In space, no one can hear you scream... not unlike in the empty theater screens that aging horror franchises play to when the lustre has gone and their final installments limp to the public. It is perhaps little wonder that some horror franchises go to space to die... or take long breaks, at least.

In celebration of Halloween, we're running down some horror franchises that made the journey to the final frontier, resulting in films that range from the sublime and outrageously campy fun to just pure awful.

Absent from the list are space horror movies that have space baked into their natural fabric. So no Event Horizon, no Alien, and no Critters 4 (they were aliens, so they just went back to space; that doesn't count).

1. Jason X (2001)

2001 was a really weird time for the Friday the 13th franchise. New Line had acquired the series in the wake of the terrible box office returns and critical panning of Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan. Known as "the house that Freddy built," New Line's plan was clear: pit Voorhees vs. Kruger in a battle of horror icons for the ages.

However, the studio had to keep Jason in the public eye to ensure the eventual crossover lived up to expectations. The first move in that effort, 1993's Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, was an odd start. The movie apparently kills Voorhees, with his iconic hockey mask seized by the equally iconic bladed glove of Freddy Krueger at the end of the film and dragged into the dirt.

Fun bit of trivia: the hand wearing the glove isn't that of Freddy actor Robert Englund but belongs to Kane Hodder, arguably the best Jason Voorhees, meaning Hodder played both Jason and Freddy!

Still, the crossover has stalled in the preproduction process by 2001, as a script couldn't be agreed upon. New Line wanted a new Friday film but in a different environment than the typical Crystal Lake setting. After rejecting a winter-themed movie that would see Voorhees killing cross-country skiers in a snow-covered Camp Crystal Lake, New Line decided to put Jason on ice in a different way, cryogenically freezing Pamela Voorhees' baby boy and sending him to space in Jason X, the tenth movie in the series.

Jason X would see the Crystal Lake Killer slaughter David Croenberg, get his ass kicked by a feisty robot, and double up on his iconic sleeping bag kill from Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (one of my favorites, massively underrated), all on the way to getting a major upgrade from some very unhelpful nanobots to become Uber Jason.

Jason X has a mixed reputation and isn't regarded as one of the better entries in the series, but the movie has a load of positives going for it.

The kills are super inventive, the nitrogen head smash being arguably one of the best in a series known for over-the-top brutality; Kane Hodder is great during his final shift as Jason, and there are a load of laughs. Jason X isn't as tongue-in-cheek as one of the following movies on this list, but it is definitely self-aware and so much better for it.

In honor of arguably the best of these space-relocated horror movies, we'll rate this and the following movies in Uber Jasons out of five. For campy space-based horror featuring a character that is a fish out of water, Jason X is near perfect.

4.8 Uber Jasons out of 5. Hail to the king, baby.

2. Amityville in Space (2022)

Alien is often referred to as "a haunted house movie in space." The elements are all there: isolation, a hidden, poorly understood danger lurking in the shadows, victims picked off one by one. Of course, that is figurative, but Amityville in Space shows why filmmakers should never make things too literal.

Amityville in Space is bad. Not so bad that it is good. So bad, it is bad.

Your opinion on Amityville as a franchise likely depends on your tolerance for utter hogwash. The first movie, The Amityville Horror, released in 1979, is an effective, often quite creepy horror. Since then, the loose Amityville Horror franchise spans nine core Amityville movies and between 50 and 90 low-budget independent additions to the franchise.

Amityville in Space is definitely at the cheapest end of the low-budget spectrum, and as the name suggests, it takes 112 Ocean Avenue further than ever before, to the year 3015 and the edge of a distant black hole.

Literally, the only thing worth watching in Amityville in Space is the hilarious opening that sees a failed exorcism attempt cause the Amityville house to literally blast off the surface of Earth like a rocket.d

Unfortunately, Amityville in Space isn't a corny "so-bad it's good" movie. It's just frustratingly bad. Perhaps disappearing into a black hole is the fate Amityville deserved all along, though with the name being in the public domain, Amityville movies will just keep coming. At least I didn't have to watch Amityville Death Toilet (yes, that really exists).

0 Uber Jasons out of 5. Avoid like a demonic pig called Jodie

3. Leprechaun 4: In Space (1996)

Leprechaun 4 sees the franchise that launched the career of Jennifer Aniston blast its titular antagonist into space. The Leprechaun, played by the unparalleled Warwick Davis, makes the voyage to the final frontier with tongue planted firmly in cheek, and the results are bloody glorious.

The film sees the Leprechaun's attempts to woo a space princess rudely interrupted by space marines and the minor inconvenience of being blown apart by a grenade.

The Leprechaun then exacts his revenge on the spacecraft of the marines, an impressively realized set for a straight-to-video horror movie in the mid-90s.

If you want some camp horror fun on Halloween, the sight of the Leprechaun emerging fully formed from the pants of a space marine is probably going to be unbeatable.

Fans of British sitcoms will be equally delighted by the appearance of Guy Siner ('Allo 'Allo's Lt. Hubert Gruber) as Dr. Mittenhand. While the rest of the cast play the ludicrousness of a leprechaun rampaging through a spaceship offing space marines relatively straight, Davis and Siner don't just chew the scenery; they suck it in like thespian black holes.

As Mittenhand says: "Thank you, Harold, I do the jokes!"

Of course, there is plenty of ropey CGI, as is standard for a 90s genre movie, but there is a wonderful practical creature at the movie's conclusion that pays tribute to David Cronemburg's The Fly. Less Brundle-Fly, more Mitten-Spider. Plus a death that is pure Looney Tunes and a Kaiju-sized leprechaun. Take that, Uber Jason.

4.5 Uber Jasons out of 5. Thank your Lucky Charms

4. Hellraiser 4: Bloodline (1996)

Another horror franchise heading to space for its fourth installment, and this one also came out in 1996. Hellraiser 4: Bloodline marks a real downturn in the fortunes of Hellraiser, being the last in the series to receive a theatrical release and the last to benefit from input from creator and horror maestro Clive Barker.

The film has a portmanteau style beginning in 2127, as Dr. Paul Merchant attempts to solve the mystery of the Lament Configuration, then flashing back to its creation by Merchant's ancestor Phillip LeMarchand in France in 1796. The movie then jumps to 1996, when the Lament Configuration has inspired a skyscraper built by another of Merchant's ancestors.

This second section also sees the franchise's figurehead Pinhead, played by Doug Bradley, come into conflict with the demonic Angelique. A conflict that is carried into 2127.

Arguably, the CGI in Hellraiser: Bloodline is no better or worse than that of Leprechaun 4; the problem is the latter isn't taking itself seriously, but the former really is.

You can't really expect a "fun" Hellraiser movie; that has never been their vibe, and they are better for the serious tone. But it means a poorly realized move to space really doesn't work.

Arguably, the biggest crime of Hellraiser 4: Bloodline is that it's a bit dull. The in-depth investigation of the Lament Configuration is only going to appeal to hardcore Hellraiser fans who will probably just end up wishing they'd watched Barker's original 1987 magnum opus movie instead.

And it was all downhill for Hellraiser after this. The franchise became the poster boy for straight-to-video horror, with some later installments developed from scripts that initially had nothing to do with Hellraiser at all. A real insult to a franchise that felt fresh, daring, and even dangerous at its outset.

Pinhead probably wished he'd stayed in space.

2 Uber Jasons out of 5. You'll need your eyes pinned back to finish it

5. Dracula 3000 (2004)

When you have been around since 1897, it is pretty hard to keep your routine fresh. By 2004, Dracula had pretty much exhausted gothic horror; a relocation to a modern setting hadn't saved Christopher Lee's Dracula in the 1970s and had arguably resulted in the worst entries in the Hammer series.

Where else to take the Count in a new millennium but into space? That's the approach taken by Dracula 3000, which doesn't connect to any other Dracula cinema outings but features character names and locales that pay homage to Stoker's original novel.

The primary protagonist is Captain Abraham Van Helsing, played by Casper Van Dien, fresh from battling space bugs in Starship Troopers. Dracula — here bizarrely called Count Orlok in an unnecessary nod to Nosferatu — is found on the abandoned ship Demeter by Mother III salvage crew member Mina Harker. Unfortunately, the connections to the source material and the infinitely better Nosferatu are present in name alone. The gothic goodness is gone.

However, something strange happened to me as I was watching Dracula 3000. I found myself enjoying it. Dracula 3000 is... fun?

The acting is more wooden than a stake, the dialog is cringy, the characters are so 2D that it is a wonder Drac could draw any blood at all, and the effects are poor. But there is so much here I found myself wanting to show my friends.

Vampire Coolio is a show-stealer; Dracula looks like he has wandered in from a neighboring studio, swanning around a sci-fi setting in full Victorian cape and collar garb. The Demeter hails from the planet Transyvannia, known to be populated by vampires. Drac had no issue procuring oak coffins for his thrall in space. It's all wonderfully silly, and I loved it.

Dracula 3000 isn't as fun as Leprechaun 4, but it definitely isn't boring like Hellraiser 4: Bloodline, and it isn't whatever the heck Amityville is Space is.

3.5 Uber Jasons out of 5. Livin' in a vampire's paradise.

For my money, Leprechaun 4, Dracula 3000, and Jason X would make a cool triple-header of space-horrors for Halloween night. But only 'cause we didn't get the following franchise entry....

Dishonorable mention: Howling IV: Werewolves on the Moon (1988)

OK. Don't Google it. This isn't the Mandela effect at work. The Howling franchise never went to space.

The Howling IV was released in 1988 under the tagline "The Original Nightmare," and though in modern parlance that would indicate a prequel to Joe Dante's 1981 classic, this film is actually a far inferior remake of that first entry in the series.

What a missed opportunity! Though the trope of a fourth film in a franchise going to space, or returning to space in the case of Critters 4, wouldn't be firmly established until 1996, The Howling could have set the ball rolling with its fourth installment.

After all, few horror franchises had suffered the drops in quality seen between the first Howling, a stone-cold classic, and Howling III: The Marsupials (they aren't even werewolves, guys!), with the awful Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf between the two.

The Howling was dying like a werewolf with a silver bullet in its guts already by the fourth film; so an early move to space would have been justified. Come on, at least give us werewolves on the moon!

The franchise would limp on for another four films after the Original Nightmare, including a lame duck reboot in 2011, never answering the question: what would happen to a werewolf on the moon? Is the moon always full on the moon, or is it never full because the werewolf can't see it?

Fans would forgive this missed opportunity. OK, maybe just me.

1,000 Uber Jasons out of Five. It's werewolves on the moon, people. C'mon!

Happy Halloween!

In the winter of 1946, two men from very different walks of life walked into California's Mojave Desert together, where one of them became convinced an extraordinary experiment they had been conducting had finally succeeded.

One of the men was pioneering rocket scientist Jack Parsons, a self-taught chemist who helped establish what would become NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and whose innovations in rocket propulsion would help lay the groundwork for the Space Race that would erupt in the years that followed. His unlikely companion was none other than L. Ron Hubbard, then a science fiction writer who had yet to compose the writings that would form the underpinnings of the Church of Scientology that he later established.

Despite Parsons' work with rockets and his companion Hubbard's fictional writings about them, their work together in the early months of 1946 had nothing to do with rocket propulsion, spacecraft, or other technological innovations that would eventually carry humans to space. Instead, Parsons and Hubbard were engaged in an elaborate series of occult ceremonies at the time, whereby they intended to summon an elemental feminine goddess known as "Babalon" (not to be confused with Babylon) to help them bring an otherworldly entity into physical existence.

Their efforts, known today as the "Babalon Working," represent one of the most unusual affairs in American history, with tangential connections to the history of space exploration.

Given its strangeness, the episode has garnered attention from several scholars and historians over the decades, who have sought to understand a series of events at the intersection of science and the occult involving one of the most unconventional innovators behind modern rocket propulsion.

Rockets and magic

Parsons, born in 1914, would become a key figure in the early development of American rocket technologies by the 1930s and 1940s in California, ultimately helping establish what would become the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). His contributions included the historic experiments at Pasadena's Arroyo Seco on Halloween Day in 1936, which NASA now recognizes as the foundational experiments that launched JPL.

Very much in contrast with his scientific aptitudes, Parsons also cultivated an interest in ceremonial magic during this period. By the early 1940s, he had immersed himself within the California chapter of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), the organization associated with the infamous British occultist Aleister Crowley and his religious philosophy known as Thelema. In 1943, Parsons became the new leader of the organization's Agape Lodge, which subsequently began operating out of his Pasadena residence on South Orange Grove Avenue.

Parsons' occult interests became particularly focused on the evocation of supernatural entities during this period, which the young rocket scientist seemed to genuinely believe could be manifested in the physical world through ritual practices. Ultimately, this led him to undertake an ambitious — and utterly bizarre — series of ceremonies aimed at conjuring what was supposedly one of Thelema's most powerful supernatural entities.

The Babalon Working

Parsons first became acquainted with L. Ron Hubbard in the summer of 1945, and shortly after meeting, Hubbard became a resident of the scientist's Pasadena home.

While Hubbard had no formal training in the occult arts, Parsons felt he demonstrated the kinds of aptitudes that would make him a promising partner for a serious ceremonial magic undertaking. Thus, in the first days of January 1946, the pair embarked on a series of rituals, which Parsons documented in a manuscript that later became known as The Book of Babalon.

"In the introduction to this text [Parsons] explained that the underlying philosophy for the Babalon Working is that the present age is under the influence of a violent force," noted University of Gothenburg scholar Henrik Bogdan in a 2016 article published in the journal Numen. "The invocation of Babalon was thus, according to Parsons, an attempt to prevent the world from being destroyed."

Specifically, Parsons believed the force of Babalon could be manifested in a specific woman. "In this sense, the Babalon Working was not only an exercise in ritual magic, but a deliberate attempt to bring a divine feminine force into human form," Bogdan notes. With this goal in mind, during the first two weeks of January 1946, the pair worked to invoke this divine feminine figure, associated with liberation and spiritual transformation according to Crowley's Thelemic system.

High strangeness in the Mojave Desert

On January 18, 1946, Parsons and Hubbard traveled into the Mojave Desert, where, according to Parsons' later writings, a change in atmosphere involving their ritual work suddenly became apparent. Now believing their operation had been a success, Parsons declared their work completed, and the two returned to Pasadena.

Soon afterward, Parsons reported to Hubbard that his elemental mistress had seemingly manifested with the sudden appearance at his home of a blue-eyed, red-haired artist named Marjorie Elizabeth Cameron. A former member of the U.S. Navy's WAVES program, Cameron had been invited to Parsons' residence by a colleague who, like Hubbard, was also lodging there at the time. Upon seeing her, Parsons became convinced this was the elemental lover he and Hubbard had worked to conjure, thereby confirming that the Babalon Working had produced its intended result.

Soon, Parsons and Cameron began a relationship, and borrowing ideas from Crowley's 1929 novel Moonchild, Parsons now believed that his romance with Cameron could facilitate the incarnation of a supernatural force through the literal conception of a child using ritual sex magic. The result, Parsons believed, could help to bring about a transformative new dawn in humanity's spiritual development.

This phase of the Babalon Working mainly involved magic rituals and Enochian incantations performed by Parsons and Cameron, with Hubbard present and assisting (in addition to having proposed Rachmaninoff's "Isle of the Dead" as an eerie sonic backdrop for the occasion). For Parsons, the ultimate goal had been to conceive a "magical child" that would become the newborn Thelemic messiah.

Aftermath

Following completion of the rituals in late February 1946, Cameron left on a trip to New York, and Parsons returned to the Mojave Desert where he completed a short treatise entitled Liber 49, believing it to be a "channeled" fourth and final portion of The Book of the Law, Crowley's foundational Thelemic text.

Upon returning from New York, Cameron even claimed to have observed an unusual aerial object—something akin to what later became known as "flying saucers" in the summer of the following year—which she believed to represent the "war engine" referenced in Crowley's work.

Crowley, however, was considerably less enthusiastic about all this. Upon learning what Parsons, Hubbard, and Cameron had been involved with, the famed British occultist confided to a colleague in an April 1946 correspondence that "Apparently he [Parsons] or Ron or somebody is producing a Moonchild. I get fairly frantic when I contemplate the idiocy of these louts."

Ultimately, a growing divide between Crowley and Parsons would cost the rocket scientist his leadership of the Agape Lodge, prompting his departure from Crowley's OTO before the end of 1946. His relationship with Hubbard similarly dissolved due to Parsons' worsening financial situation. Nevertheless, Parsons soldiered on, marrying Cameron in October 1946 and continuing his efforts to usher in a new spiritual age.

On June 17, 1952, Parsons' unusual life ended prematurely when an explosion occurred in his home laboratory, resulting in fatal injuries. He was only 37 years old. Questions still surround the circumstances of his death; while it was ruled an accident, there have been allegations that it was suicide or even a murder.

The strange legacy of Jack Parsons

During his short life, Parsons still managed to make significant contributions to the science of rocket propulsion, securing a place in the history of American space exploration — albeit one that is often overshadowed by the interest historians and scholars have taken in his occult activities.

Nonetheless, Parsons remains a key figure responsible for helping lay the early foundations for what would become America's space program. Although decades before NASA would begin sending its spacecraft in pursuit of answers to cosmic mysteries, one of its early technological pioneers had been seeking answers to such cosmic questions in a very different way: by exploring the boundary between our physical world and the supernatural realms beyond.

Bibliography

Anthony Testa, The Key of the Abyss: Jack Parsons, the Babalon Working and the Black Pilgrimage Decoded (2006), p. 128.

"Babalon Working." Occult Wiki. Accessed Oct. 29, 2026.

Bogdan, Henrik. "The Babalon Working 1946: L. Ron Hubbard, John Whiteside Parsons, and the Practice of Enochian Magic." Numen, Vol. 63, No. 1, 2016, pp. 12–32.

Carter, John. Sex and Rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons. New edition. Feral House, 2004.

Josephson Storm, Jason Ānanda. "Sex, Magic, & Rockets or the Implications of the Babalon Working for Theories of Belief and Rationality." Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 37, 2025, pp. 323–335.

Riggins, Marleigh. "Shocktober: Babalon Working." LAist, Oct. 26, 2004.

I used to make a basic mistake with meteor showers — I treated the zenith hourly rate (ZHR) like a timetable. If a shower were advertised at 20 meteors per hour, I'd go outside expecting something roughly every three minutes. After 10 quiet minutes, I'd start wondering what I was doing wrong. After half an hour, I'd start to doubt the whole idea of meteor showers.

The Northern and Southern Taurids cured me of all that. Two linked meteor showers that peak around Nov. 4-5 and Nov. 11-12 this year, they each manage only about five meteors per hour under ideal conditions. In reality, you may see fewer. You may spend a long time seeing none. So what's the point?

I've come to regard their paucity of "shooting stars" as a feature, not a flaw, for the Taurids have taught me to stop counting meteors and instead just observe the sky. I go outside for Taurus, the Pleiades, Auriga, and whatever else happens to be visible. If a Taurid crosses the sky, excellent. If not, the evening hasn't failed. The reason is that they are also known for occasionally producing very bright meteors, or fireballs — although "occasionally" is important. Don't go outside expecting a procession of them.

What's happening and when to look

The Taurids hit Earth's atmosphere at about 18 miles (29 kilometers) per second. That's relatively slow for a meteor shower. It's one reason Taurids can be more memorable than meteors from faster showers.

For observers across much of the Northern Hemisphere, Taurus rises in the east during the evening and becomes increasingly well placed as the night progresses. Later evening into the overnight hours is therefore the best time to watch.

I love looking at the night sky around Taurus, but you really don't need to stare at it if you're looking for Taurids. The radiant is indeed within Taurus (close to the Pleiades), but meteors can appear anywhere in the sky. Look roughly east or southeast, then watch as much sky as possible for an hour or so.

This year the moon helps out. The new moon falls on Nov. 9, leaving only a young waxing crescent around the shower's peak. It sets during the evening, giving us properly dark skies later on.

How and when I'm watching it

My Taurid observing strategy involves doing little direct meteor observing. I'll likely head outside once Taurus is reasonably high in the eastern sky, probably sometime in the later evening, and give myself other things to look at. The Pleiades are an obvious target — it's exciting to have this little open cluster back in the evening sky. So are the Hyades open cluster and bright orangey Aldebaran, also in Taurus. I'll probably set my smart telescope on the Pleiades and leave it alone to build up a long integration while I spend as much time as I can taking in the whole sky. Meteors are a naked-eye event and demand your attention — the second you avert your gaze from the night sky, a "shooting star" will appear. All stargazers know that!

I won't travel for hours to find perfect darkness. A darker location will reveal fainter meteors, for sure, but the Taurids' occasional bright members can be seen from less-than-perfect skies. A backyard is fine for this one — make travel plans only for August's Perseids and December's Geminids (moon phases allowing).

Nor will I keep score. Meteor rates are statistical descriptions, not promises. Five per hour does not mean one meteor every 12 minutes. You could see two close together and then nothing at all for hours. We're all so used to being told exactly what to expect, but the night sky doesn't work like that — you need to be open to whatever it throws at you (or not). Once you stop expecting the sky to do what you want, meteor showers become more enjoyable.

Stargazer's corner: Oct. 31-Nov. 5, 2026

The moon is moving out of the early evening sky this week, which is exactly what stargazers wait for at this time of year. It reaches third quarter around Nov. 1, rising later at night and leaving the evening dark. That gives us a useful 10-night window for observing before moonlight becomes an issue.

I'm planning to use it for the Andromeda galaxy. From a genuinely dark location, M31 can be spotted with the naked eye as a faint patch. From brighter suburban skies, binoculars make life much easier. The beginner mistake is expecting anything resembling the photographs. Through binoculars, I'm looking for a subtle misty glow, not spiral arms. If you want a more impressive view, get yourself a smart telescope — they do a wonderful job on M31.

There's another practical change this weekend. Daylight saving time ends across most of the U.S. and Canada on Nov. 1. The stars haven't changed their schedule, of course, but getting outside under a dark sky after dinner — and even before — suddenly becomes much easier.

Constellation of the week: Taurus

Although you don't need to stare at Taurus, the Bull, to see Taurids, it's an obvious target this week. It's climbing into the eastern sky during the evening. Bright orange star Aldebaran — a red giant 67 light-years from the solar system (and the most luminous star within 100 light-years) — marks the bull's eye. It appears to sit within a V-shape of stars that forms the bull's face. This is the Hyades, the closest open cluster of stars to the solar system at just 150 light-years.

My latest stargazing obsession

The origin story of both Taurid meteor showers is genuinely awe-inspiring. They're associated with debris left in the inner solar system by Comet 2P/Encke, which orbits the sun once every 3.25 years (1,200 days) — the shortest orbital period of any known comet in the solar system, according to NASA. The second comet ever discovered, Encke, was discovered in 1786 and spans about 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) in diameter. It last reached perihelion — its closest point to the sun — on Oct. 22, 2023, and is due to do so again on Feb. 10, 2027, but Earth encounters debris associated with the comet every year.

The picture is more complicated than a single comet trail. The Southern and Northern Taurids are part of the broader Taurid Meteoroid Complex, a vast swarm of interplanetary dust, rocks, comets and asteroids thought to be related to Encke. It's thought that it originates from a much larger object that fragmented as it got close to the sun, perhaps just 5,000 to 6,000 years ago or as much as 20,000 years ago. Fears that huge, mile-wide "planet killer" asteroids may still reside in the Taurid Meteoroid Complex appear to have been ruled out. Phew.

Each fall, Earth passes through different parts of this sprawling stream, producing two overlapping meteor showers — and, occasionally, the larger fragments responsible for the Taurids' famous fireballs.

This has been a pretty rough week for "Star Trek" royalty on this 60th anniversary year with the deaths of both Walter Koenig, "Star Trek's" Lt. Pavel Chekov on Sunday, Oct. 25 and Patrick Stewart, the storied sci-fi property's Captain Jean Luc-Picard on Wednesday, Oct. 28.

With the passing of Walter Koenig at the age of 90 this past week, franchise luminaries of all degrees are coming out with heartfelt condolences, kind words of remembrance, and tearful reflections.

William Shatner, 95, and George Takei, 89, represent the final remaining members of the U.S.S. Enterprise's core crew from "Star Trek: The Original Series" and they both took to social media to express their deep sorrow over losing one of their fellow travelers in the final frontier.

"I am deeply saddened to learn of Walter Koenig’s passing," Shatner posted on Instagram.

"Although we did not know each other well away from the set, we shared the later seasons of the original 'Star Trek' series and the six films that followed. What I observed, and what so many fans have expressed over the years, was a man who genuinely loved the 'Star Trek' community.

"At conventions, Walter was rarely content to remain behind a signing table. He preferred to be among the people who had kept 'Star Trek' alive for so many decades. That kind of genuine connection is rare, and it will be remembered by everyone who came into contact with him.

"My condolences to his family, his friends, and the countless fans whose lives he touched."

George Takei, who portrayed Lt. Hikaru Sulu and co-starred with Koenig on two seasons of "The Original Series" from 1967-69, as well as six subsequent "Star Trek" feature films, offered similar thoughts in memoriam.

"My heart is heavy. Walter Koenig, our Ensign Pavel Chekov, passed away early today," Takei shared on his Instagram page.

"Walter and I met on the bridge of the Enterprise in the 1960s, and we stayed friends for nearly six decades. When Brad and I married in 2008, Walter stood beside us as our best man. Just last month, on Sept. 14, he turned 90, on the same day Brad and I celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary. I will always treasure that he and I shared that date.

"Walter was more than Chekov. He was a writer, a teacher, a thoughtful man, and a loyal friend. To the fans who loved him for so many years, thank you. He loved you too.

"Rest well, my dear friend. Keep navigating a steady course."

On October 30, 1964, NASA's Lunar Landing Research Vehicle, or LLRV, took to the skies for the first time.

The LLRV was a bizarre, four-legged flying contraption commonly known as the "Flying Bedstead." NASA used it to simulate moon landings and liftoffs on Earth to prepare for Apollo 11, the first crewed lunar landing.

The first person to give it a whirl was the X-15 pilot Joe Walker. During this test flight, he reached an altitude of about 10 feet, and he hovered there for about a minute. He did this two more times that same day. In all, he completed more than 30 test flights with the LLRV.

These test flights took place at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. That facility has since been renamed the Armstrong Flight Research Center after Neil Armstrong, who also piloted — and famously crashed — the "Flying Bedstead" before he went to the moon.

Why it mattered

Over 60 years ago this LLRV test flight was a critical step toward landing humans on the moon for the first time, a historic moment that both served an important political purpose while also showcasing the result of monumental scientific and technical progress.

While images from this test flight might look like the team are having a bit of fun out in the desert, and perhaps they were, it was also deadly serious. The astronauts who signed onto these crewed missions were doing something that had never been attempted. They were putting their lives on the line for this progress, and this testing was a major piece in reassuring them and NASA that lunar landing could be accomplished, and safely.

Today, as we return humans to the moon with NASA's Artemis program, we see parallels between testing done over 60 years ago and testing today. Right now, SpaceX and Blue Origin are testing their lunar landers for crewed lunar landings in the near-future. While we have now been to the moon and have safely and successfully landed humans before, these tests remain critical for the safety and success of the missions.

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

This "cat's head" would work perfectly in a witch's cauldron, glowing red "eyes" and all.

Just in time for Halloween, we have new, ghostly views of the Cat's Eye Nebula haunting the outer reaches of the cosmos.

What is it?

This nebula earned its name from its distinctive "cat's head" shape, which you can see on the left-hand side of these two images snapped by both the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes. In these new images, you can even see the cat's glowing red "eye," which experts suggest could be a young star trapped in the nebula's dusty clutches.

Found about 7,500 light-years away from Earth, this star-forming region can be found within the larger Carina Nebula.

As the stars in the Carina Nebula continue to form, grow and evolve over time, the Nebula itself will change and eventually, this "cat's head" won't look much like a cat anymore. But for now, we can enjoy this vision of a domestic cat somehow depicted in this colossal tour of gas and dust.

Why is it incredible?

As a special Halloween treat, we have not one, but three new images of the cosmic cat's head.

In the snapshot captured by Hubble, we can see the nebula in visible light. This view shows the nebula as a brown pillar of dust embedded in a hazy, almost rainbow field of dust and gas. These colors are captured through Hubble's filters that can see the light coming from oxygen, hydrogen and sulfur and the light scattered by nebula dust.

JWST also took a look at this cat's head, observing the nebula in near- and mid-infrared wavelengths.

By looking at the same objects in space through different wavelengths and with different instruments and telescopes, we can uncover completely new and different details about these far-off celestial objects.

Virgin Galactic's first "Delta-class" space plane just made its maiden voyage.

The next-gen suborbital vehicle, named Apeiron (Greek for "Boundless"), lifted off for the first time ever on Thursday (Oct. 28). Flying beneath the wings of its carrier aircraft, VMS Eve, Apeiron traveled from Virgin's manufacturing site in Mesa, Arizona, to its launch site, Spaceport America in New Mexico.

"Seeing the ship fly beneath Eve to Spaceport America was a moment years in the making," Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier said in a statement on Thursday. "To our team and our astronaut community: your Spaceship has arrived."

Apeiron will undergo a series of checks and tests at Spaceport America, leading up to a planned start of commercial service in the spring of 2027.

During those customer flights, Eve will carry Apeiron to an altitude of about 45,000 feet (13,700 meters), then drop the space plane. Apeiron will fire up its onboard rocket motor, which will carry the six-passenger, two-pilot vehicle to suborbital space.

Passengers will experience a few minutes of weightlessness and get to see the curve of Earth against the blackness of space before coming down for a runway landing back at Spaceport America.

Virgin Galactic has done this before, with its VSS Unity space plane. Unity flew seven commercial suborbital missions during its operational life, which ran from June 2023 to June 2024.

Apeiron and other Delta-class planes are built for a much heavier workload, according to Virgin Galactic.

"Designed to fly twice per week with a vehicle lifetime of more than 500 missions, each Spaceship in the next-generation fleet is built to support the economics of a scaled commercial operation, with increased flight cadence and a cost profile unprecedented in the industry," company representatives wrote in the same statement.

And there will indeed be a fleet, if all goes to plan. The second Delta ship is under construction, for example, and is expected to enter service in mid-2027, according to Virgin Galactic.

Apeiron and its Delta-class siblings will need to fly a lot to deal with Virgin Galactic's backlog: Nearly 700 ticket-holders are currently waiting to fly, according to the company. And demand remains high; the latest batch of seats, which were priced at $750,000 apiece, sold out. Virgin plans to sell the next tranche of tickets for $850,000 each, LATTE Luxury News reported.

When Apeiron gets up and running, it will be the only game in town for suborbital space tourists.

Virgin Galactic once shared the skies with Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, which flew paying customers to the final frontier on its New Shepard vehicle. New Shepard conducted 14 crewed suborbital flights between July 2021 and January 2026 but is currently grounded while the company focuses on helping NASA land Artemis astronauts on the moon.

China's secretive space plane is making a series of passes over the United States in the coming days and you could spot it with your own eyes!

The mysterious spacecraft, Shenlong, is currently orbiting Earth on its fourth mission. Although we don't know what it's up to, China's space agency has said it is testing technologies that "will pave the way for more convenient and affordable round-trip methods for the peaceful use of space in the future."

Under favorable conditions, Shenlong is bright enough to spot with the naked eye, according to Spaceweather.com. But you'll need to set your alarm early, as some of the best viewing opportunities are in the predawn sky.

When and where to see China's space plane

According to satellite-tracking website Heavens-Above, skywatchers across the U.S. have several opportunities to spot Shenlong between Oct. 30 and early November, weather permitting.

Here are some of the most promising high-altitude passes for four major U.S. cities. All times are local, with the end of daylight saving time on Nov. 1 taken into account. Times are approximate and may change. Maximum elevation refers to the spacecraft's highest angle above the horizon, with 90° being directly overhead.

If clouds get in the way (or you forget to set your alarm), don't worry! There are several other opportunities over the coming days.

How can I see Shenlong from where I live?

These predictions are specific to each city, so your exact viewing times will depend on your viewing location.

To find out when Shenlong will pass over your location, head to Heavens-Above, enter your location (in the top right corner of the page), then on the homepage look for "satellite database" under the satellites subheader. And search for "PRC TEST SPACECRAFT 4".

Select "visible only" to see upcoming passes and click on a date to bring up a detailed sky chart showing the spacecraft's predicted path across the sky, including where to look and when.

What will China's space plane look like?

To the naked eye, Shenlong will look like a small, steadily moving point of light, similar to a satellite gliding across the sky.

Its brightness can vary significantly. Veteran satellite observer Paul Maley spotted Shenlong from Paarl, South Africa, in February 2026, estimating its brightness at between magnitude +2.5 and +3.5 at its brightest, according to Spaceweather.com.

Maley reported that the spacecraft was easily visible to the naked eye under dark, moonless skies, but noted that it could also become much fainter, potentially dropping to magnitude +6.

To give yourself the best chance of spotting Shenlong for yourself, head somewhere dark, away from city lights.

What is Shenlong?

Shenlong is a reusable spacecraft that launches aboard a rocket before eventually returning to Earth for a runway landing, much like the U.S. military's X-37B space plane.

China has revealed relatively little about its activities, although the spacecraft has been observed interacting with other objects in orbit. Just days ago, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency released a remarkable new photograph of Shenlong, offering a rare glimpse into this mysterious spacecraft.

Earth would be terrifying if we celebrated Halloween every 11 hours, a possibility on a super-Earth investigated by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). That is, if this extrasolar planet, or exoplanet, wasn't so hellishly hot that no life could survive on its surface.

The exoplanet in question is the rocky lava planet TOI-561 b, located around 280 light-years away, which was discovered by NASA's exoplanet-hunting spacecraft TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) in 2020. The planet is located so close to its star, TOI-561, that not only does it complete an orbit every 11 hours, but its surface temperatures reach in excess of 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,800 degrees Celsius).

That is so hot that astronomers once believed that TOI-561 b couldn't possibly possess an atmosphere. With 37 hours of JWST observations covering nearly four full orbits of TOI-561, scientists have now found this horrific planet is buried in a reflective layer of vaporized silicate mineral clouds, the same family of compounds that make up quartz and sand.

"We measured how the planet's brightness and heat changed throughout its orbit," team member Lisa Dang of the University of Waterloo said in a statement. "This technique, known as a phase curve, revealed that the planet reflects a significant amount of light from its star, and that heat is being redistributed around the planet instead of only on the sunlit side. Together, these point to the presence of an atmosphere."

The hemispheres of lava super-Earth are day and night

The proximity of TOI-561 b to its star has another consequence. The planet is tidally locked, meaning it doesn't turn like Earth. Thus, TOI-561 b has one blisteringly hot "dayside" permanently facing its star, and a cooler "nightside" facing out into space in perpetuity.

Dang and colleagues investigated the fact that the bare rock of the dayside seemed to be cooler than should be expected. They theorized that missing heat could be carried around to the night side or the heat may be reflected away before TOI-561 b can absorb it.

By using the JWST to observe full orbits of TOI-561 b, the team was able to observe the planet's nightside for the first time. They found it isn't warm enough to account for all the heat missing from the dayside.

That means TOI-561 b must reflect roughly three-quarters of the starlight that hits it. That is comparable to the most reflective planet in the solar system, Venus, which reflects around 75% of incident sunlight compared to the 30% reflected by Earth.

The team determined that this high reflectivity is the result of clouds of silicate minerals, including silicon dioxide and magnesium silicate, forming on the planet's dayside and acting like sunscreen. These clouds could also help TOI-561 b hang on to an atmosphere.

Of course, the team can't yet be sure what this atmosphere is composed of. It could be a dense carbon dioxide fog like that seen on Venus, or it could be a blanket of sulfur dioxide like that of the most volcanic body in the solar system, Jupiter's moon Io. That would be the case if, like on Io, volcanic activity is replenishing the atmosphere of TOI-561 b.

"The next big question we will seek to answer is whether TOI-561 b's atmosphere resembles Venus or an extreme version of Io," Dang said. "Observing the planet at longer wavelengths with JWST could give us insights and help explain how a planet this hot has held on to an atmosphere for billions of years."

The team's research was published in The Astronomical Journal.

Less than a week after the fates took Walter Koenig from our galaxy, another "Star Trek" legend has left us: Sir Patrick Stewart has died at the age of 86.

According to his spokesperson Kelly Bush Novak, the beloved Shakespearean actor passed away on Wednesday (Oct. 28) at his Los Angeles home after a short struggle with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia.

"He has been held in the warm embrace of family and friends, surrounded by live music, prayer, tears, laughter and the kind of profound emotion that only he could inspire after a lifetime of devotion to us all," Bush Novak shared. "We will forever cherish the peaceful ease and reflection on his face, an enduring reminder of his invincible grace."

The first time I ever saw Patrick Stewart was in director John Boorman’s masterful 1981 King Arthur film, "Excalibur." As a young teenager, I was immediately captivated by his commanding presence and charisma portraying King Leodegrance of Cameliard — Queen Guinevere’s noble father and a cunning warrior.

In 1984, he entered the sci-fi realm in David Lynch's grand and ambitious adaptation of Frank Herbert's "Dune," in which he played Paul Atreides' good friend and mentor, War Master Gurney Halleck.

Stewart was later cast as the U.S.S. Enterprise’s Capt. Jean-Luc Picard in "Star Trek: The Next Generation. He entranced millions of viewers in this role, traveling the final frontier with his gallant crew and redefining the brave and compassionate traits of a Federation starship commander. His adventurous journey on that popular show, a spinoff of "Star Trek: The Original Series," ran from 1987 to 1994, encompassing 178 episodes across seven seasons confronting Klingons, Cardassians, Romulans and The Borg.

When the series ended, Stewart continued on in the Enterprise's center seat by starring in four "Star Trek" feature films: 1994’s "Star Trek: Generations," 1996’s "Star Trek: First Contact," 1998’s "Star Trek: Insurrection," and 2002’s "Star Trek: Nemesis." Stewart also reprised the role of Jean-Luc Picard in three seasons of Paramount+’s "Star Trek: Picard," which ran from 2020 to 2023.

Stewart's prodigious talent was on further display in the hit adaptations of Marvel’s "The X-Men." He played the powerful, wheelchair-bound telepath Professor Charles Xavier in 2000’s "X-Men," 2003’s "X2: X-Men United," 2006’s "X-Men: The Last Stand," 2014’s "X-Men: Days of Future Past," and 2017’s "Logan."

Stewart, and Xavier, were prominently featured in those films. The actor and character also appeared in 2009’s "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" and 2013’s "The Wolverine," and will do so again in "Avengers: Doomsday," which will be released around Christmastime this year.

Aside from the two "Star Trek" and "The X-Men" franchise roles, Stewart had a flourishing career that spanned radio, stage and screen and was always a stellar attraction at any comic-con or other fan event around the world. Another of his many memorable projects was the compelling one-man stage show in which he played all the characters in Charles Dickens' novella "A Christmas Carol," captured on a two-disc CD set that I listen to each holiday season.

Knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2010, Sir Patrick Stewart leaves behind a remarkable legacy that brought a rare gravitas and humanity to every performance he was ever involved in, and his passing leaves fans, friends and loved ones with heavy hearts. Here’s to a wonderful life well-lived!

On Oct. 29, 1991, the Galileo spacecraft flew by the asteroid Gaspra on its way to Jupiter. Gaspra was the first asteroid to ever be visited by a spacecraft.

Gaspra orbits near the inner edge of the asteroid belt. The Galileo spacecraft had been travelling through the asteroid belt for about two months before it reached Gaspra. Galileo was 990 miles (1,593 kilometers) away from Gaspra when it whizzed by, and it was travelling at a relative speed of about 5 miles (8 km) per second.

The spacecraft took several photos of the asteroid and used an instrument called the Near-Infrared Mapping Spectrometer to study its chemical composition and other physical properties. Galileo determined that Gaspra has an irregular and elongated shape measuring about 12 miles long and 7 miles wide. The images revealed that Gaspra was also covered in craters. Because Galileo was too far away for Gaspra's gravity to affect it, the spacecraft was not able to determine the asteroid's mass.

Why it mattered

The Galileo spacecraft's flyby of Gaspra was a pitstop near the midpoint of its 6-year journey to Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. NASA launched Galileo toward Jupiter in October 1989, with the probe swinging by Venus and Earth in 1990 before its encounter with Gaspra.

The Gaspra flyby was the first asteroid flyby in history, with Galileo approaching to just under 1,000 miles (1,601 kilometers) while flying at a whopping 18,000 mph. Galileo's photos of Gaspra "revealed a cratered, complex, irregular body about 20 by 12 by 11 kilometers (12.4 by 7.4 by 6.8 miles), with a thin covering of dust and rubble," NASA wrote in an overview.

"The picture we get of Gaspra is one of something that has suffered a lot during its history," the UPI press service quoted Joseph Veverka, a Galileo imaging team member, as saying at the time. "We suspect that this is the survivor of a series of catastrophic collisions in the past."

Galileo would go on to fly by Earth a second time in 1992, then swing close by the asteroid Ida in 1993 before finally arriving at Jupiter in 1995. Along the way, the probe was in the right place at the right time to watch as the Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 broke into pieces and crashed into Jupiter in July 1994.

Since Galileo's historic first asteroid flyby, NASA and other space agencies have gone on to land on asteroids (like NEAR on asteroid Eros), collect samples of asteroids and return them to Earth (like NASA's OSIRIS-REx and Japan's Hayabusa probes), and have even intentionally crashed probes into asteroids (like NASA's DART asteroid impact mission) to test planetary protection techniques.

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

The leader of NASA's first mission around the moon in half a century is the last to announce what's next for him after retiring from active astronaut duty.

All four astronauts of the Artemis II mission, which flew around the moon in April, have hung up their spacesuits and moved on to greener pastures. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), managed by Caltech, announced yesterday that former NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman will step into the role of Caltech associate vice president and deputy director of JPL, beginning Nov. 30.

"Reid has spent his career at the edge of what is possible, and he has the technical judgment, operational experience, and leadership to help push that edge farther," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a JPL press release.

Wiseman announced his transition to "astronaut emeritus" alongside Artemis II pilot Victor Glover in September. Glover, subsequently, accepted a full-time role as executive advisor to the president of his alma mater, California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly).

Artemis II mission specialists, Christina Koch and Canada's Jeremy Hansen, also made the decision to step away from their spaceflight careers. Hansen announced his career change in July, and has since entered into reservist duty with the Royal Canadian Air Force. Koch, more recently, was appointed as NASA's acting deputy chief engineer, effective Nov. 1.

The quartet launched aboard NASA's Orion capsule on April 1, and completed a 10-day flight around the far side of the moon and back. Their mission took them further from Earth than any crewed spaceflight in history, and captured the attention of millions, who were captivated by the astronauts' incredible views and their ability to demonstrate the best traits of humanity, even while being the four people farthest from it.

The mission served as a stepping stone in NASA's Artemis program which aims to return astronauts to the surface of the moon and eventually establish a permanent base there. NASA is targeting mid-2027 for Artemis III as a flight test with Orion and the two Artemis lunar lander spacecraft (SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon). If everything goes according to plan, that mission will pave the way for Artemis IV, and the program's first crewed lunar landing in 2028.

A Baltimore native, Wiseman is a retired U.S. Navy captain who served as an aviator and test pilot before joining NASA's astronaut corps in 2009. He launched to space for the first time on the on the Soyuz TMA-13M mission to the International Space Station (ISS). He spent 165 days in orbit serving as part of ISS Expeditions 40 and 41, and completed two spacewalks totaling nearly 13 hours.

Before his selection for Artemis II, Wiseman worked as NASA's chief astronaut, overseeing crew readiness, astronaut assignments and flight safety from Dec. 2020 - Nov. 2022.

As JPL's new deputy director, Wiseman will serve under Director Dave Gallagher, helping oversee "strategic leadership, stewardship, and continuous improvement of laboratory operations," according to the JPL release.

JPL is a federally funded research and development center specializing in robotic space exploration. The lab is responsible for some of NASA's most recognizable planetary missions, including the Perseverance and Curiosity Mars rovers, Europa Clipper and the Voyager probes. JPL also operates NASA's Deep Space Network, which provides continuous communications with spacecraft throughout the solar system.

"I've explored the furthest reaches of what a human can explore at NASA — and there were truly no words in the English vocabulary to describe seeing the sun disappear behind the moon from deep space," Wiseman said.

"But that experience was really the jumping off point to go do the impossible things that Caltech and JPL dream, dare together, and do for NASA and the nation.”

Two astronauts successfully installed and deployed the second-to-last upgraded solar array for the International Space Station (ISS) during the 100th U.S. spacewalk from the orbiting outpost.

Anil Menon of NASA and Joshua Kutryk of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), both ISS Expedition 75 crewmates, completed the 7-hour-and-11-minute extravehicular activity (EVA) at 3:08 p.m. EDT (1908 GMT) on Thursday (Oct. 29). The spacewalk began and ended inside the U.S. Quest airlock, with both astronauts wearing NASA's extravehicular mobility unit (EMU) spacesuits.

It was the first spacewalk by a Canadian astronaut since April 2019, when David Saint-Jacques ventured into the void with NASA's Anne McClain.

Once outside, Menon and Kutryk worked on unbolting the ISS roll-out solar array (iROSA) from a temporary stowage platform. The 10-by-2-by-4-foot (3-by-0.6-by-1.2-meter) rolled-up assembly was delivered to the space station inside the unpressurized trunk of SpaceX's Dragon cargo capsule earlier this month, on the company's 35th ISS resupply mission for NASA.

Menon then secured himself at the end of the Canadarm2 robotic arm and carried the 750-pound (340-kilogram) iROSA to the space station's port side, where he and Kutryk next installed it on the 2A electrical power channel. Kutryk made his way to the worksite along the station's backbone truss.

Using bolts to mount the IROSA in place and connecting its electrical cables to tie it into the station's power system (during a night pass, out of safety concerns), the array was ready to be extended. No motor was needed to deploy the iROSA to its 63-foot (19-m) length. The potential energy held by the assembly's rolled-up carbon composite booms was enough to fully unroll the panel.

"And we see the iROSA deploying now," reported Mission Control four hours and 23 minutes into the spacewalk.

About 12 minutes later, the array had fully extended, draping over about half of the larger but less capable legacy panel on the P4 truss. The station's eight original arrays are showing degraded power output as they have exceeded their 15-year design life. The iROSAs, when used in tandem with their older counterparts, have increased the station's power supply by 20% to 30%.

The additional power is needed to support ongoing and planned station operations, including its safe and controlled deorbit, which is currently scheduled for 2030.

Having worked ahead of their schedule, Menon and Kutryk removed some of the beams holding the final iROSA in place on its temporary platform and rotated two launch locks that were used in its delivery on Dragon.

Thursday's EVA was the 100th U.S. outing from the space station without a now-retired space shuttle docked to the complex. Overall, it was the 285th spacewalk in support of ISS assembly, maintenance and upgrades, including 66 EVAs out of the Russian segment of the station and 119 by visiting shuttle crews.

The first U.S. spacewalk outside of the Quest airlock was made by Expedition 4 crewmates Carl Walz and Daniel Bursch on Feb. 20, 2002. The 5-hour-and-47-minute EVA mostly tested Quest's systems and completed "housekeeping chores."

"Being outside, I can say it is always sunny in space," said Menon at the conclusion of Thursday's EVA. "I find it incredible what we have been able to do to provide new solar arrays to the space station. In fact, we have been ... doing complex operations like this for over 26 years."

"This is USOS [United States Operating Segment] EVA 100, which is an incredible milestone. I think it really signifies how much we have done," he said.

This was Menon's fourth spacewalk and Kutryk's first. Menon has now logged 26 hours and 31 minutes working in the vacuum of space during his current stay on the space station.

Kutryk is the fifth Canadian astronaut to conduct an EVA. He and Menon are scheduled for another EVA on Nov. 5, when they are expected to install the eighth and final iROSA, completing the five-year process to upgrade the station's power supply.

Peacock's "Crystal Lake" takes the story of the Voorhees family back to the beginning.

It's a full-circle moment revisiting Pamela Voorhees (Linda Cardellini), who's the real star of 1980's "Friday the 13th" and the catalyst for all the murder and mayhem. While it's a welcome shake-up to the timeline of the horror franchise, nothing tops the originality of the slasher-in-space spectacle known as "Jason X".

It was 2001, and the "Friday the 13th" franchise had hit a bit of a snag. Audiences had seen Jason Voorhees go everywhere from Crystal Lake to Manhattan and Hell, but where else could this hockey-masked killer go? Screenwriter Todd Farmer had the answer: space.

"Jason X" says the quiet part out loud: Jason (Kane Hodder) can't die. In this movie, we find Jason being held at the Crystal Lake Research Facility in 2010. The head of the facility, Rowan LaFontaine (Lexa Doig), wants to put him in a cryogenic chamber, but the government has other plans for him.

Things go as well as can be expected, with Jason freeing himself and slaughtering military men like they're pancakes at a buffet. Fortunately, Rowan manages to lure Jason into a cryogenic chamber as he stabs her, leaving them both frozen in time.

Fast forward to 2455, when a group of space explorers — led by Professor Brandon Lowe (Jonathan Potts) — discover the research facility and the frozen bodies. They bring Rowan and Jason on board their ship, the Grendel.

While they believe Jason to be dead, they're able to revive Rowan using nanotechnology. As it so happens, Jason isn't dead at all (what a shocker); he was just catching up on some sleep and dreaming about stuffing teens in sleeping bags and whacking them against each other. He rises from his slumber and goes on a killing spree in the spaceship.

It's not the slasher-in-space concept alone that elevates this flick (it's pretty much a running joke that every horror franchise ends up in space eventually). No, it's the brave (and honestly wild) turns that Jason X takes towards the end.

They turn the movie's android KM-14 (played by Lisa Ryder of "Andromeda" fame) into a Rambo-esque action hero in the third act, whereby she annihilates Jason with a combination of hokey martial arts moves and ridiculously overpowered weapons.

Sadly, KM-14 makes a critical mistake: she obliterates the silent but violent killer near the medical station where the nanites reside. Not only does Jason get rebuilt bigger and stronger than before, but he's also now a cyborg with a brand-new metal mask and armor.

Needless to say, "Jason X" fully commits to every eccentric idea and bonkers premise. From the "Kung Pow"-before-"Kung Pow" face-off between KM-14 and Jason to the totally ludicrous and gory kills that border on implausible, this is the "Friday the 13th" movie that you'd dream up after eating too much cheese at midnight.

Most importantly, though, it's never afraid to embrace the shlock and humor that's evidently part of its DNA. "Jason X" is a B-movie through and through, and it waters its roots to grow wilder rather than hide or trim them down.

For instance, when Condor (Steve Lucescu) fights against Jason, he throws a bunch of stiff attacks at Crystal Lake's most famous citizen. However, Jason simply pushes him into a giant drill that's conveniently placed there (where are the health and safety regulations on the Grendel?!).

That isn't even the best part here, because when Elijah Brodski (Peter Mensah) asks the others about Condor's status, he gets met with the sensational line, "He's screwed." How this movie didn't get an Oscar nomination for best screenplay is still a mystery…

It would also be remiss to not mention the greatest kill in "Jason X" — and maybe the "Friday the 13th" franchise as a whole — as Jason freezes Adrienne's (Kristi Angus) head in liquid nitrogen then shatters it against the counter. It's a scene so iconic that even the "MythBusters" became fascinated with this idea and had to try it themselves, though without actual human heads being used, of course.

What "Jason X" represents is a different time in Hollywood, when studios and filmmakers weren't afraid to take outlandish risks with their franchises. Think about it: What else was there left for "Friday the 13th" to do? Let Jason murder more teens who cross his path?

Instead of just repeating the same formula over and over again, these filmmakers decided to think outside of the box and venture into an unexpected direction. Whether you like it or not, you have to appreciate the commitment to trying something new and reinventing the franchise.

When all is said and done, "Crystal Lake" will be remembered as a more cerebral examination of the Voorhees family, but "Jason X" might be seen as the pinnacle of creativity in the series that's never going to be reached again. It's so goofy and silly, but the concept of taking an unkillable killer, chucking him into space, and making him a cyborg deserves a standing ovation.

We're once again left wondering: Why aren't we making horror movies like this anymore?

Want to relive the madness of "Jason X" for Halloween? You can catch it on Philo, and you can watch the new Jason/Friday the 13th prequel "Crystal Lake" on Peacock.

U.S. President Donald Trump just met another NASA Artemis crew.

The astronauts of NASA's Artemis III mission visited the Oval Office on Thursday (Oct. 28) and posed for a few photos with the president.

Their visit came nearly six months to the day after that of the Artemis II crew, who stopped by the White House on April 29, 19 days after the end of their historic flight around the moon.

The Artemis III astronauts are NASA's Randy Bresnik (commander), Andre Douglas and Frank Rubio (mission specialists) and the European Space Agency's Luca Parmitano (pilot). All four — plus backup crewmate Bob Hines of NASA, and agency chief Jared Isaacman — made the White House trip.

"It was a great day at the White House with President Trump and the talented crew of Artemis III," Isaacman wrote via X on Thursday.

Artemis III will launch to low Earth orbit in the summer of 2027, if all goes according to plan. The roughly two-week-long mission will aim to dock NASA's Orion capsule with SpaceX's Starship vehicle and/or Blue Origin's Blue Moon.

NASA selected Starship and Blue Moon to be the crewed lunar landers for the Artemis program, so Artemis III will provide valuable practice: On moon-landing missions, astronauts will launch aboard Orion and then meet up with either Starship or Blue Moon, which will carry them to the lunar surface and back up again.

That's slated to happen for the first time on Artemis IV, which NASA plans to launch in 2028.

We don't yet know which private lander(s) will launch on Artemis III; NASA would like to fly both of them, but it's unclear if both will be ready when the time comes.

That uncertainty applies to Artemis IV as well. We'll have to wait a bit before we know which spacecraft will have the honor of putting astronauts down on the moon for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972.

"Sometimes dead is better." Who can forget the immortal words of Jud Crandall, delivered by the incomparable Fred Gwynne in the 1989 film adaptation of Stephen King's Pet Sematary? Turns out Crandall could have been talking about somewhere just as otherworldly as the cursed Chumash burial ground at the heart of one of King's most terrifying works of fiction.

That's because astronomers have discovered two husks of two zombie planets shuffling through the gory remains of what was once their planetary neighbors around a long-deceased star, or white dwarf. The shattered planets were revealed by a clear gap in the debris around the white dwarf J1328−1450, located around 1,600 light-years away from Earth. One of the remnants is estimated to be no larger than the size of the average solar system asteroid, while the other is estimated to be between the size of the moon and the dwarf planet Pluto.

If this wasn't creepy enough, this haunting planetary system could be a grisly warning about the future of our own solar system after the inevitable death of the sun.

White dwarfs like the one at the heart of this system are formed when stars around the same mass as the sun run out of hydrogen in their cores. This means they can no longer fuse hydrogen into helium, the nuclear fusion process that provides the outward push that supports a star against the inward push of its own gravity.

As a result, the stars' cores collapse while the outer layers, where nuclear fusion is still proceeding, puff out. This so-called red giant phase can see stars increase their radius by many 100s of times. When it happens to the sun in around 5 billion years, our star will expand to consume the inner planets, including Earth.

The red giant phase ends when the outer layers disperse along with the wreckage of consumed planets, leaving a smoldering stellar core, now a white dwarf, surrounded by the disk-shaped remains of its outer layers and cannibalized planetary children. But this may not be the final death of all the planets that once orbited the now-dead star.

"We have known for some time that planets may survive beyond the transformation of their central star, but this is the first example of a complex system with a double debris disc and potentially two surviving planetesimals," research leader Nicola Gentille Fusillo, an astronomer at the Università degli Studi di Trieste, Italy, said in a statement.

Violent stellar death can't kill these two planetary Jason Voorhees

This system differs from others seen because of the large gap between the remarkably stable inner and outer rings. All previously known debris discs around white dwarfs have been surrounded by single, flat, rotating disks, not a double structure like this.

"The system is a rare glimpse of the violent, chaotic process by which a planetary system meets its end, and it hints that dead stars can have disc structures far more complex than previously realized," team member Gentle Fusillo of the Astronomical Observatory of Trieste said.

The team thinks that this unique double structure is evidence of planets that weren't completely vaporized during this white dwarf's red giant phase.

That means just like the residents and campers of Crystal Lake couldn't finish off Pamela Voorhees' baby boy, even an expanding star couldn't finish these two planets.

The team's observations, made with the Very Large Telescope (VLT), revealed the presence of calcium, oxygen, magnesium, and iron in the disk around the white dwarf. This indicates the destroyed planets had a composition similar to the rocky planets of the inner solar system.

The researchers also found evidence of a diversity of composition in the destroyed planets. The chemistry of the outer rings deviated from that of the inner rings, indicating that at least two of the consumed planets had very different compositions.

"The system therefore offers a remarkable glimpse of what the future of planetary systems, including systems like our own, might look like," Lagos-Vilches explained.

The team's research was published on Monday (Oct. 26) in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Halloween is almost upon us! To celebrate we've pulled together a series of short "skywatching horror stories" perfect for getting you in the mood for the spooky season.

Granted, stargazing may not be the most hazardous of past times. But you'd be surprised how often things can go wrong. The best laid plans can be shattered by the unforeseen, unexpected phenomena can leave you scared witless, or mother nature itself can step in to remind us how little control we have over the environment around us.

Many of the stories serve as a cautionary tale, while others are simply..unfortunate. Be sure to share your stories of skywatching "horror stories" in the comments below for a chance to feature in next year's Halloween coverage!

An unexplained light show over France

And how better to kick off our Halloween skywatching tales than with a retelling of the strange event that terrified my entire family during a trip to France, two decades ago.

We had rented a house in the Charente, with few neighbors and no city lights. It was a stargazer's paradise, so each night we would sit outside as dusk's light faded to twilight.

One night, we stood transfixed as an electrical storm conjured sheet lightning in the distance, when without warning a shining ball of light burst into being on the near horizon. We watched, unsettled as the yellow-red light gently descended behind a row of oaks before passing over the nearby field.

My mom fled inside, convinced that we'd seen a UFO, while my dad and brothers stood and watched as the light silently flitted between the trees before disappearing from sight around five minutes after it had appeared.

We were alone in the darkness, trying to make sense of what we'd seen when a rustle in the bushes had us borderline sprinting inside, all pretences of bravery gone and images of alien greys in our heads.

It was almost certainly a boar.

Our best guess is that we saw some kind of rare electrical phenomenon that night, like ball lightning, which has been reported over 10,000 times throughout recorded history but is still very poorly understood.

My mom maintains that we narrowly avoided being abducted.

Total(ity) disaster

Our next entry comes from Space.com's Skywatching Editor Daisy Dobrijevic, who traveled all the way from the U.K. to the U.S. in the hope of seeing her first total solar eclipse, only to have totality ruined by a series of extremely unfortunate events!

"My first-ever total solar eclipse experience in Rochester, New York, on April 8, 2024, was memorable for all the wrong reasons, Dobrijovic explained. "I was attending the Rochester Museum & Science Center's ROC the Eclipse Festival, where thick clouds had completely obscured the sun. But even without seeing the eclipse itself, totality was extraordinary.

An ominous darkness raced across the sky, while rusty-red hues illuminated the clouds, creating an almost apocalyptic scene. The clouds looked as though they'd been lifted straight from a Renaissance painting. The atmosphere was electric as thousands of excited spectators watched daylight disappear. We couldn't see the eclipse, but we could certainly feel it.

Then, about 30 seconds into totality, disaster struck. We were standing in the museum's car park when the security floodlights suddenly flickered on, automatically triggered by the darkness. The harsh artificial lighting completely shattered the otherworldly atmosphere, robbing us of our chance to experience totality's eerie darkness.

Thousands of spectators erupted into boos, shouting, 'Turn off the lights!' After traveling thousands of miles for my first total solar eclipse, I'd been thwarted first by clouds, then by a car park's security lights. Talk about adding insult to injury!"

The winds of misfortune

Astrophotographer Dan Bartlett experienced a very different skywatching horror story after preparing his telescopes for a night of astrophotography at his home in the Eastern Sierra Mountains.

Nature had other plans. A security camera captured the sickening moment that an unexpected and sustained deluge of 77-mile-per-hour winds toppled Bartlett's Celestron Rowe-AckermannAstrograph 11-inch and 8-inch telescopes, mounts, accessories and all.

"A telescope owner's worst nightmare…Equal to dropping a prized eyepiece or telescope on a cement/concrete ground," Bartlett remonstrated with Space.com.

"When you first see the two scopes lying side by side, no longer upright, your reaction is to stand there and stare. Quick action of prevention is well past its timeliness. Eventually you start to pick things up and assess the damage."

"One might [put] me at fault for not taking down the scopes prior, and rightly so, however the scopes have survived sustained winds of 60+ mph winds over and over before," continued Bartlett. "You develop a level of complacency and no weather forecast in the days of the event predicted winds as high as was recorded.

Damage done? Severe. At least the dented tube of the RASA 11 has continued to win NASA APOD after APOD since the event. Oh, I now use sandbags on a heavier mount."

Bartlett continues to capture spectacular images of the night sky to this day.

An uncomfortably close look at Leo

High winds may be a potent adversary for the humble stargazer, but you know what else can complicate things? Literal mountain Lions, which is what American Meteor Society shooting star expert Robert Lunsford came face to face with on a stargazing outing to the western slope of Mt. Laguna, California.

"I was viewing alone in the local mountains many years ago," Lunsford recounted to Space.com. "Back then I often heard what I thought were juvenile mountain lions screeching in the dark. They were never too close until one night I shone my flashlight upon a full-grown cat about fifty yards away."

"The adrenalin was flowing big time as I kept that light on it. Luckily, it decided it wanted no part of me and headed back down the hill. Ever since then when viewing alone I sit in the bed of my truck to offer a little more sense of security."

Lunsford's cautionary tale serves as a potent reminder that you should always tell a friend or family member when you head somewhere remote for a spot of stargazing. And that you should probably do a little research on the local flora and fauna before making the trip!

Eyes on the stars foot in the ants

Royal Observatory Greenwich astronomer Gideon Bendavid-Walker had a run in with nature at a very different scale while leading a stargazing tour through the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary in the South Australian outback, under some of the darkest skies on Earth.

"I was running a tour from the sparsely used 1980's Dodwell Observatory as our main telescope was out for maintenance," Bendavid-Walker shared with Space.com. "It was going beautifully. I was out in the dark with my laser pointer, guiding a rapt group around the southern sky, when I felt a nip at my ankle. Then another.

Then rather a lot…

I quickly discovered that I was standing on a meat ant nest. By day they're easy to spot: a little circle of gravelly sand with a hole in the middle. At night, they're invisible, and meat ants do not take kindly to their nests being stood on."

For those of us unfamiliar with the Australian Outback, meat ants are known for being aggressive towards any they deem an intruder, have a nasty bite and are named for their habit of stripping the flesh from dead animals.

"Mid-constellation, I abandoned the cosmos and began hopping, slapping and yelling into the night. My startled guests rallied heroically, flooding the scene with torchlight (a cardinal sin for dark-adapted eyes, but quickly forgiven) and helping me evict the invaders.

The tour continued peacefully.

My dignity stayed behind with the ants."

The moral of the story — try to look down before looking up, it may save your ankles.

A relative disaster

There's a long and storied tradition of nature having its fun with astronomers, as proven by Arthur S. Eddington's complication-filled trip to West Africa, as told by Louise Devoy, Senior Curator at Royal Observatory Greenwich.

"What a nightmare....Cambridge astronomer Arthur S. Eddington watched anxiously as the skies over Principe, West Africa, clouded over with thunderous storms," Devon explained to Space.com. "As a Quaker Christian, he'd narrowly avoided jail for avoiding military service during the First World War, thanks to the intervention of Frank Dyson, the Astronomer Royal at Greenwich.

Dyson knew that Eddington was the best person to use the imminent total solar eclipse as a test of Einstein's 1915 theory of general relativity. Eddington and his colleague Edwin T. Cottingham had travelled thousands of miles to secure the best view but their plans were thwarted by every eclipse chaser's nightmare: thunderstorms, pesky mosquitoes and mischievous monkeys from the surrounding jungle who enjoyed tampering with the instruments.

Eddington and his colleague Cottingham only managed to secure one decent photograph through thin cloud. Thankfully, their Greenwich colleagues Charles Davidson and Andrew Crommelin at Sobral, northern Brazil, had better luck and their photographs confirmed Einstein's prediction."

A fall on Gold Hill

Our final tale of stargazing misfortune comes from award-winning landscape astrophotographer Josh Dury, who found himself in a race against time to stage a recreation of a famous scene from television history, with a Milky Way twist.

"One that comes to mind was the image I captured, titled: "Boy on Bike". The purpose of the image was to re-enact the classic scene from Ridley Scott's 1973 Hovis Advert through the lens of Astrophotography. I was hoping an assistant could model with the bike but plans collapsed, so I decided to do it myself.

Earlier that day, I had collected the bike from a local seller and purchased bread to resemble Hovis loaves. Driving to location in a 4x4 — bike in trailer, I dressed in outfit and progressed to Gold Hill.

Arriving before 2 a.m., there were bright LED lights still on. I had to wait until every single one turned off but one. I had to somehow get the bike into position on the steep hill, obtain focus and prepare the other elements — including a lamp and arranging the bread basket.

With the Milky Way moving into place, I really did not have much time. Setting up a star tracker and a prop set at the same time was a significant challenge.

Then, the epic finale. The weight of the lamp outbalanced the bike and collapsed with the most almighty thud (wheels still spinning). I could see lights in the street turning on!! I was mortified."

If these horror stories haven't totally put you off and you're interested in starting out on your own stargazing journey then be sure to read our expert tips for newcomers to the night sky, along with our picks of the best telescopes and binoculars for exploring the post-sunset realm.

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.

Stars shine in the vast aluminum dish of the Swedish-ESO Submillimetre Telescope (SEST) in this photograph captured by astronomer and astrophotographer José Rodrigues during a recent visit to the European Southern Observatory's La Silla Observatory in Chile.

What is it?

Rodrigues' image captures "airglow" infusing the night sky over La Silla with a soft orange glow, which is created as sunlight interacts with molecules in the upper atmosphere, according to the University of Lancaster.

The subtle phenomenon can be seen reflected in the 15-meter (49-foot) primary dish of the SEST telescope along with the myriad stars of the Southern Hemisphere, as the dome of the ESO's 3.6-meter telescope looms in the background.

Why is it incredible?

"Despite knowing about its 15-meter diameter beforehand, I was amazed by its size," Rodrigues noted in the ESO image release. The SEST first opened its great eye to the universe in 1987, at which time it was the only large telescope in the Southern Hemisphere tasked with collecting submillimeter wavelengths of light that exist beyond the visible light spectrum.

These specific wavelengths of light are emitted by wandering comets and colossal clouds of cold molecular dust and gas threaded throughout the Milky Way and beyond. SEST's observations improved our knowledge of ancient galaxies, star formation and so much more, with its perch 2,375 meters (7,792 feet) above sea level granting it a near unrivalled view of the heavens above.

The SEST telescope was decommissioned in 2003, though its work was continued by the more capable Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA).

With its working days over, the SEST telescope now stands as a quiet mirror reflecting the stars of the Southern Hemisphere night sky, seemingly pondering mysteries of the universe that it once tried to solve

SpaceX just checked another big box on the path to its 15th Starship test flight, which promises to be pretty epic.

The company conducted static-fire tests with Starship's Ship upper stage on Monday (Oct. 26) and Tuesday (Oct. 27), igniting its Raptor engines while the vehicle, known as Ship 42, remained anchored to the ground.

"Ship 42 static fires complete. The Starship preparing for Flight 15 performed a full duration, six-engine static fire, and fired a single Raptor engine to simulate a deorbit burn," SpaceX said in a Wednesday (Oct. 28) X post that shared video of the tests.

The Ship 42 tests come on the heels of a successful 33-engine static fire with Booster 22, the Starship Super Heavy first stage that will conduct Flight 15. Everything therefore appears to remain on track for Flight 15, which SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has said is targeted for sometime in November.

All Starship launches are worth watching, but this one should be particularly exciting. Musk said last week that SpaceX will try to catch both Ship and Super Heavy during Flight 15, provided the company can get regulatory approval to do so.

These catches are performed by the "chopstick" arms of the launch tower at Starbase, SpaceX's Starship launch and manufacturing hub in South Texas. The company has snagged Super Heavy on three Starship test flights to date but has not yet attempted a Ship capture.

Double chopstick catches will be the norm on operational Starship launches, if all goes to plan. This recovery strategy will reduce the time needed to get Super Heavy and Ship ready for reflight, significantly boosting launch cadences, according to SpaceX. (Starship is designed to be fully reusable, unlike SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, whose upper stages are expendable.)

SpaceX is already riding a historic success with Starship: The megarocket reached orbit for the first time ever on Flight 14, which took place on Sept. 28.

And Ship deployed 26 of the company's next-gen Starlink V3 satellites during that flight, starting the assembly of a new broadband constellation that Musk has said will eventually consist of 100,000 spacecraft.

Starlink V3 missions will therefore make up a significant percentage of Starship launches for the foreseeable future. But SpaceX also plans to use the megarocket to build an even bigger constellation in Earth orbit — Starmind, which could harbor one million of the company's AI data center satellites.

Newly released photographs of the sun captured during the Aug. 12 total solar eclipse reveal the sun's outer atmosphere in unprecedented detail.

The images, released by researchers working as part of the Solar Wind Sherpas project coordinated by the University of Hawaii, also show rare structures in the solar wind known as smoke rings. Named for their resemblance to the circles blown by smokers, these vortices were first identified in solar eclipse photographs captured in 2008. The researchers had long struggled to explain the processes behind their formation. They now know the rings are a result of the temperature differences in the coronal plasma and spread along the sun's magnetic lines deep into interplanetary space.

"This year, we have managed to capture those smoke rings really well," Miloslav Druckmüller, a professor of mathematics at the Brno University of Technology in the Czech Republic, who leads the image processing efforts for the Solar Wind Sherpas Team, said in a statement. "They are beautifully twisted vortices and there are very many of them in the corona."

The images, taken from the Pico Trigaza mountain in Spain, also reveal a giant coronal hole — an opening in the sun's magnetic field lines — through which solar wind can escape more readily at very high speeds of up to 500 miles per second (800 kilometers per second).

Coronal holes are cooler regions in the sun's atmosphere that appear darker in extreme ultraviolet and X-ray images taken by probes in space. They form in regions where the sun's magnetic field lines extend outward into space rather than looping back to the surface, allowing high-speed solar wind to escape. These structures can persist for weeks or even months.

Solar eclipse photography provides a unique vista into the processes taking place in the sun's upper atmosphere, the corona, which remain hidden even to cutting-edge space-based observatories.

Space probes and astronomical telescopes on Earth rely on instruments known as coronagraphs to view the corona. As the corona is a million times dimmer than the sun's surface, researchers need to obscure the visible solar disk with an occulter to view it. This occulter, located inside the telescope, has to cover a larger area than just the solar disk itself to protect the images from the effects of diffraction.

During a total solar eclipse, the moon naturally blocks the sun's bright disk, allowing scientists to capture exceptionally detailed views of the inner corona that are difficult to obtain with conventional coronographs.

The U.S. Air Force is opening up about the SpaceX Starfall cargo capsule it flew on a recent rideshare mission to orbit — and showing off what the capsule carried.

The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) completed a point-to-point rocket cargo delivery test using the secretive uncrewed reentry vehicle, confirming on social media its recovery of the package in the Pacific Ocean. "With support from SpaceX, the AFRL agile cargo pods were recovered after splashdown," the AFRL wrote in an X post on Oct. 26.

The Starfall capsule launched on a Falcon 9 rocket as a part of SpaceX's Bandwagon-5 mission, which lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Oct. 20. Starfall carried a number of AFRL-developed cargo pods designed to transport military equipment through space and back to Earth. The successful recovery of the pods marks a big step forward in the Air Force's effort to examine the viability of point-to-point (P2D) rocket cargo missions.

"This was a critical achievement to demonstrate the potential of Rocket Cargo delivery for point-to-point rapid global mobility for the Future Force," said AFRL Technology Transition Office director Adam Remaly in a press release on Oct. 20.

Photos included in the AFRL social media post show military personnel unpacking a recovered cargo pod for inspection. Each pod contained sensors to monitor temperature conditions through launch, reentry and splashdown, as well as to measure the shock and vibration forces exerted on its cargo.

For its first Starfall mission, AFRL packed its cargo pods with representative items like medical equipment, food ration packs and other military kit that might be helpful for surviving an emergency somewhere that's tough to reach via conventional transportation. To that end, AFRL said it also conducted a fit check of a UNI-PAC III life raft inside Starfall, which could potentially be included in future tests.

"Researchers paid special attention to the electronics equipment and survival gear, including a SATCOM-enabled tracker, batteries, a reverse osmosis desalinator, survival gear and emergency medical equipment," AFRL said in its release.

SpaceX's disk-shaped Starfall capsule made a quiet debut on a Falcon 9 launch in June, and the company has remained relatively quiet about the vehicle to date. Most of what we do know comes from a Federal Aviation Administration environmental assessment published earlier this year.

The hockey-puck-looking vehicle measures approximately 10.2 feet (3.1 meters) across and can return up to 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms) of cargo from orbit, according to that report. And it sports a carbon fiber heat shield and compressed gas thrusters for attitude control during reentry, as well as a parachute system for precision landings.

AFRL will assess the data recovered from the Oct. 20 mission to contribute to its broader Rocket Cargo initiative, which the Air Force hopes can evolve to the transportation of tens of tons of cargo per launch. That would exceed Starfall's mass capacity, but Starfall isn't the only vehicle the military has considered for its Rocket Cargo program.

SpaceX's much larger Starship rocket, which is still under development, was a likely candidate for tests at Johnston Atoll, a remote Pacific bird sanctuary where the Air Force proposed building a pair of landing pads for cargo delivery tests. However, those plans were suspended in July 2025 amid environmental concerns, and the status of the search for an alternative site is unclear.

On Oct. 28, 1971, the United Kingdom launched its first satellite. The satellite was named Prospero, but it was also known as the X-3.

This wasn't Britain's first satellite, but it was the first and only one the British space program launched with one of its own rockets. The first six British satellites all launched from the United States on NASA rockets. Prospero launched on a carrier rocket called the Black Arrow.

The Prospero mission was the fourth and final flight of a Black Arrow rocket. Prospero was designed to study how the environment in space affects communications satellites. It tested things solar cells and telemetry systems, and even had a micrometeoroid detector that would determine small particles in space posed a threat to the spacecraft.

The mission lifted off from the Woomera Range Complex in Australia. While the launch was a success, the rocket's final stage bumped into the satellite after it separated, and the collision broke one of Prospero's four radio antennas. But the satellite still worked, and it remained operational until 1973.

Why it mattered

The launch of Prospero is etched in the history books of British spaceflight. To this date, it remains the first and last British satellite ever launched on a native rocket built in the United Kingdom.

The 66-kilogram satellite launched on a three-stage Black Arrow R-3 rocket and flew in an elliptical orbit that ranged between 522 km to 1,300 km above the Earth. The rocket itself was based on the smaller Black Knight research rocket and stood nearly 13 meters tall. While the launch was successful, the Black Arrow program, which had seen two failures and two successes, was ultimately canceled.

The Prospero satellite, meanwhile, operated in orbit for two years, with regular communications ending in 1973, though it was contacted at least once each year through 1996, according to the BBC.

The satellite remains in orbit today, its legacy such that at least one company - the Scotland-based space startup Skyrora, has announced plans to retrieve Prospero in orbit and deorbit in Earth's atmosphere.

That Skyrora plan, announced in 2021, would use the company's space tug to rendezvous with the defunct Prospero, latch onto it and pull it from space. The company aims to launch its Skyrora XL rocket out of a Saxavord Spaceport in Scotland.

"By recovering Prospero, we are not only coming together as a space nation and taking responsibility for what we have launched into orbit, but also confirming our commitment to the sustainable use of outer space," Volodymyr Levykin, Skyrora founder and CEO, said at the time.

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

Living underwater was surprisingly peaceful. It was in many ways exactly what I imagine living on Mars would be like one day. There were no humans around us, except for my three SEA STAR crewmembers and me. Apart from the human noises we made, we couldn't hear anything other than the life support systems keeping us alive submerged 22 feet (7 meters) below the surface.

We were living in these extreme conditions to study the challenges astronauts may face on long-duration space missions. Since performing research in space is still rare and expensive, there are numerous facilities around the world that focus on recreating space-like conditions on Earth. One of those stations is the Jules' Undersea Lab, where the SEA STAR simulated space mission took place.

This underwater habitat was called "La Chalupa" when it was built in the 1970s. Its purpose was to allow divers to live and perform research as aquanauts — people who spend more than 24 hours underwater in a so-called state of saturation. Today, the Jules' Undersea Lab is located near Key Largo, in Florida. However, it was originally designed to be mobile — inside a barge 20 feet wide and 60 feet long (6 to 18 meters).

The aquanauts could choose an ideal site for their research expeditions underwater and then have the facility be submerged. They did that by flooding most of its inside space, turning it from a boat to a submarine. Once their work was done, they could remove the water and move "La Chalupa" to another location.

Unfortunately, the funding to keep this facility running ran out over time, and it was moved one last time to its current home. Since then, the now Jules' Undersea Lab served as the research station for tens of different aquanaut missions, including a NASA 30-day project and two missions that set world records for the longest time living underwater (73 and 100 days).

On the inside, the underwater station is made up of a galley with a kitchen and dining/work area. Next to it there is a basic toilet, shower and the "moon pool," which is the equivalent of a door to get inside the habitat. The final area is the bedroom with two bunk beds, which can be split in the middle to create two bedrooms and provide additional privacy. Three windows throughout the habitat provide its dwellers with a view of a mostly green outside world.

To start our SEA STAR simulated space mission, we waved goodbye to our Mission Control team on "Earth" and dove down to enter the Jules' Undersea Lab through the "moon pool" at 25 feet (7.6 m) underwater. After that, we did not return to the surface again until five days later. We lived and worked the whole time underwater, performing our space-related research and "spacewalks" (a.k.a. exploration dives in scuba gear).

We were able to survive all this time in such a challenging environment thanks to a number of important life support systems keeping us alive. The communications and umbilical support cables (providing air, fresh water and power) for the habitat were originally supplied by NASA. All the piping and fittings are inside the submerged barge, protected from the air-sea interface and from encrusting marine creatures. There was also a direct line to Mission Control "on Earth" to help us in case of any emergencies.

Our schedule kept us busy all day every day to simulate what astronauts experience on the International Space Station (ISS). All four of us on the SEA STAR crew had research projects that we were responsible for, as well as daily tasks. These tasks involved cooking, medical checkups, cognitive tests, maintenance work and taking care of unexpected issues. As the Commander of the crew, I also made sure everyone was on top of their work and addressed any problems that came up.

We performed "spacewalks" in between all those other activities. They were pretty physically exhausting, which meant that we did not do additional exercise during the mission. I have been the Commander of 40 simulated space missions, and normally we exercise for at least an hour or two during each mission, just like astronauts on the ISS. Nonetheless, the pressure in the Jules' Undersea Lab was approximately twice as high as it was on the surface at sea level. This caused the crew to experience additional stress to their bodies, which is why no further exercise was required.

Even though our hands were full with activities during the mission, none of us felt particularly stressed out. Whether it was because of the effects of the pressurized conditions or thanks to good planning, we actually enjoyed our time living underwater. One of the nice surprises of the mission was that the food wasn't too bad, either. We were allowed to use a small crock pot, which meant we could eat soups, stews and overnight oats. Small joys like that boosted our spirits immensely.

Having said all that, the Jules' Undersea Lab did also make the isolation from our lives on Earth feel very realistic. While we didn't have a view of Earth like the astronauts on the ISS, our very green view of a completely different world outside our windows gave us an impression of living on another planet. It was the alien nature of our lifestyle 22 feet underwater and all the challenges that came with it that made this mission feel Mars-like. Our daily schedule grounded us, the extreme environment around us kept us on our toes and our scientific exploration helped us reach new frontiers.

You can follow Dr. Michaela Musilova at her website and on social media: @astro_michaela (Instagram, TikTok and Threads), @Dr. Michaela Musilova (Facebook) and @astro-michaela.bsky.social (Bluesky).

The next International Space Station (ISS) spacewalk will have more maple-leaf flavor than usual, as a Canadian astronaut will become the first to go outside the orbiting complex in seven years.

Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Joshua Kutryk, who's also a colonel in the Royal Canadian Air Force, will help the ISS boost its power supply during his first-ever spacewalk on Thursday (Oct. 29). Kutryk will be joined by NASA astronaut Anil Menon, who has done three spacewalks already and also serves as a colonel with the U.S. Space Force.

The duo are scheduled to venture outside the orbiting lab at 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT), kicking off a spacewalk that will last roughly 6 hours and 45 minutes. You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, beginning at 6:30 a.m. EDT (1030 GMT).

It will be the first of two extravehicular activities (EVAs) for Menon and Kutryk, with the second expected to occur no sooner than Nov. 5. During the two spacewalks, the astronauts will deploy the seventh and eighth International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Arrays (iROSAs).

iROSAs lie on top of the existing, decades-old arrays on ISS, which are naturally degrading with age. The first iROSA rolled out in 2021. Once all eight are installed and running, the station will see its power supply rise from 160 kilowatts to about 215 kilowatts — a boost of roughly 30%.

A Canadian capcom, too

The capcom (capsule communicator) for both spacewalks will be CSA astronaut Jenni Gibbons. She has experience in this role already, serving as a capcom on NASA's Artemis II mission around the moon this past April. And she'll serve as lead capcom for Artemis III, which will test crewed lunar landers in Earth orbit next summer, if all goes to plan.

Also helping Kutryk and Menon will be Canadian space technology, specifically Canadarm2 — the ISS robotic arm tasked for spacewalk support, among other maintenance duties.

"It's been busy preparing for the upcoming spacewalks," Menon said about Canadarm2 in a Saturday (Oct. 24) X post. Ground controllers recently moved the arm over to the "trunk" or storage area of a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft, which brought the two iROSA arrays up earlier this month.Canadarm2 picked up the IROSAs and moved them to a transporter for the astronauts. "It even loosened bolts for us before the spacewalks … I'm grateful for the help," Menon added.

During the Oct. 29 spacewalk, Canadarm2 will do even more. Kutryk and Menon will slide an array off its transport rail and then have Menon get onto a Canadarm2 platform, to put the array into his hands. From inside the ISS, NASA astronauts Luke Delaney and Jessica Watkins will carefully move Canadarm2 to put Menon and the array at the ISS port-installation site, supporting the 2A electrical-power channel.

Each array is about 10 feet (3 meters) long when folded up and weighs 750 pounds (340 kilograms) here on Earth, according to Garrett Hehn, NASA's spacewalk flight director. The agency therefore knows the iROSAs are "a lot to handle," he said during a press conference on Oct. 20 that previewed the two upcoming spacewalks.

As such, NASA looked at how previous iROSA spacewalks were performed and created a new "elegant series of maneuvers, where we've tried to rotate around the actual center of mass of the arrays, rather than the crew member," Hehn added. "It was a lesson learned from previous EVAs, of how we thought we could make it a little less tiring on Anil."

Kutryk will move over to the installation location, hand-over-hand, to join Menon. There, the two will place the IROSA onto the older solar array, using a "mod kit" placed on a previous spacewalk. "We've got a series of bolts to structurally attach it [the IROSA] and release, in order for this folded-up configuration to fold open, and basically go from about 10 feet long to around 20 feet [6 m] long," Hehn explained.

"These arrays," he added, "I kind of think of them like a snap bracelet … They basically have a series of magnets up the side, where they deploy with enough energy that it just continues rolling out steadily. That process will take about 10 minutes on the day of the EVA."

Following that, the astronauts need to access power cables at a time when that area of the ISS is not in sunlight; the station will be (as always) moving through its orbit, circling the Earth every 90 minutes, so timing will be important.

"We can't have any sun on the arrays, whenever we're handling those hot cables," Hehn said. "Basically, we'll use a jumper to bring together both the legacy arrays' power, and this new rollout solar arrays' power, in order to have a pretty substantial gain to our power-generation capability."

The Nov. 5 EVA will essentially have the astronauts do the same installation procedure with another array, this time heading to the starboard side of the space station. The last IROSA installation, however, will take place a little farther from the station, beyond Canadarm2's reach. So the astronauts will do a "leapfrog" to get out there.

After Menon, the array and Canadarm2 are brought to the installation location, Hehn said, Kutryk — moving to the same location by himself, hand over hand — will go into another platform installed on the station truss, and take the IROSA from Menon's hands. As Kutryk waits in place, Menon will exit the robotics platform, move it from the Canadarm2 to another spot on the space station's truss, and then get back on to the platform to hold the IROSA securely for installation for the 3B electrical-power channel.

"This is the way that we close that final distance that the robotic arm is unable to do on its own," Hehn said.

Canadian robots, support teams — and new funding

The CSA's last spacewalk was during the agency's previous mission seven years ago, which involved astronaut David Saint-Jacques. On April 8, 2019, Saint-Jacques successfully fought difficult equipment during a busy excursion alongside NASA astronaut Anne McClain.

CSA has a 2.3% contribution to ISS, usually working out to a flight every five or six years. However, Kutryk's slot was delayed two years, from 2024 to 2026, because he was originally assigned to fly up on Boeing's Starliner capsule, which needs more flight testing following numerous issues that cropped up during its crewed demonstration flight in 2024.

Kutryk, who launched Oct. 1 aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon with three other astronauts, has generated a lot of political and industry excitement in Canada. His mission marks a rare pair of CSA astronaut launches in a single year, as Artemis II astronaut Jeremy Hansen just launched in April. (The last time this happened was in 2009, when Robert Thirsk was doing a long-duration station excursion and Julie Payette visited during a two-week space shuttle mission.)

Canadian astronaut missions are unusual, even when including private missions — or non-CSA government astronauts, like now-retired NASA astronaut Andrew Feustel, who has dual U.S.-Canadian citizenship. Canada is therefore using the new CSA mission as a catalyst. In recent weeks, Canada announced several government and industry commitments to keep the momentum going even after Kutryk returns next spring.

For example, Canada just announced its first bipartisan space caucus, named Hansen a space advisor to the prime minister, pledged to soon give CSA its first space strategy since 2019, and promised, if at all possible, to announce a mission assignment for Gibbons within the next year. (The latter may depend on factors such as NASA's availability for missions, as Canada does not launch astronauts on its own.)

On the industry side, Canada's defense department last week promised the launch company NordSpace $20 million CDN ($14 million USD) for a 10-year launch pad access agreement at the company's young spaceport in the province Newfoundland and Labrador; additional mission costs will be paid when those are ordered. Canada also recently promised $200 million CDN ($140 million USD) to Maritime Launch Services over 10 years, committing to a launch pad at the company's emerging spaceport in Nova Scotia.

Virgin Galactic has officially unveiled the first space plane in its next-gen "Delta" line, and announced the results of the worldwide vote to choose its name.

Spaceship Apeiron will be the first Delta-class vehicle, Virgin Galactic revealed on Wednesday (Oct. 28). Apeiron (pronounced "A'-per-on," according to the announcement) takes its name from the ancient Greek word meaning "boundless," and was selected through a public poll that drew votes from thousands of people across 83 countries and six continents.

The reveal comes on the same day that the space plane is scheduled to be flown from its manufacturing facility in Mesa, Arizona, to Spaceport America in New Mexico, where the vehicle will undergo final preparations before beginning flight tests.

Apeiron was one of four finalist names that Virgin Galactic narrowed down from a list of 276 employee-submitted suggestions. After the public weighed in, Apeiron came out on top over Horizon, Explorer and Ascend.

“Apeiron, the Boundless, captures the ambition of human spaceflight and the possibilities it opens for humanity," Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Golglazier said in a company statement. "The extraordinary response to the public vote made choosing this name even more meaningful."

The shiny new space plane will be attached to Virgin Galactic's VMS Eve carrier aircraft for its journey to Spaceport America, where engineers will complete work on its avionics software ahead of Apeiron's first flight tests and eventual operational missions.

The new Delta-class vehicle replaces Virgin's earlier space plane model, VSS Unity, which flew seven suborbital missions during its operational lifetime between the summers of 2023 and 2024. The company suspended VSS Unity flights to focus efforts on Apeiron's development, and now hopes to begin flying customers again in mid-2027.

Once they're in regular operation, Virgin plans to fly each of its Delta-class vehicles as many as eight times a month. A second Delta-class space plane is already under construction and is expected to join Apeiron at Spaceport America around the same time that Virgin restarts flying passengers, about 675 of whom are still waiting in line with tickets for a seat on one of the company's suborbital jaunts, according to the company's Q2 2026 SEC filing.

Now, more than 100 of those future space travelers are beginning their initial preparations for flight, with more ticketholders expected to follow once Virgin brings the second Delta-class vehicle into service. When the company began selling seats aboard its space plane in 2014, when VSS Unity was still under construction, tickets were priced around $200,000. Today, that price has jumped to $850,000 per seat, according to a report by Latte.

Like its predecessor, Apeiron and future Delta-class vehicles are designed for short, suborbital spaceflights, and are not capable of reaching orbit around Earth. They fly above the internationally recognized boundary of space, the 100-kilometer-high (62 miles) Karman line, and provide those onboard with several minutes of weightlessness and great views of the planet below.

Virgin Galactic plans to share further details about its upcoming flight tests during its November earnings call.

Virgin is one of two American companies that have flown paying customers to suborbital space and back. The other, Blue Origin, suspended its flights earlier this year to focus on helping land NASA astronauts on the moon.

A U.S. military intelligence agency has released an incredible new photograph of China's secretive space plane, showing it docked to another spacecraft in orbit.

The photograph was taken in 2024 by Vantor's WorldView 3 satellite, from a distance of 56 miles (90 kilometers). Ground-based observers have previously photographed Shenlong in orbit, but this new photo from Vantor, taken from space, reveals new details about the mysterious spacecraft in stunning clarity, with a resolution of 4.5 centimeters (1.8 inches) per pixel. The image was included in a new report released by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) assessing the scope and breadth of adversary threats in space.

In the image, the robotic Shenlong space plane can be seen docked to another satellite that has its solar panels deployed. It's not yet known which satellite that may have been. Shenlong's payload bay doors can also be seen in the photograph, in an open position.

Those payload doors may offer clues about what Shenlong is doing on its fourth mission, which launched in February 2026. China's space agency has stated only that Shenlong helps test technologies that "will pave the way for more convenient and affordable round-trip methods for the peaceful use of space in the future."

But observers have seen Shenlong release other objects while in orbit, such as in June 2026, when American space intelligence company LeoLabs reported that itdetected a new object in the vicinity of the space plane.

"Following additional observations across our global network and analysis via LeoLabs Delta, we have independently cataloged this object and assessed with high confidence that it was released from the Chinese space plane," LeoLabs stated at the time. "This activity is consistent with sub-satellite deployments conducted by the space plane in previous missions."

A similar event happened during Shenlong's third mission, which ended in 2024. On its second mission in 2023, the space plane also released an object and may have conducted what are known as proximity and rendezvous operations, in which two spacecraft maneuver close to one another.

It may have been that the spacecraft was releasing unnecessary hardware before landing, however. Like all things military space, few details have been released to the public about Shenlong's operations.

The United States, similarly, operates a secretive robotic space plane, the Boeing-built X-37B, and rarely releases concrete details about its capabilities or its missions. In February 2025, the U.S. Space Force released its first photo of the X-37B in space, offering a rare glimpse at the space plane in operation. The photo appeared to show it in a high Earth orbit with what appear to be its payload bay doors open.

In 2023, Space Force released its first official painting, depicting an X-37B-like space plane in orbit above Earth, intercepting another satellite.

With China and the United States currently jockeying for the lead in what many observers have called a new Space Race, rare glimpses like these images may be a way of militaries and intelligence agencies of teasing capabilities without fully revealing them to the public.

Dune: Part Three's marketing campaign has been a long and generous one, but Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures knew an extra push was needed in order to compete with Avengers: Doomsday, as both sci-fi blockbusters will be releasing next to each other at Christmas. In its final trailer, Denis Villeneuve's threequel goes all out.

This isn't the first time a Dune: Part Three trailer has left us with more questions than answers, but the in-depth look at the character dynamics and plot beats that await will make longtime fans of Frank Herbert's works raise their eyebrows.

Messiah, the second installment in the book series, is a novel of long monologues and very tense conversations. Action has a place in it, but it's a more restrained and quieter book for the most part — one that deals with the consequences of Paul's (now a space dictator) originally well-meaning actions.

Of course, the cinematic medium requires a very different language, especially when the main reason why these movies have become blockbuster hits is that Villeneuve has expertly balanced the drama and large-scale action. So, it comes as no surprise that his take on Messiah is looking to bring Herbert's concluding thoughts on Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) to life without sacrificing the grandeur that defined the first two movies.

More shocking to readers, of course, is Zendaya's (Chani) much larger role in this finale versus the book, where she was slightly sidelined with a more passive part. Paul's lover walking away from him at the end of Part Two was a major departure, and one that set her up for bigger things in the third entry. Considering how good Zendaya has been in the role so far, we consider this a win... unless Villeneuve completely bungles her arc in the final stretch.

Dune: Part Three emerges from the sand of Arrakis on December 18, 2026, only in cinemas.

An iceberg has quickly escaped from the Weddell Sea in Antarctica, on its way to an icy new destination.

What is it?

As captured by a satellite in orbit, the Antarctic iceberg A-81 has quite quickly (for an iceberg) parted ways from its icy home, breaking off to drift toward a shallow underwater shelf in Georgia.

The 600-square-mile (1,550-square-kilometer) iceberg first broke off from the Brunt Ice Shelf in January of 2023. Now, generally speaking, giant icebergs don't travel that fast. But In just three years, this massive iceberg has traveled 1,400 miles (2,300 kilometers) north of the Brunt Ice Shelf. For an iceberg, that's really fast.

Over this time period, the iceberg drifted through the Weddell Sea in Antarctica's Southern Ocean before reaching the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, floating further into the Scotia Sea and then finally now reaching the edge of a remote island in South Georgia.

In this satellite snapshot captured on Oct. 20, 2026, we can see the iceberg in its current location near an underwater shelf off the coast of South Georgia. While it isn't abnormal for icebergs like A-81 to break off from larger ice shelves, Brunt has recently had multiple large icebergs break off one quickly after the other, according to a statement from NASA.

Why is it incredible?

This image was captured by the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer), an instrument on board NASA's Terra satellite.

Earth-observing satellites like Terra keep a close eye on changes on our home planet. In addition to this image, observations from Terra have showed how the iceberg has traveled over the last few years.

With satellites like Terra, scientists can keep a close eye on these changes in Antarctic ice, which is becoming increasingly important as climate change continues to progress across the globe, affecting everything from Arctic ice to sea levels rising, worsening natural disasters and more.

The powerful Vera Rubin Observatory has spotted what seems to be a dwarf planet circling the sun in the frigid depths beyond Neptune.

The icy object, known as 2026 ED138, is likely between 600 and 1500 kilometers (373 to 972 miles) wide, scientists say. It's therefore probably big enough to be sculpted into a sphere by its own gravity — a key characteristic that separates dwarf planets from asteroids and other small space rocks.

And if 2026 ED138 is indeed a dwarf planet, that's a pretty big deal, as astronomers have confirmed just five of them to date: Pluto, Ceres, Eris, Haumea and Makemake.

2026 ED138 was discovered by Matthew Holman, who works at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA). The big moment came on Oct. 13, when Holman was running previously collected Rubin data through a search code that he developed with his CfA colleague Kevin Napier.

That search revealed a mysterious object beyond Neptune's orbit. Despite its immense distance from the sun, this body was relatively bright, suggesting that it's larger than the average trans-Neptunian object.

"My first reaction was one of excited disbelief," Holman said in a statement on Tuesday (Oct. 27), the day the discovery of 2026 ED138 was announced. "Objects like this are very rare, so I immediately started checking whether I or the code had done something wrong."

Those checks involved a thorough search through Rubin's catalog. And that catalog is pretty heft, even though Rubin is a pretty new scope.

The Vera Rubin Observatory sits atop Cerro Pachón, an 8,799-foot-tall (2,682 meters) mountain in northern Chile, and features a primary mirror 28 feet (8.4 m) wide. The scope achieved first light in April 2025 and began its main project, the 10-year-long Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), in June of this year.

During the LSST, Rubin images the entire southern sky every few days using a 3.2-gigapixel camera, the largest digital camera ever built for astronomy. This work creates a high-resolution time-lapse "movie" that can reveal a great deal about the cosmos.

For example, astronomers think Rubin will shed light on dark energy and dark matter, the mysterious stuff that together makes up most of the universe's mass-energy budget. Its observations will also serve as a solar system inventory, helping scientists map out our cosmic backyard like never before. Rubin has already discovered more than 11,000 new asteroids, for example, with many more surely to come.

The LSST inventory will likely include a number of new dwarf planets as well — including, possibly, 2026 ED138. For the object definitely exists: Holman and his colleague Mario Jurić, who works at the University of Washington and serves as Rubin Solar System Lead Scientist, found that Rubin spotted 2026 ED138 30 separate times on 20 nights between March 4 and July 11 of this year.

And further digging revealed that the Dark Energy Camera (DEC), an instrument on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, also spotted 2026 ED138. Indeed, DEC observations of the object go all the way back to 2016.

The data show that 2026 ED138's orbit is tilted by about 25 degrees relative to the plane of the solar system. It therefore likely had a gravitational interaction with Neptune, which knocked it off kilter, scientists say.

2026 ED138 currently lies about 46 astronomical units (AU) from the sun. (One AU is the Earth-sun distance — about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers). This puts it beyond Pluto's average distance from the sun, which is roughly 40 AU.

There is still much to learn about the object, however. For example, we won't know whether or not it's a dwarf planet until astronomers nail down its size. And that will require observations in infrared light, the range of wavelengths that NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is optimized for.

So stay tuned: There's doubtless more news about 2026 ED138 coming, and Rubin could turn up more worlds like it in the coming months and years.

"If confirmed as a dwarf planet, ED138 would join a very small family of worlds," Holman said. "Rubin will image the whole southern sky again and again for 10 years, so any others hiding in the places earlier surveys skipped are now within reach."

Update for 4 p.m. ET on Oct. 28: Virgin Galactic unveiled its first Delta-class space plane on Wednesday (Oct. 28), revealing that it's named Apeiron. You can read about it here.

Space tourists and citizen astronauts rejoice! A new suborbital spacecraft is about to be introduced that will fly ticketholders on brief, suborbital journeys just above Earth.

Virgin Galactic plans to unveil its first Delta-class spaceship on Wednesday (Oct. 28), before transporting the spacecraft from Mesa, Arizona, to Spaceport America in New Mexico. Alongside that reveal, the company will also announce the spacecraft's name, selected through a public vote held across more than 80 countries.

Following its debut, the Delta-class vehicle will journey to the spaceport attached to Virgin Galactic's VMS Eve carrier aircraft, marking a transition from assembly to the beginning of official flight testing. "The arrival of our lead Spaceship at Spaceport America will be an enormous milestone in a years-long journey to build the world's first human spaceship platform designed for regular commercial spaceflight," said Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier in a statement.

Virgin Galactic is targeting mid-2027 for the spacecraft's first commercial spaceflight. Simultaneously, the company is also working on a second Delta-class vehicle, which it hopes to enter into service before the end of next year. And, with the first Delta vehicle leaving the nest, the company's Mesa factory is shifting focus to the completion of the second which will lead to structural testing and preparations for its rocket engine assembly.

Virgin Galactic announced its Delta manufacturing plans in 2022, initially anticipating research flights to begin in late 2025 and passenger service in 2026. Those plans have since run into multiple delays. The company said its revised schedule allows for the additional time needed to integrate and validate the spacecraft's avionics software, with final testing to take place at Spaceport America.

Its Delta vehicle will replace Virgin's earlier spaceplane model, VSS Unity, which began operations in June 2023, and completed seven commercial missions before its final flight on June 8, 2024. Virgin suspended Unity's commercial flights to concentrate on developing the next-generation fleet, which is designed to carry more passengers and fly considerably more frequently.

Each Delta-class vehicle is equipped to accommodate up to six passengers, compared with Unity's four, and is expected to complete as many as eight spaceflights per month — more than 10 times the rate Virgin was flying Unity.

When Virgin Galactic began selling seats aboard its planned spaceplane in 2004, tickets cost about $200,000 apiece. By 2014, nearly 700 people had reserved spots on future flights. Now, more than 100 of those future space travelers are beginning their initial preparations, with additional ticketholders expected to follow as the company works toward operating two spaceships by the second half of 2027.

Virgin Galactic plans to share live updates during Wednesday's transport flight, weather and technical conditions permitting, and provide further details about its upcoming flight tests during its November earnings call.

Scientists have long known that when two black holes collide, they merge to create a more massive black hole. These events are so violent that they set the very fabric of space ringing with ripples called gravitational waves.

Now, new research suggests that the opposite may happen, too: single black holes may be able to split in two. But this can only happen if that progenitor black hole is spinning at maximum possible speed. That speed prevents the black holes from immediately falling back on each other.

There are physical laws in place that would usually prevent black holes from splitting in two; the team behind this research investigated whether there are conditions in which these laws can be temporarily bypassed.

One of the key aspects of physics that prevents black holes from bifurcating comes from thermodynamics. Black holes possess a characteristic called "entropy," which is essentially a measure of disorder within a system.

Imagine a toddler's crayon box. When entropy is low, the crayons are neatly arranged by color. As entropy is increased, the crayons are scattered and no longer in order. To get the crayons back in order, it requires a parent to put energy into the system and neatly reorder the crayons. In other words, the entropy of a system can't be reduced without some intervention and energy being added from outside that system. Parenting would be a little easier if it could.

A black hole splitting in two would represent a decrease in entropy, strongly disfavored by the laws of thermodynamics, but only if the black hole is not rotating. The situation could be different for a rapidly rotating black hole.

This team of scientists found that a loophole exists for such a black hole.

"The two resulting black holes must also be able to separate rather than immediately fall back together," team member Francesco Sannino of the University of Naples Federico II in Italy said in a statement. "When we include this requirement, the window largely closes again, except possibly for black holes rotating close to their maximum possible rate."

Black hole trousers?

The team calculated just how such a black hole split could occur, finding that the division of the black hole's outer boundary, or "event horizon," proceeds in an oddly trouser-like shape, with one resulting black hole slipping down each "leg."

They termed this "pair-of-pants topologies."

The researchers also determined that a split is more likely to take place if one of the resultant black holes is considerably smaller than its newly born twin.

"We cannot yet give a single probability for a black hole to split. It depends on how gravity behaves beyond Einstein's theory, and we are working to quantify this," Sannino said. "We expect small primordial black holes to be more prone to splitting than much larger astrophysical black holes."

Sannino added that such black hole splits may be detectable in high-energy light called gamma-rays.

"We may detect a split indirectly: gamma-ray telescopes such as Fermi-LAT can search for signals from tiny black-hole fragments that might form during mergers," the researcher concluded.

The team's research was published on Oct. 22 in the journal Physical Review D.

I was breathing just fine through my life support systems, but I kept feeling an urge to double check that everything was ok with my "spacesuit" before heading out on this "spacewalk." I have worn many different types of spacesuits on Earth during my career, but for the first time in my life, I knew that I couldn’t just stop to breathe the air outside if there were an emergency. That's because I was underwater.

On this excursion, I was leading a simulated space mission underwater called SEA STAR. My "spacesuit" was actually scuba diving gear, and the simulated spacewalks, or EVAs (Extra-Vehicular Activities), included outings where we explored underwater environments. Being underwater, if we encountered a major problem with our gear, we would have had to treat it as seriously as if we were astronauts on the International Space Station. There was no immediate "out." This was serious.

Before this underwater mission, I had worked as the commander of nearly 40 analog missions that simulated crewed missions to the moon and Mars. The goal of these types of missions is to test what living and working in lunar or Martian environments might be like. We study everything from the psychology of living in extreme conditions, or in isolation, to the technology that astronauts might use to complete those missions successfully.

Testing spacesuit technology is also an important part of these analog space missions. These suits are usually a much simpler version of the ones astronauts use in space, which can weigh around 310 pounds (141 kilograms) when fully equipped with life support systems.

Analog spacesuits usually weigh a maximum of 30 pounds (14 kg). While there are many differences between suits designed for use in space and these suits designed for testing on Earth, the biggest one is that, on an analog mission, crew members can open their helmets and breathe the outside air if necessary.

Astronauts in space don’t have that advantage. But neither do aquanauts, those performing a simulated space mission underwater.

Aquanauts spend at least 24 hours underwater in a so-called state of saturation. That’s a physiological condition achieved by a person who breathes underwater long enough for the body’s tissues to absorb the maximum possible amount of inert gas (like nitrogen), for a specific depth and pressure.

Water leaking into our suits or into our underwater habitat can pose serious risks for the crew, as well as health problems related to the higher pressures underwater, amongst other challenges unique to this environment.

This is what pushed me to be extra thorough, and perhaps even a bit paranoid, when preparing for my scuba diving "spacewalks." While scuba diving, the dangers of your equipment failing or decompression sickness can be as lethal as some of the difficulties astronauts face during their spacewalks. That’s why we follow strict protocols when preparing to go on underwater EVAs and during the outings themselves.

As an experienced scuba diver, I wasn’t concerned with the scuba diving aspect of the mission itself. In many ways, it was much easier than some dives in pitch black water I performed in the open ocean or cave dives. But for these EVAs, I was more on edge because I was the Commander of the SEA STAR crew living 22 feet (7 meters) underwater in the station, called the Jules’ Undersea Lab, in Florida. Being responsible for other people’s lives made me extra cautious and also more worried than usual when diving.

Despite the many challenges of these underwater EVAs, these experiences and lessons learned can teach us a lot about what we still need to improve for future long-duration space missions.

Our aquanaut "spacesuits" were essentially the same as scuba gear, with the exception of two important accessories that aren’t always necessary for normal dives. Those were gloves and flashlights. We needed the gloves as protection from a number of factors in the environment around us, like barnacles and other sharp natural formations. They also made using cameras and vacuums for environmental cleaning underwater more challenging, which was a good approximation for how gloves limit astronauts’ dexterity during spacewalks.

The underwater environment around us had very low visibility, which is why the flashlights were a mandatory component of our EVAs. They helped us to navigate through the darkness and find each other. Even still, with just the small flash of light we could only see a couple of feet ahead of us. That is why it was also vital that we worked together and moved side-by-side.

Good communication skills were another crucial component of our underwater simulated space mission. Before each EVA, we prepared a plan, talked about backup plans and went over emergency procedures. During the EVA, we used standard scuba diving sign language to communicate, and we created some new mission-specific signals as well. This visual communication is very useful during simulated space missions on land, too, especially in situations when our communications technologies have not worked properly.

No matter how much we prepared, though, the fear of the unknown and of getting lost can still get to a crew. A common safety protocol when diving is to safely return to the surface if you get lost or separated from your team and cannot find them. However, during the SEA STAR mission, we planned on staying underwater for the full five-day duration of our mission. That meant that such an option was out of the question, except of course in emergency scenarios.

Personally, I enjoyed the challenge of the low visibility in new terrain. It allowed me to hone my orientation and navigation skills, as well as my abilities as a leader in challenging environments. Though I was more vigilant than I perhaps needed to be, once I dove out of our submerged station, I went straight into my favorite mode: exploration. Despite not being able to see very much ahead of me, and all while keeping a watchful eye on my crewmembers, I finally truly felt like an astronaut on a spacewalk. Darkness was all around me, but my determination and curiosity propelled me toward exploring the unknown.

You can follow Dr. Michaela Musilova at her website and on social media: @astro_michaela (Instagram, TikTok and Threads), @Dr. Michaela Musilova (Facebook) and @astro-michaela.bsky.social (Bluesky).

Scientists are still learning about a cosmic "string of pearls," a unique celestial relic left by a supernova explosion that humanity witnessed around 850 years ago.

That is thanks to the most detailed observation of the dandelion-shaped chains of gas and supernova debris that comprise Pa 30, the only supernova remnant of its type observed in the Milky Way. What makes Pa 30 even more unique is that it has a rare "zombie star" at its heart.

Supernovas like the one that created Pa 30 are called Type Ia supernovas; they happen when a dead star called a white dwarf overfeeds on a companion star like a cosmic vampire. This overfeeding triggers a runaway nuclear explosion that usually destroys the white dwarf. But on rare occasions, the supernova doesn't completely destroy the star, and a shattered stellar body remains, called a zombie star. These events are called Type Iax supernovas.

Pa 30 was first identified in 2013 by a citizen scientist in 2013, but scientists soon linked it to a cosmic explosion recorded independently in the year 1181 in Japanese, Chinese, and Arabic historical documentation. That makes this one of only five supernovas seen before the invention of the telescope.

"Reliable historical records of stellar explosions extend back only about a thousand years. For all we know, there might well be similar remnants still lurking in the dark in our own galaxy," team member Ilaria Caiazzo, assistant professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), said in a statement.

"Today, we are lucky to study an intriguing object we know was observed by astronomers who made three independent historical records of the event centuries before the invention of the telescope."

Solar system-sized pearls

Pa 30 is a good laboratory to study supernovas because, at around 7,500 light-years away, it is relatively close to Earth on cosmic scales. For instance, the heart of our galaxy is around 26,000 light-years away. "We can see this much detail because of Pa 30's proximity to Earth," said Caiazzo. "This proximity makes Pa 30 uniquely valuable for study."

It is also an important subject of study because it is the only supernova remnant in which we can see a zombie star.

Using the Gemini North telescope, Caiazzo and colleagues zoomed in on Pa 30, discovering knots along the strands of gas radiating out from the site of the cosmic explosion, like pearls on a string.

These pearls are each wide enough to encompass the orbit of Neptune, the most distant planet from the sun, ten times over.

"The planetary region of our solar system could fit in each knot about ten times with room to spare," said Caiazzo. "The knots are quite strikingly uniform. We are excited to try to model them."

The team also discovered that the zombie star sits almost perfectly at the heart of Pa 30. When these cosmic explosions happen, they should provide any debris, including zombie stars, with a kick. The fact that this "living dead" star still sits dead center of this wreckage suggests that when this explosion happened, it was roughly symmetrical and the kick was relatively light.

"Explosions conserve momentum. If the explosion itself was perfectly symmetric, the ejecta should also be symmetric, and the surviving star should not receive a substantial kick," Caiazzo said. "We were able to measure a precise upper limit of the remnant star's transverse kick speed, showing that it was surprisingly small. We practically don't see the star moving away at all."

While there are still many mysteries surrounding Pa 30 and its zombie occupant, one of the most exciting prospects emerging from this research is the possibility it will help identify the wreckage of other Type Iax supernovas in our galaxy.

"While we can see Type Iax supernovas in distant galaxies as point sources of light, resolving the remnants of such explosions is only possible in our own galaxy and in very few nearby ones," Caiazzo concluded. "Eventually, we plan to use Pa 30's distinctive properties to search the Milky Way and nearby galaxies for similar objects."

The team's research was published in The Astrophysical Journal.

The November full moon reaches maximum illumination at 9:53 a.m. EST (1453 GMT) on Nov. 24, as the lunar disk sits opposite the sun in Earth's sky, appearing fully lit by its rays.

November's full moon is traditionally known as the "Beaver Moon", because it rises around the time when the small mammals take refuge in their dens, having stored enough food to survive the long winter months, according to the Old Farmer's Almanac.

The Nov. 24 full moon also happens to be the first of three consecutive "supermoons". The non-scientific term is often bestowed on full moons that occur when the natural satellite is within 90% of perigee, when the moon is closest to Earth in its elliptical orbit. The proximity can make a supermoon appear 14% larger and 30% brighter than the smallest full moon of the year, according to NASA.

When to see the November full moon

The November full moon will be below the horizon for stargazers in the U.S. when it turns full at 9:53 a.m. EST on Nov. 24. Instead, viewers in America will get their best view of the near-full Beaver Moon as it arcs towards the western horizon in the predawn hours of Nov. 23.

You may notice the lunar disk take on a gorgeous yellow-orange hue in the hour before moonset, as the bluer wavelengths of its light are scattered by Earth's dense atmosphere through a process known as Rayleigh scattering — the same phenomenon that turns the sky red at sunset.

November's supermoon may appear even larger as it travels close to the horizon thanks to a phenomenon known as the "Moon Illusion", which tricks us into thinking that the lunar disk is larger than it actually is while closer to foreground objects, compared to when it shines overhead. The moon will also appear fully lit to the casual observer on the evenings of Nov. 23 and Nov. 24, so there's no need to miss out if you struggle with early mornings!

The table below details local full moon timings for when the moon is 100% illuminated for a selection of cities spread across the globe (local moonset and moonrise times will vary based on your location):

Local full moon timings for November 2026

Why it's called the Beaver Moon

The November full moon is often called the Beaver Moon because it rises around the time that beavers retreat to their lodges after collecting enough food to see them through the winter.

It is also known as the Frost Moon by the indigenous Cree people of Canada and the northwestern U.S., and as the Digging Moon by the Tlingit, in reference to the animals that scratch around for fallen nuts in the hardening autumn earth, per the Old Farmer's Almanac.

The rising of the November full moon also marks the Hindu festival of Dev Diwali when worshippers light earthen lamps called "diyas" and offer prayers to celebrate Lord Shiva's defeat of the demon Tripurasura, after which the Hindu gods descended to Earth to celebrate, according to the Edinburgh Hindu Mandir & Cultural Centre.

Nov. 24 and the rising of the full moon also coincides with the Sikh celebration of Guru Nanak Gurpurab, when millions celebrate the birthday of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, according to the BBC.

What else to see in the sky around the full moon

Stargazers in the U.S. will be treated to a magnificent natural light show in the predawn hours of Nov. 24, when the near-full moon shines low on the western horizon less than 5 degrees from the bright stars of the Pleiades open star cluster.

The Pleiades and moon will be close enough to share the field of view of a pair of 10X50 binoculars, which will help reveal gorgeous detail on the lunar surface, while helping to resolve dozens more of the clusters blue-white stars as they cut through the deluge of moonlight.

Tear your gaze away from the moon and find a trio of spectacular multi-colored lights forming a tight triangle high in the southern sky. The red light of Mars will shine steadily above the twinkling star Regulus at the heart of the constellation Leo, with the yellow-white light of Jupiter to their right.

Venus will also be visible as a dazzling "Morning Star" hanging low on the eastern horizon, with Mercury below, tracing out the path of the approaching sun.

Saturn, meanwhile, will make for a satisfyingly easy and visually spectacular target in the post sunset hours of Nov. 24, as it shines in the southeastern sky in the constellation Pisces, whose stars will be a challenge to spot in the light of the newly waning moon.

Observing tips

The November full moon presents a stunning opportunity to photograph the entirety of the Earth-facing lunar disk as its disk appears temporarily free from shadow. Be sure to make use of our expert guide to photographing the moon, along with our picks of the best cameras and lenses for astrophotography, if you want to upgrade your equipment.

• Use a tripod to keep your camera as steady as possible.
• Use a remote shutter/timer to prevent camera wobble.
• A smartphone stargazing app can help you find the exact point of moonrise on your local horizon.
• A lens with a focal length of 12-50 mm is useful for landscape photography, while a focal length of at least 400 mm is advised for capturing more detailed views of the lunar surface.
• The moon can be made to appear particularly large while close to the horizon next to foreground objects, where it may take on an orange-yellow appearance thanks to Rayleigh scattering. A cleaner, more "classic" view can be captured as it soars high overhead.

Upcoming full moons

These times mark the exact instant of full illumination. Your own moonrise or moonset may be hours earlier or later, depending on your location. For the best viewing plan, use an app such as Stellarium or SkySafari 7 Pro to find your local moonrise time and be sure to read our full moon calendar for comprehensive timings for each full moon in 2026.

Editor's Note: If you would like to share your full moon photos with Space.com's readers, then please send your photo(s) along with your name, the location and any comments on what it was like to capture the picture to spacephotos@space.com.

PALO ALTO, Calif. — Cowboy Space just showed us how it plans to become a big player in the final frontier.

The California-based company, which is run by Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt, intends to operate a constellation of 20,000 AI data centers in low Earth orbit (LEO). It will build those satellites in house and launch them on a homegrown rocket — a vehicle Cowboy Space unveiled here on Monday night (Oct. 26), at an event it called "Big Sky Rising."

"It's a fundamentally novel approach to rocketry in the modern era, in our opinion," Bhatt said during the event. "The idea is that you have a two-stage rocket where the upper stage of the rocket itself transforms into the satellite."

That rocket is called Big Iron, Bhatt told us on Monday night. And so is the data-center satellite, as both are considered to be part of the same system.

The stainless-steel rocket will be 282 feet (86 meters) tall and 15.4 feet (4.7 m) wide. It will be powered by Cowboy Space's Clydesdale engines — nine in the first stage and one in the upper stage, the same configuration employed by SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. And, like the Raptor engines that power another SpaceX launcher, the giant Starship, Clydesdale will burn liquid oxygen and liquid methane, a combo known as methalox.

Big Iron's first stage will be reusable; an animation Bhatt showed during "Big Sky Rising" showed the booster coming down for a landing on a ship at sea, as Falcon 9 first stages often do these days.

The upper stage, meanwhile, will stay in orbit as a Big Iron satellite. The spacecraft will tip the scales here on Earth at about 33,000 pounds (15,000 kilograms), and, after unfurling its solar panels, it will be about 433 feet (132 m) long.

The payload fairing that protected the satellite during launch will morph into a radiator, which will dump into space the prodigious heat generated by Big Iron's GPUs (general processing units). And there will be a lot of GPUs: Each satellite will carry five racks of them, Bhatt said, which will provide about 1 megawatt of compute payload.

Big Iron will therefore be much larger than an "imperial-class satellite" — Bhatt's term for SpaceX's planned Starmind AI data center spacecraft, each of which will have a solar wingspan of 246 feet (75 m) and boast about 250 kW of compute payload.

Cowboy Space plans to operate about 20,000 Big Iron satellites in LEO, a constellation it calls Stampede. Each rocket will carry just one of these satellites to orbit, so it will take 20,000 launches to build Stampede — and, likely, several thousand more every year to maintain it at that number.

Cowboy Space therefore intends to launch very often — multiple times per day, from launch complexes it calls Trailheads. The company has not yet announced where these complexes will be, but each one will likely feature four active launch mounts, Bhatt said on Monday night.

And not all of these launches will serve Stampede. Toward the end of "Big Sky Rising," Bhatt announced that Big Iron will also launch payloads for customers, a service that Cowboy Space calls Big Iron Express.

The first flights of this new rocket are a few years away. Cowboy Space — which was founded in 2024 as the power-beaming company Aetherflux — is still building and testing its Clydesdale engine and says it aims to launch Big Iron for the first time in December 2028.

"Now, a lot of things have to go right for that to happen; it's not a guarantee," Bhatt said. "I think it's ambitious. But if it wasn't ambitious, I wouldn't be an entrepreneur."

Cowboy Space is operating one piece of space hardware at the moment, by the way — a satellite called Reason-1, which launched on SpaceX's Transporter-18 rideshare mission on Oct. 1.

"Its job is to prove out power beaming: using a high-power laser to transfer energy from low Earth orbit to a receiver on the ground," Cowboy Space said via X on Sept. 28. "If you want to build data centers in space, you have to master the optical systems between orbit and Earth. This is where that journey begins."

Matt Dinniman's "Dungeon Crawler Carl" is the hottest science fantasy novel series in the galaxy, and now it's getting a comic book adaptation.

"Dungeon Crawler Carl" follows the exploits of pantless Coast Guard vet Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s kitty, Princess Donut, as they compete in an intergalactic reality TV show to decide the fate of planet Earth. Carl and Princess Donut must endure a series of traps and challenges set forth by the neurotic, foot-fetishizing System AI.

Dinniman exploded in popularity from a viral self-publishing novelty to a New York Times bestselling phenomenon whose eight books in the "Dungeon Crawler Carl" universe have sold 14 million copies worldwide. There is even an upcoming TV adaptation produced by "Family Guy's" Seth MacFarlane and "Thor: Ragnarok" screenwriter Christopher Yost coming to streaming service Peacock.

Now in a move that seems almost obligatory, "Dungeon Crawler Carl" is leaping into the world of comic books with a newly announced series courtesy of Montana-based Vault Comics. A special double-sized, 48-page debut issue will arrive in January of 2027, with subsequent monthly issues landing in stores and digitally.

"New Achievement! You like 'em floppy! You wanted Carl and Donut every month, you get Carl and Donut every month," states the synopsis. "Reward: An ongoing series with scaled up art! You know what's worse than breaking up with your girlfriend? Getting stuck on a sadistic alien game show with her cat!"

Vault's "Dungeon Crawler Carl" project will be an adaptation of the popular DCC webtoon series penned by Tevagah and Dinniman and illustrated by Laurel Pursuit Studios.

Artist Kuzomari will aid in the transition from webtoon to comic book format. Main covers will be crafted by Nathan Gooden ("Barbaric') with variants provided by a roster of artists including Ryan Ottley ("Invincible"), Brett Bean, Frank Cho, Clayton Crain, Yoshi Yoshitani, Katie Cook, Riley Rossmo, Tyler Walpole, Doug Mahnke, Trish Forstner and Luciano Fleitas, who creates the novel covers.

"Entering the comic space is nothing short of amazing," Dinniman stated in an official press release. "The fact that I get to work with some of the greatest creators and artists working today feels like a dream."

Serializing the first two episodes of the webtoon series, "Dungeon Crawler Carl #1" will be released by Vault Comics on Jan. 20, 2027.

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover left a mark on the Martian landscape when it passed a historic milestone driving across the Red Planet.

What is it?

On Oct. 11, Perseverance passed 28.10 miles (45.22 kilometers) driven on Mars. This is farther than anything has ever traveled on the surface of another world, earning the rover the interplanetary driving record.

Previously, this record was set by NASA's Opportunity rover, and it took Opportunity roughly 14 years to drive this far. Perseverance traversed this distance in just over 5 years.

In this snapshot captured by Perseverance, the rover looked back at its progress, capturing its own tracks pressed into the planet's dusty surface. This moment of reflection captures years of achievement on the Red Planet.

Perseverance's driving record comes after many years of different rovers pushing autonomous driving on other worlds to new levels. As Vandi Verma, Chief Engineer for Robotic Operations at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, shared in a recent mission update, the rover team continues to push the envelope, exploring new and better ways to drive the rovers remotely from another planet.

Why is it incredible?

While Perseverance has traveled nearly 30 miles across the surface of another planet, the rover has accomplished so much more than just this distance record on its enduring mission.

Since landing on Mars back in 2021, Perseverance has observed, sampled and studied a wide variety of rocks, boulder fields, Martian slopes and more. Recently, observations made using Perseverance provided the strongest evidence yet of possible biosignatures on the planet.

While we have not yet found conclusive evidence that life once existed on Mars, as the rover has made its way across the planet's surface, it has gotten us closer to that answer than we have ever been before.

On Oct. 27, 1961, NASA launched the first test flight of its new Saturn I space launch vehicle.

The Saturn I rocket was the United States' first heavy-lift rocket designed to launch big payloads beyond low Earth orbit. This was also the first test flight of any rocket in the Saturn family of rockets, which includes the Saturn V that was used to launch astronauts to the moon during the Apollo program.

The Saturn I was enormous compared to every rocket that came before it. It was almost three times as tall as the Jupiter-C rocket, which launched the first American satellite into orbit in 1958. It also produced more than 10 times the amount of thrust that the Jupiter-C rocket could. The liquid-powered rocket launched on its maiden voyage from Cape Canaveral.

Despite a one-hour weather day, the flight was nearly perfect. It reached an altitude of 85 miles and splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean 15 minutes later. The only thing that went wrong was that its engines cut off 1.6 seconds early, but that wasn't a huge deal. Scientists figured out that this happened because there was too much liquid oxygen in the rocket and not enough propellant.

Why it mattered

NASA was only 3 years old when it launched its first Saturn rocket on Oct. 27, 1961. Human spaceflight was a mere 6 months old, after the April 12 launch of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin earlier that year. Yet NASA had its eyes on the moon.

That's where the Saturn rocket family came in.

The Saturn I rocket, the predecessor to the Saturn V that sent Apollo astronauts to the moon, began its life in 1957 as the so-called Saturn C-1 booster, a project led by rocket scientist Wernher von Braun at the Advanced Research Project Agency. The plan called for a heavy-lift rocket capable of 1.5 million pounds of thrust (the first launch generated 1.3 million pounds of thrust, but later versions hit that 1.5 million mark). At launch, the Saturn I stood 162 feet tall and weighed 460 tons. NASA called that first test flight the Saturn SA-1 flight.

The Launch Complex 34 pad at what is now Cape Canaveral Space Force Station was specially built for the Saturn I rocket, with NASA taking charge in June 1961.

"The flight was considered essentially flawless," NASA said in a statement. "The Saturn SA-1 flight was the first of 32 successful Saturn rocket launches — 10 Saturn Is, 9 Saturn IBs, and 13 Saturn Vs — between 1961 and 1973."

NASA ultimately built three different types of Saturn rocket, the Saturn I, more powerful Saturn IB and the super-sized Saturn V rocket for Apollo moon launches.

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

The "Star Trek" community lost one of its most beloved icons on Sunday, October 25, with the sad passing of Walter Koenig at the age of 90 in his North Hollywood home.

Koenig was best known as the U.S.S. Enterprise's Russian navigator Pavel Andreievich Chekov for two seasons on "Star Trek: The Original Series." The popular American actor continued in that role for Paramount's first seven "Star Trek" films, which began in 1979's "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" and ended with 1994's "Star Trek: Generations."

A native of Chicago, Illinois, Marvin Walter Koenig was born on Sept. 14, 1936, to Lithuanian immigrant parents and spent his formative years in New York City. After a short college stint at UCLA in California, Koenig was accepted into the prestigious Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York in 1958, joining future stars like James Caan and Christopher Lloyd.

TV guest spots in the early '60s on "Mr. Novak" and "Ben Casey" led Koenig to join the intrepid crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise for Gene Roddenberry’s sophomore series of "Star Trek." He co-starred in 36 of the 50 installments airing on the NBC Network in 1967-68 and 1968-69, premiering in famed sci-fi author Theodore Sturgeon's excellent episode, "Amok Time," broadcast on Sept. 15, 1967.

Although Koenig's Ensign Chekov character was not resurrected for the 1973-74 Saturday morning cartoon spinoff, "Star Trek: The Animated Series," due to budget issues, he did write a screenplay for that show’s first season titled "The Infinite Vulcan."

In 1982's "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan," he was promoted to Commander aboard the U.S.S. Reliant when he and Captain Terrell (Paul Winfield) beamed down to Seti Alpha V and ran into the genetically enhanced Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalban).

Following his work in the "Star Trek" movies, Koenig scored an ongoing TV role on creator J. Michael Straczynski's "Babylon 5" starting in 1993, where he portrayed the former Psi Ops commander and war criminal, Alfred Bester, through the 1998 season.

A core member of the original "Star Trek" and its Hollywood features alongside William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, and James Doohan, Koenig was often utilized as comic relief.

His thick accent, where he pronounced his “Vs” as “Ws,” was derived from hearing his Russian-Jewish father's particular manner of speech. Koenig’s undeniable contributions to the legacy of "Star Trek" and the chemistry of its cast cannot be overestimated, and he'll be sorely missed.

His bestselling 1998 autobiography, "Warped Factors: A Neurotic’s Guide to the Universe," was later followed by a detailed memoir titled "Beaming Up and Getting Off," released back in 2020.

Koenig is survived by his sole daughter, screenwriter and actress Danielle Koenig.

In 1927, Norwegian civil engineer and amateur radio operator Jørgen Hals made an unusual discovery: while monitoring transmissions from a shortwave radio station in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, he began hearing odd, "delayed" radio echoes, arriving approximately three seconds after the original transmissions, that sometimes accompanied the station's signals.

"From where this echo comes I cannot say for the present," Hals wrote of his peculiar discovery, adding that he could "only confirm that I really heard it."

Almost a century after Hals' discovery, the exact cause of this unusual phenomenon — known today as long delayed echoes, or LDEs — remains unknown. Their baffling nature has prompted a range of potential explanations, most of which focus on a variety of unexplained natural phenomena occurring in Earth's atmosphere. However, a few more far-out possibilities, including potential evidence of extraterrestrial technology, have also been considered.

What do we know?

A curious discovery

The enigma of long-delayed echoes has perplexed scientists since their initial detection by Hals, who at the time reported his odd findings to Norwegian physicist Carl Størmer. This prompted an investigation by Størmer with physicist Balthasar van der Pol, during which the duo was able to reproduce the phenomenon but were unsuccessful in determining its cause.

Since those early observations, ongoing reports of long-delayed echoes have continued to be recorded. Under normal conditions, radio echoes occur whenever a radio signal reflects or "bounces" off an object, although other conditions such as signals traveling through a delayed path can also cause echoes to occur.

Long delayed echoes, by contrast, are generally characterized by radio signals that return after more than 2.7 seconds following their original transmission, although the terminology has sometimes been applied more broadly.

Complicating investigations into this unusual brand of radio phenomena over the years has been their unpredictable nature, along with significant reported variances in the timing and nature of the delays, which has made it difficult for researchers to narrow down a single cause.

Possible explanations

Despite the challenges presented by this unique class of space mysteries, there are several theories that have been put forward over the years about what could cause long-delayed echoes.

In the mid 1980s, researchers R. J. Vidmar and F. W. Crawford conducted experiments in Alaska that aimed to detect long-delayed echoes, which built on earlier research they published involving possible detections in 1970. According to their findings at the time, Vidmar and Crawford hypothesized that radio signals could be captured between ionized layers in the atmosphere and "guided" over long distances.

More recently, University of Oslo researcher Sverre Holm has advanced a similar concept that he calls magnetospherically ducted echo (MDE), in which radio waves may become trapped within electrically charged regions of Earth's upper atmosphere and guided along magnetic field lines extending far into the magnetosphere. Under certain conditions, these signals may reach as far away as the opposite hemisphere before they are "bounced" back toward Earth, resulting in the delayed echo effect.

According to Holm, MDE "is the best understood mechanism for long delayed echoes" out of five promising explanations he outlines, adding that based on the MDE model, such long delayed echoes "can be predicted to what seems like about 5 ms accuracy using a simple model for the magnetic field lines."

Still, one problem that arises involves the relatively short delays associated with this mechanism, which may not necessarily account for the much longer, multi-second echoes reported in some historical observations. Since radio waves travel at close to the speed of light, a signal could theoretically cover distances equivalent to the planet's circumference several times in a single second. While this doesn't prove the signals actually followed such paths, it does imply that some of the reported instances of long-delayed echoes might correspond to dozens of journeys around the planet.

Speaking with Space about historical cases involving much lengthier long-delayed echoes, Holm was clear in expressing that the MDE theory also has its limitations.

"In my view," Holm told Space in an email, "Magnetospheric Duct Echoes cannot [account] for those historical LDEs at all."

To illustrate this, Holm points to two primary differences. First, the historical echoes were detected at approximately 9.55 MHz, well above the 1–4 MHz frequency range typically associated with MDEs. Additionally, historical LDEs reportedly exhibited delays ranging from 3 to 30 seconds, whereas MDEs generally produce delays of only a few hundred milliseconds.

By contrast, "MDES are only a few hundred milliseconds," Holm explained, meaning that they cannot account for all the characteristics of the earlier historic observations of long-delayed echoes.

Other theories that might be capable of filling some of the gaps in the long-delayed echo mystery include the idea that electromagnetic radio energy could be coupled into slower plasma-wave "modes" while traveling through Earth’s upper atmosphere, which, according to Holm’s review of the earlier work by Vidmar and Crawford, could potentially create much longer delays than ordinary radio propagation would allow.

After this proposed coupling into a plasma-wave mode, the signals may be converted back to ordinary electromagnetic signals and bounced back down to lower levels of Earth's atmosphere. Finally, a similar line of investigation has looked at whether clouds of plasma originating from the sun might also be able to produce the well-characterized echo effect.

What remains unknown?

Extraterrestrial origins?

Although scientific research has identified several promising explanations for long-delayed echoes, the mysterious nature of these events has also inspired more speculative theories over the decades, including some involving the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

This unique dimension to the LDE mystery has its roots in the theories of Australian physicist Ronald Bracewell, who was the first to propose the idea that autonomous interstellar probes might be used by an advanced civilization as a means of establishing contact.

According to Bracewell, the initiators of such a hypothetical contact scenario might choose to reveal their presence by intercepting and re-transmitting radio signals rather than engaging in direct communication. Carl Sagan explored a similar concept in his novel "Contact", in which transmissions from the 1936 Olympics — the earliest broadcast signals to leave Earth's ionosphere — are intercepted and rebroadcast back to Earth as a data-encoded message originating from the Vega system.

However, more than a decade before the publication of Sagan's famous novel, Scottish writer Duncan Lunan attracted international attention for his 1973 article in the journal "Spaceflight" outlining his belief that he had successfully decoded a radio message dispatched from an extraterrestrial probe. According to Lunan, the initial detection of this "hidden" alien signal had taken place decades earlier in 1927, with the famous discovery of long-delayed echoes by Jørgen Hals.

Lunan's theory essentially went like this: an extraterrestrial civilization in the Epsilon Boötis system had deployed a hypothetical autonomous communications probe (known as a Bracewell probe) to Earth in the distant past, which had been comfortably orbiting in one of Earth's gravitationally stable Lagrange points for thousands of years.

Using the original long-delayed echo detections from Hals and Størmer's research decades earlier, Lunan placed the transmitted sequence on a vertical axis, while placing the recorded echo delay time on a horizontal axis, revealing what he believed to be a view of the constellation Boötes as it might have looked 15,000 years ago — right around the time the suspected space probe would have been dispatched to Earth.

Despite Lunan's imaginative theory, an alternative hypothesis proposing a natural cause behind long-delayed echoes was subsequently advanced by Anthony Lawton, which ultimately garnered an award from the British Interplanetary Society. By 1976, Lunan had withdrawn his ideas in an article published in the Journal of the Society of Electronic and Radio Technicians, although he would eventually revisit a version of the theory in the 1990s.

The mystery continues

While few modern researchers seriously consider extraterrestrial hypotheses to explain long-delayed echoes, these obscure phenomena remain intriguing, even as ongoing research sheds light on their possible causes. Explanations such as Sverre Holm's magnetospherically ducted echo model offer promising mechanisms that may account for at least some of these unusual signals, although important questions remain unanswered.

For now, long-delayed echoes serve as a reminder of the challenges of studying electromagnetic phenomena, and how even seemingly familiar aspects of our physical world can harbor mysteries that resist straightforward explanations, even after nearly a century of investigation.

A new stack of Starlink satellites is now in orbit following an early morning SpaceX launch from California.

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 3:25 a.m. EDT (0725 GMT) on Oct. 27, from from Pad 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base. The rocket delivered the 27 satellites of Starlink Group 15-16 to low Earth orbit (LEO), and successfully executed its first stage booster landing.

The mission's booster, B1082, cut its engines and disengaged from Falcon 9's upper stage approximately 2.5 minutes into flight, and adjusted its trajectory for a touchdown on SpaceX's Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY) droneship in the Pacific Ocean.

B1082 successfullly landed on OCISLY at T+8:23, seconds before Falcon 9's second stage completed its first engine burn. The return of B1082 marks the booster's 21st Starlink mission, and 26th overall flight, the others of which include USSF-62, OneWeb Launch 20, NROL-145, Transporter-18.

Falcon 9's upper stage ignited its engine for a second time about 53 minutes after liftoff, circularizing its orbit with a burn that lasted a very short 3 seconds. That was followed several minutes later by the deployment of the rocket's Starlink payloads.

SpaceX's Starlink network consists of more than 11,000 active spacecraft. The speed with which the company is delivering them to orbit in bulk, however, has slowed somewhat.

As SpaceX shifts focus to its larger, more powerful Starship rocket under development, plans to retire Falcon 9 have already begun. Part of that process included ending Starlink launches from Florida earlier this year.

Today's mission was the 117th Falcon 9 launch of 2026, so far. About three-quarters of those were dedicated to Starlink.

Technologies developed and tested in orbit to remove space junk and fix broken satellites can be speedily repurposed to build fleets of bodyguard spacecraft to protect important satellites from adversary attacks, space clean-up company Astroscale thinks.

Astroscale made history with its 2024 up-close in-orbit inspection of a discarded Japanese rocket stage during the pioneering ADRAS-J mission in low Earth orbit (LEO), the region of space below altitudes of 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers).

The firm's ELSA-D mission, which ran from 2021 to 2024, was the first commercial endeavor to demonstrate orbital capture technologies in LEO. Now, this technology can come in handy as Western space assets face increasing threats from Russia.

Speaking on the sidelines of an event in London earlier this month, Alex Godfrey, Astroscale's head of defense, said the company could have a protector spacecraft ready for launch in under three years.

"In in-orbit servicing, we have to achieve very high levels of agility to be able to dock and close to a distance of zero meters to refuel something or remove it from orbit," Godfrey told Space.com. "With space control, you're rarely getting quite as close, so in some ways it's simpler because you are further away."

Space control — a military term for ensuring the space around Earth remains orderly and peaceful — is quickly becoming a hot talking point. Godfrey's remarks came just as the world witnessed in shock as Russia made close-up maneuvers around a radar satellite owned by Finland headquartered Earth-observation company ICEYE. The October incident, described by experts as the first rendezvous of two active satellites in low Earth orbit conducted without the consent of the target, raised concerns Russia may be preparing to damage the satellite, which is part of a fleet providing critical intelligence to Ukraine.

U.S. Under Secretary of State Thomas G. DiNanno described Russia's actions on X as "threatening behavior" and "consistent with on-orbit weapons operations."

The ICEYE incident is only the latest in a long string of activities conducted by Russia in space designed either to eavesdrop on or interfere with the activity of critical Western space assets. The Luch-1 and Luch-2 satellites have been stalking Europe's and America's communications satellites in geostationary orbit — the busy region 22,000 miles (36,000 km) above the planet where satellites have a fixed view of a portion of the globe—since 2014. Germany's military space command chief Major General Michael Traut admitted earlier this year that the Luch spacecraft have been spying on European strategic communications in space for years.

A bodyguard satellite would make sure no such intruder gets dangerously close. Godfrey said that the cost of a bodyguard mission would be on the order of a single percent of the value of a military-grade geostationary communications constellation such as the U.K.'s £8.4-billion Skynet fleet.

"To build a bodyguard satellite is absolutely within the capability and the budget of a single country like the U.K.," said Godfrey. "It would be similar to a carrier strike group where you have a [naval aircraft] carrier, but that carrier never leaves the port on its own. It has an escort of much smaller, lower-cost systems that move around to protect it."

Although Astroscale, headquartered in Japan but with significant presence in the U.K., is a leader in the commercial orbital rendezvous and proximity operations technology, no Western players currently match the deployed capabilities of Russia and China. Europe, in particular, is under-equipped for defense and military operations in space, according to the Secure World Foundation's Global Counterspace Capabilities Report. With Russia's accelerating orbital forays, the clock appears to be ticking.

Godfrey proposes a pan-European fleet of orbital bodyguards patrolling clusters of European assets to ward off future Russian attempts to jam or damage the satellites.

"The UK, for example, has multiple assets in different positions around the geostationary ring," Godfrey said. "That is difficult to protect with a single spacecraft. So what I encourage nations to think about is how to form a geo-patrol force through collaboration. If France has assets in a similar location to the UK and maybe Germany, then it makes sense for one spacecraft to protect two or three allied spacecraft, and then, in another region, another country takes responsibility for the protection."

Nick Shave, the UK managing director at Astroscale, told Space.com that the company sees interest in its technologies and is "in discussions" with "companies and customers across Europe" although it has not signed any contracts to develop bodyguard satellites.

"We have spent a good amount of time talking over the last few years, but now we have to go and really deliver," Shave said. "The UK government is promising funding for space control development from 2030 onwards. So what needs to happen now is really preparing the ground so that we've got the right capabilities, the right investment and the right demonstrator capability, by 2030."

In the meantime, Russia's COSMOS 2612 stalker satellite keeps lingering 298 miles (480 km) from the ICEYE intelligence satellite in LEO, keeping the Western space community on edge.

I have been dreaming of doing research in space as an astronaut my whole life, but for some reason, the thought of working underwater made me nervous. I’ve known for a long time that astronauts train underwater to simulate different scenarios they’re likely to experience in space. Diving was never an issue for me, either — I even made it as far as becoming a certified rescue diver. So what was the problem?

This summer, I led a simulated space mission in an underwater habitat called the Jules’ Undersea Lab. It is a research station that is located 22 feet (6.7 meters) underwater near Key Largo, Florida. You have to scuba dive to get in and out of the station. To become an aquanaut, you have to stay underwater for at least 24 hours in a so-called state of saturation.

I had been preparing for many years for this aquanaut experience, both as a scientist and as an analog astronaut. An analog astronaut is someone who takes part in a simulated space mission, where they live and work in conditions similar to those that astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) experience today, or will one day experience on the moon and Mars.

I’m no stranger to simulated space missions, either; I have been the Commander of almost 40 such missions in different facilities around the world. Almost all of those missions were on land, though, which made them substantially safer than a mission underwater. The risks of something going wrong during a simulated spacewalk or even during basic maintenance activities underwater are significantly higher than during standard analog missions on land.

Despite knowing all of that, a mission underwater was something I definitely wanted to experience to improve my skills as a leader, researcher and diver. However, the closer I got to the start of the mission, the more worried I became. My brain went through all the terrible scenarios that could occur during the mission while I was preparing for it — from someone’s gear malfunctioning during a spacewalk underwater to storms forcing us to evacuate in the middle of the night. Perhaps I still had some trauma from watching "The Abyss" by James Cameron as a child 😉.

Our mission was symbolically called SEA STAR, and I spent over a year organizing it. It took some time to get the right team and research projects together, as well as the necessary funding. My goal was to lead a mission simulating what astronauts go through on the ISS, both in terms of the diverse projects they work on and the challenges they face living in space. Only for us the deadly environment surrounding us wasn’t space, but water.

Since the health and safety of the crew is at higher risk during underwater missions, the team has to adhere to more strict procedures than they would need to during a simulated space mission on land. That, in turn, makes the mission feel more similar to an astronaut’s mission in space. The underwater environment also allowed us to perform neutral buoyancy experiments during simulated spacewalks, as well as scientific research focused on the effects of high atmospheric pressures on humans.

Our SEA STAR crew was composed of experienced analog astronauts and divers. Paul Bakken, an experimental engineer, was our Executive Officer responsible for most of the mission’s logistics. The Health and Safety Officer was Dr. Brandy Nunez, who performed microgreens research on top of overseeing the wellbeing of the crew. Our team’s Mission Specialist was Jenn Pint, who is an industrial safety expert. She was in charge of a project focused on developing a taxonomy for analyzing environmental and crew interaction factors in a space analog environment, in collaboration with Interstellar Performance Labs.

As the Commander of the crew, my main responsibilities were to make sure the crew was safe, in good health and spirits, getting along well and on top of their work. I worked with Paul to plan the mission’s schedule and to tweak it as needed — for instance, when we faced unexpected problems or some things were taking longer than planned. I also brought several research and educational projects with me on the mission, which I performed on top of my Commander duties.

Even though I was a bit concerned about the risks of the aquanaut mission before it started, I trusted my crew. I knew that we would find a way to problem-solve and face the challenges that would come our way, just like astronauts do in space. I was also looking forward to all of the interesting experiments that we had planned for the mission, which ranged from cognitive research under pressure to testing environmental student sensors.

In the end, I mostly had to trust myself that I had what it takes to not only perform this mission, but also to lead it. As I put on my scuba gear, before diving underwater for five days, I focused on the positive aspects of the mission. The nervous voices in my head made themselves heard a couple of times while I entered the water. Nevertheless, I was completely calm by the time I took my last breath of Earth air. I just waved at our collaborators on land, submerged myself and started our intense “space,” a.k.a. underwater, mission.

You can follow Dr. Michaela Musilova at her website and on social media: @astro_michaela (Instagram, TikTok and Threads), @Dr. Michaela Musilova (Facebook) and @astro-michaela.bsky.social (Bluesky).

On Oct. 26, 2004, NASA's Cassini spacecraft took the first close-up images of Saturn's largest moon Titan.

The Cassini spacecraft would later drop off a probe on Titan named Huygens, which was a European spacecraft that hitched a ride to the Saturn system with the Cassini mission. But before Cassini dropped off its robotic passenger, it flew by Titan a few times and took some amazing photos.

Cassini completed its first flyby on July 3, 2004, but when it swung by a second time on Oct. 26, it got about 300 times closer than it did the first time. At the closest point of this flyby, Cassini was 745 miles (1,200 kilometers) away from the surface of Titan. The spacecraft took hundreds of photos during this flyby, and these were the highest resolution views of Titan anyone had ever seen.

Why it mattered

Astronomers knew Saturn's moon Titan had an atmosphere before Cassini arrived at the smog-shrouded moon, but the spacecraft's first photos (and innumerable more that followed) revealed a strange world that looked eerily similar to what scientists suspect a young Earth might have been like.

The first close-up views of Titan by Cassini showed a large continent-sized region that scienitsts called Xanadu. It included bright features that hinted at a mountain range, as well as a large basin and smooth plains regions.

In all, Cassini would make 127 close flybys of Titan during its 13 years at Saturn before the mission ended in 2017. The probe even dropped the European Huygens lander on Titan, which landed in January 2005, to see the moon's surface first hand.

This flyby image of Titan (and other instrument observations taken at the same time) allowed scientists to measure Titan's atmosphere density and composition to better plan the path and descent for the Hygens lander.

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

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's non-canon, but come on; Darth Vader wielding the gleaming Infinity Gauntlet is just an excellent visual. This nerd-baiting image comes to us via the main cover of Marvel Comics' upcoming "Star Wars / Marvel: Hope Assembles #1."

"Star Wars" celebrates its 50th anniversary next year, as does the first "Star Wars #1" comic, and to kick the intergalactic party off early, Marvel will publish the debut issue of this 6-issue miniseries from writer Kevin Smith ("Clerks," "Chasing Amy") and talented artist David Marquez on Jan. 13, 2027.

It's the first-ever crossover between the "Star Wars" and Marvel Universe, and we’ve got a sweet four-page preview recreating the memorable opening scene of the original "Star Wars," where the Rebel Blockade Runner is ensnared in a Star Destroyer tractor beam and boarded by Lord Vader and a squad of stormtroopers. But this time, it's got Marvel superheroes added!

We get to see all those iconic scenes, including Darth Vader’s terrifying entrance, Princess Leia’s bold defiance, and C-3PO and R2-D2’s desperate escape in an entirely new light, as Marvel heroes like Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America rush to the rebellion's defense.

This historic event series will showcase multiple themed variant covers from acclaimed artists such as Alex Ross, David Marquez, Kaare Andrews, Cory Smith, Rafael Albuquerque, Dan Jurgens, Matteo Lolli, and many more.

Check out the four-page preview below:

"One of the most exciting things about this series is seeing familiar moments through an entirely new lens," Editor Mark Paniccia said.

"Kevin Smith and David Marquez understand exactly what makes these characters so enduring, and they find surprising, emotional, and often exhilarating ways to bring them together. Every issue has moments that will leave fans smiling, cheering, and eager to see what happens next."

"Star Wars / Marvel: Hope Assembles #1" lands on Jan. 13, 2027, and is available as both a physical copy from your local comic book shop and as a Kindle e-book download.

NASA has officially ended the mission of its Swift space telescope, after a private satellite failed in its bold bid to rescue the aging spacecraft.

That rescue mission was led by the Arizona company Katalyst Space Technologies, whose LINK spacecraft tried to meet up with Swift this summer to boost its orbit.

That didn't work out, however, so Swift continues its fall back toward Earth. The telescope is expected to reenter Earth's atmosphere "in the next few weeks," NASA said in a statement on Friday (Oct. 23).

That statement served primarily to announce the end of the Swift mission after more than 20 very productive years.

The telescope launched to Earth orbit in November 2004, tasked with studying gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) — the most powerful explosions in the cosmos. Swift was designed to operate for two years, but it continued studying the high-energy universe for more than two decades.

"In that time, Swift played a major role in advancing our understanding of the changing universe and was part of a revolution in astrophysics that showed how critical rapid-response observations are to the entire community," Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said in the statement.

NASA had hoped to keep Swift going even longer. In September 2025, the agency awarded a contract to the Arizona company Katalyst Space Technologies to rescue the observatory, which was falling back to Earth thanks to atmospheric drag.

Swift has no thrusters capable of counteracting this drag. So Katalyst built a refrigerator-sized spacecraft called LINK, which aimed to rendezvous with Swift, grapple it with three robotic arms and boost it to a higher orbit, allowing the observatory to continue its science work.

NASA and Katalyst stressed from the start that success was far from guaranteed. After all, LINK's mission was unprecedented: No private spacecraft had ever captured and boosted a satellite that wasn't designed to be serviced in this way. And the rate of Swift's orbital decay demanded a rapid timeline: LINK launched on July 3, a little over nine months after Katalyst won the $30 million NASA Swift-rescue contract.

LINK was not able to execute its very challenging mission. About three weeks after liftoff, it suffered problems with its propulsion system and orientation-maintaining reaction wheels, which caused it to start spinning at an unexpected rate. These issues prevented LINK from capturing and boosting Swift, but the private craft did manage to get within 7.5 to 9.3 miles (12 to 15 kilometers) of the observatory and photograph it.

"From the beginning, this was a high-risk, high-reward mission," Domagal-Goldman said in a statement on Sept. 25, the day that LINK fell back to Earth.

"And while we'll be sad to see Swift's mission come to a close, we knew this boost effort would be worthwhile either way — advancing U.S. spacecraft servicing technology, challenging us to meet unprecedented mission timelines, and testing how we operate satellites to extend their time in low Earth orbit," he added.

Swift — which was officially renamed the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory in 2018, after its first principal investigator, who died a year earlier — gathered its last scientific data on Oct. 20, according to NASA's Friday update.

During its long and storied career, the space telescope observed more than 2,000 GRBs. And it did other work, too, studying more than 1,400 supernova explosions, as well as eyeing asteroids, comets and black holes and conducting an all-sky survey in X-ray light. The mission's data has contributed to about 7,000 published scientific papers to date, according to NASA officials.

And that number is sure to keep rising far into the future.

"Swift leaves us with an extraordinary archive of multiwavelength observations that will fuel new discoveries for decades more," Domagal-Goldman said in the Oct. 23 statement.

"Have you ever seen a portal?"

The term "cult classic" has been loosely bandied about in cinematic circles until its definition has diluted into nothingness, but never has it been more appropriately applied than to director Richard Kelly’s strange psychological sci-fi thriller, "Donnie Darko", which celebrates its milestone 25th birthday today.

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Drew Barrymore, Mary McDonnell, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Patrick Swayze, Jena Malone, and Noah Wyle, "Donnie Darko" was released on Oct. 26, 2001, into an unstable world still shocked by the catastrophic Sept. 11 terrorist attacks less than two months earlier.

The thrust of the narrative revolves around an alternative universe accidentally forming via a supernatural anomaly after a jet engine falls off a commercial airliner and crashes through the roof of a suburban Virginia home, landing in the bedroom of our troubled title character.

As the frightening phantom of Frank the Bunny warns, this parallel reality has a ticking clock that’ll result in its imminent collapse in just 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds.

From the haunting voice telling our heroic teen, "Wake up, Donnie," as the grandfather clock in the Darko residence ominously chimed midnight, to its exploration of the nature of mental illness, time travel paradoxes, fraudulent motivational speakers, teenage angst in the 1980s, and the logistics of interdimensional portals, "Donnie Darko" became an ideal parable for turbulent times.

But Kelly's post-modern sci-fi fantasy emerged on the big screen when there existed a pervading fear of gathering in large groups as America was just beginning to recover and process the atrocities committed on 9/11. Newmarket Films was perplexed on precisely how to market the movie, as it is such a unique combination of genres that forges something far greater than the sum of its parts.

Throughout that entire fall, "Donnie Darko" came and went in multiplexes with barely a whisper, pulling in just over $500K off of a meager $4.5 million budget. Years later, it would become a bona fide word-of-mouth sensation via several re-releases, home video editions, and further experiences in regularly sold-out midnight screenings on its way to earning cult status.

It's a deeply personal film that will affect any viewer who allows its meticulously slow build to seduce them into its dreamlike sphere. Much has been debated and discussed about its many metaphors and symbolism, which employed elements of a splintered universe long before the multiverse was hijacked by Hollywood superhero spectacles. It’s a raw meditation on death more than anything, and its labyrinth of quantum entanglements feeds our existential core.

"I remember pulling over to the side of the road to finish reading Richard's script and being mesmerized," Gyllenhaal told The Guardian. "It was clearly influenced by classic directors—Ron Howard, Steven Spielberg—but with this strange psychosis. It beautifully captured the experience of moving into adulthood: the world that felt so solid becoming movable and liquid. I thought, “This is what my adolescence felt like,” although I don’t speak, and have never spoken to, rabbits."

Kelly was just 23 years old when he penned the "Donnie Darko" screenplay in only 28 days based on his own adolescence growing up in Virginia during the ‘80s. Coincidentally, that is the exact number of days Frank the Bunny declares will mark the end of the world, and it is also the same amount of time taken to complete the Southern California production shoot in 2000.

Layered with ‘80s pop anthems like Echo & the Bunnymen's "The Killing Moon," Tears for Fears' "Head Over Heels," The Church's "Under the Milky Way," and Gary Jules' melancholy cover of Tears for Fears' "Mad World," Kelly's mysterious coming-of-age masterpiece still offers up a lucid nightmare tinged with a touch of consuming dread that lingers long after any screening.

Kelly did release a director's cut in 2004 that adds extra footage and alters the soundtrack, but we recommend the original theatrical cut for the purist’s version of this classic!

Considering today’s political strife, climate change concerns, AI paranoia, pharmaceutical overlords, and alienated youth culture, "Donnie Darko" and its 1988 election year setting still seems to have its finger on the zeitgeist's pulse, continuing to present provocative questions.

This Halloween, check out "Donnie Darko's" mind-warping weirdness on this 25th anniversary occasion and let no one ever question your commitment to Sparkle Motion ever again!

Are you a Star Trek fan about to beam down to a Halloween party? Maybe you want to give Trick or Treat a Trekkie twist? We've got you covered with costumes based on the iconic sci-fi franchise, from the original series through to Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Discovery and beyond.

Adult costumes aside, we've also included outfits for younger Star Trek fans and props to round out your outfit. You needn't put them away when Halloween is over, either. Star Trek costumes are so universally recognized you can use them for cosplay purposes too, or the next time someone throws a Trek-themed party.

Or, if you're not a fan of Star Trek, check out our round-up of the best space and sci-fi themed Halloween costumes.

Astronomers have spotted a remarkable gamma-ray burst (GRB) that's a real Incredible Hulk compared to other cosmic explosions of the same type.

What makes this GRB so special is the fact that the central engine powering it remained active for around 27 days, flaring in X-rays following the initial blast. That's 20 days longer than the longest previous GRB on record.

This record-breaking burst — which is designated GRB 220706A and was spotted on July 6, 2022 — is even more exciting because scientists don't know what the central engine powering it actually is.

"In a nutshell, GRB 220706A is an extremely late X-ray flare. X-ray flaring is common following GRBs, but previously it has always come within the first few days after we detect the burst," study team member Benjamin Gompertz, of the University of Birmingham in England, told Space.com.

"The fact that we see flaring at around 27 days in the GRB’s rest frame tells us that there’s an ongoing active process, and that’s unprecedented in the known population," Gompertz added. "The previous record for delayed flaring was about six days after the GRB."

What created the Incredible Hulk of gamma-ray bursts?

GRBs are some of the most powerful explosions in the cosmos. They have been linked to the collapse of a massive star, which also triggers a supernova and creates a black hole. This results in a long-duration GRB, while short-duration GRBs are thought to be triggered when two stellar remnants called neutron stars collide.

GRB 220706A is an example of an ultra-long GRB, a rare cosmic blast of gamma rays in which the engine powering the GRB stays active for longer. They are incredibly rare, with their cause still unknown.

"We don’t know what the central engine driving this outburst is, and that’s what makes this such a compelling event," Gompertz said. "The fact that we see a supernova tells us that a star has collapsed, which is the standard power source for GRBs, but it doesn’t immediately account for the extremely late flaring or unusually bright supernova. We can interpret that through previous events to some degree."

Gompertz added that another ultra-long GRB detected in 2011, GRB 111209A, was associated with an unusually bright supernova (SN2011k) that had clear evidence for a central engine. The team behind that research determined that GRB 111209A is powered by a magnetar, a neutron star with a particular powerful magnetic field. In this case, the magnetic field is rotating at around 1,000 times per second.

"Our supernova looks a lot like that one, so a magnetar might be present here. That ties in nicely with super-luminous supernovas, which are also thought to be magnetar-driven," Gompertz said. "Another possibility could be that the GRB jet and the supernova are colliding with shells of dense material that were ejected towards the end of the parent star’s life, as it became unstable and began ejecting its outer layers. This sort of event is also seen in the super-luminous supernova population."

The team isn't quite sure how the central engine of this ultra-long GRB differs from that of others and why that resulted in 27 days of flaring.

"One possibility is that it’s a much bigger star than we usually see producing GRBs," Gompertz said. "A bigger star would take longer to fall in on itself and so provide a longer-lived source of energy to power the jet."

GRB sources may be members of a stellar population of massive, compact stars called Wolf-Rayet stars. These are 10 times wider that the sun, with around 10 times the mass of our star. However, even the collapse of such a star can't explain GRB 220706A.

"To power GRB 220706A, we estimated we need a star more like 1,000 times the radius of the sun, which would require a population of stars known as blue supergiants," Gompertz said. "On the other hand, it may be the remnant that’s different. If this star produced a magnetar, it may be that 'normal' GRBs just collapse to black holes."

The team thinks that the big question with GRBs like this one is whether they are members of the normal GRB population or a different kind of event. Having this second event, in addition to GRB 111209A, with an unusually bright supernova potentially adds weight to the idea that these are different stars. But the problem is not yet solved.

"The incredibly late flares also strain our models for how jets are powered," Gompertz said. "It will be fascinating to see how future theoretical work can incorporate a power source from a collapsing star that can last for a month!"

There could be even longer-lasting GRBs out in the cosmos that we have thus far failed to detect. Gompertz explained why such detections are tricky.

"GRBs this long are hard to detect because most of the satellites we use to find them are in low Earth orbit, which means the target is periodically blocked every 90 minutes or so," he explained. "That's fine for your typical 10- to 100-second-long GRB but becomes a nuisance when tracking much longer events. Long-lasting GRBs also seem to be more active in the X-rays rather than the gamma rays."

The University of Birmingham researcher added that newly launched missions like the Einstein Probe, which is more sensitive in X-rays than gamma rays, may be the perfect instruments to find more ultra-long GRBs.

"With any luck, we’ll get a few more of these to chase so that we can start trying to understand the incredible power sources that drive them," Gompertz concluded.

A pre-peer-reviewed version of the team's research is featured on the repository site arXiv.

SpaceX is shooting for new heights with its upcoming Starship test flight, and the booster tapped for the mission is in its final stretch of preparations before the mission.

The Super Heavy booster for Flight Test 15, Booster 22, underwent a static test fire on Sunday (Oct. 25), igniting all of its Raptor 3 engines for about 15 seconds. "Full duration 33-engine static fire for the Super Heavy booster preparing for Flight 15," SpaceX said in a post on X.

The test is a beginning of final checks on the first-stage vehicle, which will be mated with the Flight 15 upper stage, Ship 42, ahead of launch, but not before the spacecraft completes some tests of its own.

Ship 42 will also complete a series of tests as the next Starship launch approaches, including a static engine fire and final systems checks. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has stated that SpaceX will attempt the first launch tower catch of a ship upper stage on Flight 15, which, if successful, would be a significant step forward for the company's goal to mature Starship to full reusability.

SpaceX's confidence in its ability to catch both the Super Heavy and Ship stages has been building this year, following three launches so far in 2026. Its most recent (Sept. 28) mission, Flight 14, reached orbit for the first time and performed the successful deployment of 26 next-generation Starlink V3 satellites, marking the first operational payloads delivered to orbit by the spacecraft. Starlink V3 satellites are too big to fit aboard the company's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket.

Flight 14 wasn't without setbacks, however. An upper-stage Raptor engine shut down prematurely during ascent, prompting SpaceX to cut the planned 10-hour mission short. Ship, nevertheless, completed a controlled reentry and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean about three hours after liftoff.

Flight 15 could carry another batch of V3 Starlinks, though SpaceX has not officially confirmed a payload. Beginning to upgrade its global network with the fast V3 satellites, however, is a major reason SpaceX is pushing to bring Starship into regular service.

Starship's development also has implications for NASA's Artemis program, which has contracted SpaceX to develop a modified Ship upper stage capable of landing astronauts on the surface of the moon.

NASA recently updated the timeline of milestones SpaceX needs to accomplish with Starship before a lunar lander version will qualify to carry crews, with a significant demonstration mission coming up next summer on Artemis III.

The next Artemis mission will launch astronauts to Earth orbit aboard NASA's Orion spacecraft, which will dock with both lunar lander vehicles over the course of about two weeks (in addition to Starship, NASA contracted Blue Origin's Blue Moon spacecraft as a another lunar lander for the program).

SpaceX is also working toward an uncrewed lunar landing demonstration ahead of NASA's planned return of astronauts to the moon on Artemis IV, targeted for 2028. Which lander will be chosen for that mission is still undetermined, and SpaceX and Blue Origin are both still vying for the first crewed Artemis landing.

Beyond Flight 15, SpaceX hopes to demonstrate additional milestones before the end of 2026, including Starship's first launch from Florida and potentially the first re-flight of an upgraded V3 Super Heavy booster.

Booster 22's engine test marks the beginning in a series of tests leading up Flight 15, which, if recent Starship campaigns are any example, could lift off sometime in mid-to-late November.