CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A new era of astronomy is about to begin after NASA's newest flagship observatory leaped from the terrestrial bounds of Earth into the vastness of space this morning.

NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched today (Aug. 30) on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from the Kennedy Space Center here in Florida. Liftoff occurred at 7:26 a.m. EDT (1126 GMT) at Launch Complex-39A (LC-39A).

Roman is NASA's newest orbital observatory designed to add to the wealth of research and discoveries we've received from the Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope. "The scope is extraordinary," Roman senior scientist Julie McEnery said during live commentary. "We will do a survey of our own Milky Way galaxy and find 20 billion stars. That would make it the largest catalog of astronomical objects that's ever been produced."

While Hubble and the JWST are built to get close looks at distant phenomena in the universe, Roman will study the bigger picture of our cosmos. Its main instrument, known as the Wide Field Instrument (WFI), will take extremely wide images of the universe, capturing ultra-high definition views across broad swaths of the sky. It's also equipped with the first active coronagraph to be used in space, which will revolutionize exoplanet studies.

The Roman Space Telescope is named after NASA's first chief astronomer Nancy Grace Roman, the first woman in an executive leadership role at the space agency. It was Roman who advocated for a telescope in space, leading to the Hubble Space Telescope. Roman, who died in 2018, earned the nickname "Mother of Hubble" as a result.

"It was Nancy in the old days, before the internet and before Google and email and all that stuff, who really helped to sell the Hubble Space Telescope, organize the astronomers, who eventually convinced Congress to fund it," Ed Weiler, Roman’s successor as Hubble's chief scientist, told the Voice of America in 2011.

At liftoff, Falcon Heavy blazed off the pad at LC-39A, roaring with the thunder of 21 Merlin 1D engines on the business end of the SpaceX triple-booster launch vehicle. About 2.5 minutes into flight, the rocket's two side boosters cut off their engines for a nominal separation and began trajectory burns to return for a landing back here on the Space Coast.

The rocket's core booster then continued onward to deliver Falcon Heavy's second stage equipped with Roman into space. Main engine cut off (MECO) and separation of Falcon Heavy's main stage took place about four minutes after liftoff, with fairing separation about 15 seconds later.

Falcon Heavy's side boosters, meanwhile, executed boostback burns for landings at SpaceX's Launch Complex-40 and Landing Zone-2 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Base, a few miles downrange from LC-39A.

Roman's delivery to space caps more than a decade and $4 billion of development for the space telescope, which was made possible, in part, by incorporating elements of an unused spy satellite.

With its coronagraph and WFI, the telescope is designed to make groundbreaking strides in the fields of dark matter and dark energy, exoplanet discoveries, and will be capable of capturing views 100 times wider than those of its Hubble predecessor.

"The smallest Roman images will be a billion pixels," Dominic Benford, progam scientist for the Roman Space Telescope, said during live commentary. "When we take a billion-pixel image, there isn't a screen on Earth large enough to display all the pixels."

The coronagraph works by blocking out the light of distant stars in such a way that scientists can examine minute details around those stars — meaning they can map out exoplanets orbiting in the systems. Once active, Roman's Wide Field Instrument (WFI) will capture more than a terabyte of data daily; its largest survey will take over a year to complete and is expected to fill more than half a million 4K TVs.

How big will the largest Roman image be?

"A trillion pixels," Benford said.

You can actually adopt one of those Roman Space Telescope pixels yourself with NASA's new "Adopt a Pixel" program, which the agency announced during the Roman launch.

Roman's Falcon Heavy launch vehicle released the telescope to fly on its own a short 31 minutes after liftoff. NASA cheered the success, and even got a bit of a nod from celebrities in the form of a record message from singer Jewel.

"As you may know, I make artwork using astrophysical data, and there would be no data more fascinating than dark energy and dark matter," Jewel said in a recorded video. "And so, it is with this great wish of great success and Godspeed that I wish the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope so excited.

Now, the telescope is headed to sun-Earth Lagrange point 2 (L2), a relatively stationary orbital location beyond the orbit of the moon that allows the spacecraft to remain persistently on Earth's night side, with the sun on the opposite side of the planet. The locale places the sun to Roman's backside and points its sensitive instruments away from the intrusion of light reflected off the Earth and moon.

Roman's journey to L2 will take about 90 days. The first 40 or so of those days will be spent turning on the telescope's instruments and performing status checks as the spacecraft slowly configures itself for operation. Science commissioning will begin after about 45 days, its completion corresponding with when Roman arrives at L2.

"I very much hope, and in fact, expect that the most exciting science of Roman will be a surprise — something we couldn't predict and that will set the stage for the next, deeper set of questions for future missions to progress," McEnery told reporters a day before launch.

The telescope’s first images are expected in the beginning months of 2027.

Update for Aug. 30, 9 a.m. ET: SpaceX successfully launched the Roman Space Telescope for NASA atop a Falcon Heavy rocket at 7:26 a.m. EDT (1126 GMT). Read our full launch wrap story with video and photos.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A new flagship observatory is about to launch to space and join the ranks of its powerful predecessors, like the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes.

NASA's groundbreaking new Nancy Roman Grace Space Telescope is ready to lift off aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. It's scheduled to depart from Launch Complex-39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, bound for a gravitationally stable spot in space called Lagrange Point 2, or L2, nearly 1 million miles (1.6 million km) from Earth. The spacecraft's first window for launch is tomorrow (Aug 30) at 7:26 a.m. EDT (1126 GMT).

Mission managers and launch administrators held a prelaunch briefing on Saturday (Aug. 29), confirming NASA and SpaceX's "go" to proceed toward tomorrow's lift off. Weather tomorrow currently poses a 50% chance of favorable launch conditions, according to launch weather officer Justin McReynolds of the Space Force's 45th Weather Squadron.

Roman's final L2 destination will place the spacecraft in a persistent position on the opposite side of Earth from the sun. "That means that we have a wide open view of the sky that really exceeds anything in low Earth orbit like Hubble could achieve," Jackie Townsend, Roman's project manager, said during the press conference.

Once in space and operational, Roman will begin completing wide surveys of the entire universe, taking thousands of images every day. The telescope will also allow for new research into dark matter and dark energy, and it will directly image exoplanets around distant stars.

"Nancy Grace Space Telescope will blow your mind. It is the size of a tour bus, and it weighs the same as a T-Rex," Nicky Fox, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA, said during the press conference. "To put it into perspective, it will be as if Hubble and James Webb kind of peer through a keyhole at the universe, while Nancy Grace Roman will kick the door down."

Fox also put Roman's scientific potential in further context, saying its enormous datasets could help researchers tackle some of astronomy’s biggest questions. "Roman’s data will help bring us closer than ever to answering humanity's most profound questions,” Fox said, including whether "there are other solar systems like ours" and, ultimately, "are we alone in the universe?"

Before any of that science begins, however, Roman first has to get off the ground — and weather remains the biggest uncertainty for Sunday morning. McReynolds said forecasters are primarily watching offshore cumulus clouds, and the possibility of those producing showers or thunderstorms.

Conditions improve for the backup opportunities Monday and Tuesday, McReynolds said. The tropical disturbance influencing Sunday's forecast is expected to move west, dropping the probability of weather violating launch criteria to about 30% — offering a 70% chance of acceptable conditions.

Once in space, Roman will spend roughly three months going through instrument deployments, calibrations and checkout activities as it travels toward its operational orbit around L2. NASA expects the observatory's first science images to be released in early 2027.

On Episode 225 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik are joined by Adam Kall of KMI to discuss their work on the ISS, the goals of the company, and how nature — via the humble octopus and gecko lizards — may provide answers for orbital debris mitigation.

The mitigation of orbital debris is an increasingly serious problem that has not gotten enough attention, but this is changing. Commercial companies are addressing orbital debris, and one of them, KMI Space, has flown its experiments aboard the International Space Station, performing over 170 individual rendezvous-and-grab operations. The results are very promising, and the company is moving ahead with ever more ambitious designs.

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

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Space news of the week

• Starbase Louisiana: SpaceX announces enormous $100 billion Starbase launch site
• Starship is coming home! SpaceX loads floating spacecraft onto huge ship in the Indian Ocean
• Goodbye, Falcon 9: SpaceX planning to retire workhorse launcher when Starship is up and running
• Trump tried to scrap NASA's Roman Space Telescope last year. Now it's ready to launch
• Partial lunar eclipse stuns skywatchers with an ‘almost blood moon’. Here are the best photos
• 'It's going to be beautiful': President Trump signs order to create US Space Academy
• KMI Space
• Orbital “Tow Truck” Could Tackle Space Debris Problem
• Active Debris Removal
• KMI Ops Video
• REACCH Solo Capture
• Addressing the Problem of Space Debris With an Orbital Tow Truck
• KMI - The Future, Shepard, and Phoenix

Model Falcon 9!

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

About This Week In Space

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

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

August's "almost Blood Moon" partial lunar eclipse has come and gone, delighting stargazers with a gorgeous natural light show as light filtered by our planet's atmosphere turned it a deep crimson around the point of maximum eclipse.

But when is the next lunar eclipse?

Earth won't darken the moon again until Feb. 20, 2027, when a penumbral eclipse will cast our planet's soft outer shadow across February's full "Snow Moon", so named for the freezing weather that occurs around the time it rises.

The darkening will be incredibly subtle compared to that of a partial lunar eclipse, where the moon passes into Earth's intense inner shadow — the umbra — revealing our planet's curved silhouette on the lunar surface.

Our planet's deeper umbral shadow will miss the moon entirely on Feb. 20, 2027, setting the stage for an understated show of orbital mechanics, as the moon's silver lustre is almost imperceptibly dimmed by Earth's penumbra.

The soft penumbral shadow will be most apparent at 6:12 p.m. EST (2312 GMT) on Feb. 20, as the moon passes closer to our planet's umbra, according to Time and Date. The shadow will be deepest around the moon's north polar region, but even then the effect will be very subtle.

A good photography exercise would be to capture an image of the Snow Moon at the point of maximum eclipse, to compare with a photo of a regular full moon. Be sure to read our guide to photographing the moon and our picks of the best cameras and lenses for astrophotography if you're looking to upgrade your gear.

Read more: What is a blood moon, and when can you see the next one?

The next lunar eclipse to rival August's won't occur until New Year's Eve in December 2028, when a magnificent total lunar eclipse will transform Earth's satellite into a magnificent "Blood Moon" in the skies over Asia, Australia and the Pacific.

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.

On Aug. 29, 1965, two NASA astronauts returned from their record-breaking Gemini 5 mission.

Astronauts Gordon Cooper and Pete Conrad spent eight days in Earth orbit, and for the first time, the United States set a world record for the duration of a crewed spaceflight.

The Gemini 5 mission launched on Aug. 21, 1965 atop a Titan II rocket from what was then the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (now the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station) in Florida. While in orbit, the astronauts were supposed to test rendezvous capabilities and maneuvers using a pod that deployed from their spacecraft. But due to an electrical problem, they had to cancel those plans along with several science experiments.

Pete Conrad later called the mission "eight days in a garbage can," referring to the cramped quarters of the Gemini spacecraft.

Why it mattered

Human spaceflight was still pretty new in 1965 when NASA's Gemini program was in full swing. The first crewed launch was just four years earlier, when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin orbited Earth for just 108 minutes on Vostok 1.

By 1965, NASA's longest mission had run just 4 days, but the space agency needed missions at least twice as long if it was to send astronauts to the moon and back under Project Apollo.

That brings us to the Gemini 5 mission, which NASA envisioned as an endurance test to prove that astronauts could survive for eight days on a long trip to the moon and back.

Cooper commanded the flight with Conrad as pilot. (Their backup crew included future Apollo 11 moonwalker Neil Armstrong and Elliott See, both rookies at the time.) It was Cooper who designed the Gemini 5 mission patch, which featured a Conestoga wagon and the words "8 Days Or Bust," to celebrate the flight's endurance run.

It was a cramped flight, but the astronauts proved the human body could live and work in space for an extended time, setting the stage for even longer flights to follow.

It was a fuel cell oxygen tank pressure issue that forced the crew to scrap their planned rendezvous demonstration, NASA has said. While the rendezvous target was deployed as planned and tracked by radar, Mission Control called the demo off when the pressure glitch occurred because the fuel cells were key to power Gemini 5 for its full 8-day mission.

Cooper and Conrad powered down non-essential systems to conserve power on the flight. They also weathered some thruster failures on the fifth day of the mission, but a "drift-and-correct" workaround allowed the mission to continue. They also performed Earth observatoin and medical experiments during the flight.

When the Gemini 5 crew splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean on Aug. 29, they broke the previous space endurance record set by Vostok 5 cosmonaut Valery Bykovsky, who spent nearly 5 days in space in 1963.

"Although both had lost weight, they were in good physical condition after their record-breaking eight days in space," NASA wrote of the crew's condition.

Today, an 8-day mission may seem quaint, given that astronauts and cosmonauts have spent over a year in space. The longest single spaceflight lasted 437 days and was set between 1994 and 1995 by Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov on the Mir space station.

You can see the Gemini 5 space capsule today at the Space Center Houston near NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

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

SpaceX just took another step toward the highly anticipated next test flight of its Starship megarocket.

The company conducted an engine test with Starship's giant first-stage booster, known as Super Heavy, on the launch pad at its Starbase site in South Texas on Friday (Aug. 28).

"Full duration 33-engine static fire with the Super Heavy booster preparing for Flight 14," SpaceX wrote in a Friday X post that shared two videos of the test.

As that post indicates, SpaceX is gearing up for the 14th test flight of Starship, a megarocket that consists of Super Heavy and a 171-foot-tall (52 meters) upper stage known as Starship, or Ship for short.

The company has already vetted the engines on Flight 14's Ship, firing up all six of them last week at Starbase.

SpaceX is believed to be targeting mid-September for Flight 14, which will be a big milestone in Starship's development — the vehicle's first-ever orbital trip. Ship will also apparently deploy operational payloads into orbit on the flight — a batch of SpaceX's next-gen "Version 3" Starlink satellites.

Ship successfully deployed 20 V3 Starlinks on Flight 13 last month, but on a suborbital trajectory, and the satellites soon crashed back to Earth.

Starship is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, and both Super Heavy and Ship are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable. SpaceX therefore thinks the megarocket can revolutionize spaceflight, helping humanity expand its footprint out into the solar system.

NASA is invested in the vehicle as well. The agency chose Ship as a crewed lunar lander for its Artemis program, which aims to build a base near the moon's south pole in the coming years. If all goes to plan for SpaceX, Ship will fly on NASA's Artemis III mission to Earth orbit in mid-2027 and land astronauts on the moon on Artemis IV in late 2028. (NASA picked a second crewed Artemis lander, Blue Origin's Blue Moon, which could fly on one or both of those missions as well).

Nearly a decade ago, I found myself laughing alongside one of the most iconic women in astronomy. This week, a telescope bearing her name launches to the stars. So let's travel back in time and meet Nancy Grace Roman together.

Standing under a tent in Washington D.C. at the 2017 inaugural "March for Science," a hodgepodge of scientists and reporters crowd together as the rain pours down outside. "That's Nancy Roman," I hear Bill Nye whisper to me as we stood on the outskirts of the tent. And as I struggled to keep my cool next to one of my childhood heroes, here he is pointing out another.

Looking across the room, I see her. There, in the corner of the tent, a woman with white hair wearing a "science not silence" pin sits by herself, soaking in the scenery. I hadn't noticed her before as, with the noise and crowd, it was tough to notice much of anything. But Bill was right. There she was, the "mother of Hubble." The woman who pioneered astronomy at NASA and pushed space science into the future.

A quick catch-up

If you're not too familiar with Nancy, let's speed run a little bit of information about the woman whose name was chosen to represent NASA's latest space telescope.

Nancy Grace Roman, born in 1925, was a pioneering astronomer and the first chief of astronomy at NASA. In creating and leading NASA's astronomy program, she was also the first woman in an executive position at the agency.

She earned the nickname "mother of Hubble," because of the critical role that she played in realizing the Hubble Space Telescope. She spent all 93 of her years exploring the universe.

Meeting Nancy Grace Roman

Now, in this moment I'm already overwhelmed meeting Bill Nye for the first time. Unsurprisingly, I was a science-obsessed 90s kid who would wait my turn at the computer just to explore the lab in the Bill Nye CD-ROM game. But now, all of a sudden I'm also made aware that this woman who paved the way for modern astronomy is just sitting right there, mere feet away from me across the tent. And I knew I had to say hello.

So, walking over, I introduced myself.

"Hi, it's so nice to meet you," I offer, reaching out my hand to shake hers, unsure of what else to say. "I'm a bit starstruck."

And without missing a beat, she responds: "You know, I have a thing for stars," delivering the quip with a small laugh and a bright sparkle in her eye.

She holds my hand for a moment and we smile and giggle together. It's so brief, maybe just a few seconds, but for that moment I shared a cheeky inside joke with one of history's most important astronomers.

But just as the moment passes, I once again see Bill Nye, this time accompanied by NASA astronaut Leland Melvin, walking up to greet Nancy.

The pair are both incredibly accomplished icons in their own right. But in approaching Nancy, it was clear that I wasn't the only one starstruck. One by one, Bill and Leland leaned down and shared their own personal moments with Nancy, holding her hands just as I did and speaking with her in hushed tones as their eyes lit up with the same delight that I felt in mine.

Time seemed to stand still as the two spoke to Nancy; two legends in space and science meeting their own science hero. And just standing nearby, I felt the love and admiration for Nancy, whose impact on astronomy will be felt for many years still to come.

This entire meeting took place over the course of mere minutes. But still, 9 years later it sticks in my memory. About one year after this event, Nancy passed away at the age of 93. And today, her legacy lives on in Hubble, in the trail she blazed forward in astronomy and for women in science and now in the space telescope bearing her name.

Nancy always had a thing for stars, and even though she's gone, I like to think that with the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, she'll finally get to be among them.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is about to launch on an incredible adventure to help scientists explore the great mysteries of the universe. But who was Nancy Grace Roman?

You might have heard about the upcoming launch on Sunday morning (Aug. 30), which will send NASA's next flagship space telescope up to investigate everything from dark matter and dark energy to far-off worlds beyond our solar system. But do you know who the telescope is named for? This observatory will be an absolute powerhouse for astronomy, and its namesake is perfectly fitting.

Nancy Grace Roman was the first-ever chief astronomer at NASA and the agency's first female executive. She created NASA's space astronomy program in 1959, just one year after the agency was created. She laid the groundwork for modern astronomy and played a critical role in making missions like the Hubble Space Telescope happen, a feat that earned her the nickname the "mother of Hubble." In short, Nancy Grace Roman was a trailblazing scientist and leader whose work has made modern space science possible. But let's dig a little deeper.

Roman's early years

Roman was born on May 16, 1925. Her mother was a music teacher and her father was a geophysicist. Over the years, Roman would often attribute her early interest in science to influence from her parents.

"I teasingly have blamed my mother for getting me interested in astronomy, because I can remember up in Michigan she used to take me out at night and show me the constellations and the aurora and things like that. But she also showed me birds and trees and animals and plants and that sort of thing, so it wasn't just astronomy," Roman said in a 1980 interview with David DeVorkin. That conversation took place just a few years after Hubble formally began development and a decade before the space telescope would launch (though at this time, Hubble was still called the "Large Space Telescope").

Roman's passion for astronomy grew, and, at age 11, she started an astronomy club with classmates. In addition to getting her friends involved in her astronomical interests, she spent her time checking out books from her local library in a quest to learn as much as she could. As she put it, she "read everything I could get my hands on." And by junior high, Roman had already decided to become an astronomer.

"I can remember thinking, probably in junior high school or early high school days, that I wanted to go into astronomy," she said, adding that her parents were supportive of her early decision to study the stars.

At that time, not all colleges even allowed women to apply, so Roman had to look for a school that both accepted women and had a solid astronomy program. She eventually ended up choosing Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, which she attended through the end of World War II. Roman would go on to graduate school at the University of Chicago, where she studied astronomy and worked at the Yerkes Observatory, where she was the first woman on the academic staff.

Trailblazing at NASA

After spending her early-career years at academic institutions, Roman moved on to conduct astronomy research at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). She was building her career observing stars and galactic structure, bouncing radar off the moon, studying orbital mechanics and so much more.

Then, in 1959, a new opportunity arose. With her expertise and experience across astronomy, and with NASA just getting up and running, Roman was asked to join the new agency and create its first astronomy program. In stepping into this role, Roman became NASA's first-ever chief astronomer, as well as the agency's first female executive.

"The idea of coming in with an absolutely clean slate to set up a program that I thought was likely to influence astronomy for 50 years was just a challenge that I couldn't turn down," Roman told DeVorkin. She added that, when she started NASA's astronomy program, she spent a great deal of time visiting astronomy departments across the country, not just to communicate what NASA was doing but also to understand what astronomers wanted to accomplish with the agency. And it was at the 1959 American Astronomical Society meeting that Roman announced NASA's brand-new astronomy program.

While Roman had been heavily involved in research prior to joining NASA, her role expanded considerably when she began heading the agency's astronomy program. In addition to continuing her astronomy research outside of NASA, she was now leading NASA's early space missions. From finding astronomers to join NASA to working alongside engineers to proposing mission budgets and navigating the many convoluted channels of a government agency to make these missions happen, Roman worked across many areas of the field to lead astronomy at the agency.

A decade after she joined NASA, Apollo 11 landed the first humans on the moon. So, as Roman pushed for progress in science, crewed spaceflight missions were taking center stage. But Roman and her colleagues fought to continue astronomy at the agency alongside crewed spaceflight. This role required her not only to be an exceptional astronomer but also to understand the political landscape both within and surrounding NASA.

Roman realized "the importance of the politics in the scientific community," she said. "We do have to deal with it, even though we would like to make all of our decisions in a vacuum strictly on scientific and technical grounds."

'Mother of Hubble'

Roman had a hand in many missions, projects and research fields, and some of the work she did helped change humanity's understanding of the cosmos. The most notable example may be the Hubble Space Telescope.

The idea for a "Large Space Telescope" (an early name for Hubble) had been around since the 1940s. But there was heavy skepticism about how feasible it would be — and also how much it would cost. Leading astronomy at NASA, Roman really had to sell the importance of this telescope to Congress to receive the funding necessary to make it happen. She pitched the project, coordinating efforts across NASA to make sure that the message landed on Capitol Hill.

"It was Nancy in the old days, before the internet and before Google and email and all that stuff, who really helped to sell the Hubble Space Telescope, organize the astronomers, who eventually convinced Congress to fund it," Edward J. Weiler, Roman’s successor as chief scientist for Hubble, told the Voice of America in 2011.

Hubble opened our eyes to the cosmos, completely changing astronomy as we know it. The space telescope hasn't just collected incredible data; its images have also given the general public a new appreciation for the beauty and wonder of space. And so, in making Hubble happen, Roman didn't just advance scientific progress in astronomy; she also built an enduring bridge between the public and astronomy that continues to this day.

Roman won't get to see her namesake telescope launch into the heavens; she died on Dec. 25, 2018 at the age of 93. But its work will continue the legacy of NASA space science that she worked so hard establish and develop.

Update for Aug. 30, 9 a.m. ET: SpaceX successfully launched the Roman Space Telescope for NASA atop a Falcon Heavy rocket at 7:26 a.m. EDT (1126 GMT). Read our full launch wrap story with video and photos.

A huge SpaceX rocket is just minutes away from launching NASA's next great observatory into space: the Roman Space Telescope. But if you're hoping to watch it live online, you'll have to get up pretty early today (Aug. 30) or you'll miss it.

NASA's Roman Space Telescope, named after the late NASA astronomer Nancy Grace Roman, will launch on a mission to map the galaxy like never before. Liftoff is set for 7:26 a.m. EDT (1126 GMT) from a NASA pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida. You can follow the mission in real time with our Roman Space Telescope live updates.

"Roman’s deep, sweeping surveys will help investigate dark energy and dark matter, discover and characterize planets beyond our solar system, map billions of galaxies, study black holes and share enormous amounts of data with both scientists and the public," NASA said in an update Friday (Aug. 28), after clearing Roman for launch.

Here's a look at what time NASA's Roman Space Telescope will launch atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, as well as how to watch online.

What time is SpaceX's Roman Space Telescope launch?

SpaceX is currently targeting the launch of NASA's Roman Space Telescope for no earlier than 7:26 a.m. EDT (1126 GMT) today, Aug. 30.

The company will launch Roman into space atop a Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. A launch livestream will begin about one hour before liftoff.

While SpaceX hopes to launch Roman on time, the company can try again tomorrow, on Monday, Aug. 31, if needed. A launch on that day would lift off a few minutes earlier, at 7:22 a.m. EDT (1122 GMT), SpaceX has said.

Can I watch SpaceX's Roman Space Telescope launch?

Yes, of course, you'll be able to watch SpaceX launch the Roman Space Telescope, and you have some options regarding where to tune in.

NASA will provide a launch webcast early Sunday morning. That livestream begins Aug. 30 at 6:20 a.m. EDT (1020 GMT) and will run through the launch and a post-launch briefing. That livestream can be found on the NASA website here, as well as all of NASA Social channels (Facebook, Instagram, X), and streaming channels like Twitch, Discovery+, Amazon Prime, NASA+, and of course YouTube.

Our Space.com livestream can be found on our VideoFromSpace YouTube channel, and will feature NASA's livestream simulcast.

SpaceX will also host its own launch livestream via its X account, which will begin about an hour before liftoff.

As mentioned above, SpaceX aims to launch Roman for NASA at 7:26 a.m. EDT (1126 GMT), with the flight lasting about 31 minutes and 31 seconds — the time post-liftoff at which Roman is expected to deploy into space.

A post-launch press conference is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. EDT (1330 GMT) and will include comments from the experts listed below.

• NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman
• Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters
• Jackie Townsend, Roman telescope project manager, NASA Goddard
• Julie McEnery, Roman telescope senior project scientist, NASA Goddard
• Denton Gibson, launch director, NASA’s Launch Services Program, NASA Kennedy

How long is SpaceX's Roman Space Telescope launch?

SpaceX's Roman Space Telescope launch for NASA will last just over 31 minutes (31 minutes and 31 seconds, to be exact), in order to send Roman on its way into deep space.

After liftoff, the Falcon Heavy rocket's core booster and twin side boosters will fire for just under 2.5 minutes, after which the side boosters will separate and return to Earth. If all goes well, they should land about 7 minutes, 23 seconds after liftoff.

"This is the first and third flight for the two first stage side boosters supporting this mission, which previously launched the GOES-U and Viasat-3 F3 missions," SpaceX wrote in a mission overview. "Following stage separation, Falcon Heavy’s two side boosters will land on SpaceX’s Landing Zones 2 and 40 (LZ-2 and LZ-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida." SpaceX does not appear to be planning a core first-stage landing off shore for this flight.

Here's a look at the launch and flight timeline from SpaceX.

The upper stage of the Falcon Heavy will continue firing its engine through the 8-minutes-and-28-seconds mark, when it will shut down for a 16-minute cruise period. Just over 24 minutes into the flight, the second stage will reignite its single Merlin engine for about three minutes before shutting down for good.

The Roman Space Telescope will then deploy from its carrier at the 31:31 minute mark. It is expected to deploy its solar panels and sunshade shortly after liftoff, then spend the next few days unfolding its antenna and aperture cover, while also performing a mid-course correction burn on its way to its final destination: a stable point in space called Lagrange Point 2, about 1 million miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth, opposite the sun.

"The Roman team will complete a carefully orchestrated series of deployments, calibrations, and tests in the three months following launch before the observatory reaches its final orbit," NASA has said of the steps that will follow.

What if the Roman Space Telescope can't launch?

If SpaceX can't launch the Roman Space Telescope on Aug. 30, the company and NASA have at least one backup day to try again.

A second launch window is available on Monday, Aug. 31, at 7:22 a.m. EDT (1122 GMT), according to SpaceX. Both SpaceX and NASA are watching the weather closely to determine if Roman can fly on Aug. 30.

"Meteorologists with the U.S. Space Force’s Space Launch Delta 45 Weather Squadron are predicting a 60% chance of favorable weather conditions for launch, which is targeted for 7:26 a.m. EDT on Sunday, Aug. 30 from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy," NASA wrote in an update Friday (Aug. 28).

Whichever day Roman launches, you'll be able to follow the mission live on Space.com. Be sure to return to Space.com on launch day for complete Roman Space Telescope launch coverage.

The Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ is one of the best telescopes for beginner-to-intermediate stargazers who want to view deep-sky objects and appreciate assistance in manually locating the targets.

Right now, the Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ is 17% off, down to just $414.99, its cheapest since Prime Day in June.

In our Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ review, our expert tester Damian Peach awarded it an impressive 4 out of 5-star. Damian noted that it was an exquisite telescope for the beginner and added that the StarSense Explorer telescope was fully equipped, supplied with just about everything the skywatcher needs for a successful observing session under the stars.

It only missed out on the perfect score as Damian felt it would benefit from additional high-powered eyepieces to achieve more detailed views. However, at this discounted price, it's one of the best beginner-friendly telescopes you could ever want to own.

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

Ideal for entry-level stargazers, the Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ uses its clever StarSense smartphone app to streamline finding targets in the night sky. While it lacks the fully automated GoTo tracking found on some of the best smart telescopes, its substantial 5.1-inch aperture gathers plenty of light—delivering brighter, sharper, and more detailed views than most automated competitors.

One of its standout features is the clever mount-integrated smartphone dock, which takes the hassle out of locating faint deep-space targets. Fueled by real-time GPS tracking and your phone's camera, the StarSense app generates a live sky map that leads you straight to any celestial object. By replacing tedious star charts with turn-by-turn guidance, it lets you spend your time actually observing the universe rather than searching for it—earning it a top spot in our best budget telescope guide for astronomers of all experience levels.

Key features: Newtonian reflector design, 5-inch (130 mm) aperture, 25-inch (650mm) focal length, f/5 focal ratio, 307x highest useful magnification, 18 lbs (8.16 kg) weight, Starsense smartphone-powered technology, two-year warranty.

Launched: January 2020

Price history: Before today's telescope deal, the best price we've seen on the Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ telescope was $379 during the Prime Day sales in June. The MSRP is $499.95, which makes the current on-sale price of $414.99 a significant saving on what is a seldom-discounted model.

Price comparison: Amazon: $414.99 | Adorama: $449.99 | Walmart: $499.95

Reviews consensus: In our Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ review, we awarded this telescope four stars for its user-friendly interface and impressive views, making it an ideal choice for beginners who want a modern and simple way to explore the night sky.

Space: ★★★★½ | Digital Camera World: ★★★★½

✅ Buy it if: You want a user-friendly telescope for beginners that uses smartphone technology to help you navigate the night sky to observe planets and deep space objects.

❌ Don't buy it if: You want a fully automated smart telescope or prefer a more traditional method of navigating the night sky.

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

Stargazers have trigger words — total, bright, peak, maximum, best. But observing the sky is often more interesting when something seems neither one thing nor the other.

A case in point was the almost-total partial lunar eclipse we just witnessed. From where I watched, early on Aug. 28, Earth's shadow reached its maximum across the lunar surface, covering 96.2% of it, as the moon began to sink in the west. A thin part of the lunar surface remained outside the darkest part of Earth's shadow, and the surface never did quite go red. At maximum eclipse, the moon looked like a sliver — totally unlike a crescent moon, and something very odd to behold — and came within a fingernail of becoming a totally eclipsed "blood moon."

Astronomy and stargazing are full of this sort of near-miss. A comet that nearly becomes bright enough to tell your neighbors about, but ultimately becomes nothing more than a smudge in binoculars that few can even find, let alone be impressed by. A meteor shower that's hyped as the strongest for years that doesn't live up to expectations. Or the worst kind — a cloud deck that clears a few minutes after a total solar eclipse comes to an end. We pretend these moments are failures because they do not match the headline version of the sky. But it's often the "almost" part that keeps the imagination alive.

Beyond the headline act

A total lunar eclipse happens only when the entire moon passes into Earth's dark umbral shadow. On Aug. 27-28, the deep partial eclipse missed totality, but the bright uneclipsed sliver made the shadow easier to see and appreciate. Its almostness gave the event an unusual tension.

During a total lunar eclipse — also called a "blood moon," which gets headline writers very excited — the red color comes from sunlight filtering through Earth's atmosphere. Shorter blue wavelengths scatter more efficiently, while longer red and orange wavelengths are bent into the shadow and onto the moon. In other words, the totally eclipsed moon is lit by the combined glow of sunrise and sunset around the rim of Earth. That sounds like a poetic exaggeration, but it's just physics.

A partial lunar eclipse is equally just physics. With the headline act of totality not on the agenda, I watched Earth's curved shadow creep across the lunar surface, almost reach across the entire orb, then gradually retreat. You could see the geometry working. You could see the moon move through a circular shadow — our planet's shadow. A lunar eclipse always gives you time to think because it unfolds slowly, but this gave me a chance to focus on the one thing we all ignore when we obsess over the "blood moon" moment — the moon moving through Earth's giant shadow in space.

Grazing occultations and weird eclipses

Near-misses in astronomy occur when things do not perfectly align as seen from Earth. A good example is a grazing occultation, in which the moon almost crosses a bright star or planet, but not quite. Instead of seeing it disappear and re-emerge, the planet or star winks as it's skimmed by the mountains on the rugged edge of the moon. Spectacular examples include July 10, 2018, when red giant star Aldebaran blinked along the lunar limb, as seen from North America, and Aug. 24, 2023, when Antares played hide-and-seek behind the moon. It's proof that the moon has no atmosphere, though it's location-specific because the moon's apparent position in the sky varies by about two degrees depending on where you are. There are some good occultations (which all have grazing zones) coming up:

• Sept. 8: lunar occultation of Jupiter (visible across the U.S.)
• Sept. 14: lunar occultation of Venus (visible across Europe and the Middle East)
• Sept. 17: lunar occultation of Antares (visible in southwest Australia)

However, my favorite type of celestial near-miss is a solar eclipse, which comes in so many shapes and sizes that it's tough not to start collecting observations of them once you've started. If you like big partial eclipses — when the central shadow of the moon, the umbra, passes just above the planet, but never quite makes land to cause totality — get Jan. 14, 2029 and Dec. 5, 2029 in your calendar.

An extremely similar event, celestially speaking, but with a vastly different effect, will occur on April 9, 2043. On that day, a total solar eclipse will be seen from almost nowhere on the planet. Instead of a long, narrow path of totality across the globe, the cone of the moon's dark shadow just grazes Earth's edge. Most of the shadow misses the planet and falls into space. What does touch Earth will create an ellipse of totality over the far north of Russia. That makes it the 21st century's sole non-central total solar eclipse. How many eclipse chasers will be in Tymlat, on the east coast of Kamchatka, for 59 seconds of totality just minutes after watching a partially eclipsed sunrise? Most will miss it for a much simpler reason — it's not a place you can easily travel to, if at all.

Near-misses and oddities are, of course, not rare nor unusual; they're just abnormal from our point of view during a human lifetime. Astronomy is often about being close to seeing extraordinary things without fully experiencing them, and very often it's clouds that are to blame. If that sounds frustrating, it shouldn't — most of life works the same way.

Stargazer's corner: Aug. 28—Sept. 3, 2026

With the moon just past full, it remains bright for much of the night all week, so we'll struggle to see galaxies, nebulae and the Milky Way. However, Saturn, rising in the east, is now becoming more convenient in the late evening sky and is worth a look through binoculars — and particularly a small telescope if you have one. It will be in conjunction with the moon on Aug. 30. Venus remains bright just after sunset, low toward the west, though horizon haze can make it less crisp than its brightness suggests.

Constellation of the week: Capricornus

Autumn is coming to the night sky. One of the telltale signs is the presence of Capricornus, a constellation that looks more convincing on a chart than in the sky. From the northern hemisphere, it sits low in the south on late summer evenings, east of Sagittarius and south of bright star Altair, the lowest star in the iconic Summer Triangle. Its stars are modestly bright, so suburban observers will need patience and a clear southern horizon. As Capricornus emerges into the evening sky, the bright center of the summer Milky Way is on the wane, beginning to lean west, and autumn is approaching.

The United States will soon have a new service academy — or something like it, anyway.

President Donald Trump today (Aug. 28) signed an executive order creating the U.S. Space Academy, an institution of higher learning that will train students for a career studying, exploring, exploiting or helping to protect the final frontier.

"It'll serve both the United States Space Force as well as NASA and the civilian spaceflight industry, and it'll attract, train and graduate the very very best of our nation," Trump said today during a ceremony at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, at which he awarded the Artemis II moon astronauts the nation's highest space honor.

Trump compared the new school to the academies for the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard. But it appears that the U.S. Space Academy won't be so militarily focused.

"President Trump's vision for a new academy is a transformational step to educate the engineers, scientists, technicians, operators and even the astronauts who will be necessary for the inspiring future we are pursuing in space," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in an agency statement today.

"In the years ahead, we will return NASA astronauts to the lunar surface, build the Moon Base, get underway on nuclear power, ignite the orbital economy and launch more missions of science and discovery," he added. "I have no doubt that so much of the future talent that will graduate and contribute to these exciting endeavors will be educated at the United States Space Academy."

Isaacman is involved in the new project. He chairs the Presidential Commission on the United States Space Academy, which will help flesh out the new school.

Within the next 120 days, the commission will submit a report "with recommendations on governance framework, service obligations for graduates, physical location of the academy, legislative requirements and more," NASA officials wrote in today's statement.

Trump may weigh in during the design phase. He certainly has expectations for the academy, saying that "it's got to be top line."

"Even architecturally, it's got to be — it's going to be beautiful," the president added. "It's going to be the top. It's going to be as good as it can get. You know, doing a bad building doesn't cost a lot less than doing a great building. I've always said it: Doing great architecture, doing something really great that's also practical — it doesn't cost much more than doing some of the bad stuff that you see all over the place. But we're going to make this so good and so exciting."

Warning: Potential "Silo" Spoilers Ahead! Get back in the Silo if you aren't up to date!

Apple TV's "Silo" season 3 is nearing its final two episodes, depicting the Before Times’ doomsday silo project as well as the shakeup inside Silo 18 with Juliette’s memory returning. The ongoing tempest includes Camille Sims (Alexandria Riley) having to prevent a Safeguard extermination as the new Head of IT this year, and the revelation of ex-security chief Robert Sims (Common) regarding Bernard (Tim Robbins).

With the married couple of Robert and Camille Sims careening off onto very different moral trajectories, Camille must confront troubling truths as her conscience plummets into the pits of Hades, while Robert is on a profound journey of salvation.

"The writers are incredible on this show, and we were so excited when we first saw what they were going to do," Riley tells Space. "It was said to us in a harsh way. They said, 'We’re going to tear you apart.' As an actor, for both of us, it was so fun to play with.

"We see a whole roller coaster of emotions that these two go through," continues Riley. "I think it's interesting as an audience because we’ve come from such a stable unit where we’ve been the most level and the most tactical. So to shake that up and splinter them off has been a real trip for me. We sat with it quite a bit."

Her better half is steering away from his murderous past towards enlightenment, which is bright news to fans who hoped his character would find a sense of peace.

"Camille is in a difficult place," Common adds. "Robert is in a difficult place. It is redemptive, but it's scary too, because as a character he doesn't know where he is right now. He's spent his whole life with judicial, like for the government, and that was because he believed it was good for the people of the silo. But now that trust is dispersed. It's gone. He doesn't believe that's the truth, so now he’s trying to find the truth; I love that they’ve given our characters this much of a journey.

"People used to always approach me and say, 'Man, you’re the bad guy. I like you'. Or 'I don’t like you'. And I was like, 'This dude is not a bad guy.' Now in season 3 you'll get to see the different colors of who Sims is, or Camille is, and you can make a decision."

Riley's scenes as the Head of IT, having to interact with The Algorithm’s voice piped in from Silo 1 delivering demands and ultimatums, were incredibly engrossing.

"The voice was there so I could act off that emotion, which was nice," she notes. "But in terms of visuals, there was nothing. They were really intense scenes. I loved being in that room. It reminded me of doing almost like a one-woman show sometimes. It was just you in a stark domed theater. And we’d often run the scenes together, so it was like once you’re on the train you couldn’t get off. You were going through the turmoil constantly, take after take. It was sublime. It was a challenge, but I absolutely loved it."

In one quiet scene in the "Farewell" episode, Sims has a poignant moment with Bernard, just before the former Head of IT is forced out into the toxic external environment. The on-set chemistry in this scene is among the best the series has to offer.

"Tim Robbins and I discovered that at this moment in time, Sims and Bernard are two of the closest people in the silo," Common explains. "Bernard was somebody who I actually really cared about. Tim expressed to me through one of the scenes we did that he realized Robert Sims was a person Bernard loved.

"I think all our history and journey as people in the silo, in that moment when he was leaving, I felt like we were able to express that without saying anything. Just a look and an acknowledgement and an honor and respect and a love. I was kinda nervous about that moment, to be honest. But Tim did some things in it that kept it so alive and real."

"Silo" season 3 is currently airing exclusively on Apple TV.

LandSpace's first attempt to land a rocket was quite a spectacle, as newly released video footage reminds us.

The Beijing-based company's Zhuque-3 launcher reached orbit successfully during its debut mission on Dec. 3, 2025 — quite a feat for any rocket.

But Zhuque-3 couldn't pull off the twofer. Its first stage experienced problems during the latter stages of its return to Earth, ultimately exploding in a violent fireball near its designated landing pad.

We recently got some up-close looks at that failed return to Earth, thanks to CCTV. On Aug. 20, the state-run Chinese broadcaster released dramatic footage of the landing attempt, which includes video captured from a camera on the booster itself.

Those selfie shots highlight the rocket's resemblance to the paragon of reuse, SpaceX's Falcon 9. For example, we see the rapidly approaching ground through the metal mesh of two hypersonic grid fins, attitude-control devices the Falcon 9 pioneered and popularized.

The CCTV video also shows that Zhuque-3 was in trouble before it hit the ground: The booster suffered a mini-explosion during descent and was already a flaming wreck when it reintroduced itself to terra firma.

LandSpace apparently learned some important lessons that day because Zhuque-3's second mission, which occurred on Aug. 18, was a complete success. The 216-foot-tall (66 meters) rocket delivered a satellite to orbit, and its first stage stuck the landing.

It was the first-ever touchdown by a private Chinese orbital rocket, and just the second by a Chinese orbital launcher of any description. The first was pulled off on July 10 by the first stage of a Long March 10B rocket, which nestled softly into a net-like apparatus installed on a ship at sea.

Scientists are closer than ever before to confirming that a galaxy known as "Cloud 9" is the first "starless" or "failed" galaxy ever discovered by humanity.

A starless galaxy is one with virtually no stars despite possessing a wealth of gas and dust that would normally serve as the building blocks of stars. The dominant element of a starless galaxy would be dark matter, the mysterious "stuff" that remains effectively invisible because it doesn't interact with light.

Located 14 million light-years away near the spiral galaxy Messier 94 (M94), Cloud 9 is currently the best candidate for a starless galaxy humanity has discovered to date. It contains a vast cloud of hydrogen gas with an estimated mass of 1 million times that of the sun, and dark matter with around 5 million solar masses. Yet, the Hubble Space Telescope discovered in January this year that Cloud 9 emits virtually no starlight.

"But the most striking aspect of our research was the absolute emptiness of the image at the location of Cloud 9. When you look at an image reaching those depths and see nothing where a structure containing a million solar masses of gas should be, it is genuinely remarkable," team leader Ignacio Trujillo of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Spain, told Space.com.

"Most objects in the universe leave some trace of light. Cloud 9 does not. That silence is, in its own way, the most compelling result we could have obtained."

On the hunt for a failed galaxy

Trujillo explained that despite having enough raw material to build a small galaxy, Cloud 9 seems to have never formed any significant stellar population.

"That combination — gas but no stars, sitting in a relatively normal environment — makes it one of the most compelling candidates for what theorists call a 'dark' or starless galaxy," Trujillo added. "The concept has been theoretically predicted for decades, but observationally confirmed cases remain elusive.

"The difficulty is obvious: if there are no stars, there is no visible light to detect, and the only way to find such objects is through their gas emission — typically neutral hydrogen observed at radio wavelengths — combined with extremely deep optical imaging to rule out the presence of even a faint stellar component."

Trujillo and colleagues set about investigating Cloud 9 using the HiPERCAM camera on the Gran Telescopio Canarias, the world's largest optical telescope. This led to them obtaining the deepest images ever taken of the Cloud 9 region, approximately ten times deeper than any previous optical imaging of this object. "Honestly, the depth we achieved with HiPERCAM in just 2.36 hours of integration was striking," Trujillo said. What they saw left no questions about the nature of this galaxy.

"The result was clear: we detected absolutely no stellar emission within the region corresponding to the location of Cloud 9," Trujillo said. "Assuming an old, metal-poor stellar population — which would be the hardest kind to detect — we can set an upper limit on the total stellar mass of just 16,000 solar masses.

"Cloud-9 appears to be, within the limits of our observations, genuinely starless."

Why do some galaxies 'fail?'

Though starless galaxies are on the verge of escaping the realms of the purely theoretical thanks to this investigation of Cloud 9, how they form is still something of a puzzle.

However, scientists do have a pretty solid idea of how a galaxy could take shape without birthing stars.

"The leading theoretical explanation involves the ultraviolet background radiation that permeates the universe," Trujillo said. "After the epoch of reionization, this radiation field heats the gas in low-mass dark matter halos to temperatures high enough that the gas cannot cool efficiently and collapse to form stars."

The researcher added that simulations of this period of the cosmos predict that dark matter halos below a certain mass threshold, around 5 billion solar masses, should remain essentially starless.

"Cloud 9 has a halo mass consistent with this regime. In this picture, starless galaxies are not exotic anomalies but a natural and abundant prediction of standard cosmological models," Trujillo explained. "The challenge has simply been finding them."

As impressive as these results are, the jury is still out on Cloud 9 as a starless galaxy. Further investigation will be needed before scientists can firmly declare they have discovered the first starless galaxy.

"On the stellar side, deeper space-based imaging would be particularly valuable because resolving individual stars avoids many of the problems associated with diffuse-light measurements," Trujillo concluded.

"Hubble has already provided extremely strong evidence, and future facilities such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) could potentially push the search further, although the optimal filters and stellar tracers would need to be carefully chosen."

The team's research is available on the paper repository site arXiv.

Update for Aug. 30, 9 a.m. ET: SpaceX successfully launched the Roman Space Telescope for NASA atop a Falcon Heavy rocket at 7:26 a.m. EDT (1126 GMT). Read our full launch wrap story with video and photos.

NASA's next great space observatory is about to lift off, and you can watch it live.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is scheduled to launch atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Sunday (Aug. 30) at 7:26 a.m. EDT (1126 GMT).

You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, beginning at 6:20 a.m. EDT (1020 GMT). You don't have to wait that long for a Roman fix, actually; there's stuff to watch on Saturday (Aug. 29) as well. Here's a rundown of this weekend's Roman action.

Saturday: Prelaunch briefings

Things kick off at on Saturday at 9 a.m. EDT (1300 GMT) with NASA's Roman Space Telescope mission science briefing. This should be quite eventful, for Roman's science goals are ambitious; it will likely discover thousands of exoplanets, for example, and reveal intriguing new information about mysterious dark matter and dark energy.

Participants are:

• Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director, Astrophysics Division, NASA Headquarters
• Julie McEnery, Roman telescope senior project scientist, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
• Vanessa Bailey, Roman Coronagraph Instrument scientist, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
• Kristen McQuinn, Roman Science Operations Center lead, Space Telescope Science Institute
• Lee Armus, Roman Science Support Center lead, Caltech/IPAC

Next up is the prelaunch press conference, which will discuss the mission's launch readiness. It will start at 10:30 a.m. EDT (1430 GMT) and feature the following folks:

• Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters
• Lucas Paganini, Roman telescope program executive, NASA Headquarters
• Jackie Townsend, Roman telescope project manager, NASA Goddard
• Denton Gibson, launch director, NASA’s Launch Services Program, NASA Kennedy
• Julianna Scheiman, director, NASA Science and Dragon Programs, SpaceX
• Justin McReynolds, launch weather officer, 45th Weather Squadron, U.S. Space Force

Then, at 11:45 a.m. EDT (1545 GMT), NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, an accomplished pilot and private astronaut, will put on a mini air show of sorts.

Isaacman "is expected to fly past the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and Falcon Heavy rocket on the launch pad in his jet," NASA wrote in an Aug. 24 media advisory. "The flyby will be shown live on the same stream as the prelaunch news conference, with a view of the launch pad during the transition. The flyby is subject to weather and operational considerations."

Sunday: Launch day

And there's more to watch on Sunday than the launch itself. At 9:30 a.m. EDT (1330 GMT), NASA will hold a post-launch briefing featuring Isaacman, Fox, Townsend, McEnery and Gibson.

They'll likely discuss the next steps for Roman, which include a 30-day journey to its deep-space home, the sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2. This spot lies about 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth in the direction of Mars. It's gravitationally stable, meaning Roman will be able to stay put without expending much fuel.

Mission team members will spend the next few months checking out the observatory's systems and science gear. It should be ready to begin its five-year science mission in early 2027.

On Aug. 28, 1993, NASA's Galileo spacecraft flew by the asteroid Ida while on its way to Jupiter.

Galileo was the first spacecraft to fly by an asteroid in the asteroid belt. Ida was actually the second one it visited after another flyby of the asteroid Gaspra in 1991.

Galileo whizzed by asteroid Ida going almost 28,000 mph and came within 1,500 miles of the asteroid's surface. During the encounter, Galileo actually discovered a tiny moon orbiting Ida! This was the first confirmed satellite of an asteroid. The International Astronomical Union named the moon Dactyl after a group of mythological beings who lived on a sacred mountain called Mount Ida.

Why it mattered

Asteroid 243 Ida was actually the second asteroid ever to be visited by a spacecraft (Galileo previously flew by the asteroid Gaspra in October 1991), but this flyby clinched the theory that asteroids could have moons.

Until the Galileo spacecraft photographed Ida and Dactyl, astronomers suspected some asteroids could have their own moons, but Galileo proved it once and for all. During the flyby, Galileo approached within 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) of Ida as it made its way to Jupiter.

• The greatest asteroid missions of all time!

"It was previously thought that natural satellites of asteroids could form, but they probably weren't common," Torrence Johnson, Galileo's project scientist, once said of the flyby in a NASA statement. "Having found one fairly quickly, we can say that they're probably more common than previously thought."

Ida is an S-type asteroid made mostly of silicate rock and sits in the main asteroid belt. Astronomers suspect it is what's known as a Koronis asteroid, leftover debris from an ancient crash of two much larger objects, according to NASA. It was discovered on Sept. 29, 1884 by Austrian astronomer Johann Palisa at the Vienna Observatory.

Galileo imaging team member Ann Harch actually discovered Ida's moon Dactyl on Feb. 17, 1994, months after the flyby, while reviewing data, NASA said.

Galileo did not stop to study Ida and Dactyl. As with its Gaspra flyby, the probe zoomed by to continue its trip to Jupiter. NASA launched the Galileo mission on Oct. 18, 1989 and it arrived at Jupiter on Dec. 7, 1995, orbiting the giant planet for nearly 8 years. The mission ended on Sept. 21, 2003, when Galileo intentionally crashed into Jupiter.

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.

One of NASA's intrepid Mars rovers has notched another impressive milestone during its exploration of the Red Planet.

What is it?

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover used its Mastcam camera to capture a panorama made up of 323 individual images. The images were taken on Aug. 1 and Aug. 2, 2026, the 4,972nd and 4,973rd Martian days (or sols) of the rover's mission, just as Curiosity notched a total of 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) of elevation gain throughout its now 14-year exploration of the Red Planet.

The images show the wide expanse of a broad valley nicknamed "Valle Grande," a depression on the side of Mars' Mount Sharp, the 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer) mountain the rover has been climbing since 2014. The valley's floor and northern rim can be seen in the distance.

Why is it incredible?

Curiosity's mission has been incredible for a number of reasons. For one, the daring "sky crane" maneuver that NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory used to land the SUV-sized robot on the Red Planet changed Mars landings forever.

Since then, Curiosity has discovered clues that liquid water once flowed across the surface of Mars and has found tantalizing evidence of complex organic molecules on the Red Planet, including some that scientists consider to be the "building blocks" of life.

And even after 14 years of traveling across the Red Planet and suffering considerable damage to its wheels, NASA says Curiosity has plenty of exploration and science left to conduct.

Another one of NASA's Mars rovers, Perseverance, recently notched a travel milestone of its own when it surpassed 26.2 miles (42.2 km) of travel  — the length of a marathon  — across the Martian surface.

Four astronauts just received the United States' highest space honor.

President Donald Trump gave the astronauts of NASA's Artemis II moon mission the Congressional Space Medal of Honor today (Aug. 28) during a ceremony at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"This is a very rare thing. It's for courageous people, brilliant people, bestowed on astronauts who have distinguished themselves with exceptional service to the nation and all of mankind," Trump said during the event.

Artemis II launched on April 1 and came back to Earth nine days later. It was the first crewed mission of NASA's Artemis program, which aims to establish a long-term base near the moon's south pole in the coming years.

The flight sent four people — NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — on a looping journey around the lunar far side. It was the first crewed trip beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972, and its astronauts got farther from their home planet than any people ever had before.

Artemis II engaged folks around the world thanks to its importance, its historic nature and the charisma of its astronauts. And some fortuitous orbital dynamics didn't hurt, either: The Artemis II crew were lucky enough to observe a total solar eclipse from beyond the moon, something human eyes had never seen firsthand before.

The Congressional Space Medal of Honor is awarded "to any astronaut who in the performance of his duties has distinguished himself by exceptionalIy meritorious efforts and contributions to the welfare of the Nation and of mankind," NASA wrote in a description of the award, citing Congress' stated criteria.

Though the president gives out the medal, he does so on the recommendation of the NASA administrator, the agency added. Before today, just 30 people had received the award, and most of them are pretty big names. Past honorees include Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong; Alan Shepard and John Glenn, who were the first Americans to reach space and orbit Earth, respectively; Gemini astronaut Ed White, the first American to perform a spacewalk; and Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell.

The award was also given to each of the 14 astronauts who died in the space shuttle Challenger and Columbia disasters.

Hansen therefore wasn't the first non-American to receive the medal. Ilan Ramon, one of the seven people who perished when Columbia broke apart upon reentry to Earth's atmosphere on Feb. 1, 2003, was from Israel.

During his speech at today's ceremony, Trump said that the United States is entering a golden age of spaceflight and exploration. And he thanked the Artemis II astronauts for being a guiding light.

"Thanks to the crew of Artemis II, those dreams are closer than ever before," the president said. "We're on the cusp of an adventure and something that's so special, people have really not imagined anything. It's really, civilization is into the stars. The stars are up there and they're beautiful, and you're right next to them. You have the courage to be right next to them. Few people do, but you're leading the way. It's great, great bravery."

The astronauts reciprocated the warmth. For example, they gave the president a blue flight jacket commemorating the mission. And Wiseman, Artemis II's commander, thanked Trump for calling the crew during their mission.

"The one thing that really sticks out to us is, you said how proud you are and how proud our nation is of the job that we have just accomplished," Wiseman said during the ceremony. "And for us, that is what we set out to do. We wanted to inspire this nation and inspire the world, and for us, that showed us we were on the right track. So, thank you for that call."

Editor's note: This story was updated at 1:30 p.m. ET on Aug. 28 with quotes and information from the medal ceremony.

A gorgeous partial lunar eclipse delighted stargazers overnight on Aug. 27-28, as Earth's shadow darkened the full "Sturgeon Moon" in an impressive display of orbital mechanics, and we've got the photos to prove it!

The lunar eclipse occurred as Earth passed between the sun and the moon, granting viewers a spectacular view of our planet's deep umbral shadow as it advanced to cover 96% of the lunar disk, leaving a tiny crescent exposed to direct sunlight.

Photographers were ready and waiting to capture the moon as it turned blood red around the point of maximum eclipse on Aug. 28, as light filtered through Earth's atmosphere via Rayleigh Scattering saturated its shadowed surface. Read on to see our favorite photos of the Aug. 27-28 partial lunar eclipse.

Partial lunar eclipse August 2026: Best photos from around the world

We kick off with a gorgeous photo of the full moon was captured from the Hungarian village of Zsujta by Robert Nemeti just as Earth's shadow took its first "bite" out of the lunar disk, shortly after the partial phase of the eclipse began at 10:33 p.m. EDT on Aug. 27 (0233 GMT on Aug. 28).

Tycho Crater is visible in the lower region of the lunar disk close to the shadow, while bright ejecta rays of reflective material brighten the darker lunar seas, where lava solidified to form basaltic plains billions of years ago.

The eclipsed moon shared the stage with the Parthenon in Athens in this tranquil wide-angle photo from Costas Baltas. Earth's curved silhouette can be seen clearly on the lunar disk, serving as proof of our planet's spherical shape, just as it did for the ancient Greek philosophers who helped pioneer the idea over 2,000 years ago.

Giuseppe Pappa created a stunning composite image of the eclipse depicting Earth's shadow as it rolled across the lunar surface during the partial phase from Pedara, Sicily.

Pappa snapped the images using a Canon 760D with a 300 mm lens to capture the lunar seas standing out on the remaining sunlit portion of the lunar surface.

This atmospheric view of the partially eclipsed moon shining over the Suleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul, Turkiye, was taken by Isa Terli.

Kevin McCarthy captured a spectacular view as the eclipsed moon shone blood red in the skies over North Carolina, after a brief weather scare!

"With thunderstorms in the area throughout the night, I was worried I may miss the chance to capture this event," McCarthy told Space.com. "But, at the last minute, as the maximum shadow coverage approached, the clouds parted long enough for me to get the shot."

Photographer Josh Dury snapped his own incredible view of that same eclipsed lunar disk as glowed in the predawn sky over the United Kingdom

"The fantastic moment when the moon turned red," Dury said to Space.com. "Nearly didn't get this image due to unexpected fog at my first location. My gut said - 'move'. Approaching the peak of the eclipse this was the image I was able to capture."

The almost blood moon's crimson coloring was also on full display in this shot from Mauro Pimentel, taken as a thin crescent of the lunar disk was left exposed to direct sunlight in the skies over Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Another stunning composite view of last night's lunar shenanigans was taken by Kohinoor Kar, who documented the transformation of the lunar disk from full Sturgeon Moon to an eclipsed near-blood moon from Phoenix, Arizona.

Photographer Lorenzo Di Cola lined up a stunning shot of the full moon as it glowed close to the Rocca Calascio fortress in Calascio, Italy, on Aug. 28, as Earth's shadow retreated from the lunar disk following the point of maximum eclipse.

Finally, Angel Martinez captured this gorgeous shot of the eclipsed Sturgeon Moon setting behind a cluster of skyscrapers in Madrid, Spain, as atmospheric effects distorted the true color and outline of the lunar disk.

The next great lunar eclipse won't occur until New Year's Eve in December 2028, when a blood moon eclipse will transform Earth's satellite for 5.3 billion people across Asia, Australia and the Pacific, along with parts of Europe, Africa and the U.S.

Thankfully, we'll only have to wait until Feb. 6, 2027, for the next annular solar eclipse, when the moon will pass in front of the sun to create a magnificent 'ring of fire' along a narrow path crossing South America and West Africa.

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.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have studied 72 young, sun-like stars. As a result, they found that forming planets is a real race against time.

This is because the material that serves as the building blocks for planets is constantly escaping the swirling platters of gas and dust, or protoplanetary disks, that wrap around infant stars. Some types of planets may find their formation window closing sooner than others.

The team's research represents the most in-depth investigation yet into how matter escapes these protoplanetary disks and how this escape gives rise to different stages of planet formation around sun-like stars. All in all, the study helps paint a better picture of how and why our solar system took the shape it did around the infant sun around 4.6 billion years ago.

"Gas giants like Jupiter must assemble their massive atmospheres while the disk is still substantial enough to supply them, before winds and jets carry that raw material away into space," team leader Naman Bajaj from the University of Arizona said in a statement.

An ill wind blows around infant stars

The team conducted its research using data collected by the JWST’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). The scientists tracked matter loss by following the movements of molecular hydrogen, one of the most common molecules in protoplanetary disks. Each of the stars involved in the investigation represented a different stage in the early life of a star system. That meant putting these snapshots together allowed the researchers to create a "movie" detailing the early life of a planetary system.

One of the most important findings of this approach is the mechanisms for material loss from protoplanetary disks seem to evolve and switch dominance as an infant star ages.

This is important because gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn have vast atmospheres. They thus require more raw material to form than smaller rocky worlds like Earth do. Understanding matter loss allows scientists to determine at what stages of protoplanetary disk evolution gas giants can form.

"What is exciting about this study is that we can now see, across a large sample of young systems, how the mechanisms that remove gas from planet-forming disks change with time," team member Uma Gorti from the SETI Institute said in the statement. "Disk dispersal sets a fundamental clock for planet formation: once the gas is gone, the opportunity to build gas-rich planets is essentially over."

The researchers found that early in the evolution of protoplanetary disks, powerful, magnetically driven jets and winds dominate mass loss. These jets and winds are powered by magnetic fields that weave through protoplanetary disks.

Later, as the disk thins and starlight can pass through it more easily, these winds and jets weaken, and magnetic processes are dominated by high-energy radiation from the infant star ionizing gas and blowing it into space. The latter process is called photoevaporation.

All this reveals there is no one single process responsible for stripping planet-forming material from around infant stars. The research also demonstrates the JWST is more than capable of studying the dispersal of gas and dust around individual infant stars.

The next step for the team is to discover just how much material these different mechanisms shift. The scientists could also look into the areas of the disks in which the mechanisms studied operate. Down the line, this will help develop a model to reveal just how rapidly planet-formation is shut off — and in which regions of a protoplanetary disk different types of planets are most likely to form.

The team's research was published on Tuesday (August 25) in The Astronomical Journal.

Jonny Kim is leaving NASA to continue his military career.

The 42-year-old astronaut, who has one of the most jaw-dropping resumes of any person alive, is departing today (Aug. 27) after nine years with the agency. He has one mission under his belt, a long-duration flight to the International Space Station (ISS).

"Jonny has been an integral part of the agency, and his immeasurable impact will be felt for generations to come," Vanessa Wyche, director of NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, said in a statement today. "From advancing groundbreaking science to inspiring the next generation, Jonny has been an incredible source of inspiration to our nation. His exceptional talent, determination, and grit will leave a lasting legacy at NASA."

NASA picked Kim as part of its 2017 astronaut class, the 22nd in the agency's history. He and his 11 fellow selectees nicknamed themselves "The Turtles."

Kim was already incredibly accomplished before he got the NASA nod. He's a physician with a medical degree from Harvard. He served in the U.S. military, as a dual-designated naval aviator and flight surgeon as well as a Navy SEAL — a commando trained to conduct special operations on sea, air and land (hence the acronymic name).

"Over the course of more than 100 combat operations, he served as a medic, sniper, navigator and point man, earning the Silver Star, Bronze Star with Combat 'V,' and numerous additional commendations," NASA officials said in the same statement.

After completing his mandatory two years of NASA astronaut training, Kim served as a CAPCOM ("capsule communicator") at JSC, relaying information between Mission Control and crewmembers on the ISS.

"Kim also contributed to Artemis program development through his work in the astronaut exploration branch, leading the astronaut crew operations branch, and serving as increment lead for Expedition 65," NASA officials said in the same statement. "His experiences as a Navy SEAL, physician and naval aviator provided unique perspectives in mission operations and crew support."

In April 2025, Kim got the chance to go to space himself. He launched to the ISS aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft along with Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky.

The trio lived and worked in space for 245 days, circling Earth 3,920 times and traveling a total of nearly 104 million miles (167 million kilometers), according to NASA. During that time, Kim conducted a variety of scientific experiments that could advance technological development and aid space exploration down the road.

Kim, Ryzhikov and Zubritsky returned to Earth in December, touching down in their Soyuz on the steppe of Kazakhstan .

Kim isn't walking off into the sunset now. Far from it: He's going back to active duty, "to finish out the remainder of his military career within naval aviation training," according to NASA.

"Contributing to space exploration and serving NASA has been the honor of a lifetime," Kim said in the same NASA statement.

"Throughout my career, I’ve learned that beyond the missions, the training, and the hardware, success always comes down to the people," he added. "They are our greatest asset, and leading with love and empathy is how we achieve the impossible. I look forward to carrying my commitment to service, my enduring love for space and technology, and the hard-earned lessons of this past decade into my next chapter to make a meaningful impact on humanity’s future."

Kim isn't the only astronaut to hang up his spacesuit in 2026. NASA's Mike Fincke stepped away this year, as did Canadian Jeremy Hansen, who was one of the four crewmembers on NASA's Artemis II flight around the moon.

A private spacecraft failed to rescue NASA's Swift space telescope, meaning the big observatory will come crashing back to Earth in the near future.

The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory launched to Earth orbit in November 2004. Over the past two decades, it studied gamma-ray bursts — the most powerful explosions in the universe — and other cosmic objects and events using a trio of telescopes.

But Swift's science work is now done, and its days in orbit are numbered.

Call to action

In September 2025, NASA put out a call to action to save Swift, whose orbit was decaying quickly due to high solar activity. The bottom line: The observatory needed a boost to a higher orbit soon, or it would be dragged down to its death in Earth's atmosphere.

The Arizona-based company Katalyst Space Technologies answered that call, and won a $30 million NASA contract to perform the re-boost. In hurry-and-scurry mode, Katalyst built a robotic spacecraft called LINK, which launched on July 3 to meet up with Swift and haul it to a higher orbit.

But LINK suffered attitude-control issues after launch, causing NASA and Katalyst to wave off the rescue attempt.

Timeline troubles

Ghonhee Lee is the CEO of Katalyst Space Technologies.

Speaking to CNN News Central on Aug. 24, Lee said: "You know, this is not the outcome that we wanted, but I think it's very important to recognize the unprecedented scale. This was an ambitious, high-risk, high-reward mission where we designed, built and launched a space robot within nine months."

Lee said that the timeline worked against the group. "I think if we had had 12 months even — just three more months — it would have made a tremendous difference," he told CNN's Kate Bolduan.

Swift is now coming back down to Earth, but it's unclear when and where.

Uncontrolled reentry

"Yes, Swift will have an uncontrolled reentry," said Alise Fisher, public affairs specialist in astrophysics within the Office of Communications at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

The spacecraft's specific timing for reentry will depend on a number of factors, Fisher told Space.com. "Swift is not likely to reenter sooner than October. NASA will share more information as reentry approaches, following established interagency procedures for such notifications."

NASA expects most of the Swift spacecraft to burn up as it travels through the atmosphere, Fisher said, "but some components are expected to survive reentry. The risk of harm coming to anyone on Earth is unlikely."

Survivability analysis

Swift's dry mass is 613 kilograms (1,351 pounds). The spacecraft's science gear includes a Burst Alert Telescope, an Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope and an X-Ray Telescope.

So what might make it to Earth during Swift's speedy fall through the atmosphere?

The observatory's "dry mass and instruments are such that it will likely disintegrate sufficiently upon reentry to not pose a ground casualty hazard," said Darren McKnight, a senior technical fellow at LeoLabs, a company that keeps a persistent eye on what's going on in Earth orbit.

"However, it has both an X-ray telescope and optical telescope, so the internal workings of those devices might survive," McKnight told Space.com. He said that optical lenses, along with titanium tanks, are components that might make it to the ground.

"I am sure that they have done the analysis but have seen no public reporting on the survivability analysis," he said.

A sign of things to come?

Swift is unlikely to burn up entirely upon reentry, given its mass, said Ewan Wright, a Ph.D. student in interdisciplinary studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and a junior fellow at the university's Outer Space Institute.

We also don't know where it will come down, he noted.

"It has an orbital inclination of 21 degrees, so could reenter anywhere in any latitude from 21 North to 21 South," Wright told Space.com. "The most likely outcome is that any surviving debris will land in the sea, but there is a chance it could impact a built-up area and cause a casualty."

Even if Swift's return to Earth is uneventful, "there are more and more uncontrolled reentries of satellites and rockets each year, and the chance that someone will be hit is growing," Wright said.

More than a month after its epic spaceflight, Starship is finally headed home.

SpaceX announced today (Aug. 27) that it has loaded Starship's 171-foot-tall (52 meters) upper stage — known as Starship, or simply Ship — onto a huge "semi-submersible" ship in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Christmas Island.

Ship had been in the water since July 24, when it splashed down to bring an end to the Starship program's 13th test flight. The vehicle will now head back to SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas, a journey expected to take several months, according to the company.

Starship Flight 13 lifted off from Starbase, sending Ship on an hour-long suborbital jaunt that went quite well. The vehicle deployed its payloads — 20 of SpaceX's big, next-gen Starlink "Version 3" satellites — into space as planned and also managed to relight one of its six Raptor engines in the final frontier as well.

Ship then splashed down softly in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Western Australia — so softly, in fact, that it survived the ordeal intact. This was unprecedented; on every previous Starship flight, the upper stage had either broken apart during reentry to Earth's atmosphere or exploded shortly after splashdown, when it toppled sideways into the waves. (Starship's first-stage booster, known as Super Heavy, attempted a soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico during Flight 13 but suffered engine problems and hit the water hard.)

SpaceX determined to take advantage of this unexpected development. Getting an up-close look at Ship, the company said, would shed light on how its heat shield held up during the flight — key information that could advance the development of Starship, which is designed to be fully and rapidly reusable.

So the company began towing the Flight 13 Ship to shore — an endeavor that initially seemed doomed to failure.

"Unfortunately, ship recovery is not looking good right now," SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said in an Aug. 7 post on X, the social media platform he bought in 2022. He was responding to a SpaceX post that same day, which cited "challenging conditions and increasingly rough seas."

SpaceX persevered, however, and managed to tow Ship to Christmas Island, an Australian territory that lies about 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) northwest of the city of Broome. Once there, company engineers inspected the vehicle for several days as it bobbed in the waves, gathering valuable data, according to SpaceX.

"They collected heatshield samples and gained vital insight into how the vehicle handled reentry with improvements now planned on future vehicles," SpaceX said today in an X post that shared several photos of the operation.

Further analysis doubtless awaits, after the semi-submersible hauler vessel — so called because its deck goes underwater beneath heavy floating payloads, then rises up with them on board — arrives in Texas.

"Congratulations to the entire SpaceX Recovery team for battling through challenging conditions to give our engineers access to a wealth of data to continue rapidly developing Starship," SpaceX wrote in another X post today.

The hours are counting down to the launch of NASA's newest flagship orbital observatory. The spacecraft recently got its last glimpse of terrestrial light before being encapsulated in its rocket's protective payload fairing last week and is imminently bound for liftoff.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is NASA's next-generation research satellite, and it's currently slated to launch on Sunday (Aug. 30). Roman will lift off atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket at 7:27 a.m. EDT (1127 GMT) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The scope will then head to sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2 (L2), an orbital sweet spot about 930,000 miles (1.5 million km) away that will park the spacecraft on the side of Earth opposite the sun.

Roman's upcoming launch will cap nearly two decades and $4 billion of development and usher in a new wave of astronomical research into dark matter and dark energy, exoplanet discoveries and the ability to capture visible-to-near-infrared images of the universe that are 50 times wider than the field of view on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). But last year, as Roman's assembly and testing neared completion, President Trump's leaked budget proposal for fiscal year 2026 (FY26) stoked fears that the entire mission could be canceled.

In April 2025, reporting about initial "passback" budget documents outlined a proposal for the largest cut in NASA's history — a 24% overall reduction in funding, with a 50% loss to science programs. The document detailed continued support for missions like Hubble and JWST but allocated "no funding … for other telescopes." The news shocked scientists and engineers across NASA missions, who were suddenly dealt a dose of uncertainty as their job security teetered in political limbo.

For Roman's team, the prospect of abandoning the telescope just before the finish line hit hard. Lisa, an engineer who worked on Roman's team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and wished to be identified by an alias, was left confounded at the time. "We're 95% there. If it gets canceled, it would be really ridiculous, and I don't know how I would handle it," she told Space.com in an interview. "This is basically my life's work."

Others working on Roman took the news in stride. Jamie Dunn has worked at Goddard since 1991. He served as Roman's project manager from 2018 until he was appointed director of the center this past June. During a question-and-answer session with a committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on Aug. 10 — part of a congressionally mandated assessment prompted in part by reporting from Space.com about accelerated facility closures and consolidations at Goddard last year — Dunn described a calmer reaction to Roman's potential cancellation.

"Out of the eight years I [worked on Roman]," he told the committee, "we were zeroed out in the president's budget … in at least half of them. Not to be casual about it, but that happens."

When the president's official "skinny budget" proposal was published a few weeks after the April leak last year, Roman's prospects shifted from dire to just worrisome. Instead of cancelling the mission outright, the administration's budget request allocated just $156.6 million to Roman's continued development in FY26 — less than half of what the project received in FY25.

Goddard personnel began working around the clock at a time when government agencies, including NASA, were initiating reductions in force and encouraging civil servants to accept a "deferred resignation" option. Of three skilled technicians working in one department of Roman's team, two left, according to Lisa, which put further strain on the telescope's ongoing qualification testing at the time.

"We're pushing forward to get as far as we can while we have our current funding, and we'll see what happens," Lisa told Space.com last summer. "That amount of funding obviously will make it impossible, in my opinion, to keep schedule, because we can't keep running two shifts with half the people."

On the management side, Dunn tried to keep his team from getting distracted by politics. "Sometimes you've just got to keep coloring," he told the National Academies committee. "We kept working, and I [told the Roman team that] the best thing we can do is deliver on our commitments. And if delivering on our commitments isn't good enough, then what else can we do?"

Lisa said that Roman's mission leadership mitigated the team's panic. "[They] actually did a really good job of telling us, 'We're just going to proceed as we were before … Just focus on the work,' and, 'The best way to make sure we don't get cut is to continue delivering and continue to stay on schedule,'" she said.

Many of the engineers and technicians working on Roman "just put on blinders, put our heads down and kept working," Lisa said. "People were giving up their weekends, and at the same time, there was this compartmentalized knowledge that it could all get cut."

Rather than merely stay on schedule, though, the Roman mission team was pushed to accelerate it. Congress ultimately rejected the steep cuts to NASA in the president's budget request and restored the agency's funding to the previous year's levels. Not wanting to go through a repeat of uncertainty for FY27, Roman mission management began eyeing faster routes to the launch pad.

"They just kept pulling it earlier and earlier, because I think they were pushing to get it off the ground and in space before it could get cut," Lisa said. Eventually, Roman's target launch date moved up to September, and then to the end of August "so that it could happen within this fiscal year."

"In order to stay on schedule at the time, the Roman teams were running two shifts every day and working every Saturday, sometimes on Sundays," Lisa said. The strain took a toll on morale, but their hard work paid off. NASA announced the Roman Space Telescope's completion in April, eight months ahead of schedule, and under budget.

"Lo and behold, it turns out delivering on your commitments means something," Dunn said.

Now, all eyes are turning to watch Roman leave Earth. Having passed all its political hurdles leading up to launch day, Roman has one more major milestone: Launching to space to begin its mission.

Rocket rides to orbit aren't known for being particularly smooth, and after so much time spent worrying about budgets and schedules, Lisa said the part that makes her and her colleagues most nervous now is that it's out of their hands. "The launch vehicle … that's what we kind of don't have control over," Lisa said. "I'm really nervous, because it's just so many people's effort and years of work and sacrifice."

It'll take the telescope 30 days to reach its L2 destination, and there are a few benchmarks it has to meet along the way. Roman will have to perform a few trajectory adjustments, including the mid-course "correction 1" maneuver about 24 hours after launch, which Lisa described as one of Roman's most consequential in reaching its designated orbit.

After nearly two decades of development — and a final year spent wondering whether the telescope would make it to the launch pad at all — the team's focus has finally shifted to Roman's actual in-space operation as it awaits delivery to its new home in the final frontier.

A trio of NASA space telescopes teamed up to capture a gorgeous new look at the glowing spiral galaxy NGC 4258 and its two anomalous extra arms.

What is it?

This image shows NGC 4258, also known as Messier 106, a spiral galaxy located some 24 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici, the "Hunting Dogs." It is a fairly bright galaxy and can be viewed in the spring sky in the Northern Hemisphere with most telescopes.

Messier 106 is noteworthy for having two "anomalous" extra arms, the long curved regions of bright gases, dust and young stars that are characteristic of all spiral galaxies. But while most spiral galaxies have only a pair of arms, Messier 106 has two pairs. According to NASA, the extra set is composed of hot gases that are churned away from the galactic center by the supermassive black hole at the heart of NGC 4258.

Why is it incredible?

This image shows off the incredible teamwork that NASA's flagship orbital observatories can pull off. It combines X-ray observations from NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory (seen here in royal blue), optical light gathered by the Hubble Space Telescope (red, yellow and pale blue), and infrared light seen by the James Webb Space Telescope (bright orange).

By combining multiple types of light into one image, NASA is able to reveal the complete picture of what this energetic galaxy is made of.

The image also shows the incredible power of the black holes found at the centers of galaxies. "M106 helps show how supermassive black holes can create structural features that mimic star-bearing spiral arms, influencing a galaxy's evolution," NASA wrote in a statement accompanying the image.

This image was part of a NASA release of 16 new "galactic gems" captured by Chandra and other observatories.

On Aug. 27, 1962, NASA launched Mariner 2, the world's first spacecraft to successfully visit another planet.

Mariner 2 flew by Venus after a 3.5-month voyage through space.

The mission launched just one month after the Mariner 1 mission failed during launch. After departing from Cape Canaveral, Florida, Mariner 2 almost met the same fate when an electrical problem with the Atlas-Agena rocket caused it to start rolling, which made it unable to respond to any guidance commands from mission control.

By some miracle, the problem fixed itself, and Mariner 2 was on its way to Venus!

Why it mattered

Mariner 2 was a watershed mission for NASA at a time when, in the early 1960s, the U.S. was trailing behind in the Space Race with the Soviet Union — which had already launched the first satellite (Sputnik 1 in 1957), the first living creature (Laika the dog on Sputnik 2 that same year), the first human in space (Yuri Gagarin in 1961) and sent a probe to the moon (Luna 1 in 1959).

NASA's big Venus first mission, Mariner 1, failed out of the gate as mentioned above during an attempted launch on July 22, 1962, but those fortunes changed with Mariner 2.

It was an electrical short that caused Mariner 2's rocket to roll during ascent, but the booster managed to correct itself after about a minute, NASA has said.

The trip to Venus was a bit rocky, too, with Mariner 2 suffering a solar panel power drop out two times, as well as glitchy attitude control gyroscopes. Mariner 2 also got surprisingly hot as it approached its Venus flyby, prompting worries it might be cooked before it even reached the planet.

Despite all that, Mariner 2 achieved the first U.S. "first" in space, with a successful Venus flyby on Dec. 14, 1962. The probe flew within 21,564 miles (34,675 kilometers) of the hellish planet, taking the first close measurements of Venus at the time.

Mariner 2 carried no cameras (surprisingly), but its observations were the first detailed measurements of the Venus atmosphere and Venus' temperature, proving to scientists that the planet experienced a runaway greenhouse effect in the past. The probe's radio signals were also used to calculate Venus' mass in extreme detail, NASA has said.

"There will be other missions to Venus, but there will never be another first mission to Venus," said Jack James, NASA's Mariner 2 project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, before his death in 2001.

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.

Every so often, "Star Trek" likes to put its brave interstellar adventurers through hell. You know the drill — a bunch of one-off crew members will probably be blown up and/or sucked into space, while set dressers get to have fun making starship bridges look like they've been through the wars. We all know that seeking out new life and new civilisations is the prime directive on that final frontier, but sometimes we just want to see how Starfleet officers respond when the chips are down.

The latest episode of "Strange New Worlds" season 4, "Off-Hour", is one of "Trek"'s semi-regular life-or-death outings. The Enterprise finds itself trapped in a bizarre slipstream wormhole that threatens to destroy the ship if Pike and co can't find a solution before the "24"-style ticking clock (sorry, "Shipboard Chronometer") counts down to zero. It also leaves the fates of several key characters (one in particular) hanging in the balance… or at least it would, if the show wasn't a prequel, with most of its lead characters guaranteed to reappear in subsequent "Trek" canon.

Minor spoilers ahead for "Off-Hour". If you haven't seen the latest episode of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" yet, report to transporter room 3 and get out of here at once.

The likes of "The Wrath of Khan", "Voyager "'s two-parter "Year of Hell", and "Strange New Worlds"' very own "Memento Mori" have all gone to extreme lengths to mess up the normally pristine interiors of Starfleet vessels. "The Search for Spock" went even further, leaving the Enterprise in such a bad state that Admiral James T Kirk had no choice but to deploy its in-built self-destruct system.

Unfolding in real-time, "Off-Hour" is built from similar blueprints, as the aforementioned anomaly turns the Enterprise into a nightmarish environment where pretty much anything can kill you. Pike getting an electric shock while turning on the shields is just the tip of the iceberg, as Una "Number One" Chin-Riley snaps her leg in a pocket of extreme gravity, Christine Chapel loses a finger to extreme cold, and an unfortunate group of redshirts finds themselves trapped on the wrong side of a barrier with some lethal neutrino radiation.

But it's Dr Joseph M'Benga who has the worst day at the office, and by a distance. His quick and noble actions pushing Christine out of the way of an out-of-control medical table leave him pinned against a wall with a fatal trans-lumbar severance — the only thing keeping him alive is the table itself, his internal organs doomed as soon as it's pulled out of the way. Like the clichéd movie cop starting his last day on the beat, he picked the wrong day to tell Christine he's thinking of quitting the Enterprise — especially as his likely replacement, Boyce, is already on board.

There is no way M'Benga should survive this — Boyce even orders Chapel to make the patient comfortable when the inevitable happens — and in most other TV shows you'd think that actor Babs Olusanmokun was about to receive his final paycheck.

But "Star Trek" fans know that M'Benga (then played by Booker Bradshaw) filled in for Dr McCoy in two episodes of the Original Series, meaning that his deathbed chats with Chapel aren't quite as deep and meaningful as they'd be in "ER" or even this episode's biggest influence, "24".

For the same reason, you never fear for Scotty when he beams into a Jefferies Tube, unsure whether there'll be oxygen or heat waiting for him. Or wonder if Spock will survive the radiation burns he endures in a high-risk spacewalk on the Enterprise's hull. In fact, the only lead character who could be in any danger at all is La'an. As one of the few regulars whose post-"Strange New Worlds" fate remains unknown, canon offers little protection when she steps out of the airlock to rescue Spock.

"Star Trek" isn't "Game of Thrones", and shouldn't ever get into the habit of killing off characters for fun. Spock's (albeit temporary) demise in "The Wrath of Khan" still resonates because it was so emotional, dramatic, and unprecedented, as does the death of Kirk's son, David, in "The Search for Spock". William Shatner's performances in the aftermath of both are among the best of his career.

"Strange New Worlds" itself hasn't been afraid to wield the grim reaper's bat'leth when necessary, though it's always been with characters — such as original chief engineer Hemmer — who have no existing legacy in the franchise.

The question facing any prequel, however, is whether you can play around with life-and-death stakes as you would in a story whose conclusion is open-ended. Surely an "anyone could die at any time" plot is redundant when canon has the same protective properties as the Super Stars that make Mario invincible.

The exception that proves the rule is "Andor"'s majestic second season — Mon Mothma's had-to-happen escape from the Galactic Senate turned out to be one of the most unbearably tense TV moments of last year. But that show mostly reserved its highest stakes for characters who didn't have an appointment with the Original Trilogy.

Indeed, when you pretend that a beloved character might die even though they can't, you risk cheapening the drama the same way "The Rise of Skywalker" did when it led us to believe Chewbacca had been blown up, before revealing he was on a different ship all along. You're telling life-or-death stories, without ever having to deal with the messy death part — something that, as we all know from "The Wrath of Khan", even the legendary James T Kirk was never much good at.

As a result, you spend the whole of "Off-Hour" waiting for the inevitable "magical" intervention to save the day. It's certainly not a massive surprise when Chapel works out that using previously theoretical strong-force neutrinos might repair M'Benga's broken body — and a not-at-all unexpected twist when Scotty reveals they could also fix the ship's faltering engines. "Almost sounds too good to be true, I know,” Scotty admits.

Future events will always weigh heavy on any prequel, but surely stories have a responsibility to better acknowledge that viewers know what's coming. Is "Off-Hour" a brilliant example of "Star Trek" at its most tense or a cheap play on our emotions? It's probably a bit of both.

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

Europe's most powerful rocket flew again today (Aug. 27).

An Ariane 6 launched the MTG-I2 weather satellite from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana today (Aug. 27) at 4:10 p.m. EDT (2010 GMT; 5:10 p.m. local time in Kourou), right at the beginning of a 2.5-hour window.

Everything went according to plan today: The Ariane 6 released MTG-I2 into geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) 36 minutes after liftoff.

The 8,400-pound (3,800 kilograms) MTG-I2 is the second imaging satellite in the Meteosat Third Generation network (hence the name). It will complete the three-spacecraft constellation in geostationary orbit, which lies 22,236 miles (35,786 kilometers) above Earth.

Its companions, MTG-I1 and MTS-S1, launched in December 2022 and July 2025, respectively. MTG-I1 is an imaging craft and MTS-S1 is a "sounder," using an infrared instrument to probe different layers of Earth's atmosphere.

The MTG satellites are operated by the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), an international group based in Germany. And they're very capable, according to Arianespace.

"The MTG system is part of a new generation of geostationary satellites providing imagery for the early detection of fast-developing severe storms, weather forecasting and climate monitoring," the company wrote in the MTG-I2 press kit, which you can find here.

Arianespace went on to describe MTG as "the most complex and innovative meteorological geostationary system ever built," citing its potential to improve the prediction and early detection of severe weather events.

"The data gathered will have a wide range of uses, from enabling aircraft to avoid storms and for earlier alerts of flooding, through to more precise monitoring of fires and fog," the company wrote.

Today's launch was the ninth to date for the Ariane 6, which can deliver up to 12.7 tons (11.5 metric tons) to GTO in its burliest configuration. For comparison, SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket has a GTO payload capacity of 9.15 tons (8.3 metric tons).

The Ariane 6 debuted in July 2024. Before today, the rocket last flew this past June, when it successfully sent 36 of Amazon's broadband satellites to low Earth orbit.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 4:20 p.m. ET on Aug. 27 with news of successful liftoff, then again at 4:50 p.m. ET with news of satellite deployment.

August's 96% partial lunar eclipse has been and gone, putting on a mesmerizing show for stargazers across the night side of Earth as out planet's shadow slipped silently across the face of the moon, forcing it to adopt a striking crimson hue at the point of maximum eclipse.

Check out our partial lunar eclipse photo roundup for striking views of the event captured from around the world.

Tonight (Aug. 27-28), the full Sturgeon Moon will slip into Earth's shadow, creating a stunning "almost blood moon" as up to 96.2% of the lunar surface disappears into the darkest part of our planet's shadow, the umbra.

At maximum eclipse, much of the moon may take on an eerie reddish hue as sunlight filtered through Earth's atmosphere is refracted into the shadow and onto the lunar surface. Only a thin sliver of moon will escape Earth's umbra, appearing as a bright arc against an otherwise dim, rusty-red lunar disk.

Lunar eclipses are entirely safe to watch with the naked eye. Unlike a solar eclipse, you don't need filters or certified glasses. Just find the moon at the right time, then simply sit back, relax and enjoy the show. If you can't watch the eclipse in person, you can watch all the action unfold here on Space.com with these free livestreams, weather permitting. You can also follow along with the latest updates with our lunar eclipse live blog.

Who can see it?

The partial lunar eclipse favors observers across North and South America. About 12% of the world's population — 987 million people — will be able to see all phases of the eclipse, according to Time and Date, weather permitting.

Skywatchers across parts of Europe and Africa will also see the lunar eclipse. However, for many observers, including those in the UK, the moon will set shortly after maximum eclipse, cutting off the later stages of the partial phase.

When to look

The eclipse reaches its maximum at 12:12 a.m. EDT (0412 GMT) on Aug. 28, when 96.2% of the lunar surface will be covered by Earth's dark umbral shadow.

But if you have the time, it's worth settling in to watch as much of the eclipse as possible, particularly from the start of the partial phase at around 10:33 p.m. EDT on Aug. 27 (0233 GMT on Aug. 28).

The penumbral phase begins earlier, at 9:23 p.m. EDT on Aug. 27 (0123 GMT on Aug. 28), but the initial dimming will be extremely subtle because Earth's outer penumbral shadow is so faint.

I'd recommend starting your observations when the partial phase starts. From then on, you'll see Earth's shadow take progressively larger "bites" out of the moon. It can almost feel like watching the moon's monthly phases sped up into just a few hours as its appearance changes before your eyes.

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

NASA took the guts out of old spy satellites to build the groundbreaking Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope – but how? And why?

Years of hard work and anticipation are culminating as we sit on the verge of NASA's launch of its next-generation space telescope. Set to lift off this upcoming Sunday (Aug. 30) aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, the Roman Space Telescope will push astronomy into the future, exploring the mysteries of dark energy, studying far-off worlds and expanding our understanding of the universe around us. But to get to this point, NASA used some … unexpected technology.

At the core of the observatory lies the Optical Telescope Assembly. This houses the telescope's primary mirror, its main mechanism through which it surveys the cosmos, nine additional mirrors, supporting structures and various sorts of electronics. But where did all of this tech come from? The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which builds spy equipment for U.S. agencies like the CIA. That's where.

In 1999, the NRO stood up the multibillion-dollar "Future Imagery Architecture" program, which contracted out new spy satellites. The NRO contracted Boeing for the project, having the company design a whole suite of new optical and radar imaging reconnaissance satellites. They're basically spy satellites. In 2001, in a post-9/11 America, this effort continued to ramp up with national security concerns at an all-time-high. However, this flurry of spy satellite development was short-lived. And with billions of dollars in overrun costs from Boeing, the project closed in 2005.

At the time, the New York Times called the program "perhaps the most spectacular and expensive failure in the 50-year history of American spy satellite projects."

But one program's spectacular failure is another program's free space tech treasure.

Years later, in 2012, the NRO donated two unused space telescopes from this program to NASA. With optics said to be similar to the Hubble Space Telescope's, two free telescopes presented the agency with a tantalizing opportunity. This donation happened just a couple of years after Roman (then known as WFIRST) was originally proposed — and even though it would cost money to rework the hardware and build the rest of the space telescope out, this provided the possibility of a serious cost alleviation to the mission.

After considering the possibility, the team decided it was the right call. And in 2011, years before Roman (WFIRST) was even formally designated as a mission by NASA, the agency announced that they would be reusing this spy satellite technology. This decision followed the 2010 National Academy of Science Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey, which pointed to Roman as its highest priority.

While this donated spy satellite part came with top-tier optics, it was also free. The most recent space telescope to launch was the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which lifted off in 2021 but was in development since the mid-1990s. The JWST garnered significant public attention and scrutiny for being both well behind schedule and way over budget, ultimately costing a whopping $10 billion.

As the JWST was grappling with these budget issues, Roman was already in development. So, it's not a shock that when a high-tech space telescope landed on their doorstep, NASA took full advantage of the opportunity, though the Roman team would still have to replace the electronics in the telescopes that the NRO removed. Thus, in the end, did the NRO telescopes actually save NASA money? It's not clear. Each donated telescope was said to be worth at least $250 million, but experts at the time of development were torn in their estimates for whether repurposing this old hardware would actually save or eat up costs in the end.

A few quirks also came with the free hardware. In addition to having to replace the electronics and rework a telescope someone else built, the Roman team had to learn about the telescope with some, well, restrictions. When the details about the telescopes were given to the mission team, there were large chunks of information fully blacked out, the Washington Post reported at the time. But while the Roman team was handed something quite strange to work with, the mission has remained about as on schedule and on budget as we've seen with a space telescope of this magnitude.

NASA still has the second telescope from the NRO, though the agency has not said what they might do with the equipment. However strange and unexpected this series of events may have been, it did result in a completed space telescope that now sits at the launch site, ready to uncover the mysteries of the universe. Join us this upcoming Sunday (Aug. 30) to see a telescope made with spy satellite tech travel beyond our planet.

Astronomers have discovered a new ocean world outside the solar system that orbits extremely close to its parent star. This means that the extrasolar planet, or "exoplanet," is in hot water, both literally and figuratively.

The exoplanet orbits the star HD 176071 located around 335 light-years away, and is about two and a half times the size of Earth, but has about eight and a half times the mass of our planet. That indicates to scientists that this planet is about 50% water. At a distance from its star of just under 1.5 million miles (about 1.6% of the distance between the Earth and the sun) and with a year lasting just 14 hours, HD 176071 b is a rare example of a "hot water world."

That close distance to its star means the planet experiences extreme tidal forces due to the pull of the star's gravity. These forces are driving the planet, designated HD 176071 b, towards a rapid and inexorable fatal encounter that will see it eventually violently devoured by its host star.

The exoplanet is also a rare occupant of what scientists call "Neptunian Desert" a term which describes a lack of Neptune sized worlds orbiting very close to their host stars. This is thought to be because intense stellar radiation strips planets of their gaseous layers effectively shrinking them. However, HD 176071 b seems to defy this suggestion, as this water world possesses surprisingly a dynamic atmosphere that hasn't been stripped away.

"Comparing historical data from the Kepler space telescope with new TESS (Transisting Exoplante Survey Satellite) observations six years later, we noticed an unexpected phase shift in the modulation of the reflected light," lead researcher Sylvain N. Breton of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) said in a statement.

"This tells us that we are not looking at a static photograph, but a living and changing atmosphere, in which dense, highly reflective clouds form, evolve, and move along the planet's coldest edges."

That isn't the only extraordinary thing about HD 176071 b. The way the ocean exoplanet was initially discovered is pretty special too.

This ocean world doesn't cross its stellar parent

Currently NASA's catalog of confirmed exoplanets has over 6,000 entries with thousands more worlds beyond the solar system awaiting conformation. The vast majority of these were discovered when they passed in from of their host star and caused a tiny dip in starlight reaching us from that stellar body in what's known as the transit method of exoplanet detection.

Thus, the transit method requires the planet to pass between its star and Earth. As you may imagine, that's a really fortunate arrangement for astronomers to find new planets in. Most known planets in the Milky Way don't do that.

"The vast majority of planets in the universe never transit in front of their star from Earth's perspective, making them virtually invisible," Breton said.

HD 176071 b is just such a world, with this geometric hinderance, so Breton and colleagues had to be crafty to discover this water world.

The team still used the starlight of the parent star of HD 176071 b to detect the exoplanet, but instead hunted for tiny fluctuations in brightness caused when the light from this star was reflected from the planet. HD 176071 b is tidally locked, meaning it has a permanent "dayside" facing its star, and a perpetual "nightside" facing out to space. The variations in brightness result because sometimes the nightside of the planet faces us, and other times our instruments see its dayside.

"Thanks to the dataset acquired with the HARPS-N instrument on the Galileo National Telescope, we have managed to overcome this geometric obstacle: by measuring with extreme precision how the light reflected by the planet varies throughout its orbital journey, we can not only detect these elusive worlds, but also begin to characterize their structure and atmosphere, opening a fundamental window onto previously almost inaccessible planetary populations," Breton said.

The discovery of HD 176071 b shows that current astronomy techniques are sophisticated enough to characterize the atmosphere and internal structure of worlds beyond the solar system. That is a big boost for the detection of worlds that don't pass between Earth and their host star.

The team's research was published on Tuesday (August 25) in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

I had never seen a total solar eclipse. That's a strange thing to admit for the skywatching writer at Space.com, but the truth is that the opportunity had simply never come up.

When it comes to eclipses, I've always been beguiled by their beauty from afar. I've always hoped to see that strange moment when a black sun manifests to extend a glowing atmosphere into the fleeting twilight of totality. But after 37 years I hadn't once found myself in the path of the moon's inner shadow, and it was starting to feel like something that simply happened to other people.

That all changed when I joined Space.com and my life became anchored in the movements of the planets, moon and stars. I was offered the chance to report on the 2026 total solar eclipse from Spain, while our skywatching editor, Daisy Dobrijevic, witnessed totality from an HX Expedition's cruise aboard MS Spitsbergen in East Greenland. In the end, my first eclipse experience would be everything I had hoped for and more. A perfect blend of science, awe, culture and faith, that I'll carry with me for the rest of my life.

I covered the Aug. 12 eclipse from the small village — or pueblo — of Valoria la Buena in central Spain. There, I joined a team of citizen scientists from the Dynamic Eclipse Broadcast (DEB) Initiative, a voluntary initiative guided by professional astronomers from Southern Illinois University and, where possible, part funded by grants from the NASA Science Mission Directorate and the National Science Foundation. For this eclipse, the DEB was tasked with capturing data on the sun's corona while transmitting a live feed to a NASA webcast from within the path of totality.

Months of preparation, writing and trading emails with the DEB team lead Charles Greenwald came and went. Before I knew it my bags were packed, my passport was in hand and I was standing in a taxi rank outside the Madrid-Barajas Airport in the heart of Spain.

Hours of mild embarrassment ensued as I used broken Spanish and hand gestures to negotiate my way across the city to the Chamartín-Clara Campoamor station. Then onto a high-speed train heading north to Valladolid — a beautiful city whose pronunciation I butchered for the entirety of my stay.

Into the path of totality

Upon arrival I was met by Charles' brother in law Santiago and nephew Andreas, who had travelled from Guadalajara, Mexico to witness the eclipse. Andreas led us on a short detour to hunt down some quality coffee beans — he's something of an aficionado. Then on to Valoria la Buena, by means of a final 30-minute car ride that would take us deep into the path of totality.

I had embraced Charles' idea of joining the DEB group not only for the citizen science, but also because of the unique opportunity to observe the eclipse with a multinational group hailing from Mexico, the U.S. and, more locally, members from Madrid and Valladolid.

Half of the group spoke fluent English while the other spoke none at all — a mix that set the stage for an intoxicating blend of meaningful conversation and rapt observation, as the group talked passionately in Spanish over magnificent home-cooked food prepared chiefly by Santiago, his wife Gaby and Andreas.

Once at the house in Valoria la Buena I finally got the chance to connect face to face with Charles, after months of sporadic video calls. In the months leading up to the eclipse Charles had dedicated precious down time to prepare his team and test new software for the solar telescopes.

As an undergraduate, Charles had studied optics and physics before ultimately pursuing a career in aviation, which nowadays sees him fly around the world for the global shipping and logistics giant FedEx. Over dinner that first night I discovered that he was also a retired colonel in the United States Air Force, and had flown some 35 different aircraft ranging from an F15 fighter to a C-17 globemaster over the course of his military career.

He had first discovered the DEB in an article from Sky & Telescope during a brief FedEx stopoff in Sydney, Australia. After heeding the call for volunteers and spent the next year assembling a team of family and students to capture the Great American Eclipse of 2024.

Several members of the group, including Santiago, Andreas and Arath — a student at the Universidad de Guadalajara — are veterans of that first campaign. For others, like myself, it would be an incredible first. But Charles' passion is what brought it all together.

1 day to totality

In the blink of an eye it was Aug. 11 — and we had just one day to go.

With prep time running short, I packed my camera gear and headed out to our eclipse site, where the DEB team was busy practicing with their solar scope.

My goal was to observe and get the lay of the land. I also needed a little time to practice with my own humble setup — a Fujifilm X-T5 camera with a XF 70-300 mm lens, plus a Manfrotto tripod and a handy solar filter courtesy of Celestron, which worked magic with the aid of a little Blu Tack.

The team had managed to convince a kindly resident to let us set up outside their villa, and to use their internet to ensure connectivity for the NASA stream.

It was a perfect spot with a near-pristine view to the west — an important feature considering that the sun would be less than 10 degrees above the horizon at totality — less than the width of a clenched fist held at arm's length.

There had been a little commotion earlier that day. Upon hearing that his parents had agreed to let perfect strangers access their internet, the son had, understandably, cautioned against letting Charles use the Wi-Fi, fearing that his story was a little too fanciful, and that he was some kind of scam! Thankfully it all got straightened out with a quick Google search, and we didn't have the ethernet plug pulled on the operation.

Charles and Arath were already getting the telescope to track the sun by the time I arrived. They'd also tested their uplink with NASA and the connection to the main DEB team 91 miles (147 kilometers) to the northwest in the city of Leon, which was looking stable.

I took the opportunity to catch up with Arath, who dreamed of pursuing a masters degree in mathematics at Cambridge University upon completing his studies at the Universidad de Guadalajara in Mexico. Nearby, Aimar and Aaron — a pair of passionate high schoolers from Spain — had their heads down as they worked on their own mathematical equations in the patch of shade cast by a solitary umbrella. They had reached out to join the group after hearing about the DEB on a university noticeboard, and later that day quizzed me on the best places to find the latest scientific studies. I'm 80% sure that they're already smarter than me.

All the while I was getting to grips with solar photography. I had — with a little help — managed to centre the sun in my frame and after 15 minutes of toying with settings had snapped my first crisp shot of the solar disk.

Everything was looking great. The weather, our greatest potential adversary, was playing nicely. As I noted earlier, the sun would be low in the sky around the time of totality, putting a lot of atmosphere between us and the eclipse for potential clouds to coalesce in.

But Charles had been tracking the forecasts closely, and everything he'd seen indicated that the western sky would be clear as the eclipse darkened the sky on the 12th. Only one unlikely threat to totality remained.

The summer had seen Europe endure an oppressively dry, hot summer, which had seen wildfires spring up across the continent. Having spent a week just north of the Spanish border in Carcassonne, France in July, I could testify to the colossal smoke clouds that billow up from such a fire, which could easily obscure the sun as firefighters worked to bring it under control on the ground below. Thankfully, no such threat materialized.

I sought a little solitude on that final night before the eclipse. The terrace was unoccupied, so I laid back on the astroturf, traced out the constellations above and allowed my anticipation to build. As I watched, a single Perseid raced through the stars of the Summer Triangle — a stunning opening act for the solar spectacle to come.

Eclipse day in Valoria la Buena

The day of the total solar eclipse had finally arrived — and with it a strange nervous energy that made me feel as if I was vibrating on a cellular level. I was hours from seeing something that had terrified and awed my ancestors, drawn adventurers half way across the globe and allowed scientists to understand the true nature of our parent star.

Charles, on the other hand, confessed to being rested and ready, despite working through a last minute technical glitch that had reared its head in the past few days.

The fan on the computer responsible for sending commands to the telescope and uplinking to NASA had simply given out. At the height of Spanish summer. In the middle of an oppressive heatwave. Ordinarily that would probably have been game over. But this is a team including physics heads, an engineer and all round brilliant people, so they came up with a plan. They built a DIY heatsink.

The gameplan went as follows: Andreas put a bunch of wet towels in the freezer overnight. Said towels were then transported in a cooler and placed at the bottom of a nice, shaded cardboard box at the observation site, with foil between the towel and the computer.

Add to that a hand fan and cooler blocks from the freezer and Viola, you've got yourself a homemade heatsink. Human ingenuity versus technology and a Spanish heatwave. We would know the victor soon enough.

In the meantime I had another first to experience. Andreas had arranged for a local Catholic priest to hold a special Mass at the local church to mark the day of the eclipse. And I'd been invited to join them.

I am not a Catholic myself, but have always been taken with the beauty of European churches and cathedrals, and was keen to experience Mass. After quizzing Andreas on theology and triple checking it wasn't an imposition, I gratefully accepted.

The church bells had been a constant companion during my stay in Valoria la Buena, chiming every hour on the hour since my arrival. They emanated from a stunning 250-year-old church located at the heart of the pueblo, which had been constructed over three distinct phases.

During Mass, the priest remarked in Spanish on the incredible nature of the upcoming eclipse as the group listened attentively while wearing specially made eclipse t-shirts. A poignant moment of religion and science in absolute harmony.

A unique eclipse

After, I disappeared to prepare while Charles and the DEB team ferried the scope and equipment to our observing site. There was time for one final communication test with NASA.

Then it was time. And it wasn't just us.

Half the town must have turned out to experience the eclipse. Citizen scientists and family mingled with friends and locals as an impromptu block party got underway in Valoria la Buena.

I set up my camera close to Charles and the DEB scope, as the DIY heatsink worked to cool the fanless laptop in defiance of the Spanish heatwave.

Aaron, Aimar, Rosa and Siempre watched on as I double-checked the solar filter and settings on my camera, while glancing paranoid at the eclipse timings on my laptop. We were quickly joined by a semi-circle of enthusiastic locals curious about everything from the eclipse and the DEB to science journalism and Space.com.

As a result I was lost in conversation as the moment of first contact arrived and the moon took its first tentative bite out of the sun. Someone shouted and I snapped to. I immediately forgot how to use a camera. Remembered. And snapped my first photograph of the eclipsed sun.

My first instinct was that something was ineffably wrong. The sight had activated an ancient and superstitious circuit in my brain that insisted the sun simply shouldn't look this way. That I should be doing something to make it whole again.

Nervous excitement waxed in time with the waning of the solar crescent, which grew thinner with each minute as the moon's silhouette sank ever deeper into the sun. It was spectacular, but in hindsight little more than a prelude to the wonder of totality.

As the last of the solar disk threatened to slip behind the moon I panicked. Alternating between eclipse glasses and my hastily retrieved solar binoculars, unsure which would provide the best experience.

The binoculars.

Shouts of awe echoed behind as the final shred of the solar disk created a magnificent Diamond ring flare effect on the trailing edge of the lunar disk. I ripped the solar filter away from my camera and lowered the binoculars from my eyes.

The moment I had envisioned for years in my mind's eye years had finally arrived, more spectacular than I could have hoped.

With my own eyes I saw the sun's atmosphere reach out from behind the moon's silhouette. A black star shining in a false twilight.

As before, the sight stroked a primal part of my psyche that told me it was all wrong. Like watching a leviathan pass just beneath the surface in a fathomless ocean. To my senses, the eclipsed sun seemed to fill the sky. Venus was visible gleaming star-like and brilliant above, but the impossible sun was our only focus.

I grabbed my unfiltered binoculars for a closer look - something that can only be done when the sun's photosphere is completely masked by the moon during totality. A bright prominence glowed to the left of the lunar disk, outshining the corona that surrounded the natural satellite.

It was our eclipse. 1 minute and 37 seconds of totality. Another will follow in 2027, but it wouldn't be the same. It'll be a different corona, at a different altitude, enjoyed with different people. Utterly unique.

I triggered my camera shutter a dozen times. I'd knocked it out of focus upon removing the solar filter. It didn't seem to matter.

As the sun emerged from behind the moon I turned my eyes back to my camera, which had decided to stop talking to my phone at some point during totality. Ten minutes of berating the inanimate object later the connection was back, and my (out of focus) views of totality were on their way to our solar eclipse live blog.

Charles and the team had been diligently capturing data on the sun's atmosphere throughout totality, while streaming live views to NASA as they held their eclipse show in Leon.

It was, to me, a shining example of citizen science, which had brought family, friends, locals and students together as one to enjoy one of the most spectacular sights that our solar system has to offer.

The partially eclipsed sun set over the western horizon as Charles accepted the cheers of the DEB group. Our last night in Valoria la Buena was spent among newfound friends, discussing the Strokes, love and coffee, all while enjoying a little rum.

My return journey was a malaise of delayed trains, a cancelled flight and a sea of unfamiliar faces. But none of that mattered. I was dwelling on that magnificent black sun at the moment of totality, of the unnatural twilight and of the people I met along the way.

Each of the sun-reflecting mirrors proposed by U.S.-based startup Reflect Orbital will appear 40 times brighter than the full moon to observers standing within its beam on Earth, a study has found. The light pollution produced by each of those mirrors would completely wipe out stars from the sky for those underneath them, turning the starry night into an eerie twilight zone.

"It will be worse than big cities like London," Gaspar Bakos, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Princeton and one of the authors of the study, told Space.com. "You would not see any stars if you were in the beam."

Reflect Orbital recently received a license from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to launch a demonstration satellite called EARENDIL-1 into an orbit 373 miles (600 kilometers) above Earth. The spacecraft will be fitted with a giant mirror 60 by 60 feet (18 by 18 meters) in size to test how sunlight can be reflected to Earth to extend the operations of solar power plants into nighttime hours or even to illuminate disaster zones after dark for free.

Despite the company's intentions, the FCC's decision stirred an outcry among astronomers, environmental campaigners, commercial pilot associations and other stakeholders, who fear the effects that might come to pass if the FCC approves Reflect Orbital's plan to launch 40,000 space mirrors even larger than EARENDIL-1 in the coming years.

Bakos is one of the astronomers who filed objections to the FCC against the plan. He said that the new study provides hard numbers on Reflect Orbital's impact where there previously were only rough estimates.

"There has been some disbelief from Reflect Orbital about our original estimates, so we have taken data on light scattering in Earth's atmosphere which is based on papers that go back for decades to calculate the light pollution," said Bakos. "These are scattering calculations that have been extensively tested in real life situations. So, we now have scientifically accurate renderings based on this paper."

Instead of focusing on EARENDIL-1, the researchers calculated the impact of Reflect Orbital's operational mirrors, which will be 174 by 174 feet (54 by 54 m) in size. They found that to observers on Earth standing at the center of the mirror's 3.4-mile-wide (5.4 kilometers) beam, the satellite would appear 40 times as bright as the full moon and the sky as luminous as that in the after-sunset twilight.

But thanks to atmospheric light scattering — the bouncing of photons off particles in the air — the area affected by the mirror's passage would be much wider, the study found. Even at a distance of nearly 9 miles (14 kilometers) from the beam, the sky would be brighter than when the moon is full. At a distance of 21 miles (34 kilometers), the light-polluted area above the horizon in the direction of the beam would still appear brighter than the night sky during a full moon.

That would be just a single mirror. But Reflect Orbital wants to fly 40,000 such satellites. Bakos said that data suggests that to trigger energy generation even in the most efficient solar panels of today would require the combined reflected light from at least 400 such mirrors at the same time. Together, the beam from those mirrors would be 10,000 brighter than the full moon, which, however, only makes up about 2.4 percent of the brightness of the sun, the paper states.

The sky glow resulting from these combined beams, the researchers found, would be visible from 50 miles away (80 kilometers), and extend the twilight zone up to 9 miles (14 kilometers) from the beam.

"It would be almost daytime brightness," said Bakos. "It would be just like before sunrise. But in fact, that's too low for solar panels to actually operate. Even the very best ones would barely turn on even with 400 mirrors illuminating the patch."

In renderings created by Bakos and his team based on the calculations, a pristine dark sky at a dark location is shown to completely transform into a star-free twilight zone as the mirror flies overhead.

Reflect Orbital's spokesperson told Space.com in response that the study's findings were based on "inaccurate assumptions" and insisted that "the vast majority of people will never see the light in their lifetime as the vast majority of service locations will be very remote," serving "large construction and solar projects in the middle of nowhere."

The spokesperson further added that "only the satellites required to serve approved locations would be active; inactive satellites would remain below naked-eye visibility."

The researchers, however, criticize the company for failing to provide technical data to back up their claims.

Reflect Orbital, however, insists that they "engaged substantively with legitimate concerns raised by astronomers, environmental researchers and scientists" and that such "feedback has informed our technology and operational plans."

The company says that they are "working on a coordination agreement with the National Science Foundation and commissioning third-party research through independent researchers and federal partners."

For comparison, SpaceX's Starlink currently consists of around 11,000 satellites. According to some estimates, around 30 Starlink satellites are visible in the sky from a single spot on Earth at any point in time. Starlink satellites, however, are much smaller and dimmer than the Reflect Orbital mirrors.

Bakos said the overall effect of the mirrors would depend on the reflectiveness of the illuminated surface and the cloudiness of the sky. A forest, for example, might absorb most of the light while snow-covered fields or concrete city streets would scatter it further.

"It's not just the beam," said Bakos. "The glow of the reflected light from the surface will cause the sky to glow. For example the light pollution from a town illuminated by the beam will be ten to 20 times brighter than from the artificial lighting in that same town. Artificial light only illuminates streets and sidewalks, but here, everything would be illuminated — every backyard, park, roof or river."

The FCC received around 1,900 objections against the Reflect Orbital application. In its Order and Justification of Reflect Orbital's mission license, the agency stated that "impacts on optical astronomy fall outside [the FCC's] review and authorization."

In the U.S., satellite projects are exempt from the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which requires federal agencies to assess environmental impacts of their decisions. The exemption has been in place since the 1980s when only a handful of satellites were being launched in a year.

The study was accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal and is currently available on arXiv.

In late June 2023, on a morning train commuting to work in New York City, David Hendel was scrolling through a recent astronomy paper on his phone when a half-page image caught his eye.

The image, captured a year earlier by the Hubble Space Telescope, showed UGC 9050-Dw1, a dwarf galaxy some 115 million light-years from Earth. It appeared as little more than a faint, diffuse smudge of bluish-white light that astronomers call an ultra-diffuse galaxy — a type of galaxy so sparsely populated with stars that most of its mass is thought to be dark matter, the invisible substance that makes up more than 80% of the matter in the universe but has yet to be directly detected.

What made Hendel pause was not the galaxy itself but a thin, fragile ribbon of stars trailing off from it, so dim it nearly disappeared among the other smudges of light crowding the frame. Hendel, a former astronomer who had studied thousands of similar structures, immediately recognized the subtle interplay of the arc's features, including the shared color of the stars and their curved trajectory pointing toward a tiny, matching bright knot along its track. Together, those clues matched a stellar stream tearing from a tight ball of stars called a globular cluster, pulled apart by the gravity of UGC 9050-Dw1.

If Hendel's reading was correct, it would be the first such stream ever found outside the Milky Way.

"It almost seemed too good to be true," Hendel told Space.com. "At this point I felt the excitement of a discovery to such a degree that I recall looking up and around the train for someone to tell!"

This discovery would give researchers a pristine new laboratory for probing dark matter, and one far less contaminated by competing astrophysical forces that muddy similar searches within our own galaxy. Hendel, who now works in finance but still follows research from his former field, ran a quick literature search to see whether anyone had already documented the feature. No one had.

The right person to tell was not on the train, of course. Before reaching his stop, Hendel took a screenshot, sketched a rough circle around the arc and sent it to Sarah Pearson, an associate professor of astrophysics at Technical University of Denmark's DTU Space, and his friend since their graduate school days at Columbia University.

That message kicked off the collaborative effort that would ultimately confirm the find, led by Pearson and Julie Kiel Holm, a Ph.D. student at the Niels Bohr Institute at Denmark's University of Copenhagen.

The team's paper gives the stream the name Oyashio (pronounced "oh-yah-shee-oh"), Japanese for a cold Pacific current, following a tradition of naming these faint stellar trails after bodies of water in Indigenous languages to honor cultures worldwide with long astronomical traditions, including in Australia, Chile and India.

Within the Milky Way, astronomers have so far identified roughly 100 stellar stream candidates shed by globular clusters, but finding one around another galaxy is extraordinarily rare. Streams that form when a whole dwarf galaxy is torn apart are relatively easy to spot, since they emerge in the sparse outskirts of a larger galaxy. But globular cluster streams form deep inside their host galaxy, where they are washed out by brighter, more crowded starlight. Oyashio's detection was possible in part because UGC 9050-Dw1's already-sparse stellar population meant a dimmer backdrop gave the stream just enough contrast to be seen, Holm told Space.com.

Oyashio's discovery is "a very exciting step forward," Emily Cunningham, an assistant professor at Boston University who studies stellar streams and dark matter halos and was not involved in the new study, told Space.com. "Using techniques like those described in this paper, we will detect many more streams around other galaxies with upcoming observations from facilities such as the Vera Rubin Observatory and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope."

A sufficiently large catalog of such streams in different galactic environments would allow them to tease out the subtler perturbations that dark matter is predicted to cause at the smallest scales, the researchers say.

"This is one of the most promising avenues for new astrophysical constraints on dark matter's nature," said Hendel.

No Eureka! moment

UGC 9050-Dw1 was first identified in 2017 in images taken by the Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii, as part of a survey for diffuse dwarf galaxies. A follow-up study in 2023, drawing on the same Hubble images in which Hendel later spotted Oyashio, catalogued an "exceptionally high" population of globular clusters near the galaxy. Its authors concluded that UGC 9050-Dw1 likely formed from the merger of two comparably sized galaxies roughly 10 billion years ago, one gentle enough that gas from both survived and ignited a burst of star formation, which would also explain the clusters' uniform color. That 2023 study did not flag Oyashio.

In the new study, Holm and her colleagues recovered Oyashio independently in archival data from both Hubble and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, ruling out the possibility that it was an artifact of telescope imaging or subsequent data processing.

The team then ran thousands of simulations, testing which combinations of globular cluster properties and dark matter distributions could reproduce the stream's observed brightness and shape. The best-fitting models produced new estimates of the UGC 9050-Dw1's total mass and how that mass is spread throughout it, suggesting the galaxy harbors far more dark matter than its sparse stellar population would imply, consistent with expectations for such a diffuse galaxy.

In the study, the team also weighs a range of alternative explanations and lays out why none quite fit the evidence. The arc could be, for instance, a chance alignment of unrelated stars, the product of gravitational lensing from a background galaxy, or a dusty region that happens to mimic a stream's shape. None of those scenarios, the team says, accounts on its own for the key pieces of evidence, chiefly the stars' consistent color, their alignment along a single curved track and that track's connection to what appears to be the globular cluster progenitor.

"It was an interesting process in the sense that there wasn't a specific moment where we're like, 'Okay, now we know what it is,'" Holm told Space.com. "We started with the assumption that just by looking at it, it looks like it could be something. How many different ways can we try to prove that it can't be?"

Still, in the interest of rigor, the team acknowledges it cannot fully exclude every alternative explanation. "There's still the possibility that some stars just randomly fall in this pattern," said Holm, "But again ... for all these things to line up as nicely as they do would require a lot of coincidence."

Dark matter clues

The payoff of that caution lies in what Oyashio can reveal about the universe's invisible scaffolding. As a globular cluster is shredded over billions of years, the stars it sheds fan out along its former orbit rather than scattering randomly, preserving, in effect, a pristine record of the gravitational forces that shaped them. If a clump of dark matter too small to host stars of its own — a "subhalo," in the language of cold dark matter theory — passes through that stream, its gravity can tug stream stars off course and carve out a gap.

"Streams that form from globular clusters are particularly sensitive to these perturbations," said Cunningham.

The challenge lies in isolating the cause, and one stream is not enough to draw firm conclusions about the astrophysical process responsible. Inside the Milky Way, any disturbance in a stream of stars could just as easily come from the galaxy's central bar of stars or from nearby dwarf galaxies falling into the Milky Way, like the Magellanic Clouds. UGC 9050-Dw1 has none of those features, so any gap found in Oyashio would stand as a more confident signature of dark matter at work, Holm said.

"If a gap is observed in a single stream, it is very difficult to say for certain which astrophysical process is responsible," said Cunningham. "However, if we can build up a sufficiently large sample of streams in different galactic environments, we can start to disentangle these effects."

"To do this, we need to look beyond the Milky Way," she added.

New instruments coming online could help do just that. Astronomers are particularly excited for the launch of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, scheduled for launch Aug. 30 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, which has a field of view at least 100 times larger than Hubble’s. In its five-year primary mission, with a possible five-year extension, Roman is expected to measure light from a billion galaxies, according to NASA.

"You would be able to do this kind of research in different galaxies at once with the same exposure, basically," said Holm. She hopes Roman, along with the European Space Agency's Euclid space telescope, which launched in 2023, will turn up more galaxies like Oyashio, "so we can start to put together a more generalized image of how these things work and what they can tell us."

Some of those discoveries could even come to light the way Oyashio did, as a product of pure scientific curiosity applied to data already sitting in an archive. Hendel said he read the 2023 paper mostly because he was intrigued by the team's conclusion that UGC 9050-Dw1 likely formed through a dwarf galaxy merger. "I had no aim when opening it except to satisfy my curiosity," he said.

That he was able to spot a rare feature hiding inside an image collected for a completely different research project speaks to the value of the scientific community's long-standing practice of making data publicly available, Holm said.

"Anyone can come along with another idea and actually find something also interesting with the same data that you didn't know was hiding in it," said Holm. "I think that's also a really cool part of this."

The team's paper was published on Aug. 12 in the journal Nature.

On Aug. 26, 1978, cosmonaut and pilot Sigmund Jähn became the first German to fly in space.

Jähn was an experienced pilot for the East German Air Force and studied at the Gagarin Air Force Academy in the Soviet Union in the 1960s. In 1976, he and one other German pilot were selected for the Interkosmos program, which was designed to help the Soviet Union's allies with space missions.

Jähn joined three Soviet cosmonauts on the Soyuz 31 mission to the Salyut 6 space station, where he took photos of the Earth using a new multispectral camera. He also conducted experiments in biology, physics and materials science. After almost 8 days in space, he safely returned to Earth.

Why it mattered

Jähn's flight to the Soviet Union's Salyut 6 station is one of the earliest examples of partner nations flying with an ally on a collaborative space mission. He flew just three years after the first-ever international space mission, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project flight between NASA and the Soviet Union.

Today, such missions are commonplace at the International Space Station, which has seen astronauts from many countries visit as part of missions by the five space agencies overseeing it (NASA, Russia's Roscosmos, the European Space Agency, Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency and Canadian Space Agency).

Jähn conducted 25 different experiments on his Soyuz 31 flight with cosmonaut Valeri Bykovsky. Those experiments covered a range of topics, including geophysics, materials science, medicine, biology, and remote sensing, ESA has said.

After his spaceflight, Jähn led East Germany's new Space Training Centre at Eggersdorf near Strausberg until 1990, when the East German Air Force was dissolved. He was discharged with the rank of major general.

But Jähn stayed involved in Germany's space exploration efforts, serving as a freelance consultant for the German Aerospace Center (DLR) at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center near Moscow, as well as for the European Astronaut Center in Cologne.

Jähn retired in 2002, but not before having the Asteroid 17737 named in his honor in 2001. Jähn died in 2019 at age 82.

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.

Sometimes, to accomplish your mission, you have to start a few fires.

What is it?

At the von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics (VKI) in Belgium, researchers put a heat shield to the test, blasting it with scorching-hot flames to see how it would handle the intense temperatures it would experience when reentering Earth's atmosphere.

The heat shield is for Draco, a European Space Agency mission that is literally designed to go up in flames. Draco stands for the Destructive Reentry Assessment Container Object. The mission will send a satellite to space and back to collect data on the scorching experience of reentering Earth's atmosphere.

"Our biggest design challenge lies in meeting two contrasting requirements: having Draco disintegrate normally during reentry just like any average satellite, yet also recording the event and storing its data in a capsule that stays intact throughout, until the data can be transmitted safely," Draco project manager Stijn Lemmens said in a statement.

Why is it incredible?

For decades, we have sent satellites, telescopes, landers, rovers and even humans to space. And we know that the missions that return to Earth are in for a rough ride home.

When reentering through Earth's atmosphere, a spacecraft will experience extreme temperatures. And while some are designed to withstand the heat, others are meant to burn up.

But there has yet to be a spacecraft whose purpose is to be destroyed by Earth's atmosphere so we can study it. That's where Draco comes in. The mission will collect valuable data to help us better understand exactly how satellites burn up in our atmosphere.

While sending a satellite into orbit around Earth was once a novelty, today there are so many objects in orbit that companies are working to ensure that their probes can successfully burn up in our atmosphere so that they do not become dangerous space junk, orbiting until they collide with another object.

With Draco, researchers hope to better understand the process so that, when we want to send a satellite to its doom, we know what to expect.

Across the decades, Star Wars' secret sauce has always been a feeling – an intoxicating mixture of whimsy and adventure that’s nearly impossible to replicate. That’s especially true with the original film trilogy and the prequel film trilogy, even if the two have distinctly different flavors.

The series forays into video games have seen a lot of success, but Zero Company does something I’ve never seen a Star Wars game do before: it seamlessly combines the two different eras of the original and prequel film trilogies into something that not only recaptures the magic of those stories, but entirely stands on its own.

By taking the strategic XCOM formula and splicing it together with the whimsy of Star Wars, Zero Company becomes one of the best adventures you can find in a galaxy far, far away.

Zero Company takes place in the midst of the Clone Wars of the prequel trilogy, following an ex-Republic officer named Hawks who left their military post after losing an entire unit. The game picks up long after this event, with Hawks now running the titular “Zero Company,” a mercenary group that takes on odd — and often off-the-books — jobs across the war-torn galaxy. But on an ordinary mission, Hawks discovers a bizarre magic plague, a secret plan hatched by the Separatist army, and a contract with Republic intelligence to take on jobs the army can’t do.

The story of Zero Company is firmly set within the Clone Wars, and along with that comes the era's distinctive visual style and aesthetic. Fascinatingly, though, this narrative feels remarkably like a Rebel one, more in line with the original trilogy.

Zero Company’s secretive missions are a perfect vessel to explore the fringes of Galactic Society, the underworld, and the harsh reality common people face in a Republic dangerously veering toward authoritarianism. Zero Company meaningfully explores these themes, using a ragtag band of outcasts as a filter to view them. For all intents and purposes, this story could slot into the original trilogy just as easily, making it a fascinating mish-mash that Star Wars has seldom seen before.

And that all starts with Hawks themselves, a wonderfully charismatic hero who’s nearly impossible to dislike. I played the game as the male Hawks, but you can choose a female Hawks as well. The best way I can think to describe Hawks is as if Han Solo was played by Mathew McConaughey; a hero with a biting sense of humor punctuated by a thick Southern drawl, backed up by some genuinely hilarious writing.

Hawks is the grounding force of Zero Company, the down-to-Earth scoundrel that keeps everyone humble. It's a common trope in Star Wars, but it works well here because Hawks has some real weirdos to bounce off of, including a clone named Trick who has nightmares of losing his helmet before battle, an alien named Kabb who’s obsessed with opera and had a Yoda-like stilt to his speech, and a lost Jedi Padawan, who’s not quite sure how to be a Jedi.

Zero Company relishes the quiet moments where your characters get to bond, translating those bonds directly into gameplay enhancements and skills in battle. Again, this inevitably ends up giving the game more of a Rebellion-era feel, as each of your operatives holds some kind of dark secret or goal that has led them to Zero Company.

There’s a selection of defined characters to build your squad out with, on top of the ability to recruit generic operatives. And you’re going to need the numbers because in Zero Company, literally anyone can die.

This is an XCOM-style game through and through, meaning complex turn-based combat where each and every one of your characters can fall in battle. But it’s not instant death, luckily, as every character can take two injuries (downs), and the third one means permanent death.

It provides some flexibility to the game’s combat, also tying into the heavy focus on teamwork and operating the squad as a whole. You can take up to four characters into each battle, though you are occasionally joined by some kind of guest character or have to rescue a hostage, thus gaining another character midway through battle.

Zero Company is, essentially, split into three parts: The hideout, Operations, and Tactical Missions. In the hideout, you can talk to characters, conduct research to improve weapons or facilities, and then prepare for missions. On the mission board, you can use intel (gained from Tactical Missions) to conduct quick little text-based expeditions called Operations that grant various rewards, boost your influence in that specific zone, and unlock new Tactical Missions. These add some flavour without actually engaging you in combat. For that, you'll want the Tactical Missions.

There’s a ton of variability in how you build your forces; alongside the class system, which decides a character's skills, each can equip one of four weapons, along with utility items like medpacks or grenades.

Classes and skills lean into different styles of play; Astromech droids are entirely support-focused, generating AP (action points) and buffing the party, while the Assault is focused on heavy damage and drawing aggro. Zero Company smartly leans into the Star Wars universe, making classes and characters feel like distinct pieces of said universe. Tel-Rea, the Jedi character, is almost entirely melee-focused, but comes with her own entirely distinct skills and combat abilities, essentially requiring you to build your party around her.

But by far the most interesting element of building your squad is the relationship system. As characters battle alongside each other, their relationship levels will rise, and each level lets you pick a perk that applies to both operators. You might be able to permanently increase ranged damage, or critical chance, or the range of movement on first turn. This provides a ton of flexibility for progression, and feels extremely rewarding for painting units together – and directly ties into that narrative sense of camaraderie that builds as well.

Zero Company has a lot of different systems and stats to keep track of, and it can be overwhelming at first, but eventually everything clicks together in a superbly satisfying way, like finding that section of a puzzle that just effortlessly comes together.

I’m not hesitant to say that outside of XCOM itself, this is one of the best squad-based strategy games I’ve ever played. And that’s largely because of how well the game leans into the uniqueness of the Star Wars universe, using its source material in nearly every narrative beat and gameplay mechanic.

But the beating heart at the center of everything is the convincing way the game builds your tight-knit squad, the little family that quickly starts to develop. It’s in the little moments in your base, where your janitor says he’s gonna find that space mouse…. and eat it, much to the chagrin of Hawks. It’s in those little moments in battle, where a skill you’ve invested in lets your party member execute a follow-up attack at the perfect time, taking out a Sniper Droid that might have dropped your own squadmate next turn.

And I think the initial smaller scope of Zero Company’s narrative really helps nail that Star Wars feel. There are bigger stakes that eventually develop, but for the first half of the game you’re simply living out life as a band of mercenaries, getting to know your squaddies, and trying to juggle the various systems and injuries your crew gets.

Zero Company uses the epic backdrop of the prequels and the Clone Wars to tell an original trilogy-style story about a band of heroes that simply come together in the right place at the right time. Star Wars is no stranger to good video games, and Zero Company quite handily blasts its way into the conversation as one of the best.

SpaceX's launch from Florida early this morning (Aug. 25) was memorable in more ways than one.

The mission, which sent 29 Starlink internet satellites skyward from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 5:33 a.m. EDT (0933 GMT), was the 100th flight of 2026 for SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. It was also the 37th flight for this particular vehicle's first stage, setting a new reuse record for the company.

And we learned a few hours after liftoff that it was also the last-ever Falcon 9 Starlink mission to fly from the Sunshine State.

"From here on, Starlink missions out of Florida will fly on Starship. The West Coast team will continue regularly launching Starlink from Vandenberg [Space Force Base in California]," Kiko Dontchev, SpaceX vice president of launch, said via X this morning.

"In the last seven years, Falcon has flown ~260 Starlink missions from the Cape … can't wait until we launch that and many more with Starship!" he added.

Starship, which stands more than 400 feet (122 meters) tall, is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, and it's designed to be fully and rapidly reusable. Starship remains in the testing phase; SpaceX has conducted 13 test flights with the vehicle to date, all of them suborbital.

Starship currently launches only from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas. But the company is already building pads for the giant rocket in Florida, and it announced today that it plans to break ground next year on Starbase Louisiana, which it says will be able to support thousands of Starship liftoffs per year.

SpaceX thinks Starship will revolutionize spaceflight when it comes online. The company plans to phase out the Falcon 9 and its heavy-lift cousin, the Falcon Heavy, after that happens, so the final Falcon 9 Starlink launch from the West Coast may be coming relatively soon as well.

The Falcon 9 made quite an impression on skywatchers during this morning's Starlink swan song from the Space Coast, creating a "jellyfish" in the sky visible to folks as far away as New York City. Indeed, some people in the Big Apple posted video of the Falcon 9 cruising over the city's famous skyline.

The jellyfish effect is a regular feature of Falcon 9 missions that launch shortly before dawn or not long after dusk. During these windows, sunlight illuminates the rocket's expanding exhaust plume while the sky itself remains mostly dark.

The buildout of the Starlink megaconstellation has driven Falcon 9's launch cadence to record highs over the past few years. In 2024 and 2025, for example, the rocket lifted off a total of 297 times, and 211 of those were Starlink flights. Seventy-seven of the 100 Falcon 9 launches this year have been Starlink missions.

SpaceX launched 27 more of its Starlink broadband satellites to orbit today (Aug. 26), in a predawn liftoff from California's central coast.

The spacecraft rode atop a Falcon 9 rocket, which lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base at 5:35 a.m. EDT (0935 GMT; 2:35 a.m. local California time).

The rocket's first stage came back to Earth as planned about 8.5 minutes later, landing atop the SpaceX droneship "Of Course I Still Love You" in the Pacific Ocean. It was the 24th flight for this particular booster, which is designated B1082.

The Falcon 9's upper stage, meanwhile, continued powering its way skyward. It's scheduled to deploy the 27 satellites in low Earth orbit 62 minutes after launch.

There are already quite a few of them up there. The Starlink network — by far the largest satellite constellation ever assembled — currently consists of more than 11,000 active spacecraft.

The Falcon 9 has now flown 101 times so far in 2026, and 78 of those launches have been Starlink missions. The workhorse rocket is on pace to fly about 155 times this year — quite a number, but a bit shy of its record of 165, which was set in 2025.

Falcon 9 Starlink missions have historically flown out of both Vandenberg and Florida's Space Coast (from NASA's Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, which are next door to each other). But Vandenberg will be the only Falcon 9 Starlink site from now on: SpaceX announced yesterday (Aug. 25) that it's pausing Florida Starlink launches until they can be performed by the company's Starship megarocket, which remains in development.

NASA is just days away from launching its next major space observatory.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is set to lift off Aug. 30 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, heading for a spot roughly 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth.

Unlike the James Webb Space Telescope, which trades panoramic views for a narrow field of view to peer deeply into small, specific patches of the sky, Roman is built for scale. Its field of view is 100 times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope's, meaning that in just the five years of its primary scheduled mission, it will capture more than 50 times as much sky as Hubble did in its first 30 years. With that kind of reach, Roman is expected to map roughly 20 billion stars, measure light from more than a billion galaxies, and turn up as many as 200,000 new exoplanets, according to NASA.

The instruments that will make this mission possible are tucked inside the observatory that looks, oddly enough, like a helicopter frozen mid-flight. With a nose-like front end housing the telescope, a pair of flat solar panels stretched out to either side and an antenna perched on top, the resemblance turns out to be a handy way to understand the key instruments that make Roman's mission possible.

The telescope

Just like a helicopter's nose holds critical navigation and visibility instruments, the front of Roman is home to the telescope, which gathers starlight and sends it to the science instruments behind.

At the heart of the telescope is a primary mirror 7.9 feet (2.4 meters) across, the same size as Hubble's, while a smaller secondary mirror that's just under 2 feet (0.5 meters) wide sits in its front. Both mirrors are kept cold, chilled to about 19 degrees Fahrenheit (-7 degrees Celsius), to prevent heat from the telescope itself from interfering with observations, according to NASA.

The telescope is also kept in optimal optical working condition with the help of the Deployable Aperture Cover, or DAC. Located at the very front of Roman, this hat-like shade pops open once the observatory reaches orbit, blocking stray light from entering the telescope barrel and helping protect the telescope's sensitive optics throughout the mission.

Solar Array Sun Shield

A helicopter's wings would look a lot like the flat panels stretched out on either side of Roman — except these panels are built for power, not lift.

The Solar Array Sun Shield, or SASS, consists of six solar panels. Two remain fixed to the spacecraft, while four more will unfold after Roman reaches orbit. Angled toward the sun, the array generates the electricity needed to power the observatory. It also throws shade over much of the spacecraft, helping keep the sensitive instruments at the low temperatures they need to operate.

The Wide Field Instrument

The workhorse of the mission is the Wide Field Instrument, of WFI, which is essentially a giant infrared camera with so much power and sensitivity that each image it takes captures a slice of sky bigger than the full moon as seen from Earth.

It can do this thanks to a mosaic of 18 detectors arranged in an arc, each packing more than 16 million pixels, which collect light from astronomical sources and convert it into electrical signals that can ultimately be turned into images. Because each image covers such an enormous field of view, scientists expect virtually every exposure to be packed with information.

The data will help scientists uncover new insights into planetary systems around other stars and map how matter is structured and distributed throughout the cosmos, offering fresh clues about the elusive nature of dark energy.

The Coronagraph

The coronagraph, nicknamed "Starglasses," is designed to block the glare of stars so that planets orbiting them can come into view — including those far fainter than what scientists can currently see.

The instrument works by using two deformable mirrors equipped with thousands of tiny actuators. As starlight streams through the telescope, those actuators subtly reshape the mirrors in real time, correcting for imperfections in the telescope's optics smaller than the width of a strand of DNA. Specialized masks work alongside the mirrors to suppress the way light bends around internal edges such that together, the system dramatically dims a star's glare while allowing some of the much fainter light from an orbiting planet to shine through.

"I think of this as doing magic with physics," Julie McEnery, Roman senior project scientist, said during a press conference in July. We're taking advantage of the wave properties of light to cancel out the light from a star, so that we can image planets next to it."

Scientists expect this capability to allow Roman to directly image Jupiter-size planets around sun-like stars, as well as capture sharp images of fledgling planetary systems still surrounded by the dusty disks where planets are forming.

As a bonus, the whole instrument also doubles as a proving ground for future missions, including NASA's planned Habitable Worlds Observatory, which aims to directly image Earth-like planets around nearby stars.

High-Gain Antenna

Standing in for a helicopter's rotor is the antenna dish on top of Roman. The roughly 6-foot (1.8-meter) dish high gain antenna, or HGA, is the observatory's communications link to Earth, handling routine spacecraft data as well as high-speed science-data downloads. It is meant to transmit information home at speeds of up to 500 megabits per second.

Motorized gimbals allow the dish to swivel and remain locked onto ground stations even as Roman turns to look at different parts of the sky, ensuring that the enormous amounts of data collected by the telescope can make their way back to Earth.

If all goes to plan, once Roman is at its station in space, Lagrange Point 2 (L2) these components together will give the observatory both the breadth and precision needed for its ambitious survey of the universe, from mapping billions of galaxies to hunting for distant planets and probing one of cosmology's biggest mysteries, dark energy.

August's 96% partial lunar eclipse has been and gone, putting on a mesmerizing show for stargazers across the night side of Earth as out planet's shadow slipped silently across the face of the moon, forcing it to adopt a striking crimson hue at the point of maximum eclipse.

Check out our partial lunar eclipse photo roundup for striking views of the event captured from around the world.

A spectacular partial lunar eclipse will darken 96% of the full "Sturgeon Moon" tonight (Aug. 27-28). Here's how you can watch the "almost blood moon eclipse" live online from the comfort of your home.

Each phase of the partial lunar eclipse will occur simultaneously for everyone on the night side of Earth. But if clouds ruin your view — or the moon is below the horizon at the time of the eclipse — there's no need to fret!

Read on to discover a selection of YouTube live streams that'll let you watch each phase of the August partial lunar eclipse online for free. You can also follow along with all the action with our lunar eclipse live blog.

Time and Date

Time and Date will host a livestream of the eclipse on its YouTube channel starting at 10 p.m. EDT on Aug. 27 (0200 GMT on Aug. 28). The stream will feature real-time views of the Sturgeon Moon as Earth's shadow darkens its surface in the skies above Portugal and Spain, weather permitting.

Experienced hosts astrophysicist Graham Jones and Journalist Anne Buckle will provide expert commentary and scientific insights on the nature of the eclipse throughout the event.

The Griffith Observatory

Los Angeles' famous Griffith Observatory will also host a livestream, which will begin at 10:25 p.m. EDT on Aug. 27 (0225 GMT on Aug. 28), providing live views — and public onsite viewing — as the moon turns a deep crimson at the peak of the lunar eclipse.

The Virtual Telescope Project

The Virtual Telescope Project YouTube stream of the lunar eclipse starts at 9:30 p.m. EDT on Aug. 27 (1:30 GMT on Aug. 28), featuring live views of the Sturgeon Moon captured by telescopes in Manciano, Italy and Chile. The stream will be accompanied by commentary and insights from astrophysicist and astronomer Gianluca Masi.

Be sure to read our live blog for all the latest eclipse news, along with our articles discussing what to expect from each stage, what time they will occur and where the almost Blood Moon will be visible from.

You can also read up on how to capture the moon using our lunar eclipse photography guide and peruse our picks of the best cameras and lenses available for astrophotography in 2026.

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.

"Houston, we have a working comm link again."

Thanks to the efforts of two astronauts, such a call is possible again using one of two Space-to-Ground antennas outside the International Space Station (ISS). The pair finished the replacement of a faulty dish assembly during a spacewalk on Tuesday (Aug. 25).

Anil Menon of NASA and Sophie Adenot of the European Space Agency (ESA), who previously removed a faulty dish during a spacewalk on Aug. 18, installed a spare in its place and moved the broken assembly from a temporary to more permanent storage location along the station's backbone truss.

With Menon positioned at the end of the Canadarm2 robotic arm and Adenot traversing by handrails to join him, the two Expedition 75 crewmates first retrieved a spare Space-to-Ground Antenna (SGANT) from an external stowage position. Menon and the spare dish were then maneuvered to the Z-1 truss, where it was mounted and connected to the station's power and data systems.

Menon and Adenot then retrieved the faulty antenna, which they had stowed on the Z-1 truss during the prior spacewalk. Menon (on the arm) moved it to external stowage platform-3 (ESP-3) on the starboard side of the truss.

The replacement work became necessary after the SGANT ceased being able to track NASA's data and relay satellites, rendering it unusable, beginning last November. A second antenna has been in use since, continuing the transmission of voice and critical data, but this repair re-established redundancy to the system.

"On behalf of CAPCOM and I, we're going to count down like a bolt: '3, 2, 1… You just saved the video dish, you just saved the video dish,'" sang astronaut Anne McClain from Mission Control at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, parodying the The Buggles' 1979 hit "Video Killed the Radio Star."

"Oh my god, it is hard to top that," replied Menon, who could be heard laughing along with Adenot. "I want to thank the entire team on executing this complex, time-critical operation successfully."

Tuesday's spacewalk began at 8:27 a.m. EDT (1227 GMT) and was completed exactly 6.5 hours later, at 2:57 p.m. EDT (1857 GMT).

The extravehicular activity (EVA) was the 283rd in support of ISS assembly, maintenance and upgrades. It was Menon's third EVA, increasing his total spacewalking time to 19 hours and 20 minutes. It was the second time that Adenot worked in the vacuum of space, raising her time on EVA to 12 hours and 53 minutes after becoming the first woman and fifth citizen of France to perform a spacewalk.

This was the sixth outing from the International Space Station this year, the third EVA for Expedition 75 and the 98th spacewalk using U.S. extravehicular mobility unit (EMU) spacesuits at the station.

The history of Alien video games is long and twisty, but Mike Diver — veteran writer, editor, critic, and journalist — decided a few years ago to make a complete chronicle of Xenomorph-filled games his next big adventure. Ahead of Aliens: The Video Games' August 30 release, we sat down with him and discussed the franchise's past, present, and future in games.

The following interview has been edited for better flow.

"I played a lot of Alien 3 on Mega Drive," Diver recalls when asked about his first few contacts with Alien. "I was slightly too young to be watching those movies... I was also quite taken with a book that a friend of mine's dad owned – it was a book with stills of the film in it... I saw the chestbursters in those stills before I saw it moving on-screen, and in a way that was more striking." He believes that left an impression on him, which likely helped his fascination with the franchise over time.

Diver worked in games media for a long time, which afforded him opportunities such as covering the first Alien: Isolation, going into Creative Assembly and playing before it came out. This led to Diver researching Alien games for "on and off over, let's say, five to ten years".

It was actually the Nintendo DS exclusive Aliens: Infestation — a gorgeous 2D sidescroller with a permadeath mechanic for squad members — that made him realize maybe there was a cool opportunity in trying to chronicle the entire history of Alien video games, including the overlooked ones.

"There's no book about Alien games. There was one about Doom, Nintendo, Star Trek... So why not Alien? I pitched it around, got a commission, wrote a book. It sounds easy when you say it like that." While he admits being a fan of the franchise helped, it wasn't easy, especially as he had to chase developers from disbanded studios for research.

"I was speaking to Dave Dorman, who's a comic book artist, and he was working on the cancelled CDI game Aliens Interactive, so he's quoted from archive material, but he and I were exchanging emails, and he was going to send me some concept work and answer some questions, but that never came off, unfortunately," he reveals. "I spoke to a couple of people for Alien: Isolation, but I didn't speak to [director] Al Hope. Sega were quite positive about it, and then they said 'actually no, you can't', and that may be because of the new Isolation game."

While those were notable misses for Diver, he also landed plenty of big shots too. "It was really cool to get someone like Tony Beckwith [producer on Alien 3 for SNES], who's retired, in there, and John Heap, who programmed the original Alien on ZX Spectrum, or Mark Eyles, who worked on Aliens: The Computer Game... There's 24 new interviews across the book in total, so yeah, happy with it."

After reading through the book myself, I must say it's a proper deep dive that, despite being full of illustrations and screenshots, still feels like a rather breezy read at under 200 pages.

It was a balancing act, Diver admits: "You gotta think about where the audience's interests are gonna lie. I could definitely write a lot more on the MSX Aliens, for example, but the reality is that not many people will know that game. It's nice to include, but I'm not that worried it's a smaller chapter next to something like Colonial Marines. It made sense to go deeper into the games that people played, but I wanted even the smallest chapters to have some sort of substance."

Diver and I also got to gush about weirder, more overlooked experiments like Aliens vs. Predator: Extinction for PS2 and Xbox, an off-beat real-time strategy game that wasn't released on PC. "I managed to get in touch with someone on that game; Jason Hough, a designer at Zono... They had totally worked on multiplayer for ages, and then it was all removed." The reason? Probably deadlines and the fact that "online play wasn't really a thing" in the console space back in 2003. (It wouldn't be long before it took off with titles like SOCOM and the Halo sequels.)

Speaking about the future of Alien video games, we have Fireteam Elite 2 right around the corner and Isolation 2 already being shown off. Diver admits he knows "quite a lot about the Isolation sequel" since "devs talk to devs", but the actual chapter in the book only quotes other people about what they think it'll be like. "It's a little bit annoying to sit on that because I thought there'd be more about that game out by the time this book's out... There are things about that game that I'm excited for people to see."

With all the movement around the IP right now — especially after Alien: Romulus and Earth revived a lot of interest in it — Diver wants to return and do more work on upcoming games. "It's quite a rich, fertile period for Alien games, and I'd really like to do more about them in the future."

When asked about his favorite part of the book to put together, Diver returns to Alien 3: "That came really quickly, the combination of the Mega Drive and SNES ones, and then being able to speak to Jas Austin, who did the Game Boy version. I wasn't expecting to get anyone for the Game Boy one because credits back then weren't great. I had to dig around a bit."

The AvP (Atari Jaguar) chapter also came together fast according to Diver: "James Hampton was pretty cool as well... He was very responsive. It's lovely when an interviewee is sending you stuff and like really happy to talk more if I had any follow-ups."

I had to ask Diver about the 'ideal' way to go through his guide, which will no doubt push curious gamers to check out some forgotten Alien games one way or another. "It doesn't go from the early '80s through the 2000s in a straight linear, chronological way... Let's say Alien or Alien 3 is your favorite movie. You can go straight to that," explains Diver. "I'd love it if anyone who picks this up sees an Alien game and they go 'Maybe I'll go check that out' and find a way to play them."

Before logging off, I also asked for his top three Alien games of all time. Diver went with Capcom's AvP (1994) for arcade machines, Aliens: Infestation, and Alien 3 on the SNES. "The Mega Drive one is quite punishing with its time limits... The SNES one is just a lot more methodical, and you can take your time, and the environment art is great. The game ends like Alien 3, so credit for that as well, 'cause the other ones didn't."

We don't get movie tie-ins like those anymore, but looking at what's next for Xenomorphs in video games, I'd say we mostly can't complain… mostly.

Aliens: The Video Games will be available where books are sold starting on August 30. You can pre-order it through Amazon right now.

A new spaceport will bring 10 launch pads to Louisiana's Gulf Coast and support thousands of Starship launches per year.

SpaceX and Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry announced Tuesday (Aug. 25) a $100 billion investment in the state's Vermilion Parish to build "Starbase Louisiana," a sprawling new manufacturing and launch facility for SpaceX's massive Starship rocket. It will be one of the biggest projects in the state's history, and serve as SpaceX's largest center for spaceflight operations.

Once complete, the new site will feature five complexes that feature two Starship towers each, for a total of 10 launch pads across the facility, each with its own propellant farm. That fuel will also be produced onsite as well.

"We're planning to build a self-sustaining spaceport with its own propellant production, power generation, deep water shipping capabilities, vehicle processing facilities, and probably an airport," SpaceX President Gwynn Shotwell said during the announcement event. "And thanks to the abundant resources here in Louisiana, we have ready access to the natural gas that fuels these rockets to get to orbit."

SpaceX and Louisiana officials say the site will eventually support thousands of launches per year and will be central to SpaceX’s effort to dramatically increase Starship’s flight rate. SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk recently estimated that Starship will be launching more than 30 times per day by 2030, which equates to more than 10,000 flights per year.

Landry framed the project in historic terms, saying."This will be the place [from] which America reaches farther than it has ever reached before. In 1803, Louisiana gave America a continent. Today, Louisiana and SpaceX will give America the stars.”

Starship is SpaceX's next-generation, fully reusable launch vehicle. The giant rocket is still under development, but the company is quickly making strides to mature the rocket to operational status. SpaceX is preparing for Starship's 14th test flight in September, and is on a tight timeline to qualify the rocket for operational missions.

Shotwell said SpaceX's existing infrastructure can't support the number or cadence of Starship launches the company anticipates reaching, and tied Starbase Louisiana to SpaceX's long-term goal of using Starship to make human life interplanetary. In the nearer term, Starship is also tasked with returning astronauts to the surface of the moon.

NASA has contracted SpaceX to design a lunar lander version of Starship for the agency's Artemis program. Artemis III is scheduled for mid-2027, and will launch NASA's Orion spacecraft to Earth orbit to practice rendezvous and docking maneuvers with one of SpaceX's current "Version 3" Starship test vehicles. The first moon landing of the program is planned for Artemis IV in 2028, giving SpaceX a fast-approaching deadline to mature Starship from test article to crew-certified lunar lander.

For the Artemis IV Starship to carry out its mission of landing astronauts on the surface of the moon and then launching them back to lunar orbit to rendezvous with Orion, and for any Starship mission beyond low Earth orbit, the spacecraft requires refueling launches of additional "tanker" Starships. Artemis IV's Starship may need up to a dozen such refueling flights. But Starbase Louisiana's 10 launch pads will be for more than propellant delivery.

SpaceX plans to launch its next-generation Starlink internet satellite constellation aboard Starship. To date, SpaceX has launched more than 300 Starlink missions aboard its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, which has delivered more than 11,000 of the satellites to orbit. Already preparing for the transition to Starship, SpaceX just launched its last Falcon 9 Starlink mission from Florida, and plans to fly the remaining Falcon 9 Starlink launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. SpaceX intends to retire Falcon 9 entirely once Starship is fully operational.

The company is also planning for Starship to launch its huge artificial intelligence network and build out an orbital infrastructure to “move supercomputing to space,” Shotwell said, as artificial intelligence drives greater demand for resources.

“Put all of this together, and these tasks will require thousands of launches,” Shotwell said. “Starbase Louisiana is being designed from day one to support this dramatic increase in launch cadence.”

Construction on the new Starbase is expected to begin in 2027, with the first launch from the site targeted for 2029, SpaceX said. According to an outline of the plan from Louisiana Economic Development, the state agency overseeing the project’s economic development efforts, the project is expected to create 3,000 direct jobs over the next decade, and thousands of additional jobs indirectly tied to its development.

Already having gone through the processes in Texas and Florida, SpaceX has also already begun working with Louisiana wildlife and coastal agencies to assess the impacts of such a large industrial complex along the Gulf Coast.

"We are committed to doing our part to ensure that this land doesn't disappear," Shotwell said, viewing the area as a unique opportunity to fly the world's most powerful rocket, while supporting Louisiana's coastal resilience. "SpaceX is partnering with state and federal agencies to expand Louisiana's coastal master plan, including shoreline protection, marsh restoration, and wildlife conservation," she said.

Starbase Louisiana will be SpaceX's biggest undertaking ever, and likely the eventual hub of the company's launch operations. "This will be a project like no other," Shotwell said, "another piece of science fiction transported into reality."

Betelgeuse may be a well-known and often-studied stellar object, but that doesn't mean astronomers aren't capable of capturing this doomed star in a completely new light.

A team of scientists examined the doomed red supergiant star with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), gaining new, highly detailed insights into its turbulent surface.

Betelgeuse, located around 600 light-years away, captured the public's attention a few years ago when the rapid and dramatic dimming of the infamous highly evolved star led some scientists to hypothesize that it was about to explode in a spectacular supernova. That hasn't happened, and scientists are now less convinced that this explosion is immediately imminent, but Betelgeuse remains the subject of intense scientific scrutiny.

"Its eventual fate as a supernova makes it fascinating to know what it actually looks like now," team leader Bill Dent, an astronomer at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), said in a statement.

The newly released ALMA images of Betelgeuse, captured in 2023, show bright hotspots on the star's surface and an almost corrugated texture arising from vast amounts of plasma shifting through the star, which has around 20 times the mass of our sun, but is puffed out to around 800 times the size of our star.

The observations show the red supergiant has an atmosphere with a temperature of around 3,680 degrees Fahrenheit (2,030 degrees Celsius), but possesses at least two regions even hotter than this. One of these areas is 980 degrees Fahrenheit (530 degrees Celsius) hotter than the plasma surrounding it.

The uneven nature seen by ALMA is likely the result of massive convective movements in the star, hot plasma rising through the star and generating shockwaves that erupt in the star's atmosphere, creating bright and hot regions.

The familiarity of Betelgeuse to astronomers doesn't mean the star isn't capable of delivering surprises too. When the team compared images collected in 2023 to observations from 2015, they were surprised to see a hotspot in the northeast of the stellar disk has persisted for at least seven years, that is much longer than predicted by current stellar models.

The orientation of the hotspots of Betelgeuse also added support to the idea that the red supergiant star is orbited by an elusive companion star.

Astronomers will continue to monitor the hotspots of Betelgeuse with ALMA to determine how fixed they are and how their evolution relates to things like mass loss, and the structure of the star's atmosphere.

That investigation will likely continue until Betelgeuse finally ends its life in a supernova explosion.

The team's research has been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics and is available on the paper repository site arXiv.

Even if you aren't the kind of person who often looks up the latest space images, it's hard to navigate life (especially on the internet) without running into a few. Try choosing a new iPhone background and you'll have your pick of sharp, gray moon portraits. Watch an old "Star Trek" episode and you may not realize how many of those translucent nebulas outside the spaceship's windows were based on real, hard data.

When it comes to space, we're spoiled. Mind-bending objects light-years away from us have managed to become integrated into our everyday lives — and though we're still a ways away from understanding the true nature of the universe, we're also the closest we've ever been. It's in large part thanks to how impeccable our fleet of space telescopes is. In seconds, you can find a Hubble Space Telescope Deep Field with luminescent galaxies warped along the curvature of spacetime and James Webb Space Telescope images of strange hazy red objects from just after the dawn of time.

Moreover, what's tremendously exciting is this fleet is constantly growing. Indeed, very soon, a new space telescope will launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It's called the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, and it should be able to unlock a new level in the astronomy layer of our lives. It will show us new types of images, reveal new types of data and lead us in directions we may not yet know are possible.

What is Roman?

To put it succinctly, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is an approximately 42-foot-long (12.7-meter-long), cylindrical metal observatory scheduled to lift off from our planet on Aug. 30 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.

Across a five-year-long mission (a 10-year-long one if everything goes well), Roman is meant to use two powerful instruments — the Wide-Field Instrument (WFI) and Coronagraph Instrument — to image huge swaths of the cosmos and tackle some crucial questions. It will help scientists probe the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy, directly image exoplanets near and far, witness an extensive amount of stars exploding in colossal supernovas and more.

But whether or not it's a fair thought, it's hard not to want to compare the specifications of this space telescope to some of the others that have brought the cosmos down into our daily lives. This is particularly true for two of the major players right now: the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope.

What can Roman do that these two cannot?

Roman vs. Hubble

To start, one of the biggest benefits of Roman over Hubble is its processing power.

By numbers, that means Hubble has managed to gather about 400 terabytes of data over its approximately 35 years of service so far. Roman is expected to be able to create 500 terabytes of data every single year.

"Its surveying capabilities are over 1,000 times faster than Hubble, and can chart 200 times more sky in a single image," NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said during a press conference about Roman in April. "What would take Hubble 2,000 years to process, Roman can do in a year — the images it captures will be so large there is not a screen in existence large enough to show them."

Roman's primary mirror is about 7.9 feet (2.4 meters) wide, which is actually the same as Hubble's. Primary mirrors are arguably the most important aspect of a space telescope, because it's how an observatory manages to gather light coming from the universe. Bigger mirrors can collect more light, which allows them to see dimmer or more distant objects. Interestingly, Roman's primary mirror is also about 80% lighter than Hubble's. Roman has a secondary mirror as well; it's just under 2 feet (0.5 meters) wide. Hubble's secondary mirror is very similar at exactly 12.2 inches (0.3 m) in width.

Yet even though Roman's mirrors are so comparable to Hubble's, because of Roman's processing power as well as the capabilities of its WFI, it will be able to image a far wider stretch of sky than Hubble can.

Though Roman does have some visible light capabilities like Hubble, WFI specializes in infrared light — actually the kind of light the JWST works with, but we'll get to that telescope comparison shortly — so we should compare it to Hubble's infrared instrument. The WFI's field of view is about 100 times greater than the Hubble infrared instrument's field of view.

According to NASA, this view will allow Roman to measure light emanating from a billion galaxies and billions more cosmic phenomena over its years of service.

"Both observatories will perform spectroscopy," NASA explains, "which involves splitting light into individual colors to study patterns that reveal detailed information. But Roman's spectral studies will have lower resolution over a large area, while Hubble's has higher resolution over a small area."

This concept really sums up the difference between the two telescopes, and in fact foreshadows what we'll soon discuss about the JWST.

Roman vs. the JWST

The main similarity between the Roman Space Telescope and the JWST is those infrared light goggles.

Infrared light, unlike visible light, is invisible to human eyes. You can think of it more like a heat signature. Firefighters, for instance, use infrared trackers on burning buildings from the outside to see where the source of the fire might lie within. And when it comes to astronomy, infrared light is priceless — that's why the JWST's strong infrared capabilities give it an advantage over Hubble.

Infrared light's role in astronomy observations has to do with the way light moves throughout the universe. As light from a distant region of space moves toward us — through a continuously expanding universe, no less — those light wavelengths stretch out from tight, bluer ones into long, redder ones. Eventually, the wavelengths stretch out into the infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum, which is the part of the spectrum we cannot see with our own eyes. Plus, any objects in our line of sight that are hidden behind dense clouds of interstellar dust or gas can only be seen via their infrared emissions.

What this means is that very, very distant objects as well as concealed objects in space are pretty much invisible to us, hiding in the infrared part of the spectrum. We therefore need infrared decoders, like the JWST's suite of tools or Hubble's infrared instrument, to reveal them.

The JWST has already made absolute strides in this regard, revealing to us peculiar objects from the early years of the universe, consistently breaking its own record while finding the most distant galaxies we've ever seen and revamping Hubble portraits like the spectacular Pillars of Creation with its infrared filter. It's even reintroduced us to our own solar system with crisp views of Neptune's frail, oft-forgotten rings and Saturn's big, bright ones.

When it comes to mirrors, the JWST's iconic golden primary mirror made of 18 hexagonal segments is a beautiful 21 feet and 4 inches (6.5 meters) across, which is much larger than Roman's. This means the JWST can collect tons more light than Roman can, which makes a lot of sense because it was built to see as deep into the ancient universe as possible.

But where the JWST lacks is, you guessed it, its field of view. This is on purpose. The whole point of JWST is to pierce into the universe with a highly narrow view in order to get great resolution on whatever it's looking at. Roman definitely won't be getting that same resolution, as its images will be shallower than the JWST's, but its WFI will see a region 50 times wider than what the JWST can see.

To be clear, there are indeed other survey telescopes that are able to image huge amounts of the sky at once, but Roman's version of doing this is expected to be with higher clarity. For example, the ground-based Rubin Observatory is revolutionary for the vast amounts of data it's able to collect while scanning a new section of the sky every 40 seconds. However, Rubin is on the ground. A space telescope sits above Earth's atmosphere, and therefore has less atmospheric interference to sift through. This makes the observations way better.

Okay, you've probably figured out the moral of the story at this point: Roman's reach is shallower than Hubble's and the JWST's, but extremely wide. So, what's the benefit of this enormity?

The promise of Roman

Imaging huge amounts of the universe in one go is of foremost importance because things in the universe happen simultaneously. A supernova on one end might be worth checking out, but a fleeting fast radio burst buzzing on the other end of the cosmos could be just as vital to study. Yet, with a narrow field of view, you'd have to select which target to zoom in on. And if you aren't sure which targets are even options, while perusing an ancient black hole with immense resolution you will most definitely miss an even older one that lurks 50 frames or so away.

With Roman, scientists won't have to be as selective about which parts of the sky they scan. Roman is designed to be able to capture the supernovas, fast radio bursts, black hole emissions and warped galaxy candidates all at once. For example, NASA explains how Roman will be able to spot colliding neutron stars — stellar corpses so dense a tablespoon of one is equal to the weight of Mount Everest — with its infrared view. The JWST would likely never even come across such an event due to its tunnel vision.

Of course, Roman won't be able to image these objects with as much depth as the JWST or Hubble — or several other telescopes for that matter, like maybe SPHEREx or Euclid — but it will be able to notice that these objects exist.

The next step would be to have one of those other telescopes follow up on the targets. You can think of Roman as creating the Google Maps of hotspot locations in the universe that the JWST, Hubble or another telescope may want to examine someday.

Big field of view means big science

Furthermore, capturing information from billions of objects in such a short period of time will enable specific kinds of research, such as the hunt for the truth about dark matter and dark energy. Despite collectively making up about 95% of the universe's contents, dark matter and dark energy aren't visible to us. However, we know dark energy exists because it appears to be applying a force that accelerates the expansion of our universe and we know dark matter exists because it seems to be the glue around galaxies that prevents them from falling apart like horses on a merry-go-round spinning too fast.

What this means is imaging tons of galaxies at once could allow scientists to have a better picture of how those interactions between the dark universe and our regular universe play out. Roman will also be able to create time-lapse "movies" of the universe in three dimensions and offer scientists the chance to see how other observations fit into that picture.

It would also be remiss not to mention what Roman's other instrument can do: the coronagraph. The telescope's coronagraph is actually one-of-a-kind. You can think of it like a special artificial eclipse that brings objects into view that would otherwise be obscured by bright starlight. No other space observatory in service right now has the ability to directly image exoplanets like Roman will be able to using that coronagraph. It would take an entire other article to explain the awesome complexities of this instrument — an article that you can definitely expect soon — but to go through the basics, this tool will block out the glare of distant stars and then measure the polarization of light around them in order to help scientists tease out exoplanets orbiting those stars.

According to NASA, Roman's coronagraph will be able to detect planets 100 million times fainter than their stars. That capability is about 100 to 1,000 times better than existing space-based coronagraphs. This will give scientists the opportunity to study planets beyond our solar system that are dimmer, colder, farther and more elusive than what we're currently able to see.

With all this in mind, there is an important concept to remember.

When the JWST first entered service in the year 2022, everyone (including me) started comparing it to Hubble and thinking of it as Hubble's upgrade. It's hard not to, especially when the images rolling out of a shiny new telescope are so utterly gorgeous. But "upgrade" couldn't be farther from reality. The JWST is just different. Impressive, sure, but different. The goal is for all of these telescopes to work together, each one giving us a new sheet of the universe to explore. Stack up all the sheets, and you'll get the full picture.

Roman will simply be offering us one breathtaking new sheet.

Aurora chasers are on alert after NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) issued a moderate (G2) geomagnetic storm watch for Friday (Aug. 28), as coronal mass ejections (CMEs) launched from the sun yesterday (Aug. 25) head toward Earth.

The CME arrival follows a powerful M6.9 solar flare from restless sunspot region 4513 on Aug. 25. NOAA's SWPC has also issued a minor (G1) geomagnetic storm watch for Thursday (Aug. 27), as a stream of fast solar wind from a coronal hole is expected to buffet Earth ahead of the incoming CMEs

The M6.98 solar flare erupted from the active sunspot region 4513 and peaked at 6 a.m. EDT (1000 GMT), according to SpaceWeatherLive. 4513 has been particularly active over the previous 24 hours, firing off a barrage of solar flares including five powerful M-class eruptions. Solar flares are ranked by strength into five classes — A, B, C, M and X — with each class 10 times more powerful than the one before it. M-class flares are the second-strongest category, sitting just below the most powerful X-class eruptions.

The eruption also triggered a moderate (R2) radio blackout across the sunlit side of Earth, affecting high-frequency radio communications over parts of Africa, Europe and the Arctic.

CME incoming and possible northern lights?

The M6.9 flare wasn't the only eruption to launch material into space on Aug. 25. Several CMEs left the sun that day and NOAA's SWPC now anticipates their arrival at Earth.

NOAA's SWPC has issued a moderate (G2) geomagnetic storm watch for Aug. 28.

Before then, a coronal hole high-speed stream is forecast to reach Earth, prompting a minor (G1) geomagnetic storm watch for Aug. 27. NOAA forecasts isolated G1 to G2 conditions across Aug. 27-28 due to the combined influence of the high-speed solar wind stream and the incoming CME activity.

During G2 geomagnetic storm conditions, the northern lights can push farther south than usual, potentially becoming visible across parts of the northern U.S. and northern Europe.

If the glancing CME arrival coincides with the high-speed solar wind stream, the two influences could work together to ramp up geomagnetic activity and potentially enhance aurora activity.

How much of an impact the CME ultimately has will depend on its exact arrival time and, crucially, the orientation of its magnetic field when it reaches Earth. A strong southward magnetic field would interact more effectively with Earth's magnetic field, increasing the chances of stronger geomagnetic activity.

We'll be keeping a close eye on the latest models and space weather forecasts as Friday approaches and will update this story as more information becomes available.

Editor's note: This story was updated on Aug. 26 at 4:00 a.m. EDT (0800 GMT) to include NOAA's latest forecast and geomagnetic storm watches for Aug. 27 and Aug. 28.

Intensely focused and tethered to a floating laboratory in the vacuum of space, two astronauts spent over 6 hours working on the International Space Station during a historic spacewalk.

What is it?

Two astronauts aboard the ISS set out on a spacewalk recently (Aug. 18). European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot and NASA astronaut Anil Menon set out recently a historic spacewalk.

This was Adenot's first spacewalk and, in journeying out into the darkness of space she became the first French woman to conduct a spacewalk (or, formally, an extravehicular activity, or EVA).

In this snapshot from the space station, you can see Adenot on the left and Menon on the right, both hard at work on their mission.

On this spacewalk, which took the pair 6 hours and 23 minutes, the astronauts were tasked with removing a failed antenna from the space station. However, while it was a successful outing, the pair didn't have enough time to replace the old antenna with a new, working one.

Why is it incredible?

Getting to space is hard enough. And then once you're there, venturing out of an orbiting laboratory into the darkness of space to do a physically demanding but technically complex repair job on that laboratory is certainly no picnic.

But these two astronauts pushed through almost six-and-a-half hours of grueling space work to remove the broken antenna before running out of time. And this big step forward in this fix is critical, as these antennae help to connect the space station to Earth, which is of the utmost importance.

The antenna, a "Space-to-Ground" antenna, started malfunctioning months ago and a second antenna has temporarily taken over. But this solution was temporary and a more permanent replacement was needed as this antenna ensures that astronauts on the space station can quickly transmit critical information back down to Mission Control back on Earth.

On Aug. 25, 1997, NASA launched the Advanced Composition Explorer, or ACE satellite to study energetic particles traveling through space.

It lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a Delta II rocket and spent the next three and a half months making its way to its orbital post near the L1 Lagrangian point, a point of gravitational equilibrium between Earth and the sun. There, the spacecraft is monitoring the stream of accelerated particles coming from the sun known as the solar wind.

ACE provides 24/7 continuous coverage of the solar wind, which lets scientists know when to expect geomagnetic storms that can disrupt communication satellites and power grids on Earth.

Why it mattered

The ACE satellite is a NASA sentinel survivor.

When it launched in 1997, NASA hoped the ACE satellite mission would last up to five years as it monitored solar wind speeds and conditions, as well as the flow of other critical charged particles through space, such as galactic cosmic rays, as well as interplanetary and interstellar particles.

As of today, ACE has been hard at work for 29 years and shows no signs of stopping. It's one of NASA's oldest still-operating sun-monitoring spacecraft (the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO, is two years older, as it launched in 1995).

ACE serves as a core part of NASA's early-warning system for incoming space weather. It's nine primary instruments were between 10 and 10,000 times better than any sensors flown in space when the satellite launched in 1997. In 2005, one of those instruments — the Solar Energetic Particle Ionic Charge Analyzer — stopped sending data, but it is the only instrument to be lost during ACE's lifetime, NASA has said.

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