SpaceX isn't a launch company anymore.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is it?

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

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

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

Why is it incredible?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why it mattered

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pristine upper atmosphere

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

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

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

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

Too many launches

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

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

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

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

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

The space junk rain

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is it possible to see shooting stars during totality?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NASA

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

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

Time and Date

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

The European Space Agency

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

Royal Observatory Greenwich

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

The Virtual Telescope Project

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Given how much I enjoyed the Project Hail Mary movie, I was beyond hyped to get my hands on the Lego Project Hail Mary set. And now that I've built it, I'm thrilled to say it does not disappoint. You could even say that it's amaze, amaze, amaze!

The titular Hail Mary is the spaceship from "Project Hail Mary", the Andy Weir novel-turned-Hollywood blockbuster that carries Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) across the stars to save humanity. While the design of the ship is certainly described in the book, this is definitely a Lego rendition of the movie version. So, if you're an Andy Weir fan who imagined it looking a little different, you can blame the studio.

Coming in at $99.99 with just under 900 pieces, it's a lot smaller than we expected (and hoped for). If you're after something comparable to the hefty NASA Artemis Space Launch System or gargantuan Venator-Class Republic Attack Cruiser sets, then you'll be disappointed. However, the Lego Project Hail Mary has a heck of a party trick to make up for its diminutive size: A spinning mechanism that simulates the centrifugal gravity system of the ship.

Lego Project Hail Mary review: Build

The Lego Project Hail Mary is constructed from 830 pieces, split across six numbered paper bags, with a few large pieces in a separate plastic bag. I built the kit over the course of two nights, but you could easily smash it out in a single evening if you wanted to.

The build starts with a little diorama, showcasing the Ryland and Rocky minifigures on either side of a window (the barrier that separates them when they first meet and learn to communicate in the movie). It's a cool little display that can work well on its own or can be attached to the stand of the ship itself.

From there on, four out of the six bags are almost entirely dedicated to the display stand and the incorporated spinning mechanism, with the final section of bag four attaching the ship’s crew module to the spinning mechanism. Thanks to the intricate mechanism inside it, the stand not only spins, but also retracts and extends the crew section of the ship, simulating the centrifugal gravity system from the movie. While it's a complicated mechanism that means a lot of Technic pieces, but the build itself is straightforward thanks to the clear instructions.

At last, the final two bags will see you constructing the ship itself. This consists of the main body where the thruster is housed, the three fuselage sections, and the solar panel array that provides power to the ship. Some builders might be disappointed that the actual spacecraft is a remarkably small part of the build process, but I think the spinning display stand is cool enough to offset that. Also, there are no stickers, which is always a huge win for me.

Lego Project Hail Mary review: Design

As I mentioned earlier, the display stand is surprisingly hefty and draws the eye away from the beautiful ship – a bit more than you might want from a display piece. That's the downside, but the upside is that it's an awesome party piece. Turning the handle on the front of the stand in either direction rotates the entire ship, simulating its spin in the movie. If you turn the handle clockwise, the crew module extends outward, while turning it counterclockwise retracts it.

The ship itself is a great recreation of Grace's eponymous craft, the Hail Mary. It's quite small, as Lego spaceships go, so there are no interior details or easter eggs hiding within the construction. Despite that, it captures the distinctive silhouette of the craft well, and includes all the major details, like the astrophage-powered engines that make the whole mission possible. From the three main pillars of the ship, which are the fuel tanks that store the astrophage, to the solar panel arrays that stick out from the main body, it all looks great.

I really love the little mini-diorama scene that you can create between Grace and Rocky, recreating their tentative first contact. It's a clever bit of design too, as you can attach their individual plinths to the main display and tuck the glass divider away in the stand. The minifigures themselves are great too. Grace has a custom red NASA flight suit, while Rocky is barely a minifigure — he's an eccentric collection of pieces mashed together, but I can't deny the end result is unmistakable Rocky.

Should you buy the Lego Project Hail Mary?

Overall, the Lego Project Hail Mary is a wonderful set that should thrill fans of the movie (more so than fans of the book, although I’m sure they’ll enjoy it too). The ship looks fantastic, and the spinning mechanism is wonderful to see in motion. There are actually some enterprising companies out there selling motorized mod kits for it, which is something I'm seriously considering checking out myself.

With that said, the prominent nature of the stand and somewhat gimmicky spinning feature does limit its appeal as a display model. Plus, those who aren’t big into technic-like builds may want to pass on this one and just admire it from afar.

Finally, while the build itself is only suitable for older teens and adults due to the complex nature of the internal workings, the finished model will definitely delight younger kids thanks to the interactivity it offers.

China's latest rocket launch ended in failure this morning, lighting up the skies with some unwanted fireworks.

The state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) launched a Long March 7A rocket today (Aug. 10) from the Wenchang Space Launch Site, in the country's Hainan province, just after 8:00 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT; 8:02 p.m. local time). Around 85 seconds into the launch, the rocket exploded, generating a massive fireball and a cloud of smoke and debris while still soaring through Earth's atmosphere.

CASC had not yet released a statement about the incident by the time of this story's publication, but video reposted to social media captured the shock of onlookers the moment that the rocket burst into flames. Based on such views, the mission will almost certainly be deemed a complete failure, with total loss of vehicle and payload.

Today's launch was the 18th Long March 7A mission since the rocket's debut in 2020, which, subsequently, also ended with the vehicle's explosion. China traced that mishap to an engine malfunction that occurred shortly after first-stage separation. This morning's launch, however, didn't get that far.

The Long March 7A's four side boosters and core stage detach as a full cluster during first stage separation, which typically occurs just under three minutes after liftoff. As today's incident occurred just 85 seconds into flight, the rocket was still engaged in the main stage's initial engine burn to escape Earth's atmosphere.

The 7A — a variant of China's Long March 7 rocket family — stands just over 197 feet (60 meters) tall and combines the first two Long March 7 stages with a hydrolox (liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen)-powered third stage capable of launching up to 7 tons to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO).

According to China National Radio, today's launch carried China's Zhongxing-4B spacecraft,, a communications satellite presumably bound for GTO. China's Zhongxing satellites provide telecommunications and broadband internet services and are also thought to provide services for China's military.

It is unclear what repercussions today's explosion may have on upcoming launches, including a Chinese Zhuque-3 rocket liftoff scheduled for Monday evening. That mission is scheduled to fly from China's Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, more than 1,500 miles (2,415 kilometers) from Wenchang, at 7:45 p.m. EDT (2345 GMT; 7:45 a.m. local time), and is expected to feature a first-stage landing attempt.

CASC uses the standard Long March 7 rocket, which shares its core stage with the 7A, as its launch vehicle for delivering cargo to the Tiangong space station in low Earth orbit about every eight months. The most recent of those missions launched in May, putting the next resupply launch sometime around January 2027. Depending on the cause of this morning's explosion, that mission and others could face delays as China investigates the incident.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 4:20 p.m. ET on Aug. 10 with new photos of the launch.

Originally launched a decade ago, the ZWO ASI174MM is a planetary astrophotography camera — something you insert into the eyepiece of a telescope to take images and video of deep-sky objects, planets, the moon and the sun. This one is very much geared towards the latter, with solar and lunar imaging its goal.

At first glance, the specification looks simple: a 2.3MP monochrome Sony IMX174 sensor, 5.86µm pixels, USB 3.0 connectivity and a compact red aluminum body. The important details are the sensor size, speed and global shutter. For lunar and solar imaging, where you often want to capture large areas in high frame rate videos and freeze split-seconds of steady “seeing” — when turbulence in Earth’s atmosphere doesn’t degrade an image of an astronomical object — those traits matter more than headline megapixels.

The ASI174MM is especially attractive for solar imaging with an H-alpha telescope — a filter that blocks all wavelengths of light other than H-alpha, which is emitted by hydrogen atoms. That’s because its 5.86 μm pixels match the focal ratios typical of solar telescopes, yielding sharp, efficient detail. Its relatively large sensor can cover more of the solar disc than many small planetary cameras, while its high frame rate supports the usual lucky-imaging workflow of capturing video, selecting the best frames and stacking them for sharper images.

ZWO ASI174MM astronomy camera: Design

• Compact aluminum camera body
• USB 3.0 and ST4 guide port included
• Useful adapter bundle

The ZWO ASI174MM has a compact, lightweight and practical design that’s ideal for use as a camera attached to a telescope. Its small cylindrical aluminum body adds very little strain to a focuser, solar diagonal or off-axis guider, which is particularly useful when working with solar telescopes.

Usefully, the camera includes a high-speed USB 3.0 connection, which is important because the ASI174MM’s main strength is capturing and transferring many video frames very quickly. It can also be used over USB 2.0, but doing so gives up much of the performance that makes the camera appealing in the first place.

An ST4 guide port adds extra flexibility. Although the ASI174MM is primarily sold as a planetary camera, it can also be used as a guide camera (mounted on top of a main imaging scope to capture a wide field of view), especially with off-axis guiders (a device that sits between a main camera and the telescope to precisely track stars), where the larger sensor helps find guide stars more easily than smaller-chip models.

ZWO ASI174MM astronomy camera: Performance

• Excellent for solar and lunar video capture
• Global shutter is a real advantage
• Large pixels favor longer focal lengths

The ASI174MM’s combination of a relatively large 1/1.2-inch sensor, 5.86µm pixels, and fast video capture makes it particularly well-suited to imaging the sun and moon. Compared with planetary cameras built around smaller sensors, it records a considerably larger area of the telescope’s field of view, reducing the number of panels needed for mosaics and making it easier to locate and frame a target.

That larger sensor is especially useful for solar imaging, which is what we tested it with. The exact field of view depends on the telescope’s focal length, but the ASI174MM can capture larger active regions — and, with some setups, most or all of the solar disc — without immediately requiring a mosaic. For example, we tested it with the Sky-Watcher Heliostar 76Ha solar telescope, for which it is a natural match, where prominences, filaments, sunspots and rapidly changing structures on the solar surface need to be recorded at high speed.

The camera’s global shutter is another advantage for solar imagers. A rolling shutter (the standard choice for deep-sky imaging) records an image progressively, one row of pixels at a time, to produce a low-noise, high-dynamic-range image. However, atmospheric turbulence, which slightly shifts the image, can cause distortion. A global shutter exposes the entire sensor simultaneously, helping the ASI174MM preserve the shape of solar and lunar features more accurately from frame to frame.

High-speed capture also supports lucky imaging. Instead of trying to produce one perfect exposure, the camera records thousands of short exposures in rapid succession. Software then identifies and stacks the sharpest frames — the brief instants when Earth’s turbulent atmosphere becomes relatively steady.

While it’s ideal for solar imaging, the ASI174MM is much less convincing as a conventional deep-sky camera. Long exposures can reveal pronounced amp glow towards one side of the frame, while the uncooled sensor becomes increasingly noisy as exposure times increase. Calibration with dark frames can reduce these effects, but it adds complexity and cannot turn the ASI174MM into a modern cooled deep-sky camera. It can be used for short-exposure imaging, guiding and some specialist applications, but solar, lunar and planetary video remain its natural strengths.

ZWO ASI174MM astronomy camera: Functionality

• Captures good data
• ZWO software works well
• Little guidance available

The ASI174MM fits neatly into the established workflow for solar, lunar and planetary imaging: capture a high-speed video, identify the sharpest frames, align and stack them, then sharpen and process the image. Its fast USB 3.0 connection enables high data transfer rates, while region-of-interest controls allow the user to record only a selected portion of the sensor. Reducing the size of the recorded area can substantially increase the frame rate, which is particularly useful when imaging an individual sunspot.

Several free applications can control the camera and record these videos, including SharpCap and FireCapture. AutoStakkert! is widely used to analyze, align and stack solar, lunar and planetary frames, while programs such as ImPPG, RegiStax, Siril, Adobe Photoshop and GIMP can be used for sharpening, contrast adjustment and final processing. Windows users have the widest choice of third-party astronomy software.

However, ZWO also provides its own free ASIStudio software suite. For the ASI174MM, the most relevant applications are ASICap, which controls the camera and records lossless SER or AVI video, and ASIVideoStack, which analyses and stacks the resulting frames (and can also be used for post-processing). ASIStudio is available for both Windows and macOS.

The basic capture process is straightforward. After connecting the ASI174MM to ASICap, exposure time and gain are adjusted until the brightest areas of the sun or moon remain below saturation. Because this is a monochrome camera, the live view can be shown either in grayscale or with false color applied for easier viewing. A video containing around 1,000 to 3,000 frames is then recorded, though the ideal number depends on the target, seeing conditions and available storage.

Storage requirements are significant. Uncompressed high-frame-rate video from the full sensor can consume several gigabytes in a matter of seconds, so a fast computer, a USB 3.0 connection and plenty of free drive space are essential.

Once a video is loaded into ASIVideoStack, the software can assess frame quality, align the image and combine a chosen percentage of the sharpest frames. The finished stack can be exported in formats including JPEG and FITS. JPEG is convenient for immediate sharing, but FITS preserves more of the original image data and is better suited to serious post-processing.

The workflow is functional rather than polished. There is relatively little guidance for beginners and obtaining the best results requires experimentation with exposure, gain, frame rate, focus, stacking percentages and sharpening settings. It can take many attempts to determine which combination works best with a particular telescope and observing conditions. For that reason, it’s wise to archive the video files, which can be revisited and processed later as processing skills/software improves.

How we tested the ZWO ASI174MM

We tested the ZWO ASI174MM planetary camera for two weeks and used it in conjunction with the Skywatcher HelioStar 76mm solar telescope and Solar Quest mount to image the sun in H-Alpha (Hα).

Should I buy the ZWO ASI174MM?

Buy the ZWO ASI174MM if your main targets are the sun and moon, especially if you want a monochrome camera with a larger-than-average sensor, fast frame rates and a global shutter. It remains particularly suited for H-alpha solar imaging, where monochrome capture, speed and sensor area matter.

If this product isn’t for you

If you want a cheaper first planetary camera, a smaller-sensor ZWO ASI120-series-style camera may be enough for basic lunar, planetary and guiding use, though it will not offer the same field of view.

If you want a more modern planetary camera, look at newer monochrome planetary models like the ZWO ASI585MM with lower read noise, smaller pixels or higher resolution, depending on your telescope’s focal length.

If your goal is deep-sky imaging, a cooled astronomy camera is a better choice than the ASI174MM. We have reviewed the ZWO ASI533MC Pro and the ASI183MC Pro and gave both of them nothing less than four and a half stars for beautiful deep-sky astrophotography.

Scientists have captured the sharpest image ever of our sun's surface. This view has revealed incredible new details about the inner mechanisms driving stellar activity.

What is it?

An international team of researchers using the U.S. National Science Foundation's Inouye Solar Telescope has captured the highest-resolution view of the sun's surface.

In analyzing observations from this telescope, the team, made up of researchers from the National Solar Observatory, the NSF NCR High Altitude Observatory and the German Max Planck Institut für Sonnensystemforschung, discovered strange patterns on the sun's surface. The whirling patterns, they found, are actually evidence of what's called Kelvin-Helmholtz instability (KHI), or instability that happens when there is a change in velocity of fluids.

Why is it incredible?

This image is groundbreaking. Capturing the highest-resolution view of the sun's surface is a massive accomplishment, and in the time-lapse video above, you can even see the fluid dynamics on the surface of the sun in motion.

But this view is much more than a beautiful, high-resolution image. These observations have revealed swirls on the sun's surface at the edges of the magnetic areas, allowing the team to identify KHI on the sun's surface. This fluid instability has long been suspected on the sun, but these observations are the first time they have ever been directly seen like this.

“We believe that the discovery of Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability in the solar photosphere, backed up by analysis of numerical simulations, is a major step forward in our understanding of the dynamics and evolution of solar and stellar plasma, and will serve as a basis for future discoveries," David Boboltz, the deputy director at the National Solar Observatory, said in a statement.

A paper describing these findings was published recently in the journal Nature.

On Aug. 10, 1972, an Earth-grazing fireball burst through the sky over North America. It didn't hit the ground, but instead it passed straight through the sky.

The fireball entered the atmosphere somewhere over Utah and passed northwards, leaving the atmosphere over Alberta, Canada about 100 seconds later.

Analysis of its trajectory showed the object was about 10 to 45 feet in diameter, depending on whether it was an icy comet or a denser, rocky asteroid.

Why it mattered

When we think of fireballs, we typically think of "shooting stars" during a meteor shower: a night sky spectacle that's brief but brilliant. But a daytime fireball is something else altogether.

Nighttime meteors are typically tiny particles of space dust or rocks that burn up as they streak through Earth's atmosphere. While they look impressive in the night sky, they're relatively dim. City streetlights or even a bright full moon can outshine them.

But a daytime fireball is caused by something large enough to be visible in the sky in broad daylight, something large and fast enought to light up a sky brighter than a sunlit day. That's what happened today in 1972.

Today, an event like the "Great Daylight Fireball" of 1972 (as it came to be named) would be visible to potentially millions of witnesses as it streaked over the United States and Canada, and we'd likely see social media flooded with images and video. There is at least one reported video of the 1972 event you YouTube, but nothing compared to what we'd see if it happened today.

Japan's H3 rocket flew for the ninth time ever this afternoon (Aug. 10).

The H3 lifted off from Tanegashima Space Center today at 3:23 p.m. EDT (1923 GMT; 4:23 a.m. on Aug. 11 local time), carrying the Michibiki 7 navigation satellite aloft.

The H3's upper stage deployed Michibiki 7 into its target orbit 29 minutes later, eliciting cheers from the folks in mission control.

The two-stage H3 is the successor to Japan's workhorse H-2A rocket, which retired last year after a total of 50 flights.

The H3 — which stands 187 feet or 207 feet (57 or 63 meters) tall, depending on what type of payload fairing it employs — debuted in March 2023 and had eight liftoffs under its belt before today.

Two of those eight were failures — the debut flight and the launch of Michibiki 5 in December of last year. But the H3 bounced back from that latter anomaly two months ago, successfully delivering six satellites to orbit on June 11.

Michibiki 7 will be part of Japan's Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS), a homegrown navigation system that operates high above Earth in geosynchronous orbit.

"This system is compatible with GPS satellites and can be utilized with them in an integrated fashion," Japanese officials wrote in a description of the QZSS project. "QZSS can be used even in the Asia-Oceania regions with longitudes close to Japan, so its usage will be expanded to other countries in these regions as well."

The QZSS network will eventually consist of 11 satellites, if all goes according to plan. There are five such spacecraft operating in orbit at the moment.

Michibiki 7 is carrying a payload for the United States as well — the Situational Awareness Camera Hosted Instrument (SÃCHI), which was developed for the U.S. Space Force by the MIT Lincoln Laboratory. This is the second of two SACHIs to go up on a QZSS satellite; Michibiki 6, which launched atop an H3 in February 2025, hosts the other one. (Yes, Michibiki 6 launched before Michibiki 5.)

"This program will allow the United States to monitor satellite behavior within the GEO belt over a very interesting part of the world," Mark Huber, a technical staff member in the Lincoln Laboratory's Space Systems and Technology Division, said in a statement in December 2020.

"It is also a pathfinder in several ways," he added. "The U.S. team is blueprinting methods to allow sensitive data sharing between the United States and Japan."

Editor's note: This story was updated at 3:55 p.m. ET on Aug. 10 with news of successful launch and satellite deployment.

Pluto's atmosphere appears to be freezing out as the dwarf planet moves ever further away from the sun, according to careful observations of Pluto astronomers made as it was seen passing in front of stars in the sky.

Pluto is already cold. Its surface temperature is about –382 degrees Fahrenheit (–230 degrees Celsius), while its upper atmosphere is a little warmer at –333 degrees Fahrenheit (–203 degrees Celsius). As Pluto moves away from the sun it will grow even colder and its nitrogen-rich atmosphere should start to collapse and freeze out, condensing as frost on the frigid surface.

Now, a team led by Amanda Sickafoose of Arizona's Planetary Science Institute believe they have seen the onset of this process. "We're at a particularly interesting point for Pluto," said Sickafoose in a statement. "Our work suggests that the atmosphere has recently started decreasing in pressure."

Pluto's orbit is highly elliptical and very oblique to the ecliptic plane of the solar system. In fact, so eccentric is Pluto's orbit that for ten years either side of its perihelion in 1989 (when Pluto was closest to the sun), it was actually closer to the sun than Neptune was.

However, ever since 1989 Pluto has been moving away from the sun on its 248-year-long orbit – we've not even seen Pluto complete half of its orbit yet since its discovery in 1930. Pluto will reach its furthest point from the sun – called aphelion – in the year 2114 when it will be about 49 astronomical units (7.3 billion kilometers/4.6 billion miles) distant.

When NASA's New Horizons mission flew past Pluto in July 2015, it measured Pluto's atmospheric pressure to be 10 microbars. This is a tiny amount, millions of times lower than the atmospheric pressure on Earth, resulting from Pluto's thin nitrogen atmosphere that also contains hazes made from organic molecules including methane and carbon monoxide.

With New Horizons now having flown past Pluto and deeper into the Kuiper Belt, astronomers have to instead rely on more distant and less direct means of keeping tabs on Pluto's atmosphere. From our point of view on Earth, Pluto is sometimes seen to pass in front of a distant star. This is called a stellar occultation. When an airless body, such as an asteroid, occults (or hides) a background star the star's light winks out in an instant, before suddenly reappearing. When there is an atmosphere involved, however, the light of the star doesn't go out all at once when blocked by Pluto, but steadily fades as the atmosphere scatters and refracts the starlight before the star vanishes behind the dwarf planet's solid body.

Between 2017 and 2023, Sickafoose's team probed Pluto's atmosphere during ten occultations of stars ranging in brightness from about magnitude 12 to magnitude 18, far below naked-eye visibility.

Observing stellar occultations is not always a simple matter. They are not visible from everywhere on Earth, but only along narrow tracks, often in difficult to reach areas. The tracks, which are just a few kilometers wide, are effectively Pluto's shadow falling on the Earth. By spacing observers across the width of the track, it is possible to measure the extent of Pluto's atmosphere (there usually also has to be an unlucky observer just outside the track to confirm that is indeed the edge of the shadow track).

"I'm constantly amazed at how the simple technique of watching starlight dim and reappear allows us to study a thin atmosphere – a few millionths of the Earth's – on a world two-thirds the size of our moon and 30 times farther from the sun," said Sickafoose.

Of the ten occultations, four could be seen from observatories in multiple locations, which meant that the different observatories could confirm each other's results.

"We often prefer to observe predicted occultations that have shadow paths over large observatories because that equipment and data have proven successful," said Sickafoose. "Then, we try to improve those datasets by collaborating with local observers in the shadow paths."

Previous work had suggested that Pluto's atmosphere began freezing out in 2018, but Sickafoose's team found that actually, Pluto's atmosphere remained constant from 2015 to midway through 2021. However, between mid-2021 and the last occultation that Sickafoose's team observed in 2023, Pluto's atmospheric pressure dropped by 16 per cent.

The pressure drop was deduced from the light curves, which show how the star's brightness changed with time during an occultation. The light curves revealed that while the structure of Pluto's upper atmosphere remained fixed, the lower atmosphere changed.

Sickafoose's team interprets this as being the haze particles settling towards lower latitudes. This is what is expected to happen when the atmospheric pressure drops.

"I am hopeful that we'll be able to get more data in the next years to decades to specifically confirm or refute this trend," said Sickafoose.

It is thought that Pluto's atmosphere won't have completely frozen onto the dwarf planet's surface by the time it reaches aphelion, and then as Pluto begins moving in towards the sun once more the feeble solar heating that Pluto receives will slowly begin to increase, causing nitrogen frost to sublimate from the surface and thicken the atmosphere once more.

The findings were published on July 31 in the Planetary Science Journal.

On Aug. 12, 2026, a total solar eclipse will sweep across Earth, giving skywatchers across Greenland, Iceland and northern Spain an incredible view of totality. As the moon completely covers the sun, day will briefly turn to twilight, revealing the sun's faint outer atmosphere, the corona. But could totality reveal something else too?

Although totality never produces true nighttime darkness, it does briefly dim the sky to roughly the brightness of twilight. Since eclipse chasers in Greenland and Iceland will be in the auroral zone — the geographic zone around Earth's magnetic pole where auroras are most frequently seen — it's natural to wonder whether the two phenomena could appear together.

The answer is yes — but only if everything falls perfectly into place.

"During totality, the sky brightness is comparable to civil twilight (the first period of darkness after sunset, until the sun reaches six degrees below the observer's horizon). It's uncommon to see auroras during this time, but by no means impossible," Tom Kerss, independent astronomer and Chief Aurora Chaser for tour company Hurtigruten, told Space.com in an email.

Kerss knows this from experience. Last year, he photographed the northern lights in Norway at twilight, demonstrating that sufficiently bright auroras can remain visible even before the sky becomes fully dark.

However, the aurora's position in the sky would impact its visibility.

"During totality in August, the surface brightness of the sun's corona would almost certainly outshine auroras in its vicinity, but other parts of the sky away from the eclipse could host visible auroral structures," said Kerss.

So while it's physically possible, how likely is it?

Not very.

"If the auroral activity stays quiet, we wouldn't expect to see it during totality even though we know some energy is probably being emitted in the dayside portion of the oval," Kerss said.

To have any realistic chance of seeing the northern lights during the eclipse, Earth would need to be in the grip of a severe geomagnetic storm. These storms occur when eruptions from the sun, such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), slam into Earth's magnetic field. During such conditions, auroras can get a dramatic boost, appearing brighter and more widespread than usual.

Kerss explained that observers would almost certainly need a G4 or G5 geomagnetic storm (G5 is the most powerful category) to overlap with the eclipse to have any realistic chance of seeing an aurora show because they will be on Earth's dayside.

"Bright, nightside aurora can be driven by powerful substorm activity, in which energy is stored and released," Kerss explained. "The dayside aurora is driven by a combination of favorably aligned solar wind (which opens the field lines around the Earth's polar cusps) and strong precipitation directly into the auroral oval. This latter requirement is contingent on very strong or extreme geomagnetic activity."

Kerss' thoughts are echoed by Pål Brekke, a solar physicist and northern lights expert working as Lead of Space Science at the Norwegian Space Agency.

Brekke knows just how difficult this is. He attempted to spot auroras during the 2015 total solar eclipse over Svalbard but found the sky never got dark enough.

"The sky never got that dark — we could hardly see any planets and no stars," Brekke told Space.com in an email. "Most probably because the snow-covered valley and mountains reflecting lights leaking in from the side of the moon's shadow. Making the sky too bright even during the eclipse."

Brekke also pointed out that the timings work against eclipse chasers. Totality occurs in the afternoon over Greenland and Iceland, meaning observers will be beneath the daytime portion of the auroral oval. Unlike the nighttime aurora oval, which expands dramatically during geomagnetic storms, the dayside auroral oval changes much less, making displays harder to see even during active space weather.

"The chance for aurora over Spain is very low — that would need a KP=9 or so — and 20:00 [UTC] is still very early so the fattest part of the oval is still not over Spain at that time. So our guess is it will not be very likely," said Brekke.

There is one scenario, however, that could make eclipse day even more extraordinary.

"If the sun launches CMEs in the days before the eclipse, it'll be very exciting for anyone going to Iceland or Greenland, and since the exceptional Perseid Meteor Shower will also peak on that date, there's a rare opportunity to see three of the sky's greatest wonders together if conditions line up," said Kerss.

The odds may be slim, but they're not zero.

If the sun happens to unleash a powerful geomagnetic storm in the days leading up to Aug. 12, eclipse chasers in Greenland or Iceland could witness something truly remarkable.

If not, don't be too disappointed. During totality, the sun itself puts on one of nature's greatest spectacles — and that's where your attention should be.

If you're planning to watch the total solar eclipse on Aug. 12, knowing exactly when to look up is crucial.

While totality will be visible from parts of Greenland, Iceland and Spain, millions more people across Europe will experience a dramatic partial solar eclipse. Whether you're chasing the moon's shadow in Reykjavik or watching the moon take a 'bite' out of the sun from London, Paris, or Berlin, timing is everything.

You can keep up with the latest total solar eclipse news and coverage with our total solar eclipse live blog.

Total solar eclipse timings

Partial solar eclipse timings for major cities

Looking for your own eclipse time? The interactive map and resources from Time and Date let you search by city and view detailed timing information for every stage of the eclipse.

What is a total solar eclipse?

A total solar eclipse occurs when the moon moves directly between Earth and the sun, completely blocking the sun's disk from view.

During totality, the sky darkens significantly, temperatures drop and bright stars and planets can even become visible. Observers can also catch a glimpse of the sun's outer atmosphere, known as the corona, glowing around the silhouetted moon.

Totality — when the sun is completely obscured — is only visible within the narrow path of the moon's shadow. Outside that path, observers may see a partial solar eclipse, whereby only a portion of the sun is covered.

REMEMBER to NEVER look directly at the sun. To view this solar eclipse safely, you must use solar filters. Only during the brief period of totality when the moon completely covers the sun, is it safe to look at the sun without protection. Observers will need to wear solar eclipse glasses, and cameras, telescopes and binoculars must have solar filters placed in front of their lenses at all other times.

Our how to observe the sun safely guide tells you everything you need to know about safe solar observations.

After this, when is the next solar eclipse?

After the total solar eclipse on Aug. 12, 2026, the next solar eclipse will be an annular solar eclipse on Feb. 6, 2027 visible across parts of Africa and South America. The next total solar eclipse will be a spectacular event on Aug. 2, 2027. Visible across North Africa, it will be the longest totality on land since 1991.

A new way to move around Earth's outer atmosphere could soon get a field test.

The Spanish company Kreios Space plans to launch into orbit the world's first satellite that uses scooped-up air to push it forward, the company announced on Tuesday (Aug. 4).

The technology Kreios Space has been developing is called air-breathing electric propulsion (ABEP). It relies on air sourced from Earth's atmosphere, which is then heated up, ionized and expelled to generate thrust.

This method will allow satellites in very low Earth orbit (VLEO) — the region from roughly 60 miles to 250 miles (100 to 400 kilometers) above our planet — to counteract atmospheric drag without the aid of liquid fuel.

"Kreios is building the satellites that make sustained operations in very low Earth orbit possible," Kreios Space CEO Adrián Senar said in the Aug. 4 announcement.

"By enabling satellites to fly lower, longer and more efficiently, we are enabling higher-resolution Earth observation, much better satellite communications, more responsive and accurate missions and a more sustainable orbital infrastructure," he continued.

Kreios Space chose Lithuanian-based Kongsberg NanoAvionics to provide the satellite bus that will carry the ABEP system into orbit for the test run.

"Kreios is tackling one of the most demanding operating environments in space, and this mission joins a very short list of European VLEO initiatives," Kongsberg NanoAvionics CEO Atle Wøllo said in the same statement.

"Our engineering team has worked closely with Kreios to configure the MP42 satellite bus to the mission's specific requirements and support the integration of Kreios' technology," he added.

Kreios Space did not give a target launch date for the mission in Tuesday's statement, saying that the company will launch it "at a time when interest in and development of VLEO technologies has accelerated." But the company's website identifies 2027 as a notional target for its first space mission.

A new, very low frontier

Satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) — altitudes of roughly 100 miles to 1,200 miles (160 to 2,000 km) — generally don't need constant propulsion. Usually, a small boost from traditional thrusters here and there is enough to keep a LEO satellite on the right track. To power the thrusters, these satellites usually have some form of fuel built in.

VLEO works differently. It's low enough that there's still some atmosphere present, which generates drag on spacecraft. If you want a satellite to move around VLEO, it'll need to employ propulsion most or all of the time to counteract that drag. Any fuel that the satellite brings with it therefore won't last long.

So, if satellites are going to operate in VLEO, it would be very helpful to have a method of propulsion that doesn't require traditional fuel — a method like ABEP.

Satellites in VLEO have a few advantages over those operating in LEO, like sharper imagery thanks to the closer vantage point. One of the biggest advantages is that VLEO is much less crowded. There are thousands of satellites in LEO — most of them SpaceX's Starlink broadband spacecraft — and the number is growing all the time. But VLEO has plenty of room.

If ABEP technology works and companies start outfitting satellites with this new propulsion method, then we might start seeing satellites operate quite close to Earth, zooming through the atmosphere and using the air around it to stay on course.

On Aug. 9, 1976, the Soviet space program launched its last moon mission.

Luna 24 was a robotic sample return mission and the third of its kind. It lifted off on a Proton-K rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and safely landed on the lunar surface nine days later.

The probe landed in a dark plain of the moon known as Mare Crisium, or the "Sea of Crises" and collected 6 ounces (170.1 grams) of soil samples, which it brought back to Earth on Aug. 22, 1976. Scientists then found that the samples from Luna 24 contained tiny traces of water — about 0.1% by mass.

Why it mattered

The Soviet Union lost the Space Race to land the first humans on the moon, but its Luna program of robotic probes was prolific. The country's Luna 2 was the first spacecraft ever to land on the moon (it slammed into the lunar surface in 1959), with the more advanced Luna 9 making the first-ever soft-landing on the moon in February 1966, beating NASA's Surveyor 1 by about 4 months.

By 1976, 12 NASA astronauts had walked on the moon, the last two on Apollo 17 in 1973 and the Space Race was over. But the Soviet moon program was not, with Luna probes and Lunakhod rovers.

• The 21 Most Marvelous Moon Missions of All Time

The Luna sample return missions consisted of a lander equipped with a descent stage, ascent stage and Earth return capsule. The probes could collect samples of the moon, place them in the return capsule on the ascent stage, then rocket it from the moon for the trip back to Earth. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured photos of the descent stages of Luna 16, Luna 20 and Luna 24 still on the moon.

The Luna 23 spacecraft remained on the moon entirely, as it was damaged during landing and wasn't able to return a sample. NASA's LRO images later revealed Luna 23 likely fell on its side. But Luna 24, the last of the series, worked as planned, landing on Mare Crisium on Aug. 16, 1976, collecting a sample of the lunar regolith and launching back into space less than 24 hours later.

While Luna 24 was the last Soviet moon sample return mission, it was not the last for Russia.

In August 2023, Russia's Roscosmos space agency launched the Luna 25 mission, its first in 47 years, toward the lunar south pole.

Luna 25 was planned to be the first in a new fleet of moon probes, but ultimately crashed into the moon after an orbital maneuver went wrong.

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 total solar eclipse is different. While the silhouette of the moon passing across the sun barely changes, the moment our natural satellite covers the entire solar disk, something spectacular happens — the emergence of the corona. The Latin word for "crown", the solar corona is one of the wonders of nature. To gaze upon its delicate, spiky white tendrils during brief moments of totality is to glimpse the infinite, but it's only a glimpse because the corona is always changing. Shaped by the sun's constantly changing magnetic field, the corona evolves from year to year, month to month and even day to day. No two total eclipses ever reveal exactly the same structure.

It's one reason why eclipse chasers keep traveling. The corona visible during the total solar eclipse of Aug. 12, 2026 — if skies are clear — will be a unique snapshot of the sun at a specific moment in Solar Cycle 25. It will reflect years of changing magnetic activity, thousands of sunspots and countless eruptions of solar material.

Once totality ends, that exact configuration of the corona will never be seen again. Can we know in advance what it might look like?

The sun's hidden atmosphere

Under normal circumstances, the sun's corona — our star's outer atmosphere — is invisible. It extends millions of miles into the solar system, but it's overwhelmed by the brilliant light of the sun's photosphere, its visible surface. Totality changes that. When the moon completely covers the photosphere, the corona suddenly emerges. White streamers extend away from the black silhouette of the moon. Pink loops and prominences can appear around the edge of the moon.

For many first-time observers, the greatest surprise during totality is not only the detail but the scale. The corona often appears much larger than expected, extending several solar diameters away from the eclipsed sun. Photographs can capture some of that complexity, but they rarely reproduce the impression of depth and structure visible to the human eye, whose dynamic range is vastly superior to any camera.

Why every corona looks different

The corona is not a fixed object. It is created by extremely hot plasma — highly energized, ionized gas — that's trapped and sculpted by the sun's magnetic field. Since the sun's magnetic field is constantly changing, the corona changes with it.

"The sun follows a natural 11-year cycle of increasing and decreasing activity," Ryan French, solar physicist, author and science communicator at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) in Boulder, Colorado, and author of Little Book of Eclipses: An Essential Companion to Solar and Lunar Events told Space.com in an email. "At the peak of this cycle, called solar maximum, there are loads of sunspots on the sun, which are giant magnets nestled in the base of the sun's atmosphere. These sunspots produce a lot of solar flares and coronal mass ejections, which are kind of bursts and eruptions of energy from the sun's atmosphere, and at solar minimum, the sun has none of these things."

That magnetic activity determines the overall shape of the corona. During solar minimum, when the sun has few or no sunspots, the corona tends to look more uniform and more symmetrical. Long streamers often stretch from either side of the sun, giving the corona a wing-like appearance. During solar maximum, it can look much more complex. Sunspot regions act like magnetic anchors, creating structures that can appear as spikes or streamers extending in different directions.

"If you were to see a total eclipse during solar maximum, the solar corona looks almost like a five-pointed cartoon star," said French. "That's because every one of these sunspot regions creates a spire or spike that you can see with the eye."

Not solar maximum — but not quiet

The 2026 eclipse will not occur at solar maximum. Solar Cycle 25 peaked in October 2024, according to NASA and NOAA, with the Aug. 12, 2026 eclipse occurring almost two years later, during the cycle's declining phase. However, solar activity does not collapse immediately after solar maximum. It declines gradually, and the sun is expected to remain more active than it was in the lead-up to solar maximum.

"We're no longer in solar maximum — we're a third of the way past the peak in terms of amplitude and years passed," said French. "The corona will still be far more active than during the 2017, 2019 and 2020 total solar eclipses, but much less so than 2024's."

That makes the 2026 eclipse especially interesting. It likely won't show the full, highly structured corona seen close to the peak of activity in 2024, when the April 8 total solar eclipse occurred with a monthly sunspot number of about 144. Current predictions for August 2026 are closer to 102; far fewer, but still considered active by recent-cycle standards.

That means eclipse-watchers should expect something between extremes: not the clean, flattened corona of solar minimum, but not quite the wildest solar-maximum display either.

A comparison with past eclipses

A useful comparison may be the total solar eclipses near the previous solar maximum. Solar Cycle 24, which peaked in April 2014, was relatively weak. The closest total solar eclipses to that peak were the rare hybrid eclipse of Nov. 3, 2013, when the monthly sunspot number was around 113. By contrast, Solar Cycle 23, which had a double peak — in March 2000 and November 2001 — was relatively strong. The closest total solar eclipse occurred on June 21, 2001, with a monthly sunspot number of around 203. Its corona was likely more complex than expected in 2026.

The 2026 eclipse therefore sits in a middle category. It's not a repeat of 2024, but it's not a quiet-sun eclipse either. An active declining-phase corona, it will likely feature strong streamers extending far into space, but with greater asymmetry, with one side of the corona more active. "It's sunspots specifically near the edge of the sun that dictate what the corona will look like," said French. The sun rotates every 27 days, so any large active region of sunspots rotating onto the sun's edge shortly before Aug. 12 could alter the corona's appearance dramatically. It's why any forecasts of what the corona looks like — which often come from Predictive Science a week before the eclipse — are generally refined on the day of the eclipse.

Red prominences may steal the show

One of the most memorable sights during totality is the appearance of vivid pink or crimson features around the moon's edge. These are usually prominences — immense structures of hydrogen plasma suspended above the sun's surface by magnetic fields. They're often mistaken for solar flares by beginners, such as after the 2024 total solar eclipse.

"Prominences are large magnetic structures that suspend plasma in the atmosphere of the sun, and they glow very bright in a very specific wavelength of light called hydrogen alpha," said French. Prominences are more likely when the sun is active, and because they can last for days or weeks, they are easier to anticipate than a flare. In hydrogen-alpha images taken before eclipse day, observers may be able to see which prominences are present around the solar edge.

The 2026 eclipse may have favorable geometry for sighting prominences. Because the moon will appear only slightly larger than the sun — which contributed to the relatively short duration of totality, at a maximum of just 2 minutes 18 seconds — smaller prominences on different sides of the sun could be visible at the same time. That is different from longer eclipses, where the larger apparent moon can cover prominences on one side before revealing others on the opposite side.

Could a CME be visible?

A coronal mass ejection (CME) is an eruption of plasma and magnetic field from the sun's atmosphere. Seeing one during totality is possible — it happened during the total solar eclipse on Dec. 14, 2020 — but requires luck. "CMEs travel very slowly, so they take several hours to traverse and escape from the sun's atmosphere, so you wouldn't see any motion during an eclipse," said French. "But what you could see, if you're lucky, is a snapshot of an eruption — though maybe a long exposure camera will be more likely to see this than your eye would." Such a view would be rare, but the chances are higher in an active solar environment than near solar minimum.

Predicting the corona yourself

There will be a forecast from Predictive Science, which can be so accurate that some eclipse chasers avoid it, so as not to ruin the surprise of totality. One way to get a general idea is to look at real-time images from telescopes that use coronagraphs to block the sun, such as the COSMO K-Coronagraph, NASA SOHO's LASCO C3 and the GOES CCOR-1. For sunspots, check the latest H-Alpha image from the Global Oscillation Network Group (GONG).

No scientist can say exactly what the corona will look like on Aug. 12, 2026. That will depend on the sun's magnetic activity in the days immediately before totality, the location of sunspot groups, the presence of prominences and the possibility of eruptions. "What exactly we see during the August eclipse will depend on what the activity is that week," said French. "And even if you saw an eclipse a month before or a month after, it could be very different." For a few fleeting minutes over Greenland, Iceland, Spain and the Balearic Islands, the sun's hidden atmosphere will become momentarily visible before vanishing back into the glare, never being seen again in quite the same way.

We're just a few short days away from the Aug. 12 total solar eclipse, when millions will watch as the moon glides across the face of the sun, hiding its light in a wondrous display of orbital mechanics.

The eclipse will unfold during August's new moon phase, as the lunar disk slips silently between the sun and Earth in the daytime sky. Ordinarily, the subtle tilt in the moon's orbit causes its shadow to pass just below, or above our planet, missing it entirely.

However, on Aug. 12, the moon's orbit will carry it into a near-perfect alignment with the sun and Earth, casting its colossal shadow across a 182-mile-wide corridor known as the path of totality, where viewers will get to see the lunar disk fully hide the sun's disk.

The path of totality for the Aug. 12 eclipse cuts through Spain, Iceland and Greenland. Hundreds of millions more watching from outside of this narrow corridor will also bear witness to a spectacular partial solar eclipse, as the moon passes in front of our parent star, without fully obscuring its surface. Those unable to watch the eclipse in person by dint of geography can also follow along online, with details of the livestream to be released closer to the event.

Read on to discover what will happen during each stage of the Aug. 12 total solar eclipse.

Stage 1: The partial eclipse begins

The partial phase of the eclipse officially begins at the moment of "first contact", when the lunar disk takes its first nibble out of the sun — a subtle transformation that will first become visible in the skies over the U.S. state of Alaska at 11:34 a.m. EDT (1534 GMT) on Aug. 12.

You can check out exactly when the partial eclipse will begin from your location and find out exactly how much of the sun will be hidden by the moon using Time and Date's interactive eclipse tracker.

The hour and a half following first contact will see the moon sink ever farther into the sun's disk for those in the path of totality, transforming it from a burning orb into a magnificent shining crescent.

You may notice the temperature drop noticeably, accompanied by a subtle darkening of the sky in the half hour preceding the climactic phase of totality, as the moon reduces the sun to a thin sickle in the evening sky. Pinpricks of light — such as those that shine through a colander, or the gaps in a leaf — will also appear to mirror the scene above, creating a kaleidoscope of tiny bright crescents.

Remember, staring at the sun for even the briefest of moments can lead to permanent loss of vision, so be sure to read our guide on how to view the sun safely and to wear your eclipse glasses or sunoculars during the entirety of the partial phases of the eclipse. You can read our roundup of the best solar viewing equipment to find out more, along with our tips on how to check the quality and condition of your eclipse glasses.

Stage 2: Second contact

Some of the most spectacular moments of an eclipse occur just before and after totality. First, look out for the "diamond ring" effect, as the last sliver of the sun peeks out from behind the lunar disk to appear as a gorgeous celestial jewel, while the outermost layer of our star's atmosphere, the corona, creates a glowing halo around the moon.

Tear your eyes away from the sun for just a second and you may just catch sight of the moon's shadow advancing on you from the west, before it engulfs your surroundings in a false night.

The final seconds before totality will see bright "Baily's Beads" form dazzling points of light on the moon's edge, where the last shreds of the sun's disk shine through the ravines and valleys that scar the ancient lunar surface.

Stage 3: Totality & maximum eclipse

As the last of the sun's surface slips behind the moon, totality begins. This is the climactic phase of the eclipse, when the moon acts like a natural coronagraph to block the brilliance of the sun's disk, ushering in a false night in which our star's outer atmosphere can be seen leaping out from the lunar silhouette.

Totality will last a maximum of 2 minutes, 18 seconds, during which time it's safe to remove your glasses and look at the sun. Just be sure to put them on again before its fiery disk reemerges from the other side of the lunar disk.

That white halo surrounding Earth's natural satellite is the sun's corona — a jacket of superheated gas that surrounds our parent star. Look out for glowing solar prominences leaping outward through the sun's atmosphere, along with the red line of the chromosphere — the layer of the sun's atmosphere beneath the corona — which appears fleetingly at the beginning and end of totality, according to NASA.

The point of maximum eclipse occurs roughly halfway through totality, when the sun's disk is most hidden by the moon.

Eagle-eyed skywatchers may catch Jupiter and Mercury shining to the lower right of the eclipsed sun in the faux twilight experienced during totality, while Venus will appear as a bright star-like object to its upper left. If you're incredibly lucky, you could even spot one of the brightest shooting stars or fireballs of the Perseid meteor shower, which comes to a peak around the same time as the Aug. 12 total eclipse.

Stage 4:Totality ends

The fourth stage of the eclipse comes as the very edge of the sun's disk emerges from behind the moon, marking the end of totality as Bail's Beads and the diamond ring effect play out in reverse, before giving way to an ever-thickening solar crescent.

Stage 5: The partial eclipse ends.

The waning partial eclipse will come to a global end at 3:57 p.m. EDT (1957 GMT), as the moon's silhouette exits the sun's disk in the skies off the west coast of Africa — a moment known to astronomers as fourth contact.

Space.com is on hand to provide expert coverage and on the ground reporting as the eclipse unfolds. Skywatching Editor Daisy Dobrijevic is undertaking an expedition with HX to observe the total solar eclipse from the waters around Greenland, while Skywatching Writer Anthony Wood heads to Spain in a cowboy hat, to catch the orbital showdown with citizen scientists from NASA's Dynamic Eclipse Broadcast Initiative.

Be sure to check out our total eclipse live blog to stay up to date with all the latest news, along with our handy explainer article detailing everything you need to know about the Aug. 12 total solar eclipse.

If photography is your thing then why not read our guide to imaging the total solar eclipse, along with our roundup of the best cameras and lenses for astrophotography? You'll also want to peruse our picks for the best eclipse glasses and viewing gear available in 2026.

Editor's Note: If you capture footage of the Aug. 12 total solar 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.

SpaceX launched another batch of its Starlink broadband satellites to orbit today (Aug. 8) from California's scenic central coast.

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base today at 12:35 p.m. EDT (1635 GMT; 9:35 a.m. local time), carrying 24 of the internet-beaming spacecraft to low Earth orbit (LEO).

The rocket's first stage returned to Earth as planned about 8.5 minutes later, landing in the Pacific Ocean atop the SpaceX droneship "Of Course I Still Love You." It was the 16th flight for this particular booster, which is designated B1093.

B1093's most recent flight before today was on July 14, when it launched 27 Starlink satellites to LEO from Vandenberg.

Meanwhile, the Falcon 9's upper stage continued carrying the 24 Starlink satellites toward LEO today, deploying them about 61 minutes after liftoff as planned.

Today's launch was the 92nd Falcon 9 liftoff of 2026, and the 71st of the year devoted to building out the Starlink megaconstellation.

Starlink, by far the largest orbiting network ever assembled, currently consists of more than 10,900 active satellites — and it's growing all the time.

Fans who'd grown up on the original "Star Wars" trilogy were adults when they went through the ordeal of Han, Luke and Leia dying on screen. If tears were shed then, however, spare a thought for the kids who'd queued to watch "Transformers: The Movie" back in 1986, only to see many of their heroes expiring in the cartoon spin-off's opening act.

If you can have a bloodbath of sentient machines, this was it, as robots in disguise met their maker at an alarming rate. Ironhide? Dead. Ratchet? No more. Starscream? Pushing up mechanical daisies. Not even the iconic Optimus Prime was spared, as the noble leader of the Autobots met a brutal end at the hands of his nemesis, Decepticon leader Megatron.

This may seem like a recipe for traumatizing the film's target audience — and for many of "Transformers: The Movie"'s young viewers, it was a genuinely disturbing experience. But toy manufacturer Hasbro had ulterior motives for killing their darlings.

Like "Masters of the Universe" (and many other '80s cartoons before and after), the popular "Transformers" TV show was a thinly veiled commercial for one of the hottest toylines on the planet. But, the theory went, the kids who'd been watching since the series debuted in 1984 would now be familiar/bored with the original line-up, and already have the relevant robots in disguise in their toyboxes. By instigating an on-screen cull, Hasbro believed they'd be able to make way for new characters, and keep their young fans coming back for more.

"They created the story using characters that could best be merchandised for the movie," director Nelson Shin (who, in a previous life, had helped to animate the lightsabers in the original "Star Wars") told SFX magazine in 2011. "Only with that consideration could I have freedom to change the storyline. What I tried to focus on was animation-izing the story. For example, when Optimus Prime died, I changed his color from red and blue into gray in order to show that the spirit was gone from his body."

Although screenwriter Ron Friedman was sceptical — "I told Hasbro and their lieutenants they would have to bring him back, but they said no and had 'great things planned'," he recalled to Todd Matthy.com — many of the production team had little idea of the emotional carnage they were about to unleash.

"We didn't know that [Optimus Prime] was an icon," story consultant Flint Dille admitted in an interview on the "Transformers: The Movie" DVD. "It was a toy show. We just thought we were killing off the old product line to replace it with new products.

"Kids were crying in the theaters," he continued. "We heard about people leaving the movie. We were getting a lot of nasty notes about it. There was some kid who locked himself in his bedroom for two weeks."

Forty years on from its original release, a movie with such a high death count looks like a misguided brand extension for a popular Saturday morning cartoon — especially as the TV incarnation hadn't killed anyone across its two seasons to date. But for all its flaws, "Transformers: The Movie"'s storytelling was arguably bolder than any other Hollywood animation of the era.

It was also an impressive technical feat. Although the visuals are a visible step-up from the TV version, Shin (who'd been supervising producer on the cartoon from day one) and his team had to work to extremely tight deadlines to meet the film's release date:

"Time constraints and the sheer amount of work needed were the two biggest challenges, since everything had to be hand-drawn by people!"

The film is set in 2005, some 20 years on from the original series. The Decepticons have taken control of the Transformer homeworld of Cybertron, while human Autobot chum Spike Witwicky (a kid in the TV show) is now grown up with a son of his own. When the villains attack the Autobots' base on Earth, Optimus Prime is fatally wounded, with Megatron also at death's door.

A moment where he pleads, "Don't leave me, Soundwave!" to his loyal cassette player lieutenant is unintentionally hilarious, though still can't compete with a later sequence in which the surviving Autobots dance for joy with some new allies — tonally this movie is all over the place.

Having been cast adrift by the duplicitous Starscream, Megatron runs into a planet-sized robot in disguise named Unicron, who has a similar world-chomping MO as Marvel's Galactus. He wants to get his hands on the Autobots' Matrix of Leadership (the only thing in the universe that can kill him), so he transforms a reluctant Megatron into the souped-up Galvatron, and sends him out to hunt for the McGuffin.

It makes for a madcap 85 minutes as two factions of mostly unfamiliar faces vie to come out on top. The story is mostly told via the medium of fast-paced laser battles, alongside encounters with the surprising number of robotic lifeforms who populate the galaxy. Among them are a five-faced being with a penchant for feeding its fellow machines to mechanical sharks, and some scrapyard dwellers whose conversation is based on snippets from TV ads.

The "Junkions"' leader, Wreck-Gar, is voiced by Monty Python's Eric Idle, just one of the numerous star names whose presence would have meant little, if anything, to the film's young audience back in 1986. Megatron's Galvatron upgrade brought with it the dulcet tones of "Star Trek"'s Leonard Nimoy, reckless Autobot up-and-comer Hot Rod was voiced by "The Breakfast Club"'s Judd Nelson, and Robert Stack (whom readers of a certain vintage will recognize from "Airplane!") was Optimus Prime's ultra-serious number two, Ultra Magnus.

The biggest name of all was a bona fide Hollywood legend, as Orson Welles delivered his final performance as Unicron. Of the "Citizen Kane" auteur, Shin said, "He was co-operative and professional, and I liked working with him," though Welles was apparently a little less convinced.

"You know what I did this morning?" he reportedly complained to a friend. "I played the voice of a toy… I menace somebody called something-or-other. Then I'm destroyed. My plan to destroy whoever-it-is is thwarted, and I tear myself apart on the screen."

The filmmakers also spent more of their reported $6 million budget than they probably should have on a soundtrack powered by '80s hair metal and power ballads — Stan Bush's "The Touch", originally written for Sylvester Stallone vehicle "Cobra", went on to have a second life when the fictional Dirk Diggler "covered" the song in Paul Thomas Anderson's "Boogie Nights".

In hindsight, few of the creative decisions above were conducive to winning over a fanbase who'd have been happy with an extended episode of the TV show. "Transformers: The Movie" subsequently struggled to make back its budget at the box office, an also-ran in a packed summer that also included "Aliens", "Flight of the Navigator" and "Short Circuit".

It's since gone on to pick up a cult following, but still feels like one for completists — ask a casual fan to name a Transformer, and they're going to say Optimus Prime, Bumblebee or Megatron ahead of movie debutants Kup, Arcee (belatedly the first female Autobot) or Rodimus Prime.

Perhaps inevitably, Optimus Prime didn't stay dead for long, and made his inevitable comeback in the next season of the TV show. The good/bad thing about living in a modern pop culture universe is that death doesn't have to be the end.

"Transformers: The Movie" returns to theaters with a 40th anniversary re-release on September 17. It's also available to buy or rent on Amazon Prime Video.

On Episode 222 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik are joined by space writer Rich Edwards to discuss the best ways to repel space invaders.

We've all seen the movies... the aliens come to Earth, the aliens overcome the inferior humans, and the aliens fall prey to something dumb they overlooked, like microbes, Windows 95, or most absurdly, water. From the 1950s through yesterday, some of the best movies we've seen were about the invasion of our planet. They can be clever, scary, or even downright dumb, but they are all fun.

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

Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit

Space news of the week

• Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters
• Blue Origin traces origin of huge New Glenn rocket explosion to oxygen valve, CEO says
• Where will the total solar eclipse 2026 be visible from?
• SpaceX Question Time
• How to invade planet Earth: A sci-fi movie alien's guide to bringing the human race to its knees
• Alien movies in order: chronological and release
• Aliens' at 40: Here are 26 reasons why James Cameron's sequel is still the greatest sci-fi action movie of all time

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.

Early risers will catch a spectacular sight in the predawn hours of Aug. 9, as the slender crescent moon shines close to the red light of Mars among the stars of the constellation Taurus.

The 17%-lit crescent moon will rise around four hours before sunrise, or shortly after 2 a.m. for viewers in New York. The Red Planet will be visible as a steady crimson light less than 5 degrees to the lower right of the moon — close enough to share the field of view of a pair of 10x50 binoculars.

Both Mars and the moon will appear to race one another over the eastern horizon in the hours that follow, with the Red Planet gaining a slight lead over its competitor as dawn breaks.

The stars of the constellation Orion will glitter to the right of the pair throughout the race, while the Bull of Taurus watches on from above and Gemini watches from below, giving us a sneak peak at the starscape that will shine high overhead in the long winter nights a few months from now.

Look out for the subtle glow of earthshine illuminating the night side of the moon on Aug. 9, as sunlight scattered off our planet's surface and atmosphere reflects onto the nearby lunar disk, revealing the ghostly outlines of its dark lunar seas.

It's one of the last chances we'll get to gaze at Earth's satellite ahead of its new moon phase on Aug. 12, when it will cross the face of the sun in the daytime sky to trigger a spectacular total solar eclipse, which will be visible across parts of Greenland, Iceland and Spain.

Be sure to read our explainer article to discover everything you need to know about the Aug. 12 total solar eclipse. We'll also be bringing you live reports of totality as the moon's shadow sweeps over Greenland, where skywatching editor Daisy Dobrijevic will be watching from the deck of a HX Expeditions cruise ship. Skywatching writer Anthony Wood will also be observing from central Spain, where he's embedded with a group of citizen scientists from the Dynamic Eclipse Broadcast initiative.

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. 8, 1977, the Salyut 5 space station fell out of space and burned up in Earth's atmosphere.

Salyut 5 was a Soviet space station and part of the highly-secretive Almaz military space station program. It launched in 1976 and housed two crew of cosmonauts as they conducted military experiments and other scientific research in orbit. Originally, four crewed missions were supposed to go to Salyut 5. However, the third crew was unable to dock their spacecraft and had to return home.

The fourth mission had to be canceled because Salyut 5 was starting to run low on propellant for its main engines and attitude control system. Salyut 5 couldn't be refuelled, so it was deorbited and left to burn up in Earth's atmosphere.

Why it mattered

When it comes to space stations, Salyut 5 was the last of its kind. While it was the Soviet Union's fifth Salyut station, Salyut 5 was actually the third and final space station dedicated primarily to Earth reconnaissance from space, and was part of the Almaz military space station program, the Soviet Union's counterpart to the U.S. Manned Orbiting Laboratory spy station.

Salyut 5 launched in June 1976 and was expected to host at least four cosmonaut crews during its time in orbit, but only three missions were ultimately launched.

• Russian and Soviet space stations throughout history

The first mission, Soyuz 21, arrived at Salyut 5 a month after its launch, but returned to Earth early due to a noxious smell (possibly due to a fuel leak) on the station. A second mission, Soyuz 23, failed to dock at the station in October 1976 when their rendezvous system experienced a malfunction. After using too much propellant, they abandoned the docking attempt and returned to Earth, only to splash down in a frozen lake, making it the only Soyuz ever to land in water, according to RussianSpaceWeb.com.

The third and final Salyut 5 crew , Salyut 24, visited the station in February 1977, venting its air to avoid any lingering contamination before spending about 18 days in space. After the cosmonauts' departure, a small reentry capsule carrying the film from their reconnaissance photography separated from Salyut 5 and returned to Earth, RussianSpaceWeb reported.

By mid-1977, Salyut 5 was running low on propellant and couldn't be refueled. A fourth crewed mission was canceled and it was ultimately deorbited. Two more Salyut stations, Salyut 6 and 7, would eventually fly as science stations.

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.

It's hardly a "Great American Eclipse," but on Aug. 12, 2026, some parts of the North American continent will see a partial solar eclipse.

Will it be as impressive as on April 8, 2024, when totality visited Mexico, 15 U.S. states and six provinces in Canada? No, yet in some parts of the U.S. and Canada, astronomers will be out in force to capture a significant chunk of the sun as it is obscured by the new moon.

The spotlight may be on the total solar eclipse in Greenland, Iceland, and Spain, but millions across North America can still see the moon take a bite out of the sun on Aug. 12. The farther northeast you are, the deeper the eclipse. Here's everything you need to know about the partial solar eclipse in North America.

During a partial solar eclipse, it is NEVER safe to look directly at the sun without solar eclipse glasses designed for solar viewing. Read our guide on how to observe the sun safely.

Where to see the partial solar eclipse in the U.S.

Between 7:34 a.m. AKDT and 2:52 p.m. EDT, 20 U.S. states will see something of the partial solar eclipse, though only northeastern states will get a good view. Here's a sample of locations and the time of maximum eclipse. Note that the partial eclipse begins (first contact) and ends (last contact) around 55 minutes before and after the time of maximum eclipse given here.

Where to see the partial solar eclipse in Canada

Between 8:38 a.m. MST and 4:38 p.m. NDT on Aug. 12, every province in Canada will be able to see some kind of partial solar eclipse, but those in the east of the country will see something much more significant. Here's a sample of locations and the time of maximum eclipse. Note that the partial eclipse begins (first contact) and ends (last contact) around 55 minutes before and after the time of maximum eclipse given here.

What to expect

This is a small partial solar eclipse in North America, which occurs at lunchtime. In the east of the continent, it will occur high in the sky — about two-thirds of the way between the horizon and the zenith — in the south-southwest. At maximum eclipse, the partially eclipsed sun with resemble a thick crescent or a smile. It won't get dark — that only happens within the path of totality — nor will daylight be affected.

Those using a telescope to observe or image the partial eclipse (using a solar filter) should also consider that Venus — which will be visible just after sunset — reaches dichotomy on Aug. 12. This is the point in its current apparition as the "Evening Star" that it starts becoming interesting in a telescope. Dichotomy sees it reduce to 50%-lit and gradually become an ever-shrinking crescent.

Perhaps more importantly, the early hours of Aug. 13 see the peak of the annual Perseid meteor shower.

When is the next solar eclipse visible from the US after August 2026?

The next solar eclipse on Aug. 2, 2027, will be seen in Newfoundland, Canada, where a 23% partial eclipse will occur at the province's southwestern tip.

On Jan. 26, 2028, during an annular solar eclipse across northern South America, eastern U.S. states and eastern Canada will see a very small partial solar eclipse shortly after sunrise. Florida will have the best view, with around 15% of the sun blocked.

On Jan. 14, 2029, a large partial solar eclipse will be seen in the morning sky across all of North America — up to 81% in northern Canada and 74% in northwestern U.S. states. On June 12, 2029, a smaller partial solar eclipse will peak at 34% just after sunrise from Nunavut, the Northwest Territories and the northern tips of Alberta and British Columbia.

Finding the sun sounds easy, right? Many people think of the sun as big and bright, but it’s actually rather small in the sky — it’s got an angular diameter of just half a degree, in fact, the same as the moon. Put an all-important solar filter on a telescope, and you’re left with the challenge of finding a tiny orange or white circle in a sea of black. Even if you manage to find the sun, nudging a solar telescope back into position every few minutes to keep it in the field of view quickly gets irritating.

Cue the Sky-Watcher SolarQuest mount, a simple grab-and-go product that exists to solve exactly that problem. Costing around $585/£259-£359 (the latter with a tripod), it is not a general Go-To astronomy mount and it is not trying to be one. It is best understood as a dedicated solar tracking platform for small solar telescopes. That could range from regular telescopes wearing solar filters, most likely during a solar eclipse, to dedicated solar telescopes such as white-light-filtered refractors and H-alpha (Hydrogen-alpha) telescopes designed specifically for viewing the sun.

Sky-Watcher SolarQuest mount head: Design

• Lightweight and compact mount head
• Simple controls make it beginner-friendly
• Vixen-style saddle suits small solar scopes

The SolarQuest mount head weighs just 2.9 lbs/1.3 kg, accepts standard 45mm Sky-Watcher/Vixen-style dovetails and can be fitted to a tripod using a 3/8-inch screw. Meanwhile, the optional tripod is lightweight and easily adjustable, with a bubble level and accessory tray. Whatever tripod you use, it’s imperative to get it stable before using the SolarQuest because its ability to track the sun successfully depends on it.

With the optional aluminum tripod — which we used in our review — the total setup is still only around 9.9 lbs/4.05 kg, making it easy to set up inside and carry into the garden. Eclipse chasers travelling abroad will easily be able to store it in a carry-on camera bag.

The mount itself has very few controls: A power button and an 8-way sliding switch. A long press of the power button finds the sun, with the second used to make manual adjustments. There are no menus and no alignment tasks.

Sky-Watcher SolarQuest mount head: Performance

• Finds the sun automatically in clear conditions
• Fine-tuning controls keep the sun centered
• Works well with solar telescopes

At first glance, the promise of the Sky-Watcher SolarQuest mount head is so simple: you level the tripod using its built-in bubble or spirit level and point the attached telescope somewhere to the left of the sun. You then long-press the power button and step back. The built-in GPS calculates the date, time, and location, as well as the sun’s altitude and azimuth. The mount levels the telescope, pauses, then slews to the right altitude. Then its photodiode solar sensor (a small camera) hunts for the solar disc and locks on. In practice, the system gets impressively close to that ideal — but with some small caveats.

The sun needs to be in a clear sky, but it doesn’t have to be high. We reviewed the SolarQuest during a summer heatwave, when getting up very early was the only sensible way to observe the sun. Having got up early to take advantage of the cool morning air before the sun rose too high, we feared the SolarQuest would fail to find such a low sun. Luckily, there were no such issues, with SolarQuest taking just under 60 seconds to be perfectly aligned with the sun.

For visual observing, that’s transformative. Instead of spending the first part of a session aligning, shadow-aiming and nudging a scope into position, you can be looking at the sun within minutes. However, we did have to use the joypad on the SolarQuest to center the sun. Happily, the controls are very sensitive and move slowly, so we were able to have a perfect view of the sun in under two minutes from pressing the power-on button. That’s impressive.

Sky-Watcher SolarQuest mount head: Functionality

• Accurately tracks the sun
• 8x AA batteries are old-fashioned
• Payload is a limiting factor

Tracking accuracy is very good, with a tiny adjustment on the joypad required perhaps every few hours. Since it largely follows the sun’s path through the sky, it should be suitable for a total or deep partial solar eclipse, when a crescent sun could confuse the sensor (to be sure, you could cover the sensor during totality so it doesn’t hunt for the sun and try to realign during an eclipsed crescent sun).

However accurate it is, this is an alt-az mount. It can track the sun well but it cannot remove field rotation during much longer imaging sessions. For visual use and almost all solar use — including casual video capture — that is not a major issue. However, for long-duration solar imaging and creating time-lapses, it’s a limitation to keep in mind.

One practical complaint is the battery compartment. Pop open the door (which detaches and becomes easily lost) and inside is a small plastic cradle that takes eight AA batteries. As if needing to take a trip to a store before being able to use the SolarQuest wasn’t annoying enough, it occurred to me that if I was going to an eclipse, I would need to travel with at least eight more AA batteries as spares — and possibly another 16x for true peace of mind. Not a pleasant prospect. Should any gadget like this be AA battery-powered in the age of Lithium-ion and USB-C? A resounding no. The box includes a 12V DC connection but there’s no cable. It all seems poorly thought through and old-fashioned.

However, the main practical limitation of the SolarQuest is its 8.8 lbs (4 kg) payload, which sets it apart as an accessory for small solar telescopes. At its best when speed and simplicity matter, SolarQuest is a travel-friendly mount ideal for beginners and eclipse chasers seeking to remove a common frustration from solar observing — finding and tracking the sun — without adding complexity. It almost totally succeeds.

How we tested the Sky-Watcher SolarQuest mount head

We tried the SolarQuest for about two weeks with both a Celestron Regal M2 spotting scope (with a solar filter attached) for white-light observations of the solar disk and a Skywatcher HelioStar 76mm solar telescope. The latter was used to get some images of the sun in H-Alpha (Hα), in conjunction with a ZWO ASI174MM planetary camera.

Should I buy the Sky-Watcher SolarQuest mount head?

If you need something to support a solar or solar-filtered telescope under 8.8 lbs/4kg, the SolarQuest should be on your radar. It quickly finds the sun and tracks accurately, removing the need for manual alignment. It’s also really compact, operates quietly and has very simple controls.

The included instructions are poor, the way it’s battery-powered is far from ideal, and it’s limited by its payload capacity, but it’s so easy to use and quick to work that it’s hard to criticize the SolarQuest too harshly — it’s a slick and simple accessory.

If the Sky-Watcher SolarQuest mount head isn’t for you

There are very few dedicated solar trackers like the Sky-Watcher SolarQuest. However, some star trackers do have a mode where you can choose the sun as the star to track, including the Benro Polaris. Once you’ve entered the sun in the frame using the virtual joystick, the Polaris can automatically track it. Another alternative is an equatorial mount, which, when well aligned, can handle solar observing for longer periods and/or for making time-lapse sequences.

As usual, SpaceX is dreaming big.

The company plans to build factories on the moon, using robots to do much of the heavy lifting, Elon Musk said on Tuesday (Aug. 4) during SpaceX's first-ever quarterly earnings call.

"We are going to land a lot of tonnage on the moon," he said. "We're going to build the factories on the moon. The robots will be helpful with that."

This is not a newly revealed vision; Musk first laid it out in February, in a blog post that announced SpaceX's purchase of xAI, a company that the billionaire entrepreneur founded in 2023. But Musk doubled down on it this week, showing investors that off-Earth manufacturing is very much front-of-mind for SpaceX.

The factories in question will build SpaceX's Starmind AI satellites, if all goes according to plan. The company aims to operate a million-strong Starmind constellation in Earth orbit in the coming years, and then go farther afield with the craft after that.

Eventually, SpaceX wants to launch locally made Starmind satellites off the lunar surface using electromagnetic mass drivers — basically, extremely powerful rail guns.

"Using robots on the moon to scale up manufacturing on the moon — which, I know it sounds, like, super sci-fi right now, but it's going to happen — will enable us to build the mass accelerator on the moon," Musk said.

"And if you have a mass accelerator on the moon, and you have solar and radiator production on the moon, you can — I know this sounds totally nuts — but you can you can probably scale to 1,000 times the economy of Earth in terms of intelligence launched to space, but probably, you know, maybe even a million times," he added.

"Solar and radiator production" refers to the manufacture of key Starmind satellite components: solar panels to power them and radiators to dump the large amounts of heat they'll produce into the vacuum of space.

Musk didn't provide details about the robotic lunar labor force. But he's presumably counting on Optimus, a humanoid robot built by another one of his companies, the carmaker Tesla. Musk has previously said that SpaceX will launch some Optimus units to Mars in the near future, to help pave the way for human settlement of the Red Planet.

Those robots will fly on Starship, SpaceX's fully reusable next-gen megarocket, which is currently gearing up for its 14th test flight. Indeed, Starship is key to most of the company's plan's both in Earth orbit and beyond.

"Starship aims to quadruple payload capacity and reduce launch costs by 10 times compared to our Falcon 9 rocket, unlocking significant capabilities across all of our business segments," SpaceX Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen said during Tuesday's earnings call.

"We continue to make progress building the infrastructure required to support thousands of Starship launches per year, including accelerating Raptor and launch vehicle production, the buildout of our gigabays, and making significant progress towards activating multiple launch pads at Starbase and in Cape Canaveral at Pad 39A and Pad 37," he added. (Raptor is the engine that powers Starship, and Starbase is SpaceX's South Texas site, which serves as the current hub of Starship manufacturing, testing and launch activities.)

Tuesday's call was a landmark for SpaceX — its first as a publicly traded company. Musk founded SpaceX as a private concern in March 2022 and took it public this past June, via the richest IPO in history.

The IPO raised $86 billion and valued SpaceX at $1.77 trillion. Only six American companies had higher market capitalizations at the time — NVIDIA, Apple, Alphabet (Google), Microsoft, Amazon and the semiconductor manufacturer Broadcom. (Market caps fluctuate all the time, going up and down with companies' stock prices.)

The main point of Tuesday's call was to discuss SpaceX's first-ever earnings report, which covered the second quarter of this year. The company's revenue over that stretch was $7.8 billion, a 92% increase over the same period in 2025, according to the report. SpaceX lost more money than it made during Q2 2026, but the shortfall was considerably smaller than in Q2 2025 — $541 million versus $1.0 billion.

It looks like Starship's two-week-long ocean adventure won't have a happy ending.

The SpaceX megarocket conducted its 13th test flight on July 24, lifting off from the company's Starbase site in South Texas. Things went pretty well on Flight 13, especially for Starship's 171-foot-tall (52 meters) upper stage, known as Ship, which splashed down as planned in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Western Australia.

In an unexpected first, Ship survived that homecoming, staying in one piece even after toppling over and hitting the waves. It remains intact still, and SpaceX is towing it toward shore in Western Australia to get a better look. But the ambitious effort is unlikely to succeed, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk told us today (Aug. 7).

"Unfortunately, ship recovery is not looking good right now. Nonetheless, we were able to obtain close-up photos of critical regions of the heat shield and engines for future upgrades," Musk wrote this afternoon via X, the social media site he owns.

He was responding to a SpaceX post from an hour or so earlier, which provided an update about the recovery effort and shared two photos and a video of the activities.

The recovery team has "been overcoming challenging conditions and increasingly rough seas as they attempt to guide the 52m long spacecraft to port," SpaceX wrote in the post.

Starship is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, standing about 408 feet (124 meters) tall when stacked. Both of its stages — Ship and the Super Heavy booster — are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, a breakthrough that SpaceX thinks will revolutionize spaceflight.

A key enabler of rapid reuse is Ship's heat shield, which protects the vehicle during its downward trips through Earth's atmosphere. Musk has described heat shield development as perhaps the biggest challenge on Starship's road to operational flight — but that challenge may now be in the rearview mirror.

"I don't want to jinx it or anything, but I think I'd consider the heat shield problem solved at this point," Musk said on Tuesday (Aug. 4), during SpaceX's first-ever quarterly earnings call.

It's no surprise that Starship and Flight 13 came up in that call. The megarocket is key to SpaceX's ambitious future plans, which include assembling and operating a million-satellite AI constellation in Earth orbit.

Flight 13 was similar to previous Starship test missions; it was a suborbital jaunt that ended with Super Heavy coming down in the Gulf of Mexico and Ship landing in the Indian Ocean.

There was a big milestone, however, in addition to Ship's unexpected transition to seagoing vessel: During its time in space, the upper stage deployed 20 functional Starlink V3 satellites, the bigger, next-gen variant of SpaceX's broadband spacecraft.

These satellites quickly came back down to Earth on July 24, but Flight 13 was a vision of the future nonetheless. SpaceX wants to operate a constellation of 100,000 or so Starlink V3s, and this network will be lofted by Starship.

NASA just made an interstellar tweak to the Voyager 2 spacecraft, known as the "Big Bang", to keep its remaining 50-year-old science instruments running a little longer.

Voyager 2 and its twin launched in 1977, called Voyager 1, rely on a form of nuclear battery known as a radioisotope thermoelectric generator that uses the heat produced by the decay of plutonium. But the supply of plutonium on each probe drops at about four watts a year on each spacecraft.

To keep the probe running on this dwindling power supply, engineers recently reduced Voyager 2's power requirements by turning off a few non-science devices and using "lower-power alternatives" that are still effective enough to keep the spacecraft warm while it's so far from the sun, NASA officials said in a statement. "The spacecraft power margins have grown razor thin, requiring the team to conserve energy by shutting off non-essential devices and systems," NASA officials wrote of the mission, which is managed by the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The drop in power is having a measurable science impact on both spacecraft — each has turned off two of their science instruments since 2024 alone. While some of these instruments were shut off after the spacecraft finished their historic planetary flybys decades ago, others were turned off due to power requirements.

Each spacecraft initially launched with 10 instruments, and Voyager 2 is now down to only three instruments. At first it looked as though Voyager 2 would have to shut down another of these instruments later this year, but luckily, the new power shifts will allow all three to operate "for at least another year," NASA said.

Voyager 1 will be tasked to do the same "Big Bang" power change "in the coming months." A signal to each spacecraft takes nearly 24 hours (or one light-day) to make a one-way journey, and officials noted Voyager 1 is further from Earth than its twin. (Voyager 2 is at about 142 astronomical units or sun-Earth distances, while Voyager 1 is nearing 171 AU.)

The two spacecraft initially launched to take advantage of a rare alignment between the outer solar system gas giant planets, which in order of distance from the sun are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Each Voyager spacecraft first flew past Jupiter and Saturn, taking unprecedented imagery of the planets and their moons.

Next, Voyager 1 was directed to fly above the plane of the solar system (also known as the ecliptic) while Voyager 2 continued flying past Uranus and Neptune, becoming the first spacecraft to see these worlds and their moons. Voyager 2's last planetary flyby was in 1989.

The two spacecraft continue to send scientific data from interstellar space; Voyager 1 passed into that region in 2012, while Voyager 2 did so in 2018. Voyager 1 is Earth's most distant spacecraft, currently around 15.9 billion miles (25.5 billion kilometers) away from us, according to NASA.

New evidence has come to light showing that the mysterious 'little red dots' discovered in the early universe by the James Webb Space Telescope could evolve into the active centers of fully formed galaxies.

"Everything created in the early universe must evolve into something around us," said George Rieke of the University of Arizona in a statement. "We have had little idea of what little red dots become, but these results finally show us how to find their progeny."

Discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) almost as soon as it became operational in 2022, little red dots have been a perplexing cosmological mystery. As their name suggests, they appear small, red and surprisingly bright. They are mostly found at redshift values suggesting they existed between 13.2 and 12.2 billion years ago. To shine so brightly at such great distances would usually imply these objects are quasars — which are luminous nuclei of galaxies powered by active supermassive black holes — but the light coming from little red dots is more like that of bloated stars. It looks to be mostly in infrared with some ultraviolet, and none of the X-rays that one would expect from an active black hole chomping down on material.

As such, researchers have come up with the hypothesis that little red dots are "black hole stars," or vast clouds of gas heated from within by a concealed but growing supermassive black hole.

However, the population of little red dots drops off a cliff at redshifts equating to less than 12 billion years ago. Where did they all go? There are two options. Either they all died off, or they developed into objects more familiar to us.

One recent hypothesis is that little red dots turned into large globular clusters. And now, an alternative possibility has come along.

A team led by Pierluigi Rinaldi, who was at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory when conducting this research but is now at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, think it has identified a descendent of a little red dot. It appears to be in the form of a distant galaxy, catalogued as WISEA J123635.56+621424.2, which is found at a redshift of 2, meaning that we see it as it was 10.5 billion years ago.

The galaxy displays neat spiral arms around a red core. Rinaldi's team have nicknamed it the Saguaro, after a species of cactus native to the Sonoran desert in the United States' south-west, thanks to the galaxy's arms and how its core resembles the red fruit produced by the cactus.

Saguaro's core has all the hallmarks of a little red dot. It shines bright in infrared as seen by JWST, and also emits in ultraviolet as detected by the Hubble Space Telescope. Yet, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has also detected faint X-rays originating from Saguaro.

"What the X-ray observations show is that this galaxy has an active galactic nucleus, and a very obscured one at that," Carys Gilbert of the University of Cape Town in South Africa, who participated in the study alongside Rinaldi, said in the statement. "It's not only obscured but also X-ray weak. That kind of combination could explain the lack of X-ray emission that we see from all other little red dots. It fits the puzzle of little red dots nicely."

This is not the first time X-rays have been seen coming from a little red dot. Earlier this year it was reported that scattered X-rays were seen breaking through from a little red dot called 3DHST-AEGIS-12014, given credence to the hypothesis that little red dots are black hole stars, where the black hole gradually consumes the "star" from the inside out, eventually carving holes through which X-rays can escape. We see 3DHST-AEGIS-12014 as it was 11.8 billion years ago, meaning that Saguaro, which existed 1.3 billion years later, is a little bit further on in its development.

"Because the Saguaro is at lower redshift, we can see the very beautiful and bright host galaxy in high resolution and detail with Webb and Hubble," said Harvard's Zihao Wu, who was also part of Rinaldi's team.

Intrigued, Rinaldi's team simulated how Saguaro would appear to us if it existed a billion years after the big bang. Much of its galactic structure would either be less developed or simply just too faint to be seen at such distance. All that would be visible would be the nucleus, looking very much like all the other little red dots.

This implies that little red dots are not a unique population of their own, but are simply a phase in the development of galaxies with supermassive black holes. Our own Milky Way could have been a little red dot once upon a time.

Saguaro is a crucial link in the story of little red dots and how they connect with modern galaxies. While there is still much to learn, such as the beginning of their story and how they form, the middle and end of their story is now beginning to take shape.

The findings were reported on 29 July in The Astrophysical Journal.

Solar observation can be tricky or underwhelming when trying to observe with handheld methods such as using solar eclipse glasses and solar binoculars. Hunting for the sun with binoculars can be tricky due to the essential ISO 12312-2 rated solar filters on the glass blocking all vision except for the solar disk itself. This is where a smart telescope like the entire Unistellar range can help; it automatically finds and tracks the solar disk from a few presses on your smartphone.

Need a smart telescope? Skip ahead to pick from our list of recommendations to suit all budgets.

All you need is to attach the correct Unistellar solar filter for your model, click Go-to on the Sun and the telescope will slew to the solar disk. If connected to a tablet or larger screen, you can get a much bigger image of the sun to share with groups and family. This also allows you to watch the observation from a shaded spot and get comfortable without needing to stay out under the beating sun.

Smart telescopes not only find and track the solar disk but they can image it too. Using built-in image focusing, stacking and processing, the telescope delivers a sharper image within seconds and reveals solar details like sunpots on the surface. If you don't want to miss getting a shot of the next solar eclipse, you can use the solar observation mode to capture the sun at all stages of the eclipse from your smart telescope. At the time of writing, the next total solar eclipse is coming on Aug. 12, 2026 and will be mainly visible in Greenland, western Iceland and northern Spain. Partial eclipses will be visible in some other European countries, parts of Canada and New York City.

What to do: A generalist step-by-step for most smart telescopes

• 1. Turn your smart telescope on
• 2. Link the smart telescope to a smartphone or tablet
• 3. Install the solar filter if the model requires a separate attachment
• 4. Select the sun on the app and wait for the location
• 5. Focus the image if needed and then use enhanced vision for more detail

What do you need?

For solar observation with a smart telescope, the first thing you will need is a smart telescope. While I'm going over how to use a Unistellar eVscope 2 for solar imaging and observation, most of the other smart telescope brands have models that are capable of this too, like the Dwarflab Dwarf Mini 3 and Vaonis Vespera II. If you are used to using a traditional telescope, bear in mind that you will need a smart device to operate the smart telescope and observe your targets. Most smart telescopes come with a tripod, so you shouldn't have to worry about getting one extra but it is an essential piece of equipment.

Next, you need a solar filter for your telescope. This is to protect the image sensors in the body of the telescope and drastically reduce the amount of light entering the aperture, so that you don't get a highly overexposed image. Many brands sell these solar filters separately and in the case of Unistellar, you have to make sure you get the right one for your model. There is a solar filter for their Odyssey range and then another filter for their pro range, which features the eQuinox 2 and eVscope 2 models.

Finally, you will also need access to somewhere with a good view of the sun, so a park, garden or open space is ideal. Solar imaging is best done in mid-to-late morning before the sun has heated up our atmosphere, which causes disturbance in the image. This is especially important if you are looking to get crisp shots of sunspots.

Observing and imaging the sun

Make sure your tripod is level, with your smart telescope properly attached, then turn it on and remove the dust cap. Open your preferred app and add your device by following the on-screen instructions.

Next, you should inspect your solar filter for any tears or holes, as any exposure to the sun without the filter can permanently damage the sensor. Installation is easy as you just clip the filter onto the end of your smart telescope.

After the device is connected, go to the list of sky targets in your app and it will allow you to browse or search for the sun. Click on it to bring up the go-to functions and if you are interested, more astronomical information about your chosen target.

Clicking on go-to for the sun brings up a series of slides to guide you through how to safely observe the sun with your device. The app also recommends positioning your telescope mount in the direction of the sun with the motor on your right to avoid any issues or delays in slewing.

After pressing go, the smart telescope should move and slew towards the sun. It can take a little while but it is rather exciting as you see the edges of the solar disk flash on the screen as the telescope gets closer and centers the image.

For smart telescopes with manual focusing, you will need to make sure that your image is in focus. Now on a bright sunny day, this can be tricky to see on a smart device screen but it is essential to getting a sharp image of sunspots. Using the wheel at the bottom of the eQuinox 2, I gradually adjusted the focus in small increments to allow for live image delay on my tablet. I used the sunspots as a guide for my focus, but it was still difficult because they don't become crystal clear during focusing, they just get slightly more defined and darker.

The real detail on the surface comes after you click enhanced vision mode or equivalent on the app, which starts live stacking of exposures of a few milliseconds and reveals a much more textured view of the solar surface. The sunspots get much sharper edges and you are able to see both the umbra and penumbra on some of them. In my imaging session, I got an image displaying the larger active regions of 4498, 4496 and 4492 as well as some smaller regions.

Observing an eclipse with your smart telescope

You should prepare well in advance if you are planning to observe a solar eclipse and test out the kit there before the big day. You don't want to be learning how to use your device on the day of the eclipse. Practice setting it up for solar observation a good few times before the day of the eclipse.

Using one of the best stargazing apps or the official Unistellar eclipse page, you can find out where the eclipse will be visible from and the time of maximum coverage in that location, so you can plan accordingly. The Aug. 12, 2026 total solar eclipse is just before sunset will be very low on the horizon, so you would need to find somewhere with a good view of the sunset and, ideally, do a practice run a week before. Setting up a few hours before the actual eclipse is necessary to avoid any last-minute disruptions and to get your telescope trained on the sun before the lunar disk starts to eclipse it. This is assuming that the skies are completely clear and free of clouds, but this is definitely something you should check before hauling your kit to a remote location. I use the Met Office Cloud cover map for the UK but other sites offer US and international coverage such as and Ventusky, SAT24 and Astrospheric.

Our top smart telescope recommendations to suit all budgets

Picture it: A swarm of tiny robot helicopters descends through a reddish-brown sky, landing gracefully on the Martian surface. What are they wearing? Tiny capes.

NASA's SkyFall mission will send a trio of mini rotorcraft to Mars equipped with ground penetrating radar technology which happens to look like little capes. These uniquely designed swaths of fabric look decidedly strange or even accidental in new videos from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) that show the little drones practice landing. But these capes are actually flexible antennae that will allow the craft to peer beneath the Red Planet's surface in search of water ice.

"The only way to detect shallow subsurface ice remotely is to fly close to the ground," Adrian Tang, SkyFall’s ground-penetrating radar lead instrument scientist at JPL, said in a statement on Thursday (Aug. 6). "By flying low and slow, a SkyFall helicopter could capture radar images that resolve the fine layering where dry soil gives way to ice, detecting its presence and mapping its extent."

Orbiting spacecraft have studied Mars for decades, imaging the planet and mapping it with radar. But from orbit, their radar is unable to see the first few feet of material just below the planet's surface — a zone where scientists expect to find shallow ice deposits mixed in with the rocks and dust. This work could be important for future astronauts who need to better understand the ground below their feet for safety reasons, and for future travelers searching for accessible ice to process for drinking water, oxygen and fuel.

Skyfall will follow in the footsteps of Ingenuity, the first rotorcraft on another world, which hitched a ride to Mars aboard NASA's Perseverance rover. The new choppers are based heavily on Ingenuity, which weighed just 4 pounds (1.8 kilograms) here on Earth. But Skyfall will be more capable than Ingenuity, whose main job was to show that choppers can explore the thin skies of Mars.

SkyFall's tiny cape ground-penetrating radar, which uses a type of flexible antenna called Vivaldi that was invented back in 1978, is designed to survey up to 16 feet (5 meters) below the Martian surface. The radar will be able to reach anywhere from several yards below the planet's surface to the uppermost layers of surface material.

And the antenna's unique design ensures that the SkyFall drones will be able to make these subsurface observations without damaging the equipment during landing.. The antenna is extremely lightweight, and the team miniaturized it to be both the right size and shape to fit the tiny helicopters, which sit just 6 inches (15 centimeters) above the ground at rest. The tricky thing was, the designers had to miniaturize the radar antennae while maintaining functionality. But they did just that, and these tiny radar capes will be able to bend and move out of the way as the rotorcraft do their thing, flying above and landing on the Red Planet.

"Although we managed to shrink the antenna quite a bit, it is about 1.5 times longer than the helicopter’s legs," Christine Gebara, SkyFall ground-penetrating radar mechanical lead at JPL, added in the statement.

"That means during landing, the Vivaldi has to bend out of the way — and if it lands on a rock, it bends even further," she added. "But when the helicopter takes off again, the antenna must spring back into place for data collection. Because SkyFall is expected to make dozens of flights exploring Mars, we needed an antenna that could repeatedly handle those pressures without losing its shape in flight."

To make these little capes capable of withstanding incredible feats on another world, the engineers behind the helicopters covered the antenna in layers of polyester and Vectran, a flexible (but incredibly strong) material that was previously used for the airbag that cushioned NASA's Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers during their touchdowns in 2004. The antenna's shape is also reinforced with flexible fiberglass tape springs and a lightweight structure. In total, each antenna weighs a miniscule 5 ounces (142 grams).

But a crafty design isn't enough. Getting to Mars is no small feat, and NASA needs to be sure that these little helicopters and their gear are up to the challenge. So, in JPL's Environmental Test Laboratory, which recreates different elements of environments beyond Earth, the SkyFall team put the rotorcraft and its little radar antenna to the test. They bent and flexed the antenna over and over, recreating multiple landings on the surface, exposed the craft to extreme temperatures, and continually checked to make sure that, throughout this testing, the helicopter could still transmit and receive radar signals. At the end of this testing, the antenna had endured 200 simulated Mars landings and was still working just fine. That is more than twice the number of landings expected from the mission.

"This test checked every box it was supposed to and answered our biggest technical questions," Tang added. "While we still have work ahead of us before the antenna is fully flight-qualified, this was a major milestone, and the hardware performed exactly as expected."

The trio of SkyFall helicopters will put their radar capes to the ultimate test when they fly to Mars. NASA plans to launch this mission to the Red Planet in 2028 aboard NASA's Space Reactor-1 Freedom, the first nuclear fission-powered interplanetary spacecraft.

A private rescue spacecraft is having troubles of its own in Earth orbit.

LINK, a satellite built and operated by the Arizona company Katalyst Space Technologies, launched July 3 on a daring and unprecedented mission: Rendezvous with NASA's Swift space telescope and boost the observatory to a higher orbit before it falls out of the sky.

About three weeks after launch, however, LINK started spinning at an unexpected rate, a problem that caused a temporary communications dropout and a reset of its satellite platform. And two of LINK's three orientation-controlling reaction wheels stopped working.

Spacecraft operators always work hard to fix such problems when they crop up, but there's a special urgency where LINK is concerned. It needs to reach Swift soon, or atmospheric drag will pull the observatory — which possesses no thrusters of its own — down past a point of no return. NASA thinks this boundary lies at around 186 miles (300 kilometers) above Earth, an altitude that Swift is expected to reach by October.

So the original plan called for LINK to meet up with Swift in early August, just a month after launch — pretty much as soon as commissioning work on the rescue craft wrapped up. That's not going to happen at this point, but mission teams haven't given up on the rescue attempt. Indeed, they're making progress on getting LINK back up to speed, as a new update relates.

"LINK originally was in a multi-axis spin rotating at about 9 degrees per second, which resulted in sporadic communications and impeded LINK’s progress toward Swift," NASA officials wrote in the update, which the agency posted on Thursday (Aug. 6).

"Using a series of burns from one of LINK’s electric propulsion thrusters, the Katalyst team now has slowed that spin to about 1.47 degrees per second," they added. "Katalyst plans to keep LINK at that spin rate as it proceeds with next steps for the mission."

Those next steps include uploading flight software updates "with new attitude controllers designed to maintain LINK’s stability in its current configuration," NASA officials wrote. "These updates would allow LINK to begin maneuvering to align with Swift’s orbit."

The updates are expected to be beamed up to LINK "in the coming days," according to the update.

Swift — officially known as the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, launched in 2004 to study gamma-ray bursts, the most energetic events in the universe.

The $250 million telescope's initial altitude was about 375 miles (600 km). But it has fallen considerably since then, and the descent is accelerating: The lower Swift goes, the more atmosphere it encounters and the greater the force of frictional drag becomes.

Swift is still working just fine, which explains why NASA wants to save it. Last September, the agency awarded Katalyst $30 million to build LINK — a refrigerator-sized spacecraft with three robotic arms — and fly its rescue mission.

That's a very tight timeline, but Katalyst hit it, getting LINK ready by its launch date and checking off a number of commissioning milestones before running into trouble. The company has experience delivering under pressure, so maybe it can pull off the rescue craft's rescue before it's too late.

The Chinese commercial launch company Landspace is set for a second attempt at catching an orbital booster.

The startup launched its first Zhuque-3 rocket in December 2025, in what was a milestone for Chinese rocket reusability efforts. While the Zhuque-3 second stage successfully reached orbit, the first stage exploded in a dramatic fireball during its final powered descent toward the landing pad.

Now, Landspace is poised for a second attempt at liftoff and landing, with airspace closure notices indicating that launch is scheduled from the Dongfeng commercial space innovation pilot zone at Jiuquan spaceport, in northwest China, at around 7:45 p.m. EDT on Aug. 10 (23:45 GMT, or 7:45 a.m. Beijing time, Aug. 11).

The company conducted a successful static fire test on June 29 in preparation for the launch.

"All systems operated normally, and test data and results met expectations, validating the correctness and coordination of system operations and laying a solid foundation for upcoming flight missions," Landspace stated in a post that day on the social media platform X.

Zhuque-3 is a 216-foot (66-meter) stainless steel rocket powered by methane-liquid oxygen engines. It's similar in capabilities to SpaceX's Falcon 9, and is capable of sending 40,350 pounds (18,300 kilograms) of payload to low Earth orbit (LEO).

The Aug. 10 launch will be China's fourth orbital booster recovery attempt. The first was the Zhuque-3 launch in December 2025; the second was the debut, just days later, of the Long March 12A, which also reached orbit but with a first-stage recovery attempt ending in flames. The third try, using the Long March 10B, took place on July 10. That one was successful: China made history, becoming just the second country to land an orbital booster, in this case using a vessel equipped with a net-capture system.

Landspace, when it makes its expected second attempt next week, will use a powered descent and landing legs, similar to the Falcon 9.

On Aug. 7, 1980, NASA's Viking 1 spacecraft ended its epic and historic mission on the Red Planet.

Viking 1 was the first spacecraft to successfully land on Mars. It was one of two Viking missions NASA launched in 1975 to go look for evidence of life on Mars. Each of the Viking missions were composed of an orbiter and a lander. Viking 1's orbiter took photos of the Martian surface that helped NASA decide where to drop the lander.

• Viking 1: The Historic First Mars Landing in Pictures

After four years of orbiting Mars, the orbiter ran out of attitude-control propellant, so NASA had to shut it down. The lander continued its scientific observations for another three years before it lost contact with NASA in 1983.

Why it mattered

NASA's Viking 1 mission is most well-known for making the first truly successful landing on Mars, but the mission was more than just a huge lander. Viking 1 actually consisted of two spacecraft, the Viking 1 Lander and the Viking 1 Orbiter. The two spacecraft rode to Mars together, with the lander separating from the orbiter ahead of its landing on the Red Planet.

In fact, NASA sent FOUR Viking spacecraft to Mars in total. The Viking 2 mission also carried both a Lander and Orbiter. But the Viking 1 probes were the first of that wave. The two orbiters were based on NASA's general Mariner 9 spacecraft bus, but more sophisticated. They carried three primary instrument suites: A two-camera imaging system; infrared spectrometer for water vapor mapping; and an infrared radiometer for thermal mapping.

The Viking missions were only planned to last 90 days, but both the lander and orbiter lasted years beyond their design lifetime. The Viking 1 Orbiter studied Mars for four years, orbiting the planet 1,488 times before shutting down on orbit 1,489 on Aug. 7, 1980.

The Viking 1 and Viking 2 Orbiters captured a combined 52,663 high-resolution photos of Mars, mapping about 97% of its surface with a resolution of about 984 feet (300 meters). They also snapped photos of Mars' two moons, Phobos and Deimos, in great detail, far surpassing what NASA achieved with the Mariner 9 Mars orbiter in 1971.

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.

In a nebula far, far away, colossal clouds of dust and gas tower amongst the stars.

What is it?

This spectacular new image from the James Webb Space Telescope showcases the brilliant majesty of the Carina Nebula, a giant cloud of dust and gas found 7,500 light-years away in the constellation Carina.

You may have seen the Carina Nebula before — in the first-ever image released from JWST, which has been dubbed "Cosmic Cliffs."

In this new image, captured by JWST's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), you can see the nebula in a whole new light. This snapshot captures a specific feature that is being dubbed the "Treasure Chest," as it vaguely resembles a glowing coffer overflowing with stellar jewels.

This "Treasure Chest" contains a cluster of young stars, approximately 70 stars in total. While these might be young, growing stars, the most massive of the bunch is a whopping 19 times more massive than our sun.

Why is it incredible?

While JWST has looked at the Carina Nebula before, new observations can reveal completely new details and help scientists uncover new information about the nebula and the strange ways in which the universe works.

Right now, scientists think that the star cluster in the "Treasure Chest" is about 1.3 million years old. However, previous estimates thought the grouping could be just 100,000 years old. So, new observations by powerful telescopes like JWST can significantly change our understanding of the cosmos.

With each new observation or data point, the history and context of the universe around us could completely transform. And, as this star cluster grows over time, its stars will become more brilliant. They may therefore illuminate more of this star cluster, potentially revealing details and secrets of this "treasure" that scientists might never have predicted.

It will be a magnificent day for England's south coast. From Portsmouth's Historic Dockyard and Brighton's Royal Pavilion to Dorset's Jurassic Coast and Cornwall's Land's End, beaches and cliff tops will be plunged into darkness in the day during the U.K.'s first total solar eclipse for almost 91 years. There is, however, a problem — this scenario won't occur until Sept. 23, 2090.

A total solar eclipse visits a location on Earth on average once every 366 years, and the British are currently in no-man's land. Aug. 12, 2026, is particularly cruel, with a path of totality cruising past the British Isles as it surges across the Atlantic Ocean from Iceland to northern Spain. Eclipse chasers in the U.K. are used to traveling, and travel they will, but those left behind will nevertheless experience a very deep partial solar eclipse peaking at 98% in extreme locations. It will be the U.K.'s most significant partial solar eclipse since March 20, 2015, when another path of totality just missed the U.K. to the north.

Related: Total solar eclipse 2026 — Everything you need to know

During a partial solar eclipse, it is NEVER safe to look directly at the sun without solar eclipse glasses designed for solar viewing. Read our guide on how to observe the sun safely.

Where to see the partial solar eclipse in the U.K.

A deep partial eclipse is a compelling sight, and the widespread nature of this one means millions of Brits can experience it without leaving home.

London, Manchester and Glasgow all experience 91.4% coverage, staggered by only a few minutes. Belfast does slightly better at 93.1%, while Cardiff edges ahead among the U.K's capitals at 93.2%. In practice, these differences are subtle — this is a nationwide event that requires no travel. That said, expect crowds at U.K. national parks, such as Snowdonia, the Brecon Beacons and the Pembrokeshire Coast in Wales; the South Downs and the Lake District in England; and the Cairngorms and the Isle of Skye in Scotland.

However, it's in County Kerry, Ireland, that sees the biggest eclipse in the British Isles archipelago, with Great Skellig — Luke Skywalker's island sanctuary in "Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens" and "Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi" — seeing a whopping 98% partial eclipse.

When to see the partial solar eclipse in the U.K.

This is a late, low eclipse, and timing matters. The action takes place between 5:59 p.m. and 8:10 p.m. BST, but the main event comes around 7:05-7:13 p.m. BST, when the eclipse reaches its maximum across the U.K. The deeply eclipsed sun will appear above the west-northwest horizon as a thin crescent, hanging like a curved blade, with its tips pointing toward the ground.

It won't get dark — that only happens within the path of totality. However, daylight will feel very subdued with a noticeable dimming.

Location will be crucial. Because the sun will be so low, you'll need a clear, unobstructed horizon — ideally from a coastal viewpoint, hilltop, or open landscape. Get into position early, use proper eclipse glasses and solar filters, and follow the sun as the moon slowly takes its bite.

If you're somewhere rural, it's worth spending the night, which also happens to be the peak of the annual Perseid meteor shower.

Best weather for the partial solar eclipse in the U.K.

Whether the sky is clear on the day is another matter; August may be warm in the U.K., but it's not known for clear skies (as anyone who traveled into the last British path of totality, in Cornwall in 1999, will recall). This is why many British eclipse chasers are perfectly happy that there is no total solar eclipse in the U.K. until 2090, but statistics are not destiny. A single high-pressure system on the day could transform the outlook entirely.

Meanwhile, the path of totality crosses regions with more reliable weather patterns, particularly north-central Spain and the Balearic Islands.

Partial solar eclipse beyond the U.K.

While observers in the U.K. will see a deep partial eclipse, those inside the narrow path of totality — across eastern Greenland, western Iceland and northern Spain — will experience something fundamentally different, if only for a few minutes. In eastern Spain, totality arrives just before sunset, with the fully eclipsed sun hovering only a few degrees above the western horizon. The sun will disappear almost immediately after totality ends.

However, what's been largely overlooked is the scale of the partially eclipsed sunset across Europe and northwest Africa. Across Algeria, France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Poland and beyond, millions will see the sun set while deeply eclipsed. In some locations, maximum eclipse occurs just minutes before sunset; in others, the sun slips below the horizon still significantly covered by the moon. Expect slim crescent suns to be photographed slipping beneath the horizon from across Central Europe.

Consequently, U.K. observers will see the edge of a much larger event — the moon's expansive penumbral shadow stretching across continents. It will be one of the most widely visible and visually striking eclipse phenomena of the decade. According to Time and Date, 283 million people will see at least a 90% partial eclipse.

When is the next partial solar eclipse in the U.K.?

If Aug. 12, 2026, feels like a one-off, it isn't. The U.K. is in the midst of an unusually active spell for partial eclipses, with at least one visible almost every year through the end of the decade. After this deep event comes a more modest partial on the morning of Aug. 2, 2027 — linked to the century's longest total eclipse over North Africa — with a maximum obscuration of 48% in southern England.

On Jan. 26, 2028, attention shifts once again to a partially eclipsed sunset during which up to 56% of the sun will be obscured by the moon. That one will be best seen from western locations such as Cornwall and Wales, while the central path delivers an annular "ring of fire" across Portugal and Spain. The June 12, 2029, eclipse is much more marginal, visible only from northeast England and eastern Scotland as a shallow partial eclipse at sunrise. Finally, on June 1, 2030, another annular eclipse brings a partially eclipsed sunrise to the entire U.K., with up to about 49% of the sun blocked by the moon in the southeast.

Individually, these events are varied — morning, sunset and sunrise eclipses, deep and shallow — but taken together they form a rare sequence for armchair eclipse chasers in the U.K. who likely won't be around for totality 64 years from now.

Want to know how to make the most of your eclipse viewing experience? Our best solar viewing gear for 2026 is here to help. We also have a guide on how to photograph a solar eclipse for those looking to take an even closer look at our star.

Be sure to stay up to date with all the latest news with our total solar eclipse live blog, where skywatching editor Daisy Dobrijevic will be sharing her experience of totality from aboard a HX Expeditions cruise ship in the waters off eastern Greenland. Skywatching writer Anthony Wood will also be bringing reports of each eclipse phase from central Spain, as he watches the eclipse accompanied by citizen scientists from the Dynamic Eclipse Broadcast initiative.

Are you ready for the eclipse? Whether you're bound for the path of totality or set to see a partial eclipse from Europe, Canada or the northeast U.S. on Wednesday, Aug. 12, there's a dirty word eclipse chasers hate to utter during an eclipse season, and yet become completely obsessed with — clouds.

Related: Total solar eclipse 2026 — Everything you need to know

We all start behaving as though Earth's atmosphere owes us something. After spending years studying the climate and where it is most likely along a path of totality to have a clear sky, we're in position and can now do almost nothing about it save for drive or sail a few miles. We refresh cloud forecasts. We compare satellite imagery. We point at scraps of blue sky as if we can persuade them to remain so at a specific time. By the time the moon is almost on the sun, we've spent the best part of a week staring at our phones and fretting.

The received wisdom is that you must have a perfect view of a total solar eclipse, and that if you don't, you've failed because you didn't do your research or take evasive action. Never mind that many who end up under a blue sky then spend the entire time behind a camera. The desire for a clear sky and a clean horizon is obvious — particularly if you're in the path of totality — and yet it's entirely possible that clouds will be present, very possibly in the places expected to be clear. That's exactly what happened on April 8, 2024, when the favored state of Texas was cloudy while wintry Maine and New Brunswick had a bluebird day.

Having seen many total, annular and partial solar eclipses, I have come to believe something slightly heretical: you do not need a perfectly clear-sky view of a total or partial solar eclipse to matter. Sometimes one clear second is enough. Whisper it, but clouds add a lot of drama not just to an eclipse, but to photos of it, too.

Beginners often assume an eclipse is only "successful" if they see the sun's corona throughout totality. Some even rank eclipses in advance according to how long totality lasts. It's all an illusion. If a gap opens in the cloud for a short time and the corona appears, that is not a consolation prize. That is the thing itself. The same goes for a glimpse of a partially eclipsed sun if that's what's heading your way.

So don't fret the eclipse — check weather forecasts and do your best to find a clear sky, but when nature takes over, don't fight it or get upset by it. Cherish whatever you get. You only need a one-second window — and even that is not in your control.

What's happening

On Aug. 12, the moon's shadow crosses eastern Greenland, western Iceland and northern Spain, with a small part of Portugal also near the action. From inside the narrow path of totality, the sun will be completely covered for up to 2 minutes 18 seconds. If that's your destination, get excited — and be prepared. During totality, stay present. An eclipse is short enough that distraction becomes a genuine hazard to observing. A one-second look can be enough, but only if you are really paying attention.

Outside of the path of totality, a much wider partial solar eclipse will be visible across the U.K., Europe, parts of North America and northwest Africa.

The U.K. gets one of the more striking consolation prizes: a very deep partial eclipse late in the day. Across much of Britain, around nine-tenths of the sun will be covered, with the deepest views toward the west and southwest. London, Manchester and Glasgow are all in the roughly 91% range, while Cardiff and Belfast do slightly better. Maximum eclipse takes place around 7:05 to 7:13 p.m. BST, when the sun will be low in the west-northwest. That low sun is the detail many people will miss. This is not an eclipse to watch from behind a row of houses, trees or office blocks. A beach, cliff top, hill or open field may make the difference between seeing a thin solar crescent and seeing nothing at all. But having a clear western horizon means clear weather is needed not just where you are, but where you're looking — possibly a 100 miles away to the northwest. That will be even more of an issue in eastern Spain and the Balearic Islands, from where the total solar eclipse will occur when the sun and moon are just a couple of degrees above the horizon.

North America gets a smaller event, but not a meaningless one. The farther northeast you are, the better — though a partial eclipse probably isn't something to travel far to see more of. It's best to take what's coming your way. In the U.S., northern Maine sees the deepest partial eclipse, while Boston, New York, Philadelphia and parts of New England see a smaller bite taken from the sun after lunch. Canada does better, especially in the east and north. Newfoundland sees more than half the sun covered, while the rest of Atlantic Canada has a much better show than most of the U.S.

Wherever you are, remember that it is never safe to look directly at the sun without proper eclipse glasses or certified solar filters. Thin cloud does not make it safe to look at the sun. Nor do sunglasses. Even a quick glance requires eclipse glasses.

How and when I'm watching it

I'll be in Greenland for this one, but the way I recommended you watch it is low-tech. I would bring eclipse glasses, a printed or saved set of local timings (visit Time and Date for a location-specific schedule), and binoculars with a proper solar filter fitted securely over the front of the lenses. Personally, I wouldn't build the day around photography. The great trap of a total solar eclipse is believing it is mainly something to photograph. It is not. It is something that happens to the whole environment.

If you're in the path of a deep partial eclipse — say, over about 80% — you may begin to notice the light taking on an unusual quality, with a more noticeable dimming around 90% coverage. If you're in the path of totality, you'll feel a coolness as totality begins, birds and humans going quiet, and light levels suddenly crashing as the moon's shadow sweeps across you. Clouds can even sharpen the strangeness. In the path of totality, a low, milky sky may hide the corona, but that also makes the darkness feel heavier and more sudden. All of this is why people cherish their experience of an eclipse — not because of a photograph.

Stargazer's corner: August 7-13, 2026

Here comes an incredible week of stargazing, with the solar eclipse and the peak of the Perseid meteor shower — both occurring on the same day — hard to underplay. Those chasing the eclipse in Greenland and Iceland may have a chance to see the aurora after midnight, though the darkness is short. Farther south, it's peak Milky Way season. The galaxy arches high across the sky, with its brightest and most detailed regions now well placed after dusk. All this week, the moon will be a thin crescent, if present at all, creating excellent conditions for simply stepping outside and exploring the sky at night. If you can glimpse the Milky Way, an eclipsed sun and a "shooting star," you've bagged one of the greatest combinations in skywatching.

Related: The biggest skywatching day of 2026 is coming. Here's what you'll see in North America and Europe

Constellation of the week: Perseus

Perseus is the name attached to the week's meteor shower, but the meteors do not actually come from the stars of Perseus. They only appear to radiate from that direction because Earth is moving through a stream of comet debris. To find Perseus, look northeast late in the evening and higher before dawn, below the W-shaped constellation Cassiopeia. The beginner's mistake is to stare at the radiant. Use Perseus only as an anchor point, then watch the widest patch of dark sky you can manage. This meteor shower — one of the best of the year, taking place under perfect moonless conditions — rewards patience more than precision.

Two NASA astronauts installed the seventh and final set of mounting hardware for new sets of solar arrays during a successful 6.5-hour spacewalk outside of the International Space Station.

Jessica Meir and Anil Menon on Thursday (Aug. 6), assembled the modification kit for one of the space station's eight power channels, which will allow for the future addition of a new ISS Rolll-Out Solar Array (iROSA). Since 2021, astronauts on prior spacewalks have deployed six of the iROSA assemblies, leaving now just two awaiting delivery to the station later this year.

Like building a giant erector set, Meir and Menon worked to assemble and bolt together the triangular brackets on the 3B power channel, located on the far right, or starboard (S6) segment of the station's backbone truss. Menon was positioned on an articulating portable foot restraint (APFR) atop a worksite interface (WIFEX), providing a stable angle to work from the truss.

Once the modification kit structure was built and secured to the 3B mast canister, the two spacewalkers routed cabling that will carry the electricity from the future iROSA into the 3B power channel and then covered the struts with multi-layer insulation to protect them from micrometeoroid strikes.

The iROSA wings sit forward of the legacy solar arrays, augmenting their electricity generation rather than replacing it. The station's eight original arrays began showing degraded power output as they exceeded their 15-year design life. When used in tandem with the new iROSA wings, the upgraded system will increase the station's electricity supply by 20% to 30%.

The other power channel currently without an iROSA deployed is 2A on the left, or port side, of the station.

"Anil, you can see the moon to the — well, I am not sure what way you're facing, but…," said Meir, taking a short break during the spacewalk to notice NASA's next destination for astronauts under its Artemis program.

"To my right. Yeah, I see it — thanks for the heads-up," said Menon. "I can see a future moon base there."

"I can see it, too!" Meir said.

Meir later turned her attention to Mars with her closing words of the day.

"On this day in 2012, NASA's robotic rover Curiosity successfully landed on the surface of Mars with the goal of understanding if the planet could have fostered life. Curiosity achieved that goal within a year," she said. "One day, humans will visit Curiosity, propelled by the groundbreaking science, technology demonstrations and operations conducted here on the International Space Station for almost 26 years now."

"Today, we made one more step toward expanding the ISS power system, further sustaining our human presence in low Earth orbit, as we prepare to take those next steps," said Meir.

Thursday's spacewalk began at 8:33 a.m. EDT (1233 GMT) when Meir and Menon switched their spacesuits to internal battery power. After collecting their tools and reentering the Quest airlock, the spacewalk, or extravehicular activity (EVA), concluded at 3:00 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT), 6 hours and 27 minutes after it began.

This was the 96th U.S. EVA and 281st spacewalk overall in support of the International Space Station's assembly, maintenance and enhancement. It was the first career spacewalk for Menon and the sixth for Meir, bringing her total time on EVA to 42 hours and 33 minutes.

This was the first spacewalk for the space station's Expedition 75 crew. There are two more U.S. outings scheduled for this month: EVA 97 will work to replace a space-to-ground antenna on Aug. 13, and EVA 98 will connect power channel cables and data relay systems as part of ongoing maintenance, including preparations for the station's future deorbit, as well as replace a navigational aid used for spacecraft docking on Aug. 25.

A Japanese Earth-observing satellite got to orbit early this morning (Aug. 6), five weeks later than originally planned.

The spacecraft — a radar satellite that will be operated by the Tokyo-based company iQPS — lifted off atop a Rocket Lab Electron vehicle from New Zealand today at 5:18 a.m. EDT (0918 GMT; 9:18 p.m. local time).

It was a deferred round two for the mission: Rocket Lab originally tried to launch it on June 30 but aborted that attempt at the last second. The company has not yet revealed what caused that abort.

Everything went well on this morning's flight, which Rocket Lab called "The Grain Goddess Provides." The Electron deployed the iQPS satellite into its target orbit about 357 miles (575 kilometers) above Earth, Rocket Lab announced via X this morning.

The spacecraft — known as QPS-SAR-13 or MIKURA-I, after a Japanese goddess associated with abundance and prosperity — will study our planet using high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR), which can peer through clouds and collect imagery both day and night.

iQPS is building a constellation of 36 such SAR satellites in low Earth orbit. Electron is the primary launcher for this network; "The Grain Goddess Provides" was the eighth of a total of 15 launches that Rocket Lab will conduct to help assemble the constellation.

Today's mission was the 92nd overall for Rocket Lab and the company's 13th of 2026. Most of these flights have involved the 59-foot-tall (18 meters) Electron, the company's workhorse small-satellite launcher. But a growing number these days are performed by HASTE, a suborbital variant of Electron that allows customers to test technologies in a hypersonic flight environment.

And we could soon see an increase in the cadence of HASTE liftoffs. Rocket Lab recently signed a $266 million contract with the U.S. Space Force to fly up to 18 suborbital missile-defense missions, most of them from Alaska, a new launch locale for the company.

There are some things you can always rely on in "Star Trek". Vulcans are rarely great company at parties, for example, and you can be approximately 93% certain that the alien you're about to meet will be more-or-less human in form — give or take a few adornments around the forehead area.

And, just as most holodeck adventures turn out to be bad for the blood pressure, going on vacation is never as restful or relaxing as it's supposed to be. In fact, most starship crews would be better off saving the "out of office" for another day.

SPOILERS AHEAD! ANYONE YET TO WATCH "HUMAN BEST FRIEND" SHOULD PROCEED WITH CAUTION TO AVOID VIOLATING TEMPORAL PRIME DIRECTIVES.

That said, it's entirely understandable that the members of the Enterprise's Alpha Shift (aka the usual bridge crew) would want to take a break. They've been working non-stop for months, are on their way to mediate some potentially stressful peace negotiations, and — in the meantime — the mostly unseen members of Beta and Gamma Shifts have managed to sneak in some R&R of their own. But a quick trip through Starfleet history would tell them Pike and co's communal jolly in "Human Best Friend" (the latest episode of "Strange New Worlds" season 4) was doomed from the moment their shuttlecraft touched down.

Even James T Kirk and the Original Series gang take a brief sojourn away from their famous five-year mission. In aptly named season 1 episode "Shore Leave", the crew beam down to a theme park planet that was channelling "Westworld" several years before the 1973 movie unleashed a gunslinging android named Yul Brynner.

This seemingly idyllic vacation world is home to sophisticated tech that can read visitors' minds, and manufactures robots to manifest their thoughts in live-action. Some of these recreations are relatively harmless — Wonderland alumni Alice and the White Rabbit were, of course, no strangers to the '60s counter-culture — but Kirk somehow ends up face-to-face with a former school bully, while Dr McCoy winds up dead, Jim, on the end of a knight's lance. The ship's physician is subsequently resurrected by the park's in-house Caretaker, but it's not the sort of experience that earns five-star ratings on TripAdvisor.

Even so, the Enterprise gives the Omicron Delta region's hottest tourist destination another shot in Animated Series episode "Once Upon a Planet". But, following the kindly Caretaker's demise, the park is now under new management, in the form of a master computer that's become so resentful of its fleshy overlords that it's decided to rebel, kidnapping crew members, unleashing monsters from the darkest corners of their minds, and hatching a scheme to hijack the Enterprise — hardly a recipe for repeat business.

By the time the "Next Generation" era rolls around, Risa (a purpose-built "pleasure planet" with an artificially idyllic climate) has become the only place for vacationing Starfleet types to be seen.

When the famously workaholic Jean-Luc Picard bows to crew pressure in "Captain's Holiday" and agrees to spend a few days buried in a book by the pool, he instead finds himself embroiled in an Indiana Jones-esque quest to recover a powerful artefact from the future. It's not a bad experience, per se — numerous romantic sparks sizzle between Picard and professional relic hunter Vash — but it doesn't deliver on the R&R brief.

In "Deep Space Nine" episode "Let He Who is Without Sin…", meanwhile, the popular view of paradise proves too much for taciturn security guy Worf when girlfriend (and future wife) Jadzia Dax drags him to Risa.

Famously "not a merry man", he refuses to wear his civvies and sabotages the planet's weather systems, proving he's the kind of grump who'll think nothing about ruining the fun for everyone else. Some people really are only happy when it rains…

(The crew of the USS Voyager are presumably relieved that, being trapped in the Delta Quadrant, they have an excuse for giving the vastly overrated Risa a miss.)

That said, steering clear of pleasure planets is no guarantee of a happy vacation experience. When Picard decides to go back to the family vineyard to recover from his Borg assimilation ordeal in "Family", he spends most of the time butting heads with his stubborn brother, Robert — sometimes you just yearn for the simplicity of life in an emotionless cyborg collective. And Benjamin Sisko's own attempt at a family excursion with son Jake in "DS9"'s "Explorers" also proves to be far from peaceful, when the vintage lightship he's built from ancient Bajoran instructions warps them into uncharted waters and a run-in with the Cardassians.

So Pike and his crew should have known better when they embarked on shore leave of their own. Indeed, if anyone had bothered to read the microprint within the fine print — as highlighted by the Ceznar Grand's maître d' (played by "The Kids in the Hall" and "A Bug's Life" star Dave Foley) — they'd have been more prepared for the thumping headaches and memory gaps that come as standard when you're hanging out on a planet with a naturally intoxicating atmosphere.

Cue "The Hangover"-style hijinks as Ortegas and Scotty try to recall the night before via an extended game of "hunt the shuttlecraft", Nurse Chapel reveals a secret passion for bingo, and Number One karaokes her way through a succession of Klingon power ballads (aka the best kind).

They'll all be relieved to know that, in "Star Trek", whatever happens on shore leave tends to stay on shore leave — even questionable facial tattoos that, without futuristic Federation medical tech, Pike might otherwise have come to regret.

But crucially, we will always know what went down when Alpha Shift let their hair down. And at least Kirk and Spock had an excuse to enjoy the hugs and deep-and-meaningfuls we know they've always wanted.

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