On Thursday (Nov. 12), the Euclid space telescope released its first major batch of data, capturing the light of more than a billion objects over an area of sky as big as 9,500 full moons. The data release lays the foundation for one of the largest-ever 3D maps of the cosmos and many groundbreaking discoveries about the nature of dark energy and dark matter.

The European Space Agency's (ESA) Euclid space telescope has been called the "Dark Universe Detective" because of its capability to investigate the dual mysteries of dark matter, the universe's most mysterious stuff, and dark energy, the force accelerating the expansion of the universe. Collectively, these cosmic elements are sometimes referred to as the dark universe.

The new data release, designated DR1-Foundation, was built from 13 months of observations and is accompanied by a multitude of images, including large sky mosaics. It marks the first major release of mission data since Euclid launched in mid-2023.

"These are far more than beautiful pictures; today marks a scientific milestone in our study of the cosmos," ESA's Director of Science, Carole Mundell said in a statement. "This major Euclid data release represents the largest space-based survey of its kind, laying the foundation of future discovery in a new regime for astronomy and demonstrating the excellence of European technology, science and international collaboration."

What's in the Euclid release

The ESA put into raw numbers the sheer number of celestial objects viewed by the Dark Universe Detective and contained in DR1-Foundation. That includes light spectra from 160 million sources, over 900 million galaxies, and 60 million candidates for quasars, regions of space dominated by feeding supermassive black holes.

"This is a change in scale from Euclid's previous releases, which included a few days of observations over around 60 degrees squared of sky," ESA's Euclid project scientist Valeria Pettorino said. "We're now releasing more than a year of data covering a significantly larger area. This unlocks groundbreaking science."

Euclid can see such a vast number of cosmic objects thanks to the fact that its space-based position helps it avoid interference caused by Earth's atmosphere.

This includes clusters of galaxies and even larger superclusters. The study of these objects, some of the largest structures in the cosmos, can reveal how matter came together across the larger network of gas, dust and dark matter called the cosmic web.

"Euclid doesn't just look far back in time  — it does so across huge areas of sky," Euclid Consortium member Barbara Sartoris of JL Lagrange Laboratory, Nice, France, explained. "This gives us an unprecedented view of large samples of ancient galaxy clusters that were previously out of reach.

"We will explore these in the coming months to learn how these giants grew, and decipher what they reveal about the dark universe."

Another exciting element of the new Euclid data release is the 15,000 strong gravitational lensing candidates catalogued by the space telescope. Gravitational lensing is an element of the universe first explained in Einstein magnum opus, general relativity, in 1915.

General relativity says that objects with mass cause the very fabric of space to warp, and that gravity arises from this warping. But there is another consequence. When light passes this curvature, its usually straight path is curved. That means when light from a single background source passes an object with great mass, like a galaxy or galaxy cluster, a strong gravitational lens, it can arrive at our telescopes at different times.

As a result of this strong lensing, background sources can be greatly amplified. It is an effect that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been using to great effect to study galaxies in the early universe.

Thus, the prospect of mapping 15,000 strong gravitational lenses is monumental, especially in studying the rate at which the universe is expanding and thus the effect of dark energy.

"Strong lensing provides unique insight into the dark universe, allowing us to 'weigh' individual galaxies, including their invisible dark matter, and explore how the universe is expanding," Natalie Lines of the University of Portsmouth, U.K., and member of the Euclid Consortium, said. "Over 10 years ago, we forecast that Euclid would revolutionize the field of strong lens discovery. That day is finally here."

The best is yet to come

Arguably, the most exciting thing about DR1-Foundation is that Euclid is just getting started. The area of sky covered from spring 2024 to spring 2025 represents just 14% of Euclid's target for its entire six-year survey.

That means whatever scientists discover from this data release could be the tip of the iceberg in terms of how the Dark Universe Detective will change our understanding of the cosmos.

"DR1-Foundation includes raw data, calibrated images, catalogues, and spectra over a huge sky area, with enough statistics touncover even rare objects," Valeria said. "It will be used to map the large-scale structure of the universe in unprecedented detail.

"So much discovery is yet to come."

An astronaut from Pakistan is set to launch on China's Shenzhou 24 mission in the coming weeks and become the first-ever international visitor to the Tiangong space station.

A pair of astronaut candidates from Pakistan have been training at the Astronaut Centre of China in Beijing, following an agreement reached between China and Pakistan in Islamabad in February 2025 and a subsequent selection process.

China's human spaceflight agency confirmed in a Nov. 7 press statement that the upcoming Shenzhou 24 mission will carry one of the astronauts. The agency also released a mission patch.

"China and Pakistan are all-weather strategic cooperative partners," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said Nov. 9. "Having the Pakistani astronaut on board China's spaceships will mark the first-ever joint mission of Chinese and foreign astronauts in the history of China's manned space program."

It is not yet known which of the two candidates will fly on Shenzhou 24. They were named in Pakistani press reports as Muhammad Zeeshan Ali and Khurram Daud, both pilots from the country's military forces. The pair were chosen from a wider pool of around 20 finalists.

The chosen candidate will fly as a payload specialist on Shenzhou 24 along with two Chinese colleagues, while the other will be on standby as a backup. While the Chinese astronauts will be starting a six-month-long stay in space, the Pakistani astronaut will spend roughly a week in orbit aboard Tiangong during a standard crew rotation period. He will then return to Earth aboard the departing Shenzhou 23 spacecraft, along with two Chinese astronauts who will have completed a six-month-long stay in orbit.

The arrangement means changes to China's usual "three in, three out" Tiangong crew rotations. One of the three Shenzhou 23 astronauts, who arrived at Tiangong on May 24, will stay aboard and complete China's first-ever year-long stay in orbit, while the Pakistani astronaut will take their seat aboard Shenzhou 23 to return home.

During his stay in space, the Pakistani astronaut will be responsible for four research payloads selected from more than 300 proposals, according to Pakistan's space agency, SUPARCO.

China has not announced a timeline for the launch of the Shenzhou 24 mission, but it is expected to lift off before the end of November. The Shenzhou 23 astronauts currently aboard Tiangong are closing in on 180 days in orbit, nearing an end to their six months in space.

Shenzhou 24 will launch from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert on a Long March 2F rocket. The identities of the crew for China's human spaceflight missions are typically closely guarded, and will only be revealed in a press conference a day ahead of launch. Shenzhou 24's Long March 2F rocket will be rolled out to the pad around a week ahead of launch.

The partnership between the two countries has already produced Chinese-launched Pakistani satellites, including a lunar cubesat, and a Pakistani-built rover due to fly on the Chang'e-8 lunar landing mission.

One of the most anticipated fall TV series, "Blade Runner 2099," recently dropped its final neon-tinted trailer, and now we’ve finally got a handle on the plot dynamics of this dystopian thriller set in the cyberpunk world of Ridley Scott's original.

Prime Video's bold and brooding 8-episode series lands Nov. 25 as a tangential sequel to Denis Villeneuve's "Blade Runner 2049," unfolding some 50 years after the 2017 feature film. Now the artificial inmates are running the asylum when violent replicant uprisings flip the script, causing humanity to become second-class citizens.

"In Los Angeles 2099, Cora (Hunter Schafer) lived her entire life on the run, a chameleon forced to adopt numerous identities," states Prime Video's synopsis. "To secure a stable future for her brother, she assumes one final identity and is forced to partner with Olwen (Michelle Yeoh), a Blade Runner who’s confronting the end of her life. The two are pulled into a widening conspiracy that poses an existential threat to a city that’s fighting to be reborn."

This engrossing final trailer reveals more of the detailed noir world and Cora's plight to blend into society as a Blade Runner who links up with Olwen, an aging replicant exterminator, for an uneasy partnership. Here, a tense scene plays out in this preview as Cora undergoes an intense police station screening while being used as a resistance pawn to help take back the city from usurping androids. But another deep mystery lies hidden in plain sight!

"You have to see the lie that is in front of you," warns Yeoh's dying synthetic cop.

"Blade Runner 2099" sports a spirited cast that includes Dimitri Abold ("The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes") and Lewis Gribben ("Somewhere Boy”) in collaboration with Katelyn Rose Downey ("The Nun II"), Daniel Rigby ('Renegade Nell"), Johnny Harris ("A Gentleman in Moscow"), Amy Lennox ("Only Child"), Sheila Atim ("The Woman King") and Matthew Needham ("House of the Dragon”).

Delivered by creator and showrunner Silka Louisa ("Shining Girls"), and executive produced by Silka Louisa and Ridley Scott’s Scott Free Productions, "Blade Runner 2099" lands on Prime Video beginning Nov. 25, 2026.

I’ve spent a lot of time with smart telescopes, from relatively inexpensive Seestar models to the original Vaonis Vespera and the Vespera Pro. They all promise essentially the same thing — you put a telescope outside at night, choose something interesting on your smartphone and let the technology take care of the rest. The Vaonis Vespera 3 does that exceptionally well, but after spending several nights with it, I’m convinced it’s designed for a rather different kind of buyer.

At $2,490/£2,199, this is hardly an impulse purchase for the beginner who’s curious about astronomy – you could buy several perfectly capable smart telescopes for the same money. Yet I found myself increasingly impressed by what the Vespera 3 could achieve, particularly when I returned to the same object over several nights. The images were sharp, the colors were excellent and I almost never had to think about the battery.

That doesn’t mean the experience was flawless. I sometimes spent longer than I’d have liked waiting for the telescope to get ready, but once it began photographing the sky, the Vespera 3 reminded me why I love smart telescopes so much.

Why I kept returning to the same objects over several nights

One of my favorite things about smart telescopes is watching a photograph develop as more light is collected. What begins as a fairly ordinary patch of stars gradually becomes something much more interesting. First a faint cloud of gas appears, then more structure emerges, and eventually you have an image that, only a few short years ago, would have been difficult to capture without specialist equipment.

With the Vespera 3, I spent several nights photographing the Pleiades (M45), the famous star cluster in Taurus. The Pleiades make an excellent subject for testing a telescope because the stars are bright, but the surrounding nebulosity is much harder to capture convincingly. The Singularity app used to control Vespera 3 stacks each image as it goes, but keeps them in sight as an optional time-lapse, so you can see exactly why you’re spending so much time on one object.

Even better, the Vespera 3’s PerseverENS feature lets you add data to an existing observation over multiple nights (it’s actually called multi-night observation in the app). Instead of having to call it a night or start again every time the weather interrupts an imaging session, you can return to a target and continue building the image over weeks — or years. This is excellent for faint nebulas, but also for anyone who lives somewhere with unpredictable weather.

The Vespera 3 also has CovalENS, Vaonis’s mosaic imaging system, which captures adjacent sections of sky to produce a larger image. That’s helpful for objects such as the Pleiades and large nebulas, which occupy a substantial area of the sky.

Mosaics inevitably take longer than conventional images — if it images six sections of the night sky, it takes six times longer for the same image quality — but they also make the telescope more versatile than its native field of view (2.5 x 1.4 degrees) might suggest.

I was impressed by what it captured from an urban location

Smart telescopes are particularly useful for people living under light-polluted skies. A conventional optical telescope can show you the moon, the planets and some brighter star clusters, but faint nebulas are largely out of reach. The Vespera 3 tackles that problem by taking repeated short exposures and combining them automatically. As the exposures accumulate, faint details become clearer, and the image becomes less noisy.

I photographed the Orion Nebula (M42), one of the most rewarding deep-sky targets for almost any telescope. Its bright central region makes it a quick capture, but the surrounding clouds of gas give a camera plenty more to uncover. The color in M42 via the Vespera 3 was particularly striking: stars looked sharp, the background was pleasingly clean, but the colors had a richness you don’t always see from less expensive models.

The Vespera 3 uses a 50mm refractor telescope and an 8.3-megapixel Sony IMX585 camera sensor. Those specifications are identical to the Vespera 2, but the Vespera 3 has a new optical system, which uses four lenses in three groups, including two extra-low-dispersion elements. Vaonis has also introduced internal baffling to reduce unwanted reflections from nearby artificial lights. For urban astronomers, every little helps. I wouldn’t claim that the Vespera 3 makes dark skies unnecessary. It doesn’t — and if you do take a trip to dark skies with the Vespera 3, your images will improve — but it can produce extremely satisfying images even from a city.

For anyone who wants more control over their images, the Vespera 3 also saves lossless TIFF files that can be exported to a PC or Mac using a USB-C cable. That means you can take the images into your preferred editing software for further processing, rather than relying entirely on the results produced by the Singularity app.

I wish choosing what to photograph was more intuitive

There’s something wonderfully simple about looking at a map of the night sky, spotting an interesting object and tapping it to point your scope in that direction. It’s one of the reasons I enjoy using Seestar smart telescopes. I did miss that experience with the Vespera 3.

Vaonis’s Singularity app has an extensive catalog of galaxies, nebulas, star clusters and other targets, but I found myself browsing lists when I’d rather have been exploring an interactive sky chart.

There is a section devoted to constellations, which initially got my hopes up. I thought it might allow me to photograph an entire constellation, capturing its familiar star pattern as a wide-field image. Sadly not — each constellation has a diagram showing where the catalog’s deep-sky objects are located. That’s useful if you already know what you’re looking for, but it isn’t the same as being able to see the sky overhead and choose a target visually.

However, the telescope can still find and photograph the objects in its catalog, and the automated tracking works well once you’ve made your choice.

It takes a while to get started

That smart telescopes give you instant gratification is something of a selling point — but it’s also a myth. Yes, they save an enormous amount of work compared with traditional astrophotography equipment. There’s no separate tracking mount to align, no camera to attach and no laptop required to control the imaging process. However, automation doesn’t necessarily mean instant results.

For example, every time the Vespera 3 is switched on, it needs to establish its position by identifying stars overhead. Its Star Zone Search and autofocus procedure took around five minutes, with a percentage displayed in the app to show how far it had progressed. That’s not an unreasonable wait for a sophisticated astronomical instrument, but it felt a little drawn-out when I was eager to begin photographing something. If there are clouds, expect it to take much longer.

Once the Vespera 3 had aligned itself, I could choose a target and leave the telescope to work. The optical arm moved into position, the camera began collecting exposures and an image gradually appeared on my smartphone.

I was less impressed by the touch-sensitive power button. Its softly illuminated indicator didn’t always make it obvious whether the telescope was switched on. More than once, I had to check my phone’s available Wi-Fi networks to establish whether it was on or off.

Not having to worry about battery life is bliss

Vaonis claims the Vespera 3 can operate for up to 11 hours. I didn’t run it continuously until the battery was exhausted, but it lasted longer than every observing session I attempted. That did change how I used it, because I could concentrate on the target instead of keeping an eye on the remaining charge or wondering whether I should connect a portable battery.

The new, improved tripod also makes a difference. It’s tall, adjustable and reassuringly stable, with a useful canopy strung between its legs for holding any accessories — perhaps filters, a red torch or snacks.

I wouldn’t buy it primarily for the sun or planets

The Vespera 3 is capable of photographing the moon and the sun, although solar photography requires a properly fitted optional solar filter. Unfortunately, that costs a further $179/£159, which is rather steep.

It’s also not the best choice for detailed planetary images. The 245mm focal length is ideal for framing many galaxies and nebulas, but Jupiter and Saturn remain small subjects.

Another omission is an equatorial tracking mode. Some cheaper smart telescopes — such as the Seestar S50 Pro and the DwarfLab Dwarf 3 — offer EQ mode for more advanced imaging, but the Vespera 3 relies solely on its motorized alt-azimuth mount. That doesn’t stop it from producing excellent photographs, but it does mean more experienced users have one less option to experiment with.

I’d recommend it to someone who knows they’ll use it

The biggest question surrounding the Vespera 3 isn’t whether it works — it’s whether it’s worth the money. After all, it costs far more than the Seestar S50 Pro, which also has built-in imaging filters, whereas the Vespera’s light pollution ($229/£219), dual-band ($399/£370) and solar (£179/£159) filters are optional purchases. They do, however, make a significant difference — with the dual-band filter giving nebulas more contrast, color and detail.

Overall, the Vespera 3 offers a slightly more polished imaging experience than the many entry-level smart telescopes on the market. I enjoyed its clean, colorful images and appreciated the ability to work on the same subject over several nights, while the excellent tripod and battery endurance make it particularly well suited to longer observing sessions.

I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone, but I can see why someone who already loves photographing the night sky might happily pay extra for the Vespera 3.

A commercial satellite has spotted the International Space Station (ISS), giving us a unique view of the orbiting lab from above.

What is it?

Most of the time, when we see the ISS, it is from down here on Earth or from the viewpoint of the astronauts onboard, peering out the windows at the station's limbs, solar arrays and instruments.

But in this snapshot, which was posted on X on Nov. 9 by the Australian company HEO, we can see the station stretched out in all its glory.

HEO specializes in using satellites in low Earth orbit to capture images of other spacecraft, though longer-term the company aims to capture observations far out into the solar system. HEO doesn't build the satellites that take these photos; rather, the company's software tasks the spacecraft to image targets as they come into range.

This great photo of the ISS from above, for example, was taken by a satellite operated by BlackSky, a Virginia-based company that holds a non-Earth imaging agreement with HEO.

So far, HEO and its partners have captured imagery of a variety of spacecraft in orbit, including the ISS, China's Tiangong space station and the European Space Agency's ERS-2 satellite (while it was hurtling back to Earth in 2024).

Why is it incredible?

While it might seem that satellites are just hovering above Earth, the space station and other spacecraft in LEO are hurtling through space at roughly 17,500 mph (28,160 kph), hundreds of miles above our planet's surface.

A snapshot of a satellite from above is therefore far from mundane. Rather, it requires incredible coordination and technical skill; satellite operators must know precisely when their target will present itself, and their equipment must be capable of getting the shot.

Ancient Egyptian temples will inevitably dominate the story of the total solar eclipse on Aug. 2, 2027.

After all, the path of totality crosses Luxor, home to Karnak, the Valley of the Kings, and some of the ancient world's most famous monuments. But follow the moon's shadow west and another ancient civilization comes into view. Before reaching Egypt, totality will sweep across the Mediterranean and North Africa, passing over an extraordinary collection of Roman cities, fortresses, theaters, temples and triumphal arches. Many lie within what became Rome's North African provinces, a region that produced some of the empire's wealthiest and most impressive cities.

From beachside Baelo Claudia in Spain and military Tamuda in Morocco to Timgad and Djémila in Algeria and the jaw-dropping El Jem Amphitheater in Tunisia, Roman ruins will experience between two and more than five minutes of darkness — creating extraordinary possibilities for eclipse chasers and photographers. Here are some of the best places to watch the moon's shadow cross what was once the Roman Empire. All times, totality durations and historical cloud cover data come from Time and Date.

1. Baelo Claudia, Spain

Roman ruins, an Atlantic beach and the mountains of Africa could all share the frame with the eclipsed sun at Baelo Claudia. Founded in the second century B.C., this remarkably well-preserved Roman city near Bolonia beach includes a forum, basilica, theater, temples, baths and a decumanus maximus (east-west street), all set against forested hills and a vast coastal sand dune. For photographers, the possibilities are exceptional — columns and temples may provide an ancient foreground, while wider compositions could incorporate the beach and dunes. On particularly clear days, Morocco is visible across the Strait of Gibraltar — potentially putting Roman ruins, two continents and a total solar eclipse into one extraordinary scene.

2. Málaga Roman Theatre, Spain

Few eclipse locations can offer two civilizations in the same photograph. Málaga's Roman Theatre was built in the first century B.C., when the city was part of the Roman province of Hispania, and today sits directly beneath the Alcazaba, the imposing Muslim-era palace-fortress that dominates the hillside above. Although its totality is considerably shorter than locations farther south, the photographic possibilities are compelling. From a carefully chosen position, it may be possible to frame the darkened sun with the theater's ancient stonework and the walls of the Alcazaba rising behind it. Another major advantage for eclipse chasers is that this extraordinary historical setting sits in the heart of Málaga, making it one of the most accessible ancient sites on the path of totality.

3. Tamuda, Morocco

Long before the Romans arrived in northern Morocco, Tamuda was already a thriving Mauretanian settlement. Founded around the third century B.C. in the Martil Valley, near modern Tétouan, the Romans established a fortified military camp here in the first century A.D., whose massive stone walls remain the defining feature of this archaeological site. Tamuda combines long totality, promising weather and an atmospheric archaeological foreground — yet remains far less famous than the Roman sites across the Strait of Gibraltar.

4. Timgad, Algeria

Few places in the 2027 path of totality combine ancient architecture and long totality quite like Timgad. Founded around A.D. 100 as the Roman colony of Thamugadi, this remarkably well-preserved city sits on an open plateau at the foot of Algeria's Aurès Mountains. Its grid of streets, forum, theater, temples, baths and columns survives alongside its most famous monument, the three-arched gateway traditionally known as the Arch of Trajan. A relatively high sun will make close architectural compositions challenging, but Timgad's wide-open site provides plenty of possibilities for carefully planned wide-angle images.

5. Lambaesis, Algeria

Just 12—15 miles (20—25 km) west of Timgad lies its military counterpart. Lambaesis was the principal base of Rome's Legio III Augusta, the legion that helped secure Rome's African Empire. Rather than an entire gridded colonial city, the attraction here is monumental military architecture, most notably the imposing remains of the heart of the fortress. The eclipse circumstances are almost identical to nearby Timgad, with more than five minutes of totality and historically excellent prospects for clear skies. Scout both sites beforehand, study where the sun will stand above the ruins, and decide which offers the strongest alignment — and the easiest access — on eclipse morning.

6. Djémila, Algeria

Djémila trades a long eclipse for one of the most spectacular settings on the path of totality. Known to the Romans as Cuicul, this exceptionally well-preserved city was built in mountainous terrain around 2,950 feet (900 meters) above sea level — an unusual setting for a Roman settlement — and its ruins include temples, forums, houses, baths, arches and a theater. The surrounding green hills and mountains give eclipse photographers a very different backdrop from the flatter, more arid landscapes farther south. The catch is totality, which is significantly shorter than at other Roman ruins.

7. Sbeitla, Tunisia

Sbeitla could be one of the great archaeological settings for the 2027 eclipse. Known in Roman times as Sufetula, the city prospered under Roman rule and today contains some of Tunisia's most impressive ancient ruins. Its centerpiece is an unusual group of three remarkably well-preserved temples dedicated to Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, standing above the forum and reached through the monumental Arch of Antoninus Pius. That high sun will require some careful positioning and probably a wide-angle composition, but eclipse photographers will have an extraordinary collection of arches, columns and temples to use as foregrounds.

8. El Jem Amphitheater, Tunisia

It may be the third-largest and one of the best-preserved Roman amphitheaters in the world, but El Jem offers another reason to consider it for totality. Unlike Rome's Colosseum — which it closely resembles — visitors can explore its multi-tiered seating, climb high into the surviving structure for panoramic views and visit the underground passages once used by gladiators and animals. Built around A.D. 238, El Jem combines one of Rome's greatest surviving monuments with some of the most promising eclipse conditions on the entire track.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have discovered the oldest pair of supermassive black hole-powered quasars ever seen. There's just one problem: they shouldn't exist!

The compact quasar pair, spotted with the aid of the Gemini North telescope, has been designated J1602+4228AB and nicknamed Nāpōwawāʻenakaulua, which means "Two celestial bodies of fathomless powerful darkness in the brilliance of heat reincarnating energy into the universe." The compact quasar pair is seen as it was 900 million years after the Big Bang at a time when such supermassive black holes should not have had time to grow to such tremendous masses.

Nāpōwawāʻenakaulua isn't just the oldest and most distant quasar pairing ever seen. There is just 18,100 light-years, or roughly one-fifth the diameter of the Milky Way, between the supermassive black holes, which have masses of 1.5 billion and 400 million times that of the sun. That makes Nāpōwawāʻenakaulua the most compact quasar pair found during a period of the universe's history known as Cosmic Dawn, shortly after the birth of the first stars, galaxies, and black holes.

"There is no definitive theoretical explanation for how a single one of these giant quasars exists so early in the age of our universe, much less two," research team leader Silvia Onorato of the NOIRLab said in a statement.

"We observed Nāpōwawāʻenakaulua at a time when the universe was only a thirteenth of its age and, astonishingly, its supermassive black holes are just as massive as those we see today."

How were supermassive black holes over fed at Cosmic Dawn

Quasars occur when the supermassive black holes that sit at the heart of large galaxies are surrounded by a flattened cloud of swirling gas and dust called an "accretion disk," from which they feed or "accrete" matter. The immense gravity of the central black hole causes friction, heating the accretion disk and causing it to glow, often brighter than the combined light of every star in the surrounding galaxy. We see that glow as a quasar.

Finding such objects in the recent cosmic history of the 13.8-billion-year-old universe isn't troubling, though finding compact pairs of them is still extremely rare. Such pairs should be common because the merger of galaxies that brings together supermassive black holes is frequent. That should lead to an abundance of pairs of quasars with a separation less than the typical size of a galaxy.

There are three reasons this has proven tricky. Firstly, the "quasar phase" of a supermassive black hole is relatively short on cosmic terms. Secondly, even relatively close quasar pairs are very far away, making them faint and hard to detect with ground-based telescopes. Finally, at such great distances and with such a small separation between the two supermassive black holes, the individual members of a quasar pair are hard to individually resolve.

Yet, astronomers do find quasar pairs. Sometimes at distances and times that they would probably rather not, because it challenges everything we know about black hole growth.

The trouble arises before the universe was 1 billion years. That is because, according to current models, black holes should need at least 1 billion years to feed and merge enough to reach masses millions or billions of times that of the sun.

Yet, since it began operations in 2022, the JWST has been routinely discovering supermassive black holes powering quasars as early as 400 million years after the Big Bang. If that wasn't confusing enough, the discovery of Nāpōwawāʻenakaulua, the third quasar pair seen at Cosmic Dawn, could really break current models.

Nāpōwawāʻenakaulua was uncovered in data from the JWST's Aether survey, which is conducting a census of objects in the early universe. Using JWST’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph Integral Field Unit) instrument, the survey has uncovered 200 quasars, just under half of all currently known early universe quasars. It was while browsing the Aether dataset that the team discovered that quasar J1602+4228A is not alone, it had a companion now designated J1602+4228B.

Resolving these two quasars should have been nearly impossible from the ground. But this was possible for Gemini North thanks to perfect timing and perfect weather conditions over Maunakea, the dormant volcano on the island of Hawai'i where the telescope is located.

A definite scientific feat, Nāpōwawāʻenakaulua remains a mystery for now, but it could actually help scientists better understand how galaxies were coming together during Cosmic Dawn, a vital stage in the evolution of the universe.

"Nāpōwawāʻenakaulua is a really unique environment," Onorato said. "It's a laboratory for astronomers to study how the very first massive galaxies and their central black holes assembled together through direct galaxy interactions during these early times."

The team's results were published on Tuesday (Nov. 10) The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

SpaceX launched a classified mission for the U.S. Space Force from California tonight (Nov. 11), the second such flight for the company in a six-day span.

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base tonight at 11:36 p.m. EST (8:36 p.m. local California time; 0136 GMT on Nov. 12), kicking off a mission called USSF-627.

Vandenberg hosted a similar liftoff less than a week ago: On Nov. 6, a Falcon 9 sent the USSF-432 mission skyward from the site, which lies on California's gorgeous but often foggy central coast.

We don't know much about USSF-627 or USSF-432; both are classified. Some experts have speculated, however, that each mission launched a batch of SpaceX's Starshield satellites for the Space Force's Space Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio, which helps the military branch track potential targets around the world.

SpaceX didn't reveal details about either USSF-627 or USSF-432, and the company ended the webcast of both launches shortly after the first stages of their Falcon 9 rockets came back to Earth.

In both cases, that touchdown occurred about 8.5 minutes after liftoff on the SpaceX droneship "Of Course I Still Love You," which was stationed downrange of Vandenberg in the Pacific Ocean.

It was the seventh mission for USSF-627's Falcon 9 booster, which carries the designation 1103.

USSF-627 was the 120th Falcon 9 launch of 2026 and the rocket's 15th national-security flight of the year to date. Eighty-five of the 120 flights have been devoted to building out SpaceX's Starlink broadband constellation in low Earth orbit, which currently consists of more than 11,000 satellites.

The Falcon 9 is not on a record-breaking cadence this year. In 2025, the rocket flew a whopping 165 missions, and 122 of them were Starlink flights.

A long-term goal at NASA has been the ability to robotically haul back to Earth specimens from the Red Planet.

NASA is kickstarting a new initiative for its troubled Mars Sample Return (MSR) program, called the Perseverance Sample Retrieval Architecture, or PSRA in space shorthand. The plan is to establish a fresh NASA strategy for gathering Mars samples collected by the Perseverance rover and launching them back to Earth.

The PSRA initiative was noted on Nov. 9 by Tiffany Morgan, director of the NASA Mars Exploration Program (MEP), during the virtual meeting of the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG).

Here's the PSRA strategy:

• Develop impartial recommendations for retrieving the Martian samples collected by NASA's Perseverance Mars rover and deliver them to Earth
• Assess proposed mission requirements
• Review prior lessons learned
• Evaluate current capabilities and acquisition options

Morgan noted that there will be a PSRA strategy team kickoff in January 2027 with a final report due in winter 2027-2028.

Pick-me-ups

The backdrop to the PSRA activity is that there's one busy rover already on the Red Planet snagging and bagging samples.

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover remains on the prowl within Jezero Crater following its touchdown in February 2021. That car-sized robot has been grabbing select specimens from across the area and gingerly dropping the sealed pick-me-ups on the surface of Mars, as well as stuffing them inside the rover itself.

Those collectibles may well hold signs of past life on the enigmatic, dusty and foreboding Red Planet.

NASA and the European Space Agency have for years been intently plotting out plans to send future spacecraft to Mars and haul those Perseverance-plucked bits, pieces, and sniffs of atmosphere to Earth for rigorous inspection here on Earth using state-of-the-art equipment.

Sticker shock

However, over the years, multiple reviews of a NASA Mars Sample Return (MSR) project by independent groups have reported sticker shock findings. Indeed, one last price tag came in at about $11 billion, with samples being returned to Earth in 2040. That finding was deemed by NASA itself as too costly and not doable within an acceptable time frame.

Yet another appraisal group ended up finding it feasible to return Mars samples as early as 2035 for a less costly ship and shoot cost of some $8 billion.

How the PSRA review deals with MSR cost and a multitude of other concerns is in the to-be-determined column.

Why samples now?

In the first place, why are samples from Mars delivered by robotic means? Why not let a human expedition bring back the goods?

Also speaking at MEPAG was Bruce Jakosky of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder and Department of Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington.

Jakosky called for an integrated approach to planning human missions to Mars. He highlighted recommendations stemming from a workshop in which he participated, held last May and organized by Explore Mars, Inc.

That report focused on the impact of MSR on reducing risk for human missions, rather than focusing on the science, Jakosky told Space.com.

"The purpose is to understand the risk to astronauts and to hardware. The risk includes that from compounds that are present in the soil that are hazardous to astronauts if breathed in," said Jakosky. "This includes perchlorates and chloromethanes that have been identified already, and detection of other species that might be present. It also includes dust that can be breathed in by astronauts and that can affect hardware wear and tear," he said.

During the MEPAG gathering, Jakosky flagged the importance of returning samples prior to human missions to Mars, such as:

• Identify and characterize known hazardous chemicals to ensure astronaut safety (e.g., perchlorates and chloromethanes), and look for possible additional hazardous chemicals
• Characterize very fine dust particles that could cause respiratory issues in astronauts
• Characterize dust and regolith properties for spacesuit design and wear patterns
• Search in advance of the arrival of humans for evidence of extant life that could interact with terrestrial life
• Enhance astronaut effectiveness on the surface and science return from human missions by providing initial context and analysis
• Demonstrate successful round-trip to Mars
• Demonstrate successful round-trip travel, including entry, descent, landing and ascent from the surface of Mars.
• Demonstrate implementation of planetary protection protocols. While human missions would not use the same approaches, what we learn from doing these would make the approach for humans much easier to plan and implement.

China's program

Yet one more forcing factor for NASA in yet another relook at MSR is that China is making progress on its Tianwen-3 Mars Sample Return mission.

According to the China National Space Administration, the country's Tianwen-3 probe will have a lander, an ascender, a service capsule, an orbiter, and an Earth reentry module.

Tianwen-3 appears on track getting the trek underway around 2028 on two Long March-5 heavy-lift carrier rockets from the Wenchang Space Launch Site in China's southernmost island province of Hainan.

China's Tianwen-3 mission is dedicated to bring back to Earth roughly 500 grams of Red Planet collectibles in 2031.

Fast radio bursts, flashes of energy from faraway galaxies, are invisible to our eyes. However, we can now hear their melody, thanks to a composer who has turned them into sound.

Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are among the most extreme events in the universe, releasing as much energy in a millisecond as the sun puts out in three days and briefly outshining entire galaxies. Since the first FRB was discovered in 2007, astronomers have detected thousands of them; however, exactly how these cosmic flares are launched remains poorly understood. Recent evidence points to at least one burst coming from the environment around a rotating neutron star.

Despite their power, FRBs last only a few thousandths of a second before vanishing into space. Catching one takes luck, as a telescope has to be pointed at the right patch of sky at the right moment. That changed with CHIME (the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment) in British Columbia. With a very wide field of view and a supercomputer to process its data, CHIME more than quadrupled the number of known FRBs in its first year of operation alone. Between 2018 and 2023, CHIME recorded 4,539 bursts from 3,641 sources.

As pulses of radio waves, our eyes haven't evolved to see FRBs, nor can we hear them as they aren't sound waves. Well, not until now.

"Artist and composer Andrew Melchior turned all of the CHIME bursts into sound for "The Logos," an installation that has played daily at Oulu Cathedral in Finland since early April and is scheduled to run through the end of the year. Melchior and Kiyoshi Masui, an associate professor of physics at MIT, "sonified" the bursts, translating data into acoustics so that human ears can hear them.

The structure of each real signal is mapped to varying musical pitches and played through 12 loudspeakers spread throughout the cathedral. The result is a range of tones, with distant FRBs humming, rumbling, popping, and whistling.

The signals are old by any human measure. According to a description on Melchior's website, the youngest in the work are about 50 million years old, and the oldest are about 8 to 9 billion years old.

Physics also plays a role in what is heard. Each burst arrives with its high frequencies first and sweeps downward, stretched by its journey through intergalactic gas, "and you can hear that dispersion as it falls from the dome," Melchior told Space.com by email.

Since their discovery in 2007, the bursts are also still yielding discoveries. Last month, astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope pinpointed the host galaxy of the most distant FRB yet, one that went off when the universe was only about 3 billion years old.

The galaxy, a small, young, star-forming dwarf, was far smaller than expected. That makes it harder to square with the theory that FRBs come from merging neutron stars, researchers say, which would take billions of years to occur.

This fits better with a second theory, in which a young, highly magnetic neutron star called a magnetar produces the burst soon after a massive star explodes, according to NASA.

Back on Earth, an upcoming event at Oulu Cathedral offers a more immediate encounter with the bursts. On Nov. 21, 30 singers will stand among the audience and "sing back to the sky in Finnish" while Melchior plays the bursts live from a keyboard, he told Space.com by email.

"The fast flashes will echo as snare-like beats bouncing through the cathedral," Masui said in a previous MIT statement.

"It should feel rich and layered, while also revealing something real about how these signals travel across billions of years of cosmic space before reaching Earth."

On Nov. 11, 1966, the Gemini 12 mission launched an astronaut crew into orbit and set the stage for NASA's Apollo program to land humans on the moon.

Gemini 12 was the last mission of the Gemini program. It had two astronauts on board: Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin. NASA wanted to send humans to the moon. But first, it needed to make sure crews had the right skills, like docking vehicles in space and taking spacewalks.

Before Gemini 12, astronauts struggled with spacewalks because there weren't enough handholds on their spacecraft. NASA made some spacewalk changes for Gemini 12. Aldrin performed three spacewalks and spent more than five hours working in space with no major problems. Gemini 12 also successfully docked to an unpiloted Agena booster that launched the same day.

The astronauts returned to Earth after four days in space. Both Aldrin and Lovell went on to join the Apollo program. Aldrin became the second person to walk on the moon during Apollo 11, and Lovell became the commander of Apollo 13.

Why it mattered

Gemini 12 may have closed out NASA's Gemini program of two-person space missions, but it established the mission also established the fundamentals of spacewalking that Apollo astronauts would use when they walked on the moon.

It's fitting that Aldrin was the primary spacewalker of the mission. A rookie astronaut (and the first to earn a Ph.D.), Aldrin set a precedent by training for his spacewalk in a neutral buoyancy pool in Maryland to better simulate working in weightlessness. Then he did it again as the second person to walk on the moon on Apollo 11.

"This approach became so successful, underwater training has become the primary spacewalk training method used by the United State, Russia and China," NASA officials said in a mission overview. "Today, NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory in Houston is large enough to include mockups of major sections of the International Space Station. As such, it is the largest indoor body of water in the world, with 6.2 million gallons of water."

The Agena docking target for Gemini 12 launched into orbit just over 90 minutes ahead of Lovell (the mission commander) and Aldrin. Aldrin ended up using a sextant to help Lovell rendevous with the agena after they lost radar lock within 74 miles of the vehicle.

During his spacewalks, Aldrin installed handrails, used foot restraints and other tools that have since become routine on spacewalks in orbit. They also tested tools and techniques that Aldrin and other moonwalks would use on the moon.

Gemini 12 also tested a computer-controlled reentry technique when it returned to Earth on Nov. 15, landing Lovell and Aldrin just 3 miles from their target near their recovery ship the USS Wasp in the Atlantic Ocean, about 600 miles east of Cape Canaveral.

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.

Imagine you’ve crash-landed on an alien planet. Your ship is destroyed, your oxygen supply is dangerously low, and the landscape around you is completely unknown. Where would you begin looking for clues to your survival? Surprisingly, the best place to start could be the star overhead.

This is the predicament that three crew members of the Wild Blue Yonder face in Audible’s new sci-fi thriller, "Exoplanet." This sci-fi thriller is written by acclaimed comic writer Benjamin Percy, executive produced by Andy Weir (Project Hail Mary, The Martian), and features an all-star voice cast including Anthony Mackie, Ariana DeBose, and John Leguizamo.

Stranded on an unfamiliar planet, they encounter volcanic wastelands, unknown skies, and environments that seem to defy reason. But behind the extraordinary events of this audio drama is a very real scientific question: what makes a planet habitable?

Learning from the stars

In “Exoplanet”, the crew view skies that are not only unfamiliar but also seemingly different from one another. One character sees a sun as so dim that he can look directly at it, while another suffers under a blazing heat, surrounded by stretches of sun-scorched red rock.

For astronomers, the light emitted by a star is one of the most crucial tools for understanding planets orbiting it.

Using a technique called spectroscopy, astronomers split starlight into its constituent wavelengths, producing a spectrum much like a rainbow. By studying this spectrum, they can investigate the temperature, composition, and other physical properties of the star.

However, stellar temperature is only part of the picture. The amount of energy a planet receives depends on both the luminosity of the star and its orbital distance.

Astronomers use these measurements to determine whether a world lies in the habitable zone of a star, where temperatures could allow liquid water to exist on the surface given a suitable atmosphere.

A planet orbiting a cool red dwarf would need to be much closer to its star than Earth is to the Sun to be in this habitable zone. Unfortunately, being in this zone is no guarantee of a planetary paradise.

Hostile stars

A planet that sits comfortably in the habitable zone is ultimately still at the mercy of its star. Stars emit more than just the light we see. Ultraviolet radiation and X-rays can interact with planetary atmospheres, altering chemistry and even contributing to the loss of the atmosphere.

Violent stellar flares can produce bursts of high-energy radiation. A planet could offer a wonderfully balmy temperature, only to be bombarded with radiation from the host star.

The age of a star matters too. Young stars tend to be more active, with radiation that could erode a planet’s atmosphere over time. Meanwhile, as stars age and evolve, their changing luminosities can drastically alter the conditions a planet experiences.

For the stranded crew in “Exoplanet”, understanding the star overhead may therefore be as important as knowing the landscape beneath their feet.

Is the air breathable?

Even if a planet has survived all the complications we’ve just thrown at it, there’s still a rather important question: could we actually breathe the air?

In "Exoplanet", one crew member discovers that the planet’s atmosphere contains enough oxygen for him to breathe without his spacesuit. On Earth, oxygen makes up around 21% of our atmosphere. However, finding a similar percentage on another planet wouldn’t automatically mean the air is safe to breathe.

Atmospheric pressure matters just as much. At high altitudes on Earth, the oxygen percentage remains the same, but the lower pressure means less oxygen is available to our lungs.

Oxygen isn’t the only concern, either. The fictional planet’s volcanic landscape releases gases such as sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide, both of which are hazardous at high concentrations. Even an oxygen-rich atmosphere could still be lethal.

Searching for life

But what if you don't just need to know if a planet is habitable? What if you need to know if something already lives there?

Before the Wild Blue Yonder arrived at the planet, probes detected dimethyl sulfide, a molecule we associate with biological activity on Earth. This is a beautifully timely detail, as this very molecule has been at the heart of a scientific debate about one of the most intriguing exoplanets discovered so far.

Astronomers have investigated possible signs of dimethyl sulfide in the atmosphere of K2-18 b, an exoplanet orbiting a red dwarf. However, both the detection itself and the biological interpretation remain heavily disputed.

The challenge is that detecting a single molecule isn’t definitive evidence of life. Its presence can be influenced by factors other than biology, like atmospheric chemistry and stellar radiation.

Understanding whether such a molecule could actually indicate life means studying not just the planet’s atmosphere, but also the radiation it receives from its star.

More than Earth Mark 2

Astronomers have discovered thousands of exoplanets. Understanding whether any could support life is, however, an extraordinary challenge.

The distance between the planet and the star might give us a good clue, but its atmosphere, geology, and stellar environment are all interconnected in determining whether life could survive. For the unfortunate crew of the Wild Blue Yonder, those distinctions could mean the difference between survival and utter disaster.

We might one day identify a planet with Earth-like temperatures, liquid water, and abundant oxygen. But even then, there’s still a huge gap dividing a potentially habitable planet from one where we could safely remove our helmets.

"Exoplanet" is available now exclusively from Audible. It is free for members of its subscription tiers or available to purchase separately.

The origin of life on Earth remains a mystery. New research shows that comets almost certainly did not bring the chemical building blocks of life to our planet.

Life as we know it is based around carbon chemistry, also known as organic chemistry. Complex organic molecules are the fundamental building blocks of biochemical compounds such as nucleobases, amino acids, sugars and so on that act as the machinery for biochemistry on Earth.

Two big questions are where did this complex chemistry originate? Did these complex organic molecules form on Earth, or were they delivered here from space?

New research led by planetary scientist Richard Anslow of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Cambridge has now seemingly ruled out comets as the origin of complex organic molecules on Earth.

"Historically, scientists thought that comets were important for the origin of life on Earth, because they carried carbon and nitrogen-bearing molecules, so these giant space snowballs were almost like a 'get-out-of-jail-free card' that brought all the molecules a planet would need to seed life," said Anslow in a statement.

Stripping the romance from the Earth's turbulent past

Comet impacts on Earth were much more frequent in the first half-billion years of the solar system’s existence, when there were still lots of debris leftover from the formation of the planets.

For over a century comet impacts had been considered a prime suspect in the search for what brought the building blocks of life to Earth. However, while comets bringing the building blocks of life to Earth is "kind of a romantic idea," according to Anslow, the University of Cambridge researcher added that the team's results suggest that is highly unlikely.

Anslow and colleagues arrived at this conclusion based upon computer modeling by using the very latest simulations depicting the origin and evolution of comets and their orbits, their interactions with Earth's atmosphere as they enter it, and of the hypervelocity comet impacts themselves.

In particular, they used the fate of hydrogen cyanide as a proxy for what happens to complex organic molecules in comet impacts. Hydrogen cyanide is frequently found in comets and was even detected in the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS.

The problem is that comets are generally moving at too great a velocity. For organic molecules to survive impact, the impact velocity would have to be below 33,500 miles per hour (15 kilometers per second).

Anslow and his colleagues found that, in general, comets travel too fast and enter Earth’s atmosphere at too sharp an angle for complex organic molecules to survive. Instead, they are mostly vaporized on impact. Even on the rare occasions that the complex organic molecules survived, they were usually not in great enough abundance to provide any meaningful prebiotic chemistry.

"It would really have to be a one-in-a-million occurrence, because not only would you need an impact at just the right speed and just the right angle, you would also need everything to happen after that point, in terms of the concentration and the speed at which the chemical origins of life got going," said Anslow. "We can’t rule out for certain that it happened that way, but it seems to be a really rare occurrence – at best, a one-off fluke."

Maybe life on Earth is a fluke

It is not yet known if the origin of life on Earth was a fluke, or whether life is plentiful in the universe, so a fluke occurrence could still have been a trigger for life on our planet.

However, researchers are coming around to alternatives, either that all the pre-biotic chemistry that resulted in life took place on Earth without requiring material from space, or asteroids instead brought those important molecules to Earth.

Scientists have found asteroids to be rich in those molecules – for example, the sample of material brought back by the OSIRIS-REx mission from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu contained all the building blocks of RNA.

However, other planets could have plausibly benefitted from comet impacts. The simulations showed that complex organic molecules in comets would stand a slightly better chance of surviving impacts on Mars, because of the Red Planet’s thinner atmosphere and lower gravity.

"This is not to say it definitely happened on Mars, of course, but it suggests it would be unlikely if it happened on Earth and didn’t happen on Mars," said Anslow. "Or the other, perhaps more likely, alternative is that it didn’t happen on either planet."

More intriguing are the possibilities on exoplanets, specifically the peas-in-a-pod multi-planet systems around red dwarf stars such as TRAPPIST-1, where all the planets are bunched up close.

In 2023 Anslow wrote a research paper describing how comets could gravitationally bounce from one planet to the next, losing velocity in the process so that when they crash into one of the planets, they impact is not so severe and complex organic molecules might have a chance to survive.

The team's research was published on 28 October in Scientific Reports.

The coming launch bottleneck has ramped up demand for a rocket that has yet to leave the ground.

Rocket Lab announced on Monday (Nov. 9) that it recently raised the price of a Neutron launch from $55 million to $70 million — an increase of more than 25%, for a ride on a rocket that's set to debut in 2027.

"Launch is extremely constrained, and that is exactly the situation we predicted," Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck said on Monday during the company's third-quarter earnings call. "We saw a pent-up launch market on the horizon, and rather than provide early discounted launches, we set out to deliver a rocket into an environment with extreme demand at full price or higher."

Rocket Lab is best known for Electron, a workhorse small-satellite launcher that debuted in 2017 and now has 90 orbital missions under its belt. The 59-foot-tall (18 meters) expendable rocket and can haul 660 pounds (300 kilograms) to low Earth orbit (LEO).

Neutron is the company's entry into the medium-lift market. It features a reusable first stage, stands 141 feet (43 m) tall and can carry 14.3 tons (13 metric tons) of payload to LEO.

Rocket Lab announced Neutron back in 2021 and first targeted a 2024 debut for the vehicle. But various problems have cropped up over the years, pushing things back. Last month, for example, Rocket Lab announced that it was delaying the first Neutron flight from late 2026 into 2027 due to a manufacturing issue (which it says is now under control).

Such setbacks have not dampened demand for Neutron's services, however. During Monday's call, Beck revealed that Rocket Lab booked eight Neutron launches during the third quarter of 2026, which ran from July 1 through Sept. 30.

The contracts for those eight flights are worth "a total of roughly 515 million, including multiple missions on a new escalated base price of $70 million," Beck said. Neutron's first 16 launches are now sold out, he added, and bookings from here on will be for flights in the 2030s.

"The demand is a function of both a tightening global launch supply and our customers' confidence that Rocket Lab is the right partner to break the world's launch bottleneck," Beck said.

That bottleneck is coming in 2028 or so, when SpaceX plans to retire its Falcon 9 rocket. For some perspective, and comparison with Neutron: SpaceX currently charges $74 million for each Falcon 9 launch. The rocket has a reusable first stage and can carry about 25 tons (22.7 metric tons) to LEO.

The medium lifter has been the world's most prolific rocket for the past few years. In 2025, for example, it flew 165 times — roughly the same number of orbital missions as all other launchers in the world combined. And all 165 of those flights were successful.

But SpaceX is phasing out the Falcon 9 — and its heavy-lift cousin, the Falcon Heavy — nonetheless, shifting all launch work over to its fully reusable Starship megarocket, which can haul more than 100 tons to LEO.

There's a real worry among folks in the space community that this massive payload capacity won't be available to them for a while. SpaceX has made it pretty clear that early Starship operations will be geared toward internal priorities — specifically, the buildout of SpaceX's Starlink V3 broadband network and its Starmind AI data-center constellation.

These will be very big jobs, even for the most powerful rocket ever built. For example, the Starlink V3 megaconstellation will consist of about 100,000 satellites, according to SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk. Starship can carry about 60 of these spacecraft to LEO per launch, so just building out the constellation will require about 1,700 liftoffs.

The numbers for Starmind will be even more mind-boggling, for SpaceX wants that constellation to eventually harbor a million satellites.

The coming launch bottleneck should increase demand for Electron as well as Neutron, Beck said during Monday's call. After all, many small-satellite operators have launched with SpaceX over the years, booking spots on Falcon 9 "rideshare" flights. And those opportunities are now drying up.

"The next logical alternative is of course an Electron, so we see tremendous traction there," Beck said.

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured a breathtaking view of thousands of stars glittering like cosmic jewels in a dazzling display of blue, gold and orange.

But this spectacular scene is far more than just a pretty picture. Some of these stars are almost as old as the universe itself and could hold clues to how our Milky Way formed.

What is it?

The exquisite image released by ESA on Nov. 5 shows Messier 30 (M30), a densely packed collection of stars located approximately 27,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Capricornus.

M30 is a globular cluster, a roughly spherical collection of tens of thousands to millions of stars held together by gravity.

Our Milky Way is home to at least 150 of these ancient stellar gatherings, some of which are estimated to be between 11.5 billion and 13.5 billion years old. For comparison, the universe itself is approximately 13.8 billion years old!

Why is it amazing

Besides looking like a vast cosmic treasure trove glittering across the universe, M30 also has a fascinating story to tell.

Globular clusters are essentially cosmic time capsules. Their ancient stars preserve chemical clues about the conditions that existed when they formed, helping astronomers piece together the Milky Way's early history.

Astronomers have also discovered that M30, along with several other globular clusters, traverses the Milky Way in the opposite direction to the galaxy's rotation. This unusual motion raises the intriguing possibility that M30 may not have formed in our galaxy at all. It could have simply been captured by the Milky Way billions of years ago.

I’ve used several smart telescopes over the last few years, but I'd recommend the ZWO Seestar S30 Plus to almost anyone wanting to get started in astrophotography. At $499/€499, it’s a complete imaging system that can photograph galaxies, nebulae and star clusters automatically, even from a light-polluted city. Better still, it’s so small that it can live on a bookshelf.

I recently captured images of the Dumbbell Nebula (M27), the North America Nebula (NGC 7000), the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) and the Pleiades (M45) with the S30 Plus. All were remarkably easy to capture, and none of the images accompanying this review required external processing. It’s basically point-and-shoot astrophotography — if you live under light-polluted skies, that’s a game-changer.

I also think the S30 Plus makes an ideal companion to a conventional optical telescope. I can set it to photograph a nebula I have no hope of seeing under light pollution while I try to find brighter objects through the eyepiece of another telescope. It will then get on with collecting photons while I enjoy observing.

For anyone who already owns a telescope but doesn’t want the expense and complexity of conventional astrophotography, that’s a compelling proposition.

I photographed nebulas despite light pollution

One problem with buying a cheap optical telescope is that deep-sky objects rarely resemble the colorful photographs you see online. The moon, planets and bright star clusters can look wonderful through an eyepiece, but faint galaxies and nebulas are much harder to appreciate, particularly from a town or city.

Like all smart telescopes, the S30 Plus gets around that problem by photographing objects rather than showing them directly. Its camera takes repeated exposures, which the telescope automatically stacks to reduce noise and gradually reveal faint detail. The longer you leave it working, the better the resulting image tends to become.

Being able to photograph colorful nebulas without traveling to a remote observing site is one of the biggest attractions of the S30 Plus. For beginners living in cities, it could transform their experience of astronomy.

It’s the perfect companion to my optical telescope

I’ve always preferred spending my nights looking at the sky rather than fiddling with equipment, which is one reason I enjoy smart telescopes. Traditional astrophotography can involve a camera, tracking mount, adapters, cables, alignment, a laptop and considerable patience before the first useful exposure begins. The S30 Plus removes almost all of that.

I can put it outside, connect the Seestar app and choose a target from its built-in sky atlas. The telescope then moves to the correct position, identifies the star field, centers the object, focuses and begins imaging. Within minutes, a photograph starts appearing on my smartphone. That leaves me free to use an optical telescope alongside it — or stay inside and do something else.

The longer I leave it alone, the better the images get

Using the S30 Plus’s built-in UV/IR cut filter — which blocks ultraviolet and infrared light — I captured the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), a popular deep-sky object. As the hours went by, the dust lanes on its outskirts appeared in ever more detail. That’s how smart telescopes work — they collect and combine dozens or hundreds of short exposures, gradually revealing fainter structure while reducing noise.

So impressive is the image after only about five or six exposures that it’s tempting to stop after a few minutes — but patience makes an enormous difference. Fortunately, you don’t have to stand beside the S30 Plus. You can leave it collecting light — even overnight, thanks to its scheduling option (though it’s not waterproof, so check the weather forecast!).

Using the dual-band anti-light pollution filter, the Pleiades open cluster (M45) provided another interesting test. The S30 Plus has a mosaic mode that photographs overlapping sections of sky to create a larger image than its main camera can capture in a single frame. It’s ideal for expansive targets such as the Pleiades and Andromeda, although gathering enough exposures takes time. The app shows how much of the mosaic has been completed, and if needs be, you can continue collecting data on subsequent nights.

I also photographed the Double Cluster in Perseus (NGC 869 and NGC 884) and the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules (M13), both relatively swift targets, but as anyone who’s used a smart telescope knows, it’s the faint nebulas that are the real prize. For those, dark skies mean better data — and that’s exactly why a smart telescope needs to be portable.

It’s small enough to fit in my camera bag

The S30 Plus weighs just 3.64 lbs (1.65 kg) and measures 8.25 x 5.5 x 3.15 inches (210 x 140 x 80 mm) when switched off. That’s small enough to fit into a camera bag in place of another lens or camera body, which is a major advantage because I travel to remote locations quite frequently. That fact that it sits on such a tiny tripod is also a boon.

I’ve recently used the much larger Seestar S50 Pro, which weighs 6.17 lbs (2.8 kg). It’s a more capable imaging instrument with a 50mm aperture and a larger 8.3-megapixel sensor, but its heavier, bulkier chassis is harder to get into carry-on luggage. The S30 Plus and the higher-spec S30 Pro also differ from the S50 Pro in that they come with a padded carry case. This has a useful carrying handle, although there’s no shoulder strap or dedicated storage for the tripod and magnetic solar filter.

It’s also worth taking along a portable battery and USB-C cable to recharge its built-in 6,000mAh battery during long sessions, though it lasts about six hours, which will suit most observing sessions.

It’s much more advanced than the original S30

The original, now-discontinued S30 was already impressive, but the S30 Plus is a substantial upgrade. It has improved four-element apochromatic optics with ED glass and two 3.7-megapixel cameras, each producing 1,440x2,560-pixel images. That’s almost 80% more pixels than the original S30’s main camera.

The main camera’s field of view has increased slightly to about three degrees, while the wide-angle camera now covers 43.5 degrees of sky. The latter can be used for star trails, though I suspect it’s something most people will experiment with occasionally.

There’s also an EQ mode. This will align the telescope with Earth’s rotation to allow longer exposures and sharper edges, which I found worked really well. It requires an appropriately angled mount or wedge (such as the Seestar TH10 Fluid Tripod Head) and a small tripod.

I tested it at 51 degrees north, which randomly appears to be the cut-off point for ease of use because of the tilt it puts on the telescope. It’s when a tripod begins to topple with the weight, meaning you need a tripod whose legs can be set at a low angle (Seestar’s TC20 tripod would be ideal, and is very compact).

The app makes it all very easy to set up, and advanced imaging possibilities like this are welcome. So, too, is the option of outputting images as lossless FITS files for anyone wanting to process their images using specialist software.

That’s what makes the Seestar S30 Plus such a good beginner’s telescope. It’s easy to use immediately, but there’s plenty of scope to develop more sophisticated astrophotography skills without buying another instrument.

I photographed the moon and sun during the day

The S30 Plus isn’t limited to deep-sky photography. I photographed a near-full moon against a blue daytime sky, something I particularly enjoy doing with smart telescopes because they’re so quick to set up.

It also comes with a magnetic white-light solar filter, allowing safe photographs of the sun when the filter is securely fitted. This must always be installed before pointing the telescope towards the sun. I did have to manually guide the S30 Plus to the sun and moon on a few occasions, but it’s easy enough to do, and I actually like the option to manually take control — few other smart telescopes allow it. Once you’ve found the sun or moon, the scope centers it and keeps it in view (unless you’re on a moving ship, by the way, where tracking generally fails — something for eclipse chasers to think about).

Planetary photography is less impressive. The 30mm aperture and short focal length aren’t ideal for detailed views of Jupiter or Saturn, so for anyone primarily interested in observing and imaging planets, I’d recommend a conventional optical telescope instead.

I could spend years exploring the sky with this telescope

The S30 Plus occupies an interesting position in ZWO’s increasingly crowded Seestar range. With dual 8.3MP cameras and wider fields of view, the S30 Pro is a worthy upgrade from the original S30. Meanwhile, the $999 S50 Pro has a larger 50mm aperture that collects almost three times as much light, although it’s also significantly bulkier and more expensive.

Alternatives exist outside ZWO’s range. DwarfLab’s Dwarf Mini is exceptionally portable, but its lower resolution and more limited capabilities make it less versatile. At the other extreme, Unistellar’s Odyssey has an 85mm aperture, an electronic eyepiece and opportunities to contribute to citizen science projects, but it sits in a different price bracket.

The S30 Plus will hit the sweet spot for many. It offers almost everything a beginner needs to explore deep-sky astrophotography, with built-in filters, mosaic mode and EQ tracking giving plenty of advanced features to grow into. Crucially, it’s small enough to travel with easily. Yes, you can spend more and get slightly better image data, but most beginners don’t need to.

The Seestar S30 Plus is one of the most affordable smart telescopes available, but it’s also one of the best-value offerings in its class.

A new NASA space telescope will study the universe in ultraviolet light to reveal the violent and turbulent events that bubble under what appears to be a cosmic sea of tranquility.

The Ultraviolet Explorer (UVEX) mission, developed by NASA in conjunction with the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), will be the first mission to create deep all-sky maps in ultraviolet light. Thus, when it launches in 2031, UVEX will join new sky-mapping surveys like NASA's SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer), which scans the cosmos in infrared, and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which does the same over the southern hemisphere in visible light, in creating deep-sky maps across a broad swathe of the electromagnetic spectrum.

UVEX's ultraviolet views will reveal explosive events such as the collisions between ultra-dense stellar corpses called neutron stars and the supernova explosions that mark the deaths of massive stars and the births of neutron stars and black holes. Additionally, the NASA ultraviolet telescope should be able to detect a multitude of low-mass galaxies much closer to the Milky Way than similar galaxies that are currently being observed millions and even billions of light-years away by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

The $590 million UVEX mission will "advance fundamental frontiers in astrophysics, from understanding the smallest galaxies to diagnosing the aftermath of neutron-star mergers and other cosmic explosions," the mission's principal investigator, Caltech physics professor Fiona Harrison, said in an Oct. 27 statement.

"The first major ultraviolet space mission in two decades, UVEX is a bold leap forward in our exploration of the ultraviolet universe," Caltech President Ray Jayawardhana said in the same statement.

UVEX will paint a picture of cosmic life, death and afterlife

UVEX will benefit from a major leap forward in UV sensitivity thanks to its Caltech-built sensors, which are based on complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) imaging technology. This will help the spacecraft tap into what Harrison described as "the untapped opportunity in the UV."

UVEX will be uniquely poised to spot millions of nearby, small, and faint galaxies that are teeming with infant stars that emit bright UV light.

"In optical light, it's very hard to distinguish these nearby galaxies from faraway ones that look similar," Harrison said. "UV light will make them easier to find."

UVEX won't just be investigating the infancy of stars, however. It will also examine the deaths of ancient stars in the form of supernovas.

Supernovas occur when a massive star runs out of fuel for nuclear fusion and can no longer support itself against the inward push of its own gravity. As the core of the star collapses, its outer layers are blasted outward in cosmic explosions we call supernovas.

This is a process that scientists are keen to understand, as these explosions fling the heavy elements forged during the stars' lifetimes into surrounding galaxies. This material becomes the building blocks of the next generation of stars, planets, and possibly even life.

UVEX will also investigate what happens to the end products of some supernovas, neutron stars, when they meet and merge.

Neutron stars contain between one and two times the mass of the sun crammed into a width of around 12 miles (20 kilometers). That means they are composed of matter so dense that, if a teaspoon of it were brought to Earth, it would weigh over 1 billion tons. That's equivalent to stacking around 9 million adult blue whales on a spoon.

So, when neutron stars in binary systems spiral together and merge, they create an environment so violent that it's the only place in the universe where scientists are sure that elements heavier than lead, like gold, silver, and platinum, are able to be forged.

Currently, neutron star mergers are detected via ripples in spacetime called gravitational waves. Scientists can then follow up on the aftermath of the mergers by observing them in electromagnetic light, from high-energy gamma rays to low-energy radio waves. Thus, UVEX will add another aspect to the investigation of neutron star collisions and our understanding of where heavy elements originate.

The new space telescope's maneuverability will allow it to observe these explosive events very shortly after they happen, giving it an advantage over other instruments, including NASA's long-serving Hubble Space Telescope.

"With UVEX, we will now be able to follow up on gravitational-wave events in ultraviolet light," UVEX team member and Caltech scientist Mansi Kasliwal said in the same statement. "I can count on two hands how many spectra we have of transient events in their infancy phase with the Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble is, of course, amazing and does have some ultraviolet capabilities, but it cannot rapidly pivot to observe real-time events."

UVEX will also be revolutionary in the study of blue stars that have had their outer layers of hydrogen stripped away by companion stars. These stars offer researchers a unique opportunity to study the interior of stars, which is usually obscured by their outer layers.

"We will be able to see what's inside the stars," Kareem El-Badry, an associate professor of astronomy at Caltech and a member of the UVEX team, said in the same statement. "We only know of a small number of stripped stars of this type now. UVEX will find hundreds."

All of the above elements discussed are the expected discoveries and investigations that UVEX will be involved with. Perhaps even more exciting, however, are the unexpected elements of the universe it will uncover.

"Every time you look at the skies in a new wavelength, you learn something new and unexpected," El-Badry said.

SpaceX is just days away from what might be its most ambitious test flight yet of the company's massive Starship megarocket, the largest launch vehicle ever built.

On Friday (Nov. 13), SpaceX will launch its next Starship test flight on a mission that, if successful, will return both its Super Heavy first-stage booster and Ship upper stage to Earth for back-to-back landings at their launch pad. It will be the first full recovery of an orbital rocket in history. And if you want to watch it live, you'll need to know what time and where to tune in.

In our guide below, we'll explain exactly when and how to watch SpaceX's Starship Flight 15 mission. It is the 15th test flight of the giant stainless-steel reusable rocket, which SpaceX wants to use for everything from Starlink internet satellite launches to landing NASA Artemis astronauts on the moon in 2028, and even for a crewed flight to Mars. But first, SpaceX has to successfully recover and refly both stages, something it's never done before — and that's where Flight 15 comes in. It's the first time the company will try to land an entire Starship rocket. Here's when to tune in.

What time is SpaceX's Starship Flight 15 launch (and landing)?

The Starship Flight 15 test mission is currently scheduled to launch no earlier than Friday, Nov. 13, at 5:45 p.m. EST (2245 GMT), from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas. But there is a chance of a later liftoff time.

SpaceX has said it has a 75-minute window in which to launch Starship Flight 15 to add some flexibility into its preflight countdown. That means the launch could take place anytime between 5:45 p.m. and 7 p.m. EST (2245-0000 Nov. 14). The local time for the launch window will be 4:45 p.m. to 6 p.m. CST.

SpaceX has not formally announced if it has backup days for the launch, but if the company does have those options, liftoff would likely occur at the same time, based on past Starship missions that saw delays.

One thing that separates Starship Flight 15 from past Starship test flights is its length. The mission, if it runs its full duration, will last just over 22.5 hours until Ship lands back at Starbase. That landing would occur on Saturday, Nov. 14, at 4:17 p.m. EST (2117 GMT). If SpaceX launches at the end of its window on Friday, at 7 p.m. EST, the Ship landing would occur on Saturday at 5:32 p.m. EST (2232 GMT).

Meanwhile, the Super Heavy, known as Booster 22, will land about 6.5 minutes after liftoff.

Related: Read our SpaceX Starship and Super Heavy guide for a detailed look at the megarocket.

Can I watch SpaceX's Starship Flight 15 launch?

Yes, you'll be able to watch SpaceX's Starship Flight 15 launch online, and you have many ways to do so.

Space.com will host a livestream simulcast of Starship Flight 15 on this page, as well as on our homepage and our YouTube channel VideoFromSpace. That webcast will begin about 30 minutes before liftoff, at 5:15 p.m. EST (2215 GMT).

SpaceX, of course, will offer its own Starship Flight 15 livestream on its Flight 15 mission page, as well as on its X account. That livestream will also begin 30 minutes before launch, at 5:15 p.m. EST (it's the same one as on Space.com).

A prelaunch show

If you need your Starship launch preparations fix before the Nov. 13 launch, good news: You can see SpaceX's prep work live online.

NASASpaceflight's YouTube channel offers live views of SpaceX's Starship pads at Starbase 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

On Wednesday (Nov. 11), the channel will stream live views of the Starship Flight 15 rocket stacking, starting at 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT).

The NASASpaceflight Flight 15 launch webcast will begin on Nov. 13 at 11:45 a.m. EDT (1645 GMT), about six hours before launch. NASASpaceflight typically offers live commentary and constantly changing views of the Starship launch pad via remote cameras positioned around Starbase.

In-person launch options

If there was ever a SpaceX Starship test flight to see in person, this just might be it.

In addition to watching the world's largest rocket launch into space, Starship Flight 15 offers the chance to see both parts of that megarocket return to Earth and be caught in mid-air, 22 hours apart.

If you've read our past Starship launch viewing guides, you'll know that SpaceX doesn't have an official viewing site for Starship launches. But you can see the spectacle from several public beaches (as well as private campgrounds).

Cameron County Amphitheater at Isla Blanca Park on South Padre Island is always my first recommendation (I watched the first Starship launch from there in April 2023). The park offers a clear view of the Starship launch site across the bay and includes views of boats on the water. There are also bathrooms close by for your convenience. It's 5 miles (8 kilometers) from the launch site as the crow flies. But plan to head out early as traffic can be heavy, especially if you have to cross the bridge from Port Isabel.

Speaking of Port Isabel, there are stretches along Highway 48 between Port Isabel and Brownsville, Texas where you can pull over to the shoulder to watch the launch from 6 to 8 miles (10 to 13 km) away. But it's just the side of a highway, so don't expect bathrooms there. The website SpaceLaunchSchedule.com does report that there are "open pull-offs" to park, from which you can get "wide wetland views." And, of course, it's free. I've driven along Highway 48 during two Starbase visits but have not pulled over to the shoulder to test this site.

If you're on the Mexico side of the border, you may be able to watch Starship Flight 15 from Playa Bagdad, a public beach with a "head-on view of the launch tower and a festive vibe," according to SpaceLaunchSchedule.com.

Finally, there is the Rocket Ranch campground, where you can get a closer view of Starship launches — but you have to pay $200 a ticket (kids under age 17 are $40). The ranch is 3.8 miles (6.1 km) from the Starbase launch site, and your ticket allows you to camp there for one day and one night. Longer four-day stay packages are available.

The Rocket Ranch has two primary viewing locations: The "Outpost" offers the closest view and "unmatched media service," so you can stay connected. The second location is a bit farther away on the campground itself. Please note: Tickets include bus transportation from the ranch campground to a viewing site and back, but it is for one launch attempt only. Be sure to read the full Rocket Ranch FAQ for details on the site.

How long is SpaceX's Starship Flight 15?

If everything goes to plan, SpaceX's Starship Flight 15 orbital launch and landing test could last up to 22.5 hours and orbit the Earth 14 times.

"If successful, this will mark the first full recovery of an orbital launch system and a breakthrough moment in making Starship a reliable, rapidly reusable rocket," SpaceX wrote in a mission overview.

But the test flight could end early. That's what happened on SpaceX's first orbital Starship test mission, Flight 14 on Sept. 28, which was expected to last nearly 10 hours and orbit Earth six times. Instead, SpaceX ended the mission after three hours and two orbits of Earth as a safety precaution.

"Starship’s initial return to launch site mission is expected to orbit the Earth at an altitude of ~275 km and complete approximately 14 orbits around the planet over the course of a more than 22-hour flight," SpaceX wrote in the mission description. "Similar to Starship’s first orbital mission, the flight profile has been designed with the opportunity to insert into a passively safe suborbital trajectory or safely deorbit at multiple pre-determined areas over the ocean after raising to an orbital altitude."

If SpaceX has to end the Starship Flight 15 test flight early, it has three primary splashdown zones to land the Ship upper stage in the ocean.

The company could drop the Ship vehicle in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Hawaii in early and late stages of the mission, according to a reentry overview. A mid-mission splashdown window off the coast of Chile is available if needed at that time. A late-mission splashdown zone in the Gulf of Mexico is also available.

The Gulf is also a wave-off splashdown zone for SpaceX's Starship Super Heavy Booster 22 in case it is unable to land shortly after liftoff.

As with Starship Flight 14, SpaceX is loading Flight 15 with 26 operational Starlink V3 internet satellites. They will be deployed in orbit within the first 90 minutes of the flight.

"The Starship upper stage’s primary objectives include the deployment of 26 Starlink V3 satellites and the first return to launch site and catch at Starbase," SpaceX wrote in its overview. "Starship will only execute a return to launch site if the flight control team has ensured that the vehicle systems critical for reentry maneuvers and final landing burn and tower approach are healthy."

What if Starship Flight 15 can't launch on Nov. 13?

While SpaceX is hoping to launch Starship Flight 15 on time, there is a chance that a technical issue or bad weather could prevent liftoff on Nov. 13.

SpaceX has not announced any official backup days for the Starship Flight 15 launch, but it is likely that the company has at least one if not two additional opportunities to try again, based on past Starship launches. Any backup launch attempts will depend greatly on the nature of a launch delay.

A good website to watch is the official Starbase page for Boca Chica Beach and Highway 4 closure alerts here. Those beach closures can be a good indicator of SpaceX's available flight windows.

You'll be able to follow SpaceX's Starship Flight 15 mission on Space.com as it happens. Be sure to come back on launch day for complete Starship Flight 15 coverage.

SpaceX is one big step closer to the 15th test flight of its Starship megarocket.

The company announced today (Nov. 10) that it had moved its latest Starship first stage, known as Super Heavy Booster 22, to the launch mount at its Starbase facility in South Texas ahead of Flight 15, which is scheduled to lift off this Friday (Nov. 13).

During the upcoming launch test, SpaceX plans to catch both Booster 22 and Starship's Ship upper stage with its launch tower's "chopstick" arms in a double landing catch — something the private spaceflight company has never tried before. It will be the first full recovery of an orbital rocket in history.

Booster 22 therefore "was used for final catch testing upon arrival [at the pad], including a suspended squeeze test at catch height," SpaceX said in an X post today (Nov. 10).

That post shared four photos of the giant booster, which is powered by 33 of SpaceX's next-gen Raptor engines. The first shot showed Super Heavy in one of Starbase's "Mega Bay" assembly buildings before rollout, while the other three depicted it grasped by the tower's arms, held high in the South Texas sky.

SpaceX has used the chopstick arms during Starship flights before; it has successfully caught Super Heavy on three separate occasions. But the company has never attempted a catch of Ship, which flies higher and farther than the booster and is therefore a more challenging target. And SpaceX only reached orbit with Starship for the first time on Flight 14, which launched on Sept. 28.

So Flight 15 will break new ground. And, if all goes to plan, it will give us a look at the future: SpaceX plans to catch Super Heavy and Ship on all operational Starship missions, as this recovery strategy will allow the company to boost the megarocket's launch cadence.

And SpaceX wants to fly Starship incredibly often, so that it can build out its Starlink V3 broadband constellation and even bigger Starmind AI data-center network. Indeed, Elon Musk has said the company is eyeing 10,000 Starship flights per year by 2030.

If all goes to plan, Flight 15 will launch from Starbase on Friday during a 75-minute window that opens at 5:45 p.m. EST (2245 GMT; 4:45 p.m. local Texas time).

Super Heavy will return to Starbase for its catch about 6.5 minutes after liftoff. Ship will follow suit much later — about 22 hours later, in fact, after it has deployed 26 Starlink V3 spacecraft into LEO and completed 14 circuits of our planet.

You can watch all the action live here at Space.com and get updates about the mission here.

In any respectable audiobook project, finding the names of Andy Weir ("The Martian," "Project Hail Mary") and Benjamin Percy ("The Ninth Metal," "Wolverine") attached would elicit intense fan interest, but add the superstar vocal talents of Anthony Mackie ("Avengers: Infinity War," "Avengers: Doomsday"), Ariana DeBose ("West Side Story"), and John Leguizamo ("Ice Age"), and it catapults this sonic odyssey into the stratosphere.

Such is the case with "Exoplanet," Audible Original’s new 7-episode science fiction audio drama executive produced by Weir and penned by Percy. Its planet-hopping space disaster narrative sees the crew of the starship Wild Blue Yonder hit a quantum anomaly, forcing their ship to crash-land onto a deadly exoplanet. All is not as it seems, though, as each crew member arrives in a different era on the same world.

We hooked up with Mackie, DeBose, and Lequizamo to learn more about this renaissance of audio dramas and what attracted them to board Weir's sci-fi thriller.

Mackie voices Chief Engineer Jeff Shaw. His attraction to the imaginative genre began at an early age thanks to some cool family friends while growing up in the Big Easy.

"My brother went to college at Morehouse," he tells SPACE. "I was like 8, and he was 18. He’d always bring friends home, because New Orleans is a party city, so they'd come over and get drunk. But one of his friends gave me a book by Walter Mosley and one by Octavia Butler, and I got hooked into sci-fi and the future."

"From 'Back to the Future' to 'Aliens,' the future was such an idea of what was going to be out there. Now we’re living it," reveals Mackie. "It’s very important to me as a human being to have that construct as a part of my career. The only thing more arrogant than wanting to be president is standing up and saying, 'Yeah, I can go to space.' That sounds crazy to me."

Leguizamo's New York City childhood was influenced by absorbing classic radio dramas of the past, which primed him for this special Audible project.

“It was Anthony and Ariana being in it that really pumped me up, and of course Andy Weir," he recalls regarding his portrayal of Science Officer Logan Bowers. "Then when I got the theme, that it was something relevant today and makes you think about computers and technology taking over and making us obsolete. It just hit me in that right zeitgeist, at that right little point."

"As a poor kid, there was no YouTube or cell phones, and we didn’t have computers," reminisces Leguizamo. "I used to go to the Broadcast Museum on 53rd Street and listen to old radio plays like The Shadow and these incredible detective radio plays. It's a different art form. With no visuals, your voice has to create the world. I thought that was an incredible challenge."

DeBose portrays the Wild Blue Yonder's confident First Officer Becca Bang, who’s stranded in a temporal mystery that might engulf her at any moment.

"I've yet to do anything like this, which is always exciting," she adds. "I was a little afraid of it, which told me I should do it. These gents are so talented. It's great company. It’s coming from brilliant minds who build worlds so impeccably. And it's about real stuff we’re dealing with today. I liked the idea that we could tell this story and make people listen and create a space for them to imagine themselves in it and see how they problem-solve to make the world a bit better."

Recording your character's lines is far more difficult than just stepping up to the microphone to read a script, and our ace "Exoplanet" trio delivered in every session.

"I just go in and throw myself at something," DeBose recalls. "I don’t really have a method. But I can tell you this: it is a full-body workout. I use everything at my disposal, whether it’s a chair or a pillow or running in place. I just do what the character does and end up sweating. And after three days, I have to go sit in silence. It's great. I love the idea of bringing back the radio play. The art of listening is such a thing. I don’t think people listen enough. Even for myself."

Likewise, Leguizamo embraced his booth sessions with exuberance and authenticity.

"You have to cancel the rest of your day, especially if you've got to talk, because your vocal chords are fried," he admits. "And if they're not fried you're not doing your job. You really have to do the physicality. If you run you have to run like a maniac and be out of breath. If I'm getting hit I start punching myself. Then there’s a sexiness to doing these things. Your voice has to have a little mystery, a little naughtiness. It’s an interesting intersection where you pull it back a little and invite the audience in.”

For Mackie, who’s used to athleticism needed to play MCU superheroes like The Falcon and Captain America, recording dialogue offered a different type of opportunity.

“I look for reasons not to talk to people, so I love doing these," he jokes. "Once I’m out of the studio, I’m not talking to anybody for two days. At a certain point for me, I find mentally I get tired of hearing myself talk. I just have to come home at cut off. I’ve said enough words for the next month.”

"Exoplanet" is available now exclusively from Audible.

On Nov. 10, 2013, Europe's GOCE satellite fell to Earth after four years in orbit mapping the planet's gravitational field.

GOCE, its name was short for Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer, launched in 2009 on a mission to map Earth's gravity like never before. But despite that successful mission, it was doomed in 2013 when it ran out of fuel.

At the time, controllers weren't sure where GOCE would fall back to Earth. Some people worried that it might crash into a populated area. However, the small spacecraft broke up in the atmosphere and didn't cause any property damage.

It disintegrated about 50 miles above the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean. The European Space Agency called the mission a success. GOCE lasted far longer than expected. It showed small variations in Earth's gravity, mapped the structure of Earth's crust and mantle, and tracked ocean currents.

Why it mattered

The GOCE satellite was a sleek spacecraft, with fins covered in solar panels that gave it a futuristic design. In fact, its look earned it a pretty cool nickname.

"GOCE's sleek, elegant aerodynamic design — responsible for it being dubbed the 'Ferrari of space' — immediately set it apart from most other satellites,." ESA officials said in a description.

There was more than looks behind GOCE's design. In order to generate the best map ever of Earth's gravitational field, GOCE had to fly in an orbit so low — just 139 miles (224 kilometers) — it needed to counteract the drag from the gossamer thin atmosphere of Earth at that altitude. The International Space Station orbits Earth at nearly twice that altitude.

GOCE was powered by an xenon ion engine that allowed to maintain its low orbit for four years. Once it ran out of fuel, the 1-ton satellite could not maintain its position in space, leading to a fiery plunge to Earth.

The large size of GOCE — it weighed 2,425 pounds (1,100 kilograms) and was 17 feet (5.3 meters) long and 3.2 feet (1 m) wide — made its reentry stand out, particularly since at least 25% of the satellite was expected to reach the Earth's surface.

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.

Astronomers have solved the mystery of an extrasolar planet, or exoplanet, that "disappeared" after seven years of observations. New research suggests that the planet hasn't vanished at all, but has been dragged off its orbit by an unseen planet.

The exoplanet, designated TOI-2535 b, is located around 1,000 light-years away. TOI-2535 b was routinely observed with NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) space telescope for seven years between April 2019 and March 2026 as it completed its 8.25-Earth day orbit of its parent star. That's 10 times quicker than the orbit of Mercury around the sun and means this blisteringly hot planet is classed as a "hot Jupiter."

However, something strange happened started to happen as astronomers observed the distant world. The orbits of the planet weren't regular like those of other planets, with TOI-2535 b often arriving six hours early or six hours later than when astronomers expected. Then, in March this year, TESS was no longer spotting the characteristic drops in starlight that TOI-2535 b caused as it crossed, or "transited," the face of its parent star. It seemed to have vanished.

This team used TESS data to determine that TOI-2535 b is being pulled on by an unseen neighbor and is, in turn, pulling on that planet as well. This is causing the orbits of both worlds in the TOI-2535 system to "wobble." TOI-2535 b disappeared when that wobble tilted it out of alignment with its star.

"We think of the universe as resembling clockwork, where everything is regular, but that's not true. If there are multiple planets in a system, they can affect each other's orbits. We know of a few systems that are like this," team member Samuel Yee of the University of California, Los Angeles, said in a statement. "This is the most extreme example we've seen because the two planets are interacting so strongly. The planet's orbit is tilting so quickly that its transit disappeared while we were watching."

TOI-2535 b isn't expected to transit its parent star for at least 30 years, but the hidden neighbor tugging on it may cross the face of the star sooner than that.

In the meantime, scientists will attempt to decode what this extreme wobbling exoplanet system says about how it formed.

Hot Jupiters should be cool customers

There is currently a lot of speculation about how hot Jupiter planets like TOI-2535 b form. That is because current routes of planet formation suggest planets like this would need to form around a great deal of ice. Obviously, ice isn't likely to be abundant as close to a star as TOI-2535 b is currently.

This means that hot Jupiters likely form far from their stars and then migrate inwards. There are two ways that this could happen. The planet could be excited into an elliptical orbit by violent events like a near-collision with another planetary object, and then interactions with the star pull the planet inwards.

Alternatively, the hot Jupiter may be pulled inwards along with the other planets while sitting in a flattened cloud of gas and dust around the infant star called a protoplanetary disk.

If this second, less turbulent route occurs to bring hot Jupiters close to their stars, then the resultant system should be very flat. In other words, there shouldn't be extreme tilts between the orbits of the planets in that system.

However, the tilt caused to TOI-2535 b by its unseen companion indicates that flattened systems can be twisted by more tilted orbits later in their existence. This makes the slower migration possible despite the orbital tilt.

"Because TOI-2535 b has a close neighbor, it probably migrated by slowly spiraling in instead of getting flung in," Yee said. "We may be seeing a formation channel that doesn’t happen very often but is very interesting."

The team's research was published on Monday (Nov. 9) in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Humanity's first 239,000-mile voyage to the moon may have taken place more than five decades ago, but the drama of this endeavor, and stories of the individuals who made it happen, still capture our imaginations to this day.

While television screens may have shown countless factual and dramatic retellings of the space race, "We Chose to Go to the Moon" takes the stories to the stage of New York City's renowned Carnegie Hall for an 'immersive performance' that combines music, archival film, and storytelling that puts a fresh spin on one of America's greatest feats.

Below, we explain where you can watch "We Chose to Go to the Moon" online — potentially for free — and from anywhere.

When Is The "We Chose to Go to the Moon" Release Date?

"We Chose to Go to the Moon" is set to be broadcast at 8 p.m. ET and PT on Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026, on PBS in the United States.

The live show was originally filmed at Carnegie Hall in April 2026, just as NASA's Artemis II was blasting off to send a crew of four astronauts on their mission around the Moon.

How To Watch "We Chose to Go to the Moon"

"We Chose to Go to the Moon" will be broadcast on PBS in the United States.

That means it can also be streamed simultaneously online via the PBS.org website and via the PBS app for compatible devices, including iOS, Android, Apple TV, Android/Google TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Comcast, Samsung Smart TV, VIZIO, and LG Smart TVs.

Watching "We Chose to Go to the Moon" outside of the US

Unfortunately, PBS streaming and broadcasts are geo-blocked for those trying to access them from outside the United States.

If you want to stream "We Chose to Go to the Moon" or anything else on PBS while you're overseas, Surfshark VPN will let you access the platform from anywhere in the world.

What Is "We Chose to Go to the Moon"?

In September 1962, the incumbent United States President, John F. Kennedy, gave an address to Houston's Rice University that became the symbolic starting pistol to the USA's participation in the so-called 'space race'.

"We choose to go to the moon," he said. "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

That's the jumping off point for historian John Monsky's so-called 'living documentary' that brings together archival footage, spoken word remembrances, and music from the time, to bring America's participation in the space race to a Carnegie Hall — and now television — audience.

It brings together perspectives from the individuals who were at the heart of the action, including the Apollo 11 astronauts astronauts — Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins and Ed White — their families, and those unsung heroes of Mission Control.

The narrative is backdropped by a live orchestra and some of Broadway's best theatrical stars, with a rousing soundtrack that features David Bowie's "Space Oddity", Elton John's "Rocket Man" and Simon & Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence".

Are There Any "We Chose to Go to the Moon" Teasers and Trailers?

There are no trailers available for "We Chose to Go to the Moon" on YouTube, but there is a 30-second preview for the show at Carnegie Hall on the PBS website.

Who Are The "We Chose to Go to the Moon" Cast and Creators?

"We Chose to Go to the Moon" was created, written, and narrated by John Monsky. He's the cultural historian behind the popular "American History Unbound" series that tells stories from the country's past on the famous boards of New York City's Carnegie Hall.

Music for this show is played live by the Orchestra of St. Luke's, conducted by Kimberly Grigsby. A quartet of vocalists includes Shonica Gooden, Adam Kantor, Elena Shaddow, and David St. Louis, all of whom are experienced musical theater singers on Broadway.

There will be an introduction from actor and "Apollo 13" director Ron Howard, together with spoken word vignettes from performers Skylar Astin, Brent Comer, Claybourne Elder, Elizabeth Gillies, Taylor Louderman, and Joy Woods.

We test and review VPN services in the context of legal recreational uses. For example:1. Accessing a service from another country (subject to the terms and conditions of that service).2. Protecting your online security and strengthening your online privacy when abroad.We do not support or condone the illegal or malicious use of VPN services. Consuming pirated content that is paid-for is neither endorsed nor approved by Future Publishing.

The posided magnetic fields of Uranus and Neptune may stem from extreme conditions lying within their deep interior. Unravelling the mystery behind the magnetic fields of these worlds is giving us new insight into the little-known interiors of the ice giants.

Only one spacecraft has ever visited Uranus and Neptune, the Voyager 2 spacecraft which spend past Uranus in January 1986 and Neptune in August 1989. Voyager 2 found that their planetary magnetic fields were, to put it bluntly, wonky. Uranus’ magnetic field was offset from its rotational axis by 59 degrees and isn’t even centered on the planet’s core, but instead is only two-thirds of the way down. Neptune is similar, with a disordered magnetic field offset by 47 degrees and centered halfway between the core and its visible cloud tops.

If we compare these planets to Earth, which has a stable magnetic field tilted by just 11 degrees to our planet’s rotation, we can see how extreme the magnetic fields of the ice giants are.

Various explanations for the strange magnetic fields of the ice giants have been put forward over the years. Uranus as a whole is tilted by 97 degrees and effectively rolls around the sun, and speculation is that billions of years ago it was knocked on its side by a collision with a long-lost Earth-sized planet. Could this collision have also skewed its magnetic field?

This might be a plausible explanation were Neptune’s magnetic field also not similarly skewed without having experienced a collision. Clearly, whatever the cause, it must be intrinsic to the nature of the two ice giant planets. Now, a new study by scientists in the U.S. and the UK, based on computer simulations and Voyager 2’s measurements of the two planets’ magnetic fields, may have found a solution.

The solution to the weird magnetic fields of the solar system's ice giants may come down to how planets generate their magnetic field through the dynamo effect. This arises from the swirling, convective motion of an electrically conducting liquid within a rotating body, which is able to generate and maintain a powerful magnetic field.

Inside Earth, the electrically conducting fluid is the molten iron in the outer part of our planet’s core, and the magnetic field that it generates has clear north and south poles – what we call a dipole, a phenomenon that we can also see in the two magnetic poles of a simple bar magnet.

However, the conditions inside Uranus and Neptune are somewhat different. As ice giants, they contain a lot of volatiles – ammonia, hydrogen, helium, methane, and water surrounding a probable rocky core. Furthermore, Uranus and Neptune are substantially larger than Earth, with 14.5 and 17 times the mass of our planet, respectively. This increased mass creates crushing conditions within the interior of the ice giants.

"Deep inside Uranus and Neptune, pressures and temperatures become extremely high," research team leader Chi Yan of the University of Texas at Austin, who led the new findings, said in a statement. "Under those conditions, which can cause water molecules to break apart into ions, the material may become increasingly electrically conductive with depth."

Given the increasing electrical conductivity and the compositions of the two planets, the computer simulations were able to replicate the bizarre magnetic fields of Uranus and Neptune. This showed how the magnetic-field structure co-evolves alongside changes in the fluid motion driven by convection and the temperature inside the planets.

It also seems that this co-evolution might not yet be over. The simulations indicate that the magnetic fields of both planets can change quite significantly in the space of just a few decades.

"Earth’s magnetic tilt drifts by only a degree or so over 50 years," said Yan. "Our models show the ice giants can behave very differently. In some stretches, the tilt swings by tens of degrees within decades. In others, it shifts only slightly over the same span."

NASA have prioritized a new mission to return to Uranus in the early 2040s, while the China National Space Administration’s Tianwen-4 mission launching to Jupiter in 2029 will deploy a small probe to carry onwards to Uranus via a gravitational slingshot. Until then, scientists are coming up with creative ways to not have to rely only on the 40-year-old Voyager 2 measurements of the magnetic fields.

For example, Tom Stallard of Northumbria University in the UK, who is a co-author with Yan on the new research paper, has been leading James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations of the faint infrared auroral lights on both Uranus and Neptune. Aurorae are generated when charged particles on the solar wind interact with a planet’s magnetic field, driving some of those charged particles into the atmosphere above the magnetic poles. (Neptune actually has a quadrupolar component, muddling its defined north and south magnetic poles.) As such, the location of aurorae is a good indicator of what’s going on with a planet’s magnetic field.

"We are busy working on what’s contained within these observations, but the shape and structure of the aurora, as well as other weird patterns in the ionosphere [upper atmosphere], promise to provide us with a way of understanding how the magnetic fields have changed, [which is] an important stepping stone," said Stallard.

The hope is that by combining JWST’s observations of the aurora with Voyager 2’s magnetic-field measurements and the results of the computer simulations, it will be possible to estimate the configuration of the magnetic fields on Uranus and Neptune today and see how they compare to the 1980s.

This would provide an experimental test to help show whether the new model describing the magnetic fields is on the right track, although we won’t know for sure until a new mission arrives in the ice giants’ backyard.

The findings were described on 3 November in the journal Communications Physics.

In the final weeks of 1960, two young radio enthusiasts were monitoring transmissions from a home-built listening station on a rooftop in Turin, Italy, when the brothers detected something extraordinary: a faint signal that bore the hallmarks of one originating from space. That wasn't the only surprising thing about the alleged signal:, the transmission carried a very familiar message: it was Morse code for the international distress signal SOS.

As the youths listened, the signal seemed to grow weaker. This raised a troubling possibility: could it be that the signal's source was moving farther away from Earth? And if so, was it possible that this concerning signal was of Soviet origin — perhaps a spacecraft drifting helplessly into space, carrying a cosmonaut on board whose doomed mission had never been publicly acknowledged?

These strange events from November 1960 became the first in a series of alleged radio signal interceptions that would form the basis of an enduring Cold War-era mystery involving so-called "lost cosmonauts" — early Soviet space travelers rumored to have died during secret spaceflight missions before Yuri Gagarin's historic flight the following spring, in April 1961.Today, more than six decades later, the story remains one of the most haunting legends of the Space Age. Were there truly early Soviet space missions — with tragically ill-fated cosmonaut crews — that remain undisclosed to this day?

Interception at Torre Bert

The peculiar story began in October 1957, as the Italian brothers Achille and Gian Battista Judica-Cordiglia learned, along with the rest of the world, about the Soviet Union's successful launch of Sputnik 1, Earth's first artificial satellite.

Immediately, the two became fascinated with the idea of trying to listen in on signals from such spacecraft and began working to assemble their very own radio tracking station, which they put together mostly from secondhand military surplus equipment. What they couldn't easily find and purchase, the brothers would often assemble themselves. They built an improvised tracking station in an abandoned World War Two bunker, which the brothers dubbed Torre Bert, that eventually became a fully functional radio facility with an antenna they built from salvaged materials like chicken wire and scraps of metal.

Whatever it lacked in aesthetics, the station made up for in functionality, and soon the brothers' amateur efforts reportedly allowed them to successfully intercept transmissions associated with Sputnik 2, the first Soviet spacecraft to carry a living creature into orbit: a dog named Laika, who became a one-way passenger on the mission. Later, the boys also said they were able to track transmissions from America's Explorer 1 satellite.

Some of what the Judica-Cordiglia brothers were able to achieve could be chalked up to being in the right place at the right time. Specifically, their location in northern Italy was advantageous, since it allowed them to monitor signals from Soviet spacecraft passing overhead.

A distress call from space

By late November 1960, the Judica-Cordiglia brothers learned of reports from a West German observatory suggesting there may have been an unidentified satellite in orbit, raising an intriguing possibility: could there have been a spacecraft launch that had not been disclosed to the public?

Intrigued, the brothers began spending their evenings at Torre Bert scanning the skies for radio frequencies in search of the alleged mystery object. Eventually, they claimed to have detected a signal that differed significantly from those they had tracked in the past. Unlike the familiar electronic beeps they had intercepted from other satellites, this transmission seemed unmistakable: it was Morse code for SOS.

According to their account, as the pair listened to the alarming transmission, the signal gradually began to fade, raising a disconcerting possibility: what if the spacecraft they were monitoring hadn't merely been traveling through orbit, but had been drifting away from Earth?

If correct, the implications were staggering: the Soviet Union may have launched a secret space mission, but this time with a human cosmonaut on board — and something had gone terribly wrong, ending with a spacecraft and its occupant becoming lost in space.

Significantly, the brothers appear to have reached this conclusion independently, and no verified evidence has ever surfaced establishing that the transmission they claimed to have intercepted originated from a crewed spacecraft, let alone one associated with an unacknowledged Soviet mission that somehow escaped Earth's gravitational influence, with tragic results.

Nonetheless, the brothers' claims would soon help give rise to a disturbing possibility: that there had been unknown "lost" cosmonauts who perished during missions that remained hidden from public knowledge.

Heartbeats and ghostly voices

The alleged distress signal was only the beginning of a series of unsubstantiated claims the Judica-Cordiglia brothers made, and by the first days of February 1961, the amateur radio sleuths would claim to have intercepted another odd signal. This time, the pair claimed to have heard labored breathing coming across the airwaves, and even what resembled the strained moans of a person aboard an orbiting spacecraft.

In an equally eerie recording the brothers produced, what sounded like a rapidly beating human heart could be heard. The brothers shared the recording with Italian cardiologist Achille Dogliotti, whose examination reportedly led him to conclude that the sounds were consistent with strained breathing and an elevated human heartbeat.

With time, more recordings would begin to appear, featuring transmissions the boys believed to be evidence of unsuccessful Soviet missions that preceded the successful spaceflight of Yuri Gagarin, whose 108-minute journey around Earth in 1961 made him the first human to travel into space.

However, what may be the brothers' most controversial claim involved a recording they believed captured the final moments of a female cosmonaut whose ill-fated journey allegedly occurred prior to the historic 1963 spaceflight of Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman to travel into space. However, experts have pointed out that these transmissions do not follow typical military communications protocols, further casting doubt on their legitimacy.

Alleged Soviet surveillance?

As the Judica-Cordiglia brothers' notoriety increased, journalists and curiosity-seekers weren't the only ones whose attention they reportedly began to attract; their activities also allegedly garnered interest from intelligence officials.

In one instance, the brothers claimed a man identifying himself as a Russian reporter had visited them. Shortly thereafter, another individual — this time claiming to be an Italian counterintelligence agent — warned them that the "journalist" who had come to see them was a KGB agent.

The Judica-Cordiglias and their unconventional hobby, it seemed, had now placed them in the crosshairs of Soviet intelligence officials.

An unusual twist in this part of the Italian brothers' story would eventually emerge decades later, when London-based journalist Kris Hollington began reinvestigating their claims for a feature story that appeared in the paranormal-focused magazine Fortean Times. According to Hollington, a former Soviet KGB operative who later served as a Russian ambassador to a European country had reportedly confirmed (on condition of anonymity) that Moscow was indeed interested in the Judica-Cordiglias and their claims.

"Our cosmonauts were warned to be careful what they said while in space after this and we had the brothers followed," the former KGB agent reportedly told Hollington.

Things could have ended tragically for the brothers if it were not for the fame they achieved at the time for their alleged radio interceptions. As the former KGB agent told Hollington, it was believed for a time that the brothers "had to be dealt with — an accident perhaps," although after they appeared on a television program that brought them significant attention, any Soviet plans that would have endangered the brothers became impractical.

"That saved their lives," the former KGB agent reportedly told Hollington, who expressed gratitude for the circumstances that may well have saved the Italian brothers, with the former agent confiding to Hollington that he thought "they were good kids."

Unanswered questions

Of course, the claims of alleged Soviet surveillance are difficult to verify given the anonymity requested by Hollington's source. The same must be said of many of the claims made by the Judica-Cordiglias — even if the brothers were successful in intercepting Soviet transmissions at the time, that alone does not prove that they uncovered evidence of unacknowledged missions during which cosmonauts may have perished.

Some, like spaceflight researcher Sven Grahn, have acknowledged the genuine tracking capabilities the brothers possessed while remaining skeptical of the more sensational "lost cosmonaut" claims, suggesting the brothers might have misinterpreted some of the transmissions they recorded.

"I think that the Judica-Cordiglia brothers did run a tracking station and picked up signals from various spacecraft," Grahn said in an assessment of the brothers and their claims. "However, for some reason they thought that they needed sensational stories [to] maintain their image of a 'hot-shot' operation," he adds. "Once they over-interpreted some receptions and made fantastic claims they were 'trapped' and had to continue to produce sensations."

There is also the possibility that the recordings were hoaxes, of course. Whatever the case, there are no independently verified launch records, authenticated communications, or other evidence from the period that provides additional support for what the brothers claimed to have intercepted.

Something that can be verified, however, is the Soviet Union's well-documented secrecy, adding a further layer of complication to matters. As space historian James Oberg has observed, there are verified instances in which Soviet officials altered photographs and records from the early years of human spaceflight, a fact that has perhaps helped fuel rumors about alleged missing cosmonauts. It is also known that the Soviet space program covered up several deadly disasters, such as a launch pad explosion on Oct. 24, 1960 that killed a high-ranking Soviet military officer and at least 100 others. At the time, Soviet state news outlets reported it as a plane crash.

No verified evidence has emerged to support claims of failed, unacknowledged Soviet crewed spaceflights of the kind described in the lost-cosmonaut legends. Yet the Judica-Cordiglia brothers' accounts have drawn attention for decades and remain among the strangest stories in the lore of the early Space Age — a fact that illustrates humanity's enduring fascination with Cold War mysteries and phenomena that exist beyond Earth.

A robot just played Tinkertoys in space, assembling the first satellite structure ever made without a human touching the controls.

The DARPA-funded project saw a robotic "truss builder" create a reflective antenna using Kapton film, composite fiber tubes and aluminum joints. The implications are huge for future missions, potentially opening up new possibilities to build — or fix — satellites in the final frontier.

"This is the first time that a structure has been autonomously constructed in space," Sergio Pellegrino, an aerospace and civil engineering professor at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), said in a statement on Nov. 5.

The need for such spacecraft will likely rise substantially in the future, as companies assemble giant megaconstellations for cell-phone communications, AI compute and other purposes. Indeed, the ball is already rolling on such ambitious projects, generating enough hype for space startups around the globe to raise a record $20.8 billion in the third quarter of 2026 alone.

Anything that launches aboard a rocket is limited by the size of that vehicle's fairing — the nose cone that protects payloads during their ride to space. In space, however, the ability to stretch out is practically infinite — after taking into account, of course, engineering and financing constraints.

Assembling structures robotically off Earth could therefore be revolutionary, advocates say. And the recent milestone was a step in that direction.

"This work could be useful not only for astronomy and astrophysics, but also for communications and other areas, such as building very large solar arrays for space solar power," said Pellegrino, who's team leader of the truss-building project, a Caltech demonstration mission called Autonomous In-Space Tensioned Reflector Assembly (ASTRA).

ASTRA built a 1.4-meter-wide (4.5-foot) structure in orbit. That's an impressive achievement, but it just scratches the surface of what DARPA wants to accomplish via a program it calls Novel Orbital and Moon Manufacturing, Materials, and Mass-efficient Design, or NOM4D for short.

"NOM4D's objective is to enable efficient, scalable construction of very large structures in space," NOM4D Program Manager Andrew Detor said in a Nov. 5 DARPA statement.

"By 'very large,' I mean hundreds of meters or kilometers in scale. Nothing approaching that scale can be achieved today," Detor added.

ASTRA was a demonstration, allowing researchers to check boxes and identify obstacles before shooting for a bigger goal. And the team did run into issues — specifically, time limitations, which prevented them from building additional sections of the antenna. Still, the researchers were able to prove out the third phase of a larger DARPA project.

Pellegrino's team completed the two previous phases — defining the mission and testing the hardware in a lab — before shipping the ASTRA payload to the spaceflight company Momentus, Inc. for integration into its Vigoride 7 space tug. Vigoride 7 launched on March 30, along with many other payloads, aboard SpaceX's Transporter-16 rideshare mission.

ASTRA flew with two prebuilt sections of a truss, a robotic "manipulator" and parts to make the rest of the truss in space. In brief communication windows totaling 15 minutes a day, engineers sent up commands and checked in on the robot's progress as it picked up things, readied them in the right spot, and performed construction on an assembly plate.

The team overcame many "little surprises" on the way but were not able to finish the entire truss in time. Still, Pellegrino framed the effort as a success.

"Developing a payload of this complexity on such a short timeline was an enormous undertaking for our small team," he said.

Looking into the future, he is hopeful that robots will be able to build larger telescope mirrors for observatories to peer deeper into space, as well as more advanced structures for radio telescopes to listen for distant signals.

NOM4D is also supporting a project from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, but that one will take place at the International Space Station, focusing on how to harden carbon tubes in orbit.

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is sizing up its next dig site on the Red Planet.

The Curiosity team will characterize the surface composition of the Mars site, informally named "Nazca," as thoroughly as possible before drilling into it.

What is it?

Curiosity snapped the close-up image on Oct. 18, 2026, using its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI). The image shows multiple roughly disk-shaped potential crystal formations at the rover's next drill target.

MAHLI is located on the turret at the end of the rover's robotic arm. It uses an onboard focusing process to make a composite of images of the same target acquired at different positions to focus on multiple features in a single image.

Why is it incredible?

Scientists theorize that the "discs and needles" texture takes its characteristic shape as crystals, or "crystal forms," grow.

The relatively large sizes of the crystal forms at "Nazca" may provide clues about the temperatures at which they grew, as well as information about the abundance of salts and fluids in the area at the time. Complicating this picture, however, is the fact that mineral crystals can be replaced by other minerals after their original crystallization. The new minerals are known as "pseudomorphs," because they have the same shape as the original minerals but not the same composition or molecular structure.

The Curiosity team will characterize the surface composition of Nazca — which shares its name with an ancient South American civilization that's famous for the large designs it etched into the rock and dirt — before drilling begins. The NASA researchers will then be able to compare the deeper composition to the surface-level composition.

As rival makers announce increasingly ambitious smart telescopes, ZWO has taken a different approach. Its new Seestar S30 Plus launched today and is available for $474 from Seestar’s website and Amazon, just in time for Christmas. Better still, we’ve been using it for a month and can bring you a first look.

Announced a few months after the flagship Seestar S50 Pro and replacing the now-discontinued Seestar S30, the new Seestar S30 Plus retains its 30mm aperture and compact chassis, but upgrades to four-element apochromatic optics with extra-low dispersion (ED) glass and two 3.7-megapixel cameras.

Both produce 1,440 x 2,560-pixel images, while a much-improved 43.5-degree wide-angle camera can capture the Milky Way, constellations, star trails and nightscapes. Built-in filters, a mosaic mode and equatorial (EQ) tracking add considerable deep-sky astrophotography potential.

For a telescope weighing just 3.64 lbs (1.65 kg), it’s impressive. It easily fits into a camera bag and could happily live on a bookshelf.

I’ve already photographed the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), the Pleiades (M45), the Dumbbell Nebula (M27) and the North America Nebula (NGC 7000). The results are excellent for such a small instrument, especially when imaging nebulas with its built-in dual-band filter, which helps reduce light pollution.

The Seestar app adds new in-app post-processing options, so you don’t have to mess around with any of that — though you can also export everything as lossless FITS files. The S30 Plus also includes a magnetic solar filter, enabling you to indulge in solar photography safely.

With Dwarflab’s $1,299 Draco (3.5-inch/90mm aperture) recently landed in stores and Vaonis’ own $4,990 Atlas (3.1-inch/80mm aperture) not available until 2027, ZWO’s decision to offer an upgraded entry-level smart telescope that buyers can get their hands on right now looks particularly smart.

With ZWO's pattern of delivering cheaper smart telescopes without sacrificing on quality, the Seestar S30 Plus could be one of Christmas 2026’s best gifts for anyone interested in astronomy — and maybe that’s the point of it. Either way, first impressions are good. A full review is coming tomorrow, so check back at Space.com to find out our full thoughts and testing.

For those who want to experience a total solar eclipse, the next two years present the best kind of problem. On Aug. 2, 2027, the so-called "eclipse of the century" will sweep across southern Spain, North Africa and the Middle East, bringing more than six minutes of totality to parts of Egypt. Then, on July 22, 2028, another exceptionally long total solar eclipse will cross Australia, putting the remote Outback and Sydney Harbor in the path of the moon's dark central shadow before it reaches New Zealand's beautiful South Island.

Both eclipses will be spectacular, and both will require careful planning, yet they promise very different experiences. The 2027 event combines over six minutes of totality with some of the very best weather prospects possible, while 2028 offers over five minutes of totality above some of the world's most famous wildernesses and cityscapes.

Eclipse chasing requires careful planning and dedication, but also significant funds. If you can only choose one, which should it be?

2027 total solar eclipse: pros and cons

On paper, 2027 is difficult to beat. Maximum totality on Aug. 2 will last about 6 minutes, 23 seconds, making it the longest totality on land since 1991 and until 2114. The path of totality will cross southern Spain and Gibraltar before sweeping across Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Somalia and the Chagos Islands. About 88.9 million people live in its path, according to Time and Date. It will dominate the news for weeks.

For Europeans, southern Spain is the obvious easy option. Tarifa, at the country's southern tip, will see about 4 minutes, 39 seconds of totality, while the U.K. Overseas Territory of Gibraltar gets about 4 minutes, 25 seconds. Travel farther east and the duration increases, with Sfax in Tunisia getting around 5 minutes, 41 seconds and locations in Egypt experiencing more than six minutes. Weather prospects generally improve, too, as the path crosses the deserts of North Africa.

Egypt is the headline destination. Luxor will see about 6 minutes, 20 seconds of totality near midday, with Karnak Temple, the Valley of the Kings, and some of the world's greatest ancient monuments nearby. The climatic odds are excellent, with clouds extremely rare in early August. That combination of a very long totality, ancient landscapes and a very high probability of a clear sky makes 2027's path of totality highly unusual.

But there are downsides. Temperatures around Luxor can exceed 105°F (41°C) in August, a dust storm is not impossible, and totality occurs shortly after 1 p.m. when the sun (and moon) will be high overhead — making photography very difficult. Demand is already intense, making organized trips expensive. Spain will be considerably easier and probably cheaper for European eclipse chasers, but at the expense of roughly two minutes of totality — and slightly less favorable weather prospects.

2028 total solar eclipse: pros and cons

If 2027 is about extreme duration, 2028 is about choice. On July 22, 2028, a path of totality will cross the Cocos Islands, Christmas Island, Australia, from northwest to southeast — passing directly over Sydney — before continuing across the Tasman Sea to New Zealand's South Island. That's about 6.3 million people, according to Time and Date. This will be an exclusive eclipse experienced by relatively few people, certainly when compared to the eclipses in 2024, 2026 and 2027.

Maximum totality will last 5 minutes and 10 seconds in the remote Kimberley region of Western Australia. That's more than a minute shorter than 2027, but still exceptionally long by total solar eclipse standards (most last about two minutes). More importantly, the Australian Outback has excellent climatic prospects. Historical cloudiness on July 22 is around 8% at Purnululu (Bungle Bungles) close to the point of greatest eclipse in Western Australia and 19% at Karlu Karlu (Devil's Marbles) in the Northern Territory, making Australia's interior an attractive destination for serious eclipse chasers. Temperatures will be around 86°F (30°C) in July.

Then there's Sydney. Australia's largest city will experience about 3 minutes, 45 seconds of totality, its first total solar eclipse since 1857. Sydney Opera House and Harbor Bridge beneath a totally eclipsed sun could produce some of the decade's defining astronomical images, while millions of people experiencing totality together should create an extraordinary atmosphere. Temperatures will be around 62.6°F (17°C).

A compromise is weather. Historical cloudiness in Sydney is around 43%, which is good odds for most eclipses — and July is known for clear weather. But in 2028, anyone prioritizing their chances of a clear totality will be tempted by a (albeit pricier) trip to the Outback. For Europeans, reaching Australia also comes with considerable cost and time. The huge number of hotels in Sydney could keep accommodation relatively competitive, but the long flight means it makes little sense to travel there for only a few days. For many international eclipse chasers, 2028 will naturally become an expensive one- or two-week trip.

Don't forget the night sky

There's another reason to think beyond those few minutes of darkness. With the right planning, an eclipse trip can also become an extraordinary astronomy vacation (tip: come a week before the eclipse for the darkest evening skies). Here, 2028 offers visitors from Europe and North America something very different — the Southern Hemisphere night sky.

July is a superb time to see the bright central regions of the Milky Way from dark locations in Australia. The Southern Cross, or Crux, is one of the southern sky's defining sights, with Alpha and Beta Centauri nearby. Omega Centauri, the largest and brightest globular cluster visible from Earth, is another showpiece, while the Eta Carinae region offers one of the richest sections of the Milky Way for binoculars and small telescopes.

There are other reasons to extend the trip. A partial lunar eclipse occurs on July 6-7, 2028, while the Southern Delta Aquariid meteor shower peaks around July 28 — a week after the eclipse, during a first-quarter moon — and is particularly well seen from the Southern Hemisphere. Add Australia's world-class dark skies, and a trip into the Outback could become as much about stargazing as the eclipse itself.

The 2027 eclipse has fewer night-sky extras. The Delta Aquariid meteor shower peaks a few days before the eclipse — in dark, moonless skies — while Jupiter will dominate the western sky shortly after sunset. However, anyone traveling from the Northern Hemisphere will largely see a familiar celestial hemisphere. Australia offers a genuinely different sky experience.

City, desert or wilderness?

Perhaps the most useful way to choose between these eclipses is not to compare their durations, but to imagine where you would most like to be when the moon's shadow arrives.

In 2027, the decision largely comes down to how far along the eclipse track you want to travel. Stay in southern Spain for convenience and around four minutes of totality, head into Tunisia for longer totality and excellent weather prospects, or go all-in on Egypt for more than six minutes beneath almost cloudless desert skies — and bragging rights among eclipse chasers. It's an eclipse that can be combined with beaches, Roman ruins, North African cities or the temples and, of course, the tombs of ancient Egypt.

In 2028, the contrast is even greater. Sydney offers a communal total solar eclipse — a busy "we eclipse" — with millions watching daylight disappear above one of the world's great cities. Head thousands of miles away into the Australian interior and the same event becomes a lonely "me eclipse" in the wilderness, with up to five minutes of totality above an immense Outback landscape. Continue to New Zealand, and there's yet another possibility — a shorter totality with the sun much lower in the afternoon sky.

Which total solar eclipse should you choose?

If your priority is purely totality duration, 2027 marginally wins. More than six minutes of totality combined with extraordinarily reliable weather is a rare combination. There's a good reason Aug. 2, 2027 is being marketed as the "eclipse of the century." But if you've always wanted to visit Australia or New Zealand, the 2028 eclipse is an extraordinary excuse to finally go, in addition to experiencing a long totality.

Choose the trip you most want to take, then find the best possible place for you within the path of totality. After all, no total solar eclipse lasts long enough, and most eclipse chasers struggle to recall exactly how long totality lasted. They're just left with the same question as always — when is the next one?

Twin NASA spacecraft are wrapping up a year-long escapade, ready to make a beeline to the Red Planet.

The Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) spacecraft launched in November 2025 on the second-ever flight of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket. But rather than head straight to Mars, the two spacecraft dawdled through a looping trajectory. Now, they are back in Earth's neighborhood where they tackled a crucial engine burn unusually close to Earth that — if all goes well — will set them on track for Mars.

"No NASA mission has ever done this before," said Rob Lillis, a planetary and space physicist at the University of California, Berkeley and principal investigator of the ESCAPADE mission. "For most missions, it just isn't necessary."

That's because traditionally NASA's Mars missions have been carefully choreographed within cosmic launch constraints, leaving Earth during a brief window of planetary alignment that only occurs every 26 months. ESCAPADE was meant to launch in October 2024, when Earth and Mars were favorably aligned, but delays with the New Glenn rocket forced the mission to sit out the precious launch window.

Rather than wait to launch this fall, NASA decided to try something new. ESCAPADE mission planners designed a "loitering" orbit, shaped like a kidney bean. It called for the twin probes to loop through that trajectory to be back at Earth in early November 2026, ready to continue on to Mars.

Once they arrived, however, the twin probes faced a major hurdle: Each had to perfectly execute an engine burn within Earth's gravity well. The maneuver is similar to the slingshot flybys that spacecraft regularly conduct to adjust their trajectories — but here, the probes had to fire their engines to amp up the effect of the burn rather than acting alone.

The first spacecraft tackled the feat on Nov. 7; the second did so on Monday (Nov. 9). And according to NASA, the burns went perfectly. "This is the first time NASA has used a powered Earth flyby to propel a spacecraft toward Mars, and we've now executed this maneuver twice, flawlessly, in just two days," Asal Naseri, acting associate flight director for NASA's Heliophysics Division said in a statement.

After just a few minor course corrections, ESCAPADE will be sailing toward a September 2027 Mars arrival.

A scenic detour

The twin ESCAPADE spacecraft have made the most of their extended tour. Each spacecraft is about the size of two refrigerators and equipped with three scientific instruments and a couple cameras. All are tailored for studying the strange magnetic field of Mars, which is created both globally by charged particles from the sun interacting with the atmosphere and locally by areas of highly magnetic crust.

Earth's magnetic field is much stronger and generated by the planet's core. But it too is affected by the solar wind, as scientists call the constant stream of charged particles flowing off the sun and across space. On the side of Earth opposite the sun, the solar wind stretches the magnetic field to form an elongated tail structure, like a terrestrial windsock.

A range of missions have studied this magnetotail at various points up to nearly 800,000 miles (1.27 million kilometers) away from Earth, but beyond that, it has been a mystery. Conveniently, the two ESCAPADE spacecraft traveled through the structure over the course of about 10 days early last year at a much greater distance from Earth — some 1.19 million miles (1.91 million km) away.

"We were able to capture the magnetic field structure of that distant tail, how it flaps, how it moves, how the plasma flows within it," Lillis said, gathering data that he called "unprecedented." "And not only that but for the first time, we were able to do that with two spacecraft simultaneously."

A second shot at the magnetotail came over the summer, when the spacecraft were much closer to Earth but the moon was also passing through the magnetic structure. The two ESCAPADE spacecraft were able to partner with twin ARTEMIS-THEMIS spacecraft at the moon to observe the structure from four different perspectives simultaneously.

That's a huge boon when trying to study the magnetotail and its intricate and ever-changing magnetic field lines and plasma, Lillis said. "These are generally not things you can measure remotely," he said. "You kind of have to be there."

On Nov. 9, 1967, NASA launched the powerful new Saturn V rocket on its maiden voyage.

The Saturn V moon rocket was 363 feet tall. That's taller than the Statue of Liberty! It was the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built at the time (though SpaceX's Starship megarocket has since surpassed it). NASA needed such a powerful rocket to launch astronauts to the moon. However, the first Saturn V launch didn't carry astronauts, because it was only a test flight.

During the launch, the rocket created a loud shockwave that surprised nearby observers. The ground shook so hard that it rattled buildings miles away, and all the shaking caused a huge shower of dust and debris NASA's new launch center, the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The mission lasted 8 hours 36 minutes. The rocket carried an uncrewed command module that splashed down in the Pacific Ocean.

Why it mattered

The launch of Apollo 4 in November 1967 was a turning point for NASA on its path to landing astronauts on the moon.

The space agency had bet the moon on its new Saturn V booster, a three-stage heavy-lift rocket designed to fly astronauts in a capsule (as well as their lander) to the moon and back. But the rocket had never been fully tested until the Apollo 4 launch.

NASA also needed a new launch site for its Apollo missions. So the agency built Launch Complex 39 at what is now called the Kennedy Space Center, a Florida spaceport that has become the home port for orbital human spaceflight in the United States. But in 1967, no rockets had ever flown from the site. Yet, everything went according to plan.

• Amazing Apollo 4: NASA's 1st Saturn V Moon Rocket Test Flight in Photos

“It was really an expert launching all the way through from lifting off exactly on time to performance of every single stage,” rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun, director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, said at the time.

The launch came as NASA was on its heels.

Just months earlier, on Jan. 27, 1967, the space agency suffered a fatal tragedy when Apollo 1 astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee died on the launch pad after a fire broke out inside their Apollo command module during a ground test.

“The maiden voyage of the Saturn V dramatically increased the confidence of people across the nation in the management of the largest research and development undertaking in which the western world has ever engaged,” George Mueller, NASA's then-Associate Administrator for Manned Space Flight, said at the time.

One year later, another Saturn V rocket launched the first astronauts to the moon with the Apollo 8 mission. All of the Apollo missions that followed also launched on Saturn V rockets.

Just two years after its debut, the Saturn V rocket launched the Apollo 11 astronauts to the moon for the first crewed moon landing in July 1969.

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.

CORRECTION: This story was updated at 7:26 pm ET to replace a launch photo to correctly show the Apollo 4 launch on a Saturn V rocket.

Jupiter and Mars will shine side by side in a spectacular close approach in the heart of the constellation Leo on Nov. 15. Here's what you need to know.

Mars and Jupiter reach their closest apparent separation in Earth's sky at 9:04 p.m. EST on Nov. 15 (0204 GMT on Nov. 16), according to astronomy website In-The-Sky. The planets will be below the horizon for U.S. stargazers at the moment of their closest approach, but observers can catch the pair rising above the eastern horizon around midnight local time, just a few hours later.

Remember: You can discover the exact timings for the rising and setting of the planets above your local horizon using Time and Date's night sky tracker.

Jupiter will be the brightest of the pair, when it rises a little over 1 degree from the red light of Mars — roughly the width of your little finger held at arm's length against the night sky. The bright star Regulus will glow close at hand, forming the dot of the backward question mark formation of stars that represents the head of the great Lion in the constellation Leo.

Mars and Jupiter will be close enough to share the field of view of a pair of 10x50 binoculars and will also make for a spectacular sight through the eyepiece of a telescope when viewed separately as they rise away from the horizon.

The gas giant's iconic Great Red Spot will rotate into view in the predawn hours of Nov. 16, and will be visible through a backyard telescope with an aperture of just 4 inches. Using a light green color filter will help increase the visibility of the vast storm, while an orange filter will help bring out detail in the gas giant's sweeping cloud belts.

The two planets will appear to gradually drift apart over the coming weeks and won't appear as close again for another 2.5 years in July 2029, when the two planets appear close together in the constellation Virgo.

Be sure to check out our guide to photographing the night sky, along with our picks of the best cameras and lenses for astrophotography if you're interested in following the dance of the planets for yourself.

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.

Ever since NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) started observing the early universe, it has been providing almost as many surprises as it has answers. One such surprise are the so-called Little Red Dots, cosmic objects that seemingly disappear completely before the universe is two billion years old.

New research suggests that Little Red Dots may actually be connected primordial black holes, tiny black holes born not from dying stars but rather from fluctuations in the density of matter just after the Big Bang, in the earliest moments of cosmic history. Should they exist, primordial black holes would predate stars, galactic dust particles, and elements heavier than hydrogen and helium.

Now, researchers have used JWST data to test whether one particular Little Red Dot, known as blackAbell 2744-QSO1 (QSO1), could host a primordial black hole.

"A black hole is an object born from the gravitational death of a star. Primordial black holes are a very different story," study team member Valerio De Luca, of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) in Maryland, said in a statement.

"They come from the physics of the early universe that predates the first stars, when the universe was expanding exponentially in time and space. So the mechanisms for creating primordial black holes are different," De Luca added.

Little Red Dots could be the smoking gun of primordial black holes

Though scientists have theorized about the existence of primordial black holes since they were first proposed by Stephen Hawking in the 1970s, no hard evidence has presented itself. One of the issues scientists have puzzled over is how to tell the difference between a primordial black hole and a "traditional" or astrophysical black hole formed from the supernova death and collapse of a massive star.

"Little Red Dots could surround astrophysical black holes, and most probably many of them do, but they could also be primordial black holes, if primordial black holes exist," De Luca said. "So the question becomes, Which ones are primordial and how can we tell?"

De Luca and colleagues turned their attention to QS01, located around 13.1 billion light-years from Earth, which is seen as it was just 700 million years after the Big Bang. What makes this Little Red Dot stand out is the fact that it is almost entirely composed of hydrogen and helium. Because these were the universe's first elements, it could be more unspoiled and primordial than other Little Red Dots.

The team modeled how a Little Red Dot like QS01 could form from a primordial black hole. That was necessary because the circumstances under which this could happen would have to be very specific.

"There are constraints on primordial black holes from cosmological observations," said team member Loris Del Grosso, also of JHU's Department of Physics and Astronomy. "There can only be so many primordial black holes in the universe, for example, and there cannot be too many of them in a given cluster."

Considering three possible scenarios, the team found that the most likely situation is a smaller primordial black hole consuming surrounding gas and energy until it grew to be the size of QSO1.

"The door was open on this theory — that Little Red Dots could be primordial black holes," Del Grosso said. "We've now cracked it open a little farther by showing some scenarios are more likely than others."

Del Grosso and crew now intend to look at the other 100 or so Little Red Dots seen by the JWST to determine how many of them could have started life as primordial black holes.

Then scientists may finally have the evidence to say these long-theorized ancient black holes actually existed.

"We don't have a clear understanding of what happens in the early universe right after the Big Bang," De Luca concluded. "If primordial black holes do exist, then something had to happen to make them in the first place, which would be a groundbreaking discovery in physics."

The team's findings were published in June in the journal Physical Review Letters.

They say all good things come to those who wait… and WAIT. Well, the wait for "Robopocalypse" fans might finally be over, as Oscar winners Ron Howard and Akiva Goldsman have announced they're working on a TV adaptation.

It does seem like an eternity since news first broke that Portland-based New York Times bestselling author Daniel H. Wilson’s "Robopocalypse" (Doubleday, 2011) was bought by Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks SKG for a sci-fi spectacle, with Drew Goddard ("The Martian") brought in to pen the screenplay.

That was back in 2009, and since then the story of a rogue AI named Archos and a hearty band of indigenous people in America’s heartland battling to save humanity from extinction has been placed on Hollywood’s back burner. After numerous stalled starts and director Michael Bay getting involved in 2018, "Robopocalypse" was quietly powered down due to script issues, filmmaker scheduling conflicts, and the enormous budget required.

But now we have been blessed with the news, first broken by The Hollywood Reporter, that Ron Howard ("Apollo 13," "The Da Vinci Code") and Akiva Goldsman ("A Beautiful Mind," "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds") have taken up the mantle of this chilling sci-fi project to develop as a new TV series. And what timing, just as AI fever has gripped the planet with paranoia centered around our eventual robot overlords.

"'Robopocalypse' has all the scale and suspense of a major action story, but what drew me to it are the thought-provoking themes and humanity at its center," Ron Howard shared in a statement.

"Daniel created a future that feels both startling and increasingly plausible, with characters who must figure out what connects us when the technology we rely on turns against us. I am also thrilled to work with Akiva again. We have shared some incredibly meaningful creative experiences, and this feels like the right story to bring us back together."

As a PhD graduate of Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute and a future king of the techno-thriller, Wilson was the ideal writer to bring this frightening story to life, and a 2014 sequel titled "Robogenesis" was equally gripping.

The prolific, award-winning writer has since set up a multitude of other Hollywood projects spawned from his catalog of works, including "Amped," "The Clockwork Dynasty," the authorized sequel to Michael Crichton's "The Andromeda Strain," "The Andromeda Evolution," and his 2025 alien invasion novel "Hole in the Sky," still alive at Netflix.

Howard's Imagine Entertainment will partner with Akiva Goldsman's Weed Road Pictures on this episodic adaptation, with Howard attached to direct the pilot episode and Goldsman serving as series showrunner.

"Robopocalypse" marks a creative reunion for the distinguished creators, following their collaborations on "A Beautiful Mind," "Cinderella Man," "The Da Vinci Code," and "Angels & Demons." Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment is slated to executive produce the ambitious show alongside Imagine's Brian Grazer and Jeb Brody and Weed's Rachel Wizenberg and Greg Lessans.

It's too early to tell which streaming service the "Robopocalypse" TV show will be attached to yet. Hopefully the pilot episode wows one of the big names, and we can finally see the "Robopocalypse" adaptation of our dreams.

In the meantime, we'd recommend checking out the original book by Daniel H. Wilson.

Starfish Space's first Otter has died, just a month after it reached the final frontier.

The Seattle startup announced on Tuesday (Nov. 3) that its Otter 24C satellite suffered a glitch in low Earth orbit (LEO) and is not recoverable.

The anomaly killed an ambitious mission in the cradle, as Otter 24C was still in the commissioning phase.

Otter 24C launched Oct. 1 on SpaceX's Transporter-18 mission, a rideshare flight that carried a total of 130 payloads to LEO (including a prototype satellite for Project Suncatcher, Google's planned AI constellation).

The Starfish satellite was flying a mission for NASA called Small Spacecraft Propulsion and Inspection Capability, or SSPICY for short. The goal was to "demonstrate technologies necessary for future debris-removal missions as well as for future applications in the servicing and inspection of active spacecraft," according to NASA's SSPICY site.

"This advances NASA's in-space manufacturing and assembly (ISAM) goals to ensure a sustainable space operating environment and builds towards a future where objects can be assembled, repaired and maintained in space, significantly expanding possibilities for science and human exploration," the agency added.

Starfish Space was a natural partner. The Seattle company plans to become a big player in the nascent field of satellite servicing, using its line of Otter craft to repair, refuel or deorbit other satellites for a variety of customers.

SSPICY marked Otter's spaceflight debut. The mission plan called for the 739-pound (335-kilogram) Otter 24C spacecraft to approach and inspect "up to four inoperable space objects of U.S. origin" over the course of a two-year mission, performing detailed visual inspections.

But Otter 24C never got the chance to perform any of these orbital rendezvous.

"While working through commissioning steps, Starfish eventually stopped receiving data from Otter 24C," the company said in a Nov. 3 X post.

"An investigation into the loss of communications has determined that fault protection on the satellite bus provided by [California company] Astro Digital had an error that turned off the radio and prevented re-establishing communications," Starfish added. "Starfish, NASA, and Astro Digital have concluded that Otter 24C is not recoverable."

The company further said that it's implementing fixes to reduce the chances that the problem will crop up in the future. And it stressed that Otter 24C's death will not be in vain.

"The work completed through Otter 24C will directly contribute to the success of future Otter missions, as Starfish continues developing the technologies and operations required to make satellite servicing a routine capability in orbit," Starfish said.

The Seattle company has other work to do in LEO at the moment as well: Its Otter Pup 2 prototype craft is currently gearing up to conduct a historic docking of its own in LEO.

Otter Pup 2, which launched in June 2025, has been getting closer and closer to another private spacecraft, Gilmour Space's ElaraSat. Last week, the company announced that Otter Pup 2 got within a mere 82 feet (25 meters) of its target.

"With this progress, Otter Pup 2 has officially completed Characterize, the penultimate phase of its mission. That leaves just one phase left: attempting docking, and a chance to make history," Starfish Space said in an Oct. 27 X post.

Two private satellites have docked before, but only much higher above Earth, in geostationary orbit. Such a meetup has not yet happened in LEO.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA has officially launched the Moon Base Student Challenge, asking students to help build humanity's future on the moon. And there's $1 million in prizes up for grabs for the winners.

To build and sustain a base on the moon, NASA will have to solve a myriad of problems. And they're looking to the next generation for help, the space agency's chief Jared Isaacman said Sunday (Nov. 8).

"We are inviting students from across the country to help solve some of the problems that stand between humanity and a permanent presence on another world," Isaacman said. "We're putting 1 million in prizes together to support the best ideas and recognize the teams behind them."

Isaacman made this announcement wearing his blue flight suit from the rocket garden at NASA's Kennedy Space Center Visitor Center amidst the agency's MAX POWER air show event. Just the day before, he flew fighter jets in that suit and even jumped out of a plane, skydiving into the event. Soon after this announcement, he was flying another fighter plane above the crowd.

The audience for this announcement was filled with students of all ages. Some young children wearing costume spacesuits squeezed as close as they could to the front of the room while teenagers considering their futures listened intently. It was clear that Isaacman's presence and words were landing with this group.

But what moon base challenges does NASA want to see these students tackle? In short, all of them.

"The moon base will allow us to conduct groundbreaking science, test new technologies, and prepare again for where we inevitably go next, which is the red planet," he said. "But before any of that can happen, we have an awful lot of problems that need to be solved."

"We need ways to generate power through the long lunar night. We need to protect our astronauts from that incredibly harsh and dangerous and demanding environment on the surface. We need to move people and equipment around on the surface and support human life three days away from Earth," Isaacman said, illustrating just a few of the big issues that present with the concept of a moon base.

How will it work?

This challenge is open to high school and post-secondary students based in the U.S. For participating students, they will form teams that will work on an idea from one of six different technical topics related to creating and running a moon base. These six topics include power systems, habitats, communications, mobility, life support and astronaut safety.

This will be what Isaacman described as a "multi-phase competition that mirrors how ideas are developed actually in the aerospace industry."

"Teams will first submit concepts, then they're going to refine them, and finalists will have the opportunity to present their solutions directly to NASA leaders and stakeholders," he further explained.

"The prize money is great for sure, but the the real opportunity is to work on problems NASA is actively trying to solve right now, so students don't need to wait to graduation to contribute to that effort," Isaacman added.

A long road ahead

Right now, NASA has a long road ahead of them before a moon base is actually built. In mid-2027, the agency is planning to launch its Artemis III mission which will see a crew of four astronauts practice rendezvous maneuvers with two different lunar landers. If all goes to plan, this will be followed by Artemis IV landing humans on the moon's surface for the first time since the final Apollo mission in 1972.

The agency is making these big steps forward to not just a crewed return to the moon, but a sustained, long-term return to the moon. However, knowing that a fully-fledged moon base is still firmly in the future, they are banking on the ingenuity, creativity and passion of

If you're a student or know a student interested in participating in this challenge, you can find more information on NASA's website here. Interested students can register until Jan. 25, 2027.

So, you thought "Stranger Things" was done and dusted after all that Conformity Gate nonsense? No way! Netflix's sci-fi sensation returns in the live-action prequel series "Other Worlds: A Stranger Things Adventure."

Created by the Duffer Brothers and Kate Trefry, with the episodes set to be directed by Joe Wright ("Darkest Hour", "Black Mirror"), this new show isn't set in Hawkins or the electric '80s. No, this time around, the action takes place in Marion, Nevada, in 1955, and you know what else is located in Nevada, right? Area 51.

The teaser trailer certainly teases the possibility of a trip to the world's most paradoxically famous secret military base, showcasing a bike and radio resting outside of a fence with a sign that clearly says it's a restricted area (in any TV show or film, that's actually an invitation to see what's on the other side). Of course, the tease doesn't end there, as the thunder booms in the sky and there's a visual hint of a wormhole.

No story details about "Other Worlds: A Stranger Things Adventure" have been released to date, but there are some clues out there for all the Internet sleuths.

Trefrey wrote the Henry Creel-focused "Stranger Things: The First Shadow" play, while Matt Duffer explained to Variety how a spin-off show would tackle the rock that Henry found in the briefcase in "Stranger Things." So, yes, expect this to be a Henry-centric affair and the start of his long, hard road to hell and becoming Vecna.

What'll be interesting, though, is to see how the show ties into the history of Area 51. After all, it was on April 12, 1955, that CIA officer Richard Bissell discovered the site, while the "Other Worlds" trailer has the date of April 19th clearly marked onscreen, so the timelines align nicely here.

"Stranger Things" has never been shy of tying itself to real-world science and historical events, so it'll be fascinating to see how the show explores Area 51 as a concept and the secrets everybody believes are hidden there.

Was it really a site to test highly advanced weapons and aircraft, or was E.T.'s cousin held hostage there until he revealed Colonel Sanders' 11 herbs and spices? Who knows, with all this renewed excitement around this mysterious military facility, we might get another "Storm Area 51" event to enjoy and laugh at all over again.

Regardless, more "Stranger Things" is welcome news, and since it's presumably about one of the show's best characters, Henry Creel, it only adds another layer to his already intriguing lore. If we can't have an origin story about Hopper's incredible and envious moustache, this is the next best thing.

"Other Worlds: A Stranger Things Adventure" arrives on Netflix in 2028.

If NASA ever hopes to build a permanent moon base for astronauts, let alone aim for Mars, the U.S. space agency is going to need a whole lot of space travelers. And now, you have a chance to be one of them.

NASA on Saturday (Nov. 7) put out the call for a new class of astronaut candidates who think they have the "right stuff" to fly, live and work in space. Those astronaut hopefuls have until Dec. 3 to apply (the application website is here), with NASA planning to make its final selections in late 2027.

"This is an extraordinary time to join NASA's astronaut corps," the space agency's chief, Jared Isaacman, said in an announcement, which was made during NASA's "Max Power" air show at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. "The people we select could walk on the moon, live and work at the Moon Base, and help pioneer the systems and operations that will ultimately carry crews to Mars."

It's been two years since NASA last sought applications for astronauts. In 2024, more than 8,000 people applied, though only 10 — five men and five women — made the cut. They're in the middle of a two-year training program right now.

This new 2027 astronaut group will be the 25th astronaut class in NASA history. Its announcement comes the same year that NASA returned astronauts to the moon for the first time since the Apollo era with the Artemis II moon flyby. Four more astronauts will test Artemis moon landers in Earth orbit on the Artemis III mission in 2027.

NASA currently has 32 active astronauts in its spaceflying corps. The agency has recruited 370 people to fly in space since 1959, when the first seven Mercury astronauts were selected and unveiled to the world.

"There is a lot to be done in order to get all of these new vehicles and the new suits and everything as we continue to work towards the moon, build a base there, stay permanently, and then eventually onto Mars," NASA astronaut Nichole Stilwell, class of 2021, told Space.com in an interview at KSC during the Max Power event. "And so we just don't have enough people, and we're looking for more."

If you're interested in applying to be a NASA astronaut, you should take a look at the requirements first.

NASA's core guidelines require applicants to be U.S. citizens and have a master's degree in a STEM field like "engineering, biological science, physical science, or computer science from an accredited institution," the space agency said in a statement. You'll also need at least three years of experience in your related field.

Don't have a master's degree? Here's three other ways NASA might consider your application, according to the agency's advisory:

• "Completion of at least two years of work toward a doctoral program in an appropriate technical field of engineering, biological science, physical science, computer science, or mathematics. 
• "Completion of a Doctor of Medicine, Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine, Physician Assistant, Doctor of Nursing Practice, Family Nurse Practitioner, or a related medical degree. 
• "Completion of, or current enrollment in, a nationally recognized Test Pilot School program, provided the program is completed by July 2027. If Test Pilot School is the only advanced technical degree, then completion of a bachelor’s degree in a STEM field, including engineering, biological science, physical science, or computer science is required."

If you're a medical doctor and are considering applying to be an astronaut, your residency training can be counted toward your professional experience, but only if it is completed by July 2027, NASA said.

If you want to be a pilot astronaut for NASA, you'll need some serious flight hours under your belt. Here's a rundown of some ways to meet that requirement:

• 750 hours flying as pilot in command of high-performance jet aircraft.
• 1,000 total flight hours in a rotary-wing aircraft, with 300 hours as pilot in command.
• 1,500 total flight hours in other fixed-wing aircraft, with 750 hours as pilot in command.

"For those who apply, becoming a NASA astronaut is more than a career opportunity,” said NASA chief astronaut Scott Tingle, who also chairs the Astronaut Selection Board at the agency's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston. "It is a chance to join a legacy of explorers who have pushed the boundaries of discovery and play a role in the missions that will shape humanity’s future in space."

Once NASA selects its 2027 astronaut class, the new recruits can expect to begin a two-year training program based out of JSC, which is home to the agency's astronaut corp and Mission Control.

“The window is open. The mission is waiting.," NASA Deputy Administrator Matt Anderson said in a statement. "And the only thing missing from the greatest adventure humanity has ever embarked upon is you."

Space.com Content Manager Chelsea Gohd contributed to this report from NASA's Max Power event at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

A futuristic single-person aircraft takes to the skies at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with the upper stage of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket providing a dramatic backdrop.

The unusual scene was captured during the MAX POWER event, which brought together innovators and emerging technologies at the iconic spaceflight facility.

What is it?

The photograph shows a single-person electric aircraft called Jetson ONE, developed by Jetson, a US-based company working to bring personal flight to the skies.

The compact rotorcraft uses multiple propellers to climb into the air, allowing it to take off and vertically without the need for a runway.

The aircraft was performing flight demonstrations during the UP.Summit gathering, which formed part of the larger MAX POWER event at the Kennedy Space Center.

During the demonstrations, the Jetson ONE demonstrated its ability to maneuver through the air and hover in place, giving spectators a close-up look at the technology in action.

Why is it amazing?

The photograph offers a fascinating glimpse at two very different approaches to flight.

While Jetson is developing small electric aircraft designed for personal transportation, Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket is built to carry payloads far beyond Earth's atmosphere.

SpaceX will make spaceflight history this week, if all goes according to plan.

The company announced over the weekend that it's targeting Friday (Nov. 13) for the 15th test flight of its Starship megarocket, which will attempt something that's never been done before.

"The upcoming flight is planned to be the first to return both Starship and Super Heavy to the launch site for catch," SpaceX wrote in a description of Flight 15. "If successful, this will mark the first full recovery of an orbital launch system and a breakthrough moment in making Starship a reliable, rapidly reusable rocket."

Super Heavy is Starship's giant booster, and Starship (or Ship for short) is its upper-stage spacecraft. As SpaceX's description noted, both elements are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable.

"Catch" refers to SpaceX's recovery mechanism for both stages: Each will return to the launch mount at SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas and be plucked out of the sky by the tower's "chopstick" arms.

SpaceX has caught Super Heavy on three Starship flights to date, but it has never tried the maneuver with Ship. It's a taller order; Ship flies higher and farther than Super Heavy, so its return to Earth is more complex and energetic.

SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk already told us that Flight 15 would likely feature a double-catch attempt. But the newly released mission description gives us a launch date, as well as details about the flight.

Flight 15 is scheduled to launch from Starbase on Friday during a 75-minute window that opens at 5:45 p.m. EST (2245 GMT; 4:45 p.m. local Texas time).

Super Heavy will come back to Starbase for its tower catch about 6.5 minutes after liftoff, if all goes to plan. But Ship will stay up quite a bit longer.

The upper stage will go orbital, something Starship did for the first time on Flight 14 on Sept. 28. And, as on Flight 14, Ship will deploy 26 of SpaceX's next-gen Starlink V3 satellites, the vanguard of a new megaconstellation that will eventually consist of about 100,000 spacecraft, according to Musk.

But Ship should stay aloft for much longer on Flight 15 than it did on Flight 14, which ended with a splashdown in the northern Pacific Ocean about three hours after liftoff.

"Starship’s initial return to launch site mission is expected to orbit the Earth at an altitude of ~275 km [171 miles] and complete approximately 14 orbits around the planet over the course of a more than 22-hour flight," SpaceX wrote in its description of Flight 15.

"Similar to Starship’s first orbital mission, the flight profile has been designed with the opportunity to insert into a passively safe suborbital trajectory or safely deorbit at multiple pre-determined areas over the ocean after raising to an orbital altitude," the company added.

So there's no guarantee that Ship will indeed come back to Starbase for a catch on Flight 15; SpaceX will call off the try if anything is amiss. Whatever happens, however, you should definitely tune in. It's not every day, after all, that you can watch a rocket the size of a 40-story building take flight.

Thanks to a combination of radar, infrasound, dash-cam and security camera footage, astronomers have tracked the bright daytime meteor that fell over Cape Cod Bay in May 2026 back to its origin as a small asteroid perturbed by Jupiter and sent on a comet-like orbit towards Earth.

Meteor fireballs visible in the daytime are referred to as 'bolides'. At 1:06 p.m. local time (18:06 UTC) on May 30, 2026 one such bolide was widely witnessed falling out of the sky over coastal Massachusetts, with members of the public also reporting an associated sonic boom that rumbled across the north-eastern coast of the United States.

Now, a team of scientists from Europe and the United States, led by space physicist Juha Vierinen of the Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø, have patched together measurements from a meteor-observing radar network, regular weather radar, infrasound stations and camera footage to fully characterize the fall of this meteoroid and trace its orbit around the sun.

Key to these observations were measurements by the Spread Spectrum Interferometric Meteor Observing Network (SIMONe) based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT's) Haystack Observatory. SIMONe is a project jointly developed by MIT, the Arctic University of Norway and the Leibniz Institute of Atmospheric Physics in Kühlungsborn, Germany.

"We were fortunate that the event occurred within the coverage of SIMONe," Vierinen told Space.com.

This is echoed by Ryan Volz, a radio scientist at Haystack Observatory who is a member of the team who studied the May 30 bolide. "We got pretty lucky to observe this one," Volz told Space.com. "A bolide like this would have to enter the atmosphere within about 62 miles (100 kilometers) of a SIMONe-like meteor radar system for the head echoes we saw to be detectable, and there are only a handful of places in the world that currently meet that criteria."

A head echo is what radar sees when a meteoroid – what we call the lump of rock that becomes a meteor while it is still in space – enters Earth's atmosphere, generating a cloud of plasma around it as it superheats the atmosphere and its outer surface.

"The head echoes give the best constraints on the meteoroid's trajectory," said Volz.

The existence of the head echo is usually very brief, taking place at 56 miles (90 kilometers () altitude down to about 44 miles (71 kilometers) when the plasma around the meteoroid is dense enough to return a radar echo. The head echo transitions into a 'trail echo', which is produced by a streak of turbulent plasma that is left in the wake of the meteoroid after it has passed through a given part of the atmosphere.

In the case of the 30 May bolide, the trail echo was detected down to an unusually low altitude of 20 miles (32 kilometers), at which point the falling rock fragmented with an explosive force equivalent to 500 tons of TNT, whereas the total impact energy of the bolide was in the region on 1.1 kilotons of TNT. Only three recorded bolides around the world had a greater impact energy in the year before (2025), giving an indication of how rare such events are.

At this point, four of the Next Generation Weather Radars (NEXRAD) jointly operated by the National Weather Service, the Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. Air Force took over, recording the debris from the fragmentation as solid chunks of rock fell as meteorites into Cape Cod Bay.

The radar detections were supported by infrasound readings of the atmospheric pressure waves resulting from the hypervelocity fall and break-up of the object. These pressure waves can travel hundreds or thousands of kilometers and were picked up by the Elginfield Infrasound Array (ELFO) in Ontario, Canada, as well as by citizen scientists operating their own Raspberry Shake/Boom pressure sensors, which are build-your-own micro-barometers produced by the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

"Six citizen-operated sensors jointly constrained the arrival direction," said Vierinen. "Five other single-station detections and ELFO supplied the signal periods used to estimate the energy release. We are grateful to the citizen scientists whose measurements expanded the coverage and helped locate the event."

From the data gathered, the team were able to deduce certain properties about the object that fell to Earth over Massachusetts. The meteoroid that entered the atmosphere was about a meter (approximately three feet) across, and based on how deep it penetrated into the atmosphere before fragmenting it must have been a pretty solid body, possibly rich in iron.

"We cannot determine its exact history, but we found no association with any known meteor shower," said Vierinen.

Extrapolating its trajectory back into space, the team found that the meteoroid had a comet-like elongated orbit around the sun that took it almost as far out as Jupiter. Comets on such orbits are referred to as Jupiter-family comets, since their orbits are governed by perturbations from Jupiter's powerful gravitational influence.

However, the meteoroid was definitely not a comet, and previous research has found that Jupiter can draw out small asteroids from the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and place them on such orbits.

"Meteoroids can be perturbed by other bodies including Jupiter," team-member Marc Fries told Space.com. "The meteoroid's aphelion – the point where it is farthest from the sun – is close to Jupiter's orbit, which suggests a close pass by the gas giant may have indeed flung it into its recent Earth-crossing path. This same process has slowly depopulated the asteroid belt throughout the solar system's history."

Meteoroids on meter-sized scales are in something of a black spot – they are not very easy to detect in space from Earth unlike larger asteroids, and they are not common enough to be falling to Earth all the time unlike the pebble-sized meteoroids and smaller that burn up as shooting stars. As such, we know relatively little about this population of bodies and every bolide that we see helps us to learn more.

"Every new piece of data we glean about Earth impactors adds to the statistics," said Fries. "It is especially helpful to have measurements of total power, location, originating orbit and similar data points for the more massive meteorites, because those are the meteoroids and asteroids we encounter less frequently."

That the meteoroid fell over such a highly populated area was a stroke of luck. Although the atmosphere is carefully monitored on a global basis by both ground stations and satellites high above us, meaning that even if a meteor streaks above an uninhabited area there is usually enough data to narrow down its trajectory somewhat, radar observations are able to do so more accurately.

"We would love to have global coverage with meteor radar networks and we and others are making progress with SIMONe and similar systems, but the current coverage is still sparse," said Volz.

Nevertheless, the Cape Cod bolide resoundingly shows that by combining radar echoes from head and trail plasma with weather radar observations and ultrasound pulses from the break-up of falling rocks, scientists can ascertain the orbits of impacting meteoroids very accurately.

While the Cape Cod meteoroid was much smaller than the asteroid that exploded over Chelyabinsk in 2013, which was about 18 meters across and exploded with an energy equivalent to between 400 and 500 kilotons of TNT, being able to trace meteoroids back to their orbits may in future reveal new populations of potentially hazardous impactors.

The research into the Cape Cod bolide is available as a preprint on the arXiv server.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA is pushing ahead with its plan to build a moon base for astronauts by 2032, with the agency unveiling up to $10 billion in contracts to launch and deliver cargo to the moon and other efforts on Saturday (Nov. 7).

The NASA announcement, revealed here during the space agency's "Max Power" air show event at Kennedy Space Center, included plans for a new $10 billion Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) framework, dubbed CLPS 2, about$1.3 billion in funding for the agency's Venture-Class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare (VADR) program, and the nuclear-powered "PROMISE" rover on the moon.

The announcements mark another step in NASA's effort to establish infrastructure on the moon before Artemis astronauts return to its surface, including a rover and other cargo and research elements.

"Under the current CLPS contract, it's all all or nothing, which might be fine if you're only doing one or two of those [missions] per year," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman told Space.com during a press conference on Saturday. "But when you're trying to scale up to what we're talking about today, you want to have the flexibility to move pieces around."

Landing cargo on the moon

NASA selected eight companies to compete for the new CLPS 2 missions under the framework: Blue Origin, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, ispace-U.S., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, SpaceX and Voyager Technologies.

The contracts for the 10-year CLPS 2 architecture carry a combined maximum value of $10 billion, rather than $10 billion in immediately awarded missions. NASA also increased the ceiling of its existing CLPS contract from $2.6 billion to $4.2 billion to support the agency's "Phase One" Moon Base objectives.

NASA is also following through on a promise Isaacman made in June, when he proposed repurposing an engineering model of the Perseverance and Curiosity Mars rovers (essentially an Earth-based twin) as a mission-ready rover to send to the moon. That rover, called PROMISE (short for "Polar Rover for Observation, Mapping, and In-Situ Exploration"), is a nuclear-powered robot intended to explore the lunar south pole beginning in late 2028.

The autonomous rover will carry a drill and scientific instruments to search for volatiles and water ice on the lunar surface. NASA awarded Blue Origin a $94 million base contract, with an additional $140 million option period based on performance, to deliver PROMISE to the lunar surface aboard its Blue Moon Mark 1 lander.

Communication satellites, navigation tests and more

In addition to that contract for Blue Origin, NASA awarded six launch and orbital transportation task orders worth a total of approximately $1.3 billion to Arrow Science and Technology, Blue Origin and Impulse Space under its Venture-Class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare (VADR) program.

The missions will demonstrate commercial launch and orbital transportation capabilities, including cargo transfers between Earth and lunar orbits, navigation tests with the CAPSTONE 2 spacecraft and lunar scouting with "MoonFall" drones. Blue Origin, SpaceX and Relativity Space will provide launch support with their New Glenn, Falcon 9 and Terran R rockets, respectively.

Under a separate lunar logistics contract, NASA selected SpaceX to launch communications satellites aboard its Starship megarocket in 2028, helping to establish a future lunar communications network with spacecraft similar to the company's Starlink spacecraft.

NASA also awarded contracts to Honeybee Robotics, Redwire and Yank Technologies to develop components for a lunar power and communications tower, known as miniCAST.

The announcements support NASA's Phase One Moon Base strategy, which is scheduled to extend through 2029 and focuses on robotic exploration, infrastructure demonstrations and commercial deliveries. Phase Two, which runs from 2029 to 2032, will continue to build out infrastructure for the base, which will get up and running during Phase 3.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman knows how to make an entrance. Under the bright afternoon sun on Saturday (Nov. 7), Isaacman plummeted through the air above 10,000 onlookers, skydiving into the agency's air show MAX POWER.

MAX POWER overtook NASA's Kennedy Space Center here over the weekend, combining aeronautics and aerospace in a massive public air show, the first of its kind for the space agency. A mix of astronauts, fighter jet displays and new technology on display, the spectacle is a lot space-ier than a traditional air show, and Isaacman made sure to really showcase this merging of worlds. A pilot and private astronaut, Jared Isaacman is no stranger to the skies, and immediately after landing back on solid ground he jumped right back up and took to the event's main stage to greet an excited crowd.

"Going into this job, I I knew we had to do something like this," Isaacman said after landing and taking the stage. "We knew on our nation's 250th birthday, we had to open up [the] Kennedy Space Center the year that we returned our astronauts to the lunar environment and put on a little bit of a show."

And put on a show he did.

From thousands of feet above a crowd holding their breath, Isaacman jumped out of a plane alongside members of Skydive Chicago and other notable individuals, including Montana senator Tim Sheehy (R-Montana) and former U.S. Air Force Thunderbird pilot Shawn Gustoson.

One by one, tiny white parachutes popped up in the sky above, which continued to grow in size as the skydivers neared the ground. And before we knew it, Isaacman was gracefully touching down just behind the air show's main stage, landing to the sound of cheers from the eager audience.

In addition to serving in his role as NASA Administrator, Isaacman is an entrepreneur, commercial astronaut and pilot. Known in flight by his callsign "Rook" which he was given during fighter jet training, Isaacman has so far logged over 8,000 flight hours. In 2009, he broke the world record for fastest trip around the world in a light jet (he made the trip in 61 hours, 51 minutes and 15 seconds) and is flight-qualified in a number of military jet aircraft. He also financed and flew on two private orbital space missions on a SpaceX Dragon, Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn, performing the world's first private spacewalk on the latter misison.

Before jumping out of a plane and careening through the air on Saturday as part of this celebratory stunt, Isaacman was actually flying overhead in not one, but two different fighter jets.

First, he flew an F-5, a lightweight supersonic fighter jet, and just a short while later, Isaacman flew a MiG-29, a twin-engine supersonic fighter jet, over the crowd of excited air show attendees. And the fun didn't stop with this skydive, as Isaacman took to the skies once again, flying over the event in fighter jets on Sunday.

How do you follow this act?

This weekend's MAX POWER events are not a one-time-only celebration of aviation and aerospace at NASA. Earlier in the weekend, the agency announced that in 2028, a week-long event called CAPEWEEK will return to the Kennedy Space Center, promising a next-level showcase of air and space innovation and spectacle.

Isaacman and NASA astronauts presented President Donald Trump, who was onhand for the ceremony, with a gold plaque in his honor that will be installed at the Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility runway in time for the CAPEWEEK in 2028.

"What you are seeing today again, imagine March 2028," Isaacman said of the future. "It's going to be 10x bigger. I mean, not just the the fighter aircraft you're seeing, but displays of aerospace-related hardware, rovers, landers. We're going to bring commercial airliners in here ... I would bet on this, the next new Grand Airliner will be announced here."

"That kind of ambition is exactly that you should expect from your space agency," he added. "I promise you, there'll be more to come."

A satellite went knee-deep in the dead, after a voice command from the ground activated the Doom video game in space.

Playing a first-person shooter from 1993 was obviously not in the design plan for the PRETTY cubesat, which is run by a consortium including the European Space Agency (ESA). But the pioneering voice command opens up new worlds for satellite work, the team says.

"Someone in distress at sea or in a remote area could transmit 'mayday' or "help" on a radio," stated Estonia's Tanagra Space, which supplied the software for the feat. The hope is one day, a satellite could use transcription and AI to alert rescue services for assisting folks in remote zones.

The call to play Doom, thankfully, had no other urgency than curiosity — and teamwork, fueled by pizza. OPS-SAT Space Lab managed the experiment on behalf of ESA. Radio amateurs then made six unsuccessful attempts during passes over Poland and Norway, between April and July. The seventh finally reached success under the Oslo Group of the Norwegian Radio Relay League.

"We are radio amateurs, with the emphasis on amateurs. Satellite work was not something our club did, and we had no budget for it," representative Eskil Hadland, call sign LB6AJ, said in the Tangara statement. "So we borrowed a line wrongly credited to Pippi Longstocking: 'I have never tried that before, so I should definitely be able to do that.'"

The Norwegians spent 59 days and about 7200 NOK or $775 (pizza included) to reach PRETTY, helping make changes to the satellite software to pick up a voice. For example, a raw recording of an attempt on July 3, retransmitted to Earth, showed the spoken words to space were unrecognizable. Further work revealed the satellite's receiver channel was too wide to pick up the voice signal, leading to a fix to narrow the channel.

The historic voice command on July 27— in part, "PRETTY play Doom Doom Doom"— came from a rooftop in Oslo, and was spoken at night by Jon Bergli Heier (LB9BJ). PRETTY picked up the transmission, transcribed the command using on-board voice recognition, and then — just like a typical evening gamer—opened up Doom for a play session.

This was no multiplayer gaming situation, but the satellite did create a report of its demon-slaying skills — and its ability to interpret the command. For example, PRETTY generated a "postcard" including a frame of the gameplay, a transcription, and signal diagnostics. The satellite also transmitted its recording of Hadland's command.

As anybody who uses voice-recognition software knows, there are challenges in transcriptions: nobody speaks in exactly the same way, and aspects such as accent or background noise can lead to misinterpretations. The satellite also had to contend with Doppler shift, and with an antenna not designed to relay voices to space.

But the transmission clearly worked, powered by open-source tools including GNU Radio (which handled the signal processing) and Sherpa-ONNX (speech recognition).

The hope is that future spacecraft could one day adapt this approach to radio frequencies for other ideas outside of spoken words. For example, perhaps deep-space radio signals could be detected via satellite, with an AI on board sending the most relevant data to operators after analyzing the work.

For now, however, the Norwegian radio operators are basking in the success: "Our tiny ground station shouted at an ESA spacecraft, and was heard," Hadland said.

"Starlog" was one of the greatest sci-fi and fantasy magazines ever, and after a 17-year absence, it's being resurrected.

The legendary sci-fi mag went dark back in 2009 as part of the wave of popular publications folding due to years of declining readership and subscriptions. But as of Nov. 13, this geek favorite periodical returns as an annual print edition, and it's available for pre-order now.

It’s another indication of digital fatigue in the world, and fans of a certain age will recall the pleasure of poring over each colorful issue packed with in-depth interviews, behind-the-scenes photos, TV guides, classic movie retrospectives, book reviews, con news, and VFX features.

"Starlog" launched in 1976, in the pre-"Star Wars" days, under the leadership of editor-in-chief Kerry O’Quinn. It first arrived with artist Jack Thurston's beautiful painted "Star Trek" cover, featuring William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk and Leonard Nimoy’s Spock, set against the U.S.S. Enterprise near a shimmering black hole.

The magazine continued to inform the science fiction community about upcoming sci-fi TV shows and blockbuster Hollywood films for over three decades; I fondly recall reading each informative and entertaining monthly issue cover-to-cover.

Just in time to honor its 50th anniversary this year, "Starlog" blasts back into the sci-fi universe with Issue #375 showcasing cover artwork created by Armenian artist Gabriel Yeganyan. Its geek culture legacy, covering iconic franchises like "Star Wars," "Star Trek," and "Alien," will now live on thanks to Fangoria Holdings and io9 co-founder Annalee Newitz, editor-in-chief.

"During its original 33-year run, 'Starlog' documented science fiction as it evolved across film, television, books, technology, and culture," said 'Fangoria's Tara Ansley.

"Fifty years after the magazine first launched, the line between science fiction and the real world has become increasingly difficult to separate. That makes this an especially interesting time to bring 'Starlog' back. Technology may change, but the most compelling questions have always been about people: how we live, what we create, and what kind of future we want to build."

"Starlog" reloads for its first annual edition after a long hiatus on Nov. 13. You can pre-order the first issue (Issue 375 in continuity) on the Starlog website.

On Nov. 8, 2005, Europe launched its first mission to Venus. The spacecraft was called Venus Express.

Venus is a hothouse planet, one where the atmospheric pressure can easily crush an unprotected spacecraft. Even from orbit, Venus Express had to survive harsh radiation. But the spacecraft lasted for more than nine years.

During that time, Venus Express saw a weird vortex swirling around Venus's south pole. It also saw possible signs of active volcanoes. Venus Express also discovered that the planet generates its own auroras. These auroras happen when particles from the sun hit charged particles in the atmosphere.

Late in the Venus Express mission, controllers told the spacecraft to dip down into Venus's clouds — even though the spacecraft wasn't designed to do this. It performed well, but eventually it stopped listening to commands. The spacecraft burned up in the atmosphere in January 2015.

Why it mattered

Venus Express established ESA as the third world organization to successfully send a probe to study Venus, following the United States and Soviet Union. (Japan's JAXA became the fourth five years later.)

"By studying Venus, scientists learn how Earth-like planets change over time," reads a summary of the planet's exploration prepared by The Planetary Society. "Orbital studies [like Venus Express] hint that Venus may have hosted habitable oceans before becoming inhospitable."

"By studying Venus, we can learn how Earth-like planets evolve and what shapes planets throughout the galaxy into temperate, lush worlds instead of sweltering hothouses. Venus also helps scientists model Earth’s climate, and may serve as a cautionary tale on how dramatically a planet’s climate can change," wrote the Society.

ESA returned to Venus in 2018 when BepiColombo, its joint mission with JAXA, used the planet's gravity to redirect its path toward the planet Mercury.

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.

Godzilla goes toe-to-toe with long-time foe King Ghidorah in Godzilla Minus Zero, which opened in theaters on Friday (Nov. 6). Though the three-headed golden Kaiju might seem like a natural native of Monster Island, King Ghidorah actually emerged from the depths of space.

However, it isn't just the origins of King Ghidorah — also known as Monster Zero in the Godzilla movie Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965) — that are this beast's only cosmic connection. One of the largest structures in the universe, the King Ghidorah Supercluster, was named in honor of Godzilla's primary antagonist.

Eat that, King Kong!

King Ghidorah and Godzilla

King Ghidorah is a three-headed, twin-tailed golden dragon from the stars, first introduced in the fifth Godzilla movie, Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964).

In this first appearance, part of the Shōwa era (1964–1975) of Godzilla history, Ghidorah ravaged Venus, wiping out its population 5,000 years before arriving on Earth encased within a highly magnetic meteorite. Ghidorah was bested this first time by Godzilla, Rodan, and Mothra.

Undeterred, Ghidorah returned for a rematch just a year later in Invasion of Astro Monster (1965), after being discovered supposedly terrorizing the inhabitants of Planet X, a world found beyond Jupiter. In this movie, it is revealed that Ghidorah is less a king and more a pawn, under the control of calculating Xiliens as part of a plan to subjugate Earth. This will become a theme.

Freed from that control, Ghidorah returns to deep space, once again falling under the thrall of an alien race in 1968's Destroy All Monsters.

This movie sees Ghidorah hold its own against a who's who of kaiju, eventually succumbing to the combined might of Godzilla, Minilla, Mothra, Rodan, Manda, Gorosaurus, Anguirus, Kumonga, Baragon, and Varan.

Even with three gravity-beam-blasting heads, that is hardly fair!

Ghidorah returned with some backup for a final time in the Shōwa era in 1975's Godzilla vs. Gigan. This time, Ghidorah and his tag-team partner Gigan (who resembled a giant one-eyed space chicken) were under the control of cockroach-like Nebulans. Getting mind-controlled three times is just embarrassing!

Fortunately, the Shōwa era drew to a close in 1975 before Ghidorah was forced into servitude for a fourth time.

Ghidorah returned in the rebooted Godzilla timeline of the Heisei era (1991–1998) in 1991's Godzilla Vs. King Ghidorah, but its cosmic origins are gone. The Heisei Ghidorah begins life as three genetically engineered creatures called Dorats in the future before being morphed into a three-headed form via nuclear exposure.

Ghidorah was given a spiritual origin in the Millennium era's Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001), actually serving as a protagonist, helping Mothra in halting Godzilla's rampage.

Ghidorah is once again an extraterrestrial in Universal Pictures' MonsterVerse movie Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), being described as having "fallen from the stars" in ancient times before rising to challenge Godzilla.

Now King Ghidorah is back once again in Godzilla Minus Zero, maintaining his extraterrestrial origin story and once again challenging Godzilla to an epic kaiju battle.

Those are some of the fictional versions of this golden beast, but what does it look like in reality?

The real King Ghidorah!

Arguably the most impressive feat of King Ghidorah has been to make itself such an important part of pop culture that astronomers took note.

The King Ghidorah supercluster is a collection of galaxies located around 6.7 billion light-years from Earth. Covering an area of the sky equivalent to 19 full moons, as seen from our vantage point, this cosmic Kaiju was discovered in late 2022 by Japanese astronomers using data from the Subaru Telescope.

The King Ghidorah supercluster is comprised of at least 19 individual associated galaxy clusters. It stretches out for an incredible 1.3 billion light-years, meaning the entire Milky Way could fit across it around 12,300 times. That makes it the largest supercluster ever discovered.

To put into context just how monstrous the King Ghidorah supercluster is, consider the fact that it has a mass equivalent to 10,000,000,000,000,000 suns, 10 times as massive as the Milky Way's home supercluster, Laniakea.

Even Godzilla may think twice before attempting to tussle with that particular King Ghidorah!

See King Ghidorah in action in Godzilla Minus Zero, which is showing in theaters in the US and UK from November 6. You can see the preceding movie, Godzilla Minus One, on Netflix.

A new computer simulation that depicts Earth, or a rocky planet in general, without life is the latest tool in the quest to discover whether or not we are alone in the universe.

Life leaves its mark on a planet, particularly its atmosphere, in the form of a mixture of biochemically created gases. Some are obvious, while others can be produced by both biology and geology, meaning that distinguishing a planet that has life from one that does not, solely based on what gases we can detect in its atmosphere, can be difficult. The key is in knowing which atmospheric conditions can be explained without life.

To aid in distinguishing between habitable and inhabited planets, planetary scientist Samantha Gilbert-Janizek of the University of California, Riverside, developed a model that simulates the evolution of a rocky planet without life.

"The model can help us see how habitable but non-living planets might mimic living planets," Gilbert-Janizek, who was a PhD student at the University of Washington when the research was conducted, said in a statement.

Gilbert-Janizek built upon a model previously developed by Washington’s Rory Barnes that simulated the core, mantle, and crust of a planet. This new model pushed the simulation two steps further by incorporating the surface and atmosphere of the planet as well.

In all, the model simulates 19 properties of a rocky planet that are not related to life, including the amount of heat a planet receives from its star, the exchange of heat and chemicals from the core to the surface, and the outflow of certain gases from the subsurface.

Gilbert-Janizek’s starting point was to simulate the development of Earth had life never arisen here, therefore providing a baseline with which to compare to exoplanets. She ran the simulation from the birth of Earth 4.5 billion years ago to 500 million years into the future. The result was a lifeless world, but one that still had oceans and an atmosphere.

"When we interpret observations of an exoplanet’s atmosphere, this tool will help us determine the probability that what we observe indicates life on the surface," said Gilbert-Janizek.

What makes the simulation especially useful is its plug-and-play nature. Researchers can simply apply the bulk properties of whichever planet they are studying to the model, and then just let it run. If the result is a planet with an atmosphere that matches what is detected spectroscopically by the James Webb Space Telescope or, in the future, the various extremely large 30-meter-plus ground-based telescopes or NASA’s planned Habitable Worlds Observatory, then we know that planet probably does not have life as we know it.

However, if the simulated planet without life does not match what we observe on the real planet, then it becomes possible that life is present and altering the atmosphere.

"Dr Gilbert-Janizek’s work represents an exciting step toward understanding where life can exist in the universe,” said Barnes. "After more than a decade of work by many scientists, Dr Gilbert-Janizek has finally completed a model of the Earth that simultaneously reproduces properties of Earth’s core, mantle, surface and atmosphere. That calibration gives us confidence that future simulations of exoplanets will be accurate."

While any deviation from what is predicted by the model will not necessarily mean there is definitely life on a planet, it will help pick out those worlds that are worthy of follow-up studies by the next generation of telescopes.

Gilbert-Janizek’s model is described in a paper published in The Planetary Science Journal.

On Episode 235 of This Week In Space, Tariq Malik and Rod Pyle are joined by Dr. Jim Green to talk about the past, present, and future of planetary exploration.

Robots have, and always will, be the first to go to the dark and scary places in space. For many years, Jim oversaw these missions for NASA as their Chief Scientist. He has always been passionate about NASA's science programs and believes we're quite likely to find life off-Earth in the near future. Join us!

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

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Space news of the week

• NASA announces experimental X-70 Fractal aircraft: A 'new beginning for aeronautics'
• Earth has captured a new mini moon  — but it won't stick around for long
• Max Power: NASA hosting its 1st air show this weekend on Florida's Space Coast
• 'Trials and Tribble-ations' at 30: The classic 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine' episode that brought Captains Kirk and Sisko face-to-face
• When Voyager 1 goes dark, what comes next?
• Curiosity - 7 Minutes of Terror
• Searching for Signs of Intelligent Life: Technosignatures
• Metavisionaries

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.