Launches, missions, and discoveries across space exploration and astronomy — with the context behind each story, not just a headline and a link.
Astronomers report the discovery of AT 2026abck, a young transient at z=5.017 found in JWST NEXUS Year-2 imaging — the first robustly detected z≳5 transient in a non-lensing field. Its hot, luminous, UV-bright emission and off-nucleus location point to a core-collapse supernova caught roughly 4–10 rest-frame days after explosion.
Read original →Using a foundation model trained on JWST data, astronomers identified a luminous galaxy whose Lyα transmission reveals a vast ionized superstructure at cosmic dawn, with an extremely low neutral hydrogen fraction at z≈6.8. The finding challenges standard inside-out reionization models and marks the first astrophysical phenomenon discovered by deep learning.
Read original →SpaceX's Starship reached orbit for the first time on Flight 14, deploying 26 Starlink V3 satellites before splashing down in the Pacific. The milestone moves the fully reusable megarocket beyond suborbital testing toward eventual operational missions and SpaceX's moon and Mars ambitions.
Read original →Astronomers report a long-lived nuclear transient in GNz7q, a quasar at redshift 7.19, that is best explained as a tidal disruption event (TDE) around a black hole of about 30 million solar masses. Multi-decade HST, Spitzer, and JWST data plus JWST spectroscopy and photometry reveal extreme variability, high radiated energy, a broad Balmer line, and a dust echo, making it one of the most energetic TDEs known and a rare probe of black-hole fueling in the early universe.
Read original →Astronomers report a fifth companion in the HR 8799 system, a close-in substellar object at roughly 2–3 au with 10–14 Jupiter masses, using Gaia astrometry, Hipparcos-Gaia proper-motion anomalies, radial velocities, and high-contrast imaging. The discovery fills a long-standing detection gap between the system's four directly imaged giant planets and its debris belts, and shows Gaia can reveal massive planets at separations difficult for other methods.
Read original →Astronomers have reported the first direct detection of auroral radio emission from an exoplanet, β Pictoris b, using the MeerKAT array. The signals imply a magnetic field of at least 1.25 kG at the planet, the first direct magnetic field measurement for a world beyond the Solar System.
Read original →The US has for the first time confirmed it deployed a space weapon in Earth orbit, with Air Force Secretary Troy Meink saying the 'on orbit' capability is needed to protect US forces from hostile action. The disclosure drew a warning from China against an arms race and left experts speculating whether the system is electronic jamming or a kinetic anti-satellite weapon.
Read original →In a world first, a Ukrainian Sargan-3000 naval drone sank a Russian Orcan USV in the Black Sea, marking the first combat engagement in which one uncrewed surface vessel destroyed another. The kill, carried out with intelligence from Ukraine’s HUR and a Kongsberg remote weapon station, highlights the growing role and sophistication of USVs in the Russo-Ukrainian War.
Read original →German company Isar Aerospace successfully reached orbit with its Spectrum launcher from Andøya Spaceport in Norway, marking the first orbital launch from continental Europe and a key milestone for ESA's European Launcher Challenge.
Read original →NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched on Aug. 30 and is now a three-month, million-mile journey to its final orbit. The flagship observatory will map vast sky areas in infrared to probe dark matter, dark energy, and exoplanets.
Read original →NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center on Aug. 30, 2026, beginning its mission to survey billions of stars and galaxies and study dark energy, exoplanets, and cosmic evolution.
Read original →NASA's Roman Space Telescope launched on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, beginning its infrared sky survey to study dark energy, dark matter, and exoplanets. ESA contributed hardware and will support communications as the mission heads to L2.
Read original →NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched from Kennedy Space Center aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy on August 30, 2026. With Hubble-sized optics but a 100x wider field of view, Roman is poised to transform supernova and exoplanet studies.
Read original →NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, beginning a three-month journey to its final orbit at L2, where it will explore dark matter, dark energy, and exoplanets.
Read original →The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, a $4.3 billion NASA observatory with roots as a surplus spy satellite, is set to launch Aug. 30. It will study dark energy, survey the Milky Way, and hunt for exoplanets using gravitational microlensing, with data openly available to all.
Read original →A series of record-breaking heat waves has gripped Western Europe throughout 2026, with temperatures exceeding 40°C and causing widespread disruption, wildfires, and thousands of excess deaths. NASA’s Earth Observatory highlights animated temperature data from May through August showing the scale of the extreme heat.
Read original →Using ESA’s Mars Express and a state-of-the-art Martian meteorological model, scientists found that the Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud may form through homogeneous nucleation—a rare process never before seen in a planetary atmosphere. The result suggests Mars’s most striking cloud can condense without the dust particles normally needed for cloud formation.
Read original →A new study links six S-complex near-Earth objects targeted by space missions to specific main-belt families and meteorite analogues. By combining near-infrared spectral fitting with dynamical maps, it finds Flora/LL6-7 for Eros, Itokawa, Apophis, and Torifune; Nysa/LL3 for Toutatis; and Massalia/L for Didymos-Dimorphos. It also reports that below ~100 m, the S-complex NEO population shifts toward H- and L-type compositions, approaching the distribution of ordinary chondrite meteorite falls.
Read original →A study using 81,388 broad absorption line troughs from the SDSS-IV DR16 quasar catalog finds that radiation pressure drives quasar winds, as shown by line locking in 60 to 70 percent of troughs. However, the winds carry only 0.01 percent of the quasar's bolometric luminosity in kinetic energy—50 times too little for effective feedback—suggesting quasar winds cannot quench star formation in massive galaxies as many simulations assume.
Read original →The SETI Institute's ATA-ASP campaign is surveying the Anti-Solar Point, a game-theory Schelling point where an extraterrestrial civilization could potentially detect Earth's transit, for narrowband radio technosignatures. Using the Allen Telescope Array from 2356-3700 MHz, the survey has covered about 12% of its planned coordinates, analyzed 67% of sessions, and found 25 sky-localized drifting signals in 10 coordinates that will be re-observed. It is the ATA's largest survey ever and provides the first observational coverage of a long-proposed SETI target.
Read original →A new study tests whether chaotic accretion can explain the earliest supermassive black holes, finding that the most massive black holes at z>7 could have grown efficiently from stellar-mass seeds of about 100 solar masses or less. The model predicts an exponential growth timescale of ~32 Myr and makes near-future testable predictions about spins, host galaxies, and observable counterparts.
Read original →Astronomers used integral-field spectroscopy to map gas-phase metallicity in five nearby fast radio burst host galaxies, resolving the environments around the burst sites. They find significant metallicity variations both within individual hosts and between them, showing that global long-slit measurements can misrepresent the conditions where FRBs originate.
Read original →Astronomers applied an improved Fourier-order method to the Vera C. Rubin Observatory's DP2 solar system catalog, deriving reliable asteroid rotation periods and identifying 66 super-fast rotators that spin faster than the classical 2.2-hour spin barrier. Two of them — 491384 and 566130 — are over 2 km wide yet rotate in about five minutes, implying significant internal cohesion; 491384 is now the largest known ultra-fast rotator.
Read original →Astronomers report the first interstellar detection of fully deuterated methanol (CD3OD), found toward the protostellar binary component IRAS4A2 in NGC1333 with ALMA as part of the COMPASS survey. The detection reveals an increasing D/H ratio from singly to multiply deuterated methanol, a pattern existing chemical models do not reproduce quantitatively. It demonstrates deuterium fractionation as a powerful diagnostic of how organic molecules form and are inherited during star formation.
Read original →This paper reviews the first decade of Breakthrough Listen, the $100M, 10-year Breakthrough Prize Foundation program described as the most comprehensive technosignature search ever conducted, focusing on its facilities and instrumentation. It traces three eras of hardware and software—from raw-voltage recorders at Green Bank and Parkes to commensal GPU backends at the VLA, Allen Telescope Array, and MeerKAT—and reports a ~42 PB storage estate, engineering lessons, and an SKA-era outlook.
Read original →SuperBIT's April 2023 science flight imaged 30 galaxy clusters, and astronomers have now produced the first weak-lensing convergence maps from six of them. The work uses three-band photometry and calibrated galaxy shapes to reconstruct mass maps via Kaiser-Squires inversion, marking the first successful weak-lensing mass mapping from a sub-orbital observatory.
Read original →Astronomers report the characterization of fourteen TESS Objects of Interest using SOPHIE radial velocities, TESS photometry, ground-based photometry, and high-resolution imaging. Nine systems contain planets — including hot and warm Jupiters and a low-density super-puff — while five are eclipsing binaries, and one companion is detected for the first time via transit, radial velocity, and astrometry.
Read original →Astronomers have directly detected the lens system OGLE-2006-BLG-284 in high-resolution Keck and Hubble images taken more than 15 years after its microlensing event, identifying it as a two-star system hosting a planet. The measurement yields the system's proper motion and the stellar and planetary masses, marking the first direct detection of light from a planet-hosting two-star microlensing system.
Read original →New simulations test whether ω Centauri was the nuclear star cluster of the Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus galaxy, later dislodged by the Milky Way's bar. The retrograde 3:2 bar resonance can shift its energy and angular momentum on 0.5–1 Gyr timescales, and a corridor of N-rich stars in energy-angular-momentum space links ω Centauri to GSE debris. The work also argues globular cluster chemical trends are set by cluster-scale physics, not galaxy-wide enrichment.
Read original →Using TNG, EAGLE, and SIMBA simulations, researchers map how baryons and dark matter separate across cosmic time, finding that most baryons today lie outside galaxy-hosting halos and that galaxy groups dominate redistribution into the intergalactic medium. The work introduces new characteristic scales—closure and compensation radii and envelopes—linking the spatial extent of baryon redistribution to feedback effects on large-scale structure.
Read original →Astronomers report a white dwarf, HS 0209+0832, accreting material unlike any Solar System body, strongly enriched in trans-iron and s-process elements but depleted in silicon and iron. The composition points to a candidate second-generation planet formed from stellar ejecta, with a 4.4-day photometric signal supporting a photo-evaporating giant planet scenario.
Read original →The James Webb Space Telescope has captured infrared views of the stellar nursery NGC 7129, revealing stars and outflows previously hidden by dust. The image traces multiple stages of star formation and shows how young stars shape and erode their surrounding molecular cloud.
Read original →ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot and her Crew-12 crewmates are set to undock from the International Space Station on 7 October 2026 and splash down off California on 8 October, with ESA Web TV and YouTube streaming the return live. The homecoming ends Adenot’s record-breaking εpsilon mission, the longest single spaceflight by a European astronaut, after nearly eight months aboard the Station.
Read original →Astronomers used single-photon stellar intensity interferometry at 405 nm to measure Vega's angular diameter, testing new PhotonPix detectors alongside hybrid photodetectors. The combined result of 2.97 +/- 0.23 mas agrees with model predictions, demonstrating sub-35-ps timing for precision interferometry with potential gains for CTA LST instruments.
Read original →A new machine-learning pipeline determines stellar parameters and chemical abundances from DESI spectra by fitting the full flux-calibrated SED instead of normalized spectra. Validated against APOGEE and GALAH, it shows smaller systematics than DESI's official pipeline and adds four abundances that pipeline does not report. The method has been applied to DESI Data Release 1 to produce a catalogue for 3.2 million stars.
Read original →Astronomers modeled the luminous red nova AT 2025abao in the Andromeda galaxy, tracing its eight-year infrared precursor to a roughly 1.4-solar-mass main-sequence companion spiraling through the wind of a roughly 6.9-solar-mass AGB star. Their simulations show the resulting common-envelope event ejected about 0.92 solar masses and left the companion and AGB core in a surviving eccentric binary, possibly the first observed common-envelope event caught forming a close compact binary.
Read original →A timing study of two ultra-luminous X-ray sources, NGC 5204 X-1 and NGC 55 ULX-1, has constrained their accretion-disc size and structure and found significant spin periodicities in both. The results add evidence about super-Eddington accretion and the nature of ULXs, which remain poorly understood.
Read original →The LOFAR Decametre Sky Survey (LoDeSS) has released its first data set, mapping part of the northern sky at 15–30 MHz with ~45 arcsec resolution and ~11.5 mJy beam⁻¹ noise. Covering ~15% of the planned survey, DR1 includes Stokes I and V images plus a source catalogue, demonstrating sensitive decametre imaging for studies of exoplanets, pulsars, galaxy clusters, and other low-frequency phenomena.
Read original →Astronomers analyzing multi-epoch GPI and SPHERE scattered-light images of the protoplanetary disc HD 139614 find that the inner bright ring's azimuthal brightness varies on a timescale shorter than 11 months, likely due to a structure near 1 au, and that the 31–44 au inner arc is a tightly wound spiral with a 6.1° ± 1.2° pitch angle. A physical model with three disc annuli and an inclined planet between the inner two reproduces the broad shadow across ~2/3 of the outer disc and the asymmetric bright ring, supporting an inclined perturber whose annuli precess independently.
Read original →Astronomers propose that the fast X-ray transient EP260321a, discovered by the Einstein Probe and linked to a broad-lined Type Ic supernova, was shock breakout inside an extended circumstellar shell rather than a Wolf-Rayet star. Modeling of the photon diffusion yields dense CSM parameters that imply episodic mass loss days before explosion.
Read original →New 3D simulations show giant impacts strip low-mass planetary atmospheres more efficiently than previously assumed, and a generalized scaling law that includes atmospheric mass predicts much greater loss during planet formation. Applied to solar system formation, the law suggests smaller planets routinely lose substantial atmospheres, and even Earth could have lost 20–80% of its atmosphere during the Moon-forming impact.
Read original →Experiments and simulations show that a concentrated NaCl solution, when quenched into an amorphous state before compression, crystallizes into a metastable NaCl-bearing ice VII rather than excluding salt — contradicting the common assumption that salt is kept out of the high-pressure ice mantles of water-rich planets. The phase has a density close to pure ice VII but expels crystalline NaCl at about 5.1 GPa on decompression, suggesting a pathway-dependent salt filter that could govern chemical exchange between rocky interiors and subsurface oceans.
Read original →Using the POSYDON binary population synthesis code, astronomers model how metallicity shapes double neutron star (DNS) formation across cosmic history. They find that metallicity creates distinct formation subchannels, increases intrinsic merger efficiency at low metallicity, and produces more symmetric mass ratios, while local rates agree broadly with GWTC-5 constraints.
Read original →Astronomers reexamining 1999 Hubble archival data found a strong niobium signature around white dwarf HS 0209+0832, suggesting it may host a second-generation planet formed from the dying star’s ejected material. The Nature Astronomy study argues that planet formation may continue well after a star’s death, not just during its birth.
Read original →Astronomers used an 80-year combined light curve to find that CZ Tucanae, a long-secondary-period red giant, pulsates with a 55.47-day period whose ratio to its 443.6-day LSP is almost exactly 8:1, matching a tidally excited oscillation. This makes CZ Tuc the first candidate LSP star with a TEO, offering independent evidence that at least some LSP variables are interacting binaries with substellar companions.
Read original →Researchers have demonstrated single-photon-resolving infrared detection using a megapixel HgCdTe linear-mode avalanche photodiode array at conventional cryogenic temperatures. The approach suppresses dark signal while amplifying photon-induced steps, achieving roughly two false counts per thousand reads per pixel and offering a semiconductor path to photon-counting focal planes for low-background astronomy.
Read original →A new analysis combines the full-shape power spectrum and bispectrum from DESI Data Release 1 for three luminous red galaxy bins and quasars, using the Effective Field Theory of large-scale structure. It finds that adding the bispectrum monopole tightens constraints on cold dark matter density and the amplitude of matter fluctuations, by 9–18% and 8–20% for individual tracers but less when all tracers are combined. The work offers a framework for using higher-order clustering statistics in current and future spectroscopic surveys.
Read original →Asteroseismic monitoring of the delta Scuti star TIC 160582982 reveals an eccentric 89.29-day binary orbit with a massive unseen companion. Stellar modeling and the absence of any luminous counterpart suggest the companion could be a neutron star or stellar-mass black hole, making it a candidate compact-object binary.
Read original →New XMM-Newton observations of the quasi-periodic eruptions in ZTF19acnskyy (Ansky) reveal relativistic outflows during each burst and provide the deepest look at individual eruptions in any such source. Modeling shows that a wide-angle wind can simultaneously reproduce the X-ray light curve and spectral lines, implying each eruption ejects about 1e-3 solar masses and at least 1e49 erg of kinetic energy, with implications for QPE lifetimes and feedback into the circumnuclear environment.
Read original →JWST and ALMA observations of the magnified galaxy A1689-zD1 at z=7.13 reveal a substantial dust mass but unusually low dust-to-gas and dust-to-metal ratios. The finding suggests dust production or dust properties in early metal-rich galaxies differed from local expectations, a pattern seen in other z≳6 systems.
Read original →Astronomers report three candidate spider millisecond pulsar binaries found by following up unassociated Fermi LAT gamma-ray sources with SOAR optical spectroscopy and Swift X-ray data. Two are strong redback candidates with short orbital periods and redback-like mass functions, and one shows H-alpha emission phase-offset from the companion's absorption lines—evidence that the emission traces an intrabinary shock wrapping the pulsar for the first time. A third, less secure candidate has unusual properties including a 30.5-hour orbit and a possible subgiant companion.
Read original →A new dynamical study of 16 brightest cluster galaxies has discovered eight ultramassive black holes, doubling the known population above 10 billion solar masses. The work shows that brightest cluster galaxies are outliers in the standard black-hole–velocity-dispersion relation, while depleted-core size is a much better unbiased predictor of black-hole mass at the high-mass end, supporting a black-hole binary formation model for the centers of the most massive galaxies.
Read original →NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 launched four astronauts to the International Space Station aboard a Falcon 9 and Dragon spacecraft, beginning a science expedition. The Dragon is scheduled to dock autonomously at the station’s Harmony module and is expected to set the fastest U.S. launch-to-docking record at the ISS. The crew will join Expedition 75 before Crew-12 returns to Earth.
Read original →NASA's James Webb Space Telescope examined 21 extreme debris disks—young stellar systems showing signs of violent, planet-shattering collisions—and found they are far rarer than theory predicts, appearing around only about 1% of young stars. The results, published in The Astrophysical Journal, offer clues about the collisions that may resemble the impact thought to have formed the Moon and shaped early Earth.
Read original →ESA's September 2026 roundup covers FLEX and Sentinel-3C launching on Vega-C, Sophie Adenot's final spacewalk, BepiColombo's Mercury Transfer Module separation, Spectrum becoming the first rocket to reach orbit from continental Europe, and JWST spotting tiny brown dwarfs that could harbor planet-building material.
Read original →A new analysis asks whether hints of dynamical dark energy in combined DESI and CMB data could instead be explained by a one-parameter 'cosmic glitch in gravity,' in which the cosmological gravitational coupling is slightly weaker than Newton's constant. The model fits the data at least as well as standard two-parameter dynamical dark energy and makes a distinctive prediction for DESI distances from CMB data alone.
Read original →A new analysis fits the recurrent X-ray outbursts of ESO 243-49 HLX-1 with a relativistic thin-disk model, finding a common intermediate-mass black hole and disk geometry across outbursts. The inferred injected masses and disk size point to a low-mass donor being repeatedly partially stripped on a highly eccentric orbit, supporting a repeating partial tidal disruption event interpretation.
Read original →A new arXiv white paper outlines how the Vera C. Rubin Observatory's LSST and complementary high-cadence 'shadowing' surveys can study nearby supernovae in their earliest phases. It estimates that LSST could constrain precursor emission for hundreds of core-collapse SNe and early light-curve features for many Type Ia and Type II SNe, while arguing for an embargo waiver and a dedicated nearby-galaxy transient broker.
Read original →Astronomers propose that HESS J1507-622, an unusual off-plane TeV gamma-ray source, is a young Galactic kilonova remnant. A leptonic model can reproduce its GeV-TeV emission via inverse-Compton scattering while staying below X-ray and radio limits, implying a distance of 3.8-14.3 kpc and an age of 0.2-3.0 kyr. Future MeV observations of r-process radioisotope decay, thermal dust emission, or an optical light echo could confirm the scenario.
Read original →A new analysis of late-phase spectra from GW170817's kilonova AT2017gfo uses an analytic emission model to constrain r-process element abundances. It attributes the 1.4, 1.6, and 2.1 μm features mainly to La III, Ce III, and Te III, inferring mass fractions and upper limits that point to a suppressed first r-process peak and enhanced heavy-element production in the inner ejecta.
Read original →A new 175 ks Chandra observation of the z=3.273 gravitational lens MG B2016+112 provides X-ray spectral evidence that it hosts a dual AGN, with the two nuclei separated by 175 parsecs — the tightest confirmed high-redshift AGN pair. Strong intrinsic absorption in one source identifies it as obscured, ruling out a single-AGN jet interpretation and adding to a known type II AGN in the system. The result will help studies of supermassive black hole evolution and gravitational-wave precursors.
Read original →A new analysis quantifies the tension between KM3NeT's ultra-high-energy through-going muon, likely from a neutrino above 10 PeV, and IceCube's lack of comparable events. It finds 3.5σ tension for a diffuse isotropic flux, with alternative origins still at 2.0-3.6σ, suggesting the KM3NeT event may be the first observation of a new astrophysical source.
Read original →Astronomers have developed an improved standardization framework for Type II-P supernovae using SNfactory spectrophotometry, Gaussian Process expansion-velocity measurements, and a hierarchical Bayesian extension of the standardized candle method that adds an Hα absorption-to-emission correction. The method cuts Hubble-flow scatter from 0.28 to 0.18 mag and yields H0 = 70.6^{+4.5}_{-4.3} km/s/Mpc (6.2% precision), though inconsistencies remain between calibrator and Hubble-flow populations.
Read original →The European-Chinese Smile mission has been approved to begin science operations after completing in-space commissioning, with its four instruments tested and first data already captured. The UVI camera has returned the first full ultraviolet view of the northern auroral ring since 2008, while the SXI X-ray camera is working but needs onboard adjustments to reduce stray light when pointed at Earth.
Read original →CHAMPS is a new 144-hour ALMA 1.2 mm large program mapping the joint JWST/NIRCam+MIRI footprint in COSMOS to census dusty galaxies at z>4. It reports about 385 submillimeter sources, 68 dusty AGN, and a dozen z>6 dusty galaxies, including massive candidates up to z=7.5, offering new constraints on early dust formation and obscured star formation.
Read original →A new hierarchical Bayesian analysis infers the intrinsic properties of Gaia's compact-object binaries while correcting for measurement uncertainties and selection effects. For the more than 3,000 white dwarf–main sequence systems, it finds a declining orbital-period distribution, a sharp white dwarf mass peak near 0.6 solar masses, a nonzero eccentricity peak, and a midplane space density of about 30,000 per cubic kiloparsec; it also estimates roughly 30 black hole and 600 neutron star binaries within 2 kpc. These empirical benchmarks aim to constrain binary evolution models and prepare for the much larger Gaia DR4 astrometric-orbit catalog.
Read original →New dynamical modeling of Haumea's satellite system, using two decades of Hubble Space Telescope astrometry, measures the dwarf planet's oblateness and moon masses and points to a dense rocky core beneath an ice-rich mantle. The result suggests that dense rocky cores and subsurface oceans may be common among trans-Neptunian dwarf planets.
Read original →Astronomers using JWST/NIRCam have identified the long-sought infrared counterpart to the Rapid Burster (MXB 1730-335), the only known neutron star that produces both Type I and Type II X-ray bursts. The counterpart was caught in an X-ray active state and shows dramatic infrared variability, fading by about 2.5 magnitudes in F200W on minute timescales. The detection provides an infrared anchor for future spectroscopy and simultaneous infrared/X-ray monitoring to probe the system's accretion physics.
Read original →A population-level analysis of 29 quadruply imaged quasars finds a strong preference for core-collapsed dark matter halos, as predicted by self-interacting dark matter (SIDM), over standard cold dark matter (CDM). Depending on assumptions about SIDM subhalos and globular clusters, Bayes factors disfavor CDM relative to SIDM by 6:1 to 24:1, posing a potential challenge to the CDM paradigm.
Read original →Astronomers report the discovery and multiwavelength analysis of TDE 2023mfm, an optically selected tidal disruption event arising from a wandering massive black hole offset from its host galaxy's center. Observations with ZTF, Keck, HST, Chandra, and other facilities show it has the hallmarks of a standard optical TDE while sitting about 1.08 kpc off-nuclear, with late-time radio emission that may come from a delayed outflow.
Read original →Researchers used a Mars meteorological model to show that homogeneous nucleation—water vapor condensing directly into ice without pre-existing nuclei—is needed to reproduce the Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud. This provides the first evidence of homogeneous nucleation of water vapor in a planetary atmosphere and challenges standard assumptions about how clouds form.
Read original →Astronomers report a ~7σ detection of flux blueward of Lyman-α in a massive star-forming galaxy at z≈7.57 using JWST, independently confirmed with NIRCam imaging. The finding implies an exceptionally transparent sightline through the intergalactic medium and suggests massive galaxies may contribute more to cosmic reionization than previously thought.
Read original →Researchers report the first detection of X-ray photon redshift and blueshift caused by an X-ray telescope's orbital motion around Earth. Using XRISM/Resolve observations of narrow iron K-alpha lines from galactic-center molecular clouds, they find orbital redshift modulation at 95% confidence, highlighting a calibration effect for high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy.
Read original →The CHAMPS survey has produced the largest ALMA blank-field catalog to date at 1.2 mm, covering 0.2 deg² in COSMOS and detecting 3,355 dusty galaxies. Its robust 376-source high-significance sample, at median redshift 2.54, provides a new resource for studying dusty star formation and AGN in the JWST era.
Read original →New JWST/NIRSpec-IFS observations and archival reanalysis of LAP1 at z~6.6 confirm its extremely low metallicity and low stellar mass, strengthening its status as one of the best candidates for Pop III stellar clusters during the Epoch of Reionization. The high-resolution data constrain the system's dynamics and suggest a very young stellar population, possibly the first burst of star formation in a pristine environment.
Read original →A JWST NIRCam time-series survey has identified 1,315 variable sources in the dense bulge fossil fragments Terzan 5 and Liller 1, the first JWST variability census of a globular-cluster-like object. The census adds 23% of all known variables in Galactic globular clusters in one study, nearly doubles the count in omega Centauri with Liller 1 alone, and finds long-sought infrared counterparts to the Rapid Burster and a Terzan 5 pulsar.
Read original →Researchers report the first laboratory demonstration of implicit electric field conjugation (iEFC) at small angular separations, creating a dark hole spanning 1 to 4 λ/D on a segmented pupil in H-band. The test used the SPEED high-contrast imaging testbed for ELT-class instruments, combining a small-inner-working-angle APCMC coronagraph with multi- and out-of-pupil-plane deformable mirrors. The results show iEFC and widely separated out-of-pupil DMs can generate dark holes down to 1 λ/D, advancing prospects for exoplanet imaging at unprecedented angular resolution.
Read original →NASA has reportedly launched a secret effort to return a retired Lockheed SR-71A Blackbird, Tail No. 844, to flight after nearly 27 years, offering jobs to former Blackbird test engineers. The aircraft was removed from a display pole at Armstrong Flight Research Center and moved into a former space shuttle hangar, while NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has teased a new X-plane with Blackbird-like features.
Read original →Using NANOGrav’s 15-year data, researchers derive the first constraints on supermassive black hole binary populations that incorporate pulsar-timing upper limits on individual continuous waves. The lack of resolvable continuous-wave sources favors many lower-mass binaries over a few ultramassive ones, complementing the gravitational-wave background amplitude and tightening population parameters. These constraints will improve if continuous-wave nondetection continues.
Read original →JWST observations of the lensed galaxy Janus-11 at z=10.79 reveal it is among the most massive galaxies known at z>10, with modest dust attenuation and a red-monster-like UV slope. Its [OIII]4363 detection yields the highest-redshift direct-method metallicity measurement to date and supports a star-forming galaxy interpretation, while an AGN contribution cannot be ruled out.
Read original →JWST observed comet 81P/Wild 2 with NIRSpec and MIRI, finding strong evidence of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in its coma after subtracting molecular and thermal emission. The work is the first compositional comparison between JWST remote-sensing spectroscopy of a solar system object and laboratory analysis of its returned samples, with implications for primitive carbon inherited from interstellar and protoplanetary material.
Read original →New JWST NIRSpec spectra show that Uranus's rings and four ringmoons have compositions resembling water-rich Kuiper belt objects, including deep water-ice and CO2 features. Volatile abundances decrease closer to Uranus, and the authors propose two possible histories for the rings and small inner moons.
Read original →New ALMA observations at ~1 au resolution detect and track a prominent dust blob at 52 au in the TW Hya protoplanetary disk, showing it moves with local Keplerian rotation and has a double-peaked substructure. The lack of associated compact gas emission suggests that if an embedded planet causes the structure, it must be extremely low-mass.
Read original →The Global Spline Fit (GSF) is a new data-driven model that combines space- and ground-based cosmic-ray measurements into a single, self-consistent description of elemental fluxes from hydrogen to nickel. It fits about a thousand data points with χ²/ndf ≈ 1.3, showing the global cosmic-ray dataset is consistent once instrumental energy scales are aligned. The resulting nucleon flux differs from widely used parametrizations by 20–50% across four decades in energy, with direct implications for atmospheric neutrino and muon flux predictions.
Read original →A new PHANGS analysis combines HST star-cluster catalogs with ALMA CO maps to measure how molecular gas fades around 29,233 clusters in 36 galaxies. It finds rapid gas dispersal over ~4–10 Myr and an observed cluster formation efficiency of ~1.2%, pointing to early stellar feedback as the main driver rather than cluster drift.
Read original →Fermi-LAT detected an unexpected, rapid, and powerful GeV gamma-ray outburst in 2023 from the compact steep-spectrum radio galaxy 3C 216, a rare gamma-ray-emitting CSS source. Follow-up Swift UV and X-ray observations show the outburst was dominated by synchrotron and synchrotron self-Compton emission from a relativistic jet, with radio data indicating a blazar-like core viewed at a small angle. The event is unique among 17 years of Fermi-LAT monitoring of the source.
Read original →A new analysis of proton and helium cosmic-ray spectra from 0.1 to 1000 PeV finds that the knee cannot be explained by a single terminal cutoff and requires a Galactic proton component extending beyond 100 PeV. The result suggests the knee probes Galactic cosmic-ray transport and may connect to extreme accelerators such as super-Eddington X-ray binaries, while a continuous supernova-remnant origin would challenge existing acceleration theory and gamma-ray observations.
Read original →A new analysis of eight M-dwarf sub-Neptunes with JWST spectra finds that four cannot be classified as either rocky cores with primordial hydrogen envelopes or volatile-rich ice worlds, instead occupying an intermediate 'hybrid world' regime. Because transmission-spectroscopy target selection should favor low-mean-molecular-weight envelopes, the result suggests hybrids may be even more common than observed and challenges the binary framework used to interpret these planets.
Read original →Astronomers report the serendipitous discovery of LPT J1555−5631, a 62.2-minute radio transient found in MeerKAT and ASKAP survey data that emitted bright, highly polarized pulses during a 15-hour active window in May 2022 and showed no other emission over ~5 years. Its two alternating pulses and unusual polarization indicate a near-orthogonal rotator, offering new constraints on the magnetospheres and emission physics of long-period transients.
Read original →Astronomers using HST/WFC3 G141 have detected the secondary eclipse of the ultra-short-period rocky planet TOI-2431 b, combining it with TESS optical data to measure the planet's dayside emission. The joint fit puts TOI-2431 b near the zero-albedo, no-redistribution limit and makes it the first rocky exoplanet with an HST secondary-eclipse detection, a benchmark for lava-world studies.
Read original →A new catalog uses 14.5 years of WISE/NEOWISE infrared data plus Spitzer photometry to measure or constrain the sizes of 523 comet nuclei by separating their signals from comae. It finds median diameters of 5.3 km for long-period comets and 2.5 km for short-period comets, with size distributions that flatten near 1 km and help constrain links to the destabilized trans-Neptunian population.
Read original →Astronomers have discovered and characterized Nāpōwawā`enakaulua, the most compact known quasar pair candidate in the Epoch of Reionization, with a projected separation of just 0.98 arcseconds (about 5.56 pkpc) at z ~ 6.08 and a velocity offset of ~15 km/s. JWST/NIRSpec IFU and Gemini spectroscopy reveal two supermassive black holes with distinct masses (1.5×10^9 and 4.0×10^8 M_sun) and near-Eddington accretion, and the pair's occurrence exceeds clustering expectations by 2-3 orders of magnitude, hinting at merger-triggered quasars or an overdense environment. It offers a key signpost for studying the early assembly of massive galaxies and black holes.
Read original →Astronomers detected a minute-scale rotation in the optical polarization angle of a blazar jet, changing by about 136° over roughly 80 minutes—the fastest such rotation known by nearly an order of magnitude. Combining optical polarimetry with radio VLBI, the team rules out several particle-acceleration models and attributes the extreme variability to relativistic effects and interacting standing and moving shocks.
Read original →NASA welcomed Albania, Croatia, Côte d’Ivoire, and San Marino to the Artemis Accords, bringing total participation to 76 countries. The agency highlighted rapid growth—nearly one-third of signatories have joined since the start of Trump’s second term—and outlined work on lunar exploration standards, data sharing, and debris mitigation. The next Principals’ Meeting at IAC in Antalya will focus on supporting emerging space nations and disseminating lunar debris-mitigation recommendations.
Read original →A study using the SQuIGGLE survey of over 1,300 post-starburst galaxies at z~0.7 finds cool gas outflows traced by Fe II and Mg II absorption in nearly all stacked spectra except those quenched more than 260 Myr ago. The outflows have mass-loading factors of 1–120 and velocities above their host galaxies' escape speeds, suggesting they are relic outflows from earlier starburst or AGN activity that may help quench star formation.
Read original →Simulations of massive stars in hierarchical triple systems show that gravitational perturbations from a third companion can drive binary black hole mergers matching observed mass and spin distributions. The model reproduces the dominant primary-mass peak near 10 solar masses and skewed spin-orbit properties, and predicts a decline near 30 solar masses that may mark a separate high-mass formation channel.
Read original →The TRICEPS survey introduces a sample of 16 massive star-forming galaxies at z=4-5 observed with ALMA and JWST to trace cold gas, dust, and stellar distributions at sub-kpc scales. Its first paper reports that [CII] velocity fields show regular rotation in all targets, suggesting disk-like rotation was already common when the Universe was less than about 1.5 Gyr old.
Read original →ESA has selected ECO, Keystone and CryoRad as the three Earth Explorer 12 mission candidates advancing to the next preparatory phase, following scientific review of four concepts. The missions would respectively target Earth's energy imbalance, upper-atmosphere atomic oxygen and space-debris metals, and polar ice-sheet temperature and basal conditions to improve climate and sea-level projections.
Read original →Hurricane Polo underwent explosive rapid intensification in the eastern Pacific in September 2026, going from a tropical depression to a category 5 storm in about two days and reaching estimated winds of nearly 285 km/h (180 mph). NASA satellite imagery and experts highlight the near-perfect conditions—warm water, weak shear, high moisture, and instability—that drove the record-fast intensification before an eyewall replacement cycle weakened it to category 4.
Read original →NASA-convened SPARX Science Definition Team report outlines science objectives, measurement requirements, implementation architectures, and a design reference mission for returning samples from the Moon's South Pole-Aitken basin. The basin has been the top-priority lunar science target for over two decades, and the report argues a sample return mission there could transform lunar science while leveraging commercial space and human exploration efforts.
Read original →Google's Project Suncatcher is preparing its first in-orbit test, launching a prototype satellite on SpaceX's Transporter-18 rideshare mission with Planet to evaluate how Google TPUs perform in space. The long-term research moonshot explores whether low Earth orbit, with near-constant sunlight and potential satellite constellations, could one day host scalable machine-learning infrastructure.
Read original →NASA selected PRIMA, a far-infrared space telescope, to advance into Phase B development as the first mission in its new Probe Explorers class. The $1.2 billion observatory, targeted to launch in 2033, will survey the universe at far-infrared wavelengths to study planet formation, galaxy and black hole evolution, and the cosmic buildup of dust and heavy elements.
Read original →NASA History Office revisits Shannon W. Lucid’s record-setting 188-day stay aboard Russia’s Mir station, where she conducted microgravity life-science research alongside two cosmonauts and returned on Atlantis in September 1996. Her mission set endurance records for a woman and an American, informed NASA’s preparations for long-duration ISS missions, and led to her becoming the first woman awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.
Read original →ESA and JAXA's Ramses planetary defence spacecraft has been powered on for the first time by OHB Italia, marking a key milestone in its race to launch by spring 2028. The integrated switch-on tested the onboard computer with core subsystems, a step toward full system testing before the mission's planned 2029 rendezvous with asteroid Apophis.
Read original →ESA Member States endorsed 'A call to boost European space exploration' at the International Space Summit in Paris on 9 September, setting a shared vision and political guidance for Europe's future human and robotic exploration. The Call focuses on securing post-ISS access to low Earth orbit, strengthening Europe's role on and around the Moon, and using LEO and the Moon as stepping stones toward Mars; ESA will prepare options for the Intermediate Ministerial Meeting in Rome on 15 December.
Read original →Galileo has achieved its first real-world civil authenticated position fix using its upcoming Signal Authentication Service (SAS), demonstrating the encrypted signal's reliability under spoofing conditions. During a two-hour test, five operational Galileo satellites broadcast the new signal over Europe while receivers in Norway and the Netherlands established their positions. The milestone shows SAS, combined with existing OSNMA, can help protect GNSS users against interference.
Read original →FOSSIL is a proposed space mission to measure absolute sky intensity from 50 GHz to 2 THz, targeting mu-type, y-type, and relativistic y-type CMB spectral distortions with roughly 1,000 times better monopole sensitivity than COBE/FIRAS. Its measurements would probe primordial density fluctuations and inflation, dark matter and primordial black holes, and cosmic thermal energy, while enabling legacy infrared and Galactic astrophysics.
Read original →ESA's FLEX Earth Explorer and Copernicus Sentinel-3C launched together on a Vega-C rocket from French Guiana on 15 September. The flight was Vega-C's first dual launch, using the Vespa adapter to deploy Sentinel-3C and then FLEX, which will measure plant fluorescence to study global photosynthesis and vegetation stress. Sentinel-3C continues the Sentinel-3 mission's ocean, land, ice, and atmosphere monitoring and supports weather and ocean forecasting.
Read original →ESA launched its FLEX Earth Explorer and Copernicus Sentinel-3C satellites together aboard a Vega-C rocket from French Guiana on 15 September 2026, with both deploying successfully and making first contact. FLEX will track plant photosynthesis and vegetation health from space, while Sentinel-3C continues long-term environmental monitoring for Copernicus.
Read original →ESA's 2026 Space Environment Report warns that Earth's orbits are increasingly crowded, with commercial constellations growing and too few satellites leaving congested orbits at end of life. The report finds reentry casualty risk rising and future projections for LEO objects and collisions worsening in a runaway effect, with the Space Environment Health Index deteriorating by an order of magnitude in 2025 alone. It calls for faster, more consistent debris mitigation and active debris removal to avoid Kessler syndrome.
Read original →NASA is moving quickly to establish the first United States Space Academy after a late-August Executive Order. The agency held the first commission meeting, launched a Request for Information for states interested in hosting, and outlined an ambitious timeline for a 2027 groundbreaking and 2031 permanent campus.
Read original →ESA’s FLEX vegetation-monitoring satellite and Copernicus Sentinel-3C are scheduled to launch together on a Vega-C rocket from French Guiana on 15 September, with live coverage beginning at 02:50 CEST. FLEX will map plant fluorescence to study vegetation health and photosynthesis, while Sentinel-3C continues the Sentinel-3 series’ ocean, land, ice, and atmosphere monitoring.
Read original →NASA's Curiosity rover has passed 1 kilometer of elevation above its Gale crater landing site and marked 5,000 Martian days on Mars, while studying a large wind-formed ripple named Chocolatal to determine whether it is a transverse aeolian ridge. The milestone highlights the rover's long-running climb up Mount Sharp and its continuing geological and atmospheric science.
Read original →Europe's MTG-I2 weather satellite has reached its final geostationary orbit at 36,000 km, 12 days after launching on an Ariane 6, and is beginning commissioning. It joins MTG-I1 and MTG-S1 to complete the first Meteosat Third Generation family, which is intended to improve weather forecasting, severe-weather nowcasting, numerical weather prediction and climate monitoring over Europe and North Africa.
Read original →BepiColombo's Mercury Transfer Module (MTM) successfully separated from the spacecraft stack on 3 September 2026, marking the start of the mission's long-awaited arrival at Mercury. The separation is the first step in a sequence that will see two spacecraft enter Mercury orbit in December 2026.
Read original →NASA's Mars exploration program is shifting focus from landers and rovers to aerial drones, with the SkyFall helicopter mission planned for launch as soon as late 2028 alongside the nuclear-electric propulsion testbed SR-1 Freedom. This marks the first time in more than 30 years NASA has no firm plans to send new landers or rovers to Mars.
Read original →BepiColombo, ESA and JAXA's dual-orbiter mission to Mercury, passed a key milestone on 3 September 2026 with the successful separation of its Mercury Transfer Module, clearing the way for orbit insertion in November 2026. The mission will be the first to orbit Mercury with two spacecraft simultaneously, with science operations set to begin in April 2027.
Read original →ESA's Cluster mission concluded on 1 September 2026 when the Tango satellite reentered Earth's atmosphere, completing a series of four targeted reentries observed by airborne instruments. The resulting data set is expected to improve understanding of destructive reentry and inform safer satellite design, with the Draco mission next on the agenda.
Read original →ESA has signed an agreement with ispace-Europe to build MAGPIE, its first lunar rover, which will explore the Moon's south pole in 2029 to prospect for water and other volatiles. The mission aims to pioneer a faster, more cost-effective approach to lunar exploration.
Read original →NASA has selected Blue Origin to build and operate the Mars Telecommunications Network, a $700 million next-generation orbiter system that will provide high-bandwidth communications and navigation for Mars missions. The network is expected to be operational at Mars by 2030 and is part of NASA's push to use commercial partners for deep-space infrastructure.
Read original →The third Cluster satellite, Samba, reentered Earth's atmosphere on 31 August 2026 in a precisely targeted reentry over the South Pacific, observed by an airborne team for reentry science. The event was accurate to the second and gathered valuable data on satellite fragmentation and demise, which will help improve satellite design for complete burn-up.
Read original →ESA and JAXA held a press briefing previewing the upcoming separation of BepiColombo's Mercury Transfer Module on 3 September 2026, a key step before Mercury orbit insertion in November 2026. The briefing covered the mission's status, operational challenges, and the scientific objectives of the first European and Japanese mission to Mercury.
Read original →NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is complete and set to launch on August 30, 2026, aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Kennedy Space Center, with mission media resources now available.
Read original →President Trump awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to the Artemis II crew for their record-setting lunar flyby mission. The four astronauts became the first humans to travel farther from Earth than ever before, and their mission paves the way for future Artemis lunar landings.
Read original →President Trump signed an Executive Order to create the U.S. Space Academy, a new institution to train the next generation of space professionals. The order creates a presidential commission with NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman as chair to deliver recommendations within 120 days.
Read original →The MTG-I2 weather satellite launched aboard an Ariane 6 from French Guiana, marking the rocket's ninth flight and first mission to geostationary transfer orbit. The satellite will deliver detailed weather imagery and lightning monitoring for European forecasting, with data output expected to exceed previous Meteosat satellites by 50 times.
Read original →NASA's High Performance Spaceflight Computing (HPSC) project, developed with Microchip Technology, introduces a radiation-hardened, multi-core processor promising over a hundredfold improvement in performance per watt over current space computers. The architecture is designed to handle AI, networking, and fault tolerance for future deep-space and Earth-orbit missions. The processor has begun testing at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Read original →The Meteosat Third Generation Imager-2 satellite (MTG-I2) has been encapsulated in its Ariane 6 fairing and is ready for launch on 27 August from French Guiana. This launch completes the first MTG family and will deliver high-resolution weather data over Europe and Africa every 2.5 minutes.
Read original →After eight years, BepiColombo is beginning its arrival at Mercury. On 3 September 2026, the Mercury Transfer Module will separate from the two science orbiters, the first step in a complex sequence leading to orbit insertion in November and science operations in April 2027. ESA will livestream the critical separation from ESOC starting at 13:45 CEST.
Read original →President Trump will award NASA’s Artemis II crew the Congressional Space Medal of Honor on Aug. 28 at Johnson Space Center, honoring their historic 10-day mission around the Moon.
Read original →By 2027, three flagship wide-field surveys will overlap, generating petabyte-scale datasets worth over $6B in public investment. A new arXiv paper argues that joint computational infrastructure is now the bottleneck and issues a four-pillar call to action for cross-survey science infrastructure.
Read original →Nvidia disclosed a $21 billion stake in SpaceX as part of its broader AI investment push, while SpaceX plans to expand computing capacity sharply. The stake links the rocket maker more tightly to Nvidia's chip and financing ecosystem.
Read original →Nvidia disclosed that its stake in SpaceX was worth about $21 billion at the end of the second quarter, making it the chipmaker's second-largest holding. The position stems from Nvidia's investment in xAI, which SpaceX acquired earlier this year, and has already produced a massive return.
Read original →This paper presents 70 science cases developed for NASA's Habitable Worlds Observatory, covering four scientific pillars and addressing 27 of 30 Astro2020 science questions. It outlines the required observational capabilities, including spectroscopy, photometry, UV access, and astrometry, guiding the early design of this future flagship mission.
Read original →NASA has completed the Lunar Environment Monitoring Station (LEMS), the first science payload designed for Artemis astronauts to deploy on the Moon. The instrument uses highly sensitive seismometers to study moonquakes and lunar interior structure, supporting sustained lunar exploration and future astronaut safety.
Read original →The European Commission and SpaceRISE consortium have signed an implementation agreement for IRIS², the EU's new flagship satellite constellation, expanding it to 348 satellites and moving it to full-scale deployment with ESA support. First launches are targeted for 2029, and the reinforced system will boost secure governmental capacity by 60% within the EU and 54% globally.
Read original →NASA and SpaceX are targeting Oct. 13 for the 35th commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station, carrying more than 6,300 pounds of cargo including the final set of ISS Roll-Out Solar Arrays and microgravity research on artificial retinas, heart tissue, glass, and brain organoids. Dragon will dock autonomously Oct. 15 and remain until mid-November, with NASA providing live coverage and a preview teleconference Oct. 8.
Read original →NASA and SpaceX are targeting no earlier than Oct. 13 to launch the 35th Commercial Resupply Mission, sending more than 6,300 pounds of supplies and science aboard a Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station. The mission will deliver experiments including artificial retina manufacturing, 3D heart tissue models, unconventional glass studies, and brain organoid research, and Dragon will return science and hardware after about a month.
Read original →This artist’s concept shows NASA’s proposed PRIMA far-infrared space observatory, selected in September 2026 as the first mission in the agency’s new Probe Explorers class. If confirmed, PRIMA would launch in 2033 for a five-year mission to study dust-obscured cosmic objects and the origins of planets, stars, black holes, and Earth’s water.
Read original →NASA's Curiosity rover captured a panoramic look back across Gale Crater after reaching a mission milestone: 1 kilometer of elevation above the crater floor on Aug. 26, 2026 (Sol 4,996). The Sept. 5, 2026 image, made from 95 Mastcam frames, also shows a sand ridge and a wheel trench that scientists will study for clues to how the ridge formed.
Read original →NASA has released the full lunar science dataset from the Artemis II crew's April 1–10, 2026 trip around the Moon, highlighted by an annotated tablet screenshot showing where astronauts spotted meteoroid impact flashes on the lunar surface. The crew recorded five extremely faint "pinprick" bursts of light while Orion was 46,000 miles from the Moon, and the data — including crew audio — is now open to researchers and the public.
Read original →ESA’s third day at IAC 2026 centred on Europe’s exploration ambitions and the decisions ahead, with Director General Josef Aschbacher and Member State representatives discussing autonomy in low Earth orbit, lunar exploration, and space transportation. Géraldine Naja received a 2026 WIA-Europe award, and Aschbacher said December’s Intermediate Ministerial Meeting in Rome could be a historic moment for raising Europe’s human and robotic exploration ambition.
Read original →ESA's Hera asteroid mission, launched two years ago, is preparing its first major braking manoeuvre to slow down and rendezvous with the Didymos binary asteroid system. A 93-minute burn on 15 October will use three hydrazine orbit-control thrusters, followed by a shorter 31-minute burn on 22 October, to reduce velocity by hundreds of metres per second.
Read original →ESA's Hera mission, with CubeSats Milani and Juventas, has arrived at the Didymos–Dimorphos double asteroid system after a two-year journey. A new educational video episode explains what the spacecraft will do at the historic target, the first Solar System object whose orbit was shifted by human action.
Read original →NASA and NSIDC report that Arctic sea ice reached its 2026 annual minimum on September 12 at 4.6 million square kilometers, tying 2008, 2010, and 2025 for the 10th-lowest minimum in the satellite record. The update also notes a record-low March 2026 maximum, thinner multiyear ice, and a long-term decline that scientists attribute to natural variability combined with rising global temperatures.
Read original →NASA has launched the Lunar Grounding Challenge, offering up to $150,000 for innovative designs or operational solutions to safely discharge spacesuits that build up dangerous electrostatic charge during lunar South Pole EVAs. The problem is especially acute in permanently shadowed regions, where spacesuits can accumulate high negative potentials and spark when astronauts touch a positively charged lander.
Read original →NASA's Curiosity rover has released a new Mastcam panorama of Martian dawn, showing blue morning light over wind-carved yardang cliffs on Mount Sharp in the most detailed view yet. The six-image mosaic, taken on sol 4,982 without white balancing, comes as Curiosity passes 1 kilometer of elevation and prepares to study sulfate- and carbonate-rich layers before reaching the yardangs in 2027.
Read original →On Day 2 of IAC 2026 in Antalya, ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher held high-level bilateral meetings with NASA, ISRO, the UAE Space Agency, Canada, and Australia, focusing on expanding international cooperation. ESA also hosted a panel on large LEO constellations and sustainable orbital governance.
Read original →ESA and partners tested the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover prototype Charlie for eight days in Spain's Tabernas desert, driving 220 metres under remote science-team commands. The rehearsal exercised the same navigation software and science operations planned for the 2030 Mars mission, including autonomous driving, life-detection targeting, and responding to terrain and weather surprises.
Read original →This paper outlines the development strategy for HWO-AGATE, a high-precision relative astrometry instrument concept for the future Habitable Worlds Observatory. The design pairs a gigapixel-class focal plane of four 220-megapixel GigaPyx CMOS sensors with a dedicated calibration system to meet the astrometric precision needed for exoplanet detection and characterization. It proposes an end-to-end technology maturation program to validate the detectors, space-qualify the multi-sensor focal plane, and demonstrate data reduction within spacecraft limits, targeting TRL 5.
Read original →This paper describes the design and expected performance of PRIMAger, one of two instruments for NASA's PRIMA far-infrared space observatory concept. It details PRIMAger's hyperspectral and polarimetric imaging modes, its kinetic inductance detector arrays and cryogenic architecture, the European/GSFC development split, and the planned verification program, with in-flight performance verification identified as a major challenge.
Read original →NASA and SpaceX are targeting no earlier than 8:05 a.m. EDT Wednesday, Oct. 7 for the undocking of Crew-12 from the International Space Station, with splashdown off the California coast expected around 11:34 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 8. NASA will stream the return live across multiple platforms, with undocking dependent on weather and readiness conditions.
Read original →ESA opened its first day at the 77th International Astronautical Congress in Antalya, Türkiye, with Director General Josef Aschbacher emphasizing stronger European capabilities and deeper international cooperation. The day featured a ministerial round table on space as a national strategic priority and a heads-of-agencies plenary where Aschbacher highlighted partnerships including NASA’s Artemis missions, Japan, Australia, the UAE, India and Canada.
Read original →NASA is running tests in its Icing Research Tunnel at Glenn Research Center to better understand supercooled large droplet icing, a rare hazard where very large, below-freezing water droplets can freeze on aircraft surfaces behind conventional ice protection. The work includes new probes to measure droplet sizes and is part of the Subsonic Flight Demonstrator project; results will be shared with the aerospace community.
Read original →NASA's Curiosity rover successfully drilled its 48th rock target in Gale crater, a sample called 'Basque Lakes' in the newly entered Cache Creek quad. The team used contact science and remote sensing to characterize the site before drilling, and is now awaiting CheMin X-ray diffraction results that could reveal the rock's mineralogy and its depositional and alteration history.
Read original →Former NASA lead propulsion engineer Tim Conners discusses NASA's secretive effort to return SR-71 Blackbird Tail 844 to flight after 27 years of dormancy. The interview follows satellite imagery showing Tail 844 missing from Armstrong Flight Research Center since at least May and NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman's teaser for a new high-speed X-plane, fueling speculation about a Blackbird revival and possible flight-test role.
Read original →This APOD features a Curiosity rover selfie taken on sol 1943 at the south rim of Vera Rubin Ridge, assembled from 61 MAHLI exposures into a 360-degree panorama. The excerpt also notes that on August 26, 2026, Curiosity reached 1 kilometer of total elevation gain during its trek up Mount Sharp.
Read original →NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12 is concluding its International Space Station science mission, with NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev set to return in early October. Their microgravity research spanned cancer-related crystallography, quantum physics, bone regeneration, colloidal materials, and antibiotic resistance, aiming to benefit life on Earth and prepare humans for deep-space missions.
Read original →NASA's DAVINCI team subjected the probe's engineering development unit to a Venus-like thermal test, heating it to 869 F (465 C) over about an hour. The test simulates the heating rate the probe will experience during descent to Venus's surface. DAVINCI will study Venus's origin, evolution, and present state to help determine whether it was once wet and habitable like Earth.
Read original →NASA Langley researchers conducted a first-of-its-kind wind tunnel test using unsteady Pressure Sensitive Paint on a Benchmark Supercritical Wing, with the coating glowing pink-purple under ultraviolet light as high-speed cameras captured airflow pressure changes. The test marked the technique’s first use on a large-scale, freely moving model in a low-oxygen environment, opening the door to tests of flexible aircraft models and better simulations for future flight.
Read original →ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot completed three spacewalks in less than 15 days, spending 19 hours and 42 minutes outside the International Space Station. She and her crewmates replaced critical Station hardware, installed a new communications antenna, carried out maintenance, and prepared experiments for future work, with Adenot leading her third EVA as EV1.
Read original →Jammertest, held each September on Norway's Arctic Andøya island, subjects positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) receivers to hundreds of deliberate jamming and spoofing attacks so participants can find weaknesses in their technology. ESA, a regular participant since 2023, ran its largest test portfolio yet, and Galileo achieved its first civil authenticated position fix using the Signal Authentication Service.
Read original →NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for October 2, 2026 showcases the complete Sharpless Catalog—313 nebulas imaged by astrophotographer Bing Xin from dark sites in Eastern China and Inner Mongolia. The roughly 800-hour project captures H II regions plus planetary nebulas and supernova remnants, offering a comprehensive visual tour of these objects.
Read original →NASA Earth Observatory images show record flooding along the Gandak River in Nepal and India after torrential rains from September 24–27, 2026. The floods breached embankments, inundated hundreds of villages, displaced thousands, and set new high-water marks in both countries.
Read original →A new NASA ASTRA white paper argues that a Chandra successor in the 2030s is needed to provide soft X-ray imaging with >10x higher sensitivity and >50x survey speed, complementing JWST, Roman, Rubin, and other upcoming facilities. It highlights four priority science questions and sketches three AXIS-based mission concepts—AXIS-Deep, AXIS-Classic, and AXIS-Fast—while noting the effort would advance X-ray mirror technology and sustain the US high-energy astrophysics workforce.
Read original →Researchers have built an automated platform to characterize focal ratio degradation (FRD) and throughput in large populations of optical fibers under multiple optical and mechanical stressors, a key requirement for future massive spectroscopic surveys such as Spec-S5 and WST. The system automates hardware control, data acquisition, and analysis, and validation on a multimode fiber resolved expected FRD dependencies on input angle and bend radius, weak sensitivity to compressive loading, and a reproducible periodic twist-angle effect. It provides a scalable framework for the large-scale fiber characterization needed by next-generation survey facilities.
Read original →NASA selected 16 companies for Enterprise Logistics Support Services agreements worth $1.4 billion, aiming to standardize requirements, improve reporting, and streamline cost and resource management. The blanket purchase agreements cover a broad range of logistics and hardware support work, with a five-year base period and options for extension.
Read original →NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 launched from Cape Canaveral on Oct. 1, 2026, carrying four astronauts to the ISS for a long-duration science mission. The crew is expected to dock at 7 p.m. EDT, with NASA coverage beginning at 5:20 p.m. EDT.
Read original →NASA's October 2026 skywatching guide highlights Saturn at opposition on Oct. 4, the Orionid meteor shower peaking Oct. 21–22, and the Moon passing near the Pleiades on Oct. 27–28. It also notes Hubble observations of a ten-sided atmospheric wave around Saturn's south pole that appears to be strengthening.
Read original →ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) successfully completed an Earth gravity assist flyby on 28 September 2026, gaining 3.5 km/s and deflecting its trajectory by 20°. A 48-second video from Juice’s onboard monitoring cameras shows Earth, including Africa and the Moon, as seen during the 8,640-km flyby above the Indian Ocean.
Read original →ESA's EarthCARE satellite captured vertical profiles of volcanic aerosols from the Anak Krakatau eruption, and the Darwin Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre quickly added its ATLID lidar data to aviation-monitoring tools. The observations helped support safe air travel while also offering new insight into how volcanic eruptions affect the climate system.
Read original →NASA's Curiosity rover encountered an unexpected change in rock texture—jumbled, disc-shaped lumps in bedrock blocks—while working in a sulfate unit, and the team planned imaging and compositional measurements to understand them. The rover is also preparing its first drill campaign above the erosional supersurface, which is needed to use CheMin X-ray diffraction to identify minerals in the area.
Read original →NASA selected three new scientific payload suites through its PRISM program to fly to the lunar surface via commercial CLPS landers in support of the Moon Base Program. The instruments will study lunar resources, map underground shelters, and assess environmental hazards to prepare for long-term human presence under Artemis.
Read original →NASA has awarded Modulate Space Corporation a roughly $38 million firm-fixed-price contract to develop key elements of a 5G communications system for the lunar surface with built-in Wi-Fi 6, supporting NASA's Glenn Research Center. The accelerated effort has two work areas: a 5G Network-in-a-Box lab demonstration and a lunar-surface 5G/Wi-Fi flight demonstration, with performance periods running through 2028.
Read original →NASA, CSA, and DLR signed a joint statement of intent to begin preparatory work on an Earth-based Lunar Agriculture Module-Ground Test Demonstrator. The project aims to develop technologies for growing crops on the Moon, supporting Moon Base and future deep-space missions by providing food, oxygen, and water recycling.
Read original →NASA's EPIC camera on the DSCOVR satellite captured the northeastern and central Pacific on September 27, 2026, as Hurricanes Polo and Nolo and other systems churned across the basin. The season had already produced 20 named storms and nine hurricanes by September 28, well above the 1991–2020 average, with Polo making landfalls in Baja California Sur and near Guaymas and Nolo drenching Hawaii.
Read original →NASA has added Blue Origin's New Glenn 9×4 launch service to its NLS II contract via an on-ramp provision, making the vehicle available for future agency missions. The multiple-award contract supports NASA's human spaceflight, science, and technology directorates, with ordering through June 2030 and performance through December 2032.
Read original →NASA has set live coverage plans for SpaceX Crew-13, a crewed mission to the International Space Station scheduled to launch Oct. 1 from Cape Canaveral. The Dragon spacecraft will carry NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, CSA astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov for a long-duration science mission, with docking planned about 7 p.m. after a 7-hour, 50-minute trip that would be the fastest by a U.S. spacecraft to the station.
Read original →A SpaceX Falcon 9 and Dragon are vertical at Launch Complex 40 ahead of NASA's Crew-13 launch to the International Space Station on Oct. 1. The four-person crew includes NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, CSA astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov.
Read original →NASA researchers at Glenn Research Center have developed a new biodegradable plastic composite made with simulated Moon and Mars dust that could enable on-site manufacturing of tools and habitat equipment. Adding dust made the material stronger and easier to process, and samples are now being tested for lunar and Martian surface conditions and on the ISS.
Read original →NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center is marking 80 years since NACA engineers arrived at Muroc Army Airfield, where the X-1 soon broke the sound barrier. The center now flies the X-59 quiet supersonic demonstrator and supports Artemis, and it was recently named NASA's Center of Excellence for Flight Test and Aircraft Operations.
Read original →A commercial attempt to boost NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory ended without raising the spacecraft's orbit, but NASA and vendor Katalyst Space say the effort yielded valuable servicing experience. Swift, which has studied gamma-ray bursts since 2004, is now expected to re-enter the atmosphere by year's end.
Read original →NASA’s Artemis II crew will appear at a free public event at the University of Houston on Sept. 30, 2026, to discuss their lunar mission and be recognized for setting a human spaceflight distance record. It is the crew’s first Houston public event since their April flight and concludes their post-flight campaign.
Read original →NASA's SpaceX Crew-13 is set to launch four astronauts to the International Space Station no earlier than Oct. 1 from Cape Canaveral, marking the 13th Commercial Crew rotation flight with SpaceX. The long-duration crew will conduct stem-cell, crop-production, and human-health research aimed at supporting future Moon and Mars missions.
Read original →ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) completed a precise Earth gravity-assist flyby on 28 September 2026, reshaping its path toward Jupiter while conserving propellant. The flyby also gave teams a third chance to test and calibrate Juice's science instruments before the spacecraft's future encounters at Jupiter and its icy moons.
Read original →NASA's ORBIT Challenge 2027 invites university and community college students nationwide to work with real NASA intellectual property and mission challenges in two tracks: ORBIT Earth for commercial applications of NASA patents and ORBIT Space for next-generation space exploration technology, with an optional Integration Bonus for teams pursuing both. It offers up to $500,000 in prizes, NASA mentorship, an in-person showcase, and an accelerator for finalists, with registration closing November 16, 2026.
Read original →ESA's PANGAEA geology training for astronauts marked its 10th anniversary, with ESA's Pablo Álvarez Fernández, NASA's Jasmin Moghbeli and JAXA's Kimiya Yui completing the 10th edition. The three-week course prepared them to identify and interpret Moon and Mars rocks and to practice crew operations for future lunar exploration, including Artemis.
Read original →NASA and Boeing will hold a news conference on Sept. 28, 2026, to update the public on Starliner development and plans for regular crew flights to and from the International Space Station. The briefing will feature NASA and Boeing leadership and will be streamed online.
Read original →NASA Marshall engineers have completed environmental and physical testing of the ASCENT Propulsion Dual Mode CubeSat, a flight demonstration of a single integrated propulsion system that feeds high-thrust chemical and low-thrust electrospray engines from one non-toxic fuel tank. The mission aims to reduce mass and volume, leaving more room for instruments and enabling smaller, cheaper launch vehicles. Recent ground tests included pressurized helium leak checks and thermal vacuum testing ahead of launch.
Read original →Classified intelligence estimates indicate the NSA is spending billions of taxpayer dollars this year on evaluating and testing advanced AI models — far more than previously known. The figure is fueling a debate over federal AI oversight, with lawmakers warning that a comprehensive regulatory regime could cost tens of billions annually and prompting proposals to make AI labs foot the bill.
Read original →Côte d’Ivoire became the 75th signatory of the Artemis Accords, signing at a ceremony in Abidjan during the Africa Space Expo ASPEX 2026. The move deepens the country's space cooperation with NASA and expands the U.S.-led coalition setting principles for peaceful lunar, Martian, and deep-space exploration.
Read original →NASA announced SpaceX Crew-14 crew assignments for a long-duration International Space Station expedition launching no earlier than spring 2027. NASA astronauts Kayla Barron and Chris Birch will serve as commander and pilot, joined by JAXA astronaut Makoto Suwa and Roscosmos cosmonaut Arutyun Kiviryan as mission specialists. The flight is the 14th SpaceX commercial crew rotation, and the crew will join Expedition 75/76 to conduct science and technology work supporting future Moon and Mars exploration and benefiting people on Earth.
Read original →NASA named five winners of its Mars to Table Challenge, a follow-on to the Deep Space Food Challenge, awarding a combined $650,000 for concepts that treat astronaut meals as complete food-production systems rather than individual technologies. The top $300,000 prize went to Chinyere Ukeje of Philadelphia for the Adaptive Nourishment Infrastructure (ANI) concept.
Read original →NASA's SPLICE experiment, flown on an Alta-X drone, successfully completed simulated lunar descent and landing maneuvers during recent testing. The system is designed to provide safe, precise landings on the Moon, Mars, icy worlds, and other destinations, including hard-to-reach and unknown areas.
Read original →NASA outlined the biomedical and human performance research planned for the SpaceX Crew-13 mission aboard the International Space Station, including a new ESA collaboration called Venous Haemostasis that studies spaceflight's effects on blood flow and clotting. The slate also covers manual piloting simulations, a B-vitamin study targeting vision changes, and re-entry force measurements.
Read original →ESA is inviting the public to celebrate BepiColombo's arrival at Mercury with a creative competition, offering a trip to mission control in Darmstadt on 9 December 2026. The mission has entered its Mercury arrival phase after eight years, with key milestones ahead including gravity capture and spacecraft separation.
Read original →ESA’s Industry Space Days 2026 drew a record 3,100 visitors to ESTEC for the twelfth biennial edition, connecting about 1,500 companies with ESA programmes, procurement leads and partners. The two-day event featured more than 100 presentations, 240 exhibitors, nearly 10,000 business-to-business meetings and a new Technology tent for European technology projects.
Read original →Croatia became the 74th signatory to the Artemis Accords during a ceremony in Zagreb, with NASA and U.S. State Department officials present. The signing expands international cooperation on peaceful, transparent lunar and deep-space exploration, following Croatia’s first satellite launch in 2024.
Read original →NASA's FarmFlux mission will begin with low-altitude aircraft flights over Colorado, using more than a dozen sensors to measure agricultural emissions including ozone, methane, ammonia, and particulates. The campaign—jointly led by NASA Goddard, Colorado State University, and Boston University—will later expand to Texas, the Midwest, and California's Central Valley.
Read original →Arctic sea ice reached its annual minimum on Sept. 12 at 1.78 million square miles, tying 2008, 2010, and 2025 for the 10th-lowest minimum in the satellite record. NASA and NSIDC noted that the past 20 years have produced the 20 lowest Arctic minima since 1978, while Antarctic sea ice is approaching its annual maximum after an unusual August decline.
Read original →ESA's Hera spacecraft is traveling at 12 km/s and is due to reach the Dimorphos asteroid this November. The article previews what the mission's target system—Dimorphos orbiting the larger Didymos—would look like up close, drawing on observations from NASA's DART impact.
Read original →LUVCam2 is a planned 80mm dual UV-optical space telescope that will monitor UV flares from low-mass stars as a ~1.4U payload aboard the 3U CubeSat BRNOsat in late 2027. The paper details its concept of operations and system design, including a major sensor upgrade and new onboard capabilities.
Read original →A NASA expert working group reviewed evidence on EVA prebreathe testing, decompression sickness, venous thromboembolism, and patent foramen ovale for Artemis lunar and beyond missions. It recommended that ground studies stop excluding subjects solely for LVGE, found PFO is not a major VTE risk factor, and judged bubble grades' DCS predictive value uncertain, while declining to recommend universal PFO screening/exclusion and calling for clear pre-EVA medication guidance.
Read original →Albania signed the Artemis Accords at NASA headquarters in Washington, becoming the 73rd signatory to the international agreement on responsible, transparent space exploration. The signing highlights Albania’s growing space capabilities, including its two Earth-observation satellites and participation in NASA’s Space Apps Challenge, while expanding the Artemis coalition for lunar exploration.
Read original →NASA launched its State Hubs for Skilled Technical Workforce initiative on Sept. 15, 2026, convening awardees and partners at Space Center Houston to align strategy and address aerospace workforce pipeline challenges. Seven state projects—California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, Texas, and Utah—will develop tailored programs to connect students with technical skills and hands-on experience for aerospace careers.
Read original →ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) will make an Earth flyby on 28 September 2026, using the planet's gravity to adjust its speed and direction for the long journey to Jupiter. The manoeuvre is part of a fuel-saving sequence that should put the spacecraft on course to arrive at Jupiter in July 2031 and enter orbit around Ganymede in 2034.
Read original →ESA convened its Investor Forum 2026 in Paris with roughly 200 investors, banks, industry leaders and policymakers to align public demand with private capital for Europe's space sector. The agency used the event to push concrete financing tools, including an EIB lending facility whose first deal is expected to unlock about €300 million for Italy's space supply chain.
Read original →ESA and ISRO have signed an exchange of letters extending their Cooperative Agreement for five more years, through 8 January 2032, and broadening it to cover space weather, human and robotic exploration, and outer-space sustainability. The deal, signed in Paris on 10 September 2026, builds on more than two decades of cooperation in Earth observation, navigation, space science, and mission operations.
Read original →NASA has modified SpaceX's Commercial Crew contract to add three crew rotation missions—Crew-15, Crew-16, and Crew-17—for $946 million. The award raises SpaceX's total CCtCap missions to 17 and total contract value to $5.92 billion, with mission readiness dates in 2027 and 2028 and performance through 2030.
Read original →UC Berkeley engineers and managers watch the COSI gamma-ray telescope's detector assembly being raised in a July 2026 image. COSI is a wide-field gamma-ray telescope that will study energetic phenomena like matter-antimatter creation and stellar death, a collaboration among UC Berkeley, UCSD, NRL, NASA Goddard, Northrop Grumman, and others.
Read original →The SPHEREx near-infrared space telescope, launched March 12, 2025 UTC, is an all-sky spectroscopic survey mission. Its instrument has completed a full test campaign from component-level screening to in-orbit commissioning and now operates in full science survey mode, meeting all driving requirements for optical performance, sensitivity, thermal stability, and noise control.
Read original →A technical explainer traces how SpaceX streamlined the Raptor engine from the pipe-and-wire Raptor 1 to the smooth Raptor 3, which first flew in May and delivers about 35% more thrust than Raptor 1. It recounts the engine's development timeline and the skepticism caused by the dramatic visual change, then begins explaining full-flow staged combustion and the fundamentals of rocket propulsion.
Read original →NASA has selected SpaceX to launch its StarBurst small satellite, which will hunt short gamma-ray bursts from neutron star mergers, on a Falcon 9 rideshare no earlier than 2028. The firm-fixed-price task order under NASA's VADR contract covers launch services for the Astrophysics Pioneers mission, which aims to combine gamma-ray observations with gravitational-wave data in multimessenger astronomy.
Read original →NASA has opened media accreditation for SpaceX's 35th commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station, targeting a Falcon 9 launch no earlier than October from Cape Canaveral. The Dragon cargo flight will deliver crew supplies plus the final sets of IROSA solar arrays and experiments including artificial retina manufacturing, 3D heart cell models, and brain organoids.
Read original →Fifty years ago, on Sept. 17, 1976, NASA unveiled its first space shuttle orbiter, OV-101 Enterprise, at Rockwell's Palmdale facility. Originally intended to be named Constitution, it was renamed after a Star Trek fan letter campaign and President Gerald Ford's direction. Although it never flew in space, Enterprise performed atmospheric test flights that paved the way for the shuttle program's first spaceflights in 1981.
Read original →ESA has signed 18 consolidation contracts worth €20 million with nearly 80 companies to study secure and resilient connectivity services and mission concepts for the EU’s IRIS² constellation. The work under ESA’s Low-LEO activities will explore governmental use cases and potential future evolution of IRIS² capabilities.
Read original →NASA Earth Observatory's Image of the Day shows a mid-September 2026 heat dome baking the south-central U.S., with temperatures approaching or exceeding 40°C (104°F), more than 41 million people under extreme-heat advisories, and several cities setting daily records. It matters because the event capped the contiguous U.S.'s warmest June–August on NOAA's 132-year record.
Read original →NASA held a ribbon-cutting on Sept. 10 to mark the full restoration of its Guam Remote Station, more than three years after Super Typhoon Mawar destroyed key TDRS ground antennas in 2023. The final step came July 1 when the station's central antenna returned to service, closing the TDRS 'Zone of Exclusion' that had reduced communications coverage for the International Space Station and other low Earth orbit spacecraft. The recovery relied on emergency repairs, U.S. Army mobile terminals, and disaster-relief funding that also upgraded three other Near Space Network stations.
Read original →NASA's Curiosity rover marked its 5,000th Martian day by capturing morning and afternoon panoramas from a sand ridge called Chocolatal, which were merged and colorized into a new "postcard" image. The image highlights the rover's deck, UHF antenna, nuclear power source, and tracks against the foothills of Mount Sharp and Gale Crater, while celebrating the mission's long-running exploration of Mars.
Read original →NASA's Integrated Medical Model (IMM) is a decision-support tool that uses flight records, clinical evidence, and Monte Carlo simulations to forecast health risks for long-duration Moon and Mars missions. It evaluates over 100 medical conditions and produces metrics such as medical event totals, crew functional capacity, time lost, evacuation/fatality probabilities, and resource needs, helping planners design medical kits and self-sufficient care for deep space.
Read original →A new paper details the optical and opto-mechanical design of an upgraded fiber-feed system for the Hobby–Eberly Telescope High Resolution Spectrograph, including a static atmospheric dispersion corrector and lens-based double scramblers. The design aims to improve throughput and illumination stability across 360–1000 nm by reducing residual atmospheric dispersion and fiber coupling losses.
Read original →This paper reviews how space-qualified photonic integrated circuits and optical fibres could enable the compact, stable, high-throughput instruments required for NASA's Habitable Worlds Observatory. It maps HWO science drivers to waveguide materials, arrayed-waveguide-grating spectrographs, and a space-qualification roadmap, assessing current TRL and the steps needed to reach TRL 6 at the instrument-definition gate.
Read original →NASA has selected 12 new investigations to support human explorers in space: six Space Crops grants for off-planet food production and six precision health studies on how space affects astronaut physiology. The selected research aims to improve biological life-support and mitigate health risks for lunar and Mars exploration.
Read original →Israel's culture minister, Miki Zohar, has threatened to revoke the Israeli citizenship of Oscar-winning directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor over NAZA, their Guardian-produced documentary about AI-assisted Israeli targeting in Gaza. The 80-minute film won a special jury prize at the Venice film festival after interviewing 24 Israeli military and intelligence whistleblowers, and it has also been condemned by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli ministers.
Read original →Djibouti became the 72nd nation and eighth African country to sign the Artemis Accords during a ceremony at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The agreement commits signatories to principles for safe, transparent, and peaceful exploration of the Moon, Mars, and beyond, and opens the door for Djibouti to partner with NASA on future lunar exploration and space capabilities.
Read original →NASA’s 2025 Astronaut Candidate Class is about halfway through its nearly two-year training program, with summer work including geology field trips in New Mexico and Iceland, WB-57 and T-38 flights, altitude chamber and survival exercises, and language and spacecraft-system instruction. The 10 candidates remain on track to graduate in 2027 and join NASA’s active astronaut corps.
Read original →ESA's FLEX vegetation-monitoring satellite and the Copernicus Sentinel-3C ocean and land observer have been encapsulated in the nose cone of a Vega-C rocket at Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana, with launch set for 15 September at 03:21 CEST (14 September, 22:21 local time). Sentinel-3C will deploy first, followed by FLEX, extending Europe's Earth-observation capabilities.
Read original →A new white paper outlines Hydra, a proposed constellation of low-cost spacecraft that would act as a disaggregated observatory for time-domain and multi-messenger astrophysics. It would combine gamma-ray, X-ray, and UV/optical/IR monitoring and rapid follow-up to discover high-energy transients and respond to external alerts, while offering resilience and expansion opportunities over a single large mission. The concept was submitted to NASA's ASTRA initiative for consideration by CoPAG and PhysPAG.
Read original →ABCMB is a new differentiable Einstein-Boltzmann solver for the cosmic microwave background, built in Python and JAX. It computes CMB power spectra with lensing, polarization, massive neutrinos, and updated recombination/BBN physics at sub-percent agreement with CLASS, while offering GPU support, extensibility, and stable gradients for Fisher and gradient-based analyses.
Read original →NASA is committing to share scientific data, lunar samples, and discoveries from its Artemis program with the global scientific community, a pledge backed by all 71 nations that have signed the Artemis Accords. The agency held a two-part virtual workshop series from July 28 to Sept. 8 to advance the Accords' open-data principles, offering partners practical tools and frameworks for releasing scientific data in a timely way.
Read original →ESA is rehearsing a rare dual-satellite launch campaign at its European Space Operations Centre (ESOC), where two separate mission teams will operate FLEX and Sentinel-3C in parallel after their shared 15 September launch from Kourou. The setup is unusual because the two spacecraft will fly in closely related orbits, forcing the teams to coordinate shared resources and intersecting operations during the critical launch and early orbit phase.
Read original →A new arXiv paper synthesizes what is known about lunar pits and lava tubes and assesses how they could be studied in situ, presenting LunarLeaper — a small legged robot mission concept that would combine a gravimeter, ground-penetrating radar, high-resolution imaging, spectroscopy, and leg-based geomechanical experiments to perform the first in situ investigation of a mare pit, targeting the Marius Hills Pit.
Read original →A NASA News feature recounts how a last-minute personal locator beacon and the SARSAT satellite system saved five fishermen after their boat sank 40 miles off the Mississippi Gulf Coast in 2024. It also traces SARSAT's NASA Goddard origins and growth to 62 satellites, 45 contributing nations, and more than 63,000 lives saved.
Read original →NASA and the NFL have launched a new collaboration under which NASA will conduct flyovers, astronaut appearances and fan engagement at NFL games across the U.S. as part of its Inspiration Tour. The tour will culminate in MAX POWER, a public air-and-space innovation exposition at Kennedy Space Center on Nov. 7–8, 2026, tied to America’s 250th anniversary.
Read original →Four California PlayStation buyers sued Sony Interactive Entertainment over the PlayStation Store's use of ownership language like "Buy Now" and "Confirm Purchase" for digital games that are actually sold as limited, revocable licenses. Sony has moved to compel individual arbitration or dismiss the case, which remains active with an October 1, 2026 hearing.
Read original →NASA has added Relativity Space's Terran R launch service to its NASA Launch Services (NLS) II contract under the contract's on-ramp provision, making it available for future agency missions. The move expands NASA's pool of commercial launch providers through 2032 and allows other government agencies, such as NOAA, to use the service.
Read original →NASA and European partners are using the Sentinel-6B and Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellites to measure sea level heights during a potentially historic El Niño. Their radar altimetry data, now being delivered in low latency since July 15, is intended to improve hurricane forecasts and disaster response. The Copernicus Sentinel-6/Jason-CS mission continues a decades-long record of ocean observation.
Read original →NASA astronauts Victor Glover and Reid Wiseman, who flew the landmark Artemis II mission earlier this year, will transition to emeritus status at Johnson Space Center in September. The arrangement lets NASA keep their expertise in a consultant-like role for training and mentoring while they pursue other opportunities, as the agency prepares for Artemis III in 2027 and future lunar missions.
Read original →ESA/JAXA's BepiColombo has released a new video compiling eight years of selfie footage from its M-CAM monitoring cameras, covering 9.9 billion km and nine planetary flybys. The footage documents its journey through the inner Solar System as it prepares for Mercury orbit insertion and the first-ever simultaneous dual-spacecraft operation at Mercury.
Read original →Anak Krakatau erupted in early September 2026, sending ash as high as 15,000 meters and disrupting nearly 3,000 flights. NASA satellites captured the plume and its spread, while airports reopened by September 8 even as the volcano remained at a high alert level.
Read original →NASA has issued a new solicitation to accelerate technology development for lunar exploration and a future Moon Base, targeting gaps in power, oxygen extraction, and manufacturing on the lunar surface. The call seeks industry and academic partners to mature five specific capabilities needed for sustainable presence in the South Pole region.
Read original →A NASA image-processing technique originally developed for satellite imagery is now helping archaeologists reveal faded and invisible ancient paintings and rock art. The method, called decorrelation stretch, was adapted into a widely used tool by retired medical imaging professional Jon Harman, leading to discoveries at Angkor Wat and other sites worldwide.
Read original →Over 1,000 visitors celebrated World Ocean Day at the UGA Aquarium with hands-on NASA sea level science activities, including a new augmented reality sandbox and a 'Tumbling Tower' game. The free event was part of NASA's Science Activation SEAL project, which connects agency data with educators and coastal communities.
Read original →ESA released a Sentinel-3 image showing the Anak Krakatau eruption plume and its impact on Jakarta's airport, while noting the upcoming launch of a third Sentinel-3 satellite.
Read original →New Landsat 9 images showcase Southern California's Vasquez Rocks, a tilted sedimentary formation steeply angled at about 50 degrees and famous as a Star Trek filming location. The images reveal how the site appears from orbit and illustrate its geological history, from ancient alluvial-fan deposits to deformation along the San Andreas Fault.
Read original →The International Space Summit in Paris (9–10 September) gathers leaders and industry to discuss Europe's future in space exploration, with ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher urging European leaders to define their ambitions in low Earth orbit, lunar, and Mars activities.
Read original →Asahi Linux has merged support for Apple M3 series Macs into its installer, making most M1/M2 features work on the new hardware. GPU and DCP support remain incomplete, and the support is currently gated behind Expert mode. General availability is planned around the Fedora 45 beta.
Read original →An LLM developer investigates using Jacobian space (J space) to derive activation steering vectors directly from concept tokens, avoiding the expensive finetuned-model baselines. Experiments on Qwen3-1.7B show the approach works well for simple behaviors like all-caps output, but proves brittle and hallucination-prone for complex behaviors.
Read original →A RAND report finds the US space defense industrial base lacks the engineers, technicians, and assemblers needed to rebuild military satellites lost in a war with China or Russia within the required 12–24 month timeline.
Read original →The Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission has spent a decade tracking Earth’s oceans, land, ice and atmosphere, delivering data that underpins IPCC climate reports and numerous scientific studies. With the launch of the mission’s third satellite, ESA is ensuring the long-term continuity of this essential climate monitoring capability.
Read original →NASA's DSCOVR satellite captured an image of three tropical cyclones churning simultaneously in the Pacific, while the Atlantic basin remained unusually quiet—an active pattern that reflects El Niño-driven seasonal forecasts. Two of the Pacific storms, Lowell and Karina, briefly reached major hurricane strength at the same time.
Read original →A mission white paper details how a proposed 3.5-meter segmented-mirror robotic space telescope would serve solar-system small-body science and planetary defense, using rapid-response astrometry and physical characterization of near-Earth objects. The program combines orbit refinement, hazard assessment, and coordinated ground-based mid-infrared observations to support planetary defense.
Read original →This technical paper introduces an FPGA-based prototype for the EPIC direct-imaging approach, which processes wide-field radio aperture arrays in real time with O(N log N) scaling instead of traditional O(N^2) correlators. Preliminary results focus on scalability for next-generation arrays such as SKA-Low, with applications including fast radio burst localization and gravitational-wave counterpart searches.
Read original →A mission white paper outlines the compact-object time-domain science program for a proposed 3.5-meter segmented-mirror robotic space telescope, using slitless spectroscopy from 0.2 to 1.5 micrometers to probe transient and variable compact sources. The plan emphasizes rapid gravitational-wave-counterpart follow-up, monitoring of accreting binaries and white-dwarf pulsations, and specific instrument throughput requirements through 2.7 micrometers.
Read original →NASA will provide live coverage of the launch and docking of Roscosmos' Progress 96 cargo spacecraft, which is delivering about three tons of food, fuel, and supplies to the International Space Station. The spacecraft launches Sept. 9 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome and dockes autonomously to the Poisk module on Sept. 11.
Read original →NASA's Curiosity rover investigated unusual broad, shallow pits in Mars bedrock, studied layered rocks and distant buttes, and monitored a potential regional dust storm during its 14th year on the Red Planet. The storm appeared to dissipate by week's end, and all planned activities were completed despite one lost planning day.
Read original →Watch the replay of ESA/JAXA's BepiColombo livestream covering the separation of the Mercury Transfer Module, the first step in a complex Mercury arrival sequence.
Read original →Severe peatland fires are burning across drought-stricken Indonesia, with satellite data showing activity similar to the devastating 2015 fire season. These smoldering fires are highly polluting and had already released about 10% of 2015's greenhouse gas emissions within their first month.
Read original →A new coded-mask X-ray imager using glass microchannel plate technology is lightweight (under 1 kg), compact, and self-supporting, making it suitable for space exploration satellites. Tests and simulations show promising performance in source localization and sensitivity.
Read original →FLEX and Copernicus Sentinel-3C have been encapsulated in the fairing of their Vega-C rocket at Europe's Spaceport, ahead of a scheduled 15 September launch. The two Earth-observation satellites will ride together into orbit, where they will monitor vegetation fluorescence and continue systematic Earth monitoring.
Read original →ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot completed her third spacewalk, joined by NASA astronaut Jessica Meir on EVA-99, performing maintenance and science tasks outside the ISS. The 6-hour, 49-minute EVA was the 33rd spacewalk by a European astronaut.
Read original →NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day explores how solar eclipses have been interpreted across cultures, using the August 12, 2026 eclipse as a prompt to reflect on the human connection to celestial events.
Read original →NASA technicians began installing four space shuttle-era RS-25 engines into the SLS core stage for the Artemis III mission, which will carry a crew toward the Moon in 2027. The engines, each with a storied flight history, include one that helped launch John Glenn on his final spaceflight.
Read original →Google Maps has renamed Lake Ontario to 'Lake America' for US users following President Trump's executive order, even though official US government maps still show the internationally recognized name. The move follows GNIS, the federal naming database, but the USGS base map has not yet been updated.
Read original →The GRAINE balloon-borne emulsion gamma-ray telescope completed its first overnight flight in 2023, using a new lightweight pressure-vessel gondola to keep the 2.5-m² telescope operational in the stratosphere. The successful 27-hour flight and maintained internal pressure demonstrate a technical path for future larger-area gamma-ray observations.
Read original →Türkiye signed the Artemis Accords on Monday, becoming the 71st signatory and joining NASA's international coalition for peaceful lunar exploration. The ceremony featured NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, who highlighted opportunities for signatories to contribute to the Moon Base program and future Mars missions.
Read original →This ESA monthly roundup (August 2026) highlights the agency's busiest moments: a live solar eclipse broadcast from Spain, historic spacewalks by Sophie Adenot, the MTG-I2 launch on Ariane 6, a Mars flyover, and a surprise discovery near the Milky Way's central black hole. It condenses the month's achievements into a single video update.
Read original →NASA's Roman Space Telescope is on its three-month journey to Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2, where it is being commissioned—systems are being turned on and calibrated. Solar panels and sunshade have deployed, with antenna and aperture cover deployments upcoming. The L2 halo orbit offers stability, wide sky views, and infrared-friendly conditions.
Read original →Satellites captured before-and-after images of the catastrophic flash flood in northern Nepal caused by a glacier collapse, helping emergency responders assess the devastation and guide rescue operations.
Read original →The MegaWave Radio Surveyor is a proposed space-based radio interferometer that would open the low-frequency sky to study stellar space weather, exoplanet magnetospheres, the cosmic Dark Ages, and cosmic web magnetism. The ASTRA concept builds on existing NASA missions and would address top decadal priorities.
Read original →NASA celebrated the completion of Deep Space Station 23, a new 34-meter antenna at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Aug. 25, 2026. The antenna is part of the DSN Aperture Enhancement Project to add six new multifrequency beam-waveguide dishes, boosting communication capabilities for space missions.
Read original →NASA inaugurated DSS-23, a new 34-meter deep space communications antenna at the Goldstone complex, expanding the Deep Space Network's capacity to support future missions.
Read original →NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) marked the completion of Deep Space Station 23, a new 34-meter antenna at the Goldstone complex, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Aug 25, 2026. The antenna is part of a project to upgrade the network with six new multifrequency dishes, expanding support for interplanetary missions.
Read original →NASA awarded MIT's CERBERUZ team the top prize in Phase 2 of the LunaRecycle Challenge for a technology that converts mixed trash into powder for 3D printing or injection molding, winning $775,000 across both prototype and digital twin tracks.
Read original →ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot will perform her third spacewalk on 1 September 2026 with NASA astronaut Jessica Meir, live on ESA WebTV and YouTube. The ~6.5-hour EVA-99 will include replacing a navigational aid, preparing a cosmic particle detector, and installing data-relay jumper cables.
Read original →ESA's two remaining Cluster spacecraft, Samba and Tango, will make targeted reentries over the South Pacific on 31 August and 1 September, ending a pioneering mission that transformed our understanding of Earth's magnetic environment. An airborne observation campaign will capture their disintegration to improve future spacecraft reentry safety.
Read original →MTG-I2, the second Meteosat Third Generation Imager, launched on Ariane 6 to complete Europe's first MTG weather satellite trio, promising enhanced weather forecasting and monitoring capabilities for Europe and northern Africa.
Read original →Turkey will become the 71st signatory of the Artemis Accords at a ceremony at NASA Headquarters on Aug. 31, 2026, hosted by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and Turkish Minister of Industry and Technology Mehmet Fatih Kacır.
Read original →NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is set to launch Aug. 30, 2026. This listicle highlights key facts about the mission, including its namesake, science goals, L2 orbit, and passenger names.
Read original →NASA astronaut Jonny Kim is departing the agency to continue his service as a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy, following an eight-month ISS expedition. His mission included 3,920 orbits, key science investigations, and a historic docking milestone. Kim will be remembered for his leadership and contributions to NASA's future exploration goals.
Read original →ESA has signed the first contracts under its European Launcher Challenge, awarding funding totalling over €543 million to RFA, PLD Space, and Isar Aerospace to develop new commercial launch services. The initiative aims to diversify Europe's access to space and strengthen launch service supply.
Read original →Back-to-back winter storms in August 2026 brought rare, widespread snowfall to the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, stretching from the Andes to near the Pacific coast. The event disrupted operations at ALMA and other observatories, caused flooding and mudflows, and brought rainfall totals roughly 10 times the annual average to some coastal areas.
Read original →NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has moved to the SpaceX hangar at Kennedy Space Center, where it will be mated to a Falcon Heavy rocket for a launch targeted no earlier than Aug. 30, 2026.
Read original →NASA will broadcast a spacewalk on Sept. 1 as two astronauts perform station maintenance, including replacing a navigational retroreflector and upgrading hardware outside the International Space Station.
Read original →NASA Langley has started plume-surface interaction tests in a 60-foot vacuum chamber to study how lunar lander engine plumes stir up regolith, supporting Artemis IV and Moon Base planning. The campaign will test two propulsion systems and use the data to improve predictive models and hardware design.
Read original →The Meteosat Third Generation-Imager2 (MTG-I2) weather satellite is ready for launch on an Ariane 6 from French Guiana on 27 August 2026, adding new severe-weather forecasting capabilities to Europe's MTG constellation.
Read original →ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot and NASA astronaut Anil Menon completed a 6.5-hour spacewalk to install and activate a spare Space-to-Ground Antenna on the ISS. It was Adenot's second spacewalk and the 32nd conducted by a European astronaut.
Read original →This item tells the story of Harvest (IBM 7950), a secret NSA supercomputer used for cryptanalysis during the Cold War. It ran up to 200 times faster than contemporary machines and pioneered streaming data processing, automated tape libraries, and a custom programming language. The article highlights how national security needs drove advances in computing.
Read original →NASA has added a new 34-meter antenna, Deep Space Station 23, to its Deep Space Network at Goldstone, California, expanding the agency's ability to communicate with spacecraft across the solar system. The dish began operations in August after testing and is now supporting missions like Voyager 1, Juno, and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Read original →NASA will announce winners of the LunaRecycle Challenge finale at the University of Alabama on Aug. 28, showcasing recycling solutions for lunar missions. The event includes up to 14 finalist teams, a Technology Showcase, and prize awards totaling $1.325 million.
Read original →NASA Ames Research Center experts will be available for interviews about the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which launches Aug. 30, 2026. The mission will study dark energy, exoplanets, and cosmic structures, and Ames has contributed key software and technology to the mission.
Read original →NASA's Pandora mission, the first satellite launched through the Astrophysics Pioneers program, has begun observing exoplanets and their host stars to help disentangle stellar contamination from atmospheric measurements. Its results will support future observatories like Webb.
Read original →NASA is integrating fault management with model-based systems engineering to enable autonomous mission operations, demonstrating the approach on the HelioSwarm mission. Qualtech Systems Inc. received a Phase II SBIR contract to enhance its TEAMS toolset for this effort.
Read original →NASA has announced coverage plans for the launch of its Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, scheduled for Aug. 30 on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Kennedy Space Center. The mission will use a Hubble-sized infrared telescope with a much wider field of view to explore dark energy, exoplanets, and more. Prelaunch briefings are set for Aug. 29.
Read original →ESA's next Meteosat Third Generation Imager satellite, MTG-I2, is set to launch on an Ariane 6 from French Guiana on 27 August, completing the first family of MTG weather satellites. The launch will be streamed live on ESA WebTV and YouTube, with liftoff expected at 22:10 CEST. MTG-I2 carries a Lightning Imager and a Flexible Combined Imager to improve weather forecasting and severe weather nowcasting over Europe and northern Africa.
Read original →EXPO is a proposed ESA mission concept that would extend X-ray polarimetry to a wide 2-35 keV band with fast repointing, building on IXPE's success to study magnetars, black-hole binaries, supernova remnants, and gamma-ray bursts.
Read original →NASA's Curiosity rover resumes its climb up Mount Sharp after a detour to investigate an erosional surface, conducting contact science and imaging while monitoring for late-season dust storms in Gale Crater.
Read original →NASA has modernized its Chemical Equilibrium with Applications (CEA) code, a foundational propulsion analysis tool, into CEA v3. The new Fortran 2008 object-oriented version adds modern interfaces (Python, C, MATLAB), expands thermochemical data for green propellants and sustainable aviation fuels, and supports automated design studies while preserving backward compatibility.
Read original →ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot will perform her second spacewalk on 25 August 2026, with NASA astronaut Anil Menon, to install a spare Space-To-Ground antenna on the ISS. The livestream starts at 12:00 BST/13:00 CEST on ESA WebTV and YouTube.
Read original →SHAPE, a spectro-polarimeter onboard Chandrayaan-3's Propulsion Module, is designed to observe Earth as an exoplanet from lunar orbit. This paper details its instrument design, ground-testing results, and in-orbit performance, supporting future exoplanet characterization.
Read original →Bluesky announced an alpha release of ATProto spaces, a new protocol primitive for storing non-public data while keeping atproto's portability and interoperability. The alpha includes running code, SDKs, a sample app, and a hosted PDS for developers to experiment with.
Read original →A critical technical review of SpacetimeDB 2.0, which launched with a meme-y video mocking competitors and benchmarks the author argues are flawed and dishonest. Despite the distasteful marketing, the author sees interesting ideas in the product and discusses the dangers of unfair database comparisons, illustrating with his own experience at PlanetScale.
Read original →NASA has selected four university teams to advance aviation research through its University Leadership Initiative, spanning high-supersonic propulsion to low-noise urban flight routes.
Read original →NASA satellite data is helping a Washington utility predict river flows during a severe snow drought, from record winter surges to low summer inflows. The forecasts combine weather models with Earth observations to guide hydropower and water management.
Read original →ESA's FLEX vegetation-monitoring satellite has been fuelled at Europe's Spaceport ahead of its planned 15 September launch. Once in orbit, FLEX will measure the faint fluorescence emitted by plants during photosynthesis to assess vegetation health and improve understanding of carbon and water cycles.
Read original →NASA has opened the Orbital Clarity Challenge, a new prize competition seeking low-cost, scalable ways to measure thermospheric density and drag in low Earth orbit. Up to four winners will share $500,000 and receive a free test flight.
Read original →NASA and Katalyst's LINK spacecraft will not capture and boost the Swift Observatory due to an attitude control issue, but will still attempt rendezvous and proximity operations to demonstrate satellite servicing capabilities. Swift's orbit is decaying and it may re-enter Earth's atmosphere later this year.
Read original →NASA has awarded approximately $10.5 million to seven institutions to create state-based hubs for aerospace technical workforce development. The NASA State Hubs will align employers, community colleges, and workforce systems to prepare students for high-demand technical jobs such as welders, electricians, and machinists.
Read original →ESA held a pre-launch media briefing for the MTG-I2 weather satellite, which will complete the Meteosat Third Generation constellation. The satellite is set to launch on an Ariane 6 rocket from French Guiana on 27 August, with new lightning and imaging capabilities for improved severe weather nowcasting.
Read original →ESA's Mars Express orbiter has released a new flyover animation of Schiaparelli Crater, one of Mars' largest craters at 460 km across. The video combines HRSC imagery and terrain data, and the crater's shallow depth hints at a history of infilling by wind, water, or lava. The release also highlights the crater's namesake, Giovanni Schiaparelli, and its role as the destination in 'The Martian'.
Read original →NASA’s 2027 Gateways to Blue Skies competition challenges college teams to design innovative aircraft-based methods for inspecting land-based infrastructure like bridges and tunnels, to improve safety, reliability, and cost by 2035. Finalists win cash prizes and internship opportunities with NASA Aeronautics.
Read original →NASA Glenn Research Center's decades of flight research turned aircraft into flying laboratories, proving lab breakthroughs in real skies. From WWII-era engine work to icing safety and early hydrogen fuel tests, the center's pilots and researchers built a legacy that continues to inform aviation and spaceflight.
Read original →Hurricane Lala passed just south of the Island of Hawaiʻi as a Category 1 storm, causing heavy rainfall, flooding, wind damage, and widespread power outages across the state. The storm later weakened to a tropical storm, and its intensity and track are linked to El Niño conditions in the Pacific.
Read original →The Large Size Cherenkov Telescope (LST) for the Cherenkov Telescope Array is an ultra-lightweight 23-meter telescope designed for rapid repositioning to catch gamma-ray bursts. This paper details its innovative carbon-fibre and aluminium structure, built to withstand harsh conditions at La Palma, with the prototype running since 2019 and three more under construction.
Read original →To deploy the proven Large-Sized Telescope design at CTA's Chilean site, researchers propose a seismic isolation system that could avoid major structural changes. The concept, validated with finite-element analyses, would let the ultra-lightweight telescope meet Chile's higher seismic demands.
Read original →Researchers present a preliminary calibration of the Keck/NIRC2 infrared imager's new polarimetric modes using a Mueller matrix model, achieving M3 diattenuation values closer to Fresnel predictions. The work establishes a framework for quantitative polarimetry across JHK bands.
Read original →Curiosity's team celebrates the rover's 14th landing anniversary with a blog post recounting the historic landing and detailing the rover's current science campaign on Mount Sharp, including APXS, ChemCam, and Mastcam observations.
Read original →NASA has selected four companies to provide payload processing facilities and services under its Spacecraft Processing Operations Contract, enabling commercial processing for agency missions from multiple launch locations. The contract vehicle has a $100 million ceiling and runs through 2033.
Read original →NASA's SCoPE program partnered with ASU's FORCE Summer School to train seven undergraduate interns in science communication, culminating in a public open house and university poster session. The effort aims to equip early-career planetary scientists with skills to share their research with non-expert audiences.
Read original →NASA's Rock and Roll with NASA Challenge asked the public to design lunar rover wheels for Moon base mobility, with five finalist teams testing prototypes at Johnson Space Center in late July. The winning Scotch Pad Tyres concept uses a soft Nomex-based structure, highlighting how crowdsourcing can expand wheel technologies for future lunar and Mars vehicles.
Read original →ESA broadcast the total solar eclipse of 12 August 2026 live from the Observatorio Astrofísico de Javalambre in Spain. The path of totality crossed Greenland, Iceland, Spain and northeastern Portugal. The program featured expert commentary, live telescope views, and discussions on solar science and ESA's related activities.
Read original →ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot will conduct her first-ever spacewalk on 18 August 2026, alongside NASA astronaut Anil Menon, to repair a critical communication antenna on the International Space Station. The spacewalk will be streamed live on ESA WebTV and YouTube.
Read original →Aether.jl is a high-performance Julia code for 3D magnetohydrodynamics and multifluid dust simulations, developed with an interactive human-AI workflow and verified to run on GPUs and exascale systems. It claims comparable or faster single-GPU performance than C++ code, with >93% parallel efficiency at 4096 GCDs on Frontier.
Read original →A new second-generation readout system for microwave kinetic inductance detectors (KIDs) based on an RFSoC and a polyphase filter bank achieves two-octave, 1.024 GHz bandwidth per channel, supporting up to 2048 detectors. Tests show noise performance comparable to the previous generation and detector-noise-limited operation for most channels, enabling large-format submillimeter instruments like CCAT.
Read original →Satellite imagery reveals the severe impact of western Europe's record summer heatwaves, including shrunken glaciers, dried rivers, and wildfire-scarred land. The EU's Copernicus service confirmed this was the hottest June-to-July period on record, with climate change making such extremes more likely.
Read original →NASA is inviting U.S. collegiate teams to submit concepts for its 2027 RASC-AL student competition, focused on technologies and operations for a future lunar South Pole presence. The challenge supports NASA's exploration goals while giving students a pathway to contribute to real aerospace innovation.
Read original →NASA announced MAX POWER, a two-day aerospace expo and airshow at Kennedy Space Center on Nov. 7-8, 2026, celebrating America's 250th anniversary. The event will showcase next-generation aircraft, spacecraft, and technologies, featuring air shows, speakers, exhibits, and behind-the-gates tours.
Read original →Cursor, the AI code editor, has officially been acquired by SpaceX, completing a process that began in April. The deal gives Cursor access to SpaceX's GPU fleet to develop stronger, more cost-efficient AI models, with Grok 4.6 as an early example. This marks a major integration of AI development tools with SpaceX's computing infrastructure.
Read original →ESA recaps the 12 August 2026 total solar eclipse, the first visible from Europe in over two decades. The agency shares images, satellite observations, and highlights from its live broadcast from the path of totality.
Read original →This paper presents the preliminary thermal architecture for FOSSIL, a proposed ESA M8 mission that aims to measure CMB spectral distortions with sensitivity three orders of magnitude beyond COBE/FIRAS. The design uses a staged cryogenic chain—passive radiators, a 4 K cryocooler, and an ADR—to reach 50 mK for the KID arrays, with positive thermal margins at every stage.
Read original →Researchers fabricated the first silicon-platelet feedhorn arrays using laser micromachining, demonstrating operation from 80–170 GHz and at 350 GHz for the CCAT Prime-Cam instrument. The new technique matches traditional DRIE performance and could cut production costs for large focal planes.
Read original →NASA's newly acquired 737 aircraft received a new paint job in Oklahoma as it is modified to become a reduced gravity test aircraft for lunar-gravity parabolic flights. The aircraft, formerly from the US Air Force, will support Artemis mission objectives by validating astronaut lunar suits and crew systems, and will also serve for autonomy and sensor flight testing.
Read original →The Perseid meteor shower, one of the year's brightest and most popular, is peaking on the night of Aug. 12-13 and will remain visible through the end of August.
Read original →Astronauts aboard the ISS captured images of Mount Hood and Mount Rainier enveloped in wildfire smoke during summer 2026, highlighting the spread of fires across the Pacific Northwest and affecting air quality.
Read original →Lunar Station Corp. is using NASA data and tools to help commercial space companies plan lunar missions, mapping terrain and identifying resources like water ice. The work supports landing site selection, rover navigation, and communications, with applications in mining and long-term habitation.
Read original →A total solar eclipse swept across parts of Greenland, Iceland, northern Russia, the Atlantic Ocean, Spain, and Portugal on Aug. 12, 2026, with a partial eclipse visible in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and northwest Africa. NASA shared an image from Spain and a YouTube recap of the event.
Read original →NASA has upgraded its Vertical Motion Simulator at Ames Research Center, replacing analog systems with digital technology and adding a 4K projector dome for sharper visuals and a larger field of view. The improvements reduce simulation configuration time by half using lightweight inserts, enabling safer testing of next-generation aircraft and spacecraft before they fly.
Read original →NASA astronaut Mike Fincke is departing the agency after 30 years, having flown four missions, spent 549 days in space, and logged nine spacewalks. He most recently piloted SpaceX Crew-11 and commanded Expedition 74. His career bridged the space shuttle, Soyuz, and commercial crew eras, and he ranks fourth among NASA astronauts in cumulative time in space.
Read original →Lindsey Waitt, a Worcester native who dreamed of NASA since middle school, has realized her goal as a test project engineer on the Artemis launch team. Her path included a defense career, worldwide travels as an Army wife, raising three boys, and earning a master's degree before joining NASA.
Read original →The eXtreme Wavefront Control Toolkit (XWCTk) is a new software system for the MagAO-X extreme adaptive optics coronagraph, enabling distributed, high-speed wavefront control and continuous data recording. It will be adapted for the GMagAO-X instrument on the Giant Magellan Telescope and serves as a baseline for a future space-based high-contrast imaging instrument.
Read original →NASA's Moon Base Program principal systems engineer Shatel Bhakta discussed the challenges and opportunities of building a sustainable lunar base at the South Pole during a NASA Stories at the Ion event. The talk covered the step-by-step development approach, including robotic missions, and key challenges like terrain, lighting, communications, and Moon dust.
Read original →The International Space Station is supporting NASA's Moon and Mars ambitions through experiments in exercise, medical care, and robotics, building on the Artemis II milestone.
Read original →A total solar eclipse will cross parts of Greenland, Iceland, Portugal, and Spain on August 12, marking the first such eclipse visible from mainland Spain since 1905. The European Space Agency will host a live broadcast and free in-person events to let people worldwide experience the rare phenomenon.
Read original →ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot will perform her first-ever spacewalk during U.S. Spacewalk 97, joined by NASA astronaut Anil Menon to replace a critical Space-to-Ground antenna on the ISS. Live coverage starts at 13:00 CEST on ESA WebTV and YouTube, with the EVA scheduled to begin around 14:35 CEST.
Read original →NASA's Curiosity rover spent Sols 4968-4974 investigating a suspected 'erosional supersurface' in Gale Crater, climbing onto the Cerro Paine Grande outcrop to image and analyze rock layers above and below the discontinuity. The rover reached a 24-degree tilt—near its contact-science record—and gathered data with Mastcam, MAHLI, APXS, and ChemCam.
Read original →ESA highlights how Earth observation satellites monitor wildfires, drought, and extreme heat, citing exceptional June 2026 temperatures and over 30 Copernicus Emergency Management Service activations for wildfires. The article details the capabilities of Copernicus Sentinel-2, Sentinel-3, Sentinel-5P, and EarthCARE in tracking these climate-related phenomena.
Read original →DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731-Latent-Reasoning is an open-source model that performs reasoning in a compressed latent space instead of emitting verbose thinking tokens. It is NVFP4-quantized, ships with a vllm serving form, and reports competitive BIG-Bench Hard scores while avoiding the usual answer-formatting artifacts.
Read original →NASA's Glenn Research Center is seeking Phase 1 proposals for the design and construction of a new Aerospace Power Systems Laboratory in Cleveland. The facility will support testing and development of power systems tied to Artemis, the Moon Base, and future Mars exploration, with proposals due Oct. 30, 2026.
Read original →NASA's Curiosity rover team spent Sols 5029-5035 wrapping up laboratory analysis of a drilled sample from the "Basque Lakes" drill hole, using CheMin and SAM to study Martian rock. The update explains how drill campaigns consume rover power and how Mastcam, ChemCam, and environmental monitoring continued in parallel.
Read original →A NASA profile of Richard Spolzino, a researcher at Langley Research Center working on Moon Base mission architecture and systems interoperability, explains how he maps 'data gaps'—unknowns about the Moon and Mars that must be resolved before they become problems. It traces his non-linear path from history and physics to aerospace systems architecture, and argues that NASA's culture offers early-career staff unusual scope to shape the return to the Moon.
Read original →La NASA ha abierto el plazo de solicitudes para la próxima promoción de directores de vuelo, responsables de dirigir misiones tripuladas a la Estación Espacial Internacional, las misiones Artemis a la Luna y, más adelante, las primeras misiones tripuladas a Marte. El plazo termina el 12 de octubre, se exige ciudadanía estadounidense y titulación y experiencia afines, y las selecciones se anunciarían antes de que termine el año.
Read original →NASA has opened applications for its next class of flight directors, the mission control leaders who oversee human spaceflight missions from Johnson Space Center in Houston. The agency is recruiting as it continues ISS operations while preparing for Artemis Moon missions and, eventually, crewed flights to Mars, with selections expected by the end of the year.
Read original →A Show HN post describes PasRISCV, an in-house RISC-V emulator written in Object Pascal that powers a fully emulated Alpine Linux environment inside the space game SEEDS. It runs native Linux ELF-based in-game tools even on Windows hosts and is released as free open-source software under the zlib license.
Read original →ESA will take part in the 77th International Astronautical Congress in Antalya, Türkiye, from 5–9 October 2026, with a Hall 1 booth and exhibition under the theme ‘The World Needs More Space’. The agency is using the event to strengthen international partnerships, showcase mission results and Strategy 2040 goals, and highlight cooperation on missions from BepiColombo to Ramses.
Read original →NASA has opened its 2027 Human Lander Challenge, asking U.S. collegiate teams to propose systems-level solutions for reliable lunar communications in support of Artemis and Moon Base. The competition focuses on hardware, software, and architecture, with up to 12 finalists receiving $9,000 and the top three sharing $18,000.
Read original →NASA awarded Omitron Inc. an indefinite-delivery contract worth about $23.5 million over five years to provide orbital safety analysis services. The work includes conjunction assessment screening for all NASA uncrewed spacecraft and is intended to protect NASA spaceflight assets and astronaut lives.
Read original →NASA will take part in the 77th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Antalya, Türkiye, from Oct. 5 to Oct. 9, using the event to highlight American leadership in human exploration to the Moon and Mars. The agency will also promote responsible exploration under the Artemis Accords, its science work, and support for the commercial space sector.
Read original →The Republic of San Marino became the 76th signatory to the Artemis Accords at a ceremony in Rimini, signed by Minister Rossano Fabbri with NASA and U.S. State Department officials present. The signing expands the U.S.-led framework of principles for peaceful, transparent lunar and deep-space exploration.
Read original →A NASA-developed technology for capturing carbon dioxide on Mars has been commercialized as a small-scale carbon capture system for breweries, wineries, distilleries, and energy and helium producers. Born from 1990s Small Business Innovation Research contracts for Mars resource generation, the tech now helps companies cope with CO2 shortages while cutting costs and emissions.
Read original →NASA astronaut Anil Menon will answer prerecorded STEM questions from New Hampshire K-12 students during an in-flight call from the International Space Station on Sept. 24, 2026. The event, hosted by the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center, will stream live and aims to deepen understanding of space exploration and STEM careers.
Read original →NASA’s Perseverance rover used its Mastcam-Z camera to build a 360-degree panorama of “Turquoise Bay,” a geologic area of interest in the “Margin Unit.” The natural-color mosaic combines 818 images taken over sols 933–944, with an enhanced-color version highlighting subtle color differences.
Read original →NASA’s Johnson Space Center participated in Houston’s 33rd annual Japan Festival on Sept. 12–13, showcasing Artemis III, Moon Base plans, Orion, and ISS exhibits to more than 3,000 attendees. The event highlighted NASA’s partnership with JAXA, which displayed the HTV-X1 cargo spacecraft and lunar rover concepts, and aimed to inspire future space explorers.
Read original →A detailed write-up on running FreeBSD on the Aoostar WTR Pro Ryzen edition NAS, covering the hardware's build, BIOS behavior, and BSD/Linux support. It matters for homelab users seeking a compact 10-inch-rack NAS with NVMe and SATA storage that can run non-proprietary operating systems, though fan noise and 2.5-inch drive installation are drawbacks.
Read original →ESA and The Pokémon Company International have launched an official collaboration for World Space Week 2026, including a Pikachu plush that spent 67 days aboard the ISS during Sophie Adenot's mission and a new Space and Pokémon exhibition touring ESA sites and museums across Europe. The programme also features exclusive merchandise and a special Pokémon GO event, aiming to inspire curiosity about space among audiences of all ages.
Read original →Albania will sign the Artemis Accords at a ceremony on Sept. 21 at NASA Headquarters, becoming the 73rd country to join the agreement. The accords, established in 2020, set practical principles for safe, transparent, and coordinated civil space exploration on the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
Read original →ESA honoured Surrey Satellite Technology Limited, Sener and CompPair Technologies with its annual awards for excellence and innovation at Industry Space Days 2026. The awards recognise programme delivery, responsiveness to technical and schedule challenges, and innovative technologies with potential applications in future space missions, with SSTL cited for HydroGNSS Earth Observation Scout satellites and Sener for MetOp Second Generation support.
Read original →Jev Ultrafast is a browser agent from TypeSafe that combines a dynamic, indexed action space with a single TypeSafe operation/target decision per step, invoking a small LLM only for text entry. It demonstrates a Zurich-to-London Google Flights task in 7.1 seconds, including natural-language goal handling, text generation, and loading waits, and ships as an open-source demo and library.
Read original →NASA Armstrong’s Dale Reed Subscale Flight Research Laboratory uses small remotely piloted and autonomous aircraft to rapidly and affordably test aerospace concepts, including navigation systems for future Moon and Mars landings. A new profile highlights three team members—chief engineer Derek Abramson, chief pilot Justin Hall, and drone pilot Justin Link—whose lifelong model-aircraft passion led them to mission-focused innovation at NASA.
Read original →Charlie Precourt recounts his first landing at the controls of Space Shuttle Atlantis after a 10-day mission to Mir, describing the unpowered, high-speed approach and coordinated calls with Mission Control. He also explains how a modified Gulfstream G-II trainer replicated the shuttle’s steep, 300-knot final approach, making the landing possible.
Read original →NASA's Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition (CSDA) program will host a webinar on Sept. 23, 2026, to update users on its activities and progress. The session will cover commercial Earth observation data modalities, evaluation process changes, a new calibration/validation initiative, task order status, licensing, and access tools.
Read original →TailTalk is a from-scratch, dependency-free AppleTalk stack written in Rust with Tokio, letting modern machines talk to vintage Macs over EtherTalk or LocalTalk for file sharing and printing. It ships a GUI with an AFP server, archive/disk-image import, and AirPrint/IPP bridging, but is still a prototype limited to routerless networks.
Read original →Djibouti will sign the Artemis Accords during a ceremony at NASA Headquarters on Sept. 14, becoming the 72nd country signatory. NASA Deputy Administrator Matt Anderson will host Ambassador Mohamed Siad Douale and State Department Assistant Secretary Frank Garcia; media must RSVP by 8 a.m. EDT that day.
Read original →President Trump unveiled Space Force service dress uniform designs on Truth Social, saying they were inspired by the Starship Troopers film. The reveal revived criticism that the 1997 movie satirized fascism, and highlighted the branch's history of drawing from sci-fi imagery.
Read original →NASA Earth Observatory's September 2026 Satellite Puzzler challenges readers to identify a mystery location in a satellite image. Submissions are open for guesses, with the answer to be revealed about a week later.
Read original →A reflective essay on the tension between modern industrial society and the nostalgic desire for a simpler, more communal life, questioning whether we can keep space-age tools without the alienating structures they require.
Read original →NASA's Office of Procurement explains how grant recipients can check grant status, details a temporary halt to DEIA activities due to executive orders, and lists administrative request forms, payment, and insignia requirements.
Read original →A conference splinter session at Cool Stars 23 examined how stellar granulation and magnetic activity limit radial velocity precision, and identified key strategies—including combined models, benchmark datasets, and line-by-line analyses—to reach the sub-40 cm/s precision needed for detecting Earth-like exoplanets.
Read original →Spirit Electronics is adding space-grade and high-reliability components from Texas Instruments and Microchip Technology to its online store ahead of SmallSat 2026, expanding availability of qualified parts for space programs.
Read original →NASA is exhibiting and presenting at the SmallSat 2026 conference with a comprehensive agenda covering small satellite missions, industry trends, technology development, and partnership opportunities. The schedule features updates on SPARCS, SWIFT LINK, ESCAPADE, TRACERS, SunRISE, and new initiatives like CAPSTONE 02 and DiskSat.
Read original →SpaceXAI announced the beta launch of Grok Bot, an AI-agent platform that gives each bot its own cloud computer to work across apps and websites end-to-end. Now available for premium subscribers on desktop and iOS, it grew out of an internal prototype and lets users delegate real tasks to a team of AI teammates.
Read original →NASA Earth Observatory has posted its October 2026 Satellite Puzzler, asking readers to identify the location shown in a satellite image and explain the clues they used. The monthly challenge invites submissions via a form, with the solution and a related Image of the Day story to be posted about a week later.
Read original →NASA has posted a list of Widely Attended Gathering determinations covering space-related conferences, awards dinners, receptions, and industry events from mid-2025 through late 2026. The page documents which outside gatherings NASA employees are cleared to attend, spanning major airshows, space symposiums, and company-hosted events.
Read original →A Hacker News post highlights a paper exploring how async/await semantics differ across modern programming languages, showing that apparently equivalent concurrent programs can produce different outputs depending on the runtime. It argues these differences come from design choices such as eager versus lazy task starts and identifies nine dimensions that shape observable async behavior.
Read original →A user documents the unexpected difficulty of migrating data from a Synology NAS to a UniFi UNAS Pro 8 over SMB, encountering Windows error 665 on a specific file and narrowing down the problem to writing to the UNAS. The troubleshooting process points to possible Alternate Data Streams on the source files as the culprit, echoing the author's earlier blog posts.
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