On Oct. 21, 2008, the Indian Space Research Organization launched its first mission to the moon. The mission was named Chandrayaan-1, and it consisted of both an orbiter and an impactor.

Chandrayaan-1 launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Center on an Indian rocket called the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, or PSLV-XL. (Launch occurred at 8:52 p.m. EDT, though it was about 6:22 a.m. local time at the launch site on Oct. 22.)

It arrived in lunar orbit about three weeks later and dropped off the Moon Impact Probe, which crashed into the moon on Nov. 14. The rest of the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft stayed in orbit, where it collected and transmitted data from the moon to Earth for about a year. The mission ended abruptly 14 months ahead of its planned end date when scientists lost contact with the probe.

Why it mattered

The Indian Space Research Organisation, or ISRO, had a lot riding on the success of Chandrayaan-1 moon mission, which marked the first-ever deep space mission by the Indian space agency. It was also the first mission to the moon for India, a country that hopes to launch its own crewed spacecraft and build a space station.

Chandrayaan-1 did more than just demonstrate that India's space program was capable of launching missions to the moon; it also returned some amazing science results, like evidence of water ice on the moon.

"In September 2009, scientists published results of data collected by the American M3 instrument which had detected absorption features on the polar regions of the surface of the Moon usually linked to hydroxyl- and/ or water-bearing molecules," NASA said in a mission overview.

The spacecraft carried 11 instruments to study the moon, five of them built by ISRO. The rest were experiments for the European Space Agnecy and NASA.

"In addition to the five Indian instruments, the spacecraft carried scientific equipment from the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, and Bulgaria," NASA said.

It took until Nov. 8, 2008 for Chandrayaan-1 to enter lunar orbit, where it stayed until contact was lost in August 2009, most likely due to a power supply failure caused by overheating.

"This was short of the spacecraft’s planned two-year lifetime, although ISRO noted that at least 95% of its mission objectives had been accomplished by then," NASA wrote.

India did not stop at the moon with Chandrayaan-1. In 2019, the country launched the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter, which carried the Vikram lander and Pragyan rover. Chandrayaan-2 reached lunar orbit successfully, but the Vikram landing failed.

The Chandrayaan-3 misson followed in 2023, which successfully landed a new Vikram lander and Pragyan rover near the moon's south pole. India plans to launch the Chandryaan-4 mission to return moon samples to Earth in 2028.

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

Few names in the science fiction literary world carry as much weight and respect as author Alan Dean Foster. His award-winning 55-year career as a grandmaster of the genre continues with his latest novel from Blackstone Publishing, "Lost on Paradise", and we have an exclusive excerpt to share with our readers ahead of its release this week.

Foster famously ghost-wrote the first "Star Wars" novelization for George Lucas in 1976 and "Splinter of the Mind’s Eye" in 1978, which was intended to be a low-budget Star Wars sequel should the space opera not become a hit. He’s been a mainstay for go-to fantastic adventures featuring engaging characters, dynamic plotlines, and imaginative worlds for six decades.

In addition to crafting the screen story for "Star Trek: The Motion Picture," Foster also wrote the novelizations for the first three "Alien" films, Disney's "The Black Hole," John Carpenter's "The Thing," "The Last Starfighter," "Star Trek," "Transformers," "Terminator: Salvation", and many more.

The near-future, off-world escapades of "Lost On Paradise" are the latest addition to Foster’s acclaimed bounty of bestselling standalone novels and series, including the popular "Spellsinger" series.

"Earth is crowded, polluted, and dismal," states the novel's synopsis. "Like millions of others, Jonos and Liina scrape by on her poorly paying job and what little money he gets selling items scavenged from rich people’s trash. Like millions of others, Jonos and Liina dream of Paradise.

"Paradise: a beautiful, clean, verdant world where three races live in harmony—at least, according to the videos sent back to Earth. There are the Eiquan, masters of astonishing technology; the Lusanata, hunters and farmers; and humans, who may be restricted to a few scattered settlements, but still live a life ten times better than those on Earth.

"On the run after a criminal act, Jonos and Liina finally escape to Paradise. It's everything they hoped for. Until tragedy strikes."

The genesis of Foster's "Lost on Paradise" is something that’s been percolating in his fertile mind for many years.

"I had this notion of a planet called Paradise where everything is perfect, and everything on Earth is seriously messed up," Foster tells Space. "There’s this couple who have problems; they’re poor like everybody else.

"And you have a unique male protagonist because he recognizes that his female partner is smarter than him, so she’s the brains of the outfit, and he supplies the muscle. Although he's not stupid. Too often you get a big, hulking guy with no brains. But she has a potentially fatal disease, and they’re trying to get away like a lot of poor people in the world today. So here's a place called Paradise. How do you get there? It’s expensive and difficult. And what happens if they do? Maybe Paradise isn’t always Paradise."

In crafting a deteriorating New York some 150 years or so down the calendar, it was important to stay sharp regarding developments that pop up in the news to avoid any internal logic conflicts.

"You just don’t want to get caught out by a scientific development that you postulate is near future when it's actually contemporary," explains Foster. "So I was very careful with that. But as you’re building out an alien environment and one that’s supposed to be perfect and beautiful, and then there’s maybe some things about it that aren’t, what do you introduce to show that?

"You don’t want to contradict yourself when you’re worldbuilding. That's a large problem that’s unfortunately common in science fiction," notes Foster. "Where somebody is breathing air, and suddenly they’re breathing methane, and it just doesn’t work. There’s a lot of different variables that come together that prove that Paradise is Paradise in some ways and not in others. A good example would be when the first Europeans reached Tahiti. The problem was that the people who entered this Paradise brought venereal disease and smallpox, to which the Polynesians had no resistance. So it's Paradise until you get there, and then maybe you mess it up."

Now enjoy our exclusive chapter excerpt from Alan Dean Foster’s "Lost On Paradise." Published by Blackstone Publishing.

Why shouldn’t a man and a woman in his and Liina’s position try to get to Paradise? Jonos mused as he treaded his way homeward. Though morning continued its ascent, the sun did not. Or so it seemed, when the omnipresent pollution often rendered day as dark as night. The gloom was useful for masking scavenging activities and for concealing one’s identity. It was less suitable for more plebian activities such as breathing and eating. Or living. Life on Earth sucked.

But on Paradise…

To emigrant humans it went without saying that Paradise was aptly named. Everyone had heard the stories. On Paradise a person could breathe freely. Without a mask, without fear of needing lung implants, without having to worry about inhaling a soupçon of strychnine or similar industrial pollutants. On Paradise food was plentiful and fresh, water devoid of contaminants. There was work, too, for anyone willing to adapt to entirely new surroundings, for those willing to acknowledge the much-talked-about overlordship of the dominant species. For arrivals willing to submit to the experimental, ever-evolving social structure, and to the limitations that were placed on newcomers, the technologically superior Eiquans professed an indifference that amounted to a willing welcome.

Or so the compendium of hugely diverse anecdotes insisted. That’s all they were, Jonos knew. Stories and speculation, rumors and conjecture. Ignoring the spotty rain that had begun to fall, he turned a corner and nearly ran over a couple who scrambled to get out of his way. The man he had accidentally jostled started to say something, quickly realized the size of the individual he was about to chastise, and mumbled on his way, dragging a woman—likely his wife—with him. Jonos paid them no mind. Half of him was engaged in navigating his way home, the other half in dreaming of what Paradise might actually be like.

In truth, he had never met anyone who had actually been to Paradise. He had never met anyone who knew anyone who had been to Paradise. That did not make the distant world any less real. The media periodically released vits and images of the place. These showed an Earth-like planet swathed in an atmosphere perfectly suitable for humans. The indigenous wildlife was fascinating, the few but thriving, improvised communities intriguing, and the rarely seen Eiquans themselves tall, gracile, and sophisticated. So what if they weren’t humanoid? They were bisymmetrical, anyway, highly intelligent, and by all accounts no worse than indifferent to the interests of other species. So beautiful and graceful was their slender physicality, so mellifluous their speech, that even though they were quite alien the idea of living among them held no fear for Jonos.

Anything, he knew, would be a step up from Earth.

As you know, prime lenses come in a wide range of sizes and focal lengths, and every once in a while, one comes along and seems to grab you by the scruff of your neck. One such lens is the Viltrox AF 16mm f/1.8 FE, which is an impressive and useful lens for astrophotography thanks to its wide-angle field of view and fast maximum aperture.

This lens is one of the wider prime lenses that are available and could be one of the best third-party lenses for astrophotography. With a price of just $464 (£533), this is one of the most cost-effective wide-angle primes, but rather than being a second-rate lens, its build quality and image quality are fantastic. It’s not the best, but it’s undoubtedly a lens you would enjoy.

Image quality is excellent overall, with no need for lens corrections, except for vignette removal when shooting wide open. With near-perfect sharpness and minimal distortion and aberrations straight out of the camera, perhaps the weight of the lens is a small price to pay.

The lens is made up of 15 elements in 12 groups and is built like a tank, with an all-metal body. It is pretty heavy, though, weighing in at 19.4 oz (550 g) despite its relatively compact size. Attach this lens to one of the best Sony cameras and you will have a formidable combination. The 16mm f/1.8 is also available in the Nikon Z-mount.

Viltrox AF 16mm f/1.8 FE lens review

Viltrox AF 16mm f/1.8 FE: Performance

• Great image quality
• Impressively sharp at f/1.8
• Excellent corner sharpness

With a focal length of 16mm and a maximum aperture of f/1.8, this is clearly a great lens for astrophotography from a technical point of view. The light-gathering capabilities are excellent, to say the least, and during testing it was possible to shoot at a range of ISO levels with a moonless sky. Even ISO 800 was often high enough for a correct exposure.

The image quality produced by the 16mm f/1.8 is great, with excellent levels of sharpness across the frame. What’s most important here is that even corner sharpness is fantastic when wide open at f/1.8. This is the aperture setting where vignetting is at its strongest, but it reduces drastically when you stop down to f/2.8 and is completely gone by the time you stop down to f/4.

Luckily, though, there is a lens profile in Adobe Camera Raw and Adobe Lightroom that completely removes vignetting. There’s also only minimal chromatic aberration and a tiny amount of barrel distortion, which is impressive given the wide field of view produced by the lens.

As mentioned before, sharpness is great wide open and improves incrementally as you stop down up to the sweet spot of the lens, which is f/8. Sharpness drops slightly at f/11, and it’s at f/16 where diffraction begins to soften the image overall. This increases further when you stop down to f/22.

These latter apertures aren’t relevant to astrophotography; the medium ones aren’t either but the sharpness produced at f/1.8 and f/2.8 is exactly what you want.

Viltrox AF 16mm f/1.8 FE: Design

• Weather-sealed build
• Compact yet heavy
• Great handling

The 16mm f/1.8 lens is something of an oddity in one respect: it’s both compact and heavy considering its size, although this comes down to its optical construction. The lens weighs 19.4 oz (550 g) with a size of just 3.35 x 4.06 in (85.2 x 103 mm). It does, however, balance well with Sony A-series cameras.

The 16mm f/1.8 is made up of 15 elements in 12 groups, including four ED glass and three aspherical lenses. The optical construction is designed to deliver sharpness, detail and high contrast with minimal distortion. It’s fair to say it achieves these. Of course, you will experience some perspective distortion when tilting the lens up to capture more of the night sky when there are ground elements in the foreground.

Unlike some wide-angle lenses, the front element isn’t bulbous, and it features an HD nano multilayer coating with a water-resistant and antifouling coating. The filter thread is also just 77mm, so you can easily attach screw-in and square filters if you use them for your astrophotography.

The minimum focusing distance of the lens is 10.6 inches (27 cm), which is great for landscape photographers but less important for astrophotographers.

Build quality is impressive thanks to an all-metal body and weather-sealing. This gives the lens a premium look, and it feels robust in the hand. There’s also a useful digital color screen that displays lens information.

When it comes to controls, there are possibly a few more on this lens than you might find on the average prime. There’s a manual focusing ring that’s wide enough for use when wearing gloves, a manual aperture ring that can be set to stepped and stepless operation using a switch on one side of the lens, two customizable Fn buttons and an AF/MF switch.

Viltrox AF 16mm f/1.8 FE: Functionality

• Small color digital screen
• Customizable Fn buttons
• 105.6-degree field of view

The Viltrox AF 16mm f/1.8 FE is a full-frame lens offering a generous 105.6-degree field of view, allowing you to capture more of the night sky. This lens naturally works with all Sony FE bodies, and if you shoot APS-C, it will give you an equivalent focal length of 24mm. This means if you currently own an APS-C camera but plan to upgrade to full-frame, this lens could comfortably join you on that journey.

As prime lenses go, this one has a few more bells and whistles than most, so there are a few more things to talk about than usual. Focusing is internal, so the front element doesn’t rotate or extend outwards, which is great when using filters.

For astrophotography, manual focus is the only way to go, but this lens also has autofocus for when you’re shooting other subjects. The autofocus isn't the fastest we’ve seen, taking about 0.25 seconds to lock onto subjects when the lens is wide open, or 0.5 seconds when stopped down. This is driven by an SMT stepping motor, which is quiet but audible.

One feature that you don’t see on many lenses is a small color digital screen on the top of the lens. This shows the focus distance, aperture setting and the active Fn control. Is it a gimmick? A bit. Is it useful? Yes. For astrophotography, the screen is definitely useful because it’s illuminated.

As with most Viltrox lenses, there’s also a USB-C port on the lens mount so it can be powered. This allows you to connect the lens to the Viltrox Lens app via Bluetooth to update firmware and customize the Fn buttons and the digital screen’s welcome screen. This makes firmware updates incredibly easy, which is a great feature to have.

Viltrox AF 16mm f/1.8 FE: User reviews

In online reviews, users consistently highlight the lens's value and image quality. Build quality comes up time and time again, thanks to the all-metal build.

Many users report that overall, the lens offers much more than you’d expect for the price and even more than some more expensive lenses.

How we tested the Viltrox AF 16mm f/1.8 FE

The Viltrox AF 16mm f/1.8 FE was tested in combination with the Sony A7R V, which offers an unforgivingly high resolution. The lens was tested at night with a focus on astrophotography, and in daylight to assess sharpness, distortion and general functionality for an all-round approach to testing.

Should you buy the Viltrox AF 16mm f/1.8 FE?

Since there are only a few alternatives to the Viltrox AF 16mm f/1.8 FE, and given that it offers excellent value for money, this is absolutely a lens worth considering if you need a wide-angle prime.

Furthermore, you’ll struggle to find a similar alternative with the same balance of overall build quality and price. Image quality is excellent, even in the corners and edges of the frame when shooting wide open with minimal distortion.

The two customizable Fn buttons and the illuminated color screen that provides useful lens information are extremely helpful when shooting in the dark.

With a price of $464 (£533) and given its build quality, image quality and overall handling, this lens represents excellent value for money. And while it may be a full-frame lens, APS-C users can still enjoy a 24mm equivalent focal length, so it’s a useful lens for astrophotography whichever format you shoot with.

This is a professional-quality lens with a mid-range price tag, and like other Viltrox lenses, you get the lens, a lens hood, front and rear lens caps and a soft lens case in the box.

If this lens isn't for you

The Viltrox AF 35mm f/1.2 LAB FE is a slightly less wide Viltrox lens with a much faster aperture and is part of the company’s flagship LAB series.

The Sony FE 20mm f/1.8 G is a fantastic wide-angle prime offering excellent image quality in a compact and lightweight form factor.

The Sigma 14mm f/1.4 DG DN Art is something of a beast, both in terms of specs and its size. With a 14mm focal length and f/1.4 maximum aperture, it’s perfect for astrophotography.

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Growing plants in space? Yes indeed! NASA astronauts are conducting botany experiments aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

What is it?

In this snapshot — captured by NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins, commander of SpaceX's Crew-13 mission to the ISS — we can see fellow NASA spaceflyer Luke Delaney hard at work aboard the ISS. And while he's orbiting around our planet aboard a laboratory in the vacuum of space, he's also growing plants.

In the photo, Delaney is working petri dishes and experiment modules that support our growing understanding of how plants grow in the microgravity environment aboard the station. Specifically, the experiments Delaney is working on will investigate the genetic responses of plants in this environment.

This is not the first time that researchers have studied plants in space. In fact, ISS astronauts have conducted a wide variety of plant experiments and investigations over the years. They've grown peppers and other edible produce and even proved that moss can survive outside the station, in the harsh environment of space.

Why is it incredible?

When you picture the inside of an orbiting space station, you might imagine the white and gray walls with computers, buttons, switches and other such tech speckling the scene. But the space station is also full of (non-astronaut) life, thanks to the incredible variety of biological experiments onboard.

While space is "the final frontier," and we look outward to study everything from black holes to exploding stars, outer space can also help teach us about own planet. Satellites look back at Earth, studying its changing landforms, migrating wildlife, diminishing glaciers and natural disasters. Onboard the ISS, astronauts conduct experiments with plants, animals, microscopic organisms and an incredible amount of studies supporting human health and medical care. While space might be the final frontier, so much of the work done in space is designed to benefit us back here on Earth.

NASA has revealed new details about its plans to return astronauts to the surface of the moon, outlining a series of upcoming milestones for SpaceX and Blue Origin as both companies race to ready their lunar landers for the agency's Artemis program.

During an Oct. 5 presentation at the Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Antalya, Türkiye, Steve Creech, acting manager of NASA's Human Landing System (HLS) Program, laid out development timelines for both spacecraft, with key demonstrations planned through early 2028 that include orbital refueling and uncrewed lunar landing tests to qualify the vehicles to fly astronauts to the surface of the moon.

A more pressing deadline, however, is NASA's Artemis III mission, which is targeted for the third quarter (Q3) of 2027. Artemis III will launch four astronauts aboard NASA's Orion spacecraft to low Earth orbit (LEO), where they will rendezvous and dock with test versions of both companies' landers for interoperability checkouts. Those demonstrations will help inform NASA's determination about which lander the agency will choose to carry astronauts to the moon's surface on Artemis IV, targeted for early 2028.

SpaceX and Blue Origin were both awarded NASA contracts to develop HLS vehicles — Starship and Blue Moon, respectively — and have spent the past several years refining their respective lunar lander designs and dealing with various delays along the way. In the face of those delays, and in an effort to better structure its mission progression for success, NASA overhauled its Artemis program architecture in February to maintain its goal of landing astronauts on the moon by the end of 2028 and establish a more regular cadence of uncrewed landings in the meantime.

As part of that shakeup, Artemis III, previously the program's first crewed lunar landing mission, was moved up a year and repurposed for the lunar lander vehicle tests the agency is preparing to fly to LEO next year. The program's first moon landing remains scheduled for 2028, but was shifted to the manifest for Artemis IV.

Between now and then, both SpaceX and Blue Origin have more than a dozen test demonstrations and vehicle milestones to achieve, including success during Artemis III and flights afterward. This will all lead up to a key decision NASA must make: Which vehicle will carry out the first crewed landing on the surface of the moon since the Apollo program ended in 1972?

Starship reached for the first time on its most recent test flight, which occurred on Sept. 28 from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas. NASA lists several other important goals for the vehicle to achieve in 2026, including (in the order listed during the IAC presentation) the first return and catch of the rocket's upgraded Version 3 (V3) booster at its launch pad; the first-ever return and catch of a Ship upper stage; the first Starship launch from one of SpaceX's launch pads still under construction on Florida's Space Coast; and, possibly, the first V3 booster reflight.

NASA also expects SpaceX to complete the initial build of the crew cabin for its lunar lander Starship variant. SpaceX released renders of Starship's interior last year, as well as images of the test elevator astronauts are using to train for Starship egress on the lunar surface, but little else has been made public about the progress the company has made on the cabin's design.

Should the cabin's initial build wrap up by the end of the year, as NASA's presentation suggested, SpaceX will use Q1 2027 to complete integration of the systems that Starship will need to communicate with Orion during Artemis III, and deliver a cabin simulator for astronauts to train on leading up to the mission. SpaceX plans to continue Starship test flights through Q2 of next year, complete a landing leg demonstration and begin crew cabin airlock tests.

Blue Origin's lunar lander mockup is ready for NASA Artemis astronaut training

For Artemis III, SpaceX plans to fly one of its existing V3 Starship upper stages, with some slight modifications. Starship and Orion will dock as part of Artemis III but the SpaceX vehicle won't be equipped with a crew cabin for the mission's astronauts to enter. Between the end of this year and the beginning of the next, SpaceX is expected to complete the addition of a docking system and nosecone cover to the Artemis III Starship vehicle, which, NASA documents suggest, has already completed its mechanical fit checks.

Other notches on SpaceX's checklist leading up to Artemis III include the first propellant transfer demonstration with Starship in orbit. As the first-ever launch vehicle and spacecraft designed for full reusability, Starship's fuel constraints require that its tanks be topped off in order to fly beyond LEO. For a moon landing mission, this could mean up to a dozen launches of SpaceX's Starship "tanker" spacecraft to an orbiting fuel depot, which the moon-bound Starship will visit. To pull that off, though, SpaceX has to show it can successfully transfer those cryogenic fuels on orbit, and also store them effectively enough to prevent too much boil-off.

Starship won't require any refueling flights to complete its objectives for Artemis III, but SpaceX is expected to launch its first Starship tanker vehicle within a few months of that mission as it gears up for the Artemis IV moon landing mission. To that end, a launch of an uncrewed Starship lunar lander variant is targeted sometime toward the end of Q3/beginning of Q4, with an uncrewed lunar landing mission carried out before the end of 2027.

Blue Origin, meanwhile, has its own set of milestones to meet as it develops its Blue Moon Mark 2 (MK2) lander — a 52-foot-tall (16 meters) spacecraft powered by three BE-7 engines. Unlike the bare-bones V3 Starship that SpaceX will launch on Artemis III, Blue Origin plans to fly a completed test vehicle, incorporating the crew cabin, partial life-support, flight software and other systems needed to allow astronauts to enter the lander from Orion during their time docked in LEO. Astronauts will be able to enter Blue Moon from Orion to get a feel for the lander in zero-g and test some of its systems.

NASA's timeline shows the company working to complete a series of manufacturing and testing milestones in the last few months of 2026, including continued BE-7 testing and qualification of Blue Moon's BT-7 maneuvering thrusters. The company also faces its Artemis III interim design review and a critical design review for an upcoming landing demonstration mission in 2028.

Blue Origin is also working to restore its pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station's Launch Complex-36 (LC-36) to operation and return its New Glenn rocket to flight, following an explosion of the rocket in May that caused extensive damage to the facility. NASA's presentation places that milestone in Q4 2026, a timeline the company has also been very vocal about maintaining. A recent Reuters report, however, suggests that may not happen until early 2027.

By early 2027, the company expects to complete the spacecraft's communications systems and finalize its flight software, with assembly, integration and testing continuing into Q2. Q1 2027 is also when Blue Origin's Blue Moon MK1 lander (a smaller, uncrewed version of its MK2 successor) will launch to the lunar surface as a part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program of robotic moon missions.

During Q2 2027, as the Artemis III mission approaches, Blue Origin is expected to complete integration of its test lander with New Glenn and conclude qualification of its BE-7 engine. Throughout next year, the company plans to continue construction and refurbishments at its launch facilities and hopes to have a new launch pad ready to support the upgraded, more powerful New Glenn 9x4 rocket l by the end of Q3. The first flight of that rocket variant is scheduled for Q4 2027, alongside a second MK1 lunar mission and the launch of an uncrewed MK2 demonstration lander.

That spacecraft is expected to attempt its own uncrewed lunar landing in Q1 2028, around the same time Blue Origin has scheduled a third MK1 flight. Like SpaceX, Blue Origin will need to demonstrate that its lander can safely reach the moon's surface,operate there and return to lunar orbit before NASA clears it to carry astronauts on a future Artemis mission.

NASA's overall timeline remains the same as it has been since the February revamp, with Artemis III expected to launch in mid-2027, followed by a crewed lunar landing on Artemis IV in 2028, and possibly another on Artemis V that same year. There may be changes on the horizon, though. NASA will host a press conference on Friday (Oct. 23) with Administrator Jared Isaacman and Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya, as well as Artemis program director Jeremy Parsons. During the event, which you'll be able to watch here at Space.com, they will discuss the status of the upcoming moon missions and an "Artemis acceleration."

SpaceX and Blue Origin still face tight schedules to complete their respective uncrewed landing demonstrations before Artemis IV. With SpaceX targeting Q4 2027 and Blue Origin Q1 2028, both are pushing the margins against NASA's hopes to return astronauts to the lunar surface that same year. Which company ultimately gets the green light for that first landing mission will depend on the progress each makes between now and then, and whether their landers can demonstrate the readiness that NASA requires to safely carry astronauts to the surface of the moon and back again.

Don't miss the Orionid meteor shower peak tonight (Oct. 21-22) as tiny shards of Halley's Comet collide with Earth's atmosphere to carve fiery streaks through the Autumn sky! But will the light cast by the waxing gibbous moon spoil the show?

The Orionid meteor shower activity peaks when Earth travels through the densest section of the debris trail left by Comet 1P/Halley. The comet is currently racing back towards the sun ahead of its next visit to the inner solar system in 2061.

Under perfect dark sky conditions 10 to 20 shooting stars could brighten the night sky each hour as the peak unfolds, according to NASA. However, the light cast by the waxing moon — just four days from being full — will likely reduce the number of visible meteors by hiding fainter Orionids from sight.

Orionid shooting stars will appear to travel away from a point of origin, close to the red star Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion, rising above the eastern horizon an hour before midnight for viewers in the U.S.

When and where to see Orionid shooting stars this October

Your best chance at spotting the fast-moving meteors will come in the hours before dawn on Oct. 22, after the moon has set and the radiant approaches its highest point in the night sky. It's best not to stare directly at the radiant, where the glowing meteor trails will be relatively short compared to those left by shooting stars that appear 45-90 degrees away from the bright star Betelgeuse, thanks to an effect known as foreshortening.

Try to travel away from city lights and allow 20-30 minutes for your eyes to adapt to the dark. Always make sure someone knows where you're going if you head somewhere remote to catch the shower and be sure to take a red light to ensure that you can find your way while also preserving your night vision!

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

A Russian satellite just took a very close look at an American spacecraft in low Earth orbit.

A few days ago, the snooping satellite Kosmos 2612 rendezvoused with ICEYE-X36, a commercial craft that observes our planet using synthetic aperture radar (SAR).

The close encounter, which occurred between Oct. 15 and Oct. 19, was reported by Marco Langbroek and other satellite trackers, with Langbroek calling it "a worrisome cat-and-mouse game" in orbit. The rendezvous has garnered a lot of attention in space circles, because it was non-consensual and startlingly close; at one point, the two spacecraft may have been separated by just a few meters. What did Russia hope to gain from it?

Not an isolated incident

Before tackling that question, we need to set the stage a bit. For example, it's important to note that inspections aren't unheard of in the final frontier. Russia, the United States and China have all maneuvered satellites into close proximity of other nations' hardware in recent years.

Most of this activity has taken place in geostationary orbit, which lies 22,236 miles (35,786 kilometers) above Earth. At this altitude, orbital velocity matches our planet's rotational speed, allowing spacecraft to "hover" over one patch of Earth continuously. GEO is therefore a popular destination for spy, communications and weather satellites — and for spacecraft designed to shadow and assess them.

Kosmos 2612 is operating in low Earth orbit (LEO), which is part of the reason its activities have created such a stir. Neither China nor the U.S. has conducted an uncooperative rendezvous in LEO, as far as we know. But Russia has, according to Victoria Samson, chief director of space security and stability for the nonprofit Secure World Foundation.

"They've done a few," she told Space.com. "Kosmos 2543 got within about 30 kilometers [19 miles] of USA 245 in January 2020, and then Kosmos 2558 got within about 70 kilometers [43 miles] of USA 326 in August 2022. And they've done repeated approaches to 326."

Kosmos 2612 got much closer to its target than those other inspectors did, of course. And there's another big difference: USA 245 and USA 326 are classified spy satellites managed by the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office, while ICEYE-X36 is a private Earth-observing craft.

Eyes in the sky

There are about 80 ICEYE spacecraft in LEO at the moment. They image our planet using SAR, which can peer through clouds and gather data both day and night. Some of these satellites are operated by ICEYE, a company based in Finland, while others are managed by its American subsidiary, ICEYE US. ICEYE-X36 is one of the latter.

At least some ICEYE satellites provide imagery to Ukraine, which Russia invaded in February 2022 and continues to assault with ground troops and missile and drone attacks. Indeed, ICEYE signed a contract this past January firming up this data-sharing relationship with Ukraine.

"The agreement ensures that the Ministry of Defence continues to receive a high volume of high-resolution satellite imagery through ICEYE's world-leading SAR constellation, supporting the Ukrainian Armed Forces with persistent situational awareness on tactical timelines," ICEYE representatives said in a January statement.

That likely explains Russia's interest in ICEYE satellites, which is extensive and longstanding. For example, Kosmos 2612 launched in April of this year with five other spacecraft. In May, four members of this fleet, including Kosmos 2612, conducted maneuvers to get into a co-planar orbit with ICEYE-X36. Such maneuvers use a lot of fuel and are therefore not performed lightly. (It's unclear if ICEYE-X36 is dedicated to capturing imagery of Ukraine or Russia, but Russia certainly seems to think it is.)

However, we still don't know the purpose of Kosmos 2612's close approach (which is apparently over, at least for now), Samson stressed.

There are a few possibilities. For example, Russia may want to get a better idea of ICEYE satellites' capabilities, and/or figure out what exactly they're studying on Earth below. Or maybe Kosmos 2612 was actively interfering with ICEYE-X36 in some way — messing with its sensors, perhaps, or blocking or intercepting its communications with the ground.

However, Samson leans toward another explanation.

"I think they're getting frustrated," she said of the Russians.

"They've been kind of in a stalemate, particularly for the past six months or so. And so I think it's just more a matter of demonstrating military prowess in a manner that the Ukrainians cannot respond to," she added. "The Ukrainians are just as good, perhaps even better than, the Russians on drones. But when it comes to space stuff, they're not peers, and this is just a way to remind everyone that that's the case."

As Kosmos 2612's activities show, space is becoming an increasingly competitive and contested domain. The U.S. has long held the advantage above Earth, fielding the most capable reconnaissance and communications craft, but Russia and China are challenging that dominance.

This drama is unfolding above our heads now, and it affects everyone on the planet. Samson therefore wishes that governments around the world were more forthcoming about their space activities — for example, that we learned about Kosmos 2612's shenanigans from the U.S .Space Force rather than from private companies and civilians who pore over government tracking data.

"I think it just speaks to the importance of transparency, and sharing information about these sort of things," she said. "As much as you may want to, you cannot keep the existence of satellites classified, because people can see them."

SpaceX will soon notch a huge spaceflight milestone, if all goes according to plan.

The company will try to catch both stages of its Starship megarocket during the vehicle's next test flight, which is targeted for next month, founder and CEO Elon Musk announced during SpaceX's quarter 3 (Q3) earnings call today (Oct. 20).

If SpaceX succeeds, this "will be the first time that an orbital launch vehicle has been fully recovered," Musk said. "The only way that we can extend consciousness beyond Earth on a sustained basis is with a fully reusable orbital launch vehicle. So this is, I think, a profound technology milestone in the history of civilization and consciousness."

Starship is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, standing more than 400 feet (122 meters) tall when fully stacked.

As Musk noted, both of its stages — the Super Heavy booster and Ship spacecraft — are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, a breakthrough that SpaceX thinks will make Mars settlement and other grand exploration feats economically feasible.

Starship's recovery strategy is different than that for SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, which are partially reusable. (The latter two rockets have expendable upper stages). Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy boosters come back to Earth on landing pads near the launch site or on ships at sea downrange. Super Heavy and Ship, however, will steer themselves directly back to their launch tower, which will capture each vehicle with its "chopstick" arms.

This will allow SpaceX to inspect, refurbish and refly Starship at an accelerated rate, which is a priority for the company: Musk has said he envisions launching Starship more than 10,000 times per year by 2030.

Starship has conducted 14 test flights to date, and SpaceX has pulled off chopstick catches with Super Heavy on three of them. The company has not yet tried to catch Ship, which is a more difficult proposition, as the upper stage travels higher, farther and faster than the booster does.

Still, Musk is confident that SpaceX will pull off a Ship catch on the first try. (He did not give a specific target date for Flight 15, saying only that it was expected next month.)

"I'd say it's more likely than not that this succeeds next flight," he said. "And if not, we have a steady stream of Starship flight attempts through the end of this year, and and then accelerating next year."

Success would mean back-to-back Starship flights with huge milestones. On Flight 14, which occurred on Sept. 28, Ship reached orbit for the first time ever. It also deployed 26 of SpaceX's Starlink Version 3 satellites — the first 26 members of a next-gen broadband constellation in low Earth orbit that will eventually consist of about 100,000 spacecraft.

The Starship Flight 15 preview was something of an aside during today's call. The event primarily served to announce SpaceX's financial performance during Q3, the three-month stretch that ended on Sept. 30.

And that performance was strong, company representatives said. SpaceX recorded revenues of $14.6 billion during Q3, an increase of 161% from the $5.6 billion earned during Q3 of 2025. The company had a net income of $4.4 billion during Q3, $5.5 billion better than the result from the same stretch last year, when SpaceX lost $1.1 billion.

Just $1.8 billion of 2026 Q3 revenue came from SpaceX's launch division. The vast majority was generated by two other segments — connectivity (services provided by its Starlink megaconstellation) and artificial intelligence (or, as the Trump administration has recently rebranded it, "superintelligence").

SpaceX thinks these latter two segments will continue to boom. That's why it's building the infrastructure to support thousands of Starship launches per year — to loft lots of Starlink satellites and AI data centers to Earth orbit. And the company believes that it's positioned to really start raking in the cash, starting as soon as next year.

"In a nutshell, what this implies for SpaceX annual recurring revenue by the end of '27 is somewhere between 500 billion [dollars] and a trillion," Musk said.

On Oct. 20, 1970, the Soviet Union launched the Zond 8 spacecraft on a mission to the moon. This was the last mission in the Zond program.

After the first three Zond missions explored Venus and Mars, the next ones were circumlunar missions that flew around the moon before returning to Earth. Although there was no crew on board, the Zond spacecraft was designed with cosmonauts in mind.

The Zond missions served as test flights for the Soviet Union's plans to send cosmonauts to the moon. But those plans for crewed flights never came to fruition. This was partly because the U.S. had already put astronauts on the moon, but also because the Zond missions had a lot of technical problems.

Zond 8 was considered a success — even though its guidance system malfunctioned on the way back to Earth. The spacecraft still returned to Earth safely and splashed down in the Indian Ocean one week after it launched.

Why it mattered

While the Zond 1 and Zond 2 missions were launched toward Venus and Mars, respectively, the primary target of most Zond missions was the moon. At the time, the Soviet Union was embroiled in an ongoing space race with the United States to be the first on the moon with a human crew.

By the time Zond 8 launched on Oct. 20, 1970, that space race was lost to the Soviet Union. NASA and the U.S. had already landed astronauts on the moon twice with Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 (in July and November of 1969, respectively), and even peformed the first space rescue fo the Apollo 13 astronauts in April 1970.

While Zond 8 was uncrewed, it was a test flight of the Soviet Union's L1 spacecraft that was designed to fly a cosmonaut around the moon. It looped around the moon in a lunar flyby, approaching within 1,120 kilometers of the moon's surface at its closest point, according to RussianSpaceWeb.com.

Cameras on Zond 8 captured stunning views of the Earth and moon, recreating the iconic Earthrise views seen by Apollo 8 astronauts two years earlier in 1968.

Zond 8 ultimately splashed down in the Indian Ocean on Oct. 27, 1970 after a solar attitude sensor failed, sending it on a shorter, steeper reentry path during landing, according to RussianSpaceWeb.com. It was retrieved by a recovery ship, marking the end of the Soviet moon landing program. Russian would go on to develop a series of Salyut space stations, culminating in the long-lived Mir space station.

After decades without a moon probe, Russia did launch a new uncrewed moon lander in 2023. That Luna 25 mission failed and crashed into the lunar surface after an onboard engine controller malfunctioned. The country has pledged a return to the moon in 2027.

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

Taschen, purveyors of fine art and design special-edition books, have teamed up with George Lucas and his newly opened Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles to present a masterful two-volume catalog of the museum’s illuminating offerings.

Housed in a sturdy slipcase, readers will discover a pair of lavishly illustrated volumes spanning 832 pages and tipping the scales at nearly 14 pounds. At $200 for the pair, it's not cheap, but look on the bright side; hoisting these illustrated tomes will save you a subscription to your local gym!

This immersive collection documents in great detail the astounding scope of rare items on display in Lucas’s treasury of paintings, murals, photographs, sculptures, posters, comic strips, illustrations, costumes, and magazine covers that have spurred humankind’s imagination.

We'd absolutely recommend checking out the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in person if you can.

Our own Chelsea Gohd visited the Los Angeles-based museum ahead of its opening in September 2026 and adored it. But if you're not a California local, getting lost in this collection's glossy pages is the next best thing to roaming the museum exhibitions on a rainy afternoon.

Far beyond a mere companion to the marvels inside the fantastic spaceship-shaped building poised near the University of Southern California campus — the same institution where Lucas attended film school in the late 1960s — these bold editions are an adventure in their own right.

Waiting to be absorbed is an impressive assortment of storytelling expression that showcases beautiful works by everyone from Maxfield Parrish, N.C. Wyeth, and Norman Rockwell to Frank Frazetta, Jack Kirby, and Ralph McQuarrie. Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson, curated the museum’s contents that represent decades of collecting narrative art in all of its forms.

Our friends at Taschen were gracious enough to send us one of these Lucas Museum of Narrative Art special editions, and in unboxing this magnificent pair of books, one can feel the quality in the deluxe binding and thick covers. Inside you’ll find an eye-popping array of full-color photography and sharp descriptions for hundreds of artworks, all hand-picked by Lucas and Hobson.

Lucas himself delivers the preface, which is titled "The Art of Story," where he professes his love of art, myth, anthropology, illustrators, and cinema. He recalls when he came to meet his mentor, Professor Joseph Campbell, and how he amassed 40,000 pieces of art beginning when he was a student at USC.

The great director Guillermo del Toro provides a heartfelt foreword praising the importance of the museum and these prestigious companion volumes depicting a multitude of visual wonders.

Between the duo of volumes, sections are divided into chapters dealing with topics such as history, children's stories, the American West, everyday life, romance and adventure, photography, science fiction and fantasy, and, of course, Star Wars in Motion.

They take you on an overwhelming journey through the gallery’s incredibly diverse holdings, not least of which are archival items and concept art chronicling Lucas's involvement in the galaxy far, far away.

This remarkable "Star Wars" section will be of particular interest to sci-fi aficionados, as it contains 100 pages of original props, paintings, concept artwork, costumes, models, and digital renderings created by some of Lucasfilm and Industrial Light and Magic’s best and brightest talents.

Taken with the rest of the 832 combined pages of Taschen's ambitious release that fully captures the dizzying breadth of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, it's a brilliant keepsake to spark your soul and imagination.

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art two-book collection is available now via Taschen's website and Amazon.

Daniel Biedermann is a partner at NewSpace Capital. He contributed this article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Jeff Bezos, the founder and former CEO of Amazon, recently said that Blue Origin, his space technology company, is likely to go public in the coming years. The announcement has (unsurprisingly) attracted considerable attention, not least because Bezos has spent more than two decades financing the company largely from his personal wealth. He has invested billions of dollars in developing rockets, spacecraft and other forms of technology, often with very little prospect of an immediate return. But although Bezos has now raised the possibility of an initial public offering, he has given no firm indication of when one might happen. He may be right to keep his options open.

Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000. Because he has financed so much of its development by himself, the company has been able to pursue ambitious engineering projects without the financial pressures that publicly listed businesses typically face. But developing reusable rockets, manufacturing spacecraft and building the infrastructure needed for future lunar missions requires extraordinary amounts of capital: These projects can take decades to complete, and even the wealthiest investors must think hard about how best to finance them over the long term. Bezos, then, has good reasons to seek additional sources of investment — particularly as Blue Origin prepares to expand its commercial operations.

An IPO would give Blue Origin the means to raise substantial capital from public investors and reduce its dependence on Bezos's personal wealth. The company could then use that money to expand manufacturing, develop new technology and compete for a greater share of the growing space market. Public ownership would also give existing investors the power to sell some of their holdings and could make it easier for Blue Origin to finance acquisitions. But the company would also have to meet the expectations of shareholders, who would expect to see regular evidence of commercial progress. This, I suspect, is why Bezos wants to establish a stronger business before committing to a listing.

It might have much to prove commercially, but Blue Origin’s technical progress has been remarkable. In January 2025, its New Glenn rocket reached orbit for the first time — a significant achievement for a vehicle built to compete in the heavy-lift launch market. The company has also secured government and commercial contracts and continued developing its lunar capabilities. But it will eventually have to demonstrate that it can launch New Glenn frequently, reliably and at a commercially competitive cost, and it is still some way away from that point.

Some will be asking whether Bezos wants to raise money to accelerate growth or simply to reduce the amount he himself must invest. Such doubts could affect the company's valuation and make it harder to attract investors who share its long-term ambitions. But again, this suggests Bezos is playing the long game. And given the enthusiasm that has surrounded some billionaire-led space ventures, this is sensible. Investors have sometimes attached extraordinary valuations to companies with ambitious plans but limited commercial experience. Space businesses certainly require ambition: engineers will often spend years developing technology before they can sell it. But investors have to distinguish between technical achievement and commercial performance. At the end of the day, they are seeking a strong rate of return.

What’s also worth considering is how Blue Origin's progress could benefit the wider space industry, particularly the specialist companies that supply technology to larger manufacturers and operators. SpaceX has achieved remarkable success in part by developing and manufacturing much of its technology internally. This includes its rockets, spacecraft and satellites. Blue Origin also does something similar, undertaking substantial engineering and manufacturing work itself, but it is not quite so vertically integrated, and thus may have greater scope to work with external suppliers as it expands. It already buys parts, equipment and services from hundreds of businesses. If it can successfully increase its production and launch activity, these suppliers could receive more orders and gain opportunities to develop new technologies. That’s to the good of the sector as a whole.

Why? Because a successful space industry needs more than a handful of large launch providers. It needs companies specializing in satellite communications, propulsion, electronics, software and other areas. Such businesses may have developed highly sophisticated products, but they need bigger customers and predictable demand to expand and produce more. Blue Origin could become an important customer for some of these, particularly if it chooses to buy specialist technology rather than make everything internally. Greater competition between the bigger space companies could translate to more potential customers for suppliers and fewer dependent commercial relationships.

Investors would benefit. There’s real potential in businesses that provide the technology and services on which larger space companies depend — the ‘picks and shovels.’ These can sometimes serve several customers and markets, making them less dependent on the success of a single program. A growing Blue Origin would create more opportunities for companies like these — although, of course, much will depend on how Bezos chooses to organize its supply chain. We shouldn’t assume that Blue Origin will become more open to external suppliers than its competitors, but the possibility is at least worth entertaining.

As it is, Bezos still faces substantial challenges. Blue Origin is not yet a commercially mature business. The company must increase its launch activity; it must demonstrate its reliability; and it must compete for customers in the public and private sectors. It must also decide how much technology to manufacture internally and whether and where third parties can provide better products or products at a lower cost. Bezos has the resources to give the company time to answer these questions, and he appears to be willing to use them. If he continues to prioritize commercial performance before pursuing an IPO, then Blue Origin could eventually enter the public markets in a much stronger position.

HAWTHORNE, Calif. — A moon buggy carrying a history-making supercomputer is ready to launch to the lunar surface. And it's taking some inspiration from Mars.

Later this year, Astrolab will launch its uncrewed moon rover FLIP to the lunar south pole as part of the Griffin Mission 1, or Griffin-1. The California company is one of two that NASA has selected to develop a drivable rover for the agency's Artemis program. On board FLIP will be Hewlett Packard Enterprise's (HPE) Spaceborne Computer-4, an advanced computer module built to be used in space.

This will be the first time that high-performance computing and artificial intelligence will be tested on the lunar surface. As NASA gets closer to landing humans back on the moon with Artemis, advancements like this aim to support future human habitation as well as economic activity on and around the moon.

"We're sending the first supercomputer from HPE to the lunar surface later this year, doing the first GPU [graphics processing unit] on the moon [and the] first AI experiments on the moon," Jaret Matthews, founder and CEO of Astrolab, said during an Oct. 14 media event here at Astrolab's headquarters. "They're breaking new ground, and they're ahead of the curve."

The computer is designed to be lightweight, compact, self-contained and fanless. It has a low-power 64-bit CPU (central processing unit) with a GPU. The computer will be attached to FLIP's cooling system and will be powered by a system supported by both batteries and solar cells on the rover. The computer will also be paired with solid state drives from the company KIOXIA that will allow for memory storage.

So, what will a supercomputer and AI accomplish on this uncrewed mission? First and foremost, the flightwill test how the computer works in this extreme environment. The computer is built with heat-conductive aluminum and is designed with the specific conditions of the lunar south pole in mind. But while it was designed and tested to be able to withstand the extreme temperatures and conditions on the moon's surface, the upcoming mission seeks to show that this advanced technology can actually work in this environment.

"NASA's given us a real challenge," Matthews told Space.com at the media event. "We have to design for a full year on the lunar surface. So that means surviving multiple lunar nights, upwards of 150 hours of complete darkness where we're not receiving energy or warmth from the sun. And then, also, there's going to be a long period [in] which we're operating semi-autonomously for [when] the astronauts are not there … and so we're having to develop a semi-autonomous platform that will spend many months [and] travel hundreds of kilometers [on the moon]."

But the computer will more than just prove its durability, if all goes to plan. It will also analyze visual data captured on the mission and enable autonomous observations, process navigation, mapping and terrain analysis. The mission also promises to test AI capabilities, though it's unclear what exact applications we'll see with this lunar AI. HPE shared in a statement that "an AI services container will demonstrate reliable deployment of scalable AI service applications on the moon."

It is also to be determined exactly how, once tested, these capabilities might be used with future crewed missions. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station already use computers for communications, science experiments and other daily tasks while living in space, but we can't say yet exactly how future astronauts might use these capabilities, especially with the addition of AI, on the moon.

From Mars to the moon

One interesting aspect of this new development is where it came from. While HPE has provided computing power to NASA for decades, Matthews is also bringing his previous experience working at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) into this new venture.

"One of the experiments [that will be] running on the spaceborne computer on the moon is a localization software experiment from JPL. It has been used on Mars, and this will be the first time it's used on the moon," Matthews said.

"The challenge with the moon and Mars is that there's no GPS, so locating yourself and knowing where you are on the surface [can be difficult]," he added. "So we're going to be running what is essentially a machine learning algorithm that JPL developed to take a map that's stored in memory … and compare it to the local terrain we see around us, and then do a match. So essentially, match features of the local terrain to the map that's stored in memory to help find ourselves on the map and keep ourselves away from dangerous craters."

As its name suggests, Griffin-1 will be the first mission for the robotic Griffin moon lander, which was developed by Astrobotic. The Pittsburgh company is flying Griffin-1 for NASA, under the agency's CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) program. In addition to FLIP, the mission will carry Astrobiotic's CubeRover, a small, uncrewed rover; LandCam-X, an optical navigation system; and Nanofiche GLPH (Galactic Library to Preserve Humanity), a tiny archive of human history, to the moon's surface.

"The moon presents a challenging environment for advanced computing, and we’re pleased to provide HPE with an opportunity to demonstrate its technology on the lunar surface," Matthews added in a statement. "Our FLIP rover is designed to accommodate a variety of payloads, and this mission will demonstrate how commercial lunar mobility platforms can support technology development and scientific research."

If you were approaching the edge of a spiral galaxy, arriving from afar through the cosmos, it might look something like this.

What is it?

In this new snapshot by the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), we can see the edge of the spiral galaxy NGC 1827. Found about 37 million light-years from Earth, this galaxy sparkles in this side-on view.

Not all spiral galaxies are the same. This galaxy is what is known as an "intermediate" spiral, which means that its structure sits somewhere between that of a barred and unbarred spiral galaxy. Barred galaxies have a distinctive central, bar-shaped structure, while the unbarred variety lacks this bar and can look more like circular spirals.

NGC 1827's spiral shape isn't clear from the side, however. From this perspective, we see its twinkling edge, speckled with stars and woven together with brown ribbons of dust.

Why is it incredible?

Beneath the beauty of this spiral edge lies an expansive, cosmic landscape. Bright blue stars dot the spiral's side, with one particularly luminous star taking the spotlight with four diffraction spikes — created by light bending through the inner workings of Hubble's camera — emanating from its center.

This image was captured as part of a larger Hubble survey that's exploring 260 satellite galaxies, which are galaxies gravitationally bound to larger hosts. Hubble is specifically looking to survey satellite galaxies that lie near host galaxies similar to our own Milky Way.

So far, Hubble has spotted 111 such satellites and will continue to observe, hunting for the rest.

By studying satellite galaxies like this one, which also happens to be an especially low-mass galaxy, researchers could better understand the complicated dynamics both within the galaxies themselves and between them and their host galaxies.

The best stargazing apps can take your observation of the night sky to the next level, whether that's using augmented reality (AR mode) to identify stars or looking up the next lunar eclipse.

However, the bright light emitted by smartphone screens can prevent your eyes from adjusting to the dark. If you're using one of the best telescopes, you'll want to preserve your night vision even more. Fortunately, there are ways to all but eliminate this problem.

Why are bright screens bad for stargazing?

When you step out into the dark, it can take up to 20-30 minutes for your vision to adjust. The rod cells in your eyes build up a chemical known as rhodopsin, which gives you night vision.

However, bright light bleaches that chemical, negatively impacting your night vision. So when you look through a telescope, binoculars or just turn your eyes to the night sky after peering at a bright phone screen, it'll be harder for you to pick out fainter objects such as galaxies and nebulas.

One way of fixing this problem is simply to put your phone away and wait another 20-30 minutes. But if you're using a stargazing app to help you navigate the night skies, that's not really an option.

The good news is that, between individual stargazing apps and your phone's own built-in features, you can minimize the impact of your smartphone's screen light.

How to block white light in stargazing apps

Many of the best stargazing apps will let you enable a red light filter or similar, though this option may not always be present in the free version. Here's how to do that in three of our favorite stargazing apps:

SkyView: Tap the screen, tap the horizontal lines, tap on Settings, then Display, then Night Mode and Red.

Star Walk 2: Tap the horizontal lines, tap on Settings, then tap the button next to Night Mode.

Sky Tonight: Tap the horizontal lines, tap on Settings, then Tools, then Night Mode.

All these modes will minimize the amount of white light coming from the app. However, be aware that this is only within the app. Once you go back to your phone's main menu, it will be at full color. With the red screen naturally looking darker, you may have turned up the brightness on your phone, so making the switch away from the app will be quite the shock.

If you want to dim your whole phone or put it into red light mode, here's how to do that on Android or iPhone.

How to block white light on Android phones

On Android, there are several ways to minimize the impact of bright light, depending on the model and make of phone you have.

One near-universal option is to dim your smartphone. Swipe down the notification panel from the top of the screen and you'll see a brightness slider. Slide this to the left to dim your phone.

We'd also recommend disabling adaptive brightness in the Display section of your phone's settings. You may also have an Extra Dim option in the Accessibility menu — just don't dim the screen to the point of not being able to see it at all!

Some Android phones, such as recent Samsung and Google Pixel models, also offer a Red Filter. On some, you'll find this in Accessibility, then Vision Enhancements, then Color Filter. You can then choose the color you want and also tweak the opacity.

All the above options will let you continue to use your smartphone for stargazing, while minimizing its negative impact on your night vision.

How to block white light on Apple iPhones

As with Android phones, iPhones have a built-in option to dim the screen brightness. In this case, you swipe down from the top of the screen and look for the vertical brightness slider, represented by a sun icon. Reduce the slider as much as you're comfortable with, dimming the screen while still keeping it visible.

Beyond that, recent iPhones also offer the ability to apply a color filter, again via their Accessibility options. Here's how to do that.

First, tap on the Settings icon, then pick Accessibility. Select Display & Text Size and go to Color Filters. Tap the Color Filter button. Then, pick Color Tint and move the Hue and Intensity sliders all the way to the right.

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

The space around Earth is turning into a junkyard. Researchers think a refundable deposit scheme could force satellite operators to clean up their act before a tipping point is reached.

For years, space sustainability experts have warned that the growing number of satellites in orbit and the quantity of dead metal left behind threatens to trigger a dangerous cascade of collisions known as the Kessler Syndrome. Predicted in the 1970s by NASA physicist Donald Kessler, this chain of orbital smashups could make the space around Earth unusable and unsafe.

The dangerous tipping might be nearer than some think. Humankind's utilization of space is at an inflection point, as companies such as SpaceX, Blue Origin and Amazon plan to launch constellations of hundreds of thousands of telecommunication satellites and orbiting data centers in the coming years.

"Low Earth orbit looks like lots of other resources that we have trashed as economic actors," Daniel Kaffine, a professor of environmental and resource economics at University of Colorado Boulder, told Space.com.

"Waiting until it gets really, really bad to start implementing any of these types of policy interventions has historically been what we have done," Kaffine added. "But maybe we can think about things we can do right now."

In a paper published last month in the journal Nature Communications, Kaffine and his collaborators propose a scheme that would require satellite operators to post a bond of $200,000 before launch, refundable with interest upon the completion of a successful deorbit. Companies that fail to remove their junk would lose the money, which could go toward a shared pool funding active debris-removal missions, the researchers said.

"You could possibly raise billions of dollars by that," said Kaffine. "We think it's a very neat policy that doesn't require international coordination."

International bodies, such as the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee, ask satellite operators to remove their spacecraft from orbit within 25 years after the mission's end. The American Federal Communications Commission (FCC) imposes an even stricter standard — a five-year requirement for satellites in low Earth orbit. Still, a staggering 60% of satellites remain in place when their propellant runs out, the researchers say, as no consequences ensue if they fail to deorbit.

Solving the problem on the international level would be difficult, as international bodies have no powers to enforce compliance. Moreover, the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), which sets down rules for the peaceful exploration of outer space, requires the unanimous support of every member state to pass new regulations, which is nearly impossible to achieve.

"The policy we propose could be implemented on a national level, which is why we think it's interesting," Indigo Brownhall, a space sustainability researcher at University College London and the paper's lead author, told Space.com. "Any country in Europe can request satellites registered with them to follow this bond policy."

To put it simply, no satellite registered in a given country gets to space before putting the money into the kitty. The researchers acknowledge that it might be hard to persuade major players historically averse to regulations, such as the U.S., to roll out such a scheme. But they say a more environmentally conscious block, like the European Union (EU), could enforce compliance by limiting market access to those who observe their rules.

"The consumer market in Europe is massive, like 300 to 400 million people," Brownhall said. "And the EU can request anyone who wants to sell space data or any products in the EU to follow their rules. They did this with GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation]. And you can imagine that somebody like Starlink [SpaceX's satellite-internet subsidiary] surely wants to sell Starlink terminals to Europeans."

The authors estimate that, even if the scheme only covered 20% of global satellite launches, it would reduce the number of derelict satellites careening around the planet by 18%.

Currently, more than 57,000 pieces of space debris larger than 4 inches (10 centimeters) hurtle around Earth completely out of control, according to estimates by the European Space Agency. That's double the figure from less than 10 years ago. Most of these fragments were generated by explosions and orbital collisions that shattered satellites and used rocket stages into clouds of dangerous debris.

"Leaving big satellites that no longer work up there is like a ticking time bomb," Brownhall said. "Active satellites can move out of the way, but when two derelict satellites are going to hit each other, there is nothing you can do but watch it."

Kaffine said the policy could be modelled on U.S. oil operators' bond scheme, in place since the 1960s, which ensures that oil giants plug used oil wells after ceasing extraction.

"If the oil operators clean up after completing the oil production job, they get the money back," said Kaffine. "If they don't, the money goes into a fund, which the government then uses to clean up orphan wells. It's quite an analogous situation to what we see in space."

In the meantime, evidence of the worsening orbital situation is coming thick and fast. Space situational awareness companies such as U.S.-based LeoLabs, which use networks of ground-based radars and telescopes to monitor traffic in space, report increasing numbers of disintegration events — incidents involving either an explosion or a collision between old satellites, fragments and rocket bodies. In the past six months, LeoLabs has reported at least four fragmentation events in space, which together created hundreds of new pieces of space debris.

SpaceX just launched its mysterious "Starfall" return capsule for the second time ever.

Starfall was one of 32 payloads on the company's Bandwagon-5 rideshare mission, which launched atop a Falcon 9 rocket at 7:04 a.m. EDT (1104 GMT) today (Oct. 20) from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

SpaceX has been relatively quiet about Starfall, which debuted this past June on a Falcon 9 launch from the Cape.

That June 23 flight was a dedicated demonstration mission for Starfall, designed to show that the capsule can fly in a controlled fashion and survive the harrowing downward trip through Earth's atmosphere.

And those will be Starfall's main jobs. The vehicle "will enable affordable, routine access to the microgravity environment for scientific research and in-space manufacturing," SpaceX in a June 23 X post, one of the few public statements the company has made about Starfall.

Indeed, most of the details that we have about the capsule come from an environmental assessment that was published by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration in May.

According to that document, the disk-shaped Starfall is roughly 2.5 feet (0.75 meters) tall and 10.2 feet (3.1 m) wide. It weighs about 4,600 pounds (2,100 kilograms) and can bring 2,200 pounds (1,000 kg) of payload back down to Earth.

Starfall wasn't the only return capsule that went up on Bandwagon-5. Among the other 31 payloads on the flight was W-Series 7, the latest orbital "mini-factory" built and operated by the California company Varda Space Industries.

The W-Series capsules are designed to both host the production of valuable goods such as pharmaceuticals and bring them safely down to Earth, Varda has said.

The other payloads on Bandwagon-5 are a mix of "cubesats and microsats," according to SpaceX's mission description. Among the latter is Pelican-12, a sharp-eyed Earth-observation satellite built by the San Francisco company Planet.

The 32 payloads were deployed over a two-hour span beginning about 57 minutes after launch. Starfall will be the last to separate, releasing from the Falcon 9's upper stage two hours and 48 minutes post-liftoff.

The Falcon 9's first stage, meanwhile, came back to Earth as planned on Bandwagon-5. It touched down about nine minutes after launch, coming down in the Atlantic Ocean atop the SpaceX drone ship "A Shortfall of Gravitas." It was the 19th mission for this particular booster, according to the company.

Bandwagon is one of two SpaceX rideshare programs. The other, known as Transporter, has been busier, flying 18 missions to date.

The first Transporter mission, which lifted off in January 2021, delivered 143 payloads to Earth orbit, a single-launch record that still stands.

On Sept. 30, NASA formally concluded OSIRIS-REx, the historic first U.S. mission to pluck a pristine piece of an asteroid and deliver it safely back to Earth.

The van-sized OSIRIS-REx spacecraft — whose name is short for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer — visited and sampled Bennu, an ancient space rock holding pristine remnants from the dawn of our solar system more than 4.5 billion years ago. Among those cosmic relics are raw organic building blocks, the kind that may have seeded life on Earth.

"I have known this day was coming for a long time, but it is still difficult to see it arrive," OSIRIS-REx Principal Investigator Dante Lauretta, who's based at the University of Arizona, said in a post on LinkedIn. "I feel enormous pride in what we accomplished together, and real sadness that this journey has come to an end."

For the mission team, the farewell capped a decade of high-stakes engineering, on-the-fly troubleshooting and nail-biting close calls that ultimately delivered to Earth the largest asteroid sample ever collected in space, one that held secrets from the early solar system.

Long before launch, the team faced obstacles that nearly thwarted the endeavor — chiefly, two rejections from NASA — before finally securing the green light for the $1 billion project under the New Frontiers Program in 2011.

When OSIRIS-REx launched on Sept. 8, 2016, on a two-year journey across the inner solar system, Bennu was little more than a point of light in telescopes. Scientists expected the asteroid’s surface to be a smooth, sandy sphere where OSIRIS-REx could seamlessly touch down. Much to their surprise, however, when the probe arrived at the asteroid in late 2018, it revealed Bennu to be a treacherous, loosely bound amalgamation of jagged boulders.

"Our expectations about the asteroid's surface were completely wrong," Lauretta said in an Oct. 7 statement from the University of Arizona. "There was no obvious place to collect a sample anywhere."

When OSIRIS-REx touched down on a small crater named Nightingale, Bennu offered so little structural resistance that scientists said its surface reacted more like fluid than a hard, rocky shell. The spacecraft's sampling head sank directly into the asteroid, stopping after burrowing 20 inches (51 centimeters) deep by firing its thrusters at the right time to pull away, with the precious sample in hand.

Then came another nail-biting moment: The sample collector lid got jammed in a partially open position because so much material was scooped up, allowing fragments of the precious cargo to escape. In a race against time to prevent further loss, the mission team quickly stowed the sampler head directly inside the return capsule, securing the cosmic treasure for its journey back to Earth.

Even the final return to Earth, on Sept. 24, 2023, kept the team on edge: A parachute failed to deploy properly during reentry, forcing a tense but ultimately safe landing in the Utah desert.

"Successful exploration missions are not those that avoid surprises; they are those that are deliberately designed to adapt to them," Lauretta said in the statement, quoting a line from the mission's final report to NASA.

"That certainly describes OSIRIS-REx," he said. "Again and again, the mission presented us with circumstances we had not expected, and again and again, this team found a way forward."

The mission's triumphs began long before the samples reached Earth. For example, the probe set a Guinness World Record when it slid into orbit around the 1,610-foot-wide (490 meters) Bennu, which became the smallest object ever circled by a spacecraft.

The scientific payoff that followed included remote-sensing work that confirmed Bennu's surface is coated in carbon-bearing compounds. Those observations also revealed that Bennu was once part of a much larger, water-rich parent asteroid that shattered in a catastrophic collision in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

The returned sample — which weighs 4.29 ounces (121.6 grams) here on Earth, more than twice the mission's requirement — continues to thrill and occupy scientists.

A wave of research papers, now topping 200, continues to piece together the composition and history of the ancient space rock. Among other findings, Bennu's pristine material has revealed amino acids and sugars that, on Earth, are essential for life, alongside a history of exposure to liquid water that could have served as the "broth" for these compounds to interact.

More discoveries are likely to come. Most of the returned Bennu sample is being preserved for future generations of scientists, who will study it "with questions and instruments we cannot yet anticipate," Lauretta said in the statement.

Though its OSIRIS-REx chapter is closed, the spacecraft itself is far from retired. Renamed OSIRIS-APEX (OSIRIS-APophis EXplorer), the probe is using its remaining propellant to head toward Apophis, another near-Earth asteroid and a different type of space rock from Bennu. It is scheduled to arrive in 2029.

Cue the depressing rain, dark trench coats, and a dire dystopian dirge because the Blade Runner 2099 trailer is here!

Cyberpunk is charging back in confident fashion with Prime Video's latest detour into the neon-drenched dystopia of humans and rogue replicants first introduced in director Sir Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" from 1982, then revisited in Denis Villeneuve's "Blade Runner 2049."

Arriving Nov. 25, 2026, "Blade Runner 2099"'s plot turns the tables as resentful artificial beings are now the ones running the show and hunting down Earth’s humans after a successful uprising against their original makers.

This newest atmospheric trailer was unveiled at last week’s New York Comic-Con and has us totally jacked to re-immerse ourselves in that noirish futuristic realm.

Check it out below:

It’s executive produced by showrunner Silka Louisa ("Shining Girls”) and stars Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh ("Everything Everywhere All at Once") as Olwen, playing a fading replicant Blade Runner who joins forces with Hunter Schafer’s ("Euphoria") Cora, a pure human on the run attempting to evade a squad of exterminating Blade Runners while examining their existential natures.

But aside from the dazzling visuals of the City of Angels at the gates of the 22nd century, fans will also be strapping in for some cool outer space action, as evidenced by fresh footage delivering some arresting scenes of space travel, off-world planets, and Yeoh in a bizarre helmet.

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

Launching with an 8-episode debut season and executive produced by Scott Free Productions, "Blade Runner 2099" and its new world order lands on Prime Video on Nov. 25, 2026.

Millennials get a lot of flak for being overly nostalgic, but I don't think that's fair. When the modern-day world has nothing to offer us but AI slop, shrinkflation and a sad acceptance that we can't be bothered to do anything about global warming. It's easy to see why we yearn for the days of Pogs, the Backstreet Boys, and Saved by the Bell.

One area that we definitely had it good in the 90s was sci-fi, when legendary shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation, Stargate SG-1, and — of course — The X-Files ruled our TV screens long before the age of streaming services. You can relive those glory days of alien conspiracies, spooky happenings and cell phones the size of a brick with the Lego Ideas The X-Files set.

This 1478 piece set is essentially two dioramas crammed into a single display piece. The top of the model depicts a spinning UFO floating above one of those iconic coniferous forests that dominated 90s sci-fi. Why? Because — thanks to some generous tax credits — it was cheaper to shoot in Vancouver, so that's where they all flocked.

Beneath the woodland scene, though, is the real star of the show: Mulder's office, squirrelled away in the basement of the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C. This dingy little office is where Scully meets "Spooky Mulder", kicking off a glorious sci-fi odyssey that would last for eleven seasons (and two movies).

Mulder's dingy little base of operations has been stunningly recreated here, with both overt references and subtle nods that X-Files fans will appreciate. The iconic "I want to believe" poster adorns the wall, alongside photographs of crop circles and a newspaper clipping from a paper called "The Lone Brickman" — a nice nod to "The Lone Gunmen". There's even an actual X-File sitting on the desk, and a cute Lego spoof of the "Face on Mars", with a photo on the wall that shows a Lego head on the moon.

It's been a hot minute since I watched The X-Files (that DVD box set beside my TV is calling to me), but even so, I had a blast building my way down memory lane, remembering episodes as I assembled the diorama. I love the little touches, like the display cabinets filled with artifacts, the VHS tapes scattered around the office and the black oil spillage on the floor.

As with most Lego sets, the minifigures are half the joy. You get Mulder and Scully, obviously, with the dynamic duo of FBI agents both rocking flashlights (no smartphones with built-in lights back in the 90s). Mulder is wearing dark blue, while Scully is rocking an orangey brown suit, with both of them sporting an FBI badge.

Outside of the principal pair, you also get Skinner, Mr X, and the Cigarette Smoking Man. Mulder's partner-turned-nemesis Alex Krycek also gets a suitably devious-looking minifig. It's the gloves, they just make him look like a bad man (which, to be fair, he is). Finally, to ramp up the paranormal scale, we also get a pair of monster minifigs: a grey alien and Flukeman minifigures. The grey alien was a must-have, especially given the UFO floating atop this display piece, but the one-off monster of the week, Flukeman, felt like a weird choice.

Also, this John Doggett erasure will not stand. Sure, he could never replace Mulder, but Robert Patrick's seasons eight and nine run was excellent and he deserved a spot here.

And while I'm voicing minor gripes, the usual Lego FOMO tricks were in force with this set; if you pre-ordered, you got an exclusive gift set — Scully's Lab — free of charge. This extra little diorama isn't necessary, but it does feel like the collection is incomplete without it and it's not for sale separately, so you'll have to try your luck with eBay scalpers if you want it.

Speaking of Scully, Gillian Anderson has stated that after season 11 wrapped in 2018, she was done with the role. That wasn't entirely accurate, though, as she donned the lab gloves one more time for the Lego X-Files set advert. It's a short bit of fan service, but a nice touch, and, once again, it sparks those 90s neurons.

All these delicious Member Berries come at a price, though, and that's the price. This blast from the past will set you back $199 (£179 in the UK). That's no small chunk of change. But then again, anyone who wants this set is in their thirties or forties and can probably afford that outlay for the nostalgia trip. And look at it this way: when The X-Files debuted back in 1993, the price would only have been about $86.

I had a great time building the Lego X-Files set and if you're a fan of the series, you will too. Nostalgia often feels like a cheat code to our hearts, but there's nothing wrong with that. We deserve to remember the good times and the truth is that The X-Files was about as good as it ever got for sci-fi fans.

You can buy the Lego X-Files set now, available for $199/£179 from the Lego store.

Japan's groundbreaking mission to Mars is officially underway, headed to the Red Planet's mysterious moons Phobos and Deimos for a historic sample-return attempt.

The Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission launched today (Oct. 19) from Tanegashima Space Center in Japan, riding an H3 rocket that lifted off from Pad-2 at Tanegashima's Yoshinobu Launch Complex at 3:41 p.m. EDT (1941 GMT; 4:41 a.m. local time in Japan on Oct. 20).

The JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency)-led MMX mission is bound for Mars orbit, where it will study the planet's two moons, Phobos and Deimos. If everything goes according to plan, MMX will become the first spacecraft to land on and return samples from Phobos for study back on Earth, which scientists think could shed light on a decades-old mystery about the moons' origins and reveal clues about the formation of the early solar system.

It was the 10th liftoff of Japan's expendable, two-stage H3 rocket, which was jointly developed by JAXA and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. After clearing its launch pad today, the 207-foot-tall (63 meters) launch vehicle flew a nominal trajectory through its ascent corridor over the Pacific Ocean, jettisoning its four solid boosters in pairs just before the flight clock reached two minutes. The rocket shed its payload fairings about one minute and 20 seconds later, exposing MMX to the vacuum of space for the first time.

H3's first stage, powered by two LE-9 rocket engines, channels a mixture of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen to produce a combined thrust of 331,000 pounds (1,471 kN), according to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. As the mission clock approached T+5 minutes, H3 executed its main engine cutoff procedure and separated from the second stage, which ignited its engines for a 5.5-minute burn about 10 seconds later.

All continued to go to plan after that. The H3's upper stage ignited its engine for a second time for a trans-Mars injection burn about one hour and four minutes after liftoff, a maneuver that lasted roughly six minutes and 25 seconds and took MMX to a maximum velocity of about 24,145 mph (38,858 kph).

MMX was released from the rocket's upper stage right on schedule, about one minute after the completion of that burn and roughly 71 minutes after liftoff. The success elicited loud cheers in mission control, which viewers saw and heard on JAXA's launch webcast.

MMX is now under its own power, and on course for Mars. The interplanetary transit will last about 10 months, with the spacecraft scheduled to arrive at the Red Planet in August 2027. When it does, MMX's propulsion module will execute an orbital insertion burn to place itself in a quasi-satellite orbit (QSO) around Phobos, which places MMX within the space around the moon as both circle Mars.

MMX will spend about three years in the Martian system, devoting much of that time to studying the 14-mile-wide (22 km) Phobos with its science instruments. The spacecraft also carries the IDEFIX rover, a joint effort of the space agencies of France and Germany, which is scheduled to deploy to the surface of Phobos in late 2028 or early 2029.

After a mapping campaign to select suitable landing sites, MMX will perform two separate touchdowns on Phobos to collect and stow samples in the spacecraft's return capsule. Following its second landing and sample collection, MMX will briefly return to QSO with Phobos before transferring to a more elongated orbit around Mars that intersects with the planet's smaller moon, Deimos, which is just 8 miles (14 km) in diameter.

During the last several months of its time around Mars, MMX will perform a series of Deimos flybys before departing for Earth in November 2030. If all goes according to plan, the MMX sample-return capsule will land in Australia in 2031.

Scientists are counting on those samples, and other data collected during MMX's time around Mars, to answer a decades-old question surrounding the Martian moons' origins. Competing theories and conflicting evidence point to two possibilities for how Mars got its moons.

Their near-circular, equatorial orbits suggest a narrative similar to how Earth's moon is thought to have formed — as a result of a massive planetary impact between Mars and some other giant space rock, which broke off pieces of the planet that eventually coalesced to form the natural satellites that orbit there today.

Neither Phobos nor Deimos is spherical, isntead; both are oblong and lumpy, like potatoes. That fact — along with their chemical composition, as far as we have been able to tell using telescopic spectroscopy — point to the possibility that Phobos and Deimos were asteroids from the early solar system that were captured by Mars' gravitational pull. Figuring out the moons' true origin story would provide key clues about Mars' geological past, the solar system's early history and the formation of the inner planets, mission team members have said.

Once the MMX samples are safely returned to Earth, scientists will study their composition and mineralogy, then compare such chemical fingerprints with those of Martian rocks and asteroid material. These analyses, combined with data collected by MMX during its mission, will help nail down the origin of Phobos — and by extension, Deimos. — by

While JAXA leads MMX, the mission is an international effort, with interagency partnerships between JAXA, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), as well as U.S. and European companies, which supplied a handful of the spacecraft's scientific hardware and communications equipment.

NASA's contributions to MMX include the Mars-moon Exploration with Gamma rays and Neutrons (MEGANE, pronounced "meh-gah-nay") device, which is a gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer built by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL); a Honeybee Robotics-built pneumatic sampler; and communications support using the agency's Deep Space Network.

NASA has also invested approximately $87 million through the end of the mission, which includes funding for United States scientists and astromaterials experts on the MMX team. The agency is getting something concrete for such contributions: At least 15% of the planned 10-gram (0.35 ounces) returned Phobos sample will be reserved for NASA's study. Those materials will be transferred and maintained at the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston for analysis and long-term preservation.

MMX is not the first Phobos sample-return project to take flight, by the way. That distinction goes to Russia's Phobos-Grunt ("Phobos-Soil") mission, which launched in November 2011 but failed to get out of Earth orbit due to a rocket glitch. The 14.5-ton spacecraft eventually crashed back to Earth over the Pacific Ocean in January 2012.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 5 p.m. ET on Oct. 19 with news of MMX's successful separation from the H3 rocket's upper stage.

On Oct. 19, 2016, the European Space Agency's ExoMars mission arrived at Mars!

ExoMars 2016 consists of the Trace Gas Orbiter and the Schiaparelli lander. The orbiter and lander traveled there together and separated on Oct. 16, three days before the orbiter entered orbit around Mars, and the lander touched down on the planet's surface. But something went wrong during the lander's descent, and it crashed into the ground.

Schiaparelli did not survive the accident, but the Trace Gas Orbiter is still functional. It is currently circling the planet, looking for methane and other gases in the Martian atmosphere that could be evidence for possible biological activity.

Why it mattered

ExoMars 2016 was a landmark mission for the European Space Agency and designed to be the vanguard of a two-flight ExoMars program to send an orbiter, lander and rover to Mars.

Launched in March 2016, ExoMars 2016 aimed to achieve two goals for ESA and Russia. First, the mission aimed to use the Schiaparelli lander to test landing techniques that would be vital on a planned ExoMars 2018 rover. Second, the mission would deliver a critical orbiter around Mars to study the planet's atmosphere and serve as a communications link for that future Mars rover.

In the end, ExoMars 2016 was just a partial success, with ESA officials calling it "96% successful." due to the loss of the lander.

While Schiaparelli separated smoothly from the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter spacecraft, it stopped communicating with Earth just 1 minute before its planned landing on Oct. 19. Photos from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter at Mars later revealed what appeared to be its crash site and, nearby, its jettisoned parachute. Officials suspect Schiaparelli did not fire its descent thrusters as designed in order to slow itself enough for a safe landing. A data glitch was cited as its cause.

The Trace Gas Orbiter, meanwhile, continues to study Mars to this day and has spent 10 years and counting studying the Martian atmosphere.

The launch of ExoMars 2018, which includes the Mars rover Rosalind Franklin, was delayed by the Schiaparelli failure, as well as the loss of its Russian Proton rocket when ESA severed its partnership with Russia over that country's war on Ukraine.

The ExoMars rover is now expected to launch no earlier than 2028, with a landing on Mars expected in 2030.

In 2026, another country took aim at Mars on this day.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency attempted to launch the ambitious Martian Moons eXploration mission (called MMX) to land a probe on the Mars moon Phobos and return samples to Earth.

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

The moon is shrinking, and scientists are narrowing in on exactly how much our natural satellite has dwindled over the years.

The moon is thought to have formed from a violent collision between a massive object and our young Earth roughly 4.5 billion years ago, and its interior is still gradually cooling off from this ancient collision. As it cools, the moon contracts, leading to a long, slow shrinking process. Now, in a new study, scientists think that they have figured out how much smaller the moon is actually getting.

In this new study, scientists analyzing images snapped by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) have spotted over 10,000 young faults, or cracks across the moon's surface. This helped them to figure out how much the moon has contracted over time, and they now estimate that the moon's radius has decreased by about 148 feet (45 meters) over the past 400 to 800 million years.

"The number of these young faults revealed in LROC images is much greater than I ever imagined," study lead Thomas Watters, a geologist and scientist emeritus at the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, said in a statement. "As the interior of the moon continues to cool and contract, it is expected that the growth of existing faults and formation of new faults continues today."

With these LROC observations, researchers in this study saw a variety of different types of cracks and landforms across the lunar surface. This included lobate scarps, or long, curved structures that form when the moon's surface contracts, cracks and is pushed upwards; and small mare ridges, or narrow "wrinkles" in the lunar surface, across the dark plains on the moon.

Tectonic activity on the moon looks a lot different than it does on Earth. On our own planet, there are about 15 major tectonic plates. On the moon, there are no tectonic plates at all. Instead, the moon has a single-plate body meaning its outer shell is a single piece only broken by faults or other such cracks created by the moon contracting. This means that instead of faults or cracks appearing at tectonic plate boundaries, they are instead scattered all over the moon.

By mapping these thousands of different features, all created from the moon cooling and contracting over time, the researchers are piecing together lunar history. In addition to finding the extent to which the moon has shrunk over time, they also found that some areas of the moon are covered in many more faults than other areas, and the areas with fewer cracks and faults have thicker moon crust.

This led them to conclude that not only are these areas with thicker crust more stable, but they suggest that a great deal of the widespread cracks in the lunar surface were created later in the moon's history as, in its earlier years, its thick crust would have insulated the moon's warm interior and prevented cooling, contracting and cracking.

This work was described in a study published Oct. 14 in The Planetary Science Journal.

Using NASA’s SPHEREx spacecraft, astronomers have studied a host of "failed stars," also known as brown dwarfs.

These strange cosmic bodies straddle the line between planets and stars, possessing a mass between 13 and 80 times that of Jupiter (0.013 to 0.08 times the mass of the sun). They get the nickname failed stars because they form like stars from collapsing clouds of gas and dust but fail to gather enough mass to trigger the fusion of hydrogen to helium in their cores, the process that powers actual stars.

This formation process also means that brown dwarfs are cosmic loners, wandering the darkness of space alone, bereft of the light of a parent star. That description might sound like lyrics from a Type O Negative song ("Black No. 1," anybody?). And that's apt, according to the leader of the new study, which reveals that, chemically speaking, the atmospheres of these dark and cloudy worlds are not unlike those of our solar system's gas giant planets.

"They’re kind of goth," Zafar Rustamkulov, of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), said in a statement. "Unlike exoplanets, free-floating brown dwarfs are completely independent celestial objects that will fade into eternity alone. We’re still learning how complex they are."

Rustamkulov added that, from Earth orbit, SPHEREx — short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer — sees wavelengths of light that are nigh-impossible to see with telescopes on the ground because water in Earth’s atmosphere absorbs them. That is important for bringing brown dwarfs into the light.

"We are picking up light from the deep, red clouds of brown dwarfs all over the sky," he said.

A forest (of brown dwarfs)

Brown dwarfs have been somewhat mysterious since their discovery in the 1990s, due to the fact that the small amount of nuclear fusion that occurs within them causes them to emit no more than a faint glow. That means that our understanding of their makeup, their storms, and their evolution really only comes from theory.

To help lift this observational darkness, the team turned to data from SPHEREx. They studied 37 nearby brown dwarfs in a spectrum of light including 102 wavelengths, from the deepest red our eyes can see to the invisible infrared light. These local failed stars spanned the full temperature range for brown dwarfs — from 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit to minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit (2,200 to minus 20 degrees Celsius).

Considering that the temperature of the sun is about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5,500 degrees Celsius), you could definitely say brown dwarfs run cold.

The spectra of brown dwarfs seen by SPHEREx allowed the team to determine that their atmospheres are chemically rich in water, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane.

"We’re seeing the signatures of these molecules and how they change from object to object across the entire temperature regime," said team member J. Davy Kirkpatrick, also of Caltech. "Our paper concentrated on just three dozen, but we have thousands more that we are in the process of analyzing.

"I really want to see what bounds the universe places on the variety of brown dwarfs."

All my colors

Brown dwarfs have been routinely observed by other telescopes, including NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and the agency's now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope, but the wide wavelength coverage of SPHEREx has made it particularly useful in observing these failed stars. That's good news for astronomers waiting for change in the atmospheres of brown dwarfs as they age and grow cold.

The researchers found that some brown dwarfs observed by SPHEREx are at a stage of extreme change in which their clouds are clearing, creating atmospheres rich in methane.

The team may have discovered significant new details about brown dwarfs, but they are still on the proverbial mystery street when it comes to these strange celestial objects,

"The state-of-the-art models are capturing the general chemical trend, but when it comes to these cloudy transitions, the models are struggling to match the data," said Rustamkulov. "No two brown dwarfs are alike. Even at the same temperature, their spectra look quite distinct."

"This journey has turned many of us into accidental meteorologists. We know how hard it is to predict weather on our own planet, and we realize it's going to be just as challenging to explain the phenomena we see in these bizarre, cold objects," Kirkpatrick said. "The findings are a call to action to explore even more of these dark worlds."

As astronomers resond to that call to action, I will ponder how I could have worked Bauhaus' Goth classic "Bela Lugosi is Dead" into this article.

The team's research was published on Sept. 28 in The Astrophysical Journal.

Antarctica is a magnificent sight, and that beauty is visible all the way from space.

What is it?

Orbiting planet Earth, the European Space Agency's (ESA) Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission captured a close-up of West Antarctica.

Winter is ending in the Southern Hemisphere, meaning this is the peak of icy weather and sea ice in the Arctic.

In this image snapped by Sentinel-3, you can see a massive swath of ice which includes Elephant Island on the left-hand side. An ice-covered island off the Antarctic coast, Elephant Island floats in the Southern Ocean. It got its name both from the island's shape, which some liken to that of an elephant's head, and the fact that the island is home to a community of elephant seals.

Why is it incredible?

While a seal-inhabited island on the left floats near the Antarctic coast, across the water is a vast, frozen landscape. In just this snapshot, you can see about between 746 and 1,056 miles (1,200 to 1,700 kilometers) of the icy continent.

This image was captured on Sept. 30, 2026. In the Southern Hemisphere, that was just past the end of winter. The absolute peak for sea ice in Antarctica fell just a couple weeks before, on Sept. 14, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, ESA reported.

So in this one snapshot, we can see a near-maximum for sea ice in the Antarctic, spanning hundreds of miles. In observing our own planet from space, we are able to peer across vast landscapes, capturing important observational data. This is especially critical for the Antarctic as, with the progression of climate change, this sea ice continues to dwindle, adding to sea level rise among other serious consequences across the planet.

For as long as humans have watched the night sky, we have wondered about the moon, pondering everything from its alien appearance to its influence over phenomena on Earth such as ocean tides, climate stability, and even the natural rhythms of many organisms.

Among the many questions we have about Earth's lone natural satellite, one remains preeminent: what are the moon's origins, and how long has it orbited Earth?

Today, the leading theory among astronomers is that deep in our planet's past — perhaps within roughly the first 100 million years of solar system history — Earth collided with a planet-sized object, creating the moon within a period that may have been as short as just a few hours. Known as the giant-impact hypothesis, this proposed event involves a hypothetical Mars-sized protoplanet astronomers call Theia. The material ejected into orbit by the powerful impact in question would have accumulated afterward, forming the moon that we observe today.

What do we know?

Birth of a lunar origin hypothesis

The evolution of this striking solution to one of the moon's most enduring mysteries goes back to 1946, when geologist Reginald Aldworth Daly was among the first to suggest that an impact event might explain the formation of the moon.

Before Daly, scientists had been leaning toward theories that involved Earth's rapid spin billions of years ago, when each day may have at one time lasted as little as 2 or 3 hours. Decades later in the 1970s, researchers William Hartmann and Donald Davis developed their own models involving collisions of large bodies left over from planetary formation, which could collide with younger planets.

Building on such ideas, other researchers went on to propose similar scenarios between the early Earth and a Mars-sized object. Early in the following decade, the concept eventually claimed its place as the leading lunar-formation process during a landmark conference held in Kona, Hawaii, in 1984.

Evidence of a planetary-scale collision

The popularity of the giant-impact hypothesis can be attributed to the multiple lines of evidence supporting the impact scenario. For instance, researchers have long recognized the similar stable-isotope ratios between both moon rocks and those from Earth, strongly suggesting a link between their origins.

Additionally, the unusually high angular momentum (or spin) of the Earth-moon system, when compared to observations of other rocky planets, also could be explained as one of the effects of a massive collision.

Further clues can be found in the moon's composition, which reveals a relatively small iron core and lower density. This is significant to astronomers, since a hypothetical giant impact would have seen the suspected Theia protoplanet's metallic core merging with the young Earth's interior — meanwhile, lighter mantle and crust material from both worlds would have become dislodged and blasted into orbit, eventually helping form the moon.

Another important piece of evidence involves the relative depletion of volatile substances (a chemical that easily turns into gas or vapor at room temperatures) in lunar material, which again suggests that it might have been lost during an extremely energetic event, an idea further supported by evidence that the early moon once possessed a substantial magma ocean.

What remains unknown?

New research expands on the Theia hypothesis

Still, several significant questions remain, including what precise conditions led to the impact, and how the resulting planetary material evolved into the moon as it appears today.

Recently, a new study by Adeene Denton of Southwest Research Institute and colleagues at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory put a new spin on the Theia hypothesis, suggesting that the suspected ancient impact may have been significantly influenced by the heat and physical strength of the two colliding bodies.

The team's findings challenge some long-held views about the giant-impact hypothesis, while lending new support to others. For instance, the team's simulations revealed that while some impacts lead to the creation of a disk of debris that later coalesces into a moon, under other conditions, simulations support the idea that the moon could have been formed in a remarkably short period of time — perhaps within around five hours.

However, one of the primary issues with determining the exact conditions of the giant-impact hypothesis involves the ongoing debate over the moon's age.

"There is a large controversy regarding the age of the moon," said Dr. Erik Asphaug, a planetary science professor at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and one of the new study's co-authors.

In an email to Space, Asphaug explained some of the issues arising from this, since current estimates place the timing of the moon's formation anywhere from around 40 to 120 million years after the formation of the solar system. Therein lies part of the issue, according to Asphaug, who says this timing could have significant implications for models of the Theia impact.

If it had been an earlier collision, Asphaug says this would have involved a hotter Theia due to the greater degree of radiogenic heating; by contrast, a later impact would have meant a cooler and stronger Theia.

"I don't think we know enough yet to say the moon (and by corollary, the Earth) formed this way or that way," Asphaug told Space. "But knowing how temperature affects the result opens up a new dimension for viewing the problem, and that is always helpful because it shifts our frame of reference, like getting out of the car to have a walk around."

A lunar enigma in time and space

For researchers like Asphaug, understanding the moon's formation requires looking at it as more than just an event in space, but also as one in time. Doing so allows comparisons between three different metrics: isotopic decay, temperature-dependent material strength, and the geological record of debris striking other planets — a process through which he believes tighter constraints could be placed on precisely when the moon-forming impact might have occurred.

Adeene Denton, the study's lead author, also emphasized the introduction of the time component her team's research brings to the table, telling Space in an email that the outcome of the moon-forming impact could have depended significantly on the timing of the collision.

"Before, scientists have generally assumed that the outcome of the collision will be the same regardless of when it takes place," Denton wrote. "But now we know that temperature's effect on material properties, which is dictated by how old and/or cold the proto-Earth and Theia might be, alters things substantially."

By connecting impact simulations to data related to the moon's geochemical record, as well as models of early solar system formation, Denton thinks her team's work could help scientists better constrain precisely how and when the moon formed.

The mystery continues

For now, in terms of which possible scenario — an earlier or later collision event — emerges as being the most likely, Denton says it's still difficult to say.

"It depends on which scenarios for solar system formation you favor," Denton told Space.

"I am generally in favor of an earlier formation of the moon, consistent with a rapid planet-building phase in our solar system," Denton said, "but we can't neglect the possibility that the moon formed late."

While much work remains to be done, Denton and Asphaug believe their findings help significantly advance present efforts to resolve some of the questions about the giant-impact hypothesis — a few of which have lingered now for many years.

For Asphaug, however, such lingering questions may simply be part of the scientific process.

"Science has a way of wandering around for a long time until finally it all comes to focus," Asphaug said.

"I believe that will happen, in part thanks to this work, in the coming decade."

Editor's note: Japan launched its bold MMX sample-return mission to the Mars moon Phobos on Oct. 19) at 3:41 p.m. EDT (1941 GMT).
Watch a replay of the liftoff and read our launch story here.

Japan will launch an epic mission to Mars today (Oct. 19), and you can watch the action live.

The Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission is scheduled to lift off atop an H3 rocket from Japan's Tanegashima Space Center today at 3:41 p.m. EDT (1941 GMT; 4:41 a.m. on Oct. 20 local Japan time).

You can watch it live via the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Coverage will begin at 2:45 p.m. EDT (1845 GMT).

As its full name suggests, MMX will focus on Mars' two moons, Phobos and Deimos. They're both tiny compared to Earth's own moon; Phobos is just 14 miles (22 kilometers) wide, and Deimos is even smaller, with a diameter of about 8 miles (13 km).

They're also quite mysterious. While astronomers have a pretty clear understanding of our own moon's birth — it coalesced from material blasted into space when a Mars-sized planet slammed into Earth long ago — there's no consensus about Phobos and Deimos' origin story.

The duo "may be the remains of a massive impact on Mars that sent material into orbit around the planet, or they could be ancient asteroids that were captured by Mars' gravity billions of years ago," Tom Statler, MMX program executive and program scientist at NASA Headquarters, said in an Oct. 15 statement. (NASA is a partner on the mission, providing a scientific instrument, a technology demonstration, communication support and funding for American scientists on the MMX team.)

"Having the answer will help illuminate that early era when Earth and the other inner planets may have been acquiring much of their water and organic compounds," Statler added.

MMX will help provide that answer, if all goes according to plan.

The spacecraft will arrive in the Mars system in August 2027, then slip into orbit around Phobos a month later. It will study that moon and Deimos from a distance for about 18 months, then deploy the French-German Idefix rover onto Phobos' surface in early 2029.

The 55-pound (25 kilograms) Idefix "has two main tasks: providing information to prepare for the landing of the main spacecraft to collect samples, and analyzing the composition and texture of Phobos' surface," European Space Agency officials wrote in an MMX mission description.

"The gravity on Phobos is so low that Idefix will only weigh the equivalent of 15 grams [0.5 ounces] on its surface!" they added.

The MMX mothership's Phobos landing will occur in 2030. The spacecraft will grab at least 10 grams (0.4 ounces) of samples from the moon, then head back toward Earth with this extraterrestrial bounty. MMX's return capsule will land here in 2031, after which scientists around the world will scrutinize the Phobos sample for clues about the history and evolution of Mars and our solar system more broadly.

MMX was originally supposed to launch in 2024, but issues with the H3 rocket prevented it from doing so. Mars and Earth align properly for interplanetary launches just once every 26 months, so MMX had to wait a while for its next chance.

Japan already has an impressive sample-return track record. The country's Hayabusa mission brought home pieces of the asteroid Itokawa in 2010, for example, and Hayabusa2 did the same with material from the space rock Ryugu a decade later.

Editor's note: Japan launched its bold MMX sample-return mission to the Mars moon Phobos on Oct. 19) at 3:41 p.m. EDT (1941 GMT).
Watch a replay of the liftoff and read our launch story here.

Japan's mission to Mars is one of the most ambitious in spaceflight history. It aims to become the first spacecraft to return to Earth from Mars orbit, carrying with it the first-ever samples from the Red Planet system.

The mission, known as Martian Moons eXploration (MMX), is a first-of-its-kind endeavor to study the origin of Mars' moons Phobos and Deimos. The robust undertaking includes a landing on Phobos to collect the samples — which will likely be the first from the Mars system to return to Earth — and a search for evidence that could shed light on events during the formation of the solar system billions of years ago.

MMX launched on an H3 rocket from Japan's Tanegashima Space Center on Monday (Oct. 19) at 3:41 p.m. EDT (1941 GMT; 4:41 a.m. local time in Japan, Oct. 20). After a 10-month journey to reach Mars, the spacecraft will spend about three years studying Phobos, deploying a rover and landing to collect its samples. The mission will then shift its focus to Deimos for a series of flybys before departing for Earth in November 2030. If all goes according to plan, the MMX sample-return capsule is scheduled to land in Australia in 2031.

The spacecraft

The MMX spacecraft is comprised of three main parts, as well as a small rover. After release from its H3 launch vehicle, a propulsion module will provide the boost to put MMX on course for Mars. MMX's main exploration module carries the microwave-size IDEFIX rover and most of the mission's scientific instruments, while the return module houses the sample-return capsule.

Japan's Mitsubishi Electric built MMX's three main modules, with the French space agency CNES (Centre National d'Études Spatiales) and Germany's DLR (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft-und Raumfahrt) jointly developing IDEFIX. The little rover is named for a dog in the 1960s French comic "Asterix," in a nod to the country's first satellite, Astérix, which launched in 1965.

IDEFIX carries a suite of cameras, as well as the Raman Spectrometer for MMX (RAX) and miniaturized radiometer (miniRAD) instruments to analyze Phobos' surface composition and temperature.

Most of MMX's scientific instruments are housed on the exploration module, like NASA's Mars-moon Exploration with Gamma rays and Neutrons (MEGANE, pronounced "meh-gah-nay") device, a gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer built by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), and France's MIRS (MMX InfraRed Spectrometer) instrument.

The exploration module also houses the Japanese-built TENGOO (TElescopic Nadir imager for GeOmOrphology) tight-zoom camera, wide-angle OROCHI (Optical RadiOmeter composed of CHromatic Imagers) multispectral camera, laser altimeter (LIDAR) and Mass Spectrum Analyzer (MSA). The return module, meanwhile, carries Japan's Circum-Martian Dust Monitor (CMDM) and Interplanetary Radiation Environment Monitor (IREM).

The mission

MMX will arrive in orbit around Mars in August 2027, at which point it will shed its propulsion module and transition into a quasi-satellite orbit (QSO) around Phobos that allows the probe to fly in a sort of formation with the small, asteroid-sized moon as they both circle the Red Planet.

The spacecraft will spend its first few months in the Martian system observing Phobos from different altitudes, using its TENGOO and OROCHI cameras, LIDAR and MSA to map the moon's surface, study its composition and select potential landing sites.

IDEFIX will be released in late 2028 or early 2029, during the first of two MMX landing rehearsals, at about 130 feet (40 meters) above Phobos. Due to the 14-mile-wide (22 kilometers) moon's extremely low gravity, the rover will be able free-fall to the surface damage-free (hopefully), right itself after a few bounces and begin exploring to gather data on the terrain and surface conditions.

MMX sample collection could begin as early as December 2028, the acting director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, Lindsay Hays, said during a mission briefing on Oct. 15. The spacecraft will attempt two collection landings, with its exploration and return modules descending and returning to orbit as one vehicle.

On Phobos' surface, two different sampling mechanisms — the Corer Sampling Mechanism (C-sampler) and Pneumatic Sampling Mechanism (P-sampler) — will extract and collect at least 10 grams (0.35 ounces) of material for stowage inside the spacecraft's return capsule before MMX lifts off again for orbit. After its first touchdown and sample collection, MMX will return to QSO near Phobos before descending to a second landing site for a similar attempt and subsequent return to orbit.

MMX will end its observations of Phobos after about three years focused on the Martian moon, and will transition into a higher, resonant orbit around Mars in 2030. That course will repeatedly intersect Deimos' path for a series of flybys to collect and compare data with those from Phobos observations as scientists aim to investigate the moons' origins.

Near the end of 2030, the exploration module will separate, leaving the return module to fire its engine out of Mars' gravitational influence and begin an eight-month journey back to Earth with the collected samples. As MMX closes the last stretch of void during its approach to Earth in 2031, the sample-return capsule will separate and enter the atmosphere for a targeted parachute landing in Australia's Woomera region, where its contents will be recovered for laboratory analysis by Japan and its mission partners.

Phobos and Deimos

Those samples, and the data collected by MMX, could tell scientists a lot — about the moons' composition, geography and, perhaps most importantly, how they came to exist in the first place. There are two leading theories for Phobos and Deimos' origins, both of which point to very different versions of ancient Martian history.

"Phobos and Deimos are interesting, but not just in their own right. Their presence is a key piece of the larger story of the Mars system," said Tom Statler, MMX program executive and scientist in NASA's Planetary Science Division, during the Oct. 15 mission briefing. "By uncovering the moons' origin, we'll gain new insights into the history of both Mars and Earth, especially those events that shaped both planets billions of years ago and helped create the worlds we see today."

Both Phobos and Deimos are relatively small and irregularly shaped, and bear several resemblances and spectral characteristics to primitive D-type asteroids — ancient bodies thought to preserve material dating back to the solar system's formation about 4.6 billion years ago. Those similarities suggest Phobos and Deimos may have formed elsewhere in the solar system and were later captured by Mars' gravity.

Their near-circular, equatorially-aligned orbits around the Red Planet, however, somewhat complicate that theory. For example, a captured asteroid would be much more likely to have entered an elongated and tilted orbit akin to the direction and velocity of its original approach, scientists say. A competing hypothesis, therefore, offers a much more violent, but somewhat familiar, narrative for the moons' origins.

An enormous collision with ancient Mars could have blasted material into orbit to form a debris disk from which the two moons eventually coalesced. Such a process, which would be similar to the formation of Earth's moon, could explain their circular, equatorial orbits.

The contradicting geological and orbital observations for Phobos and Deimos collected to date have prevented scientists from definitively establishing one hypothesis over the other. MMX aims to provide an answer.

"It's two totally different lines of evidence that point in two different directions. That's what makes it an interesting puzzle," Statler said. Several theories have also been presented for hybrid scenarios combining the two, he added.

"There's all kinds of different ways, all kinds of different combinations of those two basic scenarios," Statler explained. "But that's the puzzle from the start, the two seemingly contradictory lines of evidence that are pointing us to what … the real history was, but we don't know what it is yet."

The science

Each theory for where Mars' moons came from predicts different chemical characteristics for their surfaces. Presumably, captured asteroids would preserve chemical signatures of material originating elsewhere in the solar system, potentially rich in volatile elements like hydrogen. Moons formed through a planetary impact, however, would contain a mixture of Mars and impact material, altered by the intense heat of such a violent collision.

Determining which scenario is more likely could reveal whether Mars experienced a massive moon-forming collision or acquired its moons from elsewhere in the early solar system. Either answer could offer new insights into the planet's evolution and the events that shaped the terrestrial planets like Earth billions of years ago, mission team members say.

"At this point, we know nothing about the composition of Phobos," David Lawrence, MEGANE principal investigator at APL, said during the Oct. 15 briefing. "We have information about mineralogy, but no elemental composition. And so, elements are really a key way to get at some of these foundational questions."

MMX's scientific suite has been carefully calibrated to make those determinations. The cameras and sensors on the MMX exploration module's TENGOO, OROCHI and LIDAR instruments will map Phobos' terrain, geological features and variations in surface materials from orbit, to provide clues about the moon's formation and evolution. Complementing those measurements, MIRS is designed to detect and classify Phobos' surface minerals and search for organic compounds to further differentiate its possible origin as an asteroid or ancient chunk of Mars.

The RAX spectrometer and miniRAD instrument aboard IDEFIX will add localized context to those observations by examining surface mineralogy and their thermal properties up close.

Back in orbit, NASA's MEGANE instrument will measure Phobos' elemental composition through gamma-ray and neutron spectroscopy that can scan tens of centimeters beneath the moon's surface for signs of volatile elements. Higher abundances of hydrogen, chlorine, sodium and potassium, for instance, would favor the asteroid-capture hypothesis, while lower abundances of those compounds could point to the heat and chemical deterioration associated with a planetary impact.

"In Japanese, 'megane' means eyeglasses," Lawrence said. "So we like to think of MEGANE as being an instrument that will look at Phobos with gamma ray and neutron glasses."

When compared to the samples MMX will return to Earth, MEGANE's findings could help scientists determine if volatile depletion found on Phobos reflects the intense heat of a post-impact formation or billions of years of subsequent erosion from the natural effects of space exposure.

MSA, meanwhile, will measure charged particles around Phobos, searching for evidence of subsurface ice and investigating how solar wind exposure has altered the moon's surface. It will also study atmospheric particles escaping from Mars. CMDM will measure dust around Mars, including particles potentially ejected from its moons by impacts.

Comparative observations of Deimos after MMX's final departure from Phobos will help establish whether the moons share similar compositions and, potentially, a common origin.

Once safely returned to Earth, laboratory analysis of the Phobos samples will allow scientists to examine chemical composition and mineralogy with a precision beyond that of MMX's onboard instruments. Tests like isotopic analyses — measuring subtle differences in the atomic makeup of elements — can help identify the samples' origins by comparing their chemical fingerprints with those of Martian rocks and asteroid material.

JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) scientists think some returned material could even originate from Mars itself, deposited on Phobos after ancient asteroid impacts blasted rocks off the Red Planet's surface, potentially holding evidence of its geological past.

International effort

The JAXA-led mission represents interagency partnerships with NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), which are providing hardware and communications support through the Deep Space and Estrack networks.

NASA's contributions to MMX also include MEGANE, the Honeybee Robotics-built P-sampler, and an approximately $87 million investment through the end of the mission. NASA is funding the United States scientists on the MMX team, who will, alongside NASA's astromaterials experts, "be fully involved in the examination and scientific analysis of the Phobos samples when they are delivered to Earth," Hays said during the mission briefing. "We get all of the value and all of the scientific participation at a lower cost total [than funding the entire mission]."

For its role, NASA will receive at least 15% of the returned samples, with materials to be maintained at the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston for analysis and long-term preservation. To that end, MMX's scientific impact could extend far beyond the mission's conclusion.

"The Phobos samples will be historic," Statler said, with the potential "for future research to answer the questions we don't even know yet how to ask."

Dean Robbins is a journalist and children's author. He contributed this article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

The pioneering computer scientist Margaret Hamilton, who died on Sept. 30 at age 90, played a key role in putting astronauts on the moon. She was a problem-solver extraordinaire, and it all started in early childhood.

Considering the name "daddy longlegs" unfair to female arachnids, young Margaret decided to call half of them "mommy longlegs." Wondering why the neighborhood baseball players were all boys, she determined to join the team herself.

As she grew up in the 1940s and '50s, Margaret noticed a similar problem with various professions. Why were doctors, judges and scientists almost always men? The solution: she would study hard in school and prepare herself for any job she might care to do.

It's no surprise that a born problem-solver would gravitate to computers. In the late 1950s, the new technology offered mind-bending possibilities, and this college math major saw a chance to put her skills to use on a cosmic scale.

Hamilton had long been a stargazer, thanks to a philosophical father who taught her to love the night sky. In 1965, after stints in meteorology and satellite tracking, she became interested in a Massachusetts Institute of Technology project that designed in-flight computers for NASA's moon mission.

The team, of course, consisted solely of men. But, just as with her neighborhood baseball team, Hamilton refused to accept limitations for herself or anybody else. She kicked open the door and quickly rose to director of software engineering.

With her knack for devising novel solutions to seemingly insoluble problems, no one was better suited for the job. Working with the era's primitive technology, Margaret thought through the various mishaps that could occur on a spaceflight and designed the software to handle every contingency.

The epochal Apollo 11 moon mission of 1969 put her planning to the test. As astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin neared the moon's surface in their lunar module, an error overloaded the onboard computer's processing unit. Mission Control faced the prospect of aborting the landing, but Margaret's ingenious programming allowed the system to prioritize essential tasks while canceling the inessential ones. The lunar module touched down without a hitch, and Armstrong and Aldrin became famous.

Sadly, Margaret Hamilton did not. She continued to work behind the scenes, contributing to the five additional lunar landings as well as Skylab and the space shuttle. In 1976, she struck off on her own to start a software company. She might have lived the rest of her life in obscurity if not for a fateful black-and-white photograph from 1969.

This image began to attract attention on the internet in the 2010s. It showed Margaret wedged between a coatrack and a blackboard at MIT, standing beside a towering stack of her printed code from the Apollo missions. Bespectacled and smiling, she radiates the confidence of a scientist who had stormed the boys' club and conquered the universe.

I was one of those fascinated by the photograph, and I contacted Margaret about the possibility of profiling her in a children's book. She initially resisted, uncomfortable with being the center of attention. But she came to see the appeal of a book about herself that she could read to her great-grandchildren, so that they might be inspired to break barriers themselves one day. She warmed to the task of telling her life story and even sent me examples of her Apollo code, which Lucy Knisley incorporated in the illustrations for "Margaret and the Moon: How Margaret Hamilton Saved the First Lunar Landing."

With the 2016 book and movie "Hidden Figures" calling attention to women's overlooked contributions to the space program, Hamilton soon had to get used to being the center of attention. She received a Presidential Medal of Freedom and achieved LEGO immortality in the "Women of NASA" set. In 2019, to mark the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing, Google used reflected moonlight to create a massive portrait of Margaret in the Mojave Desert. Rarely has so humble a soul received so grand a tribute.

The world will miss Margaret Hamilton, but, just like her great-grandchildren, we will always have her example to inspire us. She showed that, no matter how daunting the obstacles, there are few problems we can't solve.

On Oct. 18, 1963, a cat went to space! Félicette was a French "catstronaut" who became the first and only feline to fly to space.

While the U.S. and Soviet Union were busy launching primates, dogs and humans, the French decided to join the space race by launching a cat. Félicette, a stray tuxedo cat from the streets of Paris, was a substitute for another cat named Felix, who somehow escaped on launch day.

So Félicette went where no cat had ever gone before. She boarded a French Véronique AG1 rocket and soared 130 miles above the Earth before safely parachuting back down.

Luckily Félicette made it home alive and well, unlike many of the other animal astronauts that flew during the space race.

Why it mattered

Félicette survived spaceflight, but was short of this world. She was euthanized two months after her recovery so scientists could study her brain.

A second cat was launched by the French on Oct. 24, but its flight did not go so well, veering off course. When the cat was found a day later, it was discovered it have died as a result of the journey. From there on, CERMA (Centre d'Enseignement et de Recherches de Médecine Aéronautique) changed its research to flying monkeys.

Félicette may have become a footnote to history had it not been for a crowdfunded effort to raise a statue in her memory nearly 60 years later. The sculpture was unveiled in 2019 at the International Space University in Strasbourg, France. European astronauts Helen Sharman, Paolo Nespoli and Reinhold Ewald were on hand for its reveal.

In addition to the memorial statue, Félicette has been memorialized on postage stamps issued by Chad and Comoros, both former French colonies.

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

Astronomers estimate that our home galaxy, the Milky Way, has churned out more than 10 million black holes over its 13-billion-year history. Yet so far, they have found only 70.

Now, a group of astronomers in the U.K. is trying to close that vast gap by enlisting the public. Their project, called Black Hole Hunters, is looking for volunteers with a computer and a few spare minutes to sift through troves of data gathered by a NASA space telescope. By flagging recognizable patterns that could point to a "missing" black hole, volunteers can help fast-track a search that would otherwise take years, the team says.

"You'll be narrowing down precisely where we need to point our telescopes next," project co-lead Adam McMaster, an astronomer at the University of Southampton in the U.K., said in a statement, "and you might be the one to discover a black hole."

Cosmic magnifying glasses

Black holes form when massive stars roughly 20 times heavier than our sun run out of fuel and collapse, leaving behind an abyss with gravity so immense that even light cannot escape. While invisible themselves, these cosmic behemoths reveal their presence by bending the light of nearby objects, and the Black Hole Hunters project is searching for one specific manifestation of this effect.

It happens thanks to the fact that massive stars often form in pairs, and a star can sometimes survive the violent supernova explosion that turns its companion into a black hole. When that happens, the two bodies continue to orbit each other. If such a duo aligns just right with Earth, the black hole will periodically pass directly between its companion star and our planet. And when it does, the black hole's gravity acts like a cosmic magnifying glass, bending and magnifying the star's light, causing it to briefly appear brighter to watchful telescopes.

To find these hidden giants, the project relies on data from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS. Although the satellite's primary mission is to hunt for planets beyond our solar system, its method of data collection — tracking tiny, continuous changes in a star's brightness over time — is ideally suited for identifying black hole magnification events, the project description notes.

"It's a simple task with no expertise required," McMaster said in the statement. "We will show volunteers examples of what to look for so all they have to do is recognise the right patterns."

Automated algorithms conduct a preliminary sweep of the TESS data, screening millions of potential stars for the most obvious black hole candidate locations, according to the project description. But, the researchers say, artificial intelligence struggles with the messy realities of the cosmos, such as stellar flares and the natural pulsations of stars that can trick the algorithms into false positives.

The human touch

That makes human volunteers a key part of the search. To keep errors in check, each graph is shown to multiple volunteers, and their answers are combined so that individual mistakes average out, according to the project's website.

"I can search for black holes on my laptop from my bedroom — and could make a real impact on real space science," Grace Clarke, an undergraduate student of physics and astronomy at the University of Southampton who's involved with the project, said in the same statement. "The data's easy to understand — it's just pattern recognition — and you don't need a degree in astronomy to read it."

The crowdsourced shortlist of promising signals lets astronomers aim follow-up observations at specific stars, such as precise measurements of whether a star is being tugged at by an unseen companion. Those measurements take time and are expensive, so a good shortlist helps researchers spend scarce telescope time wisely, the team says.

Since launching on the Zooniverse platform in October 2021, the project has attracted nearly 23,000 volunteers, who have completed more than 12 million classifications, according to its website.

Before turning to TESS, the team ran a similar search using data from SuperWASP, a ground-based survey that, like TESS, monitored stars for signs of planets from 2004 to 2016. Those results are still being analyzed and are expected to be published soon.

The team also plans to widen its search with observations from other instruments, including the European Space Agency's Euclid mission and NASA's recently launched Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

"With potentially thousands of new discoveries, we need all the help we can get," McMaster said in the statement.

Spain is one of the easiest places in the world to experience the total solar eclipse on Aug. 2, 2027. The so-called "eclipse of the century" first makes landfall in Andalucía, where totality will last up to 4 minutes and 40 seconds during mid-morning, with the sun comfortably high at around 38-42 degrees above the horizon in the eastern sky. Excellent roads, plentiful accommodation and Málaga's international airport make this an obvious alternative to North Africa and the Middle East.

However, choosing where to watch requires some thought. Southern Spain's narrowing shape funnels the path toward the Strait of Gibraltar, potentially concentrating huge numbers of eclipse chasers around Tarifa, the Costa del Sol and the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar during the peak summer holiday season.

From busy Mediterranean beaches to mountain villages, here's where to see the total solar eclipse on Aug. 2, 2027 in southern Spain. All times, totality durations and historical cloud cover data come from Time and Date.

1. Tarifa

At the southernmost tip of mainland Europe, where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Mediterranean Sea, Tarifa is likely to be one of the country's busiest eclipse-watching locations because it will experience the longest totality in mainland Spain. Just 9 miles (14 km) across the Strait of Gibraltar from Morocco, the historic port town is known for its whitewashed old town, the medieval Castle of Guzmán el Bueno and its long, sandy beaches. Los Lances and Valdevaqueros offer wide horizons and plenty of open space.

2. Gaucín

For eclipse chasers who would rather head into the mountains than join the crowds on the Costa del Sol, Gaucín is an intriguing alternative. One of Andalucía's classic pueblos blancos, the whitewashed village occupies a spectacular position in the mountains above the coast, crowned by the ruins of Castillo del Águila. Its elevated setting offers sweeping views across the surrounding countryside towards Gibraltar and, on clear days, the mountains of North Africa. Crucially, heading inland doesn't sacrifice too much totality.

3. Gibraltar

Few places in Europe could provide a more dramatic setting for totality than Gibraltar, the tiny British Overseas Territory dominated by its famous 1,398-foot (426-meter) limestone Rock. However, eclipse chasers will need to view either from The Rock or its east coast, where elevated viewpoints and beaches face the Mediterranean and the eclipsed sun. However, Gibraltar has a potential complication — the easterly Levanter wind can create a distinctive cap of cloud over the Rock even when surrounding skies are clear. Another issue is accommodation, which is already at a premium. See Gibraltar Eclipse 2027.

4. La Línea de la Concepción

Immediately north of Gibraltar, La Línea de la Concepción occupies the sandy isthmus between the Bay of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean Sea. Its location creates one of Spain's most distinctive possibilities for eclipse photography. On the Mediterranean side, Playa de Santa Bárbara is a wide sandy beach north of the border, with the immense Rock of Gibraltar rising to the south — a potentially spectacular foreground. The city has around 9 miles (14 kilometers) of coastline, providing plenty of alternatives for eclipse viewing.

5. Estepona

About an hour's drive southwest of Málaga Airport, Estepona is one of the Costa del Sol's most attractive resort towns, with a pedestrianized old quarter of whitewashed streets, colorful flowerpots and squares centered on Plaza de las Flores. For eclipse day, the mile-long Playa de la Rada is the obvious gathering place, with its broad Mediterranean horizon and proximity to the town center. Other attractions include Estepona Marina and the Sierra Bermeja mountains rising behind the coast.

6. Cádiz

Historic Cádiz occupies a narrow peninsula jutting into the Atlantic and is packed with reminders of its long maritime past, including the Cádiz Cathedral, the Roman Theatre and Torre Tavira, one of more than 100 watchtowers once used to spot approaching ships. For eclipse day, the long, sandy Playa de la Victoria offers plenty of open space, while La Caleta provides a more historic setting between two coastal castles.

7. Málaga

Málaga may lose some duration compared with locations farther west, but it makes up for it with excellent transport links, plentiful accommodation and all the attractions of a major Mediterranean city. It combines the hilltop Gibralfaro Castle and Moorish Alcazaba with a Roman theatre, cathedral, museums and a lively historic center. For eclipse day, the obvious option is the coast. La Malagueta beach is within walking distance of the city center, while numerous beaches extend east and west along the Costa del Sol.

8. Torremolinos

One of the best-known resorts on Spain's Costa del Sol, Torremolinos combines a long Mediterranean beachfront with easy access to Málaga and its international airport. Its 4-mile (6-kilometer) promenade links broad sandy beaches, including Playa del Bajondillo and Playa de la Carihuela, offering plenty of potential eclipse-watching spots with views toward the eastern sky. For a higher vantage point, nearby Mount Calamorro rises almost 2,600 feet (800 meters) above Benalmádena, with panoramic views across the Costa del Sol and, on clear days, towards Gibraltar and North Africa.

9. Marbella

Marbella has around 17 miles (27 kilometers) of Mediterranean coastline, so eclipse chasers will have dozens of beaches to choose from, from San Pedro de Alcántara in the west to Cabopino in the east. Options include the sandy beaches and dunes around Cabopino, Las Chapas, Puerto Banús and San Pedro de Alcántara, all with open views across the Mediterranean. Away from the beach, Marbella offers a whitewashed old town centered on Plaza de los Naranjos, while the Sierra Blanca mountains provide a dramatic backdrop to the resort.

10. Motril

Close to the northern edge of the path of totality, Motril gets a shorter eclipse than destinations farther west, but could be among the quieter places on Spain's Mediterranean coast from which to experience it. The largest town on Granada's Costa Tropical sits between the Mediterranean and the foothills of the Sierra de Lújar, with the Sierra Nevada rising beyond. Nearby Playa Granada and Playa Poniente offer broad coastal views.

TENERIFE, CANARY ISLANDS — The Artemis II astronauts may have traveled hundreds of thousands of miles away from Earth to the moon, but they made sure the rest of us didn't miss out on the adventure.

Now, their efforts to bring the wonders of space exploration back down to Earth have earned them one of science communication's most prestigious honors: the Stephen Hawking Medal.

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover, alongside Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, accepted the award on Saturday (Oct. 17), during the opening ceremony of the Starmus VIII festival. The honor recognizes all four crew members, including NASA astronaut Christina Koch, who wasn't in attendance.

For Wiseman, the experience of seeing our home planet from the vicinity of the moon carried a powerful message.

"If we could take each of you 250,000 miles away from this planet, 400,000 kilometers away from planet Earth, and you would see Earth the size of your thumb. It's tiny," Wiseman told the audience.

"When you're there looking through the moon, back at this tiny Earth, the only thing you feel is love, peace, hope, unity", he continued. "Those aren't the right words, but that is all you feel."

During their historic Artemis II mission, the astronauts did far more than put NASA's Orion spacecraft through its paces. Through live communications, interviews and glimpses into life aboard the spacecraft, not to mention the jaw-dropping photos that just keep on coming, they helped turn an extraordinarily complex mission into something people worldwide could experience and connect with.

And that's exactly what the Stephen Hawking Medal is designed to celebrate.

Established in 2016 by physicist Stephen Hawking and Starmus, the award honors those who have gone above and beyond to make science accessible, engaging and inspiring.

The Artemis II crew joins some pretty impressive company. Previous recipients include Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin, naturalist David Attenborough, primatologist Jane Goodall and astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

This year's ceremony marks the medal's 10th anniversary, with filmmaker Ridley Scott also among the 2026 honourees.

"It's a special thrill for us at Starmus to be able to honor the intrepid Artemis II crew members in the same way that we honored the Apollo astronauts who paved the way to the moon over 50 years ago," Starmus co-founder and Queen guitarist Brian May said in a statement ahead of the ceremony.

Wiseman left the audience with one final thought.

"When you come home to this beautiful planet, you realise that it's in every single one of us to choose to make tomorrow better," he said. "So let's all choose to make tomorrow better".

Starmus VIII runs from Oct. 17-22 across Tenerife and La Palma in the Canary Islands. This year's festival, themed "The Search for Truth", brings together leading scientists, astronauts, musicians and artists to celebrate scientific discovery and explore the importance of evidence and scientific thinking.

On Oct. 17, 2016, Orbital ATK (now Northrop Grumman Space Systems) returned to flight, successfully launching a cargo shipment to the International Space Station (ISS) after its previous cargo mission failed to launch.

The private spaceflight company was contracted by NASA to fly cargo to the ISS, and stakes were high for this launch. Orbital ATK's last attempt nearly two years earlier ended in a catastrophic explosion a few seconds after liftoff.

Despite some delays, the newly upgraded Antares rocket flawlessly blasted off into the night sky from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Six days later, the Cygnus cargo spacecraft arrived at the ISS to deliver food, supplies and science experiments to the crew.

Why it mattered

For the International Space Station to be able to sustain a continuous human occupancy, periodic cargo deliveries are needed. Russia fulfills part of this requirement with its Progress spacecraft, and both ESA (European Space Agency) and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) have contributed with their Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) and H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV), respectively.

For its part, NASA contracted with Orbital (today, Northrop Grumman) and SpaceX to fly commercial resupply service missions. Both were needed to keep the U.S. operating segment of the station well supplied and with the science and research materials needed for the crew's work.

Below is a video of the explosion

Though adjustments can be made to go without one or more of these vehicles for a short period of time, the Progress, Cygnus and Dragon are key components of the ISS's continuous operation. So returning a vehicle to flight after a catastrophic exploration is important to well-being of the International Space Station program.

As it happened, Antares would fly another 12 times before having to stand down again to be redesigned, but that is for a different This Day in Space entry.

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

On Episode 232 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik are joined by Chelsea Gohd, former writer for NASA/JPL and now with Space.com, to talk about the recent large data dump from the Artemis II mission.

What was included? Why is this new data important? What observations were made, and what discoveries might result from them? What kind of annotations and notes did the astronauts include that make these observations uniquely valuable?

And finally, we talk about Artemis III - what is the mission profile and what are the stakes for SpaceX and Blue Origin?

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

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

Space news of the week

• SpaceX wants to launch Starship more than 450 times per year from South Texas
• The 1st SpaceX Starship to survive a launch to space just came home to its launch site
• SpaceX thrusters just made a Tesla Roadster 'fly' (and Elon Musk's car is still out there in space)
• Astronomers discover the 1st ever green star, a cosmic zombie just in time for Halloween
• NASA dumped over 800GB of Artemis II data online
• Artemis 2 astronauts fly around the moon in record-breaking lunar loop by NASA
• NASA Releases Artemis II Lunar Science Data, Images
• Artemis II: Sights & Sounds of Science
• Artemis II Crew Saw Impact Flashes on the Far Side of the Moon
• NASA to Discuss Artemis Acceleration, Status of Upcoming Moon Missions
• Prada and Axiom just revealed the stylish cooling suit Artemis astronauts will wear under their spacesuits on the moon

Model Falcon 9!

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

About This Week In Space

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

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

Want to educate young children about the wonders of the cosmos? Depending on the time of year, your location and the weather, your hopes to see the night sky in real life might not be as easy as heading into the backyard and peering up. That's why one of the best star projectors might be the solution.

That's why we've picked out six star projectors that actually deliver scientifically accurate images, from projections of the northern hemisphere to breathtaking pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Any one of these will turn your home into a private planetarium. Each comes with several swappable images, and you can purchase additional slides/discs for the Homestar and Pococo models. If you're seeking to stimulate a child's interest in space and STEM or just take your friends on a journey through space, these are the scientifically accurate projectors to purchase.

HBO and HBO Max's "Lanterns" served up its big cliffhanger finale on Oct. 4, 2026, and we’ve been slowly digesting thoughts on what the creative direction and ultimate legacy of this debut season were.

While by no means a perfect experiment in trying to shake up the aging superhero genre, there are enough worthy elements to consider this sci-fi mystery show an evolutionary step towards the next generation of comic-based storytelling.

After the emerald-tinted dust has settled, there are many lingering questions about where this acclaimed series from creators Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof, and Tom King might be headed and where the twists and turns might lead for a sophomore season should it be greenlit (get it?) for a triumphant return.

Warning: Major Spoilers For "Lanterns" Season 1 Ahead!

One of "Lanterns"' standout achievements is revealing the true costs of superheroism by deconstructing its DNA and examining the ugly guts of it all.

It dives into the fear, trauma, and seduction that drive humans to take up the serious business of protecting the universe and doling out justice against both Earth-bound evil and intergalactic threats. "Lanterns" also explores mental health issues and PTSD that are the inevitable byproducts of a life of unimaginable violence. The compelling series achieves a provocative dissection of it all with rare confidence without the overindulgence of distracting CGI tossed in for sheer spectacle.

It might not have been exactly the Green Lantern TV series fans wanted, but it was the show we got, and kinda the show we needed. Sure, for a series about a noble order of intergalactic space cops, we were treated to very little cosmic action, and instead we're given a grounded slow-burn police procedural à la "True Detective."

As I said before, it's not perfect, but we shouldn’t dismiss "Lanterns" for its mild shortcomings when it gets so much right. We're willing a second season into existence, and with an average of 20 million global viewers and solid reviews, HBO/HBO Max would be very wise to bring it back.

Whether a second season shifts into the heavens to rocket off on an outer space trajectory for a follow-up season is yet to be seen. For now, though, the Lanterns season one finale has left us with plenty of questions to ponder.

Is Hal Jordan really dead?

"Lanterns"' season finale revealed that Kerry, in an unhinged moment of maternal panic trying to protect her mutant son, Noah, had put a bullet in Hal's head. RIP to the original Green Lantern... or is it?

Kyle Chandler was a fantastic choice to play Hal Jordan, and he brought a charismatic gravitas and twisted sense of humor to the storied comic character. His sudden death in Rushville, frozen in the bleachers of the high school football stadium, certainly looked final, but this is the wild topsy-turvy universe of superheroes, so anything is possible.

And don’t forget that the newly-freed Thaal Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen) told the AI “Halogram” and Aaron Pierre’s John Stewart on Antaan's dead planet that the magical green ring could be used to restore Hal’s life. But Sinestro is a sly, slippery foe and is never to be trusted!

Online speculation has proposed that Hal Jordan might be revived and enter the series as Parallax, the living embodiment of fear, but that’s not likely according to the series creators. What’s more probable is that we either see Chandler's Hal Jordan revived, or he'll just turn up in occasional flashbacks or Halogram pop-in scenes.

John Stewart goes rogue?

With his unsanctioned lantern battery now in hand to power his ring, Stewart has become an independent contractor protecting Earth for Guy Gardner’s (Nathan Fillion) Sector 2814.

Fortified with the Sinestro-forged yellow charging unit deemed illegal by the Guardians and the broader members of the Green Lantern Corps., this unattached Lantern is now free to make sure Noah doesn’t turn to the dark side and lean into his evil Manhunter programming.

Will Stewart be seduced into the path of corruption by using Sinestro’s emotionally tainted battery, or steel himself against ill influences and continue to blaze his own trail as Earth's sole protector for the time being?

As a gold-toothed Gardner tells Stewart, "When I take this bull**** up back to Oa, they’re gonna send an army to put you down." This sounds like the perfect setup for an eventful "Lanterns" season 2 where the Lantern Corps come to take Jordan in, dead or alive. It’ll be interesting to see which of the infamous space cops they eventually send. This ain't over!

Noah Macon the Manhunter

Sheriff Kerry Kane (Kelly Macdonald) and the dorky Billy Macon’s (Jason Ritter) immaculately conceived son, Noah, is outed as a Human-Manhunter hybrid that came into being after Kerry’s initial encounter with Manhunter Zoe years ago.

He might be one helluva gunslinging high school quarterback now, but that pales in comparison to what he could become using his frightful shapeshifting Manhunter genes inherited from his grandmother.

With his new Nebraska collegiate ball cap and now headed off to university, the sleeper agent has some vital decisions to make way beyond declaring a major. His desire will be to wipe out the Green Lanterns and the Guardians, but Earthly domination might come first unless he pledges to subdue his instincts and lead a normal life. And is Noah really the last Manhunter, or are there legions more ready to activate?

Sinestro's fate?

Spazkaban (or Space Azkaban), the notorious cosmic penitentiary controlled by the Guardians, lost one of its most lethal inhabitants in the crimson-skinned Sinestro when Noah (Shea Pritchard), the nascent Manhunter, broke him out of jail to craft him a yellow fear-based lantern.

This persuasive villain was last seen wrapped in chains in the season finale, "Dirt and Stars," being dunked in the waters of madness by Stewart on the poison planet after a portal hop, before trying to coerce Halogram to deliver the prized ring for Jordan's resurrection.

Avid comic fans know Sinestro once commanded his own intergalactic corp that fed upon the addictive yellow glare of fear instead of the emerald light’s will-imposed power.

Will he unite with Noah to take down the manipulative Guardians of the Universe and their legion of space-bound enforcers, the Green Lanterns? Will Noah break bad or go good? And is it possible for Sinestro to forge another yellow lantern and a custom companion ring to escape captivity? As Sinestro explains, "If harnessed correctly, fear can be the most powerful force in the universe."

Shards of "Lanterns" will invariably bleed over into James Gunn's "Superman" sequel, "Man of Tomorrow," which soars to theaters on July 9, 2027, so there’s still a lot of life left in DC Studios' DCU.

All 8 episodes of "Lanterns" season 1 are available on HBO and HBO Max.

The Orionid meteor shower peaks overnight on Oct. 21-22, triggering a spectacular display of shooting stars as Earth plunges through the densest part of the debris trail shed by Halley's Comet. Here's what you need to know.

When is the best time to see Orionid shooting stars?

Orionid meteors are best spotted between the hours of midnight and dawn on Oct. 22, when 10-20 shooting stars may be seen brightening the night sky each hour under ideal dark-sky.

The glare cast by the 74%-lit waxing gibbous moon will hide fainter shooting stars for much of the night. Thankfully, the lunar disk will set a few hours after midnight, leaving a window of beautifully dark sky before dawn in which to enjoy the full majesty of the annual meteor shower. Remember to use a trusted website like Time and Date to discover the exact moment of moonset for your location.

Where should I look to see Orionid meteors?

Orionid shooting stars will appear to originate from a patch of sky, or radiant, located close to the red giant star Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion, which glistens above the southeastern horizon for stargazers in the U.S. during the early hours of Oct. 22.

For the best views look 40-90 degrees away from the radiant, where the glowing trains left in the wake of the fast-moving meteors will be at their longest. Be sure to head away from artificial lights and allow 20-30 minutes for your eyes to fully adapt to the dark for the best

What causes the Orionid meteor shower?

The Orionid meteor shower is active each year as Earth passes through the stream of debris left behind by Comet 1P/Halley, which was observed by a fleet of spacecraft when it last visited the inner solar system in 1986.

Shooting stars become visible when particles of the ancient comet collide with our planet's atmosphere at 147,600 miles per hour (237,539 kilometers per hour), vaporizing in a spectacular display of natural fireworks.

Hoping to catch a shooting star for yourself? Then be sure to read our guide to photographing meteor showers, along with our picks of the best cameras and lenses for astrophotography.

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

The astronauts of SpaceX's Crew-12 mission to the International Space Station wish that we could all see Earth as they just did.

An orbital view reveals the immense beauty of our blue planet, the only world we know of that hosts life. But it also highlights how fragile that life is, tethered to our lonely Earth in the vast void of space, according to Crew-12 commander Jessica Meir of NASA.

"You see this very thin, tenuous band of an atmosphere, and you know that that is all that is supporting life, and we really need to do our best to protect it," Meir said on Thursday afternoon (Oct. 15), during a press conference that discussed the recently concluded Crew-12 mission.

"I wish that I could bring all the eyes of all the humans to look back at the Earth in this extraordinary way that we are so privileged to have," she added. "I think it really does change you philosophically and [in] how you see each other, how you see yourself, how you see the human race when you look on it down from the vantage point that we have from above — you know, [it] gives everybody this understanding that we need to protect our planet, that it's not only so beautiful, but it's so precious."

From the International Space Station (ISS), Meir said, it's clear that everything on Earth is connected — and that the borders we've laid down between states and nations are artificial constructs.

"You realize that we really are one human when you are in space," she said. "I wish I could share that perspective with all the eyes of all the humans. I think it would be a very healthy thing for everyone to understand.

Crew-12 mission specialist Andrey Fedyaev, of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, voiced similar sentiments, though he would turn an ISS visitor's eyes inward, to focus on the crew.

"I always say that the life of crewmembers on board the space station is the best example of how people need to live on Earth," Fedyaev said during Thursday's briefing (in Russian; in interpreter translated his words into English in real time)."

"We don't have borders. We are all friendly. We're just one crew, and the safety of the crew, the safety of the station, depends on the actions of the entire crew," he added. "So, if humankind does arrive at the same conclusion — that our Earth, our planet, is one and the same space vessel that flies through space — we need to take care of it and not to destroy it. So, that's what I would like to show to everyone on Earth."

Meir and Fedyaev are far from the only ones to have their perpsectives shifted by a space mission. Pretty much every astronaut experiences this phenomenon, which is known as the overview effect, a term coined in 1987 by space philosopher Frank White.

Crew-12 consisted of Meir, Fedyaev, NASA astronaut Jack Hathaway (the mission's pilot) and the European Space Agency's Sophie Adenot (mission specialist). It was the second spaceflight for Meir and Fedyaev and the first for Hathaway and Adenot.

The quartet launched toward the ISS on Feb. 13 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Their Crew Dragon capsule, named Freedom, arrived at the orbiting lab a day later.

Crew-12 spent nearly eight months aboard the ISS, finally returning to Earth on Oct. 8. They conducted a wide range of scientific experiments and maintenance work during that time and set a few records as well.

For example, Adenot became the first French woman ever to perform a spacewalk, and she broke the mark for longest continuous spaceflight by a European at 237 days. The previous record, 201 days, was set by Luca Parmitano in 2019-2020.

I used to think being interested in the night sky meant I had to try every meteor shower. If a calendar said "peak," I interpreted that as an instruction. I'd set an alarm, find several layers of clothing and go outside at around 2:00 a.m. when even the neighborhood cats seemed surprised to see me. Then I'd spend an increasingly resentful 45 minutes staring upward, occasionally see one meteor and wonder whether I was somehow doing it all wrong. As I've grown into stargazing, I've become much more selective.

The Orionids peak next week, and normally I'd be tempted. These fast meteors come from debris from Halley's Comet, which is enough of a connection to make almost anyone want to go outside. However, another object is in the sky this year — a big, bright waxing gibbous moon that will brighten the night sky and make "shooting stars" very hard to see.

That doesn't make the Orionids unobservable. In fact, there is a narrow window when the night sky will be free from moonlight. But it does make me far less inclined to sacrifice an entire night for them, and I certainly won't be trying to spend the night camping under a dark sky in a remote rural location far from light pollution. I've discovered that knowing when not to observe is an underrated stargazing skill.

What's happening and when to look

The Orionids are active from Oct. 2 through Nov. 7, with their 2026 maximum expected overnight on Oct. 21-22. They appear to radiate from a point near Orion, although the meteors themselves can streak across almost any part of the sky.

The shower happens because Earth crosses a stream of debris left behind by Halley's Comet, which was last in the inner solar system in 1986 and will return in 2061. Those tiny particles hit our atmosphere at roughly 41 miles (66 kilometers) per second, making Orionids particularly fast meteors.

Under ideal conditions, the International Meteor Organization gives the shower a zenithal hourly rate of 20 or more around maximum. But "zenithal hourly rate" is not the same as promising that I will personally see 20 meteors while standing in my backyard for an hour. It assumes an excellent dark sky, a well-placed radiant and unobstructed viewing. In reality, that's impossible — at the very least you'd have to have eyes in the back of your head. And on each side.

This year adds another complication. The moon reaches first quarter on Oct. 18 and continues waxing toward full on Oct. 26. On the peak night of the Orionids, an 80%-illuminated waxing gibbous moon will be in the night sky as it gets dark on Oct. 21 and sets around 03:00 a.m. local time across Europe and North America on Oct. 22. You can probably see the workaround. Sunrise is roughly 06:30 a.m. local time, which means astronomical darkness — when the sun is more than 18 degrees below the horizon, meaning complete darkness — lasts until around 05:00 a.m. local time (these times work as a ballpark, but you can (check the exact times of moonset and sunrise for your location on Time and Date).

So there is a dark window before dawn, and that is when I would try to see the shower if I were determined to see it. The Orionid radiant is also much better placed after midnight than it is in the evening.

Knowing exactly what's going to happen in the sky turns a casual meteor watch into a rather more calculated exercise.

How and when I'm watching it

My plan for the Orionids this year is the same as usual — after checking the moon phase and the moonset and sunrise times, there's one more variable. The weather forecast first.

If the forecast is excellent and I'm feeling enthusiastic, I'll target the period after moonset and before morning twilight on Oct. 22. If it's due to be cloudy, I'm staying in bed.

This sounds obvious, but I think beginners are sometimes given the impression that successful stargazing requires heroic commitment. It doesn't. A meteor shower is not a performance that disappears the moment the advertised "peak" passes. The Orionids have a relatively broad period of activity, so meteors can appear on nights either side of maximum, too.

If I do go outside at 3:00 a.m., I'll do so without two hugely valuable resources for meteor showers — a lawn chair and bags of patience.

Stargazer's corner: October 16-22, 2026

The moon reaches first quarter on Oct. 18, making stargazing tricky this week. That means I'm changing what I observe rather than declaring the week a write-off. The moon itself becomes an excellent target in early evening around first quarter. Sunlight strikes the lunar landscape along the terminator — the boundary between lunar day and night — throwing mountains and crater rims into strong relief. A cheap pair of binoculars can reveal a surprising amount. With a telescope, you can spend hours getting lost in the Montes Apenninus mountain range and three nearby craters — Eratosthenes and Archimedes on either side, and Plato above. Saturn remains another easy evening target after its Oct. 4 opposition. Look toward the eastern and southeastern sky after dark for its steady yellowish light. Even a modest telescope pointed at Saturn's rings will astound.

Constellation of the week: Cassiopeia

Cassiopeia is one of the easiest constellations I know to find because its five main stars form a conspicuous W — or, right now, something that looks suspiciously more like an M. Look toward the northern sky in the evening. From mid-northern latitudes, Cassiopeia is high and prominent during autumn, on the opposite side of Polaris from the Big Dipper. That relationship is more useful to me than memorizing exactly which way the W should point. Cassiopeia circles Polaris as Earth rotates, so its orientation changes through the night. From sufficiently northerly locations, it's circumpolar, meaning it never sets below the horizon.

If you love watching meteors, 2026 has given you plenty to enjoy. This summer, the annual Perseid meteor shower peaked on the day of a new moon — and a solar eclipse — so moonlight stayed out of the way. And there's more to look forward to: in December, the Geminids, the year's most prolific shower, will peak after a waxing crescent moon sets early in the evening, opening the door to excellent viewing.

Right between those two headline showers, the dependable Orionids take their turn, reaching peak activity around Oct. 21-22.

So, when and where can you catch the show?

When and where to watch

The Orionids take their name from the spot where they seem to fan out: Orion's raised club, just above and to the left of the reddish star Betelgeuse. Orion is usually a winter favorite, so in early autumn the mighty hunter doesn't fully clear the eastern horizon until after 11 p.m. local daylight time. Don't rush outside just yet though. Wait until around 2 a.m., when Orion is well above the horizon. By about 5 a.m., just before dawn, Orion reaches its highest point in the southern sky — and the view should be at its best.

Orionid meteors tend to be faint, so city lights can easily wash them out. If you can, head to a safe, dark rural spot. Get comfortable in a reclining lawn chair or sleeping bag, give your eyes time to adjust, and enjoy the view overhead and toward the southern sky.

Why the moon won't spoil the show

And what about the moon? A full moon arrives October 25-26, but there's still a welcome stretch of dark sky for several mornings before Wednesday.

By Oct. 21-22, the waxing gibbous moon will be resting among the dim stars of Capricornus, reaching its highest point around 8:45 p.m. local daylight time. Here's the good news: it will set shortly after 2 a.m., leaving roughly 3½ hours of dark sky before dawn. In that window, one observer may spot as many as 15 to 20 Orionids per hour. Because those hours line up with the shower's peak, the moon shouldn't steal the show this year.

Halley's Comet: the source of the Orionids

So, where do the Orionids come from? Their story begins with Halley's Comet—the same famous visitor behind May's Eta Aquarids.

Meteoroids are tiny leftovers from a comet's nucleus. As a comet nears the sun, frozen material on its surface turns directly into gas, a process known as sublimation. The comet becomes a kind of cosmic litterbug, sprinkling dust and debris along its orbit. Those pieces are tiny and brittle, with the consistency of cigar ash, and every swing past the sun leaves more behind.

Comets are among the solar system's oldest and most fascinating objects. They formed alongside the sun and planets about 4.6 billion years ago, yet they have changed remarkably little. Think of them as time capsules from the solar system's childhood. Far beyond the outer planets, they spend most of their time in a deep freeze, where temperatures hover just above absolute zero, -459.67°F (-273.15°C). In that extreme cold, chemical reactions largely stop, helping comets preserve material from those earliest days.

Over the past 100,000 years, Halley's Comet has probably circled the sun well over a thousand times, leaving a fresh trail of debris on every visit. Each October and May, Earth brushes close to Halley's orbit. Some of that dust meets our atmosphere at a breathtaking 41 miles (66 km) per second, lighting up as the streaks we call "shooting stars."

The Orionids have another lovely feature: about half of these meteors leave glowing trails that linger longer than those of equally bright meteors. Halley's composition may be the reason. The particles begin burning up about 80 miles (130 km) above Earth, perhaps because they're made of lightweight material from the comet's diffuse surface rather than its core.

Looking backward . . . and forward

Perhaps you remember seeing Halley's Comet when it last swept through the inner solar system in late winter and early spring of 1986. With an orbital period of 75.4 years, this celebrated visitor is due back in late July or early August 2061.

For a little perspective, average life expectancy is 79.5 years in the United States, 82.2 years in the United Kingdom, and 83.4 years in Canada. So, if you were born after 1980, there's a fair chance you'll be here to welcome the "mother of all Orionids" home in 2061.

As for me, I saw Halley in 1986 at the "advanced age" of 30. The odds of another reunion are pretty long — you can do the math.

Until then, I'll be more than happy to step outside early on Wednesday morning and greet a few of "Halley's children." I hope you'll join me.

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, Sky and Telescope, The Old Farmer's Almanac and other publications.

Using data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have unraveled some of the atmospheric secrets of a bizarre, blisteringly hot world that has the consistency of marshmallow.

The extrasolar planet, or exoplanet, under the watchful infrared eye of the JWST, is WASP-17b, located around 1,300 light-years away. The exoplanet has a mass around 0.8 times that of Jupiter, but it is around twice as wide as the solar system's largest planet, giving it a "super-puff" consistency comparable to the Earth-based treat. WASP-17 b is so close to its parent star that it completes an orbit in under four Earth days, with this proximity also making the temperature of this "hot Jupiter" skyrocket.

Given the extreme conditions of this exoplanet, it is little wonder that its atmosphere is pretty unusual too. Using a new technique called transmission strings, a team of scientists mapped the contours of the atmosphere of WASP-17b. They found that the atmosphere is shaped like a ring with prominent "gems" rising from it.

"Planets are temperamental, their atmospheres complex and chaotic," team member Hannah Wakeford of the University of Bristol said in a statement. "The fact that all of these numbers came together and showed us this very structured, dynamical picture of this giant world over 1,000 light-years away was just really exciting."

Astronomers like WASP-17b so much they put a ring on it

WASP-17b is so close to its parent star that it is tidally locked, meaning one side permanently faces the star; its dayside is constantly bombarded with stellar radiation. In contrast, the planet also has a cooler nightside, which faces out into space in perpetuity.

By creating incredibly comprehensive 3D views of this exoplanet's atmosphere, researchers found that WASP-17b's atmosphere has a chemical composition and temperature that shift between dayside and nightside according to theory and modelling.

This was possible because the transmission strings technique tracked WASP-17b as it crossed or transited in front of its star, capturing the composition of light around the edge of the planet's atmosphere, or limb, from different angles. This method trumps standard approaches because traditional modelling only maps light as an average across the entire limb.

"Rather than assuming your atmosphere is a circle with the same radius all the way around, our technique allows you to pull out different distances from the center to the edge of the planet," Lili Alderson, of Cornell University, said. "We're able to go around the edge.

"So, we've gone from a ring to understanding where on the ring the gemstones are, so to speak."

The modelling showed just such a "gem," that occurs where hot winds from the planet reach the equator and the nightside of WASP-17b, the atmosphere of the cooler side inflates.

"Theory predicts that the morning and the evening sides should have a strong temperature difference, and WASP-17b fits really nicely in that trend – pretty much bang-on what we thought it would be," Alderson said.

The successful application of the transmission strings method is an exciting step forward in the modelling of the atmospheres of the over 6,000 worlds in NASA's exoplanet catalog.

"This is proof of concept that planets are, in fact, 3D objects, and that, consistently, as they go around their star, what we predict should be happening is happening," Alderson concluded. "To move beyond computational exercises and see it for real is a different matter."

The team's research was published on Wednesday (Oct.14) in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Well, that was a memorable debut.

Tesla unveiled its highly anticipated new Roadster last night (Oct. 16) with a spectacular stunt, using SpaceX thrusters to make the vehicle "fly."

"This is not necessarily a safety-optimized car, OK?" Elon Musk, who runs both companies, said during the livestreamed reveal, which was held at SpaceX's rocket-testing facility in McGregor, Texas. "But it takes the the fun meter to 11 out of 10."

Tesla first announced the next-gen Roadster in 2017, saying at the time that it would be released in 2020. In 2018, Musk announced that the new car would incorporate some SpaceX tech.

"SpaceX option package for new Tesla Roadster will include ~10 small rocket thrusters arranged seamlessly around car. These rocket engines dramatically improve acceleration, top speed, braking & cornering. Maybe they will even allow a Tesla to fly…" he wrote on Twitter in June of that year. (In 2022, Musk bought Twitter, which he subsequently renamed X.)

So last night's demonstration didn't come entirely out of left field — but it was still eye-popping. The show began with the Roadster driving up a ramp that quickly became a vertical wall and then an overhanging ledge. The Roadster clung to the surface, hanging upside-down from the ledge like a gecko on a ceiling thanks to a special fan suction system on its chassis.

"I mean, this car really sucks, OK?" Musk said, channeling his inner stand-up comedian. "This car could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch. It could suck a tennis ball through a hose pipe."

The suction feature is not just a novelty, he added: It will help the Roadster stay connected to the ground during high-speed turns, allowing drivers to corner incredibly well.

And the sucking was just an opening act. The Tesla soon launched itself from its position beneath the ramp's nearly horizontal ledge, executed a barrel roll in midair, and landed softly, all thanks to its SpaceX cold-gas thrusters.

"A friend of mine, Peter Thiel, once said that the future promised us flying cars, but instead we got 140 characters," Musk said after the Roadster touched down. "Well, not anymore."

The car has main thrusters in the rear, he explained, as well as attitude-control thrusters that control its orientation.

"So it can basically fly like a rocket, and it could do rolls," Musk said. "It could do, like, crazy gymnastics — whatever you want, really."

The Roadster has a total of 10 thrusters, which are fed by 600 liters — about 250 kilograms (550 pounds) — of compressed air, Tesla Engineering Vice President Lars Moravy said during last night's event. That air is housed in carbon fiber overwrapped pressure vessels, which fill "every usable void in the car," Tesla said via X last night.

The Tesla team put those thrusters to work multiple times during the presentation, at one point launching the Roadster over a line of six vehicles, including a Tesla semi-truck cab.

Nobody was behind the wheel during these stunts — nobody with a pulse, anyway. The driver's seat was occupied by a mannequin clad in a black-and-white SpaceX spacesuit.

This was a nod to "Starman," the dummy behind the wheel of Musk's cherry-red first-gen Roadster, which launched into orbit around the sun in February 2018 on the first-ever flight of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket.

Starman and his Roadster are still in space, by the way, and will be for a while. Modeling work suggests the duo will keep orbiting our star for millions of years before ultimately slamming into either Earth or Venus.

Last night's Roadster demo was something of a tease, for the car is not yet in showrooms. Musk said Tesla aims to begin producing it in 2028.

And don't expect to see the "flying" version on the road then, or anytime; it's hard to imagine regulators certifying that vehicle for everyday use. It will likely be a status symbol for a few wealthy and connected folks, locked away in spacious and well-appointed garages.

Indeed, you can't put down on a deposit for the "Rocket" version of the new Roadster on Tesla's website; purchase of that vehicle is by invite only.

Two other Roadster versions are for sale — "Performance" and "Thrust." Tesla's website describes the Performance variant as "road ready," with "active aero and a multi-mode suction system." Thrust, by contrast, is "race ready." It has active aero and suction "plus acceleration thrusters."

It costs $50,000 to reserve a Performance vehicle and $250,000 to reserve a Thrust. Tesla has not yet revealed the total cost of any of the new Roadster variants.

On Oct. 16, 1975, NASA launched the first operational GOES satellite!

GOES-A was the first in a series of weather satellites that NASA jointly operated with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The name is short for Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite. GOES-A launched on a Delta rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. GOES satellites all have a geostationary orbit, which means they always face the same part of Earth — in this case, the Indian Ocean. Once GOES-A became operational, it was renamed GOES-1.

The GOES satellite fleet has grown over the years, and is a critical link in the chain of satellites tracking Earth's weather from space. In 2016, NASA and NOAA launched GOES-R, the first in a new next-generation series of GOES weather satellites, with more to follow in ensuing years.

Why it mattered

With weather forecasts so prevalent (you can literally find them in the palm of your hand with a smartphone), it may be hard to think that such daily information wasn't always readily available. But that was the case when NOAA began building what has become an essential part of the U.S. weather monitoring fleet of satellites.

GOES-A, or GOES-1 as it was later called, "gave forecasters their first near-real time look at atmospheric conditions from a fixed location," NOAA officials said in an overview.

The satellite launched from Pad 17A at what is now the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and returned its first photo just nine days after liftoff, on Oct. 25, 1975. The satellite was equipped with a Visible/Infrared Spin Scan Radiometer (VISSR) to capture Earth observations in daylight and nighttime to track clouds and surface temperature.

The spin-stabilized satellite was able to observe Earth just 10% of the time, but was still the most up-to-date satellite observations for weather forecasters.

GOES-1 was active until March 7, 1985, when it was ultimately decommissioned. But during that time, NASA and NOAA launched five more successors, GOES 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

"For 50 years, GOES data has been the backbone of short-term forecasts and warnings of severe weather and environmental hazards in the Western Hemisphere and forecasts and warnings of space weather hazards," NOAA wrote while celebrating 50 years of GOES satellites. "Each successive generation of GOES has brought improvements and new capabilities to monitor our part of the world."

Since the first next-generation GOES satellite, GOES-R, launched in 2016, NOAA has flown another three satellites, most recently with GOES-U weather satellite launch in 2024.

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

The eighth episode of Apple TV's "Dark Matter" season 2 has just dropped, and we're all on the edge of our seats trying to guess how the strange saga of Jason (Joel Edgerton) and Daniela (Jennifer Connelly) Dessen is going to finish up. Not even fans of the books know, as this superb adaptation of NYT bestselling author Blake Crouch's 2016 novel broke out of its source material for season 2.

For Edgerton and Connelly, "Dark Matter" has been a whirlwind project as their characters search for a safe alternate universe while being pursued by a multiplicity of Jasons. The physical rigors and emotional toll of shooting the show and presenting its nuanced storytelling often proved difficult.

"There's two exhaustions that I’ve found in movie work," Edgerton tells Space. "It's either mental exhaustion from going to dark emotional places in your brain or complex dialogue stuff. Then there's the physical challenges, like for doing a fight scene. One of the weirdest ones on 'Dark Matter' was doing a gravity scene where we’re dangling on wires inside The Box. There's something deeply exhausting about it and a bit humiliating. You feel like a human teabag."

Connelly was also a part of that tough sequence and reflects on Edgerton’s tireless fortitude.

"Joel's schedule on this show is really brutal," she notes. "He's in almost all of it. This season is better, but season 1 was crazy for him. It’s surprising; sometimes the things that are most difficult are the ones you don’t anticipate. That's more exhausting at the end of the day after trying to get something to work that you didn’t think would be tricky. I like the days that are tiring because you feel drained because you’ve explored a lot in a scene. That's a nice feeling."

For Edgerton, the simplest thing to remember is that when practicing your craft, always make sure that you go home each day feeling satisfied with what you shot.

"There's nothing worse than going home and thinking that you didn’t get the best out of yourself," he reveals. "As they say, as actors we're not digging trenches. It's not hard physical labor; it's a different kind of thing. Until actually I shot a movie where I had to dig a trench."

Working with Blake Crouch on the series and its unnerving portrait of a marriage strewn across the infinite multiverse has produced new insights into their own lives.

"I find there’s something to be learned from each experience as an actor," notes Edgerton. "Each story takes you through something, whether you like to think it or not.

"You either learn a skill or meet an actor that you admire, and they teach you something inspired by their presence. We were tasked with helping Blake build the disintegration of a marriage, and it's the opposite of what you’re hoping for in real life. That each day you hope you're turning up contributing in a positive way to your relationship rather than engineering its demise. It makes you think about how you can be a better person in life. And there's always room for improvement."

Likewise, Connelly sees a sort of emotional mirroring effect to be absorbed that extends beyond "Dark Matter's" detailed sets, dizzying locations, and sound stages.

"I think Daniela, at a point when Jason is going down paths, and they're struggling, recognizes that sometimes it's hard to distinguish what is really the other person and what we’re bringing to our perception of them," she adds.

"She has things in her history that bias her vision, and she takes herself off on a journey to reconcile those things and try to take responsibility for healing. And that's a good lesson to remember in relationships in general. Being on top of one's own part of the dynamic. Sometimes things we see in each other are really things within ourselves."

"Dark Matter" season 2 airs each Friday exclusively on Apple TV, with the season finale (and perhaps the series end if not renewed) arriving on Oct. 30, 2026.

Your invitation to revisit the Space Age has arrived.

Whether you miss the days when people got dressed up to fly or you wish your "other" ride was a rocket, Mission: 60s has a *space* reserved for you.

"This is a three-day celebration of Apollo, aviation, space exploration and 1960s culture," reads a promo for the Oct. 23 to 25 event in New York. "You will be fully immersed in the sights, sounds and spirit of the 1960s Space Age."

"The weekend features astronauts, Apollo flight directors, Mission Control engineers, Star Trek legends, space artists, a Saturday Spacefarer Soiree with live music (1960s attire encouraged!), and a Sunday NASA Artemis keynote."

Organized by Luna Replicas, a company specializing in vintage space gear, and Space for Humanity, a nonprofit that underwrites spaceflight experiences, Mission: 60s is aimed at being the bridge between the last time humanity reached for the moon and today's "second space race" to do it again — this time to stay.

Launch pad

Your journey back to the 60s begins when you check into the TWA Hotel at the John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) in New York.

Once a functioning terminal for Trans World Airlines (as featured in the 2002 movie "Catch Me If You Can"), the TWA Flight Center has been reimagined as a hotel like no other.

"At the center of the hotel is Eero Saarinen's iconic TWA Flight Center, where restaurants, bars and retail outlets have taken flight. Two hotel wings, designed to reflect and defer to the landmark TWA Flight Center, sit behind the historic building and contain 512 guest rooms with views of JFK's runways and the TWA Flight Center," reads the hotel's website.

The TWA Hotel is only the first sight straight out of the past that guests will encounter. On Friday (Oct. 23), Mission: 60s begins with a guided tour of the 1964 World's Fair site in Flushing Meadows. Today the home to the New York Hall of Science, the outdoor exhibits includes the Rocket Park, where Gemini-Titan II and Mercury-Atlas D rockets and a Saturn V F-1 engine still stand.

"The space age was less than 10 years old when rockets like these powered incredible missions to outer space," reads the description on the museum's website. "Visitors will learn about the history of these vehicles as well as the United States' mission to reach the moon."

Also on view at the World's Fair site is the Unisphere, a spherical stainless steel representation of Earth, and the Astro-View Observation Towers (later reimagined as actual flying saucers in the 1997 movie "Men in Black").

The first day concludes with Space For Humanity's (separately-ticketed) "Celestial Soiree" and a Mission: 60's pool party on the hotel's rooftop.

MCC, ILC and ILM

Saturday and Sunday at Mission: 60s will bring together members of Mission Control (MCC), spaceflight experts (including ILC Dover, makers of the Apollo spacesuit) and representatives from the Hollywood community who brought about the 60s-era visions of space exploration (including Industrial Light & Magic [ILM]) for a series of engaging panel discussions.

Among the various topics scheduled for the two days of talks are:

• Apollo Mission Control & Flight Operations
• Apollo to Artemis & Beyond
• Women in Aerospace
• Apollo Communications: The Sights & Sounds From the Moon
• SciFi Inspires
• The Overview Effect
• Making Space Real: Art & Visual Effects That Sold Humanity on Space
• Space Advocacy

Featured speakers and moderators include Apollo flight director Gerry Griffin, TIME Magazine science editor Jeffrey Kluger, former NASA astronauts Nicole Stott and Ron Garan, "Star Trek" actor Bob Picardo and researcher Frank White.

On Saturday evening, there will be a second gala, "The Spacefarer Soiree," featuring a limited meet and greet aboard a Lockheed Constellation airliner and music by Bonnie Gordon. Set in 1969, attendees are encouraged to come wearing their finest period clothing.

Then, on Sunday afternoon, Uplift Aerospace will host a shared "Overview" VR experience for up to 50 people participating together.

Both days will include a vendor and artists' hall, with guests signing autographs and their books, as well as companies such as NASA's official patch provider A-B Emblem, selling Apollo-themed souvenirs and memorabilia.

A weekend pass is $150 per person, with add-ons for VIP access, the galas and Friday's World Fair excursion. Single-day admission is $85.

I know perfectly well that the moon comes out during the day. I have known this for decades. Yet whenever I spot it in a blue afternoon sky, some primitive part of my brain still thinks it has turned up early.

I'm certainly not the only one. Many people don't understand how it could be visible in daylight. In their eyes, the moon is a nighttime object. Why? Because that's when they notice it — it appears brighter.

We tend to think of the sun as belonging to the day and the moon to the night because that's how they're usually presented to us as children. Astronomically, it makes little sense. The moon spends plenty of time above our horizon while the sun is also up — it spends half its time in the daytime sky, in fact.

If the moon, pale but unmistakable, looks slightly out of place against a blue sky, it's not — you are. This week is a great time to get used to seeing it there. Just past first quarter, the moon will spend each afternoon hanging in the daytime sky, becoming easier to spot as the sun sinks towards the horizon.

What's happening and when to look

The moon reached first quarter on Sunday, Oct. 18, and is now waxing toward full moon, which occurs early on Monday, Oct. 26 (Oct. 25 in some time zones). That puts it in the right part of its orbit to be conspicuous during the late afternoon this weekend.

Here's the useful bit to remember. Around first quarter, the moon rises roughly around midday. As it waxes towards full, it rises progressively later in the afternoon. By full moon, it rises around sunset.

That makes the days immediately after first quarter an excellent time to get into the habit of finding the moon before sunset. On Monday, Oct. 19, look southeast in the afternoon for a moon just over half-lit. Each afternoon this week, it will become a little more illuminated, move farther east against the background stars, and appear progressively later in the day.

You don't need to wait until dusk. In fact, that's the point. Start looking during the afternoon, when the sun is still well above the horizon. Once you find the moon, it can be surprisingly conspicuous against the blue sky.

How and when I'm watching it

I'll start looking in the mid-to-late afternoon this week, when the waxing moon should already be high enough to find easily. You can check the exact moonrise time where you are, but there's no need to catch it as it rises. Look towards the east or southeast and scan the blue sky.

Once you've found the moon in daylight, keep checking on it as sunset approaches. The moon doesn't suddenly become brighter, of course. Instead, the surrounding sky darkens, increasing the contrast until the pale daytime moon seems to switch on at dusk and grow increasingly brilliant.

Binoculars will give you a superb view at dusk, particularly along the terminator — the boundary between lunar day and night. That's where low-angle sunlight throws mountains and crater rims into sharp relief. As the moon waxes this week, the terminator will move steadily across its surface, revealing a different landscape each afternoon.

That's another reason not to wait for the full moon. The full moon gets most of the attention, but the week beforehand is arguably a much better time to get to know our nearest celestial neighbor — and you don't even have to wait until dark.

Stargazer's corner: October 23-29, 2026

This is a bright-moon week. Full moon arrives early on Monday, Oct. 26, so moonlight will wash out faint stars and make galaxies and nebulas much harder to see. So go for Saturn instead. It reached opposition earlier this month and remains very well placed in the evening sky. Better still, the nearly full moon passes near Saturn around Oct. 23-24, giving beginners a convenient landmark for locating the planet. The moon's glare will hide faint nearby stars, but Saturn itself is easily bright enough to cope. A good example will be Oct. 27, when the Pleiades is passed closely by a bright moon. The Seven Sisters therefore won't be at their best, so you'll need to use binoculars — if you do, you'll see them easily enough.

Constellation of the week: Auriga

Auriga, "the Charioteer," is climbing in the northeastern and eastern sky during late October evenings. It's easiest to find if you start at Capella, one of the brightest stars in the entire night sky. It's just 43 light-years from the sun. From there, I look for the other stars that form Auriga's rough pentagon, including Menkalinan, Mahasim and Almaaz. The fifth corner is Elnath, although it officially belongs to neighboring Taurus.

Auriga gets even better with binoculars. The Milky Way runs straight through it, bringing with it three bright open star clusters — M36, M37 and M38. All three show up in binoculars under a reasonably dark sky, while a small telescope starts to resolve them into individual stars. There's always another layer to find in the night sky.

My latest stargazing obsession

There's something special about stargazing during the blue hour — that brief transition when daylight drains from the sky and night's window begins to open. It's particularly beautiful a few days before full moon, when the near-full orb is already rising in the east as the sun sets in the west. Look below it, and you may also see the Belt of Venus, a pinkish band above the eastern horizon caused by reddened sunlight shining through Earth's atmosphere, with our planet's dark blue-gray shadow beneath. As the sky fades through ever-deeper shades of blue, the moon brightens, and the first stars emerge around it.

I've spent years chasing the northern lights across the Arctic, from the mountains of Swedish Lapland to the dramatic Norwegian fjords.

If there's one thing I've learned, it's that choosing where to see the northern lights is about much more than simply heading as far north as possible. Whether you're on the hunt for somewhere that offers the best chance of clear skies, the most dramatic scenery or a plethora of winter activities to keep you warm, choosing the right destination can make a big difference, especially as auroras are never guaranteed.

My biggest piece of advice? Choose somewhere you've always wanted to visit regardless of whether the northern lights might appear. That way, the auroras become the icing on the cake rather than the sole measure of a successful trip.

From my personal favorites in Scandinavia to some of North America's most established aurora hotspots, here are seven of the best places to see the northern lights this 2026/27 season.

Best places to see the northern lights at a glance

Abisko and Kiruna, Sweden: Best for a short northern lights trip

Best time to visit: September to early April

Swedish Lapland holds a particularly special place in my heart. It's where I saw the northern lights for the very first time, during a trip to Kiruna in February 2023.

I'd only booked two nights in Kiruna, one of which included a northern lights tour with Anders from Outdoor North 67º. Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket! But the gamble paid off, and I was treated to a spellbinding display of auroras dancing across the Arctic sky. I've been hooked ever since.

Kiruna offers a wide range of accommodation, restaurants and activities, making it a convenient base for exploring the region. From here, you can join guided aurora tours, visit the famous Icehotel in Jukkasjärvi or head into the wilderness for dog sledding and snowmobiling adventures.

One of the region's biggest draws is Abisko National Park, around 60 miles (100 kilometers) northwest of Kiruna. Abisko is famous for its so-called "Blue Hole", a local weather phenomenon in which the skies above the national park can be clear, even if the surrounding region (and weather forecast) is cloudy. This is partly thanks to the surrounding mountains, which create a rain shadow effect, reducing the precipitation in the area.

And if you're visiting Abisko, I'd highly recommend taking the chairlift up Mount Nuolja to the Aurora Sky Station. The views across Abisko National Park and the surrounding mountains are spectacular. Just be sure to check the chairlift's operating dates and times before visiting, as it doesn't run throughout the entire season.

My tip: Although my two-night gamble paid off, I wouldn't recommend relying on such a short window if seeing the northern lights is your main goal. If possible, give yourself at least three or four nights to improve your chances of clear skies and aurora activity.

Tromsø, Norway: Best for a city break

Best time to visit: September to early April

If you want to experience the northern lights without giving up the comforts of city life, Tromsø is hard to beat.

Located high above the Arctic Circle in northern Norway, Tromsø sits beneath the auroral oval, the region surrounding Earth's magnetic poles where auroras occur most frequently.

What I particularly like about Tromsø is that it offers the best of both worlds. You have a lively city with excellent restaurants, cafes, shops, museums and accommodation, while spectacular mountains and wilderness are only a short journey away.

There's also a huge range of northern lights tours available, from small-group photography excursions to longer aurora-chasing adventures.

My tip: Tromsø is ideal if you want to combine northern lights hunting with a city break holiday. I'd recommend booking at least one guided aurora tour, particularly if the local weather forecast looks challenging.

The Norwegian coast: Best for a scenic Arctic voyage

Best time to visit: September to March

If there's one northern lights experience I'd encourage people to consider, it's sailing along the Norwegian coast.

I've been fortunate enough to travel along this extraordinary coastline on several occasions, and there's something very special about watching the northern lights from the deck of a ship, surrounded by good company, mountains, fjords and the dark Arctic sea.

Operators such as Hurtigruten and HX offer voyages along the Norwegian coast, combining opportunities to see the northern lights with some of the most spectacular scenery in Europe. While Hurtigruten operates coastal voyages calling at towns and communities along the route, HX offers expedition-style experiences with a focus on exploring the natural environment.

Rather than staying in one location, you'll travel through different coastal landscapes, with opportunities to experience Arctic wildlife, local culture and winter excursions along the way.

And then, of course, there's the possibility of the northern lights appearing overhead.

However, there's an important trade-off. Unlike a land-based aurora chase, a ship can't simply drive inland to escape coastal cloud cover. You're largely dependent on the weather along your route, although traveling through different regions over several nights gives you multiple opportunities.

Hurtigruten also offers a Northern Lights Promise on qualifying voyages, providing a complimentary return voyage if the lights aren't officially sighted during your trip. Be sure to check the eligibility requirements and terms before booking.

My tip: Choose a Norwegian coastal voyage because you want to experience the coastline itself. The scenery, communities and Arctic landscapes make it a remarkable journey regardless of auroras.

Finnish Lapland: Best for a winter wonderland getaway

Best time to visit: September to March

If you dream of a northern lights holiday involving snow-covered forests, cozy cabins and perhaps even watching auroras from a glass-roofed igloo, Finnish Lapland could be the perfect choice.

Northern Finland lies beneath the auroral oval, making it a popular destination for aurora chasers. Places such as Inari, Saariselkä and Ivalo offer excellent access to dark skies and Arctic wilderness.

Rovaniemi, the official hometown of Santa Claus, is another popular option, particularly for families, although it's worth traveling away from the city's lights for the best views.

My tip: For a quieter, more wilderness-focused escape, I'd look at northern Lapland around Inari or Saariselkä. If you're traveling with children or want a more activity-packed holiday, Rovaniemi may be a better fit.

Iceland: Best for volcanoes, glaciers and natural wonders

Iceland is one of the most extraordinary places I've ever visited. What makes it particularly special is the sheer variety of landscapes packed into one country, from towering waterfalls and vast glaciers to active volcanoes, black-sand beaches and steaming geothermal pools. There's an incredible amount to explore between northern lights hunting sessions.

But there's a catch.

Iceland's notoriously changeable weather and frequent cloud cover can make aurora hunting challenging. For that reason, I'd consider Iceland one of the riskier destinations on this list if your main objective is seeing the northern lights.

Iceland's landscapes provide some of the most spectacular backdrops imaginable for aurora photography, and when the skies cooperate, the results can be breathtaking.

The key is flexibility. I'd recommend giving yourself several nights and booking a northern lights tour that can travel in search of clearer skies rather than relying on a single fixed viewing location.

And while I've visited Iceland myself, I haven't been there specifically to chase auroras. What I can say from experience is that the country is absolutely worth visiting regardless of whether the lights appear.

My tip: Visit Iceland because you want to see Iceland, not just the northern lights. Explore its waterfalls, glaciers and volcanic landscapes, and treat any aurora sightings as an extraordinary bonus.

Fairbanks, Alaska: Best for a U.S. aurora getaway

Best time to visit: September to March

For U.S.-based travelers dreaming of seeing the northern lights, Fairbanks is a more convenient travel destination than Scandinavia.

Located in Alaska's interior, Fairbanks sits beneath the auroral oval. Its inland location is a major advantage compared to many coastal Arctic destinations; Fairbanks generally experiences less precipitation and more opportunities for clearer skies.

The official aurora-viewing season runs from Aug. 21 to April 21, providing a long window for planning a trip. However, if you're visiting in late August or early September, be prepared for some late nights. With daylight still lingering well into the evening, the sky may not become dark enough for good aurora viewing until around midnight or later.

The advantage of visiting earlier in the season is that temperatures are generally much milder compared to in the depths of winter. But if you would prefer longer nights and more opportunities to spot auroras, consider a trip between late September and March.

Yellowknife, Canada: Best for a Canadian aurora getaway

Best time to visit: Mid-August to late September and mid-November to early April

For Canadian travelers hoping to see the northern lights, Yellowknife offers an incredible aurora-viewing destination without the need to travel overseas.

Situated beneath the auroral oval, Yellowknife benefits from a relatively dry continental climate, with plenty of opportunities for clear skies compared with some coastal Arctic locations.

However, timing your visit carefully can make a difference. Although auroras are visible throughout the dark months, late October and early November are generally a less favorable period for a dedicated aurora trip. As temperatures drop, heavy cloud systems move through the area, making sightings more challenging. Indeed, some tour operators temporarily reduce their activities during this period. This is when the region receives most of its snowfall, so shifting your aurora viewing plans before or after this period gives you considerably better visibility.

My tip: Consider booking a multi-night package or several guided outings to give yourself more opportunities if the weather doesn't cooperate.

When is the best time to see the northern lights?

The northern lights occur throughout the year, but you need sufficiently dark skies to see them. That's why the main aurora tourism season across much of the Arctic runs from roughly late August or September through March or early April.

March and September are particularly good months for aurora hunting, thanks to a seasonal boost in geomagnetic activity around the spring and autumn equinoxes. This is partly explained by the Russell-McPherron effect, which describes how the changing orientation of Earth's magnetic field relative to the magnetic field carried by the solar wind makes geomagnetic disturbances more likely around the equinoxes. A 75-year study by retired NASA solar physicist David Hathaway shows that March has more geomagnetically active days than any other month of the year (with October a close second), according to Spaceweather.com.

But personally, I prefer hunting for auroras in the depths of winter, particularly December and January, when the long, dark nights give me plenty of opportunities to look for the lights. Yes, it's much colder, but I love the snowy Arctic landscapes, and I'd much rather be standing in a winter wonderland than battling driving rain!

Frequently asked questions

Whether you are a seasoned astronomer or a newcomer to the hobby, the best stargazing apps have the potential to seriously enhance your skywatching experience. But it's easy to overlook just how useful these portable programs can be.

That's why we've put together this guide to getting the best use out of stargazing apps, from identifying stars and constellations through to seeking out dark sky sites and beyond. You will wonder how you ever managed without them.

So read on and get ready to take your stargazing to the next level. And if you're wondering how else technology can take the work out of skywatching, we've also rounded up the best smart telescopes.

Using stargazing apps

Before we explore specific uses, there are a few things you need to know about using the best stargazing apps on your Apple or Android device.

Firstly, while some apps support offline use, you'll typically need a mobile or Wi-Fi signal with data to make the most of these apps.

Also, some apps lock certain features behind a paywall. Pay for Stellarium Plus, for example, and you get an additional 2 million deep sky objects, the ability to connect to certain telescopes and more.

Finally, while many stargazing apps are relatively intuitive, we'd recommend you familiarize yourself with them at home before taking them out into the field.

Identifying stars in the field

One of the most common and convenient uses for stargazing apps is identifying stars, constellations and more, just by pointing your phone's camera at them.

It really is that simple. Take Sky Tonight, which we think is the best stargazing app for AR (augmented reality). Launch the app, grant it camera access and turn it towards the object you want to identify. The name will appear on screen and you can also tap to learn more about it, whether it's a star, constellation, planet or nebula.

Conversely, you can also use the app to find specific objects in the sky. Want to view Uranus at opposition this Nov. 25 but aren't sure where to look? Search for it in Sky Tonight and the app will point you to it.

Identifiying stars from photographs

Being able to identify night sky objects in the field is a real boon, but what if you've already taken a photograph and want to identify which stars were visible?

That's where apps like Sky Walk 2 come in. If possible, you should return to the location where the photograph was taken, but if that's not possible, you can input GPS co-ordinates and Sky Walk 2 will show you the view from that location.

Next, using the clock icon and slider, alter the date to the exact time you took the photograph (or as near as possible). You will then be shown the night sky as it was at the time. You can now tap on the star or stars you want to identify and Sky Walk 2 will tell you the name.

Sky Walk 2 isn't the only app to offer such a facility, but in Sky Walk 2's case this feature is present in the free version of the app.

Finding dark sky sites

It's a sad fact that light pollution has made it harder for astronomers to study the night sky. While the planets in our solar system are still visible, sky glow obscures more distant objects, such as fainter stars.

You could travel to a dark sky reserve but, with the aid of one of several stargazing apps, it is also possible to find dark sky sites closer to home.

Apps like Sky Safari and the simply named Light Pollution Map will show you the light pollution levels locally and globally, estimated on the Bortle scale. The latter app colors the map, with pink the most light pollution and black the least.

In just a few seconds you can find out how light polluted your local area is, and use the map to find a location nearby where the sky is dark, or at least darker.

Planning a stargazing trip

Are you planning a stargazing trip? Then you'll be happy to hear there's an app for that. There are several, in fact, but Sky Safari has all you need to plan your next outing. You can create observation lists, find out when and where objects are visible, and while it won't book your tickets for you, it comes close.

Our reviewer Jamie Carter used the app to plan his observations of conjunctions, specific moon views and astrophotography opportunities. Coupled with its light pollution map, it will be a huge help in putting together an itinerary for your skywatching trip.

Troubleshooting stargazing apps

Hopefully you'll have a smooth experience, but if you're having issues, here are a few things to try.

• Take your phone out of its case. Magnetic clasps can interfere with internal sensors.
• Make sure location services are enabled. Many apps use GPS to show you the correct view.
• Check your phone's clock. If your clock is not set accurately, apps may display an incorrect sky
• Swoop your phone in a figure eight motion. This can help calibrate your phone's "compass".
• Make sure you have a signal, and that data is enabled. Unless the app has an offline mode you will still need a connection. Signal may be poor at dark sky sites.
• Check each app's permissions. Location aside, Augmented Reality (AR) stargazing apps will need camera access.

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

What looks like a neon pink treble clef floating out in space is actually a bizarre source of radio waves spotted deep in the cosmos.

What is it?

Scientists using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have peered far out into space to look at strange radio waves coming from what they have nicknamed the "treble clef" because of its distinct shape, which looks a lot like the musical notation.

Using Chandra, as well as the German Extended RÖntgen Survey with an Imaging Telescope Array (eROSITA) X-ray telescope, researchers looking at this strange sight spotted a big cloud of blue gas, which we can see in this image, along with radio signals (seen here in bright pink). They think that this object is actually a huge galaxy cluster made up of two different clusters that are in the process of merging.

Why is it incredible?

The researchers think they may have gotten to the bottom of where these radio waves are coming from, they report in a new study.

The team thinks that the treble clef-shaped radio signals were created by an outburst from a supermassive black hole. They believe that this outburst pushed clouds of charged particles and magnetic fields away from the galaxy cluster's center, producing bright radio waves.

According to the scientists, following this bright outburst, there was likely an extreme collision between two galaxy clusters. This cosmic smash-up either compressed or somehow reenergized these charged particles to amplify the radio signal.

When we see beautiful images of objects in space such as this, they can seem just like peaceful, colorful, cosmic clouds. But when you look a bit deeper, these spectacular scenes can actually be evidence of violent, chaotic events.

This work was described in a study published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.