On Oct. 14, 1947, Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier for the first time!

Chuck Yeager was a test pilot for the U.S. Air Force who made history by flying an aircraft faster than the speed of sound.

Yeager made his historic flight in a Bell X-1 rocket plane that he named "Glamorous Glennis" after his wife. Yeager had broken two ribs the night before when he fell off a horse, but that didn't stop him!

His aircraft was dropped from a Boeing B-29 bomber before accelerating to a speed of Mach 1.07, which is about 821 mph (1,321 km/h). The speed of sound, Mach 1, is about 760 mph (1,223 km/h).

Why it mattered

Before Yeager made his daring Bell X-1 flight, piloted supersonic flight was only a concept.

The Bell X-1 began its life as the XS-1, a cooperative project between NASA's predecessor the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and the U.S. Army Forces, which would evolve later into the U.S. Air Force. Bell Aircraft won the contract to build the experimental plane in March 1945 and was delivered in December of that year.

The final vehicle was a single-piloted aircraft that was just over 30 feet (nearly 11 meters) long, had a wingspan of about 28 feet (8.5 m) and powered by a rocket engine using liquid oxygen and ethyl alcohol in water as propellant. Yeager's historic flight followed a series of unpowered glide tests, incuding three by Yeager himself in August of 1947, followed by ever faster subsonic powered flights.

"The first generation X-1 aircraft changed aviation history in numerous ways, and not simply because they were the first aircraft to fly faster than the speed of sound," NASA wrote in an overview. "Rather, they established the concept of the research aircraft, built solely for experimental purposes, and unhampered by any military or commercial requirements."

According to NASA, Yeager's history-making flight wasn't immediately known to the public, a departure from the agency's X-plane tests today.

"Yeager reached a speed of Mach 1.06 at 43,000 feet, becoming the first man to fly supersonic. Air Force officials designated the flight and all data as Top Secret two hours later," NASA wrote. "Not until December 1947 would word leak of the achievement, and it was not until March 1948 that the U.S. Air Force officially confirmed the achievement."

Yeager's flight and the X-1 program laid the foundation for an ever-more-ambitious X-plane program that continues at NASA and in the U.S. military today.

NASA's latest X-plane is the X-59 supersonic plane, which is designed to test supersonic flight with quieter sonic booms as way to open up supersonic travel over land for wider commercial use.

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Don't expect any of the Artemis II moon astronauts to fly again soon.

On Tuesday (Oct. 13), NASA announced that Artemis II mission specialist Christina Koch will become the agency’s acting deputy chief engineer, effective Nov. 1.

"With this appointment, Koch will transition to management astronaut status and will no longer be eligible for future spaceflight assignments," NASA officials wrote in a statement on Tuesday.

Her three Artemis II crewmates had already shared their next moves, none of which put another spaceflight in play in the near future.

Mission commander Reid Wiseman and pilot Victor Glover, both of NASA, became "emeritus" astronauts last month, a role that seems to include planning, advising and mentoring duties but no flights into the final frontier. Glover will also work full-time at his alma mater, the California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) in San Luis Obispo.

"I'm grateful they will continue sharing what they learned with our astronauts, flight controllers and engineers as we prepare for Artemis III in 2027 and the missions that follow," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said of Wiseman and Glover in a Sept. 9 statement.

The fourth Artemis II astronaut, mission specialist Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency, announced a change of his own in July: He planned to become a reservist in the Royal Canadian Air Force, where he's also a colonel. That move became official last month as well.

Artemis II sent the four astronauts on a 10-day trip around the moon in an Orion capsule. It was the first crewed mission of NASA's Artemis program and the first human spaceflight beyond low Earth orbit (LEO) since Apollo 17 in 1972.

As Isaacman mentioned, the next mission in the program is Artemis III, a docking test in LEO scheduled to launch next year. The Artemis III crew, which was announced in June, consists of NASA astronauts Randy Bresnik (commander), Andre Douglas and Frank Rubio (mission specialists) and Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency (pilot).

If all goes according to plan, Artemis IV will land astronauts near the moon's south pole in 2028. We don't yet know who will fly on that historic mission.

Koch will succeed current NASA Deputy Chief Engineer Katherine Van Hooser, who will retire on Oct. 21 after more than 35 years of work for the space agency.

"In her new role, Koch will help lead NASA's engineering community, supporting technical oversight, mission readiness, and engineering excellence across the agency's programs and projects," agency officials said in Tuesday's statement.

Koch is a natural choice for the job, given her education and experience. She holds bachelor's degrees in electrical engineering and physics and a master's in electrical engineering, and she began her NASA career as an electrical engineer at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

NASA selected Koch as an astronaut candidate in 2013. She has two spaceflights under her belt: Artemis II and a 328-day-flight to the International Space Station that launched in March 2019. That's the longest space mission ever conducted by a woman, and it featured the first three all-female spacewalks, which Koch conducted with fellow NASA astronaut Jessica Meir.

"Christina has seen NASA engineering from both sides of the equation: developing complex systems on the ground and trusting them with her life in space," Isaacman said in the Tuesday statement.

"After spending nearly a year living and working aboard the International Space Station and helping lead America back around the moon on Artemis II this year, she brings an extraordinary combination of technical expertise, operational experience, and judgment to this role," he added. "I am excited to see the impact she will have across NASA as we return Americans to the lunar surface, build the Moon Base, get underway on nuclear power in space, and develop the capabilities that will ultimately take us on to Mars."

The truth is once again out there, as Disney & Hulu confirmed today that they have picked up a new "The X-Files" show for a full season.

Described as a "reimagining" of the classic series, the project comes from Ryan Coogler, the acclaimed writer and director of "Creed", "Black Panther", and "Sinners", and will star Danielle Deadwyler and Himesh Patel.

The show's premise will sound very familiar to fans of the original, as it centers on "two highly decorated but vastly different FBI agents who form an unlikely bond when they are assigned to a long-shuttered division devoted to cases involving unexplained phenomena."

"I've loved 'The X-Files' for a long time, so getting the chance to write and direct the pilot has meant a great deal to me," said Coogler. "What Chris Carter created is special, and we wanted to honor everything that made the original series connect with so many people while also finding our own way into that world."

Coogler wrote, directed, and executive produced the pilot for this new show, which impressed executives over at Hulu enough to give the show the greenlight. He's certainly got the pedigree when it comes to "spooky", as "Sinners" was a modern horror masterpiece, winning the Best Original Screenplay Oscar at the 2025 Academy Awards. The X-Files is one of the greatest sci-fi shows of all time, and we can't wait to see what a modern take on the classic formula looks like.

Alongside the leads, the cast will include Amy Madigan, Ben Foster, Devery Jacobs, Lochlyn Munro, Tantoo Cardinal, Joel D. Montgrand, Sofia Grace Clifton, and Hollywood legend Steve Buscemi (an inspired casting choice for any show, but especially here. He looks like a man who's seen the truth).

Both Coogler and Hulu are being coy about how this new series will fit into the continuity of the original show. It's being described as a reimagining, but they've stopped short of calling it a reboot, which could leave the door open for Mulder and Scully to return in some capacity.

The original creator of "The X-Files", Chris Carter, is also on board as an executive producer, which is great news for fans who are hoping this new incarnation keeps the spirit of the original alive.

There is no confirmed release date yet, but Ryan Coogler's The X-Files project will launch exclusively on Hulu (US) & Disney+ (UK).

Did you see a gigantic, glowing jellyfish in the night sky early on Tuesday morning (Oct. 13)? If so, it's not an alien invasion (sorry); it was SpaceX launching its latest mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

What is it?

Just before dawn on Tuesday (Oct. 13), a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, carrying to space a robotic Dragon capsule filled with thousands of pounds of cargo.

The liftoff kicked off CRS-35, the 35th mission that SpaceX is flying to the ISS as part of the company's Commercial Resupply Services agreement with NASA. Under the CRS contract, SpaceX has been sending cargo including medical supplies, food, clothing, scientific experiments and more to the space station.

It will take Dragon a couple of days to reach the orbiting lab. If all goes to plan, the capsule will autonomously dock with the ISS' Harmony module around 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) on Thursday (Oct. 15).

Why is it incredible?

Imagine you wake up early in the morning. Perhaps you're rushing to get ready for work, or maybe you're just having a quiet moment with your coffee in the pre-dawn twilight. Then imagine you look out the window and see what looks like a gigantic, glowing jellyfish made up of orange and blue light and gas stretching across much of the slowly brightening sky.

If you're not expecting such a sight, or it's your first time seeing the remnants of a rocket launch, this would probably catch you off-guard. But don't worry; there isn't anything dangerous about this sight.

This "jellyfish" is created by the water vapor and carbon dioxide that are expelled by the rocket after takeoff. In the cold upper skies, those gases start to freeze into ice crystals, flowing off of and behind the rocket. If a launch occurs around dusk or dawn, sunlight hits this flowing plume of frozen gases while the ground and skies remain mostly dark, resulting in a uniquely spectacular (albeit, unusual) view.

Nearly three months after surviving its launch to space and a tumultuous trial at sea, the first Starship spacecraft to survive its ocean splashdown has returned to Starbase.

SpaceX shared new photos and video of Ship 40, the Starship upper stage that launched on the developing vehicle's 13th flight test, as it completed the final stretch of its journey back to the company's South Texas facility. Now, the towering spacecraft is upright inside Starbase's Megabay hangar alongside a trio of its successor spacecraft, themselves bound for space, but not before an evaluation of Ship 40 can lend SpaceX engineers some valuable insights.

Ship 40 is the first Starship upper stage to return to its launch site after flying in space, offering SpaceX engineers an unprecedented opportunity to study hardware that survived the intense conditions of atmospheric reentry. "It will provide first-of-its-kind data on a flown Starship heatshield, Raptor engines, avionics, and more," SpaceX wrote in a post on X Oct. 13.

The spacecraft launched atop SpaceX's Super Heavy Booster 20 on July 24, and completed a suborbital flight that ended with a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean. Unlike previous Ship splashdowns, though, which have exploded after tipping over into the water, Ship 40 remained largely intact and afloat.

That unexpected survival prompted SpaceX to engage in an ambitious recovery effort that included towing the 171-foot (52 meter) stage though rough seas over the course of 24 days. At the time, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk expressed doubts that the company's recovery efforts would be successful. Despite the challenging conditions, Ship arrived off the shores of Australia's Christmas Island in August.

Once in the calmer Christmas waters, SpaceX engineers took time to perform a vehicle inspection and collect a number of heat shield samples from the spacecraft's belly. From there, Ship 40 was loaded onto "Forte," a massive, semi-submersible transport ship for the long seaward journey back to Texas.

Forte arrived at the Port of Brownsville on Oct. 7, wrapping up the longest stretch of Ship 40's return nearly two months after its liftoff. The spacecraft was subsequently transported over land back to Starbase and positioned for reorientation outside the Megabay. It has since been lifted to a vertical position and moved inside the bay alongside three other Ship upper stages still under assembly.

While SpaceX has successfully recovered a trio of Super Heavy boosters using the mechanical arms of its Starbase launch tower, the company has yet to return a Starship upper stage to its launch site under its own power. The return of Ship 40 will give SpaceX engineers the opportunity to study the vehicle from top to bottom as they fine-tune the systems needed to do just that. Its return marks a milestone in SpaceX's efforts to develop Starship as a rapidly reusable launch vehicle, with lessons from the recovered spacecraft potentially informing future vehicle designs and recovery operations.

Ship 40's immediate successor, Ship 41, launched on Flight 14 before 40's return to Starbase. Although 41 didn't survive its splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, the mission marked Starship's first orbital flight, and included the successful deployment of 26 next-generation Starlink V3 satellites.

Musk has said Starship's next launch, Flight 15, could feature the first attempt to catch the Ship upper stage using the same chopstick-like arms on the vehicle's launch tower, provided the spacecraft meets the necessary conditions for a safe return. SpaceX has not announced an official launch date for Starship's next flight, but, based on the testing progress of the Ship and Super Heavy in line for the mission, it is likely to fly within the next month or so.

NASA's DART mission made a cosmic mess four years ago — and now a new spacecraft is ready to scout out exactly what the first-of-its-kind collision accomplished.

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft slammed into a small space rock called Dimorphos on Sept. 26, 2022, in humanity's first test of planetary defense. That's the field dedicated to protecting Earth from the possibility of a calamitous asteroid impact, and DART mimicked how humans could change the orbit of a threatening space rock, taking it off its collision course.

The mission definitely succeeded, shortening the little asteroid's orbit around a larger rock called Didymos by about 33 minutes. But in order to make the most of the experiment, scientists ensured a second spacecraft would follow DART at a more leisurely pace. That decision will pay off this month with the arrival of a European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft dubbed Hera, which launched in October 2024, two years after DART's impact.

"Hera wants to be the detective, like Inspector Colombo, going back to the crash scene," said Patrick Michel, a planetary scientist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and principal investigator of the Hera mission.

Scientists have been able to do limited monitoring of the Didymos system over the years with telescopes both on the ground and in space. That's how they calculated the basic change to the orbit, and they've built a basic sketch of what happened.

"We know that there was a lot of material kicked up," said Angela Stickle, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory affiliated with both missions. "We know that we probably left a pretty significant mark on Dimorphos."

But the story isn't over and scientists are far from satisfied. No one knows how big a crater the impact left, or whether it completely rearranged all the asteroid's boulders. There are hints Dimorphos is now tumbling, and material may have moved between it and the larger Didymos.

Even the change to the orbit is complicated, said Cristina Thomas, a planetary astronomer at Northern Arizona University affiliated with both missions: The time Dimorphos took to circle Didymos was still changing some six months after impact, for reasons that aren't clear. "This thing that we thought was going to be very cut and dry turned out to be really interesting and complicated," Thomas said.

That's where Hera comes in, with its first arrival maneuver scheduled for Oct. 15. During three careful braking maneuvers, the spacecraft will slow down and approach the space rocks. Assuming everything goes smoothly, by early November, the spacecraft will come within 20 miles (30 kilometers) of the two rocks and begin its early science observations, then move even closer in early December.

Mission personnel can't wait for their first glimpses of Dimorphos — the first time scientists will visit someplace they've seen before without knowing what they'll find. "For us, it's like a new world," Michel said. "The new image won't have anything to do with the previous one, so that's really exciting."

In addition to mapping the two asteroids and seeing what kind of crater the impact left, scientists will also have their eyes peeled for any pieces of the DART spacecraft, although they don't expect to find anything. "We were coming in really fast, so typically, the whole spacecraft you would expect to just kind of shatter or melt," Stickle said. The only sliver of possibility is that part of the two long solar panels stretching off the spacecraft may have snapped off and survived. (The appendages may also have turned the crater shape into an oval.)

In January, once Hera has settled in, it will release two tiny companions that have piggybacked out to Dimorphos. One, called Milani, will identify the composition of materials on and around Dimorphos. The other, Juventas, will use radar to peer inside Dimorphos — the first time scientists have ever been able to study the interior of a space rock directly. Juventas will end its mission by landing on the small asteroid, and Milani may attempt a landing as well.

The trio of spacecraft will operate in tandem throughout early 2027, and the main spacecraft will operate at least through September 2027. All told, they will give scientists an unprecedented look at the pair of asteroids — the first binary asteroid a spacecraft has ever studied in detail. And the Didymos–Dimorphos duo is a good one to visit first. "It's very ordinary, and I mean that in the best possible way," Thomas said.

Ordinary except, of course, for that time humans punched it, opening the door for the Hera mission to explore the previously unremarkable rocks. And finally, that moment is just around the corner.

"Nothing really worries me," Michel said of the spacecraft's arrival. "It's really just excitement now."

Now you see them, now you don't. Scientists have discovered that some of the universe's most powerful explosions, hypernovas, may not happen at all.

These explosions, known as hypernovas, were first proposed to explain unusual stars in the halo of our galaxy, the Milky Way, and in a neighboring dwarf galaxy. It was suggested that these stars could only form from the debris of an explosion 10 times more powerful than the 'average' supernovas.

The team behind these new findings suggests that ordinary supernovas could actually account for these stars when the uneven or non-spherical way they fling out matter is considered.

"If we look at a supernova today, the star's materials are not spread evenly. Oxygen might predominantly fly in one direction, sulphur in another. New stars might form from a mix of pieces of the supernova, not its overall mix of elements," team leader Anmol Aggarwal of University College London (UCL) said in a statement. "We developed mathematical models that took account of this and found in all cases that stars with a very unusual mix of ingredients were most likely formed from ordinary supernovas.

"All the evidence we see for hypernovae is suddenly gone."

Hypernova vs. supernova: What's the difference?

Supernovas occur when massive stars run out of fuel for nuclear fusion, effectively ending their lives. This results in the star's core collapsing, sending shockwaves rippling through its outer layers, causing explosions we call supernovas.

Hypernovas are proposed to occur in a similar way, but for an even more massive and rapidly spinning star. This results in a vastly more energetic explosion.

When supernovas or hypernovas happen, they fling elements that the dying star has forged throughout its lifetime into their surrounding cosmic environments. These elements eventually become the building blocks of the next generation of stars.

That means analyzing the chemical signatures of stars can tell stellar scientists about their family histories.

"Just before a star goes supernova, it has layers like an onion, with heavier elements at the center and lighter ones further out. Our model looks at how much material from each layer or each region would be needed to fit the observed star," Ralph Schoenrich of Mullard Space Science Laboratory at UCL said. "We still don’t know how well the supernova material gets mixed before it forms new stars. That is despite decades of work in this area. Our research suggests some mixing goes on, but incomplete mixing.

"We need to take this into account in our models of how chemicals evolve in galaxies and of how the interstellar medium works."

The team began their investigation by observing four stars that are suspected to have been forged from material ejected in a hypernova explosion. Three of those stars were more likely to have been created after supernovas, the team concluded.

The scientists then studied a single red giant star in the halo of the Milky Way with an odd chemical composition, including an overabundance of heavy elements like silver and uranium. These are too heavy to be forged in the cores of all but the most massive stars, the kind of stars that go hypernova.

Such elements could also be created when two massive and dense stellar remnants called neutron stars collide and merge. However, this star doesn't have certain other heavy elements that would be present after a neutron star collision.

This team considered the origins of this star using a model of the Milky Way that has been rapidly enriched with elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, which astronomers call metals, via the death of the first generation of stars.

The rapid speed at which the star spins and the fact it exists at the outskirts of the Milky Way led the team to conclude that this star escaped a metal-poor dwarf galaxy and was eventually dragged into our galaxy. The event that created it, they concluded, was the combination of a neutron star merger and an ordinary supernova.

No hypernova required. An asymmetrical supernova would be enough, the scientists found.

The team's research was published as two papers in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

On Oct. 13, 1773, a French astronomer named Charles Messier discovered the "Whirlpool Galaxy," also known as Messier 51, or M51.

Charles Messier was scanning the sky for objects that could confuse comet hunters when he catalogued the galaxy as M51. However, Messier wasn't able to see the spiral structure, and he didn't identify it as a galaxy.

Seventy-two years later, another astronomer named William Parsons saw the whirlpool shape, but he thought it was a spiral nebula. Eventually, Edwin Hubble found out that M51 and other features like it were actually galaxies.

Why it mattered

The Whirlpool Galaxy is located about 31 million light-years from Earth and just might be the textbook case of a spiral galaxy. But in 1773, it was just one of 51 (at the time of its discovery) of "comet-like 'objects to avoid'" in the night sky.

The Whirlpool Galaxy's designation as M51 marks it as the 51st non-comet object catalogued by Messier, who was the chief astronomer of the Marine Observatory in Paris dedicated to studying comets. According to a NASA account, Messier stumbled across his first non-comet object, M1 (also known as the Crab Nebula), while studying a comet in 1758. The objects looked like fuzzy blobs like comets, but didn't move like a comet. By 1773, at the time he first spotted M51, he had catalogued over four dozen such objects to help prevent astronomers from mistaking them for comets.

The Whirlpool Galaxy appears as a dazzling spiral in images by the Hubble Space Telescope, and has a magnitude of 8.4 on the brightness scale used by astronomers. That means it can be observed through a small telescope ("most easily during May," NASA says) in the constellation Venatici (the Hunting Dogs) in the northern sky, just below the handle of the Big Dipper star pattern.

Scientists suspsect the Whirpool Galaxy gets is striking spiral shape from a close interaction with its neighbor galaxy NGC 5195, which may have passed through M51's main disk about 500 million years ago, scientists with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have said.

"This gravitational tug of war may also have triggered an increased level of star formation in M51," they added in a statement. "The companion galaxy's pull would be inducing extra starbirth by compressing gas, jump-starting the process by which stars form."

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Nostalgia is a hell of a thing, especially when it comes to sci-fi. For "Star Trek" fans wanting to mark the franchise's 60th anniversary this year, a geeky pilgrimage to upstate New York should be on the cards. Why? Because alongside the splendid autumnal colors, they can steer over to Ticonderoga to behold the newly installed Galileo shuttlecraft.

After a complete two-year restoration project in 2012 headed up by superfan and collector Adam Schneider, this iconic fictional spacecraft, seen by millions in seven episodes over three seasons of "Star Trek: The Original Series," was recently relocated from its former home at the Johnson Space Center Museum in Houston, Texas.

It's now on permanent loan to James Cawley and his Star Trek Original Series Set Tour in historic downtown Ticonderoga, New York, where it joins a family of painstakingly detailed sets based on the official "Star Trek" blueprints.

'Galileo is still the property of Space Center, and it was on display there since 2013," Schneider tells Space. "It went to USS Intrepid for the 50th anniversary of 'Star Trek,' displayed under the Enterprise Space Shuttle. You had the Enterprise with Enterprise's little shuttle Galileo adjacent, which was an extraordinary picture. It went back to Space Center, but it takes up an enormous amount of room, and they took it off display after 8 years."

It seemed a shame to have the shuttle out of sight, so Schneider got to work finding a new home for the shuttle. "Since I was on the board, I tried to figure out a place where it could be aimed", recounts Schneider. "The Star Trek Tour made the most sense, so I worked with Space Center to relocate it, and it arrived a couple of years ago."

Hoping to give the restored relic its own private docking bay due to its enormity, faithful fans raised hundreds of thousands of dollars via a Kickstarter campaign led by Brian Mix and David Harvey, and built a beautiful building addition for Galileo to be safely ensconced in.

"My wife Leslie and I had been tending over the Galileo for a number of years, and it's now successfully displayed there in New York for all to see," Schneider adds. "It's an extraordinary thing to see person if you have not. It's not the size of a chair, it’s the size of a bus. It looks gorgeous in its new space, and if you’re a space aficionado or Star Trek aficionado, that’s even more reason to get involved with this thing."

Opening weekend for the general public at Star Trek Tours to see the newest member of the museum was Sept. 18-20, 2026, and the Galileo was the star attraction. Branded Trekonderoga Weekend, the unveiling ceremony was attended by Assemblymen Dan Stec and Dan Simpson, and 'Trek' luminaries George Takei, Jonathan Frakes, and Brent Spiner.

"We're certainly thrilled that we were able to work with Adam and NASA to get it here permanently," Cawley tells Space. "Then to get it on display properly and share it with all the fans and make sure that it's on exhibit for many years to come. We’re just outside of the village of Lake George, so we’re part of the greater Lake George tourism region.

"You've seen it on television, and now you’re the caretaker of it. What an honor to be able to do that. It’s the simplicity of the Galileo that makes it so unique. It's Matt Jefferies' whole design ethic for the original series. Less is more. It catches your eye in a specific way. It has a blocky-type silhouette and actually it really complements the Enterprise because you really see the shape difference. Everything has that mid-century modern aesthetic. It's just timeless."

For Cawley, being custodian and host of the screen-used Galileo is like a dream. This 23-foot-long mock-up was part of the USS Enterprise's basic design and was rescued from demolition some 14 years ago when Schneider purchased it at a 2012 memorabilia auction for $61,000.

"We had a great rousing opening weekend with it, and business has been very steady into October with people asking about it. It's going to be a big cornerstone to the tour. I think people are becoming aware that it’s here and they’re making a pilgrimage to come because of it."

For more prices, hours, and more information on the Star Trek Original Series Set Tour in Ticonderoga, New York, visit them at https://startrektour.com or call 518-503-5497. You can also see the Galileo in action in Star Trek: The Original Series on Paramount+.

NEW YORK — Set your phasers to back-to-school, space fans. Star Trek is going back to Starfleet Academy for season 2, and we finally have a release date.

The sophomore season of "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy" will warp back to the small screen in March 2027 when the limited series returns for its final season on Paramount+. The series, which follows a class of cadets balancing Starfleet classes, space adventures (and yes, some love) in the 32nd century, will return with its full cast and even add new faces, showrunners announced at a panel at New York Comic Con 2026 on Saturday (Oct. 10).

"Season one is about letting go of who you were in the past to start again at Starfleet Academy," executive producer and co-showrunner Noga Landau said in the Star Trek panel. "Season two is about thinking that you knew who you were, only to realize that as you grow older, your life is going to go in directions you didn't expect, and you're going to have to shift your perception of yourself. So it's really about sophomore year, right?"

Holly Hunter returns as academy chancellor Nahla Ake, a long-lived half-Lanthanite, who will have to face a familiar face in her estranged father, Nyk Ake, portrayed by Bill Nighy (Living, About Time) in season two.

"He plays my full lanthanide father, who has basically, if he wants, can achieve immortality," Hunter said, dropping a big preview about her character in season two. "He plays my dad, and I play me ... and my twin, my twin sister. Very fun."

Also joining this year's Starfleet Academy class is Rosemarie DeWitt (Untamed, The Staircase) as Laytha Sadal, the First Lady of Betazed (and mother of Academy cadet Tarima).

"We have had such a blast," Hunter said of working with the entire cast of Starfleet Academy. "It was a tremendous honor and learning experience for me to do the show for two seasons, and I just really am excited about the second season because there's so much more intimacy that we just comfortably felt with each other over those 10 episodes."

In season one, Starfleet Academy brought back Trek's favorite Emergency Medical Hologram, The Doctor (Robert Picardo), then gave the 800-year-old Star Trek: Voyager physician a daughter in the photonic Sam (Kerrice Brooks) and a Klingon medical student, Jay-Den Kraag (Karim Diané), to train.

"His future existence is forever changed. Nothing will ever be the same for the character," Picardo said in the panel. "The shock of that, and how that changed the character, [...] informs all of season two. My primary relationships are now with my daughter and of course with Jay-Den, as I'm mentoring him as a future physician, and we have some terrific scenes together as well."

Executive producer and co-showrunner Alex Kurtzman promised more space action in season two of Starfleet Academy and showed an exclusive teaser clip of Academy cadets Caleb (Sandro Rosta), Genesis (Bella Shepard) and Sam as they race to recover data from a crashed spaceship on their first away mission. But the best, Kurtzman said, is yet to come when the show's cadets meet up with Nova Squadron, the elite flight team at Starfleet Academy.

"The Nova Squadron episode is amazing on a lot of different levels," Kurtzman said. "We basically did Top Gun in space. "What's available to us now technologically allowed us to go to a place that I don't think we've ever gone to on television before. Certainly not in Star Trek."

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy will return to TV in March 2027 on the Paramount+ streaming platform.

The location of Earth's geographic poles has changed several times over the past 320 million years in a process known as true polar wander, according to measurements of ancient flooding brought about by sea level changes resulting from our planet's crust shifting relative to Earth's spin axis.

Such a shift can affect climate, both on local scales and globally, as regions that were by the poles find themselves moving down to lower latitudes and vice versa. This can then affect atmospheric circulation patterns, which affect climate across the world.

The changes would have affected the environments in which life developed and evolved, from the age of the dinosaurs through to some of our oldest primate ancestors.

True polar wander is not the same as a change in the rotational axis of the Earth. Currently, Earth spins at an angle of 23.4 degrees relative to the plane of its orbit around the sun, and this rotational axis can vary periodically over tens of thousands of years as a result of the Milankovitch cycles caused by the gravitational pull of the sun and planets.

True polar wander is different. Here, the angle of Earth's spin axis does not change relative to its orbital plane. Instead, Earth's crust and mantle shift relative to that rotational axis. This is because Earth is not perfectly spherical. Instead, it is oblate, with Earth's rotation causing the equator to bulge out and the poles to slightly flatten. Because Earth is not spherical, it has multiple axes of inertia, the largest one being aligned with the rotational axis.

These axes need to be balanced to prevent Earth's rotation from becoming chaotic. However, plate tectonics and indeed the Milankovitch cycles can upset that balance of mass, for example by causing more continental crust to congregate in one hemisphere than another.

To rebalance things, Earth's crust and mantle must become decoupled from our planet's core, which stays aligned with the rotational axis. In physical terms, if there is more continental crust in one hemisphere, the crust and mantle might rotate in that direction relative to the rotational axis and the Earth's core in order to balance itself. This sees the geographical locations of the poles change, hence the name 'true polar wander'.

Currently, true polar wander takes place at a rate of 10 centimeters (4 inches) per year, but figuring out when and how fast true polar wander has occurred in the past is not without its difficulties, not least since plate tectonics can mask and even mimic the signal of true polar wander.

Previous studies relied on paleomagnetism, the study of residual magnetic traces in ancient rocks, since the orientation of those magnetic traces would have varied depending upon where that rock was located relative to Earth's magnetic field. Alas, it's not a terribly accurate means of measuring true polar wander and scientists arrived at substantially different conclusions using this technique.

Nevertheless, based on paleomagnetism, scientists had concluded that true polar wander had been negligible, or slow to proceed, in the distant past. However, new results from researchers at the Centre for Planetary Habitability at the University of Oslo in Norway, led by Mathew Domeier, have shown this not to be the case.

Domeier's team looked through the geological record to track how sea level has changed across millions of years. True polar wander would bring about an identifiable pattern in sea-level changes as the oceans reacted in response to changes in the mass distribution of the planet. The sea level changes would be equal but opposite between hemispheres — sea level rises on one side of one hemisphere would be matched by rises on the other side of the opposite hemisphere, creating a 'quadrupolar' effect.

By using statistical modeling on maps of sea level changes across intervals of 10 million years, Domeier's team identified four periods of true polar wander: in the early Jurassic period 190—200 million years ago, the late Jurassic — early Cretaceous period 140—150 million years ago, during the mid-Cretaceous 90—100 million years ago and from the Oligocene period 30 million years ago through to the Miocene 20 million years ago.

The results show that, contrary to established opinion, true polar wander can happen in bursts that are relatively fast on geological timescales, with the results showing that during the episodes of true polar wander the Earth's surface shifted by as much as 0.6 degrees per million years relative to the spin axis. This is slow by human standards, but fairly fast on geological timescales, certainly quicker than plate tectonics.

Domeier's team were also able to rule out a suspected case of true polar wander around 300 million years ago when the last great supercontinent, Pangea, migrated northwards. It turns out that Pangea's movements were entirely due to plate tectonics.

The findings were published on Oct. 1 in the journal Science.

Vision (Paul Bettany) is laying low, working the pumps at an Edinburgh pub at the outset of new eight-part Marvel Television entry "VisionQuest", and understandably so given how much the synthezoid has been through.

Resurrected and restored after being sacrificed for the greater good in "Avengers: Infinity War", albeit as an ever-more-disconnected version of what came before, he now spends every other waking hour retreating into a big white house deep within his mindspace, to chew the fat with AI agents J.A.R.V.I.S. (Brian D’Arcy), F.R.I.D.A.Y. (Orla Brady), D.U.M-E (Henry Lewis), U (Jonathan Sayer) and E.D.I.T.H. (Emily Hampshire), and a wisecracking Ultron (James Spader).

However, the threat posed by bounty hunter Paladin (Todd Stashwick) and the prospect of a reunion with his son conspire to draw him out of his stupor.

Below, we explain the cheapest ways to stream "VisionQuest" online and from anywhere with this VPN.

• Stream securely from anywhere with Surfshark VPN (80% off)

When is the "VisionQuest" streaming release?

"VisionQuest" premieres with a double-header at 9pm ET / 6pm PT on Tuesday, October 13, 2026, exclusively on Disney+.

The following six episodes will materialize on the streaming service at the same time on subsequent Tuesdays.

Originally, "VisionQuest" was due to make its worldwide debut on October 14 but Marvel has confirmed that it'll be out on October 13 in the States.

How To Watch "VisionQuest"

"VisionQuest" is available to stream on Disney+ in the US from October 13.

If you want to stream "VisionQuest" or any of Disney+'s other great films, TV shows and live sports while you're abroad, Surfshark VPN will let you access your subscription from anywhere in the world.

What is the plot of "VisionQuest"?

"VisionQuest" is as much about memory as it is Vision, so densely is MCU lore woven into its worlds-within-worlds plot.

At its heart, it's about Vision's identity crisis. He remains hopelessly devoted to an unreachable love, in thrall to Ultron, and at odds with these memories that will never truly be his own – and that's if they're even real to begin with.

But it's not all exposition and musings on existence, because Paladin is hired by an unknown kingpin to track Vision down so that his technological assets can be stolen.

Are there any "VisionQuest" teasers and trailers?

There are multiple "VisionQuest" trailers, which are sure to jog your memory in different ways.

The show is heavily informed not only by 2021's "WandaVision" but also by 2015's "Avengers: Age of Ultron" and 2024's "Agatha All Along", all three of which may be worth revisiting before embarking on "VisionQuest".

Who are the "VisionQuest" cast and creators?

"VisionQuest" is led by Paul Bettany and James Spader:

• Paul Bettany – Vision
• James Spader – Ultron
• Ruaridh Mollica – Tommy Maximoff/Speed & Thomas Shepherd
• Todd Stashwick – Paladin
• T'Nia Miller – Jocasta
• Lauren Morais – Lisa Molinari
• Orla Brady – F.R.I.D.A.Y.
• Diane Morgan – The Handler
• Polly Frame – Fiona Guthrie
• Henry Lewis & Jonathan Sayer – D.U.M.-E & U:
• Emily Hampshire – E.D.I.T.H.:
• James D'Arcy – J.A.R.V.I.S.

Produced by Marvel Television, "VisionQuest" was directed by Terry Matalas, Christopher J. Byrne, Gandja Monteiro and Vincenzo Natali. Matalas served as the showrunner.

• How to watch 'Disclosure Day' online

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

Rockets are launching to space on a near-daily basis these days, but short of livestreaming a liftoff from the comfort of your Wi-Fi router, relatively few spectators are in the right place and time to see one with their own eyes.

That wasn't the case Tuesday morning (Oct. 13), when SpaceX launched the CRS-35 mission for NASA. A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 6:35 a.m. EDT (1035 GMT), carrying a cargo variant of SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft on the company's 35th commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Following the northward path of the space station's orbit at the time, the rocket flew a trajectory along the United States' East Coast.

Falcon 9's expanding engine plume grew substantially wider than the rocket itself as it climbed in altitude into thinner, less dense air, and was illuminated by the early dawn light, making the sight visible to millions. "You can imagine my surprise when I opened my back door to let the dogs out this morning," Ellen Alence told Space.com. She snapped a pic of the rocket from her farm Colbert, Georgia.

"Many of you are talking about the 'space jellyfish' following this morning's launch from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida," NASA's Kennedy Space Center wrote in a post on X. The post explains the "jellyfish" phenomenon that is sometimes visible during dawn and dusk launches, and included additional photos of the launch.

"A jellyfish happens near sunrise or sunset when the exhaust plume from the rocket becomes brightly illuminated, creating a glowing shape resembling a jellyfish," the post said.

Further up the coast, Richard Mack Wilson-Leigh spotted the flight from Durham, North Carolina. His view of the rocket came just seconds before the vehicle's stage separation, which was followed immediately by the rocket's main booster performing an engine burn to right its trajectory for landing back at the Cape. Wilson-Leigh said that part caught him off guard more than the initial site of the rocket. "I thought it blew up at first," he jokingly told Space.com.

"At first, I thought it was a comet," Wilson-Leigh said. "My mind jumped between two thoughts: that is just beautiful beyond belief, and it is the end of the world.”

That stage separation came about 2.5 minutes after liftoff, and put on a dazzling display for those awake to see it this morning. As Falcon 9's booster began the journey to its landing zone, the rocket's second stage continued onward to orbit with Dragon and the capsule's 6,300 pounds (2,860 kilograms) of cargo for the ISS.

The spacecraft will spend roughly two days catching up to the ISS, where a recent personnel rotation swapped the astronauts of SpaceX's Crew-12 mission with those of Crew-13. The latter arrived aboard the orbital laboratory Oct. 1, which was followed several days later by the return of Crew-12 to Earth on Oct. 8.

The Dragon carrying the contents of CRS-35's manifest will arrive at the station Thursday morning (Oct. 15), and will autonomously dock to the space-facing port of the Harmony module at around 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT). Coverage of the arrival here at Space.com beginning at 9:15 a.m. EDT (1315 GMT).

Reentry and orbital-manufacturing provider Varda Space Industries is operating two spacecraft in orbit right now, with another expected to launch "in the coming days" and seven more next year.

The Los Angeles-area startup, which bills itself as one of just two companies that can currently do commercial reentry from space, successfully launched its latest two refrigerator-sized spacecraft aboard SpaceX's Transporter-18 rideshare mission on Oct. 1.

"It's humanity's first time launching multiple commercial reentry vehicles simultaneously," Varda CEO Will Bruey told Space.com on Tuesday (Oct. 7) of the Transporter-18 launch.

The payloads on the Transporter-18 Varda craft ranged from pharmaceuticals to demo navigation systems to exterior thermal-protection materials. The company bills its spacecraft as mini-factories, which can host the orbital production of valuable goods such as pharmaceuticals and then bring them safely down to Earth.

Another Varda vehicle is scheduled to follow them into space later this month. Assuming the third spacecraft launches nominally, all three will come down before Christmas in the Koonibba Test Range in the South Australian Outback, through coordination with Varda's long-time space-mission service provider, Southern Launch. And things are scheduled to ramp up quickly: Varda aims to fly seven more missions in 2027: two in Quarter 1 (Q1), two in Q2 and three in Q3 (the latter three being all on the same rocket).

"As we scale up, we care about our ability to fly and fly regularly," Bruey said, emphasizing that the company is now treating its missions less as one-offs and more as a series. "It is, first and foremost, taking that unique [spacecraft] technology and moving into a fleet mentality, rather than a space mission mentality."

Like any startup finding its footing, Varda's challenges in the coming months will be scaling safely and efficiently. But the company says it is well-capitalized to do so, and has a big hiring campaign underway. It also has been spending money on slight upgrades and improvements to its vehicles, as well as mission operations and other infrastructure to run several missions at the same time, with more funds having just arrived.

In September, Varda announced it had raised $251 million in "Series D" investment funding and will be hiring 100 people by the end of 2027, boosting its current 286-employee base by more than a third. Most of the employees work out of El Segundo, California, with a few in sales offices in Washington, D.C. and Huntsville, Alabama (where U.S. Space Command is gradually moving, along with some defense contractors, from Colorado Springs).

In the further future, Bruey said, the goal is to fly Varda vehicles into space daily, using a "standardized product" that would be put together on an assembly line. But to get to that point, like other companies in the industry, Varda will need to get through an anticipated rocket shortage beginning in about 2029.

SpaceX is by far the most active launcher these days, and it has been the dominant provider for companies like Varda via its Transporter and Bandwagon rideshare programs. But SpaceX is readying to retire its Falcon 9 rocket as it transitions more resources into Starship, the fully reusable megarocket the company sees as its workhorse of the future. Media reports suggest that SpaceX is pretty much out of capacity for Falcon 9 rockets flying through the end of service in 2028 or 2029, although slots are still available through third-party bookers.

There are a slew of newer rockets under production (such as Blue Origin's New Glenn and Relativity Space's Terran R), though they are far less mature and in some cases, even unflown. This is creating uncertainty about how much capacity there will be in the industry in the short term, but Varda said it is planning well ahead for that moment — and so too are its customers.

"We're stacked with launches from now through that 2029 time frame," Bruey said. The company's current generation of vehicles is "launch-agnostic," although the next generation is aiming to be even more so to nab opportunities from small rockets up to Starship.

The company said that, as long as Varda and its customers have access to microgravity, the shipping methodology — much like shipping on Earth — should not matter, and Varda aims to make the experience that seamless for its customers. But in the meantime, the company says it will fly as much as possible and (like everyone else) do what it can to secure slots on launching rockets after Falcon 9 retires.

"The Space Gal" is blasting off onto her next adventure to promote STEM education with out-of-this-world content.

Science communicator and citizen astronaut Emily Calandrelli, better known to millions of social media followers as "The Space Gal," is bringing her real-world spaceflight experience to the Marvel universe. Calandrelli is lending her voice to an upcoming episode of Disney Jr.'s animated series, "Marvel's Iron Man and his Awesome Friends."

She is stepping into the role of a character called Astronaut Amy in the episode "The Iron Friends in Space," offering another opportunity for Calandrelli to share her enthusiasm for space with younger audiences.

Calandrelli is an engineer, author and television host whose career has focused on making complex scientific concepts engaging and accessible. Growing from her online presence as @TheSpaceGal, Calandrelli has produced numerous educational videos, books and television appearances, including a role on the Netflix "Bill Nye the Science Guy" revival series, "Bill Nye Saves the World."

In a preview clip provided exclusively to Space.com by Disney, Calandrelli's character is welcomed by Tony Stark, Riri Williams, Amadeus Cho and Vision as they explore a moon-themed museum display. The exhibit features a holographic model of the moon and other space-themed artifacts, providing a backdrop for Astronaut Amy to share information about space and lunar exploration.

The show follows younger versions of Stark and others from Marvel's familiar superhero roster, as they navigate conflicts that are scaled down from the franchise's world-ending blockbuster emergencies to more age-appropriate problem-solving and teamwork-building storylines.

Calandrelli's cameo puts her alongside characters already rich in their storylines with backgrounds in science and technology, like Stark and Williams, known by their alter egos Iron Man and Ironheart, both of whose superhero identities revolve around the mastery of sophisticated technology and engineering. And while Astronaut Amy and her super co-stars live in Marvel's fictional universe, Calandrelli's inclusion in the episode creates the opportunity to introduce some real-life scientific concepts.

Her appearance also comes as Disney prepares to expand the animated series to include a larger ensemble. Beginning next summer, the show will evolve into "Marvel's Avengers: Mightiest Friends", and bring additional characters into the fold, including Captain America, Hulk, Black Panther, Black Widow and Thor, according to Disney. For Calandrelli, the role represents another extension of a career dedicated to making space exploration relatable and exciting for the next generation.

In November 2024, Calandrelli became the 100th woman to reach space when she launched aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket on the company's NS-28 suborbital mission. The flight carried her above the Kármán line, the internationally recognized boundary of space, and gave her several minutes of weightlessness before the capsule and its crew returned to Earth.

Calandrelli isn't the first real-life astronaut to lend her voice to the Marvel universe. Former NASA astronaut and the first Black woman in space Mae Jemison guest-starred in Disney's "Marvel's Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur" in March 2023. Jemison voiced a fictional app called Skipster, created by the show's young superhero and scientific prodigy, Lunella Lafayette. Another space traveler, citizen astronaut Kellie Gerardi, also just announced over the weekend (Oct. 12) her cast credit in the upcoming movie "Hexed", from Disney's Animation Studios.

Viewers can catch the upcoming episode of "Marvel's Iron Man and his Awesome Friends," titled, "The Iron Friends in Space," during its Disney Jr. premiere on Oct. 14 or streaming on Disney+ beginning Oct. 28.

In a milestone achievement, NASA's Perseverance Mars rover has broken the record for most miles driven on a world beyond Earth.

On Oct. 11, Perseverance hit 28.10 miles (45.22 kilometers) traveled on Mars, breaking the record previously held by NASA's Opportunity rover which went 28.06 miles (45.16 km). It took Oppy 14 years to cover all that ground; Perseverance, by contrast, has been on Mars for just 5.5 years.

The new record is far from the end of Perseverance's journey, however; the mission team thinks the rover could eventually more than double the distance it's already traveled.

"Our original design was only planned to last for [about] 20 kilometers of driving," Mark Maimone, a rover driver at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, told Space.com.

"We've more than doubled that already … and we're looking really good to go for up to 100 kilometers total," added Maimone, who works as a designated principal in autonomous planetary rover navigation on Perseverance and helped to develop the autonomous driving systems on NASA's previous Mars rovers.

"So we could double what we've done so far," he said. "And we have great expectations that [Perseverance] can continue its mission of exploring and collecting really useful and beneficial samples that will tell us so much more about the history of Mars."

Indeed, Perseverance remains in great shape, mission team members stressed.

"We are very fortunate that all of Perseverance's original capabilities are more or less intact, especially for the science instruments," JPL's Vivian Sun, the mission's deputy project scientist, told Space.com.

Perseverance landed on the floor of Mars' 28-mile-wide (46 km) Jezero Crater in February 2021. It was far from the first robot to traverse the planet's surface; the Perseverance team built on years of experience with the Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity rovers.

Through the triumphs and missteps of these previous craft, NASA learned how to better explore another planet with a rover operated from millions of miles away. Perseverance saw massive improvements made to everything from its specialty wheels to its autonomous driving system and onboard tools and instruments.

This "could not have been done without the previous missions that we've sent to Mars," Sun said.

"Five years later [after landing], we're definitely a very well oiled machine," she added. "There's a lot of technical advancements on Perseverance that are the result of many people, many engineers, working on this new technology year after year for decades now."

And, according to both Sun and Maimone, this teamwork is the real secret behind Perseverance's endurance and success.

"The magic sauce for our operations team is how cohesively we work together," Sun said. The engineers, rover drivers and science team all work together and keep each other's work in mind as they make decisions on everything from driving speed to science targets, she added.

"I'm just super appreciative of all the people that have and still work on the mission. They're really what makes the mission special," Sun said.

What's next for Perseverance

As the team mentioned, Perseverance is nowhere near done on Mars. The rover could keep driving for many more miles on the Red Planet, and the scientists and engineers at NASA have big plans and high hopes for its future.

"We are currently planning to continue down south on the crater rim," Sun said. "There's a whole diversity of different rocks along this crater rim going south that we want to investigate and figure out how it indicates conditions from early Mars."

Jezero is a giant crater created by an impact from an asteroid or comet billions of years ago. Perseverance's work has shown that Jezero hosted a lake for long stretches billions of years ago. Scientists are therefore eager to continue exploring the site, searching for clues about what the planet looked like in the ancient past, and if it could have possibly hosted life.

"There are huge chunks of pre-Jezero crust that were embedded in the stratigraphy or got thrown up by the impact, and they're now incorporated onto the crater rim," Sun said. "These are our chance to probe like really old rocks that don't really exist in any other form on the surface anymore."

As part of Perseverance's next steps south on the crater rim, the team is heading toward an area called "Rainbow Falls."

Sun said that the Rainbow Falls area is thought to have kaolinite, a clay mineral that forms when water interacts with rock. By studying these types of minerals, mission scientists might be able to get a better idea of the conditions on Mars all of those billions of years ago, when water filled Jezero Crater.

"Whenever we are looking at clay minerals, I think the question of habitability and the search for potential biosignatures is always on the table," Sun said. "So that is very much the case when we get to Rainbow Falls, or even when we see kaolinite."

NASA astronaut Anil Menon captured a gorgeous view of the northern lights dancing over the night side of Earth from the International Space Station on Oct. 10 using an iPhone camera.

What is it?

Menon's photo reveals spectacular pink, purple and red auroras glowing in Earth's upper atmosphere above a sparse dappling of city lights, subtly blurred by the motion of the orbital spacecraft over the course of the exposure.

Bright stars glimmer between the solar panels and outer hulls of the ISS and visiting spacecraft, painted purple by the auroral display. "Flying through is rare and amazing," Menon wrote in a separate aurora video he posted to X on Oct. 10. "You can see the lights on the outside of [the] station reflecting back like Christmas LEDs. It's definitely more immersive."

Why is it amazing?

Menon captured the auroras during a period of heightened geomagnetic activity, after several coronal mass ejections (CMEs) struck Earth's magnetic field, triggering geomagnetic storms ranging from minor (G1) to strong (G3) over the weekend.

During geomagnetic storms, more charged particles are accelerated along Earth's magnetic field lines toward the polar regions, where they collide with gases in the upper atmosphere; they excite them, causing them to release energy as light and producing spectacular auroral displays.

The blue-purple colors seen in Menon's image are largely produced by nitrogen at altitudes of around 60-120 miles (100-200 kilometers) , while the red hue comes from oxygen atoms higher up, typically above 125 miles (200 kilometers).

The photo is particularly impressive because it was captured on an iPhone camera, as opposed to the more traditional Nikon cameras that astronauts sometimes use to capture Earth during their time aboard the ISS.

Smartphone astrophotography has become increasingly popular over recent years, with some models now featuring bespoke modes for capturing the night sky. iPhones were even used by the astronauts of the Artemis 2 mission to document their historic flyby of the moon earlier this year!

Interested in capturing your own images of the night sky using your mobile phone? Then be sure to check out our guide to photographing stars, the moon and the Milky Way with nothing but your smartphone camera.

This year, 2026, marks the 40th anniversary of the most recent appearance of Halley's Comet, the most famous comet in the solar system.

Roughly every 76 years, Halley punctuates history like an exclamation mark in the night sky. As writer Guy Ottewell has said, it is the "wildest of the tame comets."

It is a tame comet because it can be anticipated. It is wild because it is still fresh and bright; the brightest of all the recurring comets. It is the only one that periodically becomes conspicuous to the naked eye.

Halley through history

Before 1986, Halley had been seen and recorded on 29 occasions. In A.D. 66, observers described it as a sword in the skies above Jerusalem. In 1066, its image was woven into the strip of linen now known as the Bayeux Tapestry, where an agitated crowd of Saxons points toward a fiery comet we know to be Halley. In 1301, the Florentine painter Giotto di Bondone witnessed the comet and was so impressed that, a few years later, he depicted a comet as the star that led the Magi to Bethlehem in one of his magnificent frescoes in Padua's Scrovegni Chapel.

More recently, Halley passed unusually close to Earth in 1910. As the 1986 return approached, people who remembered that earlier appearance likely told their children and grandchildren about being awakened before dawn and taken outside to see a huge, ghostly, gleaming object in the sky.

Halley's earlier appearances suggested that each return to the inner solar system might produce a magnificent display. Little wonder, then, that the public expected great things in 1986.

The great disappointment of 1986

Halley's 1986 return therefore became two very different stories: a frustrating spectacle for much of the public and an unprecedented scientific opportunity for astronomers.

But for many who saw it — or tried to — in 1986, Halley is remembered as a tremendous disappointment. Heavily promoted as the most anticipated celestial event of the second half of the 20th century, the comet proved to be an underwhelming sight that belied promises of a spectacle never to be seen again.

In all fairness, Halley's subpar performance was not unexpected. During the mid-1970's, comet experts had warned that the comet would likely disappoint much of the general public. Despite that, the comet's impending arrival was accompanied by a frenzy of T-shirts, commemorative comet medals, bumper stickers, and specially marketed telescopes. Halley logos could be found on warm-up jackets, cocktail glasses, cereal boxes, and just about everything in sight. Caught up in the grip of Halley-mania, the mainstream media emphasized that the comet would be a "once-in-a-lifetime spectacle."

One of the main problems for many trying to see the comet that year was light pollution; the total outdoor illumination in the United States had increased tremendously since Halley's previous visit in 1910. Indeed, in 1986, many of the largest cities were bathed in permanent twilight, with only the brightest stars and planets visible from near city centers and with astronomically unacceptable conditions up to 50 miles (80 km) away.

On the evening of Jan. 11, in New York City, thousands gathered at four city parks to get a view of Halley's Comet. Mayor Ed Koch and Parks Commissioner Henry J. Stern arranged to have the lights turned off at four public parks, where telescopes were set up. The comet itself was not overly impressive, but many were still happy just to get a glimpse of it. As Stern put it: "Those who came for the comet saw the comet — the cynics didn't — but it was there."

When Halley passed through perihelion — its closest point to the sun — on Feb. 9, it lay on the far side of the sun as viewed from Earth and was hidden in the solar glare. During much of March, it brightened only to third magnitude and displayed a tail about a dozen degrees long, merely one-tenth the extent of its 1910 splendor. At the same time, it moved southward through the stars of Sagittarius, Scorpius, and Centaurus. Because those constellations appear low above the southern horizon, the comet was difficult to see from Canada, Europe, and the northern United States.

The 1986 apparition was, in fact, described as the comet's worst in 2,000 years. And as one would expect, the public wasn't impressed. Having read that he'd need binoculars and a star map just to find the comet, taxi driver David A. Gittelman penned a New York Times opinion piece entitled "Who Cares About Halley's Comet Anyway?" In it he wrote:

"I was devastated. How could such an injustice be allowed to prevail? All my life I'd been waiting — all my life. What happened to the cosmic leviathan of my childhood dreams?"

What happened was that at its closest approach to Earth on April 10, Halley was nearly three times farther away than at its minimum distance in 1910. And it had arrived at this point a full two months after perihelion (instead of two weeks as in 1910) — long after its brightest phase had passed. Even those living or traveling to the Southern Hemisphere (as I did), where the comet was well placed, didn't witness a true showstopper. To make matters worse, Halley's tail suddenly ebbed at the beginning of April, leaving behind a small, condensed, nebulous mass with a stubby, fan-shaped appendage.

The leviathan turned out to be a mere tadpole!

A scientific gold mine

But while Halley disappointed the public, it proved to be an astronomical gold mine for astronomers. Within three weeks in March 1986, an international armada of spacecraft studied the comet: Japan launched Sakigake and Suisei; the Soviet Union sent VEGA 1 and VEGA 2; NASA contributed the International Cometary Explorer (ICE); and the European Space Agency, then a consortium of 11 countries, launched Giotto.

VEGA 1 and 2 and Giotto plunged deep into Halley's coma — the fuzzy, glowing cloud of gas and dust that surrounds the nucleus when it travels close to the sun — and revealed it to be an active, sputtering mass that responds violently to heating by the sun. Jets of dust were expelled from the nucleus with explosive intensity. And we discovered that the nucleus is encrusted in a dark shroud of its own debris and is as black as coal or velvet. Each VEGA spacecraft came to within about 5,300 miles (8,500 km) of Halley.

Giotto passed within just 375 miles (600 km) of the nucleus. More than 2,000 returned images showed that Halley's nucleus was larger than expected and shaped like a peanut or potato, measuring 9 miles (14 km) long and 5 miles (8 km) wide. The nucleus spins on its longest axis every 7.4 days, while the entire body appears to wobble in half that time. The images also revealed three "active regions," areas where volatile gases and dust escape when sunlight heats the surface. As the comet rotates, fresh ice enters the sunlight and sublimates; the escaping gas then drags entrained dust particles away from the nucleus.

VEGA 1 and 2 and Giotto plunged deep into Halley's coma — the fuzzy, glowing cloud of gas and dust that surrounds the nucleus when it travels close to the sun — and revealed it to be an active, sputtering mass that responds violently to heating by the sun. Jets of dust were expelled from the nucleus with explosive intensity. And we discovered that the nucleus is encrusted in a dark shroud of its own debris and is as black as coal or velvet. Each VEGA spacecraft came to within about 5,300 miles (8,500 km) of Halley.

Giotto passed within just 375 miles (600 km) of the nucleus. More than 2,000 returned images showed that Halley's nucleus was larger than expected and shaped like a peanut or potato, measuring 9 miles (14 km) long and 5 miles (8 km) wide. The nucleus spins on its longest axis every 7.4 days, while the entire body appears to wobble in half that time. The images also revealed three "active regions," areas where volatile gases and dust escape when sunlight heats the surface. As the comet rotates, fresh ice enters the sunlight and sublimates; the escaping gas then drags entrained dust particles away from the nucleus.

So, from this tiny, jet-black, dust-encrusted nucleus came all the ingredients necessary to form the bright comet head and tail that branded it as a historically magnificent and awe-inspiring spectacle.

The spacecraft encounters transformed a disappointing naked-eye apparition into a landmark scientific campaign. Yet Halley's story did not end when the probes passed through its coma.

Surprises beyond 1986

Long after 1986, a receding Halley's Comet showed that it could still provide some surprises. On Feb. 12, 1991, between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus at 1.329 billion miles (2.138 billion km) from the sun, Halley was photographed from the European Southern Observatory in Chile by two Belgian astronomers. They had expected to find the comet appearing as nothing more than a faint speck of light. Instead, it appeared as a monstrous nebula 300 times brighter than expected; a massive outburst.

The cause of the dramatic flare-up remains a mystery. An unknown body may have collided with the comet. Another possibility is that the nucleus released a large amount of latent internal energy, although such a release would be unlikely so far from the sun. Highly energetic particles in the solar wind may also have reached the comet in sufficient numbers to heat its surface.

The road to 2061

On Dec. 8, 2023, Halley's Comet reached aphelion; the farthest point in its orbit from the sun.

Halley is expected to return in the summer of 2061, in circumstances that will largely mirror those of 1986 — but with one crucial difference. This time the comet will be fully visible on the same side of the sun as Earth and should appear at least 10 times brighter. In the morning sky, it will reach its northernmost position on July 24. It will then move rapidly southward as it enters the evening sky, gradually favoring more southerly locations. Even so, viewers at mid-northern latitudes should see an eye-catching object low in the west-northwest sky in early August.

And we don't have to wait until 2061 to experience Halley.

Like all comets, Halley's is a cosmic litterbug and, as such, it leaves behind in its wake a trail of — for lack of a better term — garbage, composed of tiny bits and crumbs of space debris that can produce beautiful incandescent trails upon impacting our atmosphere. Because they emanate from the constellation Orion, we call them the Orionid meteors, which will reach their peak on Oct. 21.

In a way, I guess you can call them "rock stars," but eventually, they fall down to Earth.

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.

Hydrogen may be the most common element in the cosmos, but scientists could use it to do something unique: uncover the nature of dark energy, the mysterious force driving the accelerating expansion of the universe.

This new line of dark energy investigation comes from the fact that researchers have determined that the CHIME (Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment) project can detect the faint radio glow of hydrogen from the universe's distant past.

Not only does this represent a faster and much less expensive way to investigate dark energy, but it is a major milestone for CHIME. The instrument was specifically devised to investigate dark energy and its pervasive influence.

"This is a completely new technique for probing the cosmos, delivered by an instrument that was conceived and built by Canadians," CHIME principal investigator Mark Halpern of the University of British Columbia said in a statement. "It's a bold new step in the global cosmology program and a Canadian success story."

Why is dark energy so problematic?

Dark energy is the mysterious force that is accelerating the expansion of the universe. It is so problematic for scientists because it started acting on the fabric of space only after the expansion triggered by the Big Bang had halted.

That's akin to pushing a child on a swing, watching it stop, and then seeing the swing start up again without a push. And, not only that, but the swing starts oscillating faster and faster. Consider scientists akin to very worried parents, who would really like to know where this ghostly push came from and how it is going to proceed.

Just as, if the push on the swing continues, the child could end up in the bushes, or in orbit, the strengthening of dark energy could result in the cold death of the cosmos, or even a "Big Rip" scenario that sees space shredded. Alternatively, if it weakens and allows gravity to reassert dominance, then the universe could collapse back in on itself, resulting in a "Big Crunch" ending that sees the cosmos compressed back into a singularity, as it was at the beginning of time.

Dark energy is now the dominant element of the universe, accounting for 68% of the universe's matter-energy budget. It's little wonder that scientists are very keen to know what this mysterious force is.

So how can hydrogen help the investigation of dark energy?

"Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe and the raw material from which stars form," team member Arnab Chakraborty of the University of Toronto said. "Its faint radio emission acts like a cosmic tracer, revealing how matter is distributed across space."

Previously, CHIME could map the distribution of hydrogen in the early universe but only by cross-correlating its observations with galaxy survey data from other telescopes, operations that cost millions of dollars and can only focus on regions of the universe dense enough to form stars. CHIME has now shown it can map the radio glow of hydrogen all on its own.

Indeed, the team has already begun making steps in this direction using just a tiny fraction of existing CHIME data. Using 94 nights of observations from 2019, they detected a hydrogen signal from when the universe was just 5 billion years old.

"Our data indicate that roughly 2% of the hydrogen in the universe was in neutral atomic form at this time, broadly consistent with other measurements," team member Shabbir Shaikh of Arizona State University said. "By measuring how that hydrogen is distributed and clustered, CHIME gives us a new way to test our understanding of how galaxies form and evolve."

CHIME has now collected seven years of data, and using this, the team is hoping to probe the distribution of hydrogen back to 3 billion years after the Big Bang.

The team's research was published across two papers in The Astrophysical Journal.

SpaceX just broke an uncharacteristically long Starlink launch drought.

The company sent 27 of its Starlink internet satellites to low Earth orbit (LEO) today (Oct. 12), launching them atop a Falcon 9 rocket from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base at 8:28 p.m. EDT (5:28 p.m. local time; 0028 GMT on Oct. 13)

It was the first Starlink mission for a Falcon 9 since Sept. 19, which was another 27-satellite liftoff from Vandenberg. For some perspective on this recent gap: Between Aug. 19 and Sept. 6, a span of 19 days, SpaceX launched seven Starlink missions with Falcon 9s.

SpaceX did loft a batch of Starlinks after that, but it wasn't aboard a Falcon 9. The company's Starship megarocket carried 26 next-gen Starlink V3 craft on its 14th test flight, which took place on Sept. 28.

Starship reached orbit for the first time ever on Flight 14, and it deployed the Starlinks successfully as well. This will happen many more times going forward, if all goes to plan: The Starlink V3 constellation will eventually consist of about 100,000 satellites, all of which will fly on Starship, Elon Musk has said.

Indeed, SpaceX plans to sunset the Falcon 9 and its cousin, the Falcon Heavy, in the next few years, shifting their duties over to the fully reusable, far more powerful Starship, which remains in the test-flight phase.

That shift will be a big one for the spaceflight community, for the Falcon 9 is the workhorse rocket of its generation. In 2025, for example, it flew 165 times — roughly the same number as the rest of the world's orbital launchers combined. Nearly three-quarters of those Falcon 9 launches were Starlink missions.

Things have slowed down a bit in 2026. Today's flight was the 112th Falcon 9 liftoff of the year, and the 82nd in service of the Starlink megaconstellation, which currently consists of more than 11,100 active satellites.

All went according to plan on today's launch. The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth as planned, touching down about 8.5 minutes after launch on the drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You," which was stationed in the Pacific Ocean. It was the 20th launch and landing for this particular booster, which is designated B1088.

The rocket's expendable upper stage, meanwhile, delivered the 27 spacecraft to LEO, deploying them there 62 minutes after liftoff, SpaceX announced via X.

SpaceX launched its latest cargo mission to the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday morning (Oct. 13).

A Falcon 9 rocket launched a robotic Dragon capsule to the orbiting lab from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Tuesday at 6:35 a.m. EDT (1035 GMT).

The launch kicks off the CRS-35 mission, so named because it will be the 35th that SpaceX flies under a Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA.

If all goes according to plan, Dragon will reach the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday (Oct. 15), docking autonomously to the space-facing port of its Harmony module at around 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT). You can watch the arrival here at Space.com as well; coverage will start at 9:15 a.m. EDT (1315 GMT).

CRS-35 will deliver 6,300 pounds (2,860 kilograms) of supplies to the astronauts aboard the orbiting lab, including the final set of International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Arrays (iROSAs), which will boost the orbiting lab's energy budget.

There's also quite a bit of scientific gear heading up on the flight.

Dragon "will deliver hardware to manufacture artificial retinas in microgravity to help restore vision on Earth and 3D heart tissue models to advance large‑scale drug testing on future missions," NASA officials wrote in a CRS-35 launch preview on Oct. 7.

"The spacecraft will carry materials to study how a new type of glass forms in microgravity and brain organoids that could reveal treatment targets for neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and multiple sclerosis," they added.

Dragon will stay attached to the ISS for about a month, then head back down to Earth with scientific experiments and other hardware. It will splash down safely under parachutes in the Pacific Ocean off the California coast.

SpaceX's Dragon is the only currently operational freighter that can carry cargo in the downward direction. The other three — Russia's Progress, Japan's HTV-X and Northrop Grumman's Cygnus XL — are all expendable, burning up in Earth's atmosphere after their time at the ISS is done.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 6:59 a.m. EDT on Oct. 13 with news of a successful launch.

Using the NASA X-ray spacecraft Swift combined with radio observations, astronomers have observed a supermassive black hole burping radio jets 300 days after a heavy cosmic meal. The team was also able to roughly estimate the mass of this feeding cosmic titan, which sits at the heart of the Perseus Cluster, a massive collection of thousands of galaxies.

The black hole sits at the center of the galaxy NGC 1275, located around 225 light-years away, and is the brightest galaxy of the Perseus Cluster. The supermassive black hole first flared in X-rays, which indicated an increase in the rate at which it was accreting matter. Actively feeding supermassive black holes sit in regions called active galactic nuclei (AGNs), with their immense gravity heating surrounding matter, causing them to glow brightly. These emissions are boosted by material channeled to the poles of the central black hole, from where it is blasted out as powerful twin jets that shine across the electromagnetic spectrum, particularly in radio waves.

The observation of the following radio jet from the AGN at the heart of NGC 1275 via flaring in radio waves is crucial for understanding the relationship between the disk of matter that surrounds and feeds the black hole, called an accretion disk, and the jets it launches. This so-called disk-jet coupling is key to developing a better picture of how black holes influence star formation in the galaxies in which they sit, and thus the growth of those galaxies.

Making these observations is no mean feat. The ideal spacecraft for observing X-ray emissions is Chandra, but it doesn't observe NGC 1275 frequently enough to observe its long-term behaviour. NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory may lack the power of Chandra, but having launched in 2004, it has collected a vast amount of data regarding NGC 1275 and its central supermassive black hole.

"It is fairly difficult to see the inner region of this AGN because NGC 1275 is at the center of the massive Perseus cluster of galaxies, which adds additional light to our observations," team leader Sarah Ketchum of the University of Michigan told Space.com. "We developed a model that allowed us to remove the cluster emission from archival Swift data, and in doing so, we were able to see the changes in the X-ray flux from gas accreting onto the black hole in NGC 1275, from 2007 to 2025."

Ketchum added that the capabilities of Swift were key to this investigation of NGC 1275, which is the ideal laboratory for the study of disk-jet coupling.

"There have been studies on other galaxies with AGN that show evidence of coupling between gas accretion traced in X-ray light and gas ejection in jets, traced in radio light. But NGC 1275 reveals the impact of black hole jets on large spatial scales better than any other system," the University of Michigan researcher continued.

This black hole didn't eat a star

Ketchum and colleagues saw the strongest ever X-ray flare from NGC 1275 in Feb. 2023. Lasting less than 60 days and consisting of two 5-day blasts, this episode saw a doubling of the X-ray brightness of the AGN at the heart of NGC 1275.

The flaring was so extreme that the team had to rule out a tidal disruption event (TDE) as the cause. These occur when an unfortunate star's orbit brings it too close to the immense gravitational influence of a supermassive black hole. This influence generates intense tidal forces that simultaneously squash and squeeze the star, "speghettifying" it and allowing the black hole to snack on some plasma pasta.

"We were able to rule out TDEs as a cause," Ketchum said. "Thus, the flaring was likely caused by a spike in the rate at which matter accreted onto the black hole."

Using Swift data, the team was able to infer the radius over which the AGN emits radiation. Because the size of a black hole is directly correlated with its mass, this meant that the researchers were able to constrain the mass of the black hole at the heart of NGC 1275. They determined that this supermassive black hole has a mass somewhere between 100 million times the mass of the sun and 1 billion solar masses.

The team then compared their data to known radio data to better understand the relationship between the X-ray emission and the radio jets that disrupt gas in NGC 1275.

Ketchum added that she and her colleagues found tentative evidence of around a 300-day delay between the X-ray flaring and the radio wave emission. This indicates the time it takes plasma to travel from the base of the jet to a knot or shock created when it hits surrounding gas or dust.

"This should be tested further in the future. Our X-ray data only sparsely sample the changes in NGC 1275," Ketchum said. "This makes it difficult to determine an exact relationship between the X-ray and radio radiation for large portions of our light curve, so we would need more X-ray data to further study this connection."

The researcher added that if the X-ray flares are produced close to the black hole, an echo of these flares should be seen coming from the accretion disk.

"An emission line from neutral iron is seen in data from NGC 1275, and this may be the echo. However, we likely need many observations with XMM-Newton and XRISM ( X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission) to really establish that connection," Ketchum concluded.

The team's research has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, with a pre-peer-review version available on the repository site arXiv.

NASA is asking for ideas to stop static electricity from zapping astronauts or critical hardware during moon missions.

The agency opened a "Lunar Grounding Challenge" to avoid situations where an astronaut on the moon could become "a walking, high voltage capacitor." Submissions for the $150,000 competition are due Jan. 15 and you can see the requirements here.

NASA is hoping to put astronaut boots at the lunar south pole in 2028 during the Artemis 4 or 5 missions, on the first landing mission since NASA's Apollo 17 in 1972. But simulations suggest that both "tribocharging" (electric-charge transfer between two objects) and plasma charging (from ambient gas in the region) could build up electric charge on spacesuits. "This problem is severely compounded when entering lunar shadows and permanently shadowed regions," the agency wrote, referring to deeply cratered areas where the sun does not touch the lunar surface.

The concern is that astronauts' spacesuits could become electrically charged, as there would be an excess of electrons (negatively charged particles) compared with ions (positively charged) in these areas.

"The risk occurs when an astronaut returns to the spacecraft," the agency added. The lander would have a slight positive charge, producing an issue once the "highly negatively-charged astronaut approaches the vehicle."

NASA has asked industry partners for ideas that can help an astronaut avoid "becoming a walking, high voltage capacitor", including issues such as an electrical arc that could damage spacesuits, spark fires in the oxygen atmosphere of a spacecraft, or create electrical shocks. (A Mars simulation in 2018 was reportedly derailed due to a crew experiencing electrical issues, so this problem is not unprecedented.)

The challenge aims to create designs that would safely discharge the astronaut and their spacesuit before an astronaut touches the lander. Among the technical requirements, NASA is looking for something small (in terms of mass, volume and power) that would be able to operate even in the extreme temperature swings of the lunar surface. The technology must also be able to help as many as four extra-vehicular activities (moonwalks) that take place over as long as 10 days.

"In addition, the suspended lunar dust and heavy dust buildup on a suit in these environments significantly increases arcing lengths, allowing sparks to jump across larger gaps than they would in a clean vacuum. Therefore, the solution must aim to avoid a sudden arc that may come into contact with the outer pressure garment — suit — or the lander," NASA wrote in the challenge description.

The challenge will include multiple phases, including a concept design, concept refinement after chatting with reviewers, and then a final selection. NASA did not release a target date in its press release for when the tech would be available for astronauts, but the agency is planning on a long-term moon base for astronaut missions that would be largely ready to go in the 2030s if schedules hold.

They don't produce anything like the torrent of "shooting stars" associated with August's Perseids or December's Geminids, but the Taurid meteor showers have something else going for them — fireballs.

The Taurids are famous for occasionally producing exceptionally bright, slow-moving meteors that can streak dramatically across the night sky from September to December. As a bonus, they're visible from both the Northern and Southern hemispheres. That's because they appear to emanate from the constellation Taurus, which sits close to the ecliptic, the apparent path the sun takes across the sky as Earth orbits around it.

The Taurids are actually two closely related showers — the Southern Taurids and Northern Taurids — whose activity overlaps in late October and November. That's why they're known informally by skywatchers as the "Halloween fireballs." The broad overlapping peaks make the Taurids less about watching on one particular night and more about keeping an eye on the night sky for several weeks. Both have their radiant points — the place in the night sky where their "shooting stars" appear to come from — close to the famous Pleiades (M45) open cluster of stars in the constellation Taurus.

There's another tempting reason to watch the Taurids in 2026 — moonlight will cause little interference around the main peaks.

When are the Southern Taurids?

The Southern Taurids are already underway. According to the American Meteor Society, they're active from Sept. 20 through Nov. 20, with two distinct components. The annual component peaks around Oct. 14, while a component particularly associated with fireballs peaks overnight on Nov. 4-5. That's the night to circle if you're hoping to see one of the "Halloween Fireballs."

However, don't expect a conventional meteor storm. The Southern Taurids have an average zenithal hourly rate of about five meteors per hour. ZHR describes how many meteors an observer could theoretically see under ideal conditions with the shower's radiant directly overhead. In practice, observers see fewer, so this is not a chance to gather friends for a special show, as with the Perseids.

What the Southern Taurids lack in quantity, however, they can make up for in quality. Their meteors strike Earth's atmosphere at about 17 miles (27 kilometers) per second. That's relatively slow for a meteor, helping make some Taurids conspicuous as they travel across the sky. You don't see a Taurid meteor; you watch it.

If clouds allow, conditions should be favorable around Nov. 4-5. The moon will be absent most of the night, rising a couple of hours before dawn as a 17%-illuminated waning crescent — too dim to affect visibility of meteors.

When are the Northern Taurids?

The Northern Taurids begin later, becoming active on Oct. 20 and continuing through Dec. 10, according to the American Meteor Society. They're expected to peak overnight on Nov. 11-12.

Once again, rates are low — around five meteors per hour under ideal conditions — but fireballs are possible. Northern Taurid meteors enter the atmosphere at around 18 miles (29 km) per second, similarly as slow as their southern counterparts.

Observing conditions at the peak should be excellent. The moon will be a slender 5%-illuminated waxing crescent and will be practically absent from the night sky overnight on Nov. 11-12, leaving the night dark.

The distinction between the two Taurid showers isn't particularly important if you're simply outside hoping to see a fireball. In late October and early November, both streams are active at the same time, potentially producing around 10 Taurids per hour under clear, moon-free conditions.

Why are Taurids called the 'Halloween Fireballs'?

The nickname comes partly from timing. Their maxima are also broad rather than sharp. According to EarthSky, the Taurids tend to "ramble along" over the period, becoming particularly noticeable when the two branches overlap from late October into early November — Halloween.

It's also a reference to their tendency to produce fireballs, exceptionally bright meteors caused when larger pieces of space debris plunge into Earth's atmosphere.

Some years are considerably better for Taurid fireballs than others, and it's impossible to tell for sure in advance. EarthSky notes that enhanced displays occurred in 2008, 2015 and 2022, when Earth encountered concentrations of larger debris within the stream. However, don't expect a repeat in 2026 — the next predicted Taurid fireball swarm isn't expected until 2032.

That doesn't mean there won't be fireballs this year, only that an unusually high number isn't predicted.

What causes the Taurid meteor showers?

Both Taurid meteor showers are linked to Comet 2P/Encke, a three-mile-wide (4.8-kilometer) comet that circles the sun every 3.25 years — the shortest known cometary orbit, according to NASA. However, the Taurids belong to a much larger complex of dust, rocks, comets and asteroids, possibly created when a much bigger object fragmented thousands of years ago. Each fall, Earth crosses different parts of this sprawling debris stream, producing the overlapping Northern and Southern Taurids and, occasionally, the larger fragments that create spectacular fireballs.

How to see the Taurid meteor showers

Both showers appear to originate from Taurus, a constellation that rises during the evening and climbs higher into the sky as the night progresses. Around midnight, Taurus is well placed for many observers.

However, there's no need to find Taurus. Meteors can appear anywhere in the sky, and staring directly at the radiant can actually mean seeing shorter meteor trails. The best advice is to treat the period as a great time for naked-eye stargazing, with the usual rules applying — find somewhere away from bright lights with as wide a view of the sky as possible, and give your eyes about 20 minutes to adjust to the darkness. Binoculars and telescopes will restrict your field of view and make meteor watching impossible.

Above all, be patient. The Taurids are a slow burn in every sense — low rates, slow-moving meteors and weeks of activity. But if one of those meteors happens to be a brilliant fireball, it could easily be one of the most memorable "shooting stars" you see all year.

On Oct. 12, 1964, the Soviet Union launched Voskhod 1, a 24-hour crewed mission that achieved several "firsts" for human spaceflight. This was the first time that a spacecraft carried more than one person into orbit, with three cosmonauts packed inside the spacecraft.

Only two cosmonauts were originally supposed to fly on this mission, but Soviet politicians pressured the Russian space program to add one more. This left no room for spacesuits on board, so this also became the first spaceflight without spacesuits.

Two of the crewmembers, an engineer and a doctor, became the first civilians to go to space.

Why it mattered

Voskhod 1 served as yet another first for the Soviet Union during a space race kicked off by the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957 and followed up by the first human spaceflight with Yuri Gagarin in 1961. And while the United States did follow up with its one human spaceflights, until Oct. 12, 1964, every mission had one person on board.

That changed with Voskhod 1, which crammed three man into a spacecraft not much larger than the Soviet Union's one-person Vostok spacecraft. At the time, NASA was develoing the two-person Gemini spacecraft, which prompted the Soviet Union's then leader to push for an edge.

"Soviet leader [Nikita] Khrushchev contacted Korolev and ordered him to convert the Vostok spacecraft into a vehicle capable of carrying not two, but three cosmonauts," according to space historian Asif Siddiqi, referring to Sergei Korolev, chief designer of the Soviet space program.

In order to fit a three people inside, the Voskhod 1 cosmonauts - commander Vladimir Komarov and his crew Konstantin Feoktistov and Boris Yegorov - did not wear spacesuits traditionally used for launch and landing, adding substantial risk to the flight. They also stayed inside their spacecraft when it landed, unlike Vostok crews like Gagarin, who parachuted out of them after reentry.

The Voskhod 1 mission lasted just over 24 hours, during which its crew performed experimented with the behavior of liquids and gases in microgravity and photographed the Earth.

NASA's first multi-crew mission, Gemini 3, would launch about six month later on March 23, 1965.

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.

A neon blue pool swirls amongst what look like clouds, all surrounded by a bright red stretch of land. This might look like the surface of an alien planet, but it's actually a salt flat right here on Earth, seen from space.

What is it?

Etosha National Park in northern Namibia hosts the largest salt pan, or piece of land covered with salt and other minerals, in the country.

This image of the Etosha Pan was captured on April 5 of this year by Europe's Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission, which consists of two identical satellites in the same orbit.

The Sentinel-2 pair observe and capture imagery of our planet in different wavelengths using a high-resolution multispectral imager that can see 13 different spectral bands, or ranges of wavelengths.

By looking at our planet from space, and observing it through different wavelengths and colors, we can better understand Earth's topography and how it changes over time. With this image, researchers can better understand this landmark in Namibia, a nation in southwestern Africa.

Why is it incredible?

While this image is strikingly beautiful, the Etosha Pan doesn't exactly look like this in real life. If you were standing close to the pan in the national park, it would look bright white.

While this is a real image, false color has been added, which allows scientists to separate different types of vegetation and topography.

With the false color, the vegetation surrounding the salt pan appears in shades of red, while the salt pan itself looks like a mix of bright, light and dark blues with cloudy sediment floating around.

The varied vegetation captured in this false-color image includes grassland, savannas and mopane trees, which appear bright red. These trees are not only a dominant type of vegetation in areas of this park, they also provide essential shelter and habitats for local wildlife, including elephants, giraffe and leopards.

"Tomb Raider" celebrates its 30th anniversary this month. While many remember the iconic T-Rex or locking Winston the Butler in the freezer, many forget about the UFO in 1998’s "Tomb Raider III"; a mysterious alien craft that worked a lot like Doctor Who’s TARDIS.

Coming off the back of the hugely successful "Tomb Raider 2", developer Core Design had big plans for the third entry, including kayaking, those iconic London levels, and, of course, a level featuring a UFO in Area 51. Although it looked small on the outside, the UFO featured multiple floors for players to explore as they searched for a vital artifact, all as enemies swarmed in.

Now, I'm something of a Tomb Raider historian, and my upcoming book — "The Making of Tomb Raider: 1997-2000" (available from October 30) — goes into detail about the making of "Tomb Raider III", "Tomb Raider IV", and other games in the series during those three years. While writing the book, I spoke to level designer Richard Morton about how the physics-defying UFO was made and how shows like "The X-Files" inspired him and the team.

The Lone Gunwoman

When you start "Tomb Raider III", you find Lara in India, stumbling across one of four artifacts. After completing India, you can choose between London, South Pacific, and Nevada to collect the other artifacts before reaching the final section in Antarctica.

Richard Morton was one of the designers for "Tomb Raider III", who took on South Pacific and some of Nevada, a location that Neal Boyd had already begun work on before he moved to "Project Eden". Eventually, Lara would find herself in Area 51, with the final part of the level taking place in a UFO that houses the artifact she seeks.

“Area 51 was a bit of a team effort,” reveals Morton. “The part where the rocket launches, Neal did a lot of that stuff. So much of that level is his work, as well as some of the other routes. Andy Sandham helped in finishing off that level, too. And then the bit with the UFO, that was mine.”

Of course, a level called Area 51 needed aliens. In the late 1990s, UFOs were everywhere, ranging from TV shows like The X-Files to countless documentaries on whether aliens were real.

“We knew Area 51 had to have aliens in it in some form. And we did put some down on operating tables – we were all influenced by films and shows like 'The X-Files' and 'Independence Day', which were around at the time of TR3.”

You’d run past the UFO at certain points in between toggling switches, collecting keys, and even launching a rocket. Eventually, you’d unlock a door, letting you in to reveal an impossibly large interior. But all wasn’t as it seemed, and the journey to get here was fraught with challenges.

“I was working quite late one evening, and it wasn't a UFO to start with. I was working on the level and suddenly wondered what would happen if I had three rooms next to each other, with the room in the middle that was only the width of the portal,” explains Morton. “Then I’d link that to a separate room that was only visible inside the portal. I then somehow managed to build this impossible room that was surrounded by eight rooms – the only way I could get it to work. And it did, but it worked horizontally – it was just like Valve's 'Portal', but nine years before.”

AI programmer Tom Scutt, who had joined the team to improve the artificial intelligence for the enemies, worked with Morton to see how a portal could work in the level.

“Tom loved it, but I think he started doing some tests around it – this was just a portal in a room to see if it could be used. Soon after, he explained to me that enemies wouldn't work with it without being heavily reworked, because of how the navigation worked with the enemies,” Morton explains. “So if Lara went through a portal to 'another world', for example, the enemies wouldn't know; they'd just stay in the same room. So all in all, they basically said that they loved it, but you can't do it - and yet I kept trying.”

The truth is in there

With Area 51 taking shape and the portal idea becoming viable, Morton realized that the two could become one, resulting in the UFO. “The next night, I decided to build a UFO, which we'd already built within the level in this rough shape in one of the hangars at the end of the level.”

That night, Morton cracked it, meaning the inside of the UFO could now be far bigger. “I built a ladder going up from the entrance, which went straight up through the tiny UFO model, which was only three by three blocks, with a one-block hole going up into it. So I remade the same trick from the night before, only vertically, and it worked!”

Still, despite getting the trick to work, more had to be done to ensure no bugs would emerge during this final section of the level.

“Once you got inside the UFO, I think we had to do a tiny bit of fiddling around, just to make the enemies warp inside the UFO. But they'd only try to attack you when you were in the UFO. I think we triggered them once you got in there and de-triggered them once you came out, just to stop them from firing at you when you weren't in there, just to keep that illusion of this TARDIS UFO going.”

Programmer Martin Gibbins, who had previously warned that the UFO would break everything, was won over by it. “Despite the UFO being Richard's idea, that was a testament to Gavin Rummery's ridiculous portal system. It had a single-block doorway into what was effectively a room. That was the clip window for the rest of the world, so you could do whatever you'd like inside of it. He got it working, and I thought it was great.”

For its time, it was an amazing feat on PlayStation and PC. With this being the third mainline "Tomb Raider" game, some players felt that the series was getting stale. But it was moments like the UFO and discovering it was far bigger than many initially thought that stuck with players, and still does to this day.

Unfortunately, another moment like the UFO would not happen in subsequent games, with the pressure of making the Thanksgiving deadline looming over the team. But Morton reveals that the team did speak about what could have alternatively happened at the end of the level.

"I think we talked about having a portal room that took you to another area that could have been either another location on Earth or another location across the galaxy. But obviously, we just didn't have time to do anything like that. It would have been awesome, though.”

However, after Morton spent two evenings trying to get the UFO to work and some on the team worried that it would break the game, it became a big highlight of "Tomb Raider III".

“When I showed the team the UFO, they were basically trembling, thinking, 'What have you done now!?' And we found out that it did work, and they ended up loving it. Looking back, I couldn't believe that I'd pulled it off, to be honest. I couldn't believe that the engine didn't just crash the game every time the camera looked into that portal. It didn't crash, and I thought, ‘Wow, that's awesome,’ at the time.”

The impossible geometry of the "Tomb Raider III" UFO is indeed an impressive spectacle, even almost 30 years later. If you’re interested in seeing how the TARDIS/UFO works, you can play "Tomb Raider III" via the Remastered collection, available on PlayStation 4/5, Xbox Series, Nintendo Switch 1/2, iOS, Android, and PC via Steam.

If you want to know more about "Tomb Raider 3" and its enigmatic UFO, "The Making of Tomb Raider: 1997-2000" is available from October 30 via Pen and Sword, Amazon, and other retailers.

Fire erupted in the morning skies over Siberia on June 30, 1908, as an atmospheric explosion occurred that remains unmatched by any similar event in modern history.

That day, at approximately 7:15 a.m. local time, observers in Siberia's remote Tunguska region became witnesses to the entry of a brilliant fireball into Earth's atmosphere, trailing smoke across the dawn sky and culminating in a flash brighter than the sun itself. Within seconds, the explosion and resulting shock waves that followed reportedly knocked some members of the nearby Indigenous Evenki population off their feet, and caused damage to dwellings and livestock, while seismic instruments hundreds of miles away logged tremors caused by the blast.

The blast produced enough energy to flatten a significant stretch of the Siberian wilderness, marking an event that still serves as a cautionary tale — and a major point of reference — for modern planetary defense efforts. Yet some questions remain about exactly what happened, and what the implications are for future potential Tunguska-scale events. For many years after the events of that day, the cause of the blast — known today as the Tunguska event — remained unknown. With time, a likely culprit emerged: scientists now believe a small asteroid, estimated to have been just 130 feet (40 meters) in diameter, exploded after entering Earth's atmosphere.

What do we know?

Unraveling the Tunguska Event mystery

Remarkably, scientists wouldn't get a firsthand look at the destruction caused by the Tunguska blast for almost two decades, due primarily to the extreme remoteness of the blast location. Further complicating scientific investigations were the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the ensuing civil war.

One of the earliest attempts to reach the blast site was initiated in 1921 by Soviet geologist Leonid Kulik, who failed in his first effort, but did eventually make his way to Tunguska six years later. Upon arriving, the devastation caused by the event was unmistakable even after nearly two decades.

Curiously, at the blast site's presumed epicenter, a small area of unaffected trees remained standing, albeit stripped of some of their bark and branches. The surrounding countryside, by comparison, was littered with large numbers of trees that were toppled as the shock waves produced by the exploding asteroid high above radiated downward.

In the decades that followed, additional assessment of the site that included expeditions and aerial surveys, primarily during the 1950s and 1960s, revealed another curious feature: a distinctive hourglass- or butterfly-shaped destruction zone spanning well over 800 square miles (2,070 square kilometers), with millions of trees estimated to have been flattened. Yet most curious of all had been what investigators did not find; despite a blast zone of this size, there was no evidence of an impact crater at Tunguska.

An airburst over Siberia

What the evidence seemed to suggest was that an explosion had occurred not on the surface following a massive impact, but instead high in Earth's atmosphere — probably as much as several miles above the Earth — as tremendous aerodynamic stresses caused the object to fragment and release its energy before reaching the ground.

A longstanding debate about the Tunguska object has centered on whether it was more likely an asteroid or a comet, although today, most evidence appears to favor an asteroid. Among the clues supporting an asteroid origin are mineral and chemical signatures identified in material collected from the region that researchers have argued are consistent with a stony or carbonaceous asteroid. However, identifying physical remnants definitively associated with the Tunguska object has remained challenging.

What remains unknown?

A warning from the sky?

While the Tunguska event remains an enigma in some ways, it also offers modern researchers an opportunity to study one of the rare recent examples in Earth's geological history of a large-scale cosmic airburst.

Deeper in Earth's past — around 66 million years ago — a six-mile-wide (10 km) asteroid struck what is now Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. The impact created the 120-mile-wide (190 km) Chicxulub crater in a cataclysmic event that drove mass extinctions across the planet, eliminating nearly three-quarters of the species that thrived on Earth until that time.

Of course, even objects orders of magnitude smaller than the object that created the Chicxulub crater can pose a danger to Earth. Although the object that struck Earth 66 million years ago is believed to have been as much as 200 times wider and millions of times more massive than the suspected asteroid that exploded over Siberia in 1908, estimates indicate that a Tunguska-scale event would be capable of killing millions if it occurred today over a city the size of New York.

Such estimates aren't based entirely on theory, either. In February 2013, planetary scientists were given a dramatic opportunity to gauge the effects of such an event when a previously undetected 60-foot-wide (20 meters) asteroid exploded after entering Earth's atmosphere over Chelyabinsk, Russia.

The resulting blast, which released energy equivalent to an estimated 500 kilotons of TNT, was captured on cameras throughout the region as it damaged buildings and caused injuries to more than 1,000 people, mostly due to flying glass from windows that were shattered by the blast wave.

A wake-up call for planetary defense

Because of events like Chelyabinsk and Tunguska, planetary scientists have worked to expand initiatives that detect and monitor potentially hazardous near-Earth objects (NEOs) that could become a concern in the decades ahead.

Still, despite such efforts having been in effect at the time, the Chelyabinsk event represented an example of a potentially dangerous NEO that effectively managed to sneak up on us. Fortunately, despite the damage that was caused, things could have been far worse. But will we be so lucky next time?

To help mitigate such concerns, in 2016 NASA established the Planetary Defense Coordination Office to help align its efforts with those of its international partners and develop more advanced methods of identifying and tracking any NEOs that could pose an impact threat.

Then in 2022, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) demonstrated the use of a spacecraft as a kinetic impactor, which was intentionally sent on a collision course with Dimorphos, the small moon of the asteroid Didymos, which altered Dimorphos' orbital period around its companion by approximately 33 minutes. Such technology could one day prove to be vital if another potential Tunguska-type object were found to be on a collision course with Earth.

The mystery continues

Fact, fiction, and planning for the future

Given the questions that remain about Tunguska, as well as the misrepresentations and persistent myths surrounding it, several scientists have also worked in recent years to combat misinformation about the 1908 event.

In a paper published in March 2026 in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science, authors Mark Boslough and colleagues noted that future planning for evacuation plans and other mitigation efforts "depend critically on our ability to model these events, which depends on our understanding of the governing physics, which in turn is validated by sparse data on real events such as Tunguska."

"If people do not have confidence in the models on which evacuation plans are based, they could lose their lives," the study's authors warned.

More than a century after it occurred, June 30 is now recognized as International Asteroid Day, commemorating not only the blast's anniversary, but also the need for awareness of the dangerous potential future similar events could present.

Tunguska therefore remains a source of fascination for scientists, as well as an opportunity to better understand — and to prepare for — any potential future threats posed by similar objects, should one eventually be found on a collision course with Earth.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has moved a step closer to launching its second-ever interplanetary mission — an ambitious, eight-year exploration of seven asteroids between Mars and Jupiter that will culminate with a landing on the mysteriously red asteroid 269 Justitia.

The mission team unveiled a half-scale model of the homegrown probe that will make that landing during an Oct. 1 press conference in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE. The autonomous craft will ride attached to the main spacecraft MBR Explorer, named after Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai and the UAE's prime minister.

The flight-ready lander is being kept pristine in a vacuum chamber in the capital before being transported to Colorado by Etihad Airways, officials said, where it will be integrated with the main spacecraft, which was developed by the UAE Space Agency.

If all goes to plan, the mission will lift off from Japan in March 2028, kicking off the Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt (EMA). The project is an ambitious follow-up to the UAE Space Agency's Hope Mars orbiter, which has been studying the Red Planet since 2021.

"It's a proud moment for us here at the UAE," said Faisal al-Bannai, the secretary general of the Advanced Technology Research Council in Abu Dhabi.

'We don't know what we're going to find'

EMA will conduct high-speed flybys of six asteroids before reaching and orbiting 269 Justitia. It will travel a total of about 3 billion miles (5 billion kilometers), which is equivalent to circling Earth roughly 125,000 times, said Najwa Aaraj, the CEO of the Technology Innovation Institute (TII) in Abu Dhabi, which designed, built and tested the mission's lander.

Along the way, the MBR Explorer will utilize gravity assists from Venus and then Earth to swing deeper into space, zipping past its first three asteroid targets: 10253 Westerwald, 623 Chimaera and 13294 Rockox. A subsequent gravity assist from Mars will fling the spacecraft even farther out, guiding it past three more space rocks: 88055 Ghaf, 23871 Ousha and 59980 Moza.

By 2036, the spacecraft is scheduled to rendezvous with its final and most intriguing target, 269 Justitia. A roughly 30-mile-wide (50 km) object in the middle of the asteroid belt, 269 Justitia is unusual for its remarkably crimson hue.

Its distinct color more closely resembles icy objects in the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune than its immediate main-belt neighbors. This unique trait has led planetary scientists to hypothesize that the asteroid formed in the frigid outer solar system and migrated inward early in the solar system's history. If true, visiting 269 Justitia would offer a rare, close-up look at pristine material from the distant outer solar system via a much shorter journey.

Scientists are particularly excited that the asteroid may still hold water-related minerals and organic compounds preserved from its origins. Studying its surface could therefore offer clues to how water and organic material were distributed as planets began to form, Elias Tsoutsanis, a chief researcher at TII's propulsion and space research center, said during the press briefing.

"We don't know what we're going to find — that's exploration," Tsoutsanis told reporters. "We're really excited."

According to the mission plan, the MBR Explorer will spend roughly seven months studying 269 Justitia from orbit. Beginning at an altitude of 155 miles (250 km), the spacecraft will gradually lower its path before releasing the lander. The smaller probe will then head toward the asteroid's surface, a descent that should take two to three hours depending on 269 Justitia's precise gravity, which remains unknown.

Although TII describes the mission ending with a landing on the surface of 269 Justitia, the engineering details suggest a more violent endgame. Cruising toward the asteroid's surface at 15 to 27 meters per second (34 to 60 mph) with no meaningful way to slow down, the probe will function less like a traditional lander and more like a planned impactor.

"We don't expect that the probe will survive the touchdown," said Mariam Alhammadi, a researcher in TII leading the mission's electric propulsion.

To ensure its two onboard cameras capture essential imagery during the descent, the probe will rely on an attitude-control system to counteract any post-separation spin, Alhammadi said. Should the probe unexpectedly survive the hard landing, she added, its battery is built to last 20 to 50 minutes, providing a narrow but crucial window for it to beam close-ups of the asteroid's surface back to Earth.

The high-velocity impact is also expected to dig a small crater on 269 Justitia, possibly exposing pristine subsurface material. Because this material cannot be imaged from orbit, the team expects the probe's final images to be among the most valuable of the entire mission.

Zero margin for error

Back on Earth, the team faces an unforgiving timeline. To execute the planned flybys, the mission must launch during a narrow three-week window that opens in early March 2028.

"God forbid we miss that — we basically don't have a mission," Mohsen al-Awadhi, the mission director at the UAE Space Agency, told reporters at the press conference. The orbital mechanics are so rigid that another comparable opportunity will not arise for at least 100 years, prompting al-Awadhi to add that he is devoting no time and energy to a backup plan.

Meeting the launch window is just the first hurdle, however. Once deployed in deep space, the lander must operate with absolute autonomy, receiving no commands from Earth or the main MBR Explorer spacecraft, the team says.

"In these eight years, I have no control to call it back — so nothing can go wrong," said Aaraj.

The team is confident that rigorous engineering and testing have produced a probe that can essentially "think for itself." Equipped with AI, it is designed to decide on its own when to capture images and how to filter and rank the most valuable data. Rather than waiting until it reaches its destination, the lander will take images throughout its eight-year cruise and send the best ones back to Earth roughly every six months, according to a TII statement.

Officials declined to disclose the mission's overall cost or say whether it has stayed on budget. The United States' ongoing war in Iran has sparked missile and drone attacks across the UAE, but the mission team has persevered: WIRED reported that they pressed on even as missiles were intercepted overhead.

Looking ahead

Beyond the immediate scientific return, officials said a central pillar of this mission is accelerating the UAE's sovereign deep-space capabilities and fostering its domestic space economy.

The UAE Space Agency, established in 2014, has steadily expanded its portfolio from satellite launches to a Martian orbiter and sending two astronauts to the International Space Station. The EMA probe represents a developmental leap, designed and built in just under two years by a team of roughly 50 local engineers and scientists, many of whom began their careers as entry-level technicians on the Hope Mars mission.

"I don't want to call them my kids — there's a lot of them — but that's how attached I feel to them," al-Awadhi said during the briefing.

The UAE aims to position itself among the world's 10 largest space economies by 2031, targeting a massive expansion of a sector currently valued at about $12 billion. According to al-Bannai, the EMA project is designed to be one of many programs to come. By the time the lander impacts 269 Justitia in 2036, the technology matured during this journey will already be driving the next generation of Emirati spacecraft, he said.

"That's the journey we're on today."

On. Oct. 11, 1968, Apollo 7 launched into space with NASA astronauts Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele and Walter Cunningham. This was the first mission of the Apollo program that carried a crew into space.

Apollo 7 rebooted the Apollo program after a fire killed three astronauts during a launch rehearsal 20 months earlier.

NASA needed to prove that their Apollo spacecraft worked with this mission, which was really more of a test flight. Though the spacecraft seemed to work alright, the crew got a little snippy during their 11 days in space. First they suffered from motion sickness after launch, then Schirra came down with a cold, and the crew was constantly arguing with mission control and each other. None of the Apollo 7 astronauts went back to space after that.

Why it mattered

Had Apollo 7 not succeeded, the chances of NASA being able to fulfill President John F. Kennedy's 1961 goal, "before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth" would be called into question — not just because the clock was ticking down, but because of increasing political pressure to shut down the expensive moon program.

In the wake of the January 1967 Apollo 1 fire, NASA and North American Aviation, the prime contractor for the Apollo command module, needed to overhaul the spacecraft to make it safe for crews to fly in space. Apollo 7 provided a "shakedown cruise" for the vehicle, to confirm the fixes worked and that the command module was space worthy.

"In its day, the Apollo command module was the most complex machine ever built by man to be operated by man," said Walt Cunningham, Apollo 7 pilot, on the 40th anniversary of the flight in 2008. "We launched on the longest and most ambitious engineering test flight in history, testing the spacecraft systems, verifying the operating procedures, checking out the worldwide tracking network, and that's not to mention testing our crew."

Apollo 7 was deemed by NASA to a 101% success, setting up the first lunar landing in July 1969.

"All of us in the flights that followed were dependent on the Apollo 7 crew doing their job," said Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11 commander. "So thanks Walt and Wally and Donn."

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.

We’ve had a lot of good Alien video games in recent years, but nothing has quite matched the highs and authenticity of 2014’s Alien: Isolation. It took a decade of players clamouring for a sequel, but in late 2024, our prayers were answered when developer Creative Assembly dropped a trailer announcing Alien: Isolation 2.

Now, we’re slowly learning about what developer Creative Assembly has in store for us. Scary teasers and comments from creative director Al Hope suggest we're looking at a bigger, more ambitious survival horror game beyond an obvious visual glow-up. Our hands-on preview at Gamescom 2026 also confirmed the protagonist isn’t Amanda Ripley, which instantly raises a number of questions.

Ahead of Alien: Isolation 2’s arrival, there are plenty of Alien movies and games to go through – plus Alien: Earth’s stellar first season. Now's also a great time to play through the original Alien: Isolation again, to prepare yourself for the horrors that await us with the sequel.

Now, enough yacking. It's time to get on the express elevator to hell and find out everything that we know about Alien: Isolation 2 so far.

When is Alien: Isolation 2 coming out?

Alien: Isolation 2 doesn't have a confirmed release window yet.

Despite the impressive in-game teaser and gameplay demos, Sega and Creative Assembly still haven’t talked about a potential release window. Though many outlets are running with a 2027 target as possible, the truth is the powers that be aren’t ready to commit yet.

When we know more, you'll know more.

What platforms will Alien: Isolation 2 be on?

Alien: Isolation 2 is launching on PC (Steam), PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch 2.

Though it’s unclear if the game will release before next-gen consoles arrive, the current plan is to target current-gen machines and, of course, PC through Steam.

Given the high-fidelity visuals, a Nintendo Switch 2 version might come as a shock, but looking at the excellent third-party ports the hybrid handheld has received so far, we’re confident the developers can deliver a thrilling experience on it as well.

Alien: Isolation 2 trailers

After the aforementioned teasers, Sega and Creative Assembly finally unveiled Alien: Isolation 2 with the first-ever in-game footage in summer 2026. Watch its ‘Last Chance’ reveal trailer below:

When does Alien: Isolation 2 take place in the timeline?

Alien: Isolation 2 is confirmed to happen a few months after the events of the first game. Amanda Ripley’s battle against a Xenomorph infestation aboard the Sevastopol Station took place roughly 15 years after the events of the original 1979 movie, which places both games closer to Alien: Romulus in the canon timeline.

This time around, however, there are two big differences: Amanda Ripley isn’t the protagonist anymore, and, instead of a space station, we’ll have to survive on a rainy colony planet.

Deeper plot details are a secret for now, but we know the planet’s name is LV-921. There, a Weyland-Yutani employee named Blake and her colleagues come across a crashed part of the doomed Sevastopol station, which was destroyed by Ripley in an attempt to exterminate the aliens at the end of the first game.

The prologue demo we played at Gamescom didn’t offer much more context, but Blake is an administrative employee who’s just arrived at the colony and wants to prove she fits her new role. As you can imagine, that quickly gets her in trouble. A Xenomorph had crash-landed on the planet already, so maybe it’s up to her to finish the job that the previous Alien: Isolation protagonist started...

What type of game is Alien: Isolation 2?

Like its predecessor, Alien: Isolation 2 is a single-player, first-person survival horror game.

The gameplay loop of the original is preserved. This means you'll have limited access to weaponry and survival tools, and you'll face sneaky (and relentless) Xenomorphs that dynamically adapt to player progress and movement through each level. You’re not meant to kill the aliens, but rather to avoid and escape them.

Through patience, stealth, and smart use of supplies for crafting, survival is achievable, but this isn’t a bug hunt with the Colonial Marines. To quote Ash in the original movie, “I can’t lie to you about your chances, but you have my sympathies.”

Does Alien: Isolation 2 have a multiplayer mode?

Alien: Isolation 2 is a single-player survival horror game like the original. At the time of writing, no plans for a co-op or multiplayer mode of any kind have been shared.

At this point, it’s unclear what the whole Alien: Isolation 2 package will look like — and we wouldn’t rule out an extra, mission-based Survivor Mode like the original’s — but it seems Creative Assembly isn’t chasing co-op trends with the sequel in any way. This is a cinematic, high-intensity solo adventure.

Is there a public Alien: Isolation 2 demo?

Though attendees had access to the second Alien: Isolation 2 demo at Gamescom, no wider public demo has been released.

This could change in the future and as the game nears release, but without a launch window in sight, don’t hold your breath. It’ll be a while before most players can get their hands on the long-awaited sci-fi survival horror sequel.

Behold! Amateur astrophotographer ing. Cornelis van Zuilen has created a stunning cosmic mosaic of all 110 galaxies, star clusters and nebulas of the Messier catalog — a leviathan effort that took hundreds of hours and many nights of sleeping in his car to complete.

"One of the first Messier objects I photographed was Messier 45 (the Pleiades) back in 2024, when I had just purchased my cooled deep-sky camera and was beginning my deep-sky astrophotography journey," van Zuilen told Space.com in an email. "About a year and a half ago, I decided to capture the entire catalogue."

Van Zuilen spent 352 hours and 13 minutes imaging the menagerie of deep-sky objects using an Askar 103APO telescope and a William Optics Redcat 51 MK2.5, before artfully editing each subject using photoshop and the astronomy software PixInsight.

The ancient light collected by the telescopes was captured with a range of ZWO astronomy cameras and filters.

Van Zuilen observed many of the objects directly from his balcony from the town of Heiloo in the Netherlands, while others required van Zuilen to take his telescopes further afield to avoid capturing treetops and farm buildings in his field of view.

"Doing this from the Netherlands was quite a challenge," explained van Zuilen. "I often had to travel to a semi-dark field nearby to get a clear view of the horizon, which meant many nights of sleeping in my car. But to be honest, I actually really enjoyed that part, it felt like camping."

What is the Messier catalog?

The Messier catalog was first compiled by 18th-century astronomer Charles Messier, who sought to create a list of deep-sky objects that could be mistaken for comets as they glowed in the night sky, according to NASA.

Messier's catalog has been revised several times since its creation and includes some of the most famous deep-sky objects that can be spotted from the Northern Hemisphere, including the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), the Pleiades open star cluster (M45) and the Orion Nebula (M42).

Each of the objects can be spotted with a modest backyard telescope under dark sky conditions, which has made the Messier catalog a popular sightseeing checklist for amateur astronomers looking to explore the wonders beyond our solar system.

"As you might notice, some images are larger than others, and there's a reason for that too," continued van Zuilen. "Those are my favorite images! And most of them have a personal story behind how they came to be, which makes the collage a bit more personal and meaningful to me."

Want to start out on your own astrophotography journey? Then be sure to read our beginner's guide to capturing the night sky, along with our selection of the best cameras and lenses for astrophotography.

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

For a show with no aliens or faster-than-light travel, "Red Dwarf" has crammed an awful lot of sci-fi concepts into its 13 seasons.

Frequently as smart as "Star Trek" — albeit on a much smaller budget — Rob Grant and Doug Naylor's BBC sitcom always punched above its weight when it came to big genre ideas. In fact, many of its stories were truly ahead of their time, built around concepts that have since turned up in hit American shows (including the recent "Strange New Worlds" season four finale) and even Christopher Nolan movies.

Below we've picked out 10 sci-fi storylines and premises (and one honorable mention) where Dave Lister, Arnold Rimmer, Kryten and the Cat got there first…

1. Thoughts made flesh

Episode: "Confidence and Paranoia", "Red Dwarf I" (1988)

In "Red Dwarf": Lister goes down with a bout of space pneumonia, which has the unlikely side-effect of making his fever dreams a reality. In a twist that would give Sigmund Freud a field day, his confidence and paranoia manifest as actual humans — the former played by ex-"The Late Late Show" host Craig Ferguson.

In "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine": With a plot that feels more like a "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" outing, "DS9" season one episode "If Wishes Were Horses" sees the crew's imaginations literally coming to life. The station is soon invaded by out-of-time baseball stars, fairytale villains, and unseasonal snow, all created by aliens eager to understand the concept of imagination.

2. Total immersion virtual reality games

Episode: "Better than Life", "Red Dwarf II" (1988)

In "Red Dwarf": The crew immerses themselves in a total immersion reality game named "Better than Life". Using some headgear that looks nothing at all like a bicycle helmet, they enter a virtual world indistinguishable from reality — though, of course, Rimmer doesn't deal with happiness well, and manages to ruin it for everyone. (Similar virtual reality tech later appeared in "Red Dwarf VI" episode "Gunmen of the Apocalypse".)

In "Ready Player One": Yes, the holodeck turned up in "Star Trek: The Next Generation" a year before — and the "Recreation Room" appeared in "The Animated Series" a year before that — but they're simulations you walk into. The OASIS in "Ready Player One", however, is undeniably a descendant of the "Better than Life" tech, an all-encompassing virtuality experience built to transport you away from the drudgery of everyday life.

3. Life in reverse

Episode: "Backwards", "Red Dwarf III" (1989)

In "Red Dwarf": Kryten and Rimmer crash-land on a version of Earth where time runs backwards for everyone but them. While they wait for Lister and the Cat to rescue them, they make a living as a comedy duo called "The Sensational Reverse Brothers", while also trying to avoid finding out what happens when you go to the toilet…

In "Tenet" (2020): Temporal terrorists use prototype technology to "invert entropy", allowing them to travel through time in reverse. Director Christopher Nolan uses the premise to stage spectacular sequences where cars reverse down freeways at high speed, cause and effect goes topsy-turvy, and fights are just, well, weird.

As a result, it's incredibly difficult to understand what the hell is going on — the "Red Dwarf" version is shorter, easier to follow, and an awful lot funnier.

4. Take a picture

Episode: "Timeslides", "Red Dwarf III" (1989)

In "Red Dwarf": In the ship's darkroom (for the benefit of anyone under 35, that's where pre-digital photos were developed), a weird turn of events causes pictures to come to life. The crew can subsequently step inside images and interact with people and objects in the snaps — as long as they don't step outside the frame of the original photo. This results in a snowball fight, some wedding crashing, and Lister stealing Hitler's bag.

In "Black Mirror": "Timeslides" gets a predictably dark (but moving) twist in the seventh season of Charlie Brooker's dystopian anthology series. In "Eulogy", Paul Giamatti plays the lonely Philip, invited to assist with a memorial for an ex-girlfriend who's just passed away. Using a tech company's tech to explore existing photos — his last connection to his former love — he revisits painful memories and thoughts of what might have been.

5. The odd couple

Episode: "Marooned", "Red Dwarf III" (1989)

In "Red Dwarf": Starbug crash-lands on a remote ice planet, trapping Lister and Rimmer alone on a strange and hostile world. With their survival in the balance, there's nothing for the two frenemies to do but talk. A lot.

In "Star Trek: Enterprise": "Shuttlepod One" is the quintessential American bottle episode, a popular TV device in which the action is predominantly confined to a single set. In a plotline remarkably reminiscent of "Marooned", Trip Tucker and Malcolm Reed find themselves contemplating the end after the apparent destruction of the Enterprise. There's not much for the two crewmates to do but talk. A lot.

6. Seeing what they want you to see

Episode: "Camille", "Red Dwarf IV" (1991)

In "Red Dwarf": On a mission to save a doomed spaceship, the crew rescue a female mechanoid named Camille. Or so they think… she's actually a pleasure GELF (Genetically Engineered LifeForm) who can assume the form of anyone's ideal partner. Hence, Lister sees a Liverpudlian woman, Rimmer encounters a fussy hologram, and the narcissistic Cat gets to date, well, himself.

In "Babylon 5": The mysterious Vorlons, one of "Babylon 5"'s oldest races, spend most of the series hiding away in "encounter suits" that hide their true form. But when Ambassador Kosh eventually reveals himself while rescuing Captain Sheridan from a potentially fatal fall, he projects a more angelic form, with everyone on the space station seeing a face appropriate to their own species.

Because the Vorlons have spent thousands of years tampering with the DNA of younger races, we've all been pre-programmed to see them as beatific beings.

7. A white hole

Episode: "White Hole", "Red Dwarf IV" (1991)

In "Red Dwarf": "So, what is it?" "Red Dwarf" didn't invent the white hole — the concept is based on actual theoretical astrophysics — but the sitcom certainly had a big part to play in bringing the less famous twin of the black hole into public consciousness. In the show, the crew encounters a white hole spewing time and space into the universe, and the only way to close it is for Lister to play space pool, sinking a planet into the interdimensional fissure via an over-elaborate trick shot.

In "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds": With all the spatial anomalies that pop up on the final frontier, it's remarkable that it took until the Strange New Worlds season four finale, "Tomorrow's Enterprise", for a white hole to show up.

The "Trek" version may be surprisingly close to current theory, which suggests that the white hole is essentially the flip side of a black hole — while nothing can escape from a black hole, nothing can enter a white hole.

That said, it's unlikely that a real-life white hole/black hole dyad would allow Uhura to communicate with a future version of herself. Or that it would be the birthing site for a giant space baby with no concept of past, present, or future.

8. Manipulating the odds

Episode: "Quarantine", "Red Dwarf V" (1992)

In "Red Dwarf": The crew visits a virus research centre where they discover a selection of "positive" viruses — rather than making you ill, their effects are generally good for your wellbeing. Examples include inspiration, charisma, sexual magnetism and — most notably — luck.

In Marvel comics: Domino made her Marvel debut just before this "Red Dwarf" episode, but we're going to put this down to a case of convergent evolution. The X-Force and "Deadpool" mainstay is well known for her ability to manipulate the laws of chance — just like the probabilistic microbe, her powers turn luck into a tangible property.

9. Hard light

Episode: "Legion", "Red Dwarf VI" (1993)

In "Red Dwarf": Holographic crew member Rimmer is cursed to live his life unable to touch anything, until gestalt entity Legion upgrades his "light bee" — the hovering device that creates his image — to project "hard light". He subsequently becomes, to all intents and purposes, indestructible, while remaining entirely mobile.

In "Star Trek: Voyager": "The Next Generation" was giving light physical form long before "Legion", but what happened on the holodeck tended to stay on the holodeck. Then the Emergency Medical Hologram became a series regular in "Voyager", and needed some way to set foot outside sickbay — his handy "mobile holo-emitter" is essentially an arm-mounted light bee.

"Starfleet Academy"'s photonic lifeform SAM (Series Acclimation Mil) also feels like a descendant of the holographic starship crew in "Red Dwarf V"'s "Holoship".

10. Quantum entanglement

Episode: "Entangled", "Red Dwarf X" (2012)

In "Red Dwarf": An experiment involving a "quantum rod" from a previous adventure causes Kryten and the Cat to become entangled on a quantum level. In other words, it's an excuse for Robert Llewellyn and Danny John-Jules to perform a masterclass in both physical theatre and spooky action, as they move entirely in sync with each other.

In "The Marvels": It's fair to say it's not quite how Albert Einstein theorized it, but quantum entanglement is also used to justify Carol Danvers, Monica Rambeau, and Kamala Khan being tied together in the 2023 MCU movie. The results are slightly different — they keep swapping places every time they use their powers — but it's a similarly loose riff on real-life physics.

Honorable mention: It happened last night

"Thanks for the Memory", "Red Dwarf II"

In "Red Dwarf": When the Boys from the Dwarf hold an epic party to mark the anniversary of Rimmer's death, they get so drunk that four days have passed by the time they wake up. With no memory of the intervening time — why is Lister's leg broken? Who completed that jigsaw puzzle — they try to piece together what happened.

In "The Hangover" (2009): Okay, it's not science fiction, but the hit comedy film is built on exactly the same premise — a bunch of guys get so wasted in Vegas that they end up on a mission to work out how they ended up with one missing tooth, a lost baby, and a tiger in their hotel bathroom.

Recent "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" shore leave episode "Human Best Friend" also recycled that party/amnesia formula.

On Episode 231 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik take a dive deep into their favorite space si-fi across the ages.

From the earliest works of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells to the best of contemporary space science fiction, Rod and Tariq also challenge you with some of the most obscure titles they know.

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

• The Integral Trees
• The Smoke Ring
• Lucifer's Hammer: A Novel
• Star Trek Classics: The Mirror Universe Saga
• Rising Stars Compendium
• Farmer in the Sky
• From the Earth to the Moon (Illustrated 1874 Edition): 100th Anniversary Collection
• Between Planets
• The Expanse Series Collection 9 Books Set
• The Murderbot Diaries Vol. 1
• Ancillary Justice
• Firestar: An Epic of Science Fiction for the Twenty-First Century
• The Martian
• Rusty's Space Ship
• We All Died at Breakaway Station
• Edison's Conquest of Mars: A Classic Mars Invasion Science Fiction Adventure and Early Interplanetary War Story
• The Martian Chronicles
• Fury (Golden Age Masterworks)
• Farewell to The Master: The Day the Earth Stood Still
• The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
• A Talent For War (An Alex Benedict Novel Book 1)
• War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches
• The Chimerium Gambit: The Radiation Angels
• The Great Planet Robbery
• Earth Strike: A Gritty Military Space Opera in the Vein of Battlestar Galactica

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.

On Oct. 10, 1967, the international Outer Space Treaty was ratified. This treaty established a set of rules regulating how different countries can explore and use outer space.

Specifically, it says "the exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries and shall be the province of all mankind."

The treaty dictates that no one can claim territory in outer space and that other celestial bodies must be used "exclusively for peaceful purposes." More than 100 countries have ratified the treaty today.

Why it mattered

Considered the "cornerstone" for modern space law, the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 (formally, the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies) has provided more than a theoretical framework for future activities, but has been put to use and enforced for modern spaceflight activities.

The treaty's primary focus is on the peaceful use of space.

"First, it contains an undertaking not to place in orbit around the Earth, install on the moon or any other celestial body, or otherwise station in outer space, nuclear or any other weapons of mass destruction. Second, it limits the use of the moon and other celestial bodies exclusively to peaceful purposes and expressly prohibits their use for establishing military bases, installation, or fortifications; testing weapons of any kind; or conducting military maneuvers," reads a summary prepared by the U.S. State Department.

Beyond that, the treaty addresses the ownership of spacecraft and satellites, whether they are in space, on the surface of another celestial body or on Earth; lays the foundation for restrictions on off-Earth property rights; and calls for parties to the treaty to provide aide when needed to astronauts, whether they are in space or encounter problems during their landings.

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.

Ancient Egyptian temples will inevitably dominate the story of the total solar eclipse on Aug. 2, 2027. Luxor, home to Karnak, the Valley of the Kings and some of the most famous monuments of the ancient world, will experience more than six minutes of totality and will attract eclipse chasers from around the world. Southern Spain, particularly the coast around Tarifa and Málaga, is also expected to be busy.

But the path of totality is vast. It will stretch 9,462 miles (15,227 km) across Earth and reach about 160 miles (260 km) wide. After crossing southern Spain, the moon’s shadow will race east across Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt before crossing the Red Sea into Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and continuing across Somalia and into the Indian Ocean.

Along the way are mountain towns, desert oases, Mediterranean islands and historic cities where eclipse chasers can experience anything from a few minutes to more than six minutes of totality. Here are 10 less obvious places than Luxor, Egypt, to consider for the total solar eclipse on Aug. 2, 2027. All times, totality durations and historical cloud cover data come from Time and Date.

1. Vejer de la Frontera, Spain

Thousands will watch the eclipse from Spanish beaches, but inland are some of Andalucía’s gems. Vejer de la Frontera is one of its classic pueblos blancos — “white towns” — a maze of whitewashed houses and narrow streets occupying a hilltop a few miles inland from the Costa de la Luz. Elevated viewpoints across the surrounding countryside could make this an intriguing alternative to watching from the crowded coastline.

2. Medina-Sidonia, Spain

Perched high above the Cádiz countryside, Medina-Sidonia offers something the eclipse beaches cannot: elevation. One of Europe’s oldest continuously inhabited settlements, its historic center contains whitewashed streets, churches and the remains of a hilltop castle, with expansive views toward the surrounding plains. Totality lasts over three and a half minutes.

3. Arcos de la Frontera, Spain

You’ll sacrifice almost all of Spain’s potential totality by heading to another of Spain’s classic pueblos blancos, but what a setting. The old town of Arcos de la Frontera occupies a dramatic limestone ridge above the Guadalete River, its buildings seemingly piled along the cliff edge. Arcos sits very close to the northern limit of the path, which some eclipse chasers seek out specifically for a longer display of Baily’s beads. For an eclipse chaser who values that, scenery over duration, or relative quiet, this geographical knife-edge could be appealing.

4. Asilah, Morocco

Asilah offers an enticing combination of long totality and Atlantic scenery. The compact coastal town is known for its whitewashed medina, brightly painted murals and imposing Portuguese-era ramparts overlooking the ocean. It’s just south of the centerline of the path of totality, so it gets close to the best eclipse durations available in Morocco. Its walls, towers, beach and ocean could all provide enticing foregrounds for eclipse photography.

5. Chefchaouen Kasbah, Morocco

Surely one of the most photogenic surprises anywhere on the eclipse track, Chefchaouen is Morocco’s famous “Blue City,” its old medina filled with buildings painted in shades of blue beneath the rugged Rif Mountains. It also gets a substantial eclipse of roughly four and a quarter minutes, with the sun about 39 degrees high. An elevated viewpoint that captures the medina, the mountains, and the eclipsed sun could produce an extraordinary photograph.

6. Al Hoceïma, Morocco

For a wilder Moroccan eclipse, look east along the Mediterranean to Al Hoceïma. The city sits amid the rugged Rif Mountains, where cliffs and steep hills descend toward beaches and intensely blue Mediterranean water. With its beach resorts, you'll also find plenty of accommodation. It gets a long totality and the dramatic coastal landscape is attractive, though historical cloud cover is less favorable.

7. Oran, Algeria

Algeria’s second-largest city could be one of the more practical ways to experience the eclipse in the country. Oran overlooks the Mediterranean and is backed by hills crowned by the Fort of Santa Cruz, offering different kinds of eclipse experiences. More importantly, it’s on the centerline and gets more than five minutes of totality.

8. Houmt Souk, Tunisia

Djerba — the largest island in North Africa — offers an appealing alternative to the archaeological sites and desert landscapes elsewhere in Tunisia. Known as the “Island of Dreams” for its 300 days of annual sunshine, its main town, Houmt Souk, is known for whitewashed architecture, markets and a historic fortress. The surrounding island brings palm trees, beaches and Mediterranean horizons.

9. Bahariya Oasis, Egypt

For maximum totality without Luxor's expected crowds, Bahariya Oasis deserves serious attention. Centered on the town of Bawiti, this remote depression in Egypt’s Western Desert is surrounded by barren hills, date palms, hot springs and sweeping desert landscapes. It also lies remarkably close to the eclipse centreline, delivering 6 minutes 19 seconds of totality beneath almost dependably clear August skies. Nearby desert viewpoints could provide enormous horizons — although the eclipsed sun will be 79 degrees high.

10. Ta’if region, Saudi Arabia

Most attention in Saudi Arabia will inevitably focus on Jeddah and Mecca, but the Ta’if region offers something completely different. Sitting around 5,580 feet (1,700 meters) above sea level in the mountains east of Mecca, it is known for its cooler highland climate, dramatic escarpments and surrounding peaks. Duration varies substantially across the area because Ta’if lies toward the edge of the eclipse path, so eclipse chasers will need to choose their precise observing location carefully.

SpaceX just sent another batch of satellites to orbit for the U.S. military.

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base today (Oct. 10) at 3:39 a.m. EDT (0739 GMT; 12:39 a.m. local time), hauling 21 "data transport" satellites to orbit for the U.S. Space Force's Space Development Agency (SDA).

That was five days later than originally planned. SpaceX tried to launch the mission on Monday (Oct. 5), but the Falcon 9 aborted that attempt in the countdown's final minute, for reasons that the company has not disclosed.

Today's launch helps build out the SDA's Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), which SpaceX describes as "a mesh network of optically connected satellites in low Earth orbit [LEO] that enable global military tactical communications and missile warning, indication and tracking capabilities."

The liftoff was the fourth of nine that SpaceX will conduct to help assemble the architecture's Tranche 1 — the "initial warfighting capability tranche," according to the SDA.

Tranche 1 will eventually consist of 154 operational satellites in LEO — 126 data-transport spacecraft and 28 missile-tracking vehicles. There will also be four missile-defense test satellites, which will sport a "higher fidelity" infrared sensor than their tracking counterparts, SDA officials wrote. (Missile-tracking satellites generally hunt for the heat signatures these weapons produce during flight).

Eighty-four of the 126 data-transport satellites have now launched to date, all of them on Falcon 9s, which lifted off from Vandenberg in September 2025, October 2025, July of this year and today.

And, as its name suggests, Tranche 1 will be just the beginning, if all goes according to plan.

"SDA leverages spiral development to deploy and proliferate new capability into a new generation of the PWSA every two years, called a 'tranche,' to continually increase capability used by the warfighter," SDA officials wrote in a Tranche 1 fact sheet.

Everything seemed to go well on today's launch. The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Vandenberg for a landing a little over seven minutes after liftoff. It was the sixth mission for this particular booster, which is designated 1103. Its most recent flight was the July Tranche 1 mission for the SDA.

SpaceX ended its webcast shortly after booster touchdown, at the request of the SDA, so we did not get to see satellite deployment. But that's the norm for national security launches.

The satellites were successfully deployed in their target orbit, according to an Oct. 10 announcement by their builder, aerospace giant Northrop Grumman. The 21 spacecraft "will provide secure, resilient, low-latency communications and data transport in low Earth orbit," helping to connect warfighters with missile-tracking satellites, the company wrote.

Today's mission was the 111th Falcon 9 flight of the year. The vast majority of these — more than 70% — have helped build out SpaceX's Starlink broadband megaconstellation, which currently consists of more than 11,000 satellites.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 12:45 p.m. ET on Oct. 10 with news of successful satellite deployment.

Astronomers investigating mysterious flashes of X-rays believe that these blasts could stem from collisions between neutron stars, the events that forge elements like gold, silver, and platinum.

The event designated EP250704a, was first seen on July 4, 2025, as a blast of gamma rays lasting half a second followed by a bright X-ray emission lasting 10 minutes. After receiving an alert from the joint European-Chinese Einstein probe that witnessed the blast, a team of astronomers started to hunt for its cause by studying the aftermath of the explosion using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT), the Very Large Array (VLA), and other telescopes.

According to astronomer Niccolò Passaleva who led the observations of the X-ray flash with the VLT, this cosmic outburst was unlike any scientists had seen before. "This is the longest-lasting prompt X-ray flash ever observed from a neutron star merger," Passaleva said in a statement. "It is an opportunity to have a front-row seat to the most extreme forces of the universe and discover more of its secrets."

Neutron stars are created when massive stars die in supernova explosions, cramming one or two the mass of the sun into a width akin to a city on Earth and creating material so dense that a single teaspoon of neutron star matter brought to Earth would weigh 10 million tons. When these extreme dead stars slam together, they create environments so turbulent and violent they are capable of forging elements so heavy that even the hearts of stars can't do it. Elements like the gold on your finger.

These collision and merger events, marked by flashes of light called kilonovas, have long been associated with flashes of high-energy gamma-rays that disappear within two seconds, but new research suggests some neutron star mergers could reveal themselves via blasts of X-rays lasting minutes.

In particular, scientists have wondered if neutron star mergers could be the cause of hundreds of X-ray flashes in distant galaxies discovered by the Einstein probe since its launch in 2024. While some of these have been linked to the supernova-explosive death of massive stars that can create a neutron star or a black hole, others have defied explanation. EP250704a is one such X-ray flash.

"When I saw the X-ray data from this new event, I realized something was up," team member Eleonora Troja, part of the Einstein Probe European collaboration, said in the statement.

The team believes that there is something special in the neutron star merger mix that results in these X-ray bursts.

Merging with a magnetar

All neutron stars are created the same way from the collapsing core of a massive star, but not all neutron stars are equal.

Just as an ice skater pulls in their arms to increase the speed of a spin, the rapid reduction in radius of a collapsing stellar core can "spin up" the rotation of a neutron star to 'over 700 times per second. This collapse can have another consequence too.

It turns out that magnetic fields get stronger when magnetic field lines are pushed closer together. That means the collapse of a stellar core with an already powerful magnetic field can create a neutron star with the strongest magnetic field in the universe. Those neutron stars have a special name: magnetars.

The team behind this research thinks that the neutron star merger in question involved at least one magnetar.

"If the remnant of the collision is a magnetar, it could keep bursting for longer," Troja said. "Magnetars are rapidly spinning neutron stars with huge magnetic fields. When they dump their magnetic power into the surroundings, they can make any explosion brighter and longer-lasting."

The researchers ruled out a supernova as the cause of the X-ray burst and were also able to determine that the light from this collision has been travelling to Earth for 6 billion years.

Discovering more of these extreme X-ray flashes could help astronomers determine how often magnetars are formed through these neutron star mergers, Passaleva said in the statement.

The team's research was published in the journal Science Bulletin.

Apple TV's addictive multiverse thriller, "Dark Matter," has quietly joined their roster of fantastic sci-fi series alongside hits like "Pluribus," "Severance," "Foundation," "Silo," "For All Mankind," and "Star City."

Adapted from New York Times bestselling author Blake Crouch's ("Recursion," "Upgrade") novel of the same name from 2016, "Dark Matter" is a mesmerizing amalgam of time-travel, existential crises, alternate dimensions, and romantic love that transcends the multiverse. We're entering the final few episodes of season 2, so there’s still room to jump on the show's bandwagon and absorb the quantum entanglement for what's bound to be a cliffhanger finale airing on Oct. 30, 2026.

As "Dark Matter" season 2 heads toward its conclusion, we sat down with showrunner Blake Crouch to ask what it's like to adapt your own book to the screen, and the challenges of moving beyond the scope of his original story.

"The biggest challenge for season 2 was time because we needed to move quickly," Crouch tells Space. "This was a brand new plot and brand new story. Yeah, we had the characters from season 1 and kind of knew where they were heading, but coming up with ten hours of new story was daunting."

Crouch again serves as "Dark Matter's" executive producer and showrunner, this time being liberated from the novel's initial plotline and free to continue the story of Jason (Joel Edgerton) and Daniela (Jennifer Connelly) Dessen as they flee from a mob of duplicate Jasons chasing them across parallel existences while struggling to maintain some semblance of a marriage. Come for the trippy time loops and strange variant worlds, stay for the exceptional acting and drama!

"It was a case of go, go, go, and actually I think it kind of helps the process not be precious," explains Crouch. "We sort of committed and went with it. For the second season arc, we wanted to open up the aperture and not just focus so heavily only on the family, but to check in with Ryan and Amanda and Leighton. It seemed like an amazing opportunity to build out the world."

Crouch and his creative team were extremely happy with the debut season's aesthetics, and this sophomore outing was mostly about being faithful to that, although the new batch did indulge in a couple of standalone chapters where the writers got to play a bit and take some big swings.

"It was never something we were afraid of," Crouch adds, avoiding multiverse tropes and clichés. "Because I was starting to write 'Dark Matter' in 2014 and there are plenty of amazing things that came before that dabbled in it. But when the book came out, it was the first story that went all in and committed to the idea of the world in a grounded, emotional, character-driven way. And we always try to stay true to that identity.

"Sometimes the multiverse can be fun shock and awe when it comes to showing how wild and crazy different worlds can become. But for our characters, everyone is just shades of the same core character. And I think that approach hopefully keeps it from falling into some of those trope traps.”

Romance is frequently at the heart of Crouch’s work, which allows the series’ acclaimed cast to evolve and stretch their skills within the complicated narrative.

"I love the way Jennifer describes this second season as a continued exploration of a marriage," he shares. "And in some ways the new season of 'Dark Matter' gets far more deep into the relationship of Daniela and Jason. Because in season 1 they're together for a few minutes in the beginning and then he’s out the door and ultimately gets abducted. He doesn’t return to his family until the end of the penultimate episode."

"There's a sense in season 1 that it’s a love story between these two characters, but Jason 1 and Daniel 1 have very little screen time," he elaborates. "In season 2, we not only get to see how they interact day-to-day, but how they deal with the fallout. "

"I feel a lot of gratitude to work with such amazing creative minds, from our production designer to our actors and directors and editors. It's very humbling to get to work with so many smart people who are all trying to execute your vision."

"Dark Matter" season 2 airs new episodes each Friday exclusively on Apple TV. Fans can also catch up on the entire first season on Apple TV.

I thought I knew Orion. Three stars in a row for the Belt, Betelgeuse above, Rigel below: it's one of the constellations I have long been able to identify with the least thought, along with Cassiopeia and the Plough/the Big Dipper.

But one fall evening long ago, when I was learning the night sky, I was looking at three bright stars rising in the east and spent an embarrassingly long time wondering whether they really were Orion's Belt. They were at the wrong angle. The rest of Orion followed them into the sky almost sideways, as though somebody had knocked the Hunter over.

What was happening? Nothing had gone wrong with Orion, of course. The problem was the picture of him in my head. Most constellation diagrams are printed in the orientation that makes them easiest to recognize. The sky makes no such promise. Watch Orion rise this month, and the familiar figure can look decidedly unfamiliar at first. Better still, stay outside long enough, and you can watch his orientation change as he rises on his side and swings into the southern sky upright as the night wears on.

Orion stopped being a picture and became evidence that the sky was doing something I didn't expect to see so easily in such a short time — it was moving, and strangely.

What's happening and when to look

In mid-October, you need to be patient to see Orion, but it's one of the best months to catch it rising on its side. From much of North America, look low toward the east shortly before midnight. Orion rises on its side, with the three Belt stars — Mintaka, Alnilam and Alnitak — rising one by one, preceded by Betelgeuse and Bellatrix, followed by brilliant Rigel.

Don't worry if you can't see the whole constellation immediately. Orion is enormous, and when it's close to the horizon, buildings, trees and atmospheric haze can easily hide parts of it. Waiting another hour can transform the view.

As Orion climbs higher, it appears to turn. The Belt changes angle, and the constellation gradually approaches the orientation many of us recognize from winter evenings. It reaches due south around sunrise, by which time the Belt is sloped, but the four corner stars — Betelgeuse and Bellatrix at the top and Rigel and Saiph at the bottom — form the easily recognizable rectangle enclosing it. Orion looks like Orion.

Orion isn't actually performing a slow roll in space. Earth is rotating beneath us, carrying our viewpoint eastward. Stars therefore appear to rise in the east, arc across the sky and eventually set in the west. It's how the night sky works, but it's an effect that's particularly easy to notice with Orion because its shape is so familiar. Instead of trying to understand celestial motion from a diagram, you can watch it happening.

How and when I'm watching it

I'm going to make this an astrophotography experiment rather than a conventional observing session. As soon as Orion's Belt appears just above the eastern horizon, I'm going to take a series of 30-second images — possibly using a DSLR, or perhaps a Seestar smart telescope — and then stack them to create what will effectively be a star trail image. However, instead of focusing on Polaris to show how the night sky revolves around the north polar axis, it will show Orion's Belt rising.

Stargazer's corner: October 9-15, 2026

The new moon falls on Oct. 10, making this an excellent week to get away from the brighter parts of the solar system and see what the autumn sky looks like without moonlight. In the predawn hours of Sunday, Oct. 11, get up 90 minutes before sunrise to see Mars moving through the dozens of stars in the Beehive Cluster. Binoculars will get you a great view.

As the week progresses, watch for the moon returning to the evening sky as a slender waxing crescent. On Oct. 13 it passes close to Mercury, and on Oct. 14, to Antares, the bright reddish star marking the heart of Scorpius. Look low toward the southwest around dusk for both sights.

Saturn remains exceptionally well placed. Having reached opposition on Oct. 4, it's now already above the eastern horizon as darkness settles and remains visible for much of the night. You don't need a telescope to identify it, but even a modest telescope will give you a terrific view of its rings, which are now opening out.

Constellation of the week: Andromeda

Once you've finished watching Orion climb, turn to a constellation that is much better placed as soon as it gets dark during October. Andromeda extends away from the northeastern corner of the Great Square of Pegasus. The slightly confusing part is that the star at that corner, Alpheratz, belongs to Andromeda rather than Pegasus. Constellation boundaries are less tidy than the drawings suggest.

You can't look at Andromeda without searching for the Andromeda galaxy, M31. Under a genuinely dark sky, you can see it with the unaided eye as a faint, fuzzy patch. From a brighter suburban location, binoculars make the job considerably easier. Don't expect the enormous spiral shown in long-exposure photographs. In binoculars or a small telescope, you'll catch the bright central region.

On Oct. 9, 1992, a space rock the size of a bowling ball fell out of space and crash landed on a woman's Chevy Malibu in Peekskill, New York.

Thousands of people along the U.S. East Coast witnessed the Peekskill meteorite blazing through the skies over Kentucky, West Virginia and Pennsylvania before it hit the parked car. Eighteen-year-old Michelle Knapp was sitting at home when she thought she heard a car crash outside.

When Knapp went to look, she found a hole in the trunk of her car and a smoking-hot meteorite beneath it. She had just bought the car for $300, and after it was damaged, she sold it for $10,000.

Why it mattered

Earth is no stranger to space rock impacts (farewell, dinosaurs), but it is pretty rare to see a meteorite fall as strange as the Peekskill meteorite car crash.

The meteor that ultimately led to the Peekskill meteorite was visible from Kentucky to New York, appearing as a "fragmenting fireball" at about 7:50 p.m EDT, according to the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute. The meteorite, which weighed 12.37 kilograms, crashed through the right rear edge of the trunk of Knapp's 1980 Chevrolet Malibu and left a dent in the driveway below.

The Peekskill meteorite fall captivated scientists and the public alike due to the high amount of film and photo coverage of its meteor descent.

"Video cameras trained on Friday night high-school football games turned skyward to capture the rocketing fireball. As a result, several scientific investigations were able to track the meteorite's flight path to Earth — including its orbit around the Sun," University of Alaska Fairbanks officials wrote.

Because of such a prolific amount of film coverage, which stretched from West Virginia to New York, scientists were able to calculate the meteor's flight path before impact. It crashed into the car at a speed of about 179 mph, they said.

"This is only the fourth recovered meteorite for which detailed data exist on its trajectory," the University of Alaska Fairbanks officials wrote.

A slice of the Peekskill meteorite sold for $4,375 in a Christies auction in 2021. You can see a large piece of the meteorite on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City today. Even Knapp's car has its own website, and is sometimes put on display.

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.

A new genetically engineered microbe may one day help humanity settle Mars, a nonprofit biotechnology research startup suggests.

Our species has launched nearly 50 missions to Mars since 1960, all of them robotic. If everything goes according to plan, they've all been building toward crewed Red Planet flight, which remains a high priority for national space agencies and private companies alike.

Ideally, human crews there will not rely on shipment after shipment from Earth, but can instead make use of any resources they can unearth on Mars for air, food, water, building supplies and more. Perhaps the most radical possible outcome from this approach is the concept of terraforming Mars — transforming the cold, arid world to support life as we know it.

Now, researchers at Pioneer Labs in Emeryville, California, have developed a microbe they suggest may be a useful, safe first step toward terraforming Mars.

"On Mars, nature will do the same jobs for us that she does on Earth — create fertile soil, shelter, oxygen and food," Erika DeBenedictis, CEO of Pioneer Labs, told Space.com.

A key problem with the idea of terraforming Mars is that the Red Planet's surface is essentially toxic. While raw materials potentially useful for Earth life are found in abundance on Mars, they are mixed in the soil with toxins such as perchlorate, as well as salts that would make growth difficult for most organisms.

Previous strategies for growing plants on Mars included rinsing these poisons out, bringing supplemental fertilizers from Earth, or avoiding Martian soil entirely and using hydroponics. However, Pioneer Labs argues that these approaches do not scale up well in terms of time and expense.

The organization has developed a microbe, dubbed sPL.001, that can live off artificial, chemically accurate versions of Martian dirt, water and air. It can do this with having the toxins removed, or with fertilizer added. Moreover, it can generate bioplastics — a class of materials used nowadays on Earth for items as diverse as compostable cups and 3D printing filaments — that could be useful for building habitats on the Red Planet.

"Mars has all the raw materials for life in abundance," DeBenedictis said. "Life can grow entirely using nutrients in unprocessed Martian regolith. That’s special and different from other places, like the moon, which doesn’t have nutrients in the regolith."

In a new study, the scientists revealed how they took Earth microbes that could manufacture bioplastics and slowly exposed them to more and more Mars-like conditions over time.

"It wasn’t obvious this was going to work," DeBenedictis said. "The first time we tested growth of terrestrial microbes in Mars conditions, none of them grew! We had to keep going and test a lot more organisms before we realized we had just gotten unlucky the first time."

Eventually, the scientists evolved a tolerance for toxins normally found in Martian soil.

"It was so cool to see these microbes start growing better on simulated Mars nutrients," DeBenedictis said. "Life finds a way!"

To survive, the new microbe needs to grow inside a stirred, heated bioreactor that protects it from extreme temperature, radiation and the thin Martian atmosphere. It must also receive a processed form of air that gives the microbe the valuable nutrient nitrogen in the form of acetate, as normal Martian air has nitrogen levels too dilute for the microbes to live off. The organism is also not photosynthetic, so it cannot make its own food.

In another study, the researchers suggested that these limitations ensure their microbe cannot survive if it ever found its way outside on Mars. These measures reduce the risk that their microbe might contaminate the Red Planet as an invasive organism, especially if Mars ever did develop life of its own that might still exist in underground aquifers or within ancient salt crystals.

Samuel McKee, a DNA repair scientist at the University of Reading in England, found it believable that such a microbe could not accidentally terraform Mars.

"Many adapted or edited microbes on Earth do not survive outside of a fixed environment despite their evolution, or without a certain food supply," McKee, who did not take part in the new research, told Space.com.

In a third study, the scientists estimated that, thanks to the microbe, mission planners could fit everything needed to build a city on Mars onto a single rocket.

"The biggest limitation of what we’ve done is that simulated Mars isn’t actual Mars," DeBenedictis said. "We reconstructed the relevant chemistry of Martian regolith as carefully as we could from high-quality rover data from multiple locations on Mars. But ultimately, the real test will be doing this with actual Martian regolith."

Such research could find use beyond Mars.

"I am excited about how these avenues of research could impact our dealing with climate change on Earth or extreme environment habitats," McKee said. "Microbes can be utilized to generate much of the material and needs we have thanks to gene editing."

All in all, "we will be watching with anticipation when these microbes are finally launched to the Martian surface," McKee said.

Military officials in the U.S. and other nations have increasingly warned about the potential for conflict in space in the coming years. While many would perceive the current push to militarize space as a concern primarily for modern military thinkers, there is a far deeper — and at times, a surprising — history of warfare technologies developed for use in outer space.

At the height of the Cold War, one particularly unusual early application for space warfare was pursued by the Soviet Union, which involved mounting a rapid-fire cannon aboard a secret military space station. The weapon was reportedly developed for the Soviet-era Almaz military space station program, an ambitious Cold War-era initiative that sought to leverage cutting-edge orbital technologies of the day to enhance Moscow's military reconnaissance capabilities.

At the time, Soviet officials were concerned that the United States was already developing spacecraft that could approach, investigate, and either capture or disable Moscow's sensitive satellites. The natural response to such concerns was to develop defense systems capable of neutralizing such threats — and the result became legendary in some circles as one of the strangest weapons of the Space Race. But was this Soviet "space cannon" ever successfully fired in orbit?

What do we know?

Images of a Cold War oddity come to light

The short answer is yes, according to historian Anatoly Zak, who manages the long-running site Russian Space Web, an online hub for information about orbital pursuits in the USSR.

However, for many years, the appearance of the mysterious orbital cannon remained shrouded in mystery. In an email, Zak told Space that while the existence of this curious weapon of yesteryear had been known for decades, it was not until images were broadcast by the Russian military television program "Voennaya Priemka" that he was able to reassemble the most complete picture of how the weapon actually looked.

"This particular cannon was known since the 1990s, but that propaganda show of the Russian military TV channel showed the hardware from different directions," Zak said.

After examining this rare historical imagery, Zak said it enabled him "to build a detailed 3D reconstruction."

"This is a pretty routine method for historians and I've been doing it for more than two decades," Zak said, and images of his reconstruction, along with details about the cannon and its history, can be seen on his website.

The secret history of the Soviet Union's "space cannon"

Originally developed under weapons designer Aleksandr Nudelman for the Moscow-based KB Tochmash design bureau, inspiration for the space cannon came from aircraft gun technology designed by Aron Rikhter, builder of the famous Rikhter R-23. This gas-operated revolver automatic cannon was first developed by Rikhter in the 1950s, and adapting the weapon to the unusual demands of orbital combat led to the development of what is sometimes identified as the R-23M Kartech.

Details about the precise specifications of this orbital variant of Rikhter's famous weapon vary. In some historical accounts, the weapon is described as a modified 23-millimeter cannon, although according to Zak, it was a 14.5-millimeter cannon developed by Nudelman and his team. Estimates for its firing rate vary anywhere from 950 to several thousand rounds per minute, with some sources claiming the weapon could fire shells at a velocity of 1,500 miles per hour.

Engineers who worked with the Almaz project later claimed that during ground tests, Nudelman's orbital version of the famous Rikhter autocannon successfully pierced a metal target (a gasoline canister was reportedly used for this) from a mile away — a clear demonstration of the weapon's capabilities.

Firing an autocannon in orbit

Despite the successful ground tests, taking technology like this to orbit presented unique new problems for the Almaz project team.

As opposed to mounting the weapon on a turret, it was reportedly attached directly to the Almaz station itself. In this way, cosmonauts were able to use an optical sight for aiming, although this also required the entire 20-ton space station to be oriented toward the intended target—in essence, the entire station served as a massive orbital gun mount.

The Almaz program was concealed behind the Soviet Union's more widely known Salyut space station program. Although presented publicly as civilian technologies, some of the Salyut spacecraft were secretly developed and deployed as reconnaissance platforms equipped with state-of-the-art cameras and other intelligence collection utilities. In 1974, it was aboard one of these "civilian" spacecraft — Salyut 3 — that the cannon was carried to orbit.

Based on the available historical information, the weapon is believed to have only been fired in space on one occasion, which took place on Jan. 24, 1975. At this time, Salyut 3's crew had already returned to Earth, and the station was scheduled for deliberate deorbiting within hours of the planned test of the weapon.

One obvious reason for this had been that officials weren't entirely certain what the effects of firing the cannon might be on the spacecraft, such as the weapon's recoil on the station while fired in a microgravity environment. To overcome this, the station's maneuvering thrusters were reportedly fired at the time the weapon was fired in order to overcome problems resulting from recoil.

Here again, accounts differ, although an estimated 20 rounds were fired during the test, either at once or in a series of bursts. Each of the projectiles subsequently entered Earth's atmosphere and is believed to have burned up during reentry.

What remains unknown?

Today, it remains unclear what, if anything, the Soviet engineers learned during these tests. No detailed results of the experiment were ever released — at least not publicly.

Altogether, it seems likely that Soviet officials considered the weapon impractical, and plans for later Soviet space stations reportedly looked at the use of interceptor missiles as their primary means of defense.

Meanwhile, the Soviet military was steadily embracing more efficient orbital technologies: uncrewed reconnaissance satellites. The appeal of using low-cost satellites for reconnaissance won out in the end, and an upgraded version of the Almaz station, which had initially been slated for launch later that decade, never made its way to orbit.

The mystery continues

Arguably, the story represents one of the more unusual chapters in Cold War military experimentation, and while many details remain obscured in the shadows of Cold War-era Soviet history, enough is known today to confirm that the Almaz project's tests represent the only known case where a conventional firearm was deliberately fired in orbit.

Are you stuck for an outfit this spooky season? We've got you covered with our round-up of the best space themed Halloween costumes. Let's face it, even if there aren't any haunted spaceships out there, the vastness of the void is enough to give us the chills.

From Aliens to Star Wars, these costumes are sure to make you stand out, get the conversation flowing and maybe even raise a chuckle or two. And if you're a regular convention-goer, many of these costumes can double as cosplay outfits.

If you're still struggling for inspiration, or want to put your own costume together from scratch, you can always check out the best lightsabers, best streaming services or the best Lego Star Wars and Lego Marvel sets for ideas.

The quick list

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The best space and sci-fi themed Halloween costumes we recommend in 2026

The best overall

As sci-fi horror goes, it doesn't get more disturbing than Alien's infamous chestburster scene and now you can cosplay as one of the Nostromo's unfortunate crewmembers, complete with an alien emerging from your torso.

Admittedly, no one in the movie actually wore beige pants, so there's an inaccuracy there, which is odd given this is an officially licensed Alien costume. But the 3D chestburster, a wonderfully gruesome latex model attached to the outfit's t-shirt, more than makes up for that.

In fact, if you're in a hurry, you can forget about the rest of the costume and just slip on the t-shirt; between the creature on your chest and the Nostromo badge on your shoulder, there'll be no mistaking your outfit. And if you're looking for a couples costume, you can snag this Ellen Ripley jumpsuit.

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The best for Star Wars fans

This outfit may not bear the official Star Wars name but any fan of the saga will recognize it as the iconic robes of a Jedi, as worn by Obi-Wan Kenobi and virtually every light side wielder of the Force.

This cotton costume has plenty of detail and comes with a set of faux leather pouches, and they're unisex, so you can cosplay as whichever pre-Order 66 Jedi you want. Just add one of the best lightsabers.

But what's especially cool about this outfit is that it can be worn in a variety of ways. The tunic, trousers and cloak are all separate pieces, so you can leap into battle or slip the cloak over your head and lurk in a corner, looking all mysterious.

Those who've purchased this outfit praise its quality, in particular the thickness of the fabric. And if you lean more towards the Dark Side, there's a black Sith version as well.

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The best for nostalgia

I used to love watching the Original Series with my Grandad on a weekend. I have no idea how old I was but I have fond memories of those times and the many hours spent trying to learn how to do the Vulcan salute. If you're a fan of the Original Series like me, or just the original of anything Sci-Fi, this might be the Halloween costume for you.

Captain Kirk's shirt is a super simple and fuss-free Halloween costume. People will instantly recognize the striking color and design as being that of Captain Kirk. Combining it with a pair of dark pants will really set this costume off.

One great thing about this item is that it's not only a great Halloween costume choice but also an officially licensed product, meaning it's trademarked and authentic — ideal for true Star Trek fans as an item they can keep and wear again and again. Plus, there is the option of creating the full crew with family or friends, with the women's Starfleet dresses also being available.

It's important to note that the product listing advises customers to look at the sizing chart, rather than ordering based on your known sizes. Some people found the fit to be right, while others had to return it and order another size. To avoid this, it's best to consult the size chart. Reviewers also mentioned that the embroidery can be hit and miss, especially around the emblem.

Regardless of this, I think, for the money, this is a decent Halloween costume that will spark memories for those who grew up with the Original Series.

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The best for women

This Princess Leia costume is a great option for any Halloween parties you might be attending this year. Whether you're a Star Wars fan or not, this outfit is a classic and allows you to feel like a powerful princess while you're wearing it. You can purchase it with and without the wig — if you buy the wig, there will be no mistaking who you are. It's a simple outfit yet one that everyone will recognize. The attention to detail is good, with it mimicking the outfit worn in the films pretty accurately. So, even if you don't purchase the wig, most people will probably guess who you are dressed up as.

Made from cloth and synthetic leather, this costume can be worn by vegans too, so there are no exclusions there. It comes with the belt and, apparently, true-to-size sizing. However, there are no customer reviews for us to be sure whether this is the case or not. It may be a good idea to use the measurements provided to get the right size for you.

The best thing about dressing up as Princess Leia on Halloween? You have a fancy dress outfit ready for other parties, too. Plus, if you're into cosplay, you have your next outfit sorted. And, while some fancy dress outfits are a pain to clean, this costume is machine washable so there's no faff with hand washing. The only thing to be aware of is that it's not suitable for the tumble dryer.

Overall, this is a recognizable and classic choice for Halloween this year. However, if this doesn't feel like the right costume choice for you, you could consider other options in this guide.

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The best comedy

This inflatable spaceship costume takes the famously cheesy fake leg outfit and updates it to the space age. Put it on, let it inflate and everyone will think you're literally flying around the room!

Okay, maybe they won't be entirely convinced, but this ridiculous costume, with its dangling inflatable 'legs', will get you plenty of laughs and attention. Why not combine it with the kid-friendly rocket costume to create a family costume?

It inflates and stays inflated via the use of a battery pack, though some purchasers report you can also use a power bank. Its Amazon reviews are mostly positive, with the only real gripe being that you may need help to put it on.

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The best villain

Another recognisable costume that needs no introduction. What child doesn't love dressing up as the bad guy? And you can't get more iconic than Darth Vader.

This Darth Vader outfit comes with the helmet, cape, boots and gloves, so there's no need for further shopping with your little one to complete their outfit. Should they find the helmet uncomfortable to wear, for example, an added benefit is that the helmet, gloves and cape are detachable should your child decide they prefer to wear it without.

The reviews note it's good quality and durable, with many children enjoying wearing this costume. Durability is definitely something you need for little ones so this gets a thumbs up. One review noted that, although the material was good quality, it was thin, so this might be something to bear in mind if you live in a colder climate. Some reviews stated that the costume was large in places, such as the gloves and cape, whereas others say the sizing was spot on, or even on the smaller side. This may be down to personal preference but it seems getting the right size might prove difficult.

While being a pretty cool Halloween choice for kids, it's also an officially licensed product from Marvel. There's some jealousy that this isn't available in adult sizes...

Altogether, this is a great kid's costume for Halloween that's beyond reasonably priced. You can't go wrong.

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The best for young kids

This rocket costume will light up your child's Halloween. Whether you've got a girl or a boy, this costume is unisex in sizing and design, so it can be enjoyed by any little one. It's super simple to get your little one ready for Halloween — the rocket slides over their clothes. That's it. However, something to note is that it doesn't come with the silver shirt, so you would need to source this yourself if you want to match the rocket. That's the same for the bottoms — you would need to source orange bottoms to match the flames, if that's what you wanted to do.

Users note the material is good quality and that it's lightweight, meaning it doesn't interrupt playtime. One reviewer noted that it arrived crinkled after being in the packaging and advised removing it and letting it hang for a while before wearing. Another reviewer noted they bought it for their older child but the sizing was tight. Therefore, it seems this is a costume best suited to younger children, probably toddlers or up to five or six years old.

One of the benefits of buying a space-themed Halloween costume is that it's not only relevant at Halloween. Your child can enjoy this costume throughout the year or even use it during playtime with friends. There are multiple uses for it and that somewhat counteracts the slightly higher price for effectively an incomplete outfit (as you have to source the top and trousers yourself).

Overall, this is a quirky and cute alternative to Halloween for your little ones to enjoy, especially if they are interested in space.

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Dark clouds swirl across a sky speckled with stars as the Milky Way stretches above the European Space Observatory's La Silla Observatory in Chile's Atacama Desert.

What is it?

In this photograph snapped by astronomer José Rodrigues, the Milky Way splashes across the night sky above two telescopes at ESO's La Silla Observatory.

Between the two telescopes, the blue and red Trifid Nebula glows to the left of the larger and redder Lagoon Nebula, all within the Sagittarius constellation.

While the colorful glow of these two nebulae pull the eye toward the center of this photograph, they are surrounded by a majestic night sky landscape. The Milky Way paints the sky with dark, looming clouds lit by the galaxy's many stars.

While some of the dust in these clouds reflects starlight, causing some of the color that we see in the nebulae, most of this dust appears as dark , branching wisps.

Why is it incredible?

This image is obviously beautiful. It is a work of art; in framing the telescopes and the nebulae together, Rodrigues has created a striking visual.

But for Rodrigues, these telescopes are more than a pretty picture. The telescope seen on the left in this photo is ESO's New Technology Telescope (NTT), and the one on the right is ESO's 3.6-meter telescope. The latter scope which includes the instruments HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher) and NIRPS (Near Infra Red Planet Searcher), which astronomers use to find and study exoplanets — worlds outside of our solar system.

And Rodrigues now studies exoplanets, making these instruments an important part of his life and his work.

"It is very special, as I grew up with a poster of the 3.6 m in my room, dreaming of using it to find exoplanets," Rodrigues said in a statement.

The world's richest man just got some more hardware for his trophy room.

During a ceremony at the White House on Thursday (Oct. 8), President Donald Trump gave SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk the National Medal of Science, the highest honor the U.S. can bestow on a scientist or engineer.

Musk was recognized "for engineering achievements of extraordinary ambition and scale that have pushed the frontiers of space exploration, intelligence systems, communications and beyond, renewing American technological leadership and opening a new chapter in American manufacturing," an announcer said during the ceremony.

A little bit more about those achievements and that ambition: Musk also leads the electric carmaker Tesla and owns the social media platform X. And he founded the Boring Company, which is drilling tunnels beneath cities to potentially ease traffic congestion; Neuralink, which builds implantable brain-computer interfaces; and xAI, which makes the chatbot Grok, among other things.

Musk wasn't today's only honoree. Trump also handed out science medals to Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Lisa Su, CEO of Advanced Micro Devices, a leading semiconductor designer.

The president also awarded the slightly different National Medal of Technology and Innovation to two other tech CEOs — Michael Dell of Dell Technologies and Microsoft's Satya Nadella for contributions in their fields.

Congress established the National Medal of Science in 1959. Honorees are chosen for their "outstanding contributions to knowledge in the physical, biological, mathematical, engineering or social and behavioral sciences, in service to the nation," according to the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF).

"These broad areas include such disciplines as astronomy, chemistry, computer and information science and engineering, geoscience, materials research, and research on STEM education," NSF officials added.

The first National Medal of Science was awarded in 1963, to Theodore von Kármán, a mathematician, physicist and aerospace engineer who worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. He was a pioneer of the early space age; the widely recognized, 62-mile-high (100 kilometers) boundary where outer space begins is known as the Kármán line.

Before today, 529 people had received the medal, according to the NSF.

The National Medal of Technology and Innovation is a newer prize; Congress created it in 1980. There have been more than 240 laureates in the award's history.

Today did not mark Musk's introduction to the Trump administration. For example, in late 2024, the president tapped the tech billionaire to help lead the "Department of Government Efficiency," which aimed to slash regulations and costs across the federal government.

More recently, the Pentagon named Musk, former U.S. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey co-leaders of Project Meridian, a four-month study that aims to help the U.S. get ready for future wars.

Northrop Grumman's robotic Cygnus XL spacecraft departed the International Space Station today (Oct. 9) after a six-month stay.

Northrop Grumman's uncrewed Cygnus XL freighter was released by the station's huge Canadarm2 robotic arm today at 12:44 p.m. EDT (1644 GMT), while the duo flew 260 miles (418 kilometers) above the Pacific Ocean.

The departing vehicle is the second of Northrop Grumman's "Cygnus XL" line of freighters but the 24th Cygnus of any type to fly cargo to the orbiting lab. The company named it the S.S. Steven R. Nagel, after a NASA astronaut who flew four space shuttle missions in the 1980s and 1990s.

The S.S. Steven R. Nagel launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on April 11, carrying 11,000 pounds (4,990 kilograms) of science gear and supplies to the International Space Station (ISS). It's carrying some stuff down as well — thousands of pounds of trash, which will burn up along with the Cygnus when it reenters Earth's atmosphere on Sunday (Oct. 11).

That's the usual fate for three of the four robotic ISS resupply vehicles in operation today — Cygnus XL, Russia's Progress and Japan's HTV-X. Only SpaceX's Dragon cargo capsule is reusable; it wraps up its orbital flights with parachute-aided ocean splashdowns.

Cygnus XL is different than Dragon in another way as well: The Northrop Grumman vehicle does not dock to the ISS on its own. Rather, it's grappled by Canadarm2, which berths it to the station and moves it around in other ways as necessary.

During today's operation, which was commanded from the ground, Canadarm2 detached the S.S. Steven R. Nagel from the Earth-facing port of the ISS' Unity module and then maneuvered it into position for release at 12:45 p.m. NASA astronaut Luke Delaney monitored these activities from the ISS.

"We're just really excited to have had the S.S. Stephen R. Nagel on board, and all the science and research, critical hardware," Delaney said shortly after the Cygnus was released.

"Appreciate all the teams that came together to make this complex operation a success, from assembly, launching, docking and now the undock," he added. "Thanks for continuing to push the boundaries of human knowledge and experiments on board, to include the research during this deorbit phase. These true are the building blocks of the future of space exploration."

And about that deorbit science: The S.S. Stephen R. Nagel is carrying heat shield prototypes that will get a test during the freighter's fiery reentry.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 1 p.m. ET on Oct. 9 with news of the Cygnus XL's departure from the ISS.

Kellie Gerardi is preparing for her second spaceflight. And the secret tool up her sleeve? Motherhood.

Nearly three years ago, space researcher, online STEM creator and author Kellie Gerardi flew to suborbital space on a Virgin Galactic tourist flight. With this flight, she not only became a private astronaut, but one of the first 100 women to fly to space. Today, she's preparing to leave Earth once again with her second flight. And as Gerardi prepares to fly and conduct new research in microgravity, she sat down with Space.com to discuss space, motherhood and how much we have left to learn.

"I think motherhood eventually has to become a bigger part of the conversation if we're serious when we talk about humanity having a sustained presence beyond Earth," Gerardi told Space.com. "If we're talking about people living and working in space for longer periods, then reproductive health, pregnancy, postpartum physiology, childcare, and family life aren't just peripheral issues anymore."

Space and motherhood

Gerardi has been a serious player and public figure in the space industry for a number of years. From overseeing mission operations at Palantir Technologies to working as a payload specialist and bioastronautics researcher for the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences (IIAS), she has been conducting experiments in microgravity and working across the industry for quite some time. And over the years, she has also developed an expansive online community with whom she shares STEM videos and content about her daily life.

But while Gerardi has posted a number of fun-loving videos with her two daughters, she doesn't just share the big wins and highlights. Across social media platforms, she has also been incredibly candid with the public about her struggles with motherhood, loss, infertility and IVF (in-vitro fertilization). Among her videos discussing her life as an astronaut and researcher, she has shared incredibly personal details, bringing the public along with her as she undergoes incredibly challenging moments.

"I just remember thinking about how so many of us navigate this entire fertility odyssey invisibly while handling their careers, their families, and everything else, and I just wanted to make that a little more visible and hopefully destigmatize the topic a little bit," Gerardi shared.

"Science teaches you that a disappointing result is information, not identity. You look at the data, change variables, adjust the protocol, and try again. That doesn't mean I was able to intellectualize my way out of grief, but I do feel like I was able to borrow a little bit of the same mindset when it came time to put one foot in front of the other again, and to try to look a bit more dispassionately at the odds and our options going forward," she added.

As Gerardi prepares to return to space with her second Virgin Galactic flight, she is part of the "Mom, and More" campaign from the brand Momcozy. The campaign, which also includes Olympian Allyson Felix and Reshma Saujani, founder of Girls Who Code, "celebrates the idea that motherhood can expand what's possible for us while still leaving room for all the other passions or ambitions that make us who we are," Gerardi said.

Preparing for the future of human spaceflight

Gerardi's candid videos about her struggles have also sparked a larger conversation about motherhood as well as space exploration, especially as we look to the future. Longer-term space travel will require serious conversations about motherhood, family and health. Whether it's a long-term mission to the moon or a lifelong mission to Mars, future women astronauts will have to consider everything from menstrual cycles (which astronauts today already handle), pregnancy, motherhood, menopause and other aspects of their health.

But even in the near future, there is so much we have yet to learn about the intersection between motherhood and human spaceflight. In fact, one research team planning to study menstruation in space will be the first to ever conduct a dedicated study on the subject.

"If we're serious about building a future where more people can live and work in space, then we'll need data that reflects a much broader range of human bodies and experiences," Gerardi said. "My own experiences in motherhood have made me even more interested in questions around women's health and reproductive health in particular. There's still so much we simply don't know yet, and there's a lot of meaningful research ahead of us, and I find that really exciting!"

Pumping in zero-G

Gerardi is part of that movement to improve our understanding. From her first spaceflight to her continuing work with microgravity experiments through IIAS, she is pushing this science forward. In fact, in June of this year, she became the first person to pump breast milk in microgravity. While this was "quite the unique experience," as she put it, this was also an incredible learning moment that can help our growing understanding of the human body in microgravity.

At eight weeks postpartum, Gerardi flew on a microgravity research campaign and "given the timing of that research campaign in relation to my recent delivery, we were also curious about the postpartum body, lactation, and breastmilk expression in microgravity," she said.

"There really wasn't an evidence base for whether commercially available wearable pumps would function normally, whether milk could be safely contained, and whether altered gravity would affect comfort or milk expression, or even whether it could affect the composition of breast milk," Gerardi said.

"Scientifically, it made for interesting studies that we'll be submitting for publication, and personally, it was one of those moments where I just remember thinking that women's bodies are incredible, and there's still so much we have to learn about them in the context of altered gravity and spaceflight. And yes, I was able to bring the 'microgravity milk' home to my baby, which made it even more special," she added.

Learning from motherhood

There is still so much to be learned about the human body as it relates to human spaceflight, and we do not yet know how motherhood will be considered in longer-term space travel. But as mothers have been flying to space since Anna Lee Fisher became the first in 1984, there is much that we can learn from their experiences. Gerardi shared some of the important lessons that she's learned as a mother that have come in handy as an astronaut.

"I think there are probably more parallels between motherhood and operational environments than people realize. Honestly, adaptability is probably at the top of my list. Motherhood is a constant exercise in making plans, fighting reality, and then rapidly reprioritizing without losing your mind," she said.

"Motherhood has made me much better at constantly reassessing priorities," she added." I've moved mountains for work obligations that I later realized weren't that fragile after all. Motherhood gives me a lot of practice at making those assessments in real time. That translates pretty well to research operations. You prepare as best you can, you prioritize and adapt in real-time, and you get comfortable operating without perfect control of all the variables. Those are all pretty useful qualities in life generally."

And in addition to the many lessons that can be learned from being a mother and an astronaut, Gerardi has also found how powerful the representation of seeing a woman like herself achieve her dreams can be for the next generation.

"As a society, I feel like we tell little girls that they can grow up to be anything. We give them astronaut Barbies and American Girl dolls and tell them to dream big, but then when those same little girls grow up and become mothers themselves, suddenly there's often a different expectation around how much space their own ambitions should occupy," Gerardi said. "I don't feel guilty for pursuing my dreams. Becoming their mom made my dreams bolder and my sense of purpose deeper. I feel grateful that I can set an example for my daughters to probe the farthest boundaries of their own potential in this one precious life they get."