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<![CDATA[ Latest from Space.com ]]>
https://www.space.com
- Wed, 21 Jan 2026 11:00:00 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Watch private German rocket attempt history-making launch from Sweden today ]]>
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A German company will attempt to make spaceflight history today (Jan. 21), and you can watch the action live.
Isar Aerospace plans to launch its Spectrum rocket from Andøya Spaceport in northern Norway today, during a window that opens at 3 p.m. EST (2000 GMT; 9 p.m. local time in Norway). Success would be huge, and not just for Isar: To date, no rocket has ever reached orbit from European soil.
You can watch the attempt live here at Space.com, courtesy of Isar, or directly via the company. Coverage will begin at 2 p.m. EST (1900 GMT).
Isar Aerospace's Spectrum rocket lifts off from Andoya Spaceport in Norway on March 30, 2025, on its first flight. Spectrum suffered an anomaly and crashed less than a minute after launch. (Image credit: Isar Aerospace, Brady Kenniston, NASASpaceflight.com)
Today's flight will be the second ever for the two-stage, 95-foot-tall (28 meters) Spectrum. It launched for the first time on March 30 of last year, also from Andøya.
That test flight didn't last long: Spectrum suffered an anomaly less than a minute after liftoff and crashed into the ocean near the pad, generating a fireball that looked particularly dramatic and spectacular against the icy Arctic backdrop.
That outcome was far from surprising; orbital-class rockets rarely succeed on their debut flights. Isar is now ready to take the lessons learned from the first crack and apply them to attempt number two.
"This qualification flight is a deliberate step toward delivering sovereign access to space for Europe and allied nations. Just 10 months after proving that launch vehicles can be designed, built and launched from continental European soil, we're ready to fly again," Isar Aerospace CEO and Co‑founder Daniel Metzler said in a statement on Jan. 16.
"Europe's immediate need for space access is clear," he added. "Rapid iteration is essential to developing space capabilities precisely when they are required."
Though this second launch, which Isar calls "Onward and Upward," is a test flight, it will carry viable payloads (which Spectrum did not do on its debut). Five cubesats and one scientific experiment are going up on the rocket today.
"The insights we gain with this mission will strengthen Europe's space infrastructure, a capability essential for defense readiness and economic resilience," Alexandre Dalloneau, vice president of mission and launch operations at Isar Aerospace, said in the same statement.
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+ <![CDATA[ Rocket Lab's new Neutron rocket suffers fuel tank rupture during test ]]>
+ It will be quite a bit longer before Neutron makes it to the launchpad.
Rocket Lab's medium-lift launch vehicle buckled under pressure Wednesday (Jan. 21), when the main stage tank of the company's first Neutron rocket ruptured during an overnight test in Wallops, Virginia.
The "hydrostatic pressure trial," according to a Rocket Lab statement, was meant to push the stage to its structural limit, but was not intended to destroy the vehicle. The company says it is reviewing test data to determine a new timeline for Neutron's debut launch, which had been expected during the first quarter of 2026. "We intentionally test structures to their limits to validate structural integrity and safety margins to ensure the robust requirements for a successful launch can be comfortably met," the Rocket Lab statement reads.
While the Neutron stage seems to be a total loss, Rocket Lab said no serious damage was caused to its facilities or the surrounding test structures.
It's a significant setback for Rocket Lab's newest vehicle, which aims to compete with SpaceX's Falcon 9 payload mass to orbit capacity and partial reusability. Launching Neutron in Q1 2026, which now seems incredibly unlikely, was already a delay from a hoped-for debut by the end of 2025.
As data from the Jan. 21 test is analyzed, Rocket Lab plans to assess its repercussions and continue Neutron's development campaign using the next stage 1 tank already in production, according to the company's statement.
Neutron is a class heavier than Rocket Lab's Electron rocket workhorse, which has seen a steady and consistent increase in small-lift launches over the past few years. Standing more than twice as tall as its Electron predecessor, Neutron clocks-in at 141-foot-tall (43 meters).
The rocket is powered by Rocket Lab's Archimedes engines. Neutron's first stage is designed to be reusable, and able to land on an ocean barge after delivering up to 28,700 pounds (13,000 kilograms) to low Earth orbit.
As for when Neutron will get the chance to deliver such a payload, Rocket Lab says it "intends to provide an update on the Neutron schedule during its 2025 Q4 earnings call in February."
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+ https://www.space.com/space-exploration/rocket-labs-new-neutron-rocket-suffers-fuel-tank-rupture-during-test
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+ Fri, 23 Jan 2026 13:00:00 +0000Thu, 22 Jan 2026 21:20:29 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Sinking ice on Jupiter's moon Europa may be slowly feeding its ocean the ingredients for life ]]>
+ Jupiter's icy moon Europa may have a previously unrecognized way of delivering life-supporting chemicals to its vast subsurface ocean, according to new research.
Europa, one of the dozens of moons orbiting Jupiter, has long intrigued scientists as one of the most promising places in the solar system to search for extraterrestrial life, thanks to a hidden global ocean beneath its fractured, frozen surface that may contain twice as much salty water as all of Earth's oceans combined. Unlike Earth, however, Europa's ocean is deprived of oxygen and sealed off from sunlight, ruling out photosynthesis and requiring any potential life to rely on chemical energy instead. A key unanswered question has been how ingredients for that energy — such as life-supporting oxidants created on the moon's surface by intense radiation from Jupiter — could be transported through Europa's thick ice shell to the ocean below. Now, a new study by researchers at Washington State University suggests the answer may lie in a slow but persistent geological process that causes portions of Europa's surface ice to sink, carrying those chemicals downward.
"This is a novel idea in planetary science, inspired by a well-understood idea in Earth science," study lead author Austin Green, now a postdoctoral researcher at Virginia Tech, said in a statement. "Most excitingly, this new idea addresses one of the longstanding habitability problems on Europa and is a good sign for the prospects of extraterrestrial life in its ocean."
Scientists know from images taken during spacecraft flybys that Europa's surface is highly geologically active due to Jupiter's powerful gravitational pull. However, most of this motion appears to occur horizontally rather than vertically, according to the new study, which limits opportunities for surface materials to migrate downward, except during extreme events such as the formation of large fractures.
Additionally, the Jovian moon's near-surface ice is thought to behave as a rigid "stagnant lid," further restricting the delivery of oxidants to the subsurface ocean, the study notes.
Using computer models, the researchers found that pockets of salt-rich ice near Europa's surface can become both denser and mechanically weaker than surrounding, purer ice. Under the right conditions, these denser patches can detach and slowly sink, or "drip," through the ice shell, eventually reaching the ocean below in as little as 30,000 years, according to the study.
The process, known as lithospheric foundering, resembles a geological process on Earth in which portions of the planet's outermost layer sink into the mantle. In 2025, researchers identified this process unfolding beneath the Sierra Nevada mountain range.
To test whether a similar mechanism could operate on Europa, Green and his team modeled an ice shell roughly 18.6 miles (30 kilometers) thick under a range of ice shell conditions. In all six scenarios the team examined, surface material within the top 300 meters descends toward the base of the shell, the new study reports.
In some simulations, the sinking began after 1 to 3 million years and reached the base of the shell after 5 to 10 million years. In ice shells that were more heavily damaged or weakened, sinking began after as little as 30,000 years, the study reports.
This occurred for almost any salt content, the researchers say, provided the surface ice experienced at least some degree of weakening.
According to the study, the mechanism "may be an expedient method of transporting surface materials to the underlying Europan ocean."
The moon will be studied in greater detail in the coming years by NASA's Europa Clipper mission. Launched in 2024, the spacecraft is scheduled to arrive in the Jovian system in April 2030 and conduct nearly 50 close flybys of Europa over four years, allowing scientists to assess the depth of its subsurface ocean and further evaluate the moon's potential habitability.
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+ https://www.space.com/astronomy/jupiter/sinking-ice-on-jupiters-moon-europa-may-be-slowly-feeding-its-ocean-the-ingredients-for-life
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+ Fri, 23 Jan 2026 11:00:00 +0000Thu, 22 Jan 2026 19:09:37 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ A black hole 'feeding frenzy' could help explain a cosmic mystery uncovered by the James Webb Space Telescope ]]>
+ Scientists may have solved a cosmic mystery that has been troubling them since the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) began observations back in 2022.
When astronomers started looking back into the early days of the universe with the cutting-edge observatory, they discovered supermassive black holes that appear to have formed prior to the universe being 1 billion years old, something our current models of the cosmos can't explain But a new study has found that a black hole "feeding frenzy" may explain how these cosmic monsters were born so early in the universe's history.
"We found that the chaotic conditions that existed in the early universe triggered early, smaller black holes to grow into the super-massive black holes we see later, following a feeding frenzy which devoured material all around them," research leader Daxal Mehta of Maynooth University said in a statement. "We revealed, using state-of-the-art computer simulations, that the first generation of black holes – those born just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang grew incredibly fast, into tens of thousands of times the size of our sun."
Performing complex computer simulations, this team of researchers found that the turbulent and dense-gas-rich conditions in the first galaxies may have allowed black holes to enter into brief phases of mega-gluttony, exceeding a barrier known as the "Eddington limit." This limit determines how much material can fall to a body like a star or black hole before the radiation generated by that accretion pushes further matter away, emptying the central object's larder of gas and dust, thus cutting off its food supply.
Periods of super-consumption that defy this limit are known as "super-Eddington accretion" and serve as the missing link between black holes that form when massive stars die in supernova explosions and monstrous supermassive black holes.
Supermassive black holes are like six-foot toddlers
Supermassive black holes with masses millions or even billions of times that of the sun sit at the heart of all large galaxies in the modern 13.8 billion-year-old universe, which isn't troubling to explain at all, as they have had plenty of time to grow.
The issue is the discovery of supermassive black holes as early as 500 million years after the Big Bang, a population that the JWST has routinely been uncovering for the last three and a half years. That is because the merger and feeding processes that are thought to allow black holes to achieve supermassive status are thought to take at least 1 billion years.
"It's like seeing a family walking down the street, and they have two six-foot teenagers, but they also have with them a six-foot-tall toddler," research team member and Maynooth University scientist John Regan previously told Space.com. "That's a bit of a problem. How did the toddler get so tall? And it's the same for supermassive black holes in the universe. How did they get so massive so quickly?"
Artist's illustration of a supermassive black hole emitting a jet of energetic particles. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
The team's simulations suggest that a super-Eddington feeding frenzy could have allowed the first generation of black holes to gorge on the dense gas of the early cosmos to reach masses of tens of thousands of times that of the sun. While that doesn't get us to supermassive black holes, it provides a significant head start on the merger process that would see black holes of increasing size collide and fuse together to birth an even more massive black hole.
"These tiny black holes were previously thought to be too small to grow into the behemoth black holes observed at the center of early galaxies," Mehta said. "What we have shown here is that these early black holes, while small, are capable of growing spectacularly fast, given the right conditions."
The team's research could help scientists determine whether early supermassive black holes started out as "light seeds," with ten to a few hundred times the mass of our sun, or as "heavy seeds," with as much as 100,000 times the mass of the sun. Previously, it had been theorized that only heavy seeds would be massive enough to facilitate the rapid growth of supermassive black holes.
"Now we're not so sure," Regan said. "Heavy seeds are somewhat more exotic and may need rare conditions to form. Our simulations show that your 'garden variety' stellar mass black holes can grow at extreme rates in the early universe."
The team's research doesn't just suggest a new avenue for supermassive black hole growth, but it also shows how important high-resolution simulations are in our investigation of the early cosmos.
"The early universe is much more chaotic and turbulent than we expected, with a much larger population of massive black holes than we anticipated, too," Regan said.
As for collecting evidence of this theory, that may be a job not for the JWST or any other traditional astronomical device, but for instruments designed to detect the tiny ripples in space known as gravitational waves that mergers such as this radiate. Of particular importance could be the first space-based gravitational wave detector, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), a joint European Space Agency/ NASA mission set to launch in 2035.
"Future gravitational wave observations from that mission may be able to detect the mergers of these tiny, early, rapidly growing baby black holes," Regan concluded.
The team's research was published on Wednesday (Jan. 21) in the journal Nature Astronomy.
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+ https://www.space.com/astronomy/black-holes/a-black-hole-feeding-frenzy-could-help-explain-a-cosmic-mystery-uncovered-by-the-james-webb-space-telescope
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+ Thu, 22 Jan 2026 22:00:00 +0000Thu, 22 Jan 2026 18:03:36 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ 'Vitus Reflux' may be the lowest stakes episode of 'Star Trek' ever. Luckily, it's also a lot of fun ]]>
+ You can't save the universe every week. Sure, the Enterprise-D’s daring mission to rescue Jean-Luc Picard from the Borg, and Michael Burnham leading Discovery to the 32nd century are the kind of Alpha Quadrant-changing events that grab headlines, but even 60-year-old multimedia franchises need to take it easy from time to time.
"Starfleet Academy" is set in a school and, therefore, unlikely to put its students in situations of extreme peril every week — such educational negligence is more commonly found at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. Even so, it's hard to think of an episode in "Trek"'s long history that lowers the stakes quite as much as "Vitus Reflux", the new show's third outing.
This is an utterly throwaway slice of college comedy, rather more concerned with sports, pranks, and teen/20-something romance than getting lost on the final frontier. But perhaps the most remarkable thing about these futuristic playground squabbles is that they're actually kind of fun. They also hint that this show might be starting to carve out its own unique sector within the "Star Trek" universe.
(Image credit: Paramount)
Ignore the transporters, futuristic sports, and extra-terrestrial classmates, and this episode could be set in any present-day educational establishment — even the sports hall where the students train will feel familiar to pretty much anyone who's attended school in the last four decades. And yes, it does have a squeaky wooden floor.
With her motivational speeches — "No blood will be shed on my court without my express permission!" — half-Klingon/half-Jem'Hadar first officer/drill sergeant Lura Thok descends from a long line of disciplinarian PE teachers on screen. Meanwhile, the Academy cadets' rivalry with the War College next door is the sort of petty feud that's easy for most of us to relate to. Forget the evolved ideals of Jean-Luc Picard and the Enterprise-D gang — this is much closer to real life, albeit filtered through the prism of fluffy mascots and the US high school movie. (That said, the radical notion of a "nerd/jock hybrid" like "Coach" Jett Reno is one innovation that particular genre has traditionally been reluctant to embrace.)
From the outset, it's clear that this Starfleet Academy v War College game of "Calica" — essentially futuristic laser tag with added transporter beams — is little more than a battle for inter-faculty bragging rights, and an ode to a training sequence in "Starship Troopers". Winners and losers won't be remembered for long, while the only thing in any danger is the participants' pride.
(Image credit: Paramount)
And it turns out that there really are no rules when it comes to making your enemies look stupid. Fancy beaming your barely clothed opponents from the shower room to other locations on campus, or reworking the Starfleet Academy promo video to make the current class look as stupid as possible? Pretty much anything is fair game here.
Especially when unconventional school principal Nahla Ake (Holly Hunter) decides to reinvent this trivial student feud as a cross between an educational experience and an opportunity to get one over on her War College opposite number, Chancellor Kelrec (Raoul Bhaneja). Whether she's supplying her charges with fast-growing fungi with Furby-like voice-imitation properties (the "Vitus Reflux" of the title) or simply encouraging them to employ some out-of-the-box thinking — not too far removed from the questionable tactics that led to James T Kirk cheating on the Kobayashi Maru test — she has little interest in being impartial.
Nonetheless, with cadets Darem Reymi (George Hawkins), Genesis Lythe (Bella Shepard) and Caleb Mir (Sandro Rosta) all learning a little bit about teamwork making the dream work by the end of the episode — as well as realizing that their holographic classmate, SAM (Kerrice Brooks), is permeable (but not porous) to laser fire — this can surely go down as a successful class.
(Image credit: Paramount)
Of course, when the final credits roll, little has actually changed. Like an episode of "The Simpsons", " Vitus Reflux" could suddenly disappear from Paramount+ and have little bearing on the future of the show and its characters — the stakes really are that low.
And in that regard, it definitely isn't alone in the "Star Trek" universe. Numerous holodeck/holosuite episodes have simply been diversions from day-to-day Starfleet life, perhaps the most extreme example being the "Deep Space Nine" crew battling Vulcans in a baseball match spawned by Benjamin Sisko's decades-old rivalry with Captain Solok in "Take Me Out to the Holosuite". There have also been numerous shore leave adventures and unashamed comedy outings where the protagonists' actions have little bearing on the universe beyond their starship hull.
But bearing in mind that even comedy series "Lower Decks" usually featured some kind of antagonist or threat to the USS Cerritos, it's hard to think of too many "Trek" missions quite as trivial as this frothy concoction. And that's absolutely fine for a show that's attempting to reveal another side of Starfleet, whose heroes' biggest adventures are almost definitely several years ahead of them.
These cadets may be seeking out some 32nd century adventure and excitement, but that doesn't mean all their missions have to be life-or-death. After all, sometimes being a student is more about having fun than making your mark on the wider universe.
New episodes of "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy" debut on Paramount+ on Thursdays.
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+ https://www.space.com/entertainment/space-movies-shows/vitus-reflux-may-be-the-lowest-stakes-episode-of-star-trek-ever-luckily-its-also-a-lot-of-fun
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+ Thu, 22 Jan 2026 20:00:00 +0000Thu, 22 Jan 2026 17:55:50 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Cult sci-fi series 'Blake's 7' reboot in the works, helmed by 'The Last of Us' director Peter Hoar ]]>
+ Hollywood trade publication Deadline reports that Peter Hoar, the Emmy-nominated director of "The Last of Us," has launched a production company and is working on a reboot of cult British sci-fi drama “Blake’s 7.”
Along with executive producer Matthew Bouch (“A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder”) and West End producer Jason Haigh-Ellery, Hoar has launched “genre-based” indie studio Multitude Productions, and together the three of them have snapped up a host of IP, including “Blake’s 7,” which last aired on BBC One 45 years ago.
According to Deadline, Hoar plans to direct the reboot, which will go out to buyers soon. Bouch would “love it to go to the BBC” and will more than likely seek co-funding from American streamers and European networks alike. With long-running genre series struggling for momentum and budgets tightening across high-end scripted television, Hoar and Bouch say the moment is right to set up shop.
(Image credit: BBC)
“The ‘Blake’s 7’ story is legendary because they were given the [70s UK police show] ‘Softly, Softly’ slot that was intended for police drama with a budget intended for one big set and a few location shoots,” Hoar said. “At the time, it felt like it meant something. Those shows got into my veins. I could tell they didn’t have money, but I was able to compartmentalize and enjoy the ride knowing that the sets wobbled.”
Set in deep space in the far future, the show first aired in January 1978 and was shown on BBC One. Created by Terry Nation, a prolific British television scriptwriter in the 70s and 80s and credited for bringing the Daleks into existence, “Blake’s 7” followed on from the success of shows like “Dr Who” and “Space: 1999” and took an interesting and much darker approach to science fiction storytelling.
It followed a band of resistance fighters led by a man called Roj Blake (Gareth Thomas) who escapes from incarceration after attempting to lead a rebellion against the totalitarian Terran Federation.
Along the way, Blake recruits five like-minded individuals and steals a mysterious alien starship of a design never-before-seen. Together with Kerr Avon (Paul Darrow), Vila Restal (Michael Keating), Jenna Stannis (Sally Knyvette), Olag Gan (David Jackson), Cally (Jan Chappell) and the ship’s onboard sentient computer Zen (voiced by Peter Tuddenham), they form the original seven.
(Image credit: BBC)
Over the course of four seasons and a total of 52 episodes, some members of the original crew were killed off and replaced, a prototype portable super-computer called Orac (also voiced by Peter Tuddenham) is stolen and becomes an unofficial member of the crew, and the original alien ship, renamed the Liberator, is destroyed by Federation fighters.
The show was an attempt to embrace science fiction drama, and the performances of classically trained Darrow often made the show feel like a Shakespearean tragedy set in space. The ongoing love-hate chemistry between Avon and his character’s arch nemesis, the head of the Federation, Servalan (Jacqueline Pearce), was an undeniable highlight.
The show also launched the careers of Josette Simon — who later appeared in “Wonder Woman”, “Halo”, and “The Crow” — and Glynis Barber, who starred in “Dempsey and Makepeace”, “EastEnders”, and “Hollyoaks.”
(Image credit: BBC)
According to Deadline, Hoar compares “Blake’s 7” to recent sci-fi success “Andor,” which he believes is a hit not because of its circa-$25M per hour budget, but rather “because of the integrity, wit and sophistication.” He described “Dr Who” as a cautionary tale, pointing to Disney+’s recent exit after two seasons from what had been one of the decade’s largest co-production deals.
Bouch said, “We look back at when we were young with a degree of nostalgia, but also thinking about the 70s and 80s as we were growing up and the amount of genre material that was available … We are looking to the international market and seeing if there is a way of dovetailing that British low-budget sensibility with international markets. We know in the US there’s a big contraction, and we all need to think about finding ways to make things more economical.”
Hoar and Bouch, who have worked with Britain’s biggest showrunners, including Russell T. Davies and Jack Thorne, are championing a multi-writer model to get scribes back to work.
Over the years, “Blake’s 7” has retained a dedicated fanbase, and several rumors have circulated regarding a reboot. There’s a surprisingly deep expanded universe, and while it’s fragmented and uneven, there are novels, audio dramas, and even a serialized weekly comic that ran alongside seasons one and two.
Watch Blake's 7 on Britbox with a 7-day free trial:
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+ https://www.space.com/entertainment/space-movies-shows/cult-sci-fi-series-blakes-7-reboot-in-the-works-helmed-by-the-last-of-us-director-peter-hoar
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+ Thu, 22 Jan 2026 19:00:00 +0000Thu, 22 Jan 2026 16:39:48 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Vaonis Hestia smartphone-powered telescope review ]]>
+ Smart telescopes are great, but they are expensive. Even the least expensive, such as ZWO's SeeStar S30, will set you back in the region of $400. Yet most of us already have a smart device in our pockets. If we could just mate our smartphones to some kind of telescopic device, could we not have our own DIY smart telescope?
That's the ethos behind Vaonis's Hestia. It's not a smart telescope, or even a normal telescope. Think of it as a lens to which you can attach your smartphone and, by using an app on your phone and your phone's built-in camera, you can take images of the night sky. We call this afocal photography; it can be achieved, to an extent, by using an inexpensive smartphone adaptor that holds your phone's camera up to a telescope eyepiece. However, with the addition of Vaonis' Gravity app, the Hestia has a much wider range of guidance, exposure settings, stacking and catalogues of varied objects to choose from.
In short, it's more sophisticated than simply holding your phone up to a telescope eyepiece, but simpler than a smart telescope. The question is, how does it compare?
Vaonis Hestia review
Vaonis Hestia: Design
The Vaonis Hestia comes with a tripod. (Image credit: Gemma Lavender)
Feels solid, not flimsy, unlike the tripod
Lightweight and portable
Can be adjusted to fit all models of smartphones
The Hestia comes in a nicely padded protective case, and is about the size of a hardback book, though not nearly as heavy. It comes with a tripod sporting a pan-and-tilt handle so that you can manually move the Hestia around the night sky. The Hestia's mostly white finish is of similar quality to the plastic housing of Vaonis' smart telescopes, such as the Vespera II.
One side of the Hestia is a black metal plate with magnetic clasps that can be moved around and adjusted to fit your choice of phone, and then all you need to do is position your camera over the small opening where the Hestia focuses the light.
The Vaonis Hestia has black metal plates on magnetic clasps that can be moved to fit your phone. (Image credit: Gemma Lavender)
None of Vaonis' telescopes are particularly aesthetically eye-catching, and the Hestia is probably the ugliest of the lot, with the rubber 'camera-cup', safety warning text and the unappealing black metal plate. If you want an astronomical instrument that looks good, then the Hestia certainly does not match up to a classic refractor. Although its utilitarian appearance suits its economical design, ultimately, it is not about how it looks, but what it can do.
Vaonis Hestia: Performance
The Vaonis Hestia can be used with any sized smartphone. (Image credit: Gemma Lavender)
Perfect for imaging the Sun (with solar filter) and the Moon
Gravity app allows you to stack images
Lack of motorised tracking is a big limitation
Ordinarily, an aperture just 1.2-inches (30mm) in diameter would be far too small for any half-serious astronomical observing, but most smart telescopes have a small aperture. The Hestia has the same size aperture as the SeeStar S30, for example. The small apertures in these devices are mitigated somewhat by the fact that they are 100% focused on imaging, not visual use, and imaging collects photons and integrates over exposures, building up a picture — something the human eye cannot do, of course. Nevertheless, the limited aperture does constrain the resolution, and the low magnification means that other than the Sun and the Moon, nothing really fills the field of view.
It is possible, via the Gravity app, to stack individual images together to improve the signal-to-noise ratio and help the faint details stand out. However, this still runs into the problem of having to manually track your target while keeping it aligned in the field of view.
The lack of tracking is also a serious limitation. Again, it's fine for the Sun and the Moon, which are both bright and only need short exposures anyway. It is also okay for stars and star clusters, since you only need a short exposure to see them. For nebulae and galaxies, however, where many integrations over long exposures are required to tease out their faint light, the Hestia is not really suitable. For example, the SeeStar S30 can track the Orion Nebula for half an hour and build up a wonderful image, but after only 30 seconds, all you can see at that point is a faint smudge. Those 30 seconds are really all you get with the Hestia. I did try manually tracking, but it is difficult to keep your target perfectly aligned each time.
With a small aperture, the Hestia falls in line with smart telescopes. (Image credit: Gemma Lavender)
Vaonis Hestia: Functionality
Sadly, there is no motorized tracking on the Vaonis Hestia. (Image credit: Gemma Lavender)
Very simple to use
The Gravity app is user-friendly
No motorized tracking
The Hestia will never run out of power because it does not require a battery or any external power. This gives it a significant leg-up over smart telescopes, which have a battery life of between 4 and 8 hours, depending upon the model and weather conditions (cold weather drains batteries faster). All I needed to remember was to keep my phone charged!
I found that getting my smartphone's camera to line up with the rubber cup wasn't as easy as it might at first seem. The two magnetic brackets are quite loose, slipping and sliding across the metal plate. Although they are meant to be that way, and for good reason, as if they held on with too much magnetic strength, they would be difficult to adjust. It does mean that lining up your phone's camera is finicky business, and if you don't take due care, the phone can be nudged out of position. Even if it is just a slight nudge, it means light will fall on a different part of your camera sensor, resulting in a double image.
The tripod of the Vaonis Hestia is a little lightweight but so is the Vaonis Hestia. (Image credit: Gemma Lavender)
The accompanying tripod is not the sturdiest, with quite thin lower legs, but the Hestia is not heavy, so as long as you position it on firm ground and are careful not to knock into it, then it should be okay.
The Hestia does not have a tracking mount or any machinery, motorized or otherwise. The focal length and f/ratio are not provided, but the magnification is 25x through a small 1.2-inch (30mm) aperture. But given that it is not motorized it means that it cannot track objects in the sky. This limits exposures of deep-sky objects to about 30 seconds before they start to visibly trail. You could try and manually track objects, using Vaonis's Gravity app as a guide and taking care to center the object each time, but again, a misalignment could lead to a double exposure.
The Hestia comes with a solar filter that I could screw in over the aperture. Users must ensure that the solar filter is attached before pointing the Hestia at the Sun — the intense bright sunlight could otherwise damage the Hestia's optics, your phone's camera and even your eyes if you looked directly through the rubber eyecup at it. There is a warning next to the rubber eyecup reminding you not to do this.
While the Hestia has no motorized tracking, you can adjust it manually. (Image credit: Gemma Lavender)
To take images, I had to download Vaonis' free Gravity app from the App Store (or Google Play if you have an Android device). It first asked me to register my Hestia by scanning the QR code on the reverse of the instrument (it's hidden by the tripod head, which I had to unscrew to get to the QR code). Then the app guides you through the positioning of your phone so that it is receiving focused light (focus is achievable with a slider in the app) through the camera. Gravity has three observing modes — Sun, Moon and 'Catalog', which has everything from stars and galaxies to nebulae and planets. I found the Gravity app very easy to use.
Should you buy the Vaonis Hestia?
Buy it if:
✅ You're a beginner wanting to image the Moon and the Sun.
✅ You're an eclipse chaser: The Hestia with the solar filter is perfect for imaging solar eclipses.
Don't buy it if:
❌ You're a dedicated astrophotographer: The Hestia is really designed for beginners and those wanting to have a go at imaging the night sky in the easiest way.
❌ You want to image deep-sky objects: The Hestia is not capable of capturing good images of deep-space objects.
The Hestia works surprisingly well for imaging the Sun and the Moon. It is well suited to watching sunspot groups, spying large prominences and tracking the changing phases of the Moon. It also works well for stars and star clusters, but beyond that it is not suitable for deep sky imaging. If a user wishes to image a galaxy or a nebula, their best choice is to get a smart telescope.
If you are not too concerned about taking images then I would argue that a good pair of large binoculars (anything bigger than 10x50s) or a medium-aperture telescope of 5- or 6-inches provides a better view of the Moon, the stars and definitely the planets than the Hestia does. Because of its wide field of view and low magnification, the planets do not look like anything more than bright lights, but this is a common failing of all smart telescopes with their small apertures and wide fields. I could not see the belts of Jupiter or the rings of Saturn, for example.
User reviews of the Vaonis Hestia
Reviewers on amazon.com were broadly supportive of the Hestia, highlighting its portability, the functionality of the Gravity app and its appeal to users who want to try out astrophotography but who don't have the skills, money or time to purchase dedicated large imaging cameras and telescopes. On the negative side of things, some users found focusing to be difficult and lamented the lack of motorized finding and tracking.
If the Vaonis Hestia isn't for you
There isn't really an instrument quite like this on the market, but if you are interested in low-cost afocal photography and already own a telescope, I suggest just buying a smartphone adaptor that can attach to the eyepiece.
If you are looking for something more sophisticated, then try Vaonis' range of smart telescopes, in particular the Vespera II or the Vespera Pro.
]]>
+ https://www.space.com/stargazing/skywatching-kit/vaonis-hestia-smartphone-powered-telescope-review
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+ wFZJjDBMCGcsHJVwoFaqP7
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+ Thu, 22 Jan 2026 17:31:49 +0000Thu, 22 Jan 2026 17:31:50 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Blue Origin launches 6 space tourists to the final frontier after last-minute crew swap (video) ]]>
+
Blue Origin just sent its latest batch of space tourists to the final frontier.
The company, which was founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, launched its New Shepard vehicle today (Jan. 22), sending six passengers on a brief trip to suborbital space.
It was Blue Origin's 17th human spaceflight to date and the 38th mission overall for New Shepard, the company's autonomous, reusable rocket-capsule combo. That latter fact explains the flight's name: NS-38.
New Shepard launches the NS-38 mission with six passengers on Jan. 22, 2026. (Image credit: Blue Origin)
New Shepard lifted off from Blue Origin's West Texas launch site today at 11:25 a.m. EST (1625 GMT; 10:25 a.m. local time in Texas), after a brief delay caused by "unauthorized personnel on the range," according to the Blue Origin stream.
The six people inside the vehicle's capsule were entrepreneur and pilot Tim Drexler; Linda Edwards, a retired obstetrician/gynecologist; real estate developer Alain Fernandez; entrepreneur Alberto Gutiérrez; Jim Hendren, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel who founded the company Hendren Plastics Inc.; and Laura Stiles, Blue Origin’s director of New Shepard launch operations.
Stiles was a late addition to the crew. She replaced Andrew Yaffe, who had to drop out due to illness but will fly on a future New Shepard mission, according to Blue Origin.
The passengers for Blue Origin's NS-38 suborbital mission. (Image credit: Blue Origin)
The sextet enjoyed a few minutes of weightlessness and saw Earth against the blackness of space.
They also earned their astronaut wings, as New Shepard carried them above the Kármán Line, the 62-mile-high (100 kilometers) boundary that's widely recognized as the start of outer space. (It's not unanimous, however; both NASA and the U.S. Air Force deem space to begin 50 miles, or 80 km, above Earth.) Telemetry during today's flight indicated the capsule reached an altitude of nearly 350,000 feet (106,680 meters).
NS-38 ended quickly, as all New Shepard flights do. The vehicle's rocket came back to Earth for a powered touchdown at its designated landing pad at 7 minutes and 20 seconds after liftoff. The capsule followed suit roughly three minutes later, raising a cloud of dust in the West Texas desert as it settled down softly under parachutes.
Blue Origin has now flown 98 people to space over its 17 human spaceflights, the first of which took place on July 20, 2021 — the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. That tally includes 92 different individuals, as six people have ridden the capsule twice.
Blue Origin has not revealed its ticket prices. For perspective, Virgin Galactic, the company's main competitor in the suborbital space tourism industry, charges $600,000 per seat.
]]>
+ https://www.space.com/space-exploration/private-spaceflight/blue-origin-ns-38-space-tourist-launch
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+ wKdJmUyYMFGwV9wwnqDXRn
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+ Thu, 22 Jan 2026 16:48:07 +0000Thu, 22 Jan 2026 16:59:13 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ SpaceX launches 25 Starlink satellites into orbit from California (video) ]]>
+
SpaceX lit up the night sky over Vandenberg Space Force Base today (Jan. 22) with the launch of 25 more satellites for its Starlink broadband internet service.
A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg's Space Launch Complex 4 East today at 12:47 a.m. EST (0547 GMT; 9:47 p.m. on Jan. 21 local California time. The Falcon's upper stage reached a preliminary orbit about nine minutes later and released its Starlink payload (known as Group 17-30) as scheduled, roughly an hour after launch.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying 25 Starlink satellites lifts off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026. (Image credit: SpaceX)
The Falcon 9's first stage, known as Booster 1093, completed its 13th flight, landing on the Pacific Ocean-based drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You."
The new batch of satellites add to the 9,500 active units that comprise the Starlink megaconstellation. The service provides internet access to underserved areas around the world, as well as to airlines wanting to offer WIFI and cell phone carries seeking direct cell-to-satellite service for emergencies.
Thursday's launch was SpaceX's ninth of the year and 592nd since 2010.
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+ https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/spacex-starlink-satellite-launch-vandenberg-group-17-30
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+ 7ndTDcMFvQBmFjqTPXgiF5
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+ Thu, 22 Jan 2026 16:14:17 +0000Thu, 22 Jan 2026 16:14:18 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ James Webb Space Telescope discovers what remains after two stars collide and explode as a red nova ]]>
+ Astronomers have discovered what kind of stellar body is left after two stars collide and merge to generate an explosion called a "luminous red nova." Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the scientists discovered that the result of this merger event, which triggers a bright burst of light, is a supermassive star similar to a red supergiant star, and also found that these stellar mergers could have provided the raw materials needed for life.
Though many astronomical events occur over cosmic timescales of thousands or even millions of years, transient events like supernova explosions, the merger of black holes, and the collision and fusion of stars, as in the case of luminous red novas, occur over much shorter periods, from fractions of a second to decades. That gives astronomers the opportunity to study these events in "real time" as they develop.
"We don't normally witness the evolution of a system over millions of years, but these pairs of stars are experiencing the final moments before their collision, which instead occurs much more rapidly," research team leader Andrea Reguitti of the Istituto Nazionale Di Astrofisica (INAF) said in a statement. "The resulting transient, in fact, has evolutionary times comparable to those of a supernova — that is, a few months."
Reguitti set about answering the question of what remains after the luminous red nova fades away and the two stars have merged into a single object by studying nine different luminous red novas found in archival data. These transients have brightnesses in between that of classical novas, triggered when a white dwarf hoards material from a companion star thus sparking a runaway nuclear explosion, and supernovas that mark the death of a massive star and the birth of a black hole or a neutron star. The masses of stars involved in the mergers that trigger the formation of a luminous red nova can range from less than that of the sun to up to 50 times that of our star.
Of the nine luminous red novas examined, the team found that only two told the entire story of these powerful merger events. These were AT 2011kp, which was spotted in 2011 in a galaxy located around 25 million light-years away, and AT 1997bs, which erupted in a galaxy located 31 million light-years from Earth.
"In some cases, analyzing archival images from major space telescopes taken years before the event has allowed us to identify the progenitor, that is, study the system as it was before the merger, and therefore understand what types of stars were involved," Reguitti said. "However, until now, it was unknown what type of star would remain after the merger."
To determine the nature of the stellar body left behind by these merger events, the team had to observe them several years after the initial event. That is because when stars merge to create a luminous red nova, they eject a vast amount of stellar material. That gives rise to the brightest phase of these transients (changes in brightness), but the bright and dense shell of matter also obscures the view of the created stellar body. As every luminous red nova can eject dust equivalent to 300 times the mass of Earth, it is easy to see how the initial stages of these events would be difficult to observe through all of that material.
This investigation also required a space telescope powerful enough to observe distant galaxies and distinguish individual stars. That is where the JWST came in. Using infrared data gathered by the JWST in 2023 and 2024, in addition to visible light images collected by Hubble and the Spitzer Space Telescope, the team took another look at their selected luminous red novas, observing AT 2011kp as it was 12 years after the stellar merger event took place, while AT 1997bs was seen as it was after 27 years of evolution.
This revealed a stellar object very similar to a red supergiant star, a body hundreds of times the size of the sun, which, if placed at the heart of our solar system, would engulf the rocky inner planets and graze the orbit of Jupiter. Despite their immense size, the created stars were much cooler than the sun, with surface temperatures of between 5,840 degrees Fahrenheit and 6,740 degrees Fahrenheit (3,200 and 3,700 degrees Celsius) compared to the sun's surface temperature of around 10,300 degrees Fahrenheit (5,700 degrees Celsius).
"We didn't expect to find this type of object as a result of the merger," team member Andrea Pastorello, also of the INAF, said. "Rather, we would have expected that the system, going from two stars of a certain mass to a single one with a mass almost equal to the sum of the two (net of the material expelled by the collision), would have stabilized on a hotter and more compact source."
The impressive observing power of the JWST also allowed the researchers to study the chemicals that comprise the dust surrounding this newborn superstar. They found that this dust was made up of mostly carbon compounds like graphite. These compounds are important building blocks for living things, and with luminous red novas making such a significant contribution to interstellar dust, these events could have also played a key role in supplying the raw materials needed for life on Earth.
"We are made of carbon compounds, the same carbon that this dust is rich in," Reguitti concluded. "It's a different way of telling the old story that we are 'stardust.'"
]]>
+ https://www.space.com/astronomy/stars/james-webb-space-telescope-discovers-what-remains-after-two-stars-collide-and-explode-as-a-red-nova
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+ 2F73uKDSDrFwGeowyzTjQT
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+ Thu, 22 Jan 2026 16:00:00 +0000Thu, 22 Jan 2026 15:30:39 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Rocket Lab launches its 1st mission of 2026, sending 2 satellites to orbit (video) ]]>
+
Rocket Lab just launched its first mission of 2026.
An Electron rocket carrying two satellites for the European company Open Cosmos lifted off from Rocket Lab's New Zealand site today (Jan. 22) at 5:52 a.m. EST (1052 GMT; 11:52 p.m.local time in New Zealand).
Electron's "kick stage" deployed the two spacecraft into a circular orbit 1,050 kilometers (652 miles) above Earth as planned about 70 minutes after liftoff.
A Rocket Lab Electron rocket launches two satellites for the European company Open Cosmos from New Zealand on Jan. 22, 2026. (Image credit: Rocket Lab)
Mission success. Payload deployment confirmed for @open_cosmos. Welcome to orbit! 🛰️🚀 pic.twitter.com/xphXedHVRBJanuary 22, 2026
Today's launch was Rocket Lab's first dedicated mission for Open Cosmos, a company that designs, builds and operates satellites and also offers data-sharing and data-analysis services.
"Our approach not only dramatically lowers the costs, complexity and timescales of missions, but it also simplifies access to EO [Earth observation] data in a way that removes the barriers for all companies —even non-space customers — to address society’s most urgent challenges," Open Cosmos' website reads.
This morning's mission, which Rocket Lab called "The Cosmos Will See You Now," sent up the first two satellites in Open Cosmos' planned telecom constellation in low Earth orbit.
"This new constellation complements the already-in-orbit satellites that deliver high-resolution imagery and global monitoring capabilities, supporting a wide range of applications and providing valuable metadata for diverse uses," Rocket Lab said in an emailed statement after the launch.
Electron on its way to orbit for its 80th launch with mission success for @Open_Cosmos pic.twitter.com/mOZu5oaVrnJanuary 22, 2026
"The Cosmos Will See You Now" was Rocket Lab's 80th overall to date. The vast majority have been conducted by the 59-foot-tall (18-meter-tall) Electron, which gives small satellites dedicated rides to Earth orbit and beyond.
Rocket Lab has also conducted a handful of missions with HASTE, a suborbital version of Electron that allows customers to test hypersonic technologies in the space environment.
Rocket Lab launched 21 missions in 2025, which set a new record for the company. Its previous high, set in 2024, was 16.
Tune in tonight(Jan. 22) to watch live views of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS at opposition, as it appears opposite the sun in Earth's sky and races out of the solar system, courtesy of the Virtual Telescope Project.
Tonight's livestream is due to start at 6:30 p.m. EST (2330 GMT) and will feature live views of the interstellar comet captured by the Virtual Telescope Project's robotic scopes in Manciano, Italy. Of course, there's always the possibility that clouds could conspire to ruin the show — an eventuality that led to the cancellation of the earlier Jan. 16 livestream.
3I/ATLAS at opposition
Magnitude
"Magnitude" is used to measure the apparent brightness of objects in the night sky. The lower the number, the brighter the object! The brightest stars are around Mag +1, while a full moon is -13 and the sun is -27.
Comet 3I/ATLAS will be positioned at opposition on the night of Jan. 22 — a time when solar system objects and planets are typically at their best and brightest for observation, appearing fully illuminated by sunlight from Earth's perspective, much like a full moon.
Sadly, 3I/ATLAS is forecast to remain relatively faint, with a predicted magnitude of +13.2 as it reaches opposition, according to the Comet Observation Database (COBS) run by the Crni Vrh Observatory in Slovenia. As such, it'll be too faint to see with the naked eye, only becoming detectable through large telescopes.
3I/ATLAS' journey through the solar system
Comet 3I/ATLAS was first detected on July 1, 2025, by astronomers analyzing data collected by a telescope scanning the sky as part of the NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) project. A frenzied analysis of its orbit swiftly led scientists to conclude that it was just the third interstellar visitor to our solar system, behind 1I/ 'Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov.
3I/ATLAS made its closest approach to the sun on Oct. 31, 2025, around which time it disappeared for weeks behind the glare of a parent star. It later emerged to perform its closest proximity pass of Earth — an event known as perigee — on Dec. 19. It's due to make a planetary flyby in March later this year, when it will pass 33.4 million miles (53.7 million km) from Jupiter before continuing on its one-way journey out of the solar system, never to be seen again.
]]>
+ https://www.space.com/stargazing/watch-comet-3i-atlas-race-toward-interstellar-space-in-free-livestream-tonight
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+ 2jqR7onezAvfgnW2FNSui7
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+ Thu, 22 Jan 2026 15:30:00 +0000Thu, 22 Jan 2026 15:14:41 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ ISS astronaut spots Artemis 2 moon rocket on the launch pad from space (photo) ]]>
+ The lone U.S. astronaut currently in space took a picture of NASA's first rocket designed for a human moon mission in more than 50 years.
Artemis 2's rocket, called the Space Launch System, arrived at the launch pad Saturday (Jan. 17) — and may launch to the moon as soon as Feb. 6. From the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Chris Williams captured a view of the rocket coastside at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. "If you zoom in on the rightmost launch pad, you can see a shadow just to the left of the center of the pad," Williams said in an X post Monday (Jan. 19). "That shadow is from the rocket (and launch tower) that will soon take four of my friends on a trip around the moon."
Artemis 2 is expected to carry four astronauts on a lunar mission: NASA's Reid Williams (commander), Victor Glover (pilot) and Christina Koch (mission specialist), along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen. Glover will be the first person of color to leave low Earth orbit, while Koch will be the first woman and Hansen will be the first non-American. The moon mission is the first to return astronauts to the lunar surface since Apollo 17's moon-landing excursion in 1972.
Williams, temporarily flying solo on the U.S. side of the ISS after the early and unprecedented medical evacuation of SpaceX Crew-11 on Jan. 15, said the space photo was not his best effort. ("Should have grabbed a different lens," he added.) But it was a "special" image to him nonetheless, Williams said. The ISS coincidentally passed over Florida at about the same time SLS arrived at Launch Pad 39B on Saturday at 6:42 p.m. EST (2342 GMT). The rocket spent nearly 12 hours carefully moving across KSC on top of a baseball-infield-sized "crawler-transporter" previously tasked for Apollo and space shuttle missions.
The crew of Artemis 2 aims to spend 10 days testing the Orion spacecraft on the capsule's third space mission. The astronauts will first do a checkout in Earth orbit, and assuming all goes well, perform an engine burn (a trans-lunar injection) to bring them around the moon and home again.
Artemis 2 will be the first crewed flight for Orion. But an Orion flew uncrewed around Earth in 2014 for Exploration Flight Test-1 atop a United Launch Alliance Delta IV rocket, and another uncrewed Orion went around the moon in 2022 with Artemis 1 — which flew atop SLS on the rocket's first flight.
Artemis 2 will conduct a wide range of science and human health experiments to prepare for more long-duration moon missions. Artemis 3 is scheduled to land with astronauts in 2027 or 2028, pending readiness of the SpaceX Starship lander currently tasked to land astronauts there. More Artemis program missions are expected to follow, as NASA aims to build up a permanent presence on the moon.
The launch date of Artemis 2 is subject to change as the rocket and spacecraft undergo tests at the pad, most especially a "wet dress rehearsal" (or fueling of the rocket, in a simulated launch sequence) that required multiple attempts for certification of Artemis 1. The rehearsal is scheduled for no later than Feb. 2.
NASA has released windows for Artemis 2's launch in February, March and April. Agency officials at KSC emphasized Jan. 16 they would launch Artemis 2 with safety in mind when the mission was ready, and not "rush" the process.
]]>
+ https://www.space.com/space-exploration/human-spaceflight/iss-astronaut-spots-artemis-2-moon-rocket-on-the-launch-pad-from-space-photo
+
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+ Eb3tpxNKxwDwbq8oMpMsdE
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+ Thu, 22 Jan 2026 15:00:00 +0000Wed, 21 Jan 2026 21:02:49 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Searching for newborn stars with CAFFEINE | Space photo of the day for Jan. 22, 2026 ]]>
+ There are many questions surrounding the mechanics of star formation, from timeline to impact on surrounding stars. But for astronomers at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), one particular question is of particular focus: If you pack more material into a star-forming cloud, do you get more stars for your trouble?
Using theArTéMiS camera at the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) — a radio telescope in Chile operated by the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy — the ESO astronomers zoomed in on GAL316, a key stellar nursery. This image is part of a larger survey, the Core And Filament Formation/Evolution In Natal Environments (CAFFEINE) survey, which the astronomers are using to answer their key question — and fuel their thirst for knowledge.
What is it?
This is a layered, composite view of a stellar nursery that combines two perspectives on the same region of space. The blue, filamentary structure traces cold gas and dust — the raw ingredients of star formation — detected by APEX with the ArTéMiS camera. The background starfield comes from VISTA observations, showing the densely populated Milky Way region behind and around the cloud. Together, the two datasets make it easier to see how the invisible "fuel" for future stars threads through a field already full of older ones.
Where is it?
GAL316 is a star-forming region in our Milky Way.
A ghostly blue filament of cold gas and dust stretches across a dense starfield and looks a bit like steam curling through a café window. (Image credit: ESO/M. Mattern, P. André et al. Background: VVV)
Why is it amazing?
CAFFEINE was designed to test whether the densest star-forming regions become more productive, converting a higher fraction of their material into new stars once they pass the minimum density needed for star birth. The survey's results suggest the opposite of the intuitive guess: above that threshold, the densest regions observed didn't seem any more efficient at forming stars than other nurseries.
That matters because it hints that star formation isn't limited by "not enough stuff" once clouds reach a certain point. Instead, other brakes may still be at work even in the richest regions, the internal motions of the cloud, the way material fragments, and the early influence of young stars on their surroundings. In other words, piling on more gas and dust doesn't automatically turn a stellar nursery into a star-making machine.
]]>
+ https://www.space.com/astronomy/stars/searching-for-newborn-stars-with-caffeine-space-photo-of-the-day-for-jan-22-2026
+
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+ 5ZbabSX6REaT9JmdX7YmKU
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+ Thu, 22 Jan 2026 14:00:00 +0000Thu, 22 Jan 2026 15:03:16 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ See a slender crescent moon shine with Saturn in the western sky tonight ]]>
+ Look toward the southwestern horizon at sunset on Jan. 22 to witness the slender crescent moon cozy up to the gas giant Saturn beneath the stars of the constellation Pisces.
The moon's 22%-lit disk will appear roughly 30 degrees above the horizon — roughly the width of three clenched fists held at arm's length. Saturn will appear as a steady, bright star-like object less than 7 degrees to the moon's upper left.
Both Saturn and the moon's delicate, sickle profile will make for a gorgeous naked eye stargazing target and photo opportunity, with the four bright stars of the Great Square of Pegasusasterism forming a diamond to the pair's upper right.
A small telescope will enhance the view of the moon, revealing the dark basalt plains of Mare Crisium (the Sea of Crisis) and Mare Fecunditatis (the Sea of Fertility). These lunar features formed billions of years ago, when molten lava filled ancient impact basins and solidified in the extreme space environment.
Point the same telescope toward Saturn to catch the thin profile of its famous ring system dividing the gas giant's cloudy disk. The rings are currently tilted almost edge-on as seen from Earth. Saturn's largest moons Titan, Dione, Rhea and Tethys will also be visible as bright specs of light extending to one side of the gas giant's disk.
The thin crescent moon will shine near Saturn and Neptune on Jan. 22. (Image credit: Starry Night/Chris Vaughan)
Celestron NexStar 8SE
(Image credit: Amazon)
We reckon the Celestron NexStar 8SE is the best motorized telescope out there as it's great for astrophotography, deep-space observing and it offers stunning detailed imagery. It is a little pricey but for what you get, it's good value. For a more detailed look, you can check out our Celestron NexStar 8SE review.
Neptune also lurks nearby on the night of Jan. 22. The distant ice giant — about 17 times farther from the sun than Earth — sits less than 2 degrees above Saturn, though you'll need a telescope with an aperture of at least 8-inches (200 millimeters) to resolve the tiny blue dot of its disk. For scale, the tip of your little finger held at arm's length accounts for roughly 1 degree of sky.
The moon and Saturn will set around four and a half hours after the sun on Jan. 22. By the following night, the upturned lunar crescent will have leapt past Saturn to appear above it in the evening sky, noticeably thicker ahead of its first quarter phase on Jan. 25, when its right half will be bathed in direct sunlight as its left lies in shadow.
Editor's Note: If you take a picture of the moon with Saturn and want 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.
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+ https://www.space.com/stargazing/see-a-slender-crescent-moon-shine-with-saturn-in-the-western-sky-tonight-jan-22-2025
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+ M9PnaMJnEPcuuTWD57Bauf
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+ Thu, 22 Jan 2026 13:00:00 +0000Thu, 22 Jan 2026 10:21:02 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ iOptron 80mm White Light Solar Scope review ]]>
+ Although it is marketed as a white-light solar telescope, the iOptron 80mm White Light Solar Scope is really a nighttime scope (which can be purchased on its own) alongside a detachable solar filter from Thousand Oaks. This may be a perk for users who don't own a telescope and want to purchase a kit that's ready for both solar and lunar viewing. However, it's likely not of interest to anyone who already has a larger scope.
The telescope is lightweight with a streamlined design, and two handy eyepieces are included. The smaller aperture of the telescope — 2.4-inches (60mm) with the solar filter attached and 3.1-inches (80mm) without the solar filter — makes this telescope more suitable for beginners. And, the price is reasonable for this audience.
iOptron 80mm White Light Solar Scope review
iOptron 80mm White Light Solar Scope: Design
A view of the iOptron 80mm telescope from the side, including the plastic focusing knobs. The white disc inside the focus knob, which had been glued in, fell out during my first session. (Image credit: Ryan French)
Simple aluminum body in bright blue
Sleek 60mm solar filter
Traditional 9mm and 25mm eyepieces
The iOptron 80mm telescope is a simple-looking refracting telescope with a 3.1-inch (80mm) aperture. It's bright blue, with a clear iOptron logo at the end of the telescope. At the base of the telescope, there is a rack-and-pinion focus with a 1.25-inch (32mm) eyepiece slot. The lack of a finder scope and the eyepiece opening at the very end of the scope give it a sleek and streamlined look. The kit also includes a 45-degree erect glass prism, allowing for easier viewing of high-altitude objects. Simple 0.35-inch (9mm) and 1-inch (25mm) eyepieces are also included.
A unique selling point of this telescope is the featured SolarLite solar filter from Thousand Oaks. The filter has a simple design, mounting onto the end of the telescope with three screws. The solar filter has an aperture of only 2.4 inches (60mm), which decreases the usable aperture size from the 3.1-inch (80mm) telescope measurement. Thousand Oaks is a trustworthy producer of solar filters, so you can have peace of mind that the filter is safe.
The front and back of the Thousand Oaks SolarLite filter, which provides a safe view of the sun for both naked-eye and telescope observations. (Image credit: Ryan French)
Specifications
Weight: 3lbs (1.3 kg)
Dimensions: 13.8 x 4.1 x 4.1-inches (350 x 105 x 105 mm)
Optical design: Refractor
Aperture: 3.15-inches (80mm), or 2.36-inches (60mm) with the solar filter
Focal length: 15.7-inches (400 mm)
Focal ratio: f/5.0
Eyepiece focal length: 25mm (16x) and 9mm (44x)
Mount type: Alt-azimuth
The iOptron 80mm was designed primarily as a night-sky telescope, which is apparent from the safety label with a warning against its use for solar observations. This label is somewhat helpful, to remind you to attach the solar filter before pointing at the sun. However, it might be confusing for customers who purchased the telescope-solar-filter package especially for solar viewing. Rest assured: With the solar filter attached, solar viewing is safe.
The cosmetic finishes on the telescope are not high-quality. The plastic rack-and-pinion focus has small, white discs to hide the screws underneath, yet one popped out during my first observing session.
The caution label on the side of the general-use scope could be confusing for beginners who are using the solar filter. (Image credit: Ryan French)
iOptron 80mm White Light Solar Scope: Performance
We got soft, orange views of the sun and saw visible sunspots through the iOptron 80mm white light solar scope. (Image credit: Ryan French)
Easily visible sunspots
Inclusion of useful 9mm and 25mm eyepieces
Views of soft, golden-orange sun
Potentially problematic plastic focus knob
I tested the iOptron 80mm White Light Solar Scope on a clear, cloudless day at around 4 p.m. The sun was not at its highest by this time — but I live in a dry location over 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) above sea level, so atmospheric conditions are generally quite stable for nighttime and solar astronomy.
With the solar filter attached, the aperture of the telescope is only 60 mm wide. Through the 9mm eyepiece, the sun filled up the view nicely, but the wider 25mm view was more forgiving for non-tracking mounts. The sun appeared a nice golden orange through the solar filter.
The telescope performed as expected for a 60mm aperture white-light scope. Sunspot regions were visible (even through the 25mm eyepiece), with the difference between the umbra (the dark center of the sunspot) and the penumbra (the lighter edge of the sunspot) at the edge of visibility to a keen eye. As with all solar observations, your viewing experience will depend on the size and presence (or lack thereof) of sunspots on a given observation day, which will change constantly. At the time of my observations, only small sunspots were near the center of the sun, with a larger region rotating into view.
A comparison between the view of the sun from the iOptron 80mm White Light Solar Scope and the view from the space-based Solar Dynamics Observatory. (Image credit: Ryan French)
The images above show a comparison between a photograph taken through the iOptron telescope (a single shot from a Sony A7 IV with a Barlow lens) and a white-light image of the sun from the space-based Solar Dynamics Observatory. Naturally, the image from space is much clearer and sharper, but the iOptron telescope still picked out all of the sunspot regions. A more ambitious photographer could obtain sharper sun images by stacking multiple images together.
My primary criticism with the telescope's performance is the plastic focusing knob, which is a little stiff and not of the highest quality. When I turned the knob, it caused the telescope to wobble a fair amount and thus required readjustment of the telescope.
iOptron 80mm White Light Solar Scope: Functionality
The iOptron 80mm White Light Solar Scope pointing at the sun. (Image credit: Ryan French)
Lightweight, portable design
Easy setup
No finder scope, which may cause difficulties for beginners
The iOptron 80mm is lightweight and easy to carry over long distances. The setup is instantaneous; the telescope easily mounts onto a tripod, and the solar filter is easy to attach to the end of the scope. Don't forget this step! The 45-degree erect glass prism is a nice inclusion; it allows you to angle the eyepiece away from the telescope for easier viewing while the sun is high in the sky.
The iOptron 80mm White Light Solar Scope has a basic design. It lacks a finder scope, which would need its own solar filter, or at least an indication of where the sun is relative to the pointing. By contrast, most dedicated solar telescopes include this feature to help you find the sun. For this reason, it may take beginner astronomers a little time to find the sun within the field of view.
User reviews of the iOptron 80mm White Light Solar Scope
There do not appear to be any online reviews of the solar-filter-telescope combination. However, there are reviews of the telescope without the solar filter, rated on its use for nighttime astronomy. On the High Point Scientific website, two reviews independently mention the issues with the focus knob that I also found during my testing:
"A good basic refractor telescope. Useful for terrestrial daytime viewing and wide field viewing of moon, and large objects like comets. However, cheap plastic focusing housing causes image shift making astrophotography difficult. (4/5)"
"The view through the iOptron 80 is good, but there is a problem with focusing. When you turn the knob to focus, the object moves from side to side depending upon which way the knob is turned. Sometimes it can move completely out of view. You can see the eyepiece holder move side to side as you turn the knob back and forth. (3/5)"
Should you buy the iOptron 80mm White Light Solar Scope?
Buy it if:
✅ You're new to astronomy and want a single telescope for both daytime and nighttime astronomy.
✅ You need a compact, lightweight solar telescope: The iOptron 80mm White Light Solar Scope ticks both these boxes.
Don't buy it if:
❌ You already own a basic nighttime telescope: There isn't much point swapping to this one if you already have a decent telescope for astronomy.
❌ You want to photograph the sun: This isn't possible using this scope.
The iOptron 80mm White Light Solar Scope is a decent purchase if you do not already own a telescope and want to buy something versatile for both solar and lunar astronomy. It has a small aperture, but it's easy to set up, making it suitable for beginners.
If you already own a regular (nonsolar) telescope, it is probably better to purchase a solar filter directly for the scope you already own. This will save you money and may provide you with a larger aperture than the 60mm solar filter included with the iOptron 80mm White Light Solar Scope. Thousand Oaks, the company that makes the solar filter included with this product, also sells solar filters for other telescope sizes.
If the iOptron 80mm White Light Solar Scope isn't for you
If the iOptron 80mm White Light Solar Scope isn't for you, you have a couple of options. If you already own a telescope, the cheapest option is to buy a Thousand Oaks filter to fit your scope. That may even provide better results, if your scope's aperture is wider than 80mm.
If you want to invest in a solar-specific telescope, then H-alpha observations provide a far better view of the sun than white-light solar telescopes do. White-light filters are restricted to observing the sun's surface, the photosphere, while H-alpha filters observe a higher layer in the sun's atmosphere, called the chromosphere. In addition, H-alpha observations can reveal filaments called solar prominences. However, H-alpha telescopes are much more expensive than the iOptron 80mm White Light Solar Scope. Trusted H-alpha brands include Lunt, which sells 40mm, 50mm and 152mm-aperture options.
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+ https://www.space.com/stargazing/skywatching-kit/ioptron-80mm-white-light-solar-scope-review
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+ Thu, 22 Jan 2026 11:03:51 +0000Thu, 22 Jan 2026 11:03:52 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Wobbling exoplanet hints at a hidden exomoon so massive it could redefine the word 'moon' altogether ]]>
+ A gas giant planet beyond the solar that wobbles as it circles its star, hinting to astronomers that it is orbited by its own moon. To make this suspected discovery even more remarkable, if this moon exists it would be absolutely massive, comparable to around half the mass of Jupiter. That would make it thousands of times more massive than any moon orbiting a solar system plane — so massive it could make astronomers reconsider what constitutes a moon.
The extra-solar planet, or "exoplanet," suspected to host this tremendous exomoon is HD 206893 B, a gas giant with 28 times the mass of Jupiter, which orbits a young star located around 133 light-years from Earth. The team behind this research detected signs of the potential exomoon while investigating HD 206893 B with the GRAVITY instrument at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) located in the Atacama desert region of northern Chile.
"What we found is that HD 206893 B doesn't just follow a smooth orbit around its star. On top of that motion, it shows a small but measurable back-and-forth 'wobble'. The wobble has a period of about nine months and a size comparable to the Earth–moon distance," team leader and University of Cambridge astronomer Quentin Kral told Space.com."This kind of signal is exactly what you would expect if the object were being tugged by an unseen companion, such as a large moon, making this system a particularly intriguing candidate for hosting an exomoon."
The GRAVITY instrument allowed the team to use a technique called astrometry, which precisely measures the positions of stars and other astronomical bodies over time. This allows astronomers to detect tiny aberrations in motion that are the result of a gravitational "tug" from an unseen body.
"This technique has previously been used to measure the long, slow orbits of massive exoplanets and brown dwarfs, where observations spaced years apart are sufficient," Kral said. "In our study, we pushed this approach much further by monitoring the object over much shorter timescales, from days to months. What we found is that HD 206893 B doesn't just follow a smooth orbit around its star. On top of that motion, it shows a small but measurable back-and-forth 'wobble.'"
The result of this investigation was the inference of a companion body orbiting HD 206893 B around once every nine months at a distance of around one-fifth the distance between Earth and the sun. The orbit of this potential exomoon is tilted at around 60 degrees relative to the orbital plane of its parent planet, potentially indicating some type of interaction has disturbed this system at some point in its history.
Of course, what would be really extraordinary about this exomoon, if confirmed, is its absolutely tremendous mass, around 40% of Jupiter's mass, or around nine times the mass of the ice giant Neptune! That is so big it could call into question the definition of the word "moon."
"In our solar system, the most massive moon is Ganymede, which is still extremely small compared to what we are inferring here. Ganymede is thousands of times less massive than Neptune, so there is an enormous gap in mass between the largest moons we know and this potential exomoon candidate," Kral said.
"This naturally raises the question of whether such an object should even be called a moon. At these masses, the distinction between a massive moon and a very low-mass companion becomes blurred. However, there is currently no official definition of an exomoon, and in practice, astronomers generally refer to any object orbiting a planet or substellar companion as a moon."
Though astronomers believe that several exomoons have been detected in the past, all of these possible detections have been controversial. Thus, the team is hoping that the exomoon of HD 206893 B can be the first to be officially confirmed.
"Exomoons are difficult to detect because they produce signals that are extremely small compared to those of planets, and those signals depend very strongly on both the observing technique and the system's geometry," Kral explained.
The most successful method of exoplanet detection thus far has been the transit method, which measures the dip in light caused as a planet crosses, or "transits", the face of its parent star.
However, this technique hasn't been nearly as successful at detecting exomoons.
"The transit method — which has been the most successful technique for finding exoplanets — can, in principle, detect moons comparable in size to Jupiter's largest moons. However, it is most sensitive to planets orbiting very close to their stars, and theoretical studies suggest that such close-in planets are unlikely to retain large moons over long periods of time," Kral said.
"Astrometry, the technique we use, is sensitive to longer-period moons orbiting planets or substellar companions far from their stars. This makes it particularly promising for detecting exomoons in regions where they are expected to be stable — at least for the most massive moons, which are likely to be the first ones we can find."
In addition to hopefully confirming the presence of this exomoon, Kral and colleagues think this research and the technique they used lay down a future roadmap for exomoon discovery in other planetary systems.
"It's important to keep in mind that we are likely only seeing the tip of the iceberg," Kral concluded. "Just as the first exoplanets discovered were the most massive ones orbiting very close to their stars — simply because they were the easiest to detect — the first exomoons we identify are expected to be the most massive and extreme examples.
"As observational techniques improve, our definitions and understanding of what constitutes a moon will almost certainly evolve."
The team's research is available as a pre-peer-reviewed paper on the repository site arXiv, and accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics
]]>
+ https://www.space.com/astronomy/exoplanets/wobbling-exoplanet-hints-at-a-hidden-exomoon-so-massive-it-could-redefine-the-word-moon-altogether
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+ nsP3ugCDYrfaDhrhYyrTEE
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+ Thu, 22 Jan 2026 11:00:00 +0000Thu, 22 Jan 2026 14:31:24 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ 'We can handle any kind of difficult situation': Crew-11 astronauts say 1st medical evacuation from ISS had a silver lining ]]>
+ The astronauts of NASA's most recent mission to the International Space Station (ISS) sat down today (Jan. 21) to discuss their time in orbit, as well as their untimely departure.
NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, Kimiya Yui of JAXA and cosmonaut Oleg Platonov launched to the ISS on SpaceX's Crew-11 mission in early August of last year, for what was planned to be a 6.5-month stint aboard the orbital lab. The quartet returned to Earth shy of that goal, however, due to a medical issue that one of them experienced.
The astronauts splashed down in their Crew Dragon capsule on Jan. 15, about a month before their replacements aboard Crew-12 were expected to launch on their own six-month mission. Crew-11 was the first mission to the ISS ever cut short due to astronaut health issues, and it was therefore a critical demonstration of their training and preparedness, the astronauts said.
"This is actually a very, very good experience for the future of human spaceflight," Yui said during a post-mission press conference today.
The fact that Crew-11 returned to Earth safely under such unprecedented circumstances shows that astronauts and mission control "can handle any kind of difficult situation," he added.
The ISS has been continuously occupied in low Earth orbit since November 2000. That this was the first medical evacuation ever needed speaks not only to the training of NASA's and other space agencies' astronauts, but also the resources and preparedness of the station itself to deal with unexpected medical issues.
While NASA and the Crew-11 astronauts aren't disclosing the nature of the medical situation or whom it affected, citing privacy concerns, Fincke did say during today's press conference that the station's ultrasound machine played an important role.
"When we had this emergency, the ultrasound machine came in super handy. So I'd recommend portable ultrasound machines in the future, for sure, for all spaceflights," Fincke said. "It really helped."
Such medical diagnostic and treatment technologies will be crucial on missions that send humans deeper into space, where a quick return to Earth isn't possible. And NASA is deep into the planning of such missions. Its Artemis program, for example, aims to put astronauts on the moon just a year or two from now, and to eventually establish one or more bases on the lunar surface.
Crew-11's experience helps builds confidence that we can pull off such ambitious exploration feats, Fincke said.
"I'm very proud of the space station that we built and what humans can do, but how we handled everything all the way through — through nominal operations to these unforeseen operations — really bodes well for future exploration," he said during today's briefing, which took place in Houston. "We're a well-honed machine here at the Johnson Space Center and around the world. So, when we're getting ready for Artemis, I am very optimistic."
Forgoing the usual crew overlap period typically practiced with the arrival of a new group of astronauts to the ISS before another's departure, the Crew-11 astronauts left behind only a skeleton crew of three aboard the station. Operating on adjusted schedules to accommodate the lack of crew availability, those three are awaiting the launch of Crew-12, which is expected no earlier than Feb. 15, to bring the station back up to its normal crew complement of seven.
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+ https://www.space.com/space-exploration/human-spaceflight/we-can-handle-any-kind-of-difficult-situation-crew-11-astronauts-say-1st-medical-evacuation-from-iss-had-a-silver-lining
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+ QozhQRycngN7UgfBnAzLrZ
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+ Wed, 21 Jan 2026 23:00:00 +0000Wed, 21 Jan 2026 21:59:24 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ 'Eye of God' nebula looks like a cosmic lava lamp in new James Webb Space Telescope image ]]>
+
Astronomers have been given a new and incredibly detailed look at a very familiar astronomical object thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The new JWST image shows the Helix Nebula, the ring-like structure of which has led to the nickname the Eye of God.
The Helix Nebula is composed of stellar material shrugged off by a dying star as its outer layers were blasted away and its core collapsed to form a dense stellar remnant called a white dwarf. White dwarfs are the type of stellar corpses that are left behind when stars with similar masses as the sun run out of hydrogen in their cores and can no longer generate the energy to support themselves against the inward push of their own gravity. The remains that surround them are referred to as "planetary nebulas," even though they have nothing to do with planets at all.
That means that this intricate view of the Helix Nebula, located some 650 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Aquarius, gives scientists a hint of what is to come for our own star when it exhausts its hydrogen fuel in around 5 billion years. So, while this familiar sight for astronomers may look like a lava lamp in these images, it may actually serve as a crystal ball, foretelling doom for our solar system.
The Helix Nebula as seen by the JWST with its comet-like knots, fierce stellar winds, and layers of gas shed off by a dying star interacting with its surrounding environment. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, A. Pagan (STScI))
The Helix Nebula, also known as NGC 7293 or Caldwell 63, was first discovered by German astronomer Karl Ludwig Harding prior to 1824. It is one of the closest and brightest planetary nebulas that can be seen from Earth.
Since then, the Helix Nebula has been imaged by a vast array of telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope, with the JWST joining the fray with an infrared image courtesy of its Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam).
(Left) The Helix Nebula as seen by the Visible and Infrared Telescope for Astronomy. (Right) The smaller field of view from the JWST’s NIRCam (right). (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, A. Pagan (STScI))
The image clearly traces winds of blisteringly hot gas emerging from the vicinity of the white dwarf stellar remnant at the heart of the Helix Nebula as they slam into outer shells of previously shed cold gas and dust. This demonstrates a sharp transition between the hot gas of this system and its coolest counterpart.
Not visible in the JWST image is the smoldering white dwarf in the center of the Helix Nebula, but astronomers can see the effect of the radiation it emits as it lights close surrounding gas, heating it and causing it to be ionized.
Further out from the stellar remnant are dust pockets of cold molecular hydrogen, in which conditions are just right for the formation of complex molecules. These could one day become the building blocks of new planets, and perhaps even life.Thus, perhaps this cosmic crystal ball also offers a look backwards billions of years into the past before the solar system took shape around our infant sun.
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+ https://www.space.com/astronomy/galaxies/eye-of-god-nebula-looks-like-a-cosmic-lava-lamp-in-new-james-webb-space-telescope-image
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+ aUGDg6sk2rE9Sgyb8ur4ui
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+ Wed, 21 Jan 2026 22:00:00 +0000Wed, 21 Jan 2026 22:32:45 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ 'Legends of Tomorrow' at 10: Celebrating DC's scrappy version of 'Back to the Future' ]]>
+ In 2016, DC gave the spotlight to the misfits, the outsiders, the rebels – and the fans ate it up. No, this isn't about David Ayer's "Suicide Squad" or Jared Leto's method acting as a turkey with gang tattoos; this is about the most underrated part of the Arrowverse: "Legends of Tomorrow."
Truthfully, the premise didn't exactly inspire anyone when it was first announced. Airing on Jan. 21, 2016, the show takes lesser-used characters from other Arrowverse series and chucks the benchwarmers together for a time-travel adventure where they cross space and time to battle bad guys like Vandal Savage (Casper Crump). Hooray for surplus heroes!
This show definitely had the stench of one-season-and-done all over it, and it didn't help that the first season received apathetic reviews, as critics dished out a 65% approval rating while the audience was less kind with 58% on Rotten Tomatoes.
(Image credit: The CW)
Fortunately, the charisma of the show's stars – such as Caity Lotz, Brandon Routh, and Dominic Purcell – work overtime to compensate for the noticeable shortcomings, keeping the viewers invested in what's on screen even as the series stumbles through an initial and very public identity crisis. "Legends of Tomorrow" takes its time to find its feet, struggling to figure out if it's meant to be more serious like "Arrow" or bashfully endearing like "The Flash." However, it finally settles on what fans appreciate it as: DC's playful version of "Back to the Future."
There's no budget for a wheel-spinning DeLorean, though, as the team travels in the distinctively less stylish Waverider, which gives PlayStation 1 "Wipeout" vibes whenever it appears on screen. That's par for the course here, really, as the Arrowverse shows never had massive money behind them, usually blowing the budget on episodes featuring King Shark or Gorilla Grodd, then having Barry Allen "losing" his powers for the rest of the season. However, "Legends of Tomorrow" somehow spins the low-budget approach to its own benefit. The campy effects add to the series' charm and candour, forcing the adventures to be more intimate and contained, rather than turning into a CGI roller coaster ride out of James Cameron's wildest dreams.
While "Legends" could never compete with the visual vibrancy of "Game of Thrones" or the digital detail of "The Mandalorian," the superhero series makes the likes of Ancient Egypt and 1970s London come to life through creative costumes, efficiently designed sets, and hammy setups. It's reminiscent of early "Doctor Who" and "Star Trek" episodes, where practicality and imagination shook hands with an understanding that it's up to the audience to suspend their disbelief if they want the full experience.
(Image credit: The CW)
Viewers who let go of any expectations weren't let down in the end, especially if they appreciate the show for what it is rather than what it could be. "Legends of Tomorrow" values fun above everything else, taking us on a joyride through the ages and the different corners of the DC Universe that might have never been explored on screen otherwise. Did it always make sense? Absolutely not. Could it have been better in places? For sure. Yet, you can't deny that the show commits to the goofiness and goes full throttle around every wacky bend. Doc Brown and Marty McFly would be so proud of what Greg Berlanti and company built here.
While on the topic of unconfined joy, let's not forget that "Legends" is solely responsible for the rise of the cute and cuddly Beebo. Only those who have watched the show understand the importance and influence of the Blue God, who became an undisputed highlight of weekly television. Marvel can keep that monosyllable hunk of wood known as Groot, because all that anyone needs in their life is more Beebo. If James Gunn is serious about the success of this all-new DC Universe and providing the ultimate fan service, he better find a place for this character. More Beebs, less members of the Gunn family on screen. Please.
What "Legends of Tomorrow" also does phenomenally well is to give second chances to characters done dirty in the past. Remember the "Jonah Hex" movie starring Josh Brolin? No, of course you don't, no one does. Thankfully, DC's resident gunslinger received a rebirth thanks to a straight-shootin' performance from Johnathon Schaech, who doesn't miss when he shows up in an episode. Matt Ryan's John Constantine also entered the last chance saloon after the cancellation of his solo series, but his portrayal of the Hellblazer – more akin to his comic book counterpart than Keanu Reeves' version – lived on longer because of his magical time as part of the Legends.
(Image credit: The CW)
Despite the low expectations and a show consisting largely of B-list characters, "Legends of Tomorrow" lasted seven solid seasons. That's more than any Arrowverse show, except for "Arrow" and "The Flash." It's also the same number of seasons as "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." and more than any Marvel series released after 2016. Simply put, it's a phenomenal achievement that should be shouted from the rooftops.
So, what was the secret to the show's success? According to Caity Lotz, it all comes back to what's been mentioned before: the fun factor. "The fans embrace our weirdness," she told ComicBook.com. "It's good to know when we're just having fun, and we're playing, people are into it. And I think the fact that we don't take everything too seriously is really what makes it so fun."
But isn't that what all this stuff should be in the first place? By committing to every absurdity and possibility, "Legends of Tomorrow" counteracts the corporate-sanitized version of superhero productions today. It's the very definition of letting your hair down and going with the flow. Maybe it's time that everyone takes a page out of the Legends' book and goes back to the past to discover that rebellious spirit – and Beebo – again.
"Legends of Tomorrow" is available to watch on Amazon, Apple TV, and other streaming services in the US and UK.
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+ https://www.space.com/entertainment/space-movies-shows/legends-of-tomorrow-at-10-celebrating-dcs-scrappy-version-of-back-to-the-future
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+ sVkWHmAfrnTL2ZsurHD7AQ
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+ Wed, 21 Jan 2026 21:00:00 +0000Wed, 21 Jan 2026 18:55:58 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Record-setting astronaut Suni Williams retires from NASA after 27 years ]]>
+ One of NASA's most decorated astronauts has called it a career.
Suni Williams retired from the agency on Dec. 27, 2025 after 27 years of service. During her NASA career, she spent 608 total days off Earth — the second-most in American history, behind Peggy Whitson's 695 — and ran the first-ever marathon in space.
"Suni Williams has been a trailblazer in human spaceflight, shaping the future of exploration through her leadership aboard the space station and paving the way for commercial missions to low Earth orbit," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a statement on Tuesday (Jan. 20) that announced Williams' retirement.
"Her work advancing science and technology has laid the foundation for Artemis missions to the moon and advancing toward Mars, and her extraordinary achievements will continue to inspire generations to dream big and push the boundaries of what's possible," Isaacman added. "Congratulations on your well-deserved retirement, and thank you for your service to NASA and our nation."
Williams joined NASA in 1998, part of an astronaut class dubbed "The Penguins." She flew to space for the first time in December 2006, living aboard the International Space Station (ISS) until late April of 2007.
In the home stretch of that mission, she competed in the Boston Marathon from orbit, running on a treadmill as her crewmates cheered her on. Williams finished the 26.2-mile run in four hours and 24 minutes.
She flew two more long-duration missions to the ISS, launching to the station in July 2012 and then again in June 2024. That latter flight was the first crewed mission of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, which did not go according to plan.
Williams and fellow NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore were supposed to spend just 10 days or so in space. But Starliner experienced thruster problems on the way to the ISS, and NASA decided to extend the duo's mission while it worked out how to handle the situation.
The agency eventually decided to bring Starliner down uncrewed, which happened without incident in September 2024. Williams and Wilmore stayed aboard the ISS until March 2025, when they returned to Earth on the downward leg of SpaceX's Crew-9 astronaut mission.
Williams and Wilmore (who retired in August 2025) spent 286 days in space on that mission, which puts them in a tie for sixth place for longest single spaceflight by an American. (Frank Rubio holds that record, at 371 days.)
During her NASA career, Williams conducted nine spacewalks, which lasted a total of 62 hours and 6 minutes. That's a record for most spacewalking time by a woman, and it's the fourth-most overall.
Williams, 60, is from Needham, Massachusetts. She earned a bachelor's degree in physical science from the U.S. Naval Academy and a master's degree in engineering management from the Florida Institute of Technology. She's also a retired U.S. Navy captain and pilot who has logged more than 4,000 flight hours in 40 different aircraft.
But she was probably always destined to become an astronaut.
"Anyone who knows me knows that space is my absolute favorite place to be. It's been an incredible honor to have served in the Astronaut Office and have had the opportunity to fly in space three times," Williams said in the same statement.
"I had an amazing 27-year career at NASA, and that is mainly because of all the wonderful love and support I've received from my colleagues," she added. "The International Space Station, the people, the engineering, and the science are truly awe-inspiring and have made the next steps of exploration to the moon and Mars possible. I hope the foundation we set has made these bold steps a little easier. I am super excited for NASA and its partner agencies as we take these next steps, and I can't wait to watch the agency make history."
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+ https://www.space.com/space-exploration/human-spaceflight/record-setting-astronaut-suni-williams-retires-from-nasa-after-27-years
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+ LccChpQFKWtBTbPxf72p2H
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+ Wed, 21 Jan 2026 20:00:00 +0000Wed, 21 Jan 2026 17:47:01 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin plans to build 5,400-satellite megaconstellation ]]>
+ Yet another satellite megaconstellation is in the works, this one from Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin.
The Washington-based aerospace company announced today (Jan. 21) that it plans to build a network called TeraWave, which will consist of 5,280 satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) and 128 a bit higher up, in medium Earth orbit (MEO).
"This network will service tens of thousands of enterprise, data center and government users who require reliable connectivity for critical operations," Blue Origin said in an X post today.
As that post notes, TeraWave is targeting a customer base of big businesses and government agencies — organizations that want or need very high-throughput communications services.
TeraWave's LEO satellites will deliver speeds of up to 144 gigabits per second using radio frequency links, according to a Blue Origin statement. And the MEO spacecraft will be even more capable, using lasers to provide speeds of up to 6 terabits per second.
"TeraWave addresses the unmet needs of customers who are seeking higher throughput, symmetrical upload/download speeds, more redundancy and rapid scalability," Blue Origin's statement reads. "It enables customers to choose throughput and physical presence in response to changes in their needs."
Blue Origin plans to start building out the constellation in the fourth quarter of 2027.
What makes TeraWave different? It is purpose-built for enterprise customers. Unmatched speeds of up to 6 Tbps through a multi-orbit constellation of 5,280 LEO and 128 MEO satellites with both RF and optical links. Globally distributed customers can each access up to 144 Gbps of… https://t.co/xByEivptBA pic.twitter.com/Se07aUhgy2January 21, 2026
A number of other satellite-internet megaconstellations are under construction. SpaceX's Starlink, for example, already services customers around the globe using a network of more than 9,500 satellites (and that number is growing all the time).
Two Chinese megaconstellations — Guowang ("National Network") and Qianfan ("Thousand Sails") — are under construction in LEO as well. Both will eventually consist of more than 13,000 spacecraft, if all goes according to plan.
And Amazon, which Bezos founded back in 1994, is assembling a 3,200-satellite network in LEO called, appropriately enough, Amazon Leo (though it was initially named Project Kuiper). Like Starlink, Amazon Leo is tailored more to everyday residential users.
]]>
+ https://www.space.com/space-exploration/satellites/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-plans-to-build-5-400-satellite-megaconstellation
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+ uUoMQTE84XQSarL5DGRzgb
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+ Wed, 21 Jan 2026 19:30:00 +0000Wed, 21 Jan 2026 18:55:38 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ You're getting warmer! Hot dark matter could refine cosmic game of hide and seek ]]>
+ New research suggests that dark matter, the universe's most mysterious "stuff," may actually have been born "hot." If this is the case, the best current model we have of cosmic evolution, the standard model of cosmology, also known as the Lambda Cold Dark Matter (LCDM), may need serious revision or overwriting altogether, altering the rules of the epic game of hide and seek that has been ongoing between dark matter and scientists for decades.
Dark matter is a headache for researchers because it doesn't interact with electromagnetic radiation, light, in layman's terms. This not only makes dark matter effectively invisible, but it also means that scientists know it can't be made of the electrons, protons, and neutrons that compose the atoms making up everything from the most massive stars down to the tiniest bacteria, because they do interact with light. Couple this with the fact that dark matter outweighs ordinary matter in the universe by a ratio of five to one.
This mystery has sparked a search for candidate particles for dark matter beyond the standard model of particle physics. Thus far, this search has favored "cold" dark matter, which doesn't refer to temperature but instead references the speed at which the particles move (cold meaning much slower than light, hot meaning moving at speeds approaching light). In the standard picture, cold dark matter emerges from the hot and dense soup of energy that filled the early universe.
The new research suggests an alternative origin. Dark matter could have instead been born extremely hot, opening up alternative possibilities of how it interacts with everyday matter.
The team proposes that incredibly hot dark matter moving at near-light speeds could have been born in the universe during a period called post-inflationary reheating. This refers to the point at which the inflation field driving the rapid initial expansion of the universe decayed and transformed into a hot and incredibly dense "soup" of radiation and particles.
"Dark matter is famously enigmatic. One of the few things we know about it is that it needs to be cold," research leader Stephen Henrich, of the University of Minnesota's School of Physics and Astronomy, said in a statement. "As a result, for the past four decades, most researchers have believed that dark matter must be cold when it is born in the primordial universe.
"Our recent results show that this is not the case; in fact, dark matter can be red hot when it is born but still have time to cool down before galaxies begin to form."
Henrich and his colleagues demonstrated that dark matter could stop significantly interacting with ordinary matter and electromagnetic radiation while still very hot and thus moving at speeds approaching that of light, a process called "decoupling." If produced during post-inflationary reheating, this would give dark matter plenty of time to cool off and start acting like cold dark matter, assisting in the formation of the first galaxies by forming gravitational waves into which ordinary matter clusters.
The concept could resurrect one of the earliest and simplest candidates for dark matter, low-mass neutrinos, which were ruled out around four decades ago because it was thought they would have wiped out galactic-scale structures rather than promoting them.
"The neutrino became the prime example of hot dark matter, where structure formation relies on cold dark matter," team member Keith Olive, also of the University of Minnesota's School of Physics and Astronomy, said. "It is amazing that a similar candidate, if produced just as the hot Big Bang universe was being created, could have cooled to the point where it would, in fact, act as cold dark matter."
The team will now attempt to produce and observe these particles using experiments on Earth, including tests conducted with powerful particle accelerators, as well as detecting them in the early universe. This investigation could not only reveal the true nature of dark matter, but it could also help scientists build a clearer picture of one of the most crucial, yet mysterious, periods of cosmic evolution.
"With our new findings, we may be able to access a period in the history of the universe very close to the Big Bang," team member Yann Mambrini of the Université Paris-Saclay in France said.
]]>
+ https://www.space.com/astronomy/dark-universe/youre-getting-warmer-hot-dark-matter-could-refine-cosmic-game-of-hide-and-seek
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+ Wed, 21 Jan 2026 19:00:00 +0000Wed, 21 Jan 2026 14:57:13 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Sci-fi extraction shooter 'Marathon' is coming March 5, with new trailer showcasing all-star voice cast, collector's edition & more (video) ]]>
+
Following a delay last year, venerable game studio Bungie's first post-Destiny shooter has finally set a launch date. That's right, Marathon is back and looking snazzier than before.
Set on Tau Ceti IV after the events of the original games (last seen 30 years ago), the online extraction shooter tasks players with retrieving valuable artifacts, data, and resources from a lost colony as Runners, augmented humans with cybernetic bodies.
Last week, we learned about shells (class archetypes) and how they can reshape entire matches. Now, we've just received a pre-order trailer that's playing up the mystery and ongoing narrative that will add sauce to the strictly online action game.
Bungie has landed on March 5 as the definitive release date for Marathon, with the game set to hit PC (Steam), PS5, and Xbox Series X|S with full cross play and cross save.
Like other extraction shooters, such as ARC Raiders, Marathon will mix both PvE (co-op gameplay) and PvP (player-versus-player) action, making each trip down to Tau Ceti IV unpredictable and filled with danger. Teamwork gets the job done, but Bungie is also teasing unique opportunities for solo players.
Standard Edition pre-orders grant access to bonus cosmetics and rewards for Destiny 2. The Deluxe Edition adds premium cosmetics and access to the first rewards pass. Last but not least, the Collector's Edition includes all Deluxe Edition content plus an enticing bundle of physical goodies:
Taking things a step further, Bungie and Sony (who now owns the company) have teamed up to craft and release a limited-edition DualSense controller as well as the latest Pulse Elite wireless headset.
Those two are among the most stylish peripherals from a first-party publisher we've seen since Starfield's, we must say. Pre-orders will begin on January 29 at 10am local time here, but the headset will be limited to the US.
(Image credit: Bungie)
Holding together the universe-building and ongoing narrative efforts, an all-star voice cast has been revealed. It includes names such as Jennifer English (Clair Obscur: Expedition 33), Neil Newbon (Baldur's Gate 3), Erin Yvette (Dispatch), and Ben Starr (Final Fantasy XVI), among many others. Moreover, it's been confirmed Marathon will be dubbed for all supported languages.
Though the first closed tests last year and so-so trailers had us worried last year, we're thinking Bungie could shock the world come March. At the very least, the studio's Halo pedigree, "gunplay" chops, and striking art direction are on full display in the latest videos.
]]>
+ https://www.space.com/entertainment/space-games/sci-fi-extraction-shooter-marathon-is-coming-march-5-with-new-trailer-showcasing-all-star-voice-cast-collectors-edition-and-more
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+ Wed, 21 Jan 2026 18:00:00 +0000Wed, 21 Jan 2026 13:45:01 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Save 33% and watch Disney+ for just £3.99 a month. Don't miss out, this offer ends in January! ]]>
+ The Mandalorian and Grogu, Maul – Shadow Lord, and VisionQuest are just a few of the huge Star Wars and Marvel shows and movies dropping throughout 2026. With all of them due to stream on Disney+, it's a great time to subscribe to the channel. To entice us even more, there's currently a money-saving subscription offer in play that runs until January 28.
We rank Disney Plus as our best streaming service for sci-fi fans, and as well as Marvel and Star Wars, the channel is also home to a feast of other top content. There's the intriguing Paradise (season two starts February 23), every Predator release (Badlands is due to stream in March), the Avatar movie series (Fire and Ash will stream later this year), the fantastic Alien: Earth series, plus all the Alien movies, and a whole lot more.
Get three months' worth of Disney+ for just £3.99 a month on this UK-only streaming deal.You'll get access to brand new Marvel and Star Wars shows and movies, plus a vast back catalogue that's guaranteed to keep you entertained. You can cancel your subscription at any time. Offer ends January 28.View Deal
Standard runs at a 1080 resolution with up to two streams running simultaneously, while the Premium option lets you watch in 4K and HDR, with up to four streams.
The first new Marvel show to drop on Disney+ this year is Wonder Man on January 27. Next up is season two of the excellent Daredevil: Born Again on March 4. Following later in the year (air dates TBC) will be VisionQuest and season two of the animated series X-Men '97.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day will be released in cinemas on July 31, which will stream on Disney+ a few months later. Following that comes Avengers: Doomsday, landing on the big screen on December 18. Expect to see it streaming in early 2027.
While there's a hell of a lot happening in the Star Wars universe this year, only The Mandalorian and Grogu movie (May 22) currently has a release date as yet.
On the small screen, Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord, Ashoka season two, Star Wars: Visions Presents – The Ninth Jedi (and potentially a couple of other releases) are all scheduled to stream on Disney+ in 2026.
Key features: A vast library of Star Wars content, the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, complete Alien, Predator and Avatar franchises, Transformers movies, The Walking Dead, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Futurama, The Strain, and much more. You can cancel your monthly subscription at any time.
Price history: Offers come up occasionally for Disney Plus in the UK, the current 33% deal is the best one we've seen since this time last year.
✅ Buy it if: You want to be amongst the first to watch every new Star Wars and Marvel release and get access to what we regard as the best streaming package for sci-fi fans at a bargain price for three months.
❌ Don't buy it if: You're a current subscriber to Disney Plus or live outside of the UK.
]]>
+ https://www.space.com/entertainment/space-movies-shows/save-33-percent-and-watch-disney-for-just-gbp3-99-a-month-dont-miss-out-this-offer-ends-in-january
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+ Wed, 21 Jan 2026 17:19:00 +0000Thu, 22 Jan 2026 11:49:30 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ 'The most incredible display of aurora I've ever seen in my 20 years of flying'. Pilot captures historic northern lights show from 37,000 feet (photos) ]]>
+
An incredible northern lights display captured on the night of Jan. 18-19 from 37,000 feet. Click the arrows in the bottom right corner to enlarge. (Image credit: Matt Melnyk)
I've been fortunate enough to witness some incredible aurora displays over the years — and to receive stunning photos from readers and photographers — but this latest series of images from airline pilot Matt Melnyk may be the best I've ever seen.
During the recent geomagnetic storms that rattled Earth's magnetic field on the night of Jan. 18–19, auroras were spotted far beyond their usual polar limits, with skywatchers around the world sharing vivid images of green, red and deep magenta scenes in the sky. But Melnyk arguably had the best seat in the world — the cockpit of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
"The show started as soon as we climbed above the clouds and continued on and off during the flight from Calgary to London, U.K.," Melnyk told Space.com. "It was a historical night that's for sure!"
The breathtaking photographs were captured from 37,000 feet (11 kilometers) over northern Manitoba, Hudson Bay and Baffin Island in Canada.
From the cruising altitude of aircraft like Melnyk's, high above the clouds and far from city light pollution, auroras can appear brighter, sharper and more expansive than from the ground, with clouds and city lights far below. The northern lights appeared to fill the entire sky, saturating the scene with vivid curtains of color dancing to the whims of Earth's magnetic field.
Image 1 of 2
An incredible northern lights display captured on the night of Jan. 18-19 from 37,000 feet. (Click the arrow in the lower right corner to enlarge.) (Image credit: Matt Melnyk)
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An incredible northern lights display captured on the night of Jan. 18-19 from 37,000 feet. Click the arrow in the lower right corner to enlarge. (Image credit: Matt Melnyk)
"This was the most incredible display of aurora I've ever seen in my 20 years of flying!" Melnyk added. "This flight I will remember for days to come."
Melnyk captured the stunning photographs with a Canon R6 ii and Sigma 14mm F1.8 lens. "I normally shoot with a 20mm F1.4 lens out of the airplane at night, but I decided to go extra wide for this flight as I knew I would probably need something wider to get the big auroras!" Melnyk added.
Image 1 of 3
An incredible northern lights display captured on the night of Jan. 18-19 from 37,000 feet. (Click the arrow in the lower right corner to enlarge.) (Image credit: Matt Melnyk)
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An incredible northern lights display captured on the night of Jan. 18-19 from 37,000 feet. (Click the arrow in the lower right corner to enlarge.) (Image credit: Matt Melnyk)
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An incredible northern lights display captured on the night of Jan. 18-19 from 37,000 feet. (Click the arrow in the lower right corner to enlarge.) (Image credit: Matt Melnyk)
Melnyk is no stranger to being accompanied by the northern lights during flights across Europe, and we recently featured another set of his images captured during a severe G4 geomagnetic storm in Nov. 2025. While those photos were stunning, this latest collection truly surpasses them.
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The view from the cockpit. (Click the arrow in the lower right corner to enlarge.) (Image credit: Matt Melnyk)
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An incredible northern lights display captured on the night of Jan. 18-19 from 37,000 feet. (Click the arrow in the lower right corner to enlarge.) (Image credit: Matt Melnyk)
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Melnyk has the best seat in the house. (Click the arrow in the lower right corner to enlarge.) (Image credit: Matt Melnyk)
]]>
+ https://www.space.com/stargazing/auroras/the-most-incredible-display-of-aurora-ive-ever-seen-in-my-20-years-of-flying-pilot-captures-historic-northern-lights-show-from-37-000-feet-photos
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+ bjYh5wLpXoY9aLjMD99bzH
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+ Wed, 21 Jan 2026 17:00:00 +0000Wed, 21 Jan 2026 14:57:31 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Chinese capsule damaged by space-junk strike returns to Earth (video) ]]>
+
The first emergency operation in the history of China's human spaceflight program came to an end on Monday (Jan. 19) when an uncrewed Shenzhou 20 capsule parachuted into the Dongfeng landing site in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
The spacecraft had spent 270 days in orbit, docked for nine months to the country's Tiangong space station.
And that wasn't the plan.
Landing site team members inspect the empty Shenzhou 20 capsule on Jan. 19, 2026. (Image credit: CCTV)
Delayed due to damage from a space-junk strike
Shenzhou 20's original return date had been delayed due to concerns over tiny cracks found in the craft's viewport window. That damage was thought to be caused by a strike by space debris.
On-site inspection of the returned capsule on Monday found that its exterior was "generally normal" and the items secured inside the vessel were in good condition, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) said.
The recovery crew quickly took steps to protect the damaged porthole on the return capsule upon its touchdown on terra firma. That action was driven by the need for post-landing assessment work about the damage the Shenzhou 20 capsule suffered in space.
The Shenzhou 20 capsule was recovered on Jan. 19, 2026. It spent 270 days in orbit, longer than planned, due to a cracked window. (Image credit: CCTV)
Emergency mission
The Shenzhou 20 incident sparked an emergency mission to launch the uncrewed Shenzhou 22 spacecraft to Tiangong on Nov. 24. Now docked to the orbiting facility, that vehicle will serve the currently orbiting Shenzhou 21 crew on their expected return at the conclusion of their six-month mission later this year.
The Shenzhou 20 crew returned to Earth on Nov. 14 aboard the Shenzhou 21 capsule, after Chinese space officials deemed it too risky to fly them down on the damaged Shenzhou 20 spacecraft.
"Furthermore, in conjunction with the emergency launch of the Shenzhou 22 spacecraft, a porthole crack repair device was expedited and sent to the launch site," CNSA officials said. "Astronauts installed it inside the Shenzhou 20 capsule, effectively improving the spacecraft's heat protection and sealing capabilities during reentry."
Unique factors
The state-run China Central Television (CCTV) reported that Xu Peng, the on-site commander at the Shenzhou 20 capsule touchdown site, said that this return to Earth was unique in a number of ways.
"This marks the first time the Dongfeng Landing Site has carried out a spaceship recovery mission during the coldest season of the year, with cold weather posing a test for both our search and rescue teams and equipment," Xu said. "We made special cold-protection preparations in advance to ensure that both personnel and the equipment remained in good condition throughout the mission."
Xu also noted another unique factor of this uncrewed return recovery operation: Ground recovery teams made use of new capsule recovery methods, such as drones and other high-tech equipment.
"Adjustments were made to our recovery forces," Xu said. "The helicopter unit did not participate in this mission, and the drone and unmanned ground vehicle units made their debut. This new model, combining unmanned search equipment with ground personnel, was applied in the recovery of the uncrewed capsule."
Xu Peng, the on-site commander at the Shenzhou 20 capsule touchdown site, reports on frigid landing conditions and new spacecraft recovery techniques. (Image credit: CCTV)
Landing parachute
Furthermore, Xu added that, as the Shenzhou 20 return capsule came down without astronauts, there was no onboard crew member to manually separate the landing parachute.
"As a result, the main parachute did not automatically detach upon landing, and in strong winds, it could have dragged the return capsule along the ground. This requires our ground personnel to reach the landing point and cut the parachute as quickly as possible," Xu said.
One of the items carried in the uncrewed Shenzhou 20 capsule was a retired spacewalking spacesuit. That spacesuit was used for more than four years in orbit, far exceeding its original design life, reported CCTV. Over that time, the suit had supported 11 Chinese astronauts across eight crewed missions, enabling 20 successful spacewalks to be conducted.
Heated discussions
The Shenzhou 20 crew inspected their vehicle after it sustained damage in orbit. They observed that the porthole had an unexpected mark on the edge of the outermost glass — a triangular shape, about two centimeters long, according to a report by the state-run Xinhua news agency.
The Shenzhou capsule porthole consists of three layers of glass. "The outermost layer is a heat-resistant window, which can withstand the high-temperature ablation caused by the spacecraft's high-speed motion and intense friction with the air during its reentry into the atmosphere," the Xinhua report stated.
"The middle layer is a pressure-bearing window, and the inner layer is a protective window, which can ensure the airtightness of the cabin and the stability of the spacecraft's structure, but their heat resistance is less than half that of the heat-resistant window," reported Xinhua.
A Shenzhou 20 "Problem Analysis and Safety Assessment Report" was written based on laboratory tests that addressed a key question: Can a cracked heat shield withstand the extreme environment of atmospheric reentry? The consensus? "Life comes first, and safety comes first."
Rolling backup mode
Since the Shenzhou 12 mission, China's human spaceflight program has adopted a "rolling backup mode" of "one launch, one backup."
But, as noted in the Xinhua report, that "standby" spacecraft mode has never actually been needed. "This time, the standby status unexpectedly turned into emergency combat, and the tests followed one after another," Xinhua reported.
Actions taken — from the crew report, followed by ground worry and appraisal, to launch of the uncrewed Shenzhou 22 — was completed in 16 days.
Meanwhile, a Shenzhou 23 spacecraft has arrived at China's Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, and its Long March 2F Y23 booster is about to be shipped, the CNSA pointed out.
"With the return of the Shenzhou 20 spacecraft, the main tasks of this emergency space operation for the Chinese space station have been successfully completed," CNSA officials stated.
]]>
+ https://www.space.com/space-exploration/human-spaceflight/chinese-capsule-damaged-by-space-junk-strike-returns-to-earth-video
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+ UnZk8Qk9HV4bvVoHczjQJQ
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+ Wed, 21 Jan 2026 16:00:00 +0000Tue, 20 Jan 2026 23:25:01 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Hubble sees baby stars in Large Magellanic Cloud | Space photo of the day for Jan. 21, 2026 ]]>
+ Star formation can feel like a distant, abstract concept, until you see it mapped across a landscape of gas and dust. A recent image from the Hubble Space Telescope looks at the the N159 star-forming complex within the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the Milky Way's closest companions. That proximity makes it a prime place to watch how stars form in environments that aren't exactly like our own.
What is it?
The image was captured in a parallel field to a recently released Hubble view, showing a neighboring region of the same sprawling complex. Together, images like these help astronomers build a broader picture of what's happening across a giant star factory rather than focusing on only one bright hotspot.
Within the image, thick clouds of cold hydrogen gas arrange themselves into ridges and wispy filaments. The deep red tones come from hydrogen gas that has been energized by the harsh radiation of newly formed stars. Where the glow is brightest, it's a sign that hot, massive young stars have recently become more active.
Where is it?
The N159 star-forming complex lies in in the Large Magellanic Cloud, which is roughly 150 light-years across and lies about 160,000 light-years from Earth.
A parallel image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the rich dynamics of star formation happening within the Large Magellanic Cloud. (Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Indebetouw)
Why is it amazing?
This recent image captures the rich dynamics of star formation. Massive young stars don't quietly settle in; their intense radiation and powerful stellar winds push outward, hollowing out the surrounding gas. The bubble-like structures and carved cavities in the glowing hydrogen are classic signatures of stellar feedback, the process by which newborn stars reshape the cloud that made them. That feedback can be both destructive and creative. It can blow material away and shut down star formation in one spot, while compressing gas elsewhere and helping new stars ignite.
Images like this one help astronomers better understand the nitty-gritty details of star formation, giving us more clues about the early universe and its first stars.
]]>
+ https://www.space.com/astronomy/hubble-space-telescope/hubble-sees-baby-stars-in-large-magellanic-cloud-space-photo-of-the-day-for-jan-21-2026
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+ Wed, 21 Jan 2026 15:00:00 +0000Wed, 21 Jan 2026 15:28:21 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ US Space Force awards 1st-of-its-kind $52 million contract to deorbit its satellites ]]>
+ Starfish Space will make history next year, if all goes according to plan.
The Washington-based company just scored a $52.5 million contract to deorbit satellites for the U.S. Space Force, the first deal ever signed for such end-of-life disposal services for a constellation in low Earth orbit (LEO).
The agreement calls for Starfish Space to use one of its Otter spacecraft to haul down at least one satellite, and possibly more, from the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) network. The company is currently targeting 2027 for launch of the Otter, which is designed to capture and service satellites, even those not modified to enable such off-Earth linkups.
"This contract and mission are proof that end-of-life satellite disposal provided by Otter can provide real value to LEO constellation operators," Austin Link, co-founder of Starfish Space, said in a statement today.
"With Otter, we've dramatically reduced the cost and complexity of satellite servicing across orbits," Link added. "This contract reflects both the value of affordable servicing missions and the technical readiness of the Otter."
The Space Force is currently building out the PWSA constellation, which will eventually consist of hundreds of satellites that conduct reconnaissance, navigation and communications work for the U.S. military.
This architecture reflects a philosophical shift for the military, which has traditionally relied on a small number of highly capable but expensive spacecraft that take a long time to develop and deploy. Having a large number of satellites is also better for resilience, military officials say, as it means a potential adversary has many more spacecraft to attempt to disable in order to degrade the constellation's capabilities.
Having so many satellites aloft presents issues, however. For example, should managers of large constellations bring their satellites down relatively early, to ensure that they don't add to the space debris problem? Or should they try to squeeze as much life as possible out of each spacecraft, to maximize return on investment and the achievement of mission goals?
Imagery from the Starfish Space/Impulse Space Remora mission, during which one Mira spacecraft approached within a mere 4,100 feet (1,250 meters) of another. (Image credit: Starfish Space/Impulse Space)
Starfish Space thinks Otter can help bridge the gap between those two options. "With Deorbit-as-a-Service provided by Otter, Starfish gives constellation operators a better alternative: maximize the operational life and value of their constellations and rely on Otters to dispose of any satellites which cannot dispose of themselves at end of life," the company wrote in the same statement.
Though Otter has yet to fly, Starfish Space has successfully demonstrated some of the technology the satellite will use in orbit. For example, the company's Otter Pup 1 trailblazer launched in June 2023 and maneuvered to within 0.6 miles (1 kilometers) of a target space tug 10 months later.
This past October, one of Impulse Space's Mira orbital transfer vehicles used Starfish software to get within 4,100 feet (1,250 meters) of another Mira. And we're waiting to hear about the milestones notched by Otter Pup 2, which launched in June 2025 to conduct the first-ever commercial satellite docking in LEO.
The first Otter missions are scheduled to launch this year, giving the company operational experience with the vehicle before it embarks on its debut disposal mission for the Space Force.
]]>
+ https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/us-space-force-awards-1st-of-its-kind-usd52-million-contract-to-deorbit-its-satellites
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+ U78o5Rmx6ReuF47Xn7aCqn
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+ Wed, 21 Jan 2026 14:00:00 +0000Wed, 21 Jan 2026 12:40:50 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ NASA's Crew-11 astronauts to discuss medical evacuation from International Space Station today: Watch it live ]]>
+
Four astronauts will discuss their shorter-than-expected space mission during a press conference today (Jan. 21), and you can watch the event live.
Crew-11 consisted of NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, Kimiya Yui of Japan and cosmonaut Oleg Platonov. The quartet arrived at the ISS in early August for a planned 6.5-month stay, but they returned to Earth on Jan. 15 — about five weeks early — due to a "medical concern" experienced by one of them in orbit.
Their departure was the first medical evacuation in the history of the ISS, which has been continuously occupied by rotating astronaut crews since November 2000.
NASA has not revealed which astronaut was affected or given us many details about the health issue, citing privacy concerns. The agency has said, however, that the crewmembers are all stable and doing fine.
According to a NASA update, all four are undergoing "standard postflight reconditioning and evaluations" in Houston, where they've been since Friday (Jan. 16), (Their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, named Endeavour, splashed down off the coast of San Diego.)
Crew-11's departure leaves the ISS staffed by just three astronauts — NASA's Chris Williams and cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikayev.
The trio will have the orbiting lab to themselves until SpaceX's four-person Crew-12 mission arrives. Crew-12 is currently scheduled to launch on Feb. 15, but NASA and SpaceX are investigating the possibility of moving that up a few days.
Three was the nominal crew size on the ISS until 2009, when it doubled to six. The baseline number then increased again in 2020, to its current seven.
]]>
+ https://www.space.com/space-exploration/human-spaceflight/medically-evacuated-crew-11-astronauts-to-discuss-their-shortened-iss-mission-today-watch-it-live
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+ Wed, 21 Jan 2026 13:00:00 +0000Wed, 21 Jan 2026 15:30:41 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Watch private German rocket attempt history-making launch from Norway today ]]>
+ Update for 11 a.m. EST on Jan. 21: Isar Aerospace has canceled the planned Jan. 21 launch attempt of its Spectrum rocket due to an issue with a pressurization valve. A new target date has not yet been announced.
A German company will attempt to make spaceflight history today (Jan. 21), and you can watch the action live.
Isar Aerospace plans to launch its Spectrum rocket from Andøya Spaceport in northern Norway today, during a window that opens at 3 p.m. EST (2000 GMT; 9 p.m. local time in Norway). Success would be huge, and not just for Isar: To date, no rocket has ever reached orbit from European soil.
You can watch the attempt live here at Space.com, courtesy of Isar, or directly via the company. Coverage will begin at 2 p.m. EST (1900 GMT).
Today's flight will be the second ever for the two-stage, 95-foot-tall (28 meters) Spectrum. It launched for the first time on March 30 of last year, also from Andøya.
That test flight didn't last long: Spectrum suffered an anomaly less than a minute after liftoff and crashed into the ocean near the pad, generating a fireball that looked particularly dramatic and spectacular against the icy Arctic backdrop.
That outcome was far from surprising; orbital-class rockets rarely succeed on their debut flights. Isar is now ready to take the lessons learned from the first crack and apply them to attempt number two.
"This qualification flight is a deliberate step toward delivering sovereign access to space for Europe and allied nations. Just 10 months after proving that launch vehicles can be designed, built and launched from continental European soil, we're ready to fly again," Isar Aerospace CEO and Co‑founder Daniel Metzler said in a statement on Jan. 16.
"Europe's immediate need for space access is clear," he added. "Rapid iteration is essential to developing space capabilities precisely when they are required."
Though this second launch, which Isar calls "Onward and Upward," is a test flight, it will carry viable payloads (which Spectrum did not do on its debut). Five cubesats and one scientific experiment are going up on the rocket today.
"The insights we gain with this mission will strengthen Europe's space infrastructure, a capability essential for defense readiness and economic resilience," Alexandre Dalloneau, vice president of mission and launch operations at Isar Aerospace, said in the same statement.
Editor's note: The original headline of this story erroneously said that Andoya Spaceport is in Sweden (rather than Norway). It was corrected at 11 a.m. EST on Jan. 21.
]]>
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/isar-aerospace-second-orbital-launch-attempt-andoya-spaceport
wMzRH8TMtkLXmibBf4CbZh
- Wed, 21 Jan 2026 11:00:00 +0000Tue, 20 Jan 2026 20:34:01 +0000
+ Wed, 21 Jan 2026 11:00:00 +0000Wed, 21 Jan 2026 16:09:56 +0000
@@ -51,15 +600,15 @@
- <![CDATA[ Blue Origin launching 6 people to suborbital space on Jan. 22 ]]>
- Six space tourists will launch to the final frontier on Thursday (Jan. 22), and you can watch the action live.
Blue Origin is scheduled to launch its NS-38 suborbital mission from West Texas on Thursday, during a window that opens at 9:30 a.m. EST (1430 GMT; 8:30 a.m. local Texas time).
You can watch it live via Blue Origin. Space.com will carry the feed as well if, as expected, the company makes it available.
As its name suggests, NS-38 will be the 38th flight of New Shepard, Blue Origin's reusable rocket-capsule combo. Sixteen of the vehicle's 37 missions to date have carried people; the others have been uncrewed research flights.
New Shepard flights last 10 to 12 minutes from liftoff to the capsule's parachute-aided touchdown. During this time, passengers get to experience a brief period of weightlessness and see Earth against the blackness of space.
Blue Origin has not revealed how much it charges for a seat aboard New Shepard. Virgin Galactic, the company's chief competitor in the suborbital space tourism industry, has done so; Virgin Galactic tickets are $600,000 apiece.
The passengers for Blue Origin's NS-38 suborbital mission. (Image credit: Blue Origin)
The six people going up on NS-38 are entrepreneur and pilot Tim Drexler; retired obstetrician/gynecologist Linda Edwards; real estate developer and investor Alain Fernandez; entrepreneur and technologist Alberto Gutiérrez; retired U.S. Air Force Col. Jim Hendren, who founded the company Hendren Plastics Inc.; and Laura Stiles, Blue Origin’s director of New Shepard launch operations. You can read more about them all via Blue Origin.
Stiles is a late addition to the manifest. Blue Origin just announced her inclusion today (Jan. 20), explaining that she's replacing a passenger who can no longer fly on Thursday due to illness (but will get to participate in a future mission).
The person who dropped out is presumably Andrew Yaffe, a veteran of the recycling industry who was identified as an NS-38 crewmember in Blue Origin's first update about the mission.
]]>
+ <![CDATA[ Watch Blue Origin launch 6 people to suborbital space today ]]>
+
Six space tourists will launch to the final frontier on Thursday (Jan. 22), and you can watch the action live.
Blue Origin is scheduled to launch its NS-38 suborbital mission from West Texas on Thursday, during a window that opens at 11:00 a.m. EST (1600 GMT; 10:00 a.m. local Texas time).
You can watch it live here at Space.com courtesy of Blue origin, or directly via the company. Coverage will start 30 minutes before launch.
As its name suggests, NS-38 will be the 38th flight of New Shepard, Blue Origin's reusable rocket-capsule combo. Sixteen of the vehicle's 37 missions to date have carried people; the others have been uncrewed research flights.
New Shepard flights last 10 to 12 minutes from liftoff to the capsule's parachute-aided touchdown. During this time, passengers get to experience a brief period of weightlessness and see Earth against the blackness of space.
Blue Origin has not revealed how much it charges for a seat aboard New Shepard. Virgin Galactic, the company's chief competitor in the suborbital space tourism industry, has done so; Virgin Galactic tickets are $600,000 apiece.
The passengers for Blue Origin's NS-38 suborbital mission. (Image credit: Blue Origin)
The six people going up on NS-38 are entrepreneur and pilot Tim Drexler; retired obstetrician/gynecologist Linda Edwards; real estate developer and investor Alain Fernandez; entrepreneur and technologist Alberto Gutiérrez; retired U.S. Air Force Col. Jim Hendren, who founded the company Hendren Plastics Inc.; and Laura Stiles, Blue Origin’s director of New Shepard launch operations. You can read more about them all via Blue Origin.
Stiles is a late addition to the manifest. Blue Origin just announced her inclusion today (Jan. 20), explaining that she's replacing a passenger who can no longer fly on Thursday due to illness (but will get to participate in a future mission).
The person who dropped out is presumably Andrew Yaffe, a veteran of the recycling industry who was identified as an NS-38 crewmember in Blue Origin's first update about the mission.
Editor's note: This story was updated at 3:45 p.m. ET on Jan. 21 with the new launch target time of 11:00 a.m. ET on Jan. 22.
]]>
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/private-spaceflight/blue-origin-ns-38-suborbital-space-tourism-mission
FZM3tAJryDZsiQjUoT9viN
- Tue, 20 Jan 2026 20:00:00 +0000Tue, 20 Jan 2026 19:06:43 +0000
+ Tue, 20 Jan 2026 20:00:00 +0000Thu, 22 Jan 2026 15:02:25 +0000
@@ -167,7 +716,7 @@
<![CDATA[ Mars orbiter sees odd etchings in the sand | Space photo of the day for Jan. 20, 2025 ]]>
- Mars is famous for its volcanoes, canyons and ancient river valleys, but some of its most active geology happens in slow motion, powered by air. Over time, strong gusts can loft sand grains that ping and scrape at exposed surfaces, gradually carving landscapes the way a sandblaster etches metal.
Recently, the European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express orbiter captured this image of a series of yardangs near the Eumenides Dorsum mountain. The ridges all lean the same way, slanting and curving in from the lower left of the frame, which ESA noted reflects the direction of the prevailing wind in this region.
What is it?
The main view from the Mars Express orbiter spans an area nearly the size of Belgium, turning what might sound like "wind ripples" into something far more dramatic: an organized, tens-of-miles-long pattern of erosion that's been working the same material over and over again.
ESA added that the yardangs likely formed more recently — even on top of this lava-raft terrain — which hints at a long, layered history where volcanic resurfacing came first, and wind erosion arrived later to rework the landscape.
This view was captured by the orbiter's High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC), which has been mapping Mars in color and 3D for decades, helping scientists trace processes that shape the planet from the top down.
Where is it?
The image was captured near the northern end of the Eumenides Dorsum mountains, part of the huge, dusty Medusae Fossae Formation, and not far (in planetary terms) from the towering volcanic province of Tharsis.
The grooves, or yardangs, seen along the surface of Mars show which way the wind has been blowing. (Image credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin)
Why is it amazing?
Mars can look "frozen in time" at first glance, but images like this are a reminder that the planet is still actively changing, just not always through earthquakes and eruptions. Yardangs are evidence of sustained, directional winds strong enough (and consistent enough) to sandblast soft rock over large distances, and that makes them valuable for understanding modern Martian climate and near-surface conditions.
When you can read wind direction straight out of the terrain, you get a real-world check on atmospheric models and a clearer picture of how dust and sand are transported across the planet today.
]]>
+ Mars is famous for its volcanoes, canyons and ancient river valleys, but some of its most active geology happens in slow motion, powered by air. Over time, strong gusts can loft sand grains that ping and scrape at exposed surfaces, gradually carving landscapes the way a sandblaster etches metal.
Recently, the European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express orbiter captured this image of a series of yardangs near the Eumenides Dorsum mountain. The ridges all lean the same way, slanting and curving in from the lower left of the frame, which ESA noted reflects the direction of the prevailing wind in this region.
What is it?
The main view from the Mars Express orbiter spans an area nearly the size of Belgium, turning what might sound like "wind ripples" into something far more dramatic: an organized, tens-of-miles-long pattern of erosion that's been working the same material over and over again.
ESA added that the yardangs likely formed more recently — even on top of this lava-raft terrain — which hints at a long, layered history where volcanic resurfacing came first, and wind erosion arrived later to rework the landscape.
This view was captured by the orbiter's High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC), which has been mapping Mars in color and 3D for decades, helping scientists trace processes that shape the planet from the top down.
Where is it?
The image was captured near the northern end of the Eumenides Dorsum mountains, part of the huge, dusty Medusae Fossae Formation, and not far (in planetary terms) from the towering volcanic province of Tharsis.
The grooves, or yardangs, seen along the surface of Mars show which way the wind has been blowing. (Image credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin)
Why is it amazing?
Mars can look "frozen in time" at first glance, but images like this are a reminder that the planet is still actively changing, just not always through earthquakes and eruptions. Yardangs are evidence of sustained, directional winds strong enough (and consistent enough) to sandblast soft rock over large distances, and that makes them valuable for understanding modern Martian climate and near-surface conditions.
When you can read wind direction straight out of the terrain, you get a real-world check on atmospheric models and a clearer picture of how dust and sand are transported across the planet today.
]]>
https://www.space.com/astronomy/mars/mars-orbiter-sees-odd-etchings-in-the-sand-space-photo-of-the-day-for-jan-20-2025
@@ -226,33 +775,33 @@
<![CDATA[ Severe G4 geomagnetic storm sparks jaw-dropping northern lights worldwide (photos) ]]>
- We were expecting a show and boy did it deliver.
Skywatchers around the world were treated to stunning auroras that surged far beyond their usual polar limits, lighting up mid-latitude skies during a severe G4 geomagnetic storm.
Northern lights were reported across mid-latitudes, with sightings stretching from Germany to the southwestern United States, including New Mexico, during a night of rapidly fluctuating geomagnetic conditions that fluctuated between G1, G2, G3 and G4 storm levels.
The display was triggered by the arrival of an exceptionally fast coronal mass ejection (CME) that struck Earth's magnetic field at around 2:38 p.m. EST (1938 GMT) on Jan. 19, when geomagnetic conditions first escalated to G4 (severe) storm levels, according to NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center. The CME had blasted away from the sun just a day earlier, on Jan. 18, during a powerful X1.9 solar flare — giving it remarkably little time to cross the roughly 91 million miles (147 million kilometers) between the sun and Earth.
After the initial shock arrival, the passage of the CME itself kept Earth's magnetic field in a highly disturbed state for hours, producing repeated surges of auroral activity as storm levels rose and fell through the night, according to the U.K. Met Office.
We've gathered up some of the best photos from last night's aurora activity captured by skywatchers around the world.
Photographer Greg Gage sent us these stunning views of the northern lights captured from Deming, New Mexico, at 32° latitude!
Image 1 of 2
Northern lights captured from Deming, New Mexico, on Jan. 19. (Image credit: Greg Gage)
Image 2 of 2
Northern lights captured from Deming, New Mexico, on Jan. 19. (Image credit: Greg Gage)
"I live in Sistersville, WV and that is usually where I catch aurora. However, I'm on a 2-week 'snowbird' getaway to Deming, NM," Gage told Space.com in an email.
"In WV I am at latitude 40°. The last thing I expected was to catch auroras this far south. But a G4 CME was able to make it this far south. Wow!!"
Northern lights captured from Deming, New Mexico, on Jan. 19. (Image credit: Greg Gage)
Meanwhile, in Germany, the northern lights danced above the river Müggelspree. This stunning photo was captured by photographer Florian Gaertner.
Northern lights from Berlin, Germany. (Image credit: Florian Gaertner/Photothek via Getty Images)
Auroras flooded the skies above the village of Abaujvar, Hungary, with vivid hues of red and green. The beautiful photograph was captured by photographer Robert Nemeti.
Aurora show from Hungary. (Image credit: Robert Nemeti/Anadolu via Getty Images)
In France, photographer Jerome Gilles captured this eerie scene as rich magenta auroras filled the sky above Morbihan, Brittany.
Northern lights above Brittany, France. (Image credit: Jerome Gilles/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Photographer Chi Shiyong had front row seats to an incredibly colorful display above Beiji Village, Mohe City, Heilongjiang Province, China.
Northern lights above Beiji Village, Mohe City, Heilongjiang Province of China. (Image credit: Chi Shiyong/VCG via Getty Images)
Rich magenta hues fill the sky as distinct pillars also start to take form.
Northern lights above Beiji Village, Mohe City, Heilongjiang Province of China. (Image credit: Chi Shiyong/VCG via Getty Images)
In Germany, photographer Sascha Schuermann captured a dramatic scene unfolding in the skies above North Rhine-Westphalia, western Germany.
The northern lights fill the sky above North Rhine-Westphalia, western Germany. (Image credit: SASCHA SCHUERMANN / AFP via Getty Images)
Many skywatchers took to X to share their impressive shots of the aurora show.
Photographer Mathieu Rivrin captured a stunning timelapse of the northern lights dancing above the Côte de Granit Rose (the Pink Granite Coast), Brittany, France.
Aurores boréales sur la côte de granit rose - 20 janvier 2026#auroresboreales #bretagne pic.twitter.com/xeOsws6MmFJanuary 20, 2026
Aurora chaser Alex Masse captured a stunning view of tall aurora pillars from Kerwood, Ontario, Canada, at 10:55 p.m. local time.
As good as it got.1055pmKerwood, ON 42.89N#aurora pic.twitter.com/eZZl883GT0January 20, 2026
Amateur astrophotographer Damian shared some remarkable photos captured from Munich, south Germany!
"It was absolutely amazing, really unbelievable and unforgettable," Damian wrote in a post on X.
A little best of todays stunning aurora-show over Munich, South Germany! 😍🤩It was absolutely amazing, really unbelievable and unforgettable.#aurora #Polarlichter #München pic.twitter.com/g2xYDaN4s4January 20, 2026
Storm chaser Wouter van Bernebeek shared a beautiful photo of the northern lights dancing above Nijmegen, Netherlands, at around 10:20 p.m. local time.
Genieten van een intense noorderlichtshow! De kleuren waren opvallend fel: een 'dansende' groene band hing zelfs helemaal richting het zuiden. Ook tof om te zien dat zoveel mensen het #noorderlicht nu een keer zelf konden spotten 🌌Mijn eerste foto rond 22.20u vlakbij Nijmegen: pic.twitter.com/wIU1JpkuzPJanuary 20, 2026
While geomagnetic activity is expected to gradually ease, space weather forecasters say conditions remain unsettled — meaning there's still a chance the northern lights could make another appearance tonight if solar wind conditions cooperate.
So keep those camera batteries charged and aurora alerts switched on, we may not be done just yet.
]]>
+ We were expecting a show and boy did it deliver.
Skywatchers around the world were treated to stunning auroras that surged far beyond their usual polar limits, lighting up mid-latitude skies during a severe G4 geomagnetic storm.
Northern lights were reported across mid-latitudes, with sightings stretching from Germany to the southwestern United States, including New Mexico, during a night of rapidly fluctuating geomagnetic conditions that fluctuated between G1, G2, G3 and G4 storm levels.
The display was triggered by the arrival of an exceptionally fast coronal mass ejection (CME) that struck Earth's magnetic field at around 2:38 p.m. EST (1938 GMT) on Jan. 19, when geomagnetic conditions first escalated to G4 (severe) storm levels, according to NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center. The CME had blasted away from the sun just a day earlier, on Jan. 18, during a powerful X1.9 solar flare — giving it remarkably little time to cross the roughly 91 million miles (147 million kilometers) between the sun and Earth.
After the initial shock arrival, the passage of the CME itself kept Earth's magnetic field in a highly disturbed state for hours, producing repeated surges of auroral activity as storm levels rose and fell through the night, according to the U.K. Met Office.
We've gathered up some of the best photos from last night's aurora activity captured by skywatchers around the world.
Scott Mellis captured this beautiful image of the northern lights dancing over Covesea Lighthouse, Lossiemouth, Scotland, on Jan. 19.
"Wow, what a night it was last night with the sky erupting in colour," Mellis told Space.com in an email.
Auroras over Covesea Lighthouse, Scotland. (Image credit: Scott Mellis)
Photographer Greg Gage sent us these stunning views of the northern lights captured from Deming, New Mexico, at 32° latitude!
Image 1 of 2
Northern lights captured from Deming, New Mexico, on Jan. 19. (Image credit: Greg Gage)
Image 2 of 2
Northern lights captured from Deming, New Mexico, on Jan. 19. (Image credit: Greg Gage)
"I live in Sistersville, WV and that is usually where I catch aurora. However, I'm on a 2-week 'snowbird' getaway to Deming, NM," Gage told Space.com in an email.
"In WV I am at latitude 40°. The last thing I expected was to catch auroras this far south. But a G4 CME was able to make it this far south. Wow!!"
Northern lights captured from Deming, New Mexico, on Jan. 19. (Image credit: Greg Gage)
Photographer Miguel Marques (Marques Astronomy) captured this remarkable scene from Portugal at 40ºN on Jan. 19 around 10:30 p.m. local time.
The red aurora was visible to the naked eye, according to Marques.
Image 1 of 2
Vibrant red auroras captured in Portugal. (Image credit: Miquel Marques (Marques Photography) )
Image 2 of 2
Vibrant red auroras captured in Portugal. (Image credit: Miquel Marques (Marques Photography) )
Meanwhile, in Germany, the northern lights danced above the river Müggelspree. This stunning photo was captured by photographer Florian Gaertner.
Northern lights from Berlin, Germany. (Image credit: Florian Gaertner/Photothek via Getty Images)
In Romania, Sanda Buciuta braved the chilly temperatures to capture this delightful display on Jan. 19.
"For Romania, it is a rather rare phenomenon, especially the explosion of colors, red, green, including a tinge of purple," Buciuta told Space.com in an email.
"I was excited to observe this phenomenon. It was -9 degrees [Celsius] outside, quite cold, but it was well worth it," Buciuta added.
Auroras captured from Romania. (Image credit: Sanda Buciuta)
Auroras flooded the skies above the village of Abaujvar, Hungary, with vivid hues of red and green. The beautiful photograph was captured by photographer Robert Nemeti.
Aurora show from Hungary. (Image credit: Robert Nemeti/Anadolu via Getty Images)
In France, photographer Jerome Gilles captured this eerie scene as rich magenta auroras filled the sky above Morbihan, Brittany.
Northern lights above Brittany, France. (Image credit: Jerome Gilles/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Photographer Chi Shiyong had front row seats to an incredibly colorful display above Beiji Village, Mohe City, Heilongjiang Province, China.
Northern lights above Beiji Village, Mohe City, Heilongjiang Province of China. (Image credit: Chi Shiyong/VCG via Getty Images)
Rich magenta hues fill the sky as distinct pillars also start to take form.
Image 1 of 2
Northern lights above Beiji Village, Mohe City, Heilongjiang Province of China. (Image credit: Chi Shiyong/VCG via Getty Images)
Image 2 of 2
Northern lights above Beiji Village, Mohe City, Heilongjiang Province of China. (Image credit: Chi Shiyong/VCG via Getty Images)
Adri van den Berg snapped this beautiful northern lights show on Jan. 19 from Rouveen, Overijssel, in the Netherlands.
The northern lights captured from the Netherlands. (Image credit: Adri van den Berg)
Cloudy skies didn't stop photographer Lou Benoist from capturing this stunning image of the northern lights peaking through a gap in the clouds over the stunning cliffs of Etretat, France.
Auroras captured from Etretat, France. (Image credit: LOU BENOIST / AFP via Getty Images)
Meanwhile, in western France, photographer Oscar Chuberre captured this stunning image of the northern lights over Portsall.
Northern lights above Portsall, France. (Image credit: Oscar Chuberre / AFP via Getty Images)
In Germany, photographer Sascha Schuermann captured a dramatic scene unfolding in the skies above North Rhine-Westphalia.
The northern lights fill the sky above North Rhine-Westphalia, western Germany. (Image credit: SASCHA SCHUERMANN / AFP via Getty Images)
Many skywatchers took to X to share their impressive shots of the aurora show.
Photographer Mathieu Rivrin captured a stunning timelapse of the northern lights dancing above the Côte de Granit Rose (the Pink Granite Coast), Brittany, France.
Aurores boréales sur la côte de granit rose - 20 janvier 2026#auroresboreales #bretagne pic.twitter.com/xeOsws6MmFJanuary 20, 2026
Aurora chaser Alex Masse captured a stunning view of tall aurora pillars from Kerwood, Ontario, Canada, at 10:55 p.m. local time.
As good as it got.1055pmKerwood, ON 42.89N#aurora pic.twitter.com/eZZl883GT0January 20, 2026
Amateur astrophotographer Damian shared some remarkable photos captured from Munich, south Germany!
"It was absolutely amazing, really unbelievable and unforgettable," Damian wrote in a post on X.
A little best of todays stunning aurora-show over Munich, South Germany! 😍🤩It was absolutely amazing, really unbelievable and unforgettable.#aurora #Polarlichter #München pic.twitter.com/g2xYDaN4s4January 20, 2026
Storm chaser Wouter van Bernebeek shared a beautiful photo of the northern lights dancing above Nijmegen, Netherlands, at around 10:20 p.m. local time.
Genieten van een intense noorderlichtshow! De kleuren waren opvallend fel: een 'dansende' groene band hing zelfs helemaal richting het zuiden. Ook tof om te zien dat zoveel mensen het #noorderlicht nu een keer zelf konden spotten 🌌Mijn eerste foto rond 22.20u vlakbij Nijmegen: pic.twitter.com/wIU1JpkuzPJanuary 20, 2026
While geomagnetic activity is expected to gradually ease, space weather forecasters say conditions remain unsettled — meaning there's still a chance the northern lights could make another appearance tonight if solar wind conditions cooperate.
So keep those camera batteries charged and aurora alerts switched on, we may not be done just yet.
]]>
https://www.space.com/stargazing/auroras/severe-g4-geomagnetic-storm-sparks-jaw-dropping-northern-lights-worldwide-photos
vBK83Dn8yoFcNZQ26kQhmT
-
- Tue, 20 Jan 2026 10:33:21 +0000Tue, 20 Jan 2026 10:33:22 +0000
+
+ Tue, 20 Jan 2026 10:33:21 +0000Wed, 21 Jan 2026 15:23:44 +0000
-
-
-
-
+
+
+
+
-
+
- <![CDATA[ An armada of 6,500 Elite Dangerous players just embarked on a three-month expedition to explore the Milky Way, and there's still time to join them ]]>
- Humanity is still in the early stages of exploring the cosmos, with Artemis 2 preparing to take us back to the moon and then onwards to Mars. But if NASA's progress is a little pedestrian for you, then "Elite Dangerous" is the game for you.
"Elite Dangerous" is one of the best space exploration games out there, featuring a fully-realised — and intimidatingly large — Milky Way galaxy for players to explore. And that's exactly what they're doing, as over 6500 players have just embarked on Distant Worlds 3 — a community-led journey to the deepest reaches of the galaxy that will last for around 3 months.
The previous two Distant Worlds events set out in 2016 and 2019, respectively, with 1300 players joining the first expedition, and nearly 14,000 pilots signing up for the second voyage. It's not just a rat race to the center of the galaxy, though — the organizers put together special player-run events that include "geology projects, mining goals, mapping surveys, and a science project".
Reddit user TicklesYourElmo posted a video of their flotilla launching off on the expedition, and damn does it look cool to see all those ships jumping to FTL in unison.
I love seeing this kind of immersive, community-led stuff in massively-multiplayer games. Players embracing more than just the cool "oh look, I'm flying a spaceship" side of the game and focusing on the spirit of exploration and discovery that drives real space missions. At the end of Distant Worlds 2, they'd built a whole space station called Explorer's Anchorage at the galactic center, near Sagittarius A*, so I can't wait to see what these brave souls accomplish this time.
For the uninitiated, "Elite Dangerous" is a massive online space game set in a 1:1 scale replica of our galaxy, where players pilot spaceships to explore, trade, and battle it out amongst the stars. The game launched all the way back in 2014 and has evolved significantly since then, with major updates overhauling core systems, adding the ability to land on planets, and even triggering an alien invasion.
"We're very excited to see Commanders from around the world embarking on Distant Worlds 3. It's an enormous player-led activity, and celebrates the incredible community around Elite Dangerous who remain active and passionate about the series," Gauthier Verquerre, Executive Producer on Elite Dangerous, told Space.com in an email.
(Image credit: Frontier Developments)
"As a studio, it's always a very special moment seeing a Distant World expedition depart, as you get such a fantastic mix of newer players and seasoned explorers, and the support which they lend each other is wonderful to see."
The expedition has already set off, but you can probably still catch them if you're quick. Head over to the Distant Worlds 3 website and sign up now. Or if you'd rather stay planetside, check out the time we took a guided tour of the solar system in "Elite Dangerous".
]]>
+ <![CDATA[ An armada of 8,000+ Elite Dangerous players just embarked on a three-month expedition to explore the Milky Way, and there's still time to join them ]]>
+ Humanity is still in the early stages of exploring the cosmos, with Artemis 2 preparing to take us back to the moon and then onwards to Mars. But if NASA's progress is a little pedestrian for you, then "Elite Dangerous" is the game for you.
"Elite Dangerous" is one of the best space exploration games out there, featuring a fully-realised — and intimidatingly large — Milky Way galaxy for players to explore. And that's exactly what they're doing, as over 8000 players have just embarked on Distant Worlds 3 — a community-led journey to the deepest reaches of the galaxy that is expected to last for around 3 to 4 months.
The previous two Distant Worlds events set out in 2016 and 2019, respectively, with 1300 players joining the first expedition, and nearly 14,000 pilots signing up for the second voyage. It's not just a rat race to the center of the galaxy, though — the organizers put together special player-run events that include "geology projects, mining goals, mapping surveys, and a science project".
Reddit user TicklesYourElmo posted a video of their flotilla launching off on the expedition, and damn does it look cool to see all those ships jumping to FTL in unison.
I love seeing this kind of immersive, community-led stuff in massively-multiplayer games. Players embracing more than just the cool "oh look, I'm flying a spaceship" side of the game and focusing on the spirit of exploration and discovery that drives real space missions. At the end of Distant Worlds 2, they'd built a whole space station called Explorer's Anchorage at the galactic center, near Sagittarius A*, so I can't wait to see what these brave souls accomplish this time.
For the uninitiated, "Elite Dangerous" is a massive online space game set in a 1:1 scale replica of our galaxy, where players pilot spaceships to explore, trade, and battle it out amongst the stars. The game launched all the way back in 2014 and has evolved significantly since then, with major updates overhauling core systems, adding the ability to land on planets, and even triggering an alien invasion.
"We're very excited to see Commanders from around the world embarking on Distant Worlds 3. It's an enormous player-led activity, and celebrates the incredible community around Elite Dangerous who remain active and passionate about the series," Gauthier Verquerre, Executive Producer on Elite Dangerous, told Space.com in an email.
(Image credit: Frontier Developments)
"As a studio, it's always a very special moment seeing a Distant World expedition depart, as you get such a fantastic mix of newer players and seasoned explorers, and the support which they lend each other is wonderful to see."
The expedition has already set off, but you can probably still catch them if you're quick. Head over to the Distant Worlds 3 website and sign up now. Or if you'd rather stay planetside, check out the time we took a guided tour of the solar system in "Elite Dangerous".
]]>
https://www.space.com/entertainment/space-games/an-armada-of-6-500-elite-dangerous-players-just-embarked-on-a-three-month-expedition-to-explore-the-milky-way-and-theres-still-time-to-join-them
RpLgrVe5TRJEohMctWiUfE
- Mon, 19 Jan 2026 21:00:00 +0000Mon, 19 Jan 2026 13:04:47 +0000
+ Mon, 19 Jan 2026 21:00:00 +0000Wed, 21 Jan 2026 14:00:27 +0000
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<![CDATA[ NASA rolls Artemis 2 moon rocket to launch pad | Space photo of the day for Jan. 19, 2025 ]]>
- Since the end of the Apollo program in 1972, NASA has been looking for ways to return back to the moon. In 2022, the space agency launched the Artemis 1 moon mission, an uncrewed spacecraft that laid the foundations for the missions coming after it.
Now, three years later, Artemis 2 is slated for launch as the first crewed mission to return to our moon. But to get there, the rocket has to be moved from the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center to its designated launch pad.
What is it?
The four-person Artemis 2 crew will fly on the Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion spacecraft. Instead of landing, the team will head on a roughly 10-day trip that loops around the moon and returns to Earth, an intentionally conservative "test flight" designed to validate that Orion and its support systems can keep the astronauts safe and productive in deep space.
The Artemis 2 team iincludes NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen, all of whom will help the mission act as a proving ground for the human factors that can't be fully simulated on Earth, from life support performance to emergency procedures.
According to NASA, the launch of Artemis 2 could be as early as sometime in February, if all goes according to plan.
Where is it?
The VAB is located at Kennedy Space Center, with the launchpad located at Cape, Canaveral.
The stacked Artemis 2 vehicle includes the Orion spacecraft and SLS. (Image credit: Josh Dinner/Space.com)
Why is it amazing?
Rollout is a key inflection point where the momentum shifts from "assembly" to "launch campaign." Once at the pad, the teams begin connecting Orion and SLS to pad infrastructure, from electrical to propellant systems, and then power up and check that the fully integrated vehicle is ready. It's the first time the whole system is exercised end-to-end in the environment and configuration it must survive in on launch day.
A mission's rollout also sets up the wet dress rehearsal, where the teams will load more than 700,000 gallons of cryogenic propellants, run through countdown operations and practice draining the vehicle, without the astronauts onboard. Wet dress rehearsals are designed to uncover the real-world fueling and timing issues that only show up when you chill miles of plumbing down to super-cold temperatures and try to operate like it's launch day. NASA plans to hold their wet dress rehearsal on February 2nd, if nothing goes awry.
If Artemis 2 performs as intended, it will mark humanity's first crewed voyage into the moon's neighborhood since Apollo, and just as crucially, it will turn Artemis from a successful uncrewed demonstration into a validated system for carrying people back toward lunar exploration.
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+ Since the end of the Apollo program in 1972, NASA has been looking for ways to return back to the moon. In 2022, the space agency launched the Artemis 1 moon mission, an uncrewed spacecraft that laid the foundations for the missions coming after it.
Now, three years later, Artemis 2 is slated for launch as the first crewed mission to return to our moon. But to get there, the rocket has to be moved from the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center to its designated launch pad.
What is it?
The four-person Artemis 2 crew will fly on the Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion spacecraft. Instead of landing, the team will head on a roughly 10-day trip that loops around the moon and returns to Earth, an intentionally conservative "test flight" designed to validate that Orion and its support systems can keep the astronauts safe and productive in deep space.
The Artemis 2 team iincludes NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen, all of whom will help the mission act as a proving ground for the human factors that can't be fully simulated on Earth, from life support performance to emergency procedures.
According to NASA, the launch of Artemis 2 could be as early as sometime in February, if all goes according to plan.
Where is it?
The VAB is located at Kennedy Space Center, with the launchpad located at Cape, Canaveral.
The stacked Artemis 2 vehicle includes the Orion spacecraft and SLS. (Image credit: Josh Dinner/Space.com)
Why is it amazing?
Rollout is a key inflection point where the momentum shifts from "assembly" to "launch campaign." Once at the pad, the teams begin connecting Orion and SLS to pad infrastructure, from electrical to propellant systems, and then power up and check that the fully integrated vehicle is ready. It's the first time the whole system is exercised end-to-end in the environment and configuration it must survive in on launch day.
A mission's rollout also sets up the wet dress rehearsal, where the teams will load more than 700,000 gallons of cryogenic propellants, run through countdown operations and practice draining the vehicle, without the astronauts onboard. Wet dress rehearsals are designed to uncover the real-world fueling and timing issues that only show up when you chill miles of plumbing down to super-cold temperatures and try to operate like it's launch day. NASA plans to hold their wet dress rehearsal on February 2nd, if nothing goes awry.
If Artemis 2 performs as intended, it will mark humanity's first crewed voyage into the moon's neighborhood since Apollo, and just as crucially, it will turn Artemis from a successful uncrewed demonstration into a validated system for carrying people back toward lunar exploration.
]]>
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/artemis/nasa-rolls-artemis-2-moon-rocket-to-launch-pad-space-photo-of-the-day-for-jan-19-2025
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- <![CDATA[ Was the Red Planet once blue? New evidence points to an ancient ocean on Mars ]]>
- Mars may have once possessed an ocean at least as large as Earth's Arctic Ocean, a new study suggests.
Previous research suggested rivers and seas once existed on Mars, raising the question of whether it might have once been capable of supporting life. However, much remains uncertain about how blue the Red Planet once was.
In the new study, researchers analyzed high-resolution images from various cameras on Mars probes, including the European Space Agency (ESA)'s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, ESA's Mars Express, and NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
"Together, these instruments act like a geological time machine, helping us reconstruct the planet's past condition," study lead author Ignatius Argadestya, a planetary geologist at the University of Bern in Switzerland, told Space.com.
The scientists investigated the southeast part of a 620-mile (1,000-kilometer) canyon known as Coprates Chasma. This gorge makes up part of the Valles Marineris, the largest canyon system on Mars, which stretches more than 2,485 miles (4,000 km) long along the Red Planet's equator.
The delta deposits that appeared on the images of Mars with the coastline. (Image credit: ESA/ExoMars – TGO/CaSSIS/Ignatius Argadestya)
Specifically, the researchers focused on geological formations known as scarp-faced deposits at the lower end of Coprates Chasma. These resembled fan deltas on Earth — fan-shaped cones of debris and sand that form where rivers pour into oceans. Although wind-sculpted dunes currently cover these former delta structures on Mars, their original shape is still recognizable.
All the scarp-faced deposits the scientists identified occurred at the same range of elevations — a depth of 11,975 to 12,300 feet (3,650 to 3,750 meters) in the Valles Marineris and the northern lowlands. In addition, they all formed about 3.37 billion years ago.
The researchers suggested these scarp-faced deposits are evidence of an ancient shore. All in all, they estimated Mars once possessed an ocean across its northern hemisphere that was at least as large as the Arctic Ocean on Earth.
The delta deposits that appeared on the images of Mars with the coastline. (Image credit: ESA/ExoMars – TGO/CaSSIS/Ignatius Argadestya)
"The most important implication is that Mars may have sustained stable surface water on a planetary scale for longer periods than previously thought," Argadestya said. "Water on Mars may once have formed connected systems across vast distances, rather than existing only in isolated lakes."
The scientists noted they are not the first to speculate about the existence and size of any ocean on Mars. "What our study contributes is a new line of geological evidence that helps constrain where the shoreline may have been and how high the water once reached," Argadestya said.
In the future, the scientists plan to investigate the composition of ancient Martian soils. These could help shed light on what kind of erosion Mars experienced from water, Argadestya noted.
The scientists detailed their findings online Jan. 7 in the journal npj Space Exploration.
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- https://www.space.com/astronomy/mars/was-the-red-planet-once-blue-new-evidence-points-to-an-ancient-ocean-on-mars
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- Mon, 19 Jan 2026 14:00:00 +0000Mon, 19 Jan 2026 15:02:53 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ This is the sharpest view ever seen of a black hole's dusty disk ]]>
- The James Webb Space Telescope has delivered its clearest view yet of a supermassive black hole's immediate surroundings, NASA announced Tuesday (Jan. 13).
The snapshots show that the intense infrared glow in active galaxies comes not from powerful outflows, as long assumed, but from a dense disk of gas and dust feeding the black hole, NASA said in a statement.
The findings come from James Webb Space Telescope (JWST or Webb) observations of the Circinus galaxy, a spiral galaxy about 14 million light-years from Earth, where a team led by Enrique Lopez-Rodriguez of the University of South Carolina used specialized techniques to probe the galaxy's dust-shrouded core surrounding its supermassive black hole in unprecedented detail.
In the image above, a close-up inset of the galaxy's core reveals the inner face of a glowing, donut-shaped disk of gas and dust, known as a torus, while darker patches mark a second, more distant ring surrounding the black hole.
"It is the first time a high-contrast mode of Webb has been used to look at an extragalactic source," study co-author Julien Girard, a senior research scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Maryland, said in the statement.
This image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shows the Circinus galaxy. A close-up of its core from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows the inner face of the hole of the donut-shaped disk of gas disk glowing in infrared light. The outer ring appears as dark spots. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Enrique Lopez-Rodriguez (University of South Carolina), Deepashri Thatte (STScI); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI); Acknowledgment: NSF's NOIRLab, CTIO)
The team observed Circinus twice, in July 2024 and March 2025, using an instrument on Webb that gathers and combines light from the galaxy through a specially designed aperture with seven small hexagonal openings. These openings produce patterns that allowed the research team to isolate the hot dust and map small-scale structures at the galaxy's center that are normally hidden, according to NASA.
"This allows us to see images twice as sharp," study co-author Joel Sanchez-Bermudez of the National University of Mexico said in the statement. "Instead of Webb's 6.5-meter diameter, it's like we are observing this region with a 13-meter space telescope."
The data reveal that about 87 percent of the infrared emission from hot dust originates from the region closest to the black hole, concentrated in a flattened disk aligned with the galaxy's equatorial plane. This structure forms the inner portion of the dusty torus and acts as the primary reservoir funneling material inward to feed the black hole, the study finds.
By contrast, less than 1 percent of the emission comes from a faint arc-shaped structure, dubbed the "North Arc," where hot dust is being swept up in an outflow blasted outward by the black hole's activity. The remaining 12% arises from dust farther from the center, likely heated by the black hole's radiation and a small radio jet, but lying outside the main feeding region, the study notes.
These findings challenge decades-old models that attributed much of the infrared excess near active black holes to dusty outflows. That idea arose largely because earlier telescopes lacked the resolution needed to separate light from the accretion disk, the dusty torus and outflows, blending all of these structures into a single unresolved glow, according to the NASA statement.
Understanding black hole growth is central to understanding galaxy evolution. As black holes feed, they can also release enormous amounts of energy back into their surroundings, which can suppress or trigger star formation and shape a galaxy's overall structure.
By clearly distinguishing material falling inward to feed the black hole from dust being pushed outward in energetic winds, the new Webb observations provide a crucial step toward understanding how supermassive black holes grow and influence their host galaxies, researchers say.
The dusty torus observed in Circinus is thought to be common among active black holes throughout the universe, and the research team says it is eager to apply the new technique validated in this study to explore the immediate environments of other nearby black holes.
"We need a statistical sample of black holes, perhaps a dozen or two dozen, to understand how mass in their accretion disks and their outflows relate to their power," Lopez-Rodriguez said in the statement.
The results were published on Jan. 13 in Nature Communications.
Full-halo CME from the X1.9 flare. The three bright specks of light (left to right) are Venus, Mercury and Mars. (Image credit: NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center)
The sun sure has woken up this week, unleashing a powerful X-class solar flare on Jan. 18 that hurled a colossal, fast-moving coronal mass ejection (CME) directly toward Earth. That CME has now arrived, triggering severe (G4) geomagnetic storm conditions far earlier than initially forecast.
The shock wave from the CME struck at 2:38 p.m. EST (1938 GMT) on Jan. 19, according to NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center, which confirmed that G4 storm levels were reached shortly after impact. The storm is ongoing, and space weather forecasters say CME passage will continue through the evening, keeping the door open for more aurora activity tonight.
Why the CME's impact depends on its magnetic orientation
CME arrivals are notoriously difficult to forecast. Their speed, direction of travel and — most importantly — their magnetic orientation all determine how strongly (if at all) they will interact with Earth's magnetic field.
If the CME's magnetic field is oriented southward, a component known as the Bz, it can more easily link up with Earth's northward-pointing magnetic field, allowing energy to pour into our planet's magnetosphere and trigger geomagnetic storm conditions.
X1.9 solar flare erupts from the sun on Jan. 18. (Image credit: NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory)
If the Bz is instead oriented northward, Earth's magnetic field largely deflects the incoming energy, effectively "closing the door," and what looked like a promising space weather event can end up being a bit of a nothing burger.
Some CMEs contain a mixture of southward and northward magnetic fields, which can lead to stop-start or fluctuating geomagnetic activity. These events keep space weather forecasters and aurora chasers very much on their toes.
Even now, after the CME has arrived, we won't fully understand its magnetic orientation until it's sampled in real time by solar wind monitoring spacecraft like DSCOVR and ACE, positioned upstream of Earth.
NASA model of the incoming CME and predicted arrival time. (Image credit: NASA)
What's an X-class solar flare?
Solar flares are ranked in ascending strength from A, B, C and M up to X, with each letter representing a tenfold increase in intensity. X-class flares are the strongest eruptions and the number following the X indicates how powerful the event is. Today's flare was measured at X1.9, putting it in the upper tier of solar outbursts.
The powerful flare from sunspot region AR4341 peaked at 1:09 p.m. EST (1809 GMT), according to NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center. The eruption triggered strong (R3) radio blackouts across the sunlit side of Earth, with the most severe disruptions concentrated over the Americas.
The X1.9 solar flare triggered radio blackouts across the Americas. (Image credit: NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center)
What is a CME and how can it affect Earth?
A CME is a massive expulsion of plasma from the sun that carries a magnetic field. If a CME hits Earth's magnetosphere — the protective magnetic "bubble" generated by our planet — it can trigger a geomagnetic storm.
These geomagnetic storms vary in intensity and are therefore classified on a scale from minor (G1) to extreme (G5). Current forecasts from the U.K. Met Office suggest the incoming CME could produce strong (G3) to severe (G4) geomagnetic storm conditions.
Storms of this magnitude can disrupt satellite operations, degrade GPS navigation and increase atmospheric drag on spacecraft. They can also supercharge auroral activity, potentially pushing the northern lights far beyond their usual high-latitude haunts and into mid-latitude regions near 45° latitude.
Editor's note: This article was updated on Jan. 19 at 4:30 p.m. EST (2130 GMT) to reflect that the coronal mass ejection (CME) has arrived and triggered G4 (severe) geomagnetic storm conditions, according to NOAA. Forecasts and visibility potential may continue to evolve as the storm progresses.
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- https://www.space.com/astronomy/sun/sun-erupts-with-powerful-x-class-flare-as-huge-cme-races-toward-earth-impact-possible-within-24-hours
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- Mon, 19 Jan 2026 11:00:01 +0000Mon, 19 Jan 2026 21:38:37 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Astronomers discover an enormous iron bar in the famous Ring Nebula: 'We definitely need to know more' ]]>
- Sometimes, even the most familiar astronomical objects can hold surprises for researchers. Take the well-known Ring Nebula, which astronomers have now discovered harbors a mysterious "bar" of iron atoms.
Also known as Messier 57 (M57), the Ring Nebula is a "planetary nebula" (a misleading name because there are no planets involved) located around 2,000 light-years away. It is the glowing remains of what was once a sun-like star, which ran out of fuel for nuclear fusion and shed its outer layers as its core collapsed to form a dense stellar remnant called a white dwarf.
The iron bar was discovered by a team using the William Herschell Telescope (WHT) located in the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, on La Palma island, Spain, thanks to a new instrument called WEAVE (WHT Enhanced Area Velocity Explorer). The rod-like cloud of iron atoms fits within the inner layer of the oval-shaped nebula, which was first observed in 1779 in the constellation Lyra by astronomer Charles Messier. This bar extends out for around 1,000 times the distance between Pluto and the sun, and the mass of iron in the bar is around the same as the mass of Mars.
"Even though the Ring Nebula has been studied using many different telescopes and instruments, WEAVE has allowed us to observe it in a new way, providing so much more detail than before. By obtaining a spectrum continuously across the whole nebula, we can create images of the nebula at any wavelength and determine its chemical composition at any position," team leader Roger Wesson of the University College London (UCL) said in a statement.
"When we processed the data and scrolled through the images, one thing popped out as clear as anything — this previously unknown 'bar' of ionized iron atoms, in the middle of the familiar and iconic ring."
The Ring Nebula as seen by Hubble (Image credit: NASA)
Equipped with a bundle of hundreds of optical fibers, WEAVE's Large Integral Field Unit (LIFU) mode, the team was able to capture a spectrum covering all wavelengths of visible light across the entire face of the Ring Nebula, something that has not been possible before. It would not have been possible to discover the iron bar without this new approach to imaging the Ring Nebula.
Just how this iron bar formed remains a mystery to Wesson and colleagues. One possibility is that it is related to how the star ejected its outer layers and how this process progressed. Alternatively, the formation of this arc of iron plasma could be the result of the Ring Nebula's doomed star vaporizing an orbiting rocky planet as its outer layers puffed out.
If that is the case, the Ring Nebula could be a portent of what awaits Earth in around 5 billion years when the sun runs out of fuel for nuclear fusion and puffs out to become a red giant."We definitely need to know more — particularly whether any other chemical elements co-exist with the newly-detected iron, as this would probably tell us the right class of model to pursue," team member and UCL astronomer Janet Drew said. "Right now, we are missing this important information."
To discover the mechanism behind the creation of this iron bar, the team is planning a follow-up study with WEAVE and its LIFU mode at greater resolution.
"The discovery of this fascinating, previously unknown structure in a night-sky jewel, beloved by skywatchers across the Northern Hemisphere, demonstrates the amazing capabilities of WEAVE," Scott Trager, WEAVE Project Scientist based at the University of Groningen, said. "We look forward to many more discoveries from this new instrument."
That could include discovering if any other planetary nebulas like the Ring Nebula also contain unexpected structures.
"It would be very surprising if the iron bar in the Ring Nebula is unique," Wesson concluded. "So hopefully, as we observe and analyse more nebulae created in the same way, we will discover more examples of this phenomenon, which will help us to understand where the iron comes from."
About nine minutes later, the Falcon's upper stage reached its preliminary orbit and was on track to deploy its payload approximately an hour after leaving the ground, following a coast period and second burn of its Merlin engine.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying 29 Starlink satellites launches from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Sunday, Jan. 18, 2026. (Image credit: SpaceX)
The launch marked the 24th successful re-flight of the Falcon 9's first stage (B1080). The booster performed a propulsive landing, touching down on its four deployed legs atop the droneship "A Shortfall of Gravitas" stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.
The first stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets stands on its four landing legs atop the Atlantic Ocean-based droneship "A Shortfall of Gravitas" after launching 29 Starlink satellites into orbit from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Sunday, Jan. 18, 2026. (Image credit: SpaceX)
The ever-growing Starlink megaconstellation now numbers more than 9,500 active satellites, according to tracker Jonathan McDowell. The network provides internet access to regions around the world where others means of connecting is sparse. The service also supports wifi on airlines and direct cell-to-satellite calls for select providers.
Sunday's launch marked SpaceX's 8th launch of 2026 and 591st Falcon 9 mission since 2010.
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- https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/spacex-starlink-6-100-b1080-ccsfs-asog
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- 29euJV48rnS6F5GohMTQPN
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- Mon, 19 Jan 2026 00:27:37 +0000Tue, 20 Jan 2026 13:10:38 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Star Trek: Voyager – Across the Unknown gets a release date, bringing roguelite survival action to the Delta Quadrant ]]>
- The fever dream continues as Star Trek: Voyager – Across the Unknown now has a confirmed release date. Slated for launch nearly a quarter of a century after the television show went off the air, the roguelite strategy adventure will drop on February 19th, 2026, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.
As we reported last year, the game follows the adventures of the Voyager's crew as they attempt to navigate their way home from the Delta Quadrant, some 70,000 light-years from known space. Across the Unknown isn't beholden to the plot of the series, however, allowing players to completely reshape how their journey unfolds. This includes making decisions that can dramatically impact the makeup of the ship itself and change the fates of the crew members onboard.
Across the Unknown promises to incorporate roguelite survival elements, and that every run will vary broadly. Players will be tasked with careful management of the ship's systems and resources as they explore and make critical choices that will determine whether or not Captain Janeway and her crew make it back to the Alpha Quadrant in one piece.
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The game leans heavily into management and strategic choices. In combat, for instance, instead of directly controlling the U.S.S. Voyager, you'll issue orders to your helmsman to try to position yourself alongside vulnerable subsystems of an enemy vessel, or turn your ship to present your strongest shields to your foe. You won't manually fire weapons, but instead give your security officer broad instructions like "target their weapons subsystems."
Those officers are characters drawn directly from the series, including stalwarts like Tuvok and Tom Paris, as well as later additions like former Borg drone Seven of Nine.
Preorders are now available for both the vanilla and deluxe editions of the game (the latter of which includes additional characters, missions, and equipment), and a new demo is now live on PlayStation and Xbox. Expect a Switch 2 demo closer to release, as well as an update to the preexisting Steam demo.
While you wait for the February launch, it's a great time to catch up on some of the best Star Trek Voyager episodes on Paramount+.
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- https://www.space.com/entertainment/space-games/star-trek-voyager-across-the-unknown-gets-a-release-date-bringing-roguelite-survival-action-to-the-delta-quadrant
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- 9JN9d8EFTHf68YqXaUCfjW
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- Sun, 18 Jan 2026 16:00:00 +0000Fri, 16 Jan 2026 20:29:59 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Does antimatter 'fall up'? ]]>
- In 1971, astronaut David Scott stood on the lunar surface, holding a hammer and a feather, and in the vacuum of the moon, he let them go. They struck the gray dust at the exact same time. It was a poetic nod to Galileo, who, centuries earlier, disproved the Aristotelian notion that heavy objects "want" to be on the ground more than light ones do.
This wasn't just a parlor trick for the cameras; it was a demonstration of the weak equivalence principle, which is the bedrock of general relativity. It states that all objects, regardless of their mass or internal composition, fall at the exact same rate in a gravitational field. When Einstein was building his masterpiece theory, he didn't try to explain why this happens. He simply assumed it was a fundamental rule and moved on.
But what if there's an astrophysical creature that refuses to play by the rules? What if we dropped something so exotic, it wasn't even on Einstein's radar? We need to talk about antimatter.
To understand the allure of falling antimatter, we have to look at the history of its discovery. In the 1920s, physicist Paul Dirac was trying to force two very different worlds — quantum mechanics (the rules of the very small) and special relativity (the rules of the very fast) — to play together.
Dirac found an equation that worked, but it had a quirk. Just as the square root of 4 can be both 2 and -2, his equation offered two solutions for the energy of a particle: one positive and one negative. This was a problem. Positive energy has a "ground floor" at zero, but negative energy is a basement of a basement with no bottom.
Dirac's solution was what became known as the "Dirac sea." He imagined outer space not as an empty vacuum but as a filled "ocean" of negative energy states. If you kick one of these invisible particles into the positive realm, you leave behind a hole. That hole behaves like a normal particle but with an opposite charge. It was the first time a particle was predicted by pure math before being seen in a lab. We call it antimatter.
Why focus on antimatter to test gravity? Because antimatter is the bridge to the greatest divide in physics. General relativity (gravity) and quantum mechanics (everything else) famously do not get along. They speak different languages and live in different neighborhoods. Because antimatter is a pure product of the quantum world, it is the perfect candidate to test Einstein's theory of gravity.
However, this is a nightmare, for three reasons:
When matter and antimatter touch, they annihilate in a flash of pure energy.
Nature doesn't just hand us antimatter; we have to build it in advanced laboratories.
To overcome these hurdles, scientists at CERN's ALPHA-g experiment had to get creative. First, they made neutral antihydrogen by pairing antiprotons with positrons (anti-electrons). Because these antiatoms are neutral, they aren't pushed around by electricity.
The team caught about a hundred of these antiatoms in a Penning trap, which is a magnetic bottle that holds them in place because, while neutral, they still act like tiny bar magnets. Then, using lasers, the researchers chilled the atoms to near absolute zero to stop them from jiggling.
Then came the moment of truth: They slowly turned down the magnetic field.
If antimatter ignored the weak equivalence principle, the atoms might have drifted upward, repelled by Earth. If Einstein was right, they should tumble downward. The researchers waited for the flash of annihilation as the antiatoms escaped the trap and hit the walls of the container. After they filtered out the noise of stray cosmic rays, the results were clear: Roughly 80% of the antiatoms fell through the bottom of the trap.
Antimatter falls down. It's an anti-climactic (ha ha) result in the best way possible. It means the weak equivalence principle holds firm and Einstein's vision of a universal gravitational response remains unblemished.
However, the case isn't entirely closed. While we know antimatter falls down, we don't yet know if it falls at the exact same acceleration as regular matter does. If there is even a 1% difference in the speed of the fall, it would signal a total revolution in physics — a sign that gravity treats mirror matter differently. But for now, the universe remains a place where hammers, feathers and antihydrogen all race to the floor at the same speed.
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- https://www.space.com/astronomy/dark-universe/does-antimatter-fall-up
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- Sun, 18 Jan 2026 15:00:00 +0000Fri, 16 Jan 2026 20:29:43 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ 'Starfleet Academy' isn't the first time that 'Star Trek' tried to go back to school ]]>
- "Star Trek" is going back to school. The new Trek TV series "Starfleet Academy" is less about exploring the final frontier and more about educating the next generation of explorers, as a group of students from very different backgrounds make their way through the famous San Francisco educational establishment. But although it's taken the famous old franchise 60 years, 13 movies, 12 previous TV shows, and the dawn of the 32nd century to get here, the school is nearly as old as the franchise itself.
The Academy got its first mention in "Where No Man Has Gone Before", the second "Trek" pilot (but the third episode broadcast), when James T Kirk's old classmate, Gary Mitchell, recalled their college days. The Kobayashi Maru, the infamous no-win simulation used to test potential captains, also became a key theme in classic movie "The Wrath of Khan" (1982). But at the start of the 1990s, Starfleet Academy got remarkably close to headlining its own movie.
"Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" (1989) has long been considered one of the worst entries in the movie series, a poorly conceived tale of the USS Enterprise's mission to find God. Literally.
(Image credit: CBS/Paramount)
Its commercial and critical failure — combined with the advancing years of the famous bridge crew and the hefty salaries demanded by William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, and the rest — became a good excuse to explore alternative potential avenues for the franchise.
So, with "Trek" due to celebrate its 25th birthday in 1991, Paramount executive Ned Tanen gave producer Harve Bennett (who'd overseen the four previous films) the okay to work on "The Academy Years", a project he already had in development with "Star Trek V" writer David Loughery. If successful, Bennett believed that "The Academy Years" (sometimes referred to as "The First Adventure") could become the launchpad for a new movie or TV franchise.
"'The Academy Years', like 'Star Trek IV', would have reached beyond the ['Star Trek'] cult," Bennett recalled in "The Fifty-Year Mission" by Edward Gross and Mark A Altman. "It would have interested people who had never seen a 'Star Trek' film, which did not exclude the regulars, but it simply said, 'If you don't understand what it's all about, come see how it all began."
(Image credit: Paramount)
This story would effectively be a reboot for the franchise, a coming-of-age story for Kirk, Spock (the first non-human ever to attend the Academy), and McCoy, revealing how the Original Series' holy trinity came to be friends. In other words, "The Academy Years" would have been "Trek"'s answer to "Young Sherlock Holmes" and "Young Indiana Jones".
"In outline form, it was the story of Kirk and Spock meeting for the first time as cadets here on Earth," Loughery explained. "We've got a young Jim Kirk, who's kind of cocky and wild. He's not exactly what you might think starship captain material might be. He's like one of these kids who would rather fly hot planes and chase girls. Spock is this brilliant, arrogant, aloof-to-the-point-of-obnoxiousness genius. It's the mask he's hiding behind to cover his own conflicting human emotions. He's an outcast, he left Vulcan in shame against his father's wishes, and like all adolescents, he's trying to find a place to fit in, but he keeps screwing it up."
McCoy, meanwhile, would have been an older 30-year-old coming to terms with the death of his father, a wound explored in "Star Trek V". Despite their initial (and dramatically inevitable) differences, the trio would have come together to free an alien planet from slavery. Along the way, Kirk would have had a tragic love affair with a woman whose death would go on to shape his attitude to future relationships, much as Vesper Lynd's demise in "Casino Royale" did for James Bond.
(Image credit: CBS/Getty)
The filmmakers also planned to bookend the story with the reminiscences of the older Kirk and Spock — a cunning ruse to get the headline power of Shatner and Nimoy in the movie. Bennett wanted Ethan Hawke to play the young Kirk and John Cusack to play Spock.
"The Academy Years" may have been touted as a 23rd century answer to 1986 Paramount hit "Top Gun", but not everybody was enamored with the prospect of a movie that — seemingly the victim of a smear campaign — had come to be regarded as a spoof, a "Trek"-tinged cross between "Police Academy" and "The Jetsons".
Although Gene Roddenberry no longer had any official behind-the-scenes power, the "Star Trek" creator still held considerable sway with the fanbase. So when "the Great Bird of the Galaxy" made it clear he did not endorse the project, Bennett and co faced an uphill battle to get their movie greenlit. And even though Bennett later claimed that the door would have been left open for the original crew to return in "Star Trek VI" a year or two later, many of the veteran Original Series cast were sceptical.
(Image credit: Paramount Pictures)
The weight of opinion was enough to keep "The Academy Years" grounded in Spacedock, as Paramount opted instead to mark "Trek"'s silver anniversary with Kirk, Spock, and the gang's final adventure in "The Undiscovered Country" (1991). Bennett chose to walk away from the franchise.
But Kirk and Picard's alma mater has never really gone away. While a student, Wesley Crusher came perilously close to expulsion after a stunt-gone-wrong in "The Next Generation" episode "The First Duty" (1992), and William Shatner, Walter Koenig, and George Takei all reprised their roles in a 1997 "Starfleet Academy" PC game.
There was also a series of YA novels featuring various members of the Original Series, "Next Generation", and "Voyager" crews during their Academy days, and a Marvel Comics series featuring "Deep Space Nine"'s Nog studying at the school. In a 2010 interview with TrekMovie, Bennett recalled a mid-'90s meeting with then-Paramount head Sharry Lansing at which the prospect of resurrecting "The Academy Years" was discussed. The comeback was soon nixed, however, when a pilot for another prequel, "Enterprise", was given the nod.
(Image credit: Paramount Pictures)
Until now, the closest we've come to a bona fide Starfleet Academy movie or TV show has been JJ Abrams' 2009 "Star Trek", in which a rebellious James Tiberius Kirk enrolls at the school in an alternative timeline. In contrast to "The Academy Years" version, Spock is an instructor rather than one of Kirk's contemporaries, though our introduction to a young James T — where he steals a vintage car — seems remarkably similar to Loughery's opening scene, in which the future captain of the Enterprise would have crashed a crop duster. "Star Trek: Prodigy" could have sent its young heroes to the Academy, but the showrunners took a different path (via CinemaBlend) because they knew the new "Starfleet Academy" was already on the Paramount+ timetable.
The new 32nd-century-set TV show is, of course, very different from these previous iterations, featuring all-new characters who've grown up in the warp-free era of the Burn. That said, "Starfleet Academy" showrunner and "Trek" overseer Alex Kurtzman may just have put his finger on the reason for the Academy's ongoing appeal.
"These cadets are still figuring it out," he told SFX magazine, "and like all students in college, you go through a remarkable journey of self-discovery over the course of those four years. Oftentimes, what you enter into college thinking you want to do, and what you leave college wanting to do, are two very different things."
The first two episodes of 'Star Trek: Starfleet Academy' stream on Paramount+ from Thursday, January 15.
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- https://www.space.com/entertainment/space-movies-shows/starfleet-academy-isnt-the-first-time-that-star-trek-tried-to-go-back-to-school
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- fAH7VC2yasQPbvBeGMw56b
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- Sun, 18 Jan 2026 15:00:00 +0000Fri, 16 Jan 2026 21:03:55 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ What is below Earth, since space is present in every direction? ]]>
- This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
But what is above and below that plane? And why are the planets' orbits aligned like this, in a flat pancake, rather than each one traveling in a completely different plane?
I'm a planetary scientist who works with robotic spacecraft, such as rovers and orbiters. When my colleagues and I send them out to explore our solar system, it's important for us to understand the 3D map of our space neighborhood.
Which way is 'down'?
Earth's gravity has a lot to do with what people think is up and what is down. Things fall down toward the ground, but that direction depends on where you are.
Imagine you're standing somewhere in North America and point downward. If you extend a line from your fingertip all the way through the Earth, that line would point in the direction of "up" to someone on a boat in the southern Indian Ocean.
In the bigger picture, "down" could be defined as being below the plane of the solar system, which is known as the ecliptic. By convention, we say that above the plane is where the planets are seen to orbit counterclockwise around the sun, and from below they are seen to orbit clockwise.
Even more flavors of 'down'
Is there anything special about the direction of down relative to the ecliptic? To answer that, we need to zoom out even farther. Our solar system is centered on the sun, which is just one of about 100 billion stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way.
Each of these stars, and their associated planets, are all orbiting around the center of the Milky Way, just like the planets orbit their stars, but on a much longer time scale. And just as the planets in our solar system are not in random orbits, stars in the Milky Way orbit the center of the galaxy close to a plane, which is called the galactic plane.
This plane is not oriented the same way as our solar system's ecliptic. In fact, the angle between the two planes is about 60 degrees.
Going another step back, the Milky Way is part of a cluster of galaxies known the the Local Group, and – you can see where this is going – these galaxies mostly fall within another plane, called the supergalactic plane. The supergalactic plane is almost perpendicular to the galactic plane, with an angle between the two planes of about 84.5 degrees.
How these bodies end up traveling paths that are close to the same plane has to do with how they formed in the first place.
A side view of galaxy NGC 4217 taken by the Hubble Space Telescope shows how all the stars and their planetary systems lie on one plane. (Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA; Acknowledgement: R. Schoof)
Collapse of the solar nebula
The material that would ultimately compose the sun and the planets of the solar system started out as a diffuse and very extensive cloud of gas and dust called the solar nebula. Every particle within the solar nebula had a tiny amount of mass. Because any mass exerts gravitational force, these particles were attracted to each other, though only very weakly.
The particles in the solar nebula started out moving very slowly. But over a long time, the mutual attraction these particles felt thanks to gravity caused the cloud to start to draw inward on itself, shrinking.
There would have also been some very slight overall rotation to the solar nebula, maybe thanks to the gravitational tug of a passing star. As the cloud collapsed, this rotation would have increased in speed, just like a spinning figure skater spins faster and faster as they draw their arms in toward their body.
As the cloud continued shrinking, the individual particles grew closer to each other and had more and more interactions affecting their motion, both because of gravity and collisions between them. These interactions caused individual particles in orbits that were tilted far from the direction of the overall rotation of the cloud to reorient their orbits.
For example, if a particle coming down through the orbital plane slammed into a particle coming up through that plane, the interaction would tend to cancel out that vertical motion and reorient their orbits into the plane.
On much bigger scales, similar sorts of interactions are probably what ended up confining most of the stars that make up the Milky Way into the galactic plane, and most of the galaxies that make up the Local Group into the supergalactic plane.
The orientations of the ecliptic, galactic and supergalactic planes all go back to the initial random rotation direction of the clouds they formed from.
So what's below the Earth?
So there's not really anything special about the direction we define as "down" relative to the Earth, other than the fact that there’s not much orbiting the sun in that direction.
If you go far enough in that direction, you'll eventually find other stars with their own planetary systems orbiting in completely different orientations. And if you go even farther, you might encounter other galaxies with their own planes of rotation.
This question highlights one of my favorite aspects of astronomy: It puts everything in perspective. If you asked a hundred people on your street, "Which way is down?" every one of them would point in the same direction. But imagine you asked that question of people all over the Earth, or of intelligent life forms in other planetary systems or even other galaxies. They'd all point in different directions.
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- https://www.space.com/astronomy/what-is-below-earth-since-space-is-present-in-every-direction
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- Sun, 18 Jan 2026 14:00:00 +0000Fri, 16 Jan 2026 21:03:09 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ New moon of January 2026 brings prime views of Jupiter, Saturn and winter stars tonight ]]>
- The new moon of January will be at 2:52 p.m. EST (1952 GMT) on Jan. 18, according to the U.S. Naval Observatory.
A new moon is, technically, a conjunction of the sun and moon. The two bodies share the same celestial longitude — if one drew a north-south line from the North Celestial Pole (right near where the Pole Star, Polaris, is located) the sun and moon would both be on it.
At the new phase, you can't see the moon from Earth unless there is a solar eclipse, the illuminated side is facing away from us. On top of that new moons rise and set with the sun; even if one could light up the side of the moon facing Earth it would be lost in the solar glare. Earth-based observers won't (visually) see a new moon until Feb.17, when there will be a solar eclipse visible from the southern Indian Ocean and Antarctica.
New moon skies are dark, especially when compared to nights when the moon is out; even a half-moon (when the moon is at first or last quarter phase) is the second brightest object in the sky after the sun. That means the nights on either side of a new moon are good for observing fainter stars and seeing the naked-eye nebulas and star clusters, particularly if one can watch the sky from a place away from city lights.
Visible planets
On the night of Jan. 18, there will be two planets visible: Saturn and Jupiter. By about 6 p.m., Saturn will be about 37 degrees above the southwestern horizon. In New York City, the sun sets at 4:56 p.m.; the timing and Saturn's location in the sky will be similar for anyplace near 40 degrees north, such as Chicago, Denver, Detroit, or Sacramento. In New York, Saturn sets at 9:48 p.m.
Jupiter, meanwhile, rises at 3:58 p.m.; since the sky darkens completely by about 6 p.m., one will see Jupiter about 21 degrees high in the east. Jupiter is brighter than the surrounding stars; one way to identify Jupiter is look for a rough triangle of "stars" with two of them to the left (north) of a brighter one; the brighter, steadier light is Jupiter. Jupiter is visible almost all night; the planet does not set until 6:49 a.m. (January 19) in New York, and it reaches its highest altitude (called transit) at 11:23 p.m. Jan. 18.
Unfortunately for planet hunters, Mercury, Venus and Mars are all too close to the sun to observe; they will come out of the solar glare in the weeks following the new moon. Mercury will emerge as an "evening star" in February and Venus will do so in March. Mars will emerge into the predawn skies in March.
The new moon on Jan. 18 provides the perfect dark skies for deep sky observations. (Image credit: Starry Night/Chris Vaughan)
For Southern Hemisphere skywatchers, the sky doesn't get dark until 9:30 p.m.; as it is the austral summer, the sun sets late. In Santiago, Chile, for example, sunset isn't until 8:54 p.m. local time on Jan. 18. Santiago is about as far south of the equator — 33 degrees — as Dallas or Charleston, South Carolina is north of it, and is of a similar latitude to cities such as Cape Town and Melbourne, Australia.
From Santiago, Saturn will be 22 degrees high in the west by 10 p.m. The ringed planet sets at 11:54 p.m. Jan. 18. Jupiter, meanwhile, rises at 8:11 p.m. local time, and by 10 p.m. is in the northeastern sky about 18 degrees high.
Stars and constellations
Winter constellations are in full swing for Northern Hemisphere observers in the latter half of January. Two hours after sunset — at about 7 p.m. in New York— some of the brightest constellations have risen — Orion (the Hunter), Gemini (the Twins), Taurus (the Bull), Canis Minor (the Little Dog) and Auriga (the Charioteer). Look low in the southeast to spot the brightest star in the sky, Sirius, the alpha star of Canis Major, the Big Dog.
You can start by identifying Gemini, as this is the constellation Jupiter is in. The two stars to the left (north) of Jupiter are Castor and Pollux, with Pollux being the one closer to the horizon. almost level with Jupiter. If you look down and to the right about four times Jupiter's distance from Pollux, you will see a bright white star; this is Procyon, the brightest star in Canis Minor. Go further to the right (south) and you see Sirius, which is recognizable by its blue-white hue and its brightness.
Directly above Sirius, about a third of the way from the horizon to the zenith (the point directly overhead) is Orion. Orion can be identified by the three stars that make up his belt — early in the night, they will appear to make an almost vertical line. Going up from the horizon, the first star is Alnitak, the second is Alnilam, and the third is Mintaka. Look slightly up and to the left of the belt and one can spot a bright reddish-orange star. This is Betelgeuse (pronounced like beetle-juice), marking one of Orion's shoulders. Above and to the right of Betelgeuse is Bellatrix, his other shoulder. On the right side of Orion's Belt, about the same distance from Mintaka as Betelgeuse is from Alnitak, is a bright blue-white star; this is Rigel.
Orion constellation shining over Odenwald, Germany. (Image credit: davidhajnal/Getty Images)
Since the night will be moonless, just to the right of Orion's Belt and below it, you can, from a dark-sky location away from city lights, trace a group of faint stars that is Orion's sword, and in that group, you might be able to spot the Orion Nebula.
Look above Orion and go two-thirds of the way to the zenith to spot another reddish star, though its color is much less vivid than Betelgeuse. This is Aldebaran, the brightest star in Taurus. Aldebaran is in a group of fainter stars (the shape is a little bit like a U on its side or a backwards C). This is the Hyades, an open star cluster. Look higher still, almost straight up from Aldebaran, to see a tiny cluster of stars that are almost too close together to separate with the naked eye. This is the Pleiades, another open cluster also called the Seven Sisters. In binoculars, it will look like a miniature version of the Big Dipper.
Speaking of which, if you draw a line through Jupiter and Pollux northwards, you'll reach the Big Dipper, a group of stars that is part of Ursa Major, the Great Bear. The Dipper will be close to the horizon, with the bowl facing upwards. You can use the two stars at the front of the bowl, Dubhe and Merak (with Merak being the lower one), to find Polaris, the Pole Star.
By 9 p.m. The Big Dipper is almost vertical and in the northeast; the "bowl" faces west (left). The Dipper can now be used to point to other stars besides Polaris. If you draw a line to the right, connecting the stars at the back of the bowl (these will be the two lower in the sky) you'll reach Regulus, the brightest star in Leo, the Lion, which will be almost due east and about 17 degrees high (this will vary depending on one's exact latitude but it will be similar in any mid-Northern latitude city).
For Southern Hemisphere observers, January is when Puppis, Carina and Vela, the three constellations that make up the Argo, the famous ship of Jason and the Argonauts, are prominent, rising in the east by 10 p.m. Though you'll see an "upside down" sky, you can still use Jupiter to orient — Pollux will appear to be directly below the planet, as opposed to being to the left of it, and Procyon is to the right of Jupiter and above it, some 27 degrees high in the northeast. Look up and to the right from Procyon and you will see Sirius, about 51 degrees high. Look to the right (southwards) and still higher — about 59 degrees, or two thirds of the way to the zenith, and one spies Canopus, the alpha Star of Carina, the Ship's Keel. Below Canopus, there is a large "loop" of seven medium-bright stars, the topmost one (closest to Canopus) is called Regor, or Gamma Velorum, the brightest star in Vela, the Sail. Above and to the right of Vela is Puppis, the Poop Deck, another group of seven stars in an elongated shape rather like a peanut. The first four stars form a four-sided diamond shape to the left of and below Canopus; these are relatively faint. Just to the left of Regor is a fifth star, Zeta Puppis (or Naos) and the remaining two are to the left of that about twice as far from Regor as Naos is.
The Crux (left) with the Running Chicken Nebula (IC 2944) in the lower right, captured from Atacama Lodge, Chile, March 18, 2010. (Image credit: VW Pics /Getty Images)
About 13 degrees above the south-southeastern horizon you can see Crux, the Southern Cross, which from the latitude of Santiago is circumpolar — it never sets. At 10 p.m. it is upside down (or nearly so) so the crossbar is closer to the horizon and its brightest star, Acrux, is highest.
If you look southwest and about 54 degrees above the horizon, you can see a bright star in a patch of sky that seems to have few of them; this is Achernar, the end of Eridanus, the River. Achernar is not visible from much of the Northern Hemisphere but the end of the constellation Eridanus is — it starts just to the south of Orion's foot, Rigel, which from the latitude of Santiago is 61 degrees high in the north-northeast, with Orion's Belt below rather than above it.
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- https://www.space.com/stargazing/new-moon-brings-prime-views-of-jupiter-saturn-and-winter-stars
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- Sun, 18 Jan 2026 13:00:00 +0000Fri, 16 Jan 2026 21:02:44 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Hubble Telescope watches star blast out jet of hot gas 32 light-years long ]]>
- Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have witnessed an infant star 20 times larger than the sun setting interstellar clouds ablaze. The source of this cosmic conflagration is a stellar jet travelling at an incredible 2.2 million miles per hour (3.5 million kilometers per hour), the fastest outflow of this type ever seen.
This particular outflow is also the longest outflow from a forming star or protostar ever seen by astronomers, stretching out for a staggering 32 light-years. For context, that is around 8 to 10 times as wide as our entire solar system.
The stunning image of this cosmic eruption from Hubble shows two so-called Herbig-Haro (HH) objects designated HH 80 and HH 81, respectively, glowing in neon green and pink. HH 81 is to the upper left of the image, while HH 80 is to the bottom right.
The star illuminating them is IRAS 18162-2048, located around 5,500 light-years away, and the most massive protostar in the entire molecular cloud known as L291.
Protostars like IRAS 18162-2048 are fed by gas that falls to them from the surrounding clouds of gas and dust that originally condensed to form them. This matter can't fall directly to these hungry cosmic infants because it still possesses angular momentum. That means it forms a swirling cloud around the protostar called an accretion disk, which gradually feeds this stellar newborn like a baby bottle.
However, just as human infants are pretty messy, so too are protostars. Powerful magnetic fields channel plasma in accretion disks to the poles of protostars, accelerating it to high-speeds and then blasting it out as jets.
Outbursts from an infant star light up the interstellar clouds HH 80 and HH 81 (Image credit: NASA, ESA, and B. Reipurth (Planetary Science Institute); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America))
HH objects are created when jets of ionized gas, or plasma, are blasted away from protostars at incredible speeds. These jets strike previously ejected gas, creating shockwaves that heat that gas, causing the bright glows demonstrated by HH 80 and HH 81 in this Hubble image.
First observed by Hubble in 1995, HH 80 and HH 81 are striking examples of HH objects not just due to the size and speed of the jet powering them, but also because this is the only jet astronomers have ever seen being driven by a young massive star and not a young low mass star.
This spectacular image of HH 80 and HH 81 and its capability to allow astronomers to study minute changes in the structure of these incredible cosmic bodies, was only possible thanks to the sensitivity and resolution of Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3.
Thus, this image is further evidence that even after 36 years in service, Hubble is still a vital tool for astronomers.
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- https://www.space.com/astronomy/stars/hubble-telescope-watches-star-blast-out-jet-of-hot-gas-32-light-years-long
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- cVXxccoyE9LDWVBbV49zVb
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- Sun, 18 Jan 2026 11:00:00 +0000Fri, 16 Jan 2026 21:00:42 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ NASA rolls Artemis 2 rocket to the pad ahead of historic moon launch ]]>
- CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — On Saturday (Jan. 17), the rocket that will launch the Artemis 2 astronauts around the moon rolled to the pad for its historic mission, which could lift off just a few weeks from now.
NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, built to support the agency's Artemis 2 mission and usher in a new era of crewed flights to the moon, headed out from the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) here at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida on Saturday, beginning a 4-mile (6.4 kilometers) trek to Launch Complex-39B (LC-39B).
Engineers have spent the past year and a half stacking the Artemis 2 SLS, which rolled out of the VAB for the first (and hopefully only) time as a fully assembled launch vehicle today. SLS began its journey at 7:04 a.m. EST (1204 GMT), standing on the rocket's Mobile Launch Platform (MLP), whose massive 7.5-foot (2.3 m) treads rolled the rocket from the VAB's High Bay 3 onto the river-rock-covered road leading to the launch pad. The rocket arrived at LC-39B at 6:42 p.m. EST (2342 GMT).
SLS stands 322 feet (98 m) tall and weighs roughly 2,870 tons (2,600 metric tons) when fully fueled. The rocket is powered by two space shuttle-era solid rocket boosters (SRBs) stacked 177 feet (54 m) tall on either side and four RS-25 engines, also originally designed for the space shuttle. Combined, they produce 8.8 million pounds of thrust at liftoff to deliver the rocket's upper stages and Orion crew capsule to space.
Moving slower than 1 mph (1.6 kph), the massive vehicle's journey from the VAB to LC-39B took nearly 12 hours. Now that it's at the launch pad, NASA will spend the coming weeks performing systems integrations and vehicle checkouts ahead of a fueled launch countdown simulation known as a wet dress rehearsal, and, if all goes according to plan, a launch attempt in early February.
NASA is targeting Feb. 2 for the wet dress rehearsal. Feb. 6 is the earliest possible launch day for Artemis 2, which will fly NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen aboard the Orion spacecraft on a roughly 10-day mission around the moon.
The launch date is largely dependent on how systems checks go once SLS reaches the pad, however, with backup launch opportunities mapped out through Feb. 11 and additional windows in March and April.
Artemis 2 is the second mission of NASA's Artemis program and will be the first to fly a crew aboard Orion. Artemis 1 launched in November 2022, after a checkout campaign that ended up lasting most of the year. After its debut rollout in March 2022, the Artemis 1 SLS wet dress rehearsals and launch attempts were plagued by cryogenic hydrogen leaks, weather delays and other factors that resulted in three trips back to the VAB for maintenance.
NASA officials are hoping to avoid a similar campaign with Artemis 2 and voiced confidence in the rocket's readiness and optimism about a launch in the February window.
When it launches, SLS will deliver Orion to Earth orbit, where the Artemis 2 crew will perform systems checks ahead of a translunar injection burn that puts them on course for the moon. That burn will be completed by SLS' interim cryogenic propulsion stage, which Orion and its service module will detach from to conduct proximity maneuvering tests on their way to lunar space.
A closeup look at the Artemis 2 stack during rollout. (Image credit: NASA)
The Artemis 2 astronauts won't go to lunar orbit. Instead, the mission will fly a "free-return trajectory" that loops the capsule around the moon and slingshots it back to Earth regardless of any anomalies the crew or spacecraft may encounter during the mission. The flight path ensures the safe return of the Artemis 2 crew and Orion, without the possibility of a malfunction stranding them in lunar orbit.
Artemis 2 is the next step in NASA's goal to return astronauts to the lunar surface, where the agency hopes to establish a base in the moon's south polar region. Artemis 3 will be the first mission designed for a lunar landing, but it will proceed only if Artemis 2 is successful.
Artemis 2 will be as much a proving ground of Orion's life support systems as Artemis 1 was for the spacecraft's core design. Any unexpected speed bumps during the upcoming mission may cause further delays for Artemis 3, the expected launch date for which is already beginning to slip past NASA's hopeful 2027 target.
Artemis 2 crew members have been training at KSC, conducting launch-day rehearsals over the past several months in preparation for their mission, and were present to see their SLS rocket roll out for the first time today.
Editor's note: This story was updated at 2:30 a.m. EST on Jan. 18 with the news that the SLS-Orion stack reached the launch pad.
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- https://www.space.com/space-exploration/artemis/nasa-rolls-artemis-2-rocket-to-the-pad-ahead-of-historic-moon-launch
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- t6Lt73HGV5dMgi5TCteKK3
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- Sat, 17 Jan 2026 16:33:38 +0000Tue, 20 Jan 2026 18:06:06 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Space.com headlines crossword quiz for week of Jan. 12, 2026: What is an Einstein-Rosen bridge more commonly known as? ]]>
- Every week, Space.com delivers the latest discoveries, launches, and cosmic curiosities from across the universe. From groundbreaking research aboard the International Space Station to dazzling new images from the James Webb Space Telescope, the stories are as vast and varied as space itself. But how closely have you been paying attention?
To celebrate the thrill of space exploration and the joy of learning, we've created a special crossword puzzle built entirely from this week's top Space.com stories. It's a fun, brain-tickling way to revisit the highlights, whether you're a casual stargazer or a die-hard astrophysics fan.
Expect clues that span planetary science, rocket launches, stargazing, and entertainment tied to the stars. If you read about it on Space.com last week, it might just show up in this puzzle. And if you didn't? Well, now's your chance to catch up while flexing your trivia muscles.
So channel your inner astronaut or astronomer, and dive into this week's interstellar quiz. The answers are out there, you just have to connect the clues.
Try it out below and see how well you do!
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- https://www.space.com/astronomy/space-com-headlines-crossword-quiz-for-week-of-jan-12-2026-what-is-an-einstein-rosen-bridge-more-commonly-known-as
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- Sat, 17 Jan 2026 14:00:00 +0000Fri, 16 Jan 2026 20:27:26 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ This Week In Space podcast: Episode 193 — A History of Tomorrow ]]>
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On Episode 193 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik talks with NASA Chief Historian Dr. Roger Launius about about how NASA tracks its history, the public's perceptions of spaceflight, and how our understanding of the past might inform our future in space.
Also the Crew 11 return, Artemis II rollout, and MAVEN, phone home! Join us for this engaging conversation!
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.
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- https://www.space.com/entertainment/space-movies-shows/this-week-in-space-podcast-episode-193-a-history-of-tomorrow
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- Sat, 17 Jan 2026 13:55:14 +0000Sat, 17 Jan 2026 13:55:15 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ 1 month until a 'ring of fire' annular solar eclipse puts on a show — mostly for penguins ]]>
- Heads up, skywatchers! There's just one month to go until the annular solar eclipse of 2026.
At 4:56 a.m. EST (0956 GMT) on Feb. 17, the moon will begin to turn the sun into an impressive "ring of fire" during an annular solar eclipse. Maximum eclipse, whereby the largest proportion of the sun is covered, will occur at 7:12 a.m. EST (1212 GMT)
The striking phenomenon will be visible only to those watching from within the path of annularity, a 2,661-mile-long and 383-mile-wide (4,282 by 616 kilometers) route where the moon will cover about 96% of the sun's disk. Few will witness this eclipse, as the annular stage will only be visible from a remote region of Antarctica.
Viewers across the rest of Antarctica, along with parts of southern Africa and the southernmost regions of South America, will be treated to a partial solar eclipse. The rest of us will be able to follow the event online: official livestream details have not yet been released, but we'll share them as soon as they become available. You can also track the event as it happens via our solar eclipse live blog.
An observation platform at Concordia Station in Antarctica. The Concordia Station is in the path of annularity. (Image credit: IPEV/PNRA - E. Bondoux)
Solar eclipses happen at new moon, when the moon lines up perfectly between Earth and the sun, casting its shadow onto our planet. In a total solar eclipse, the moon is close enough to Earth that it appears the same size as — or slightly larger than — the sun, allowing it to fully cover the sun's disk and briefly turn day into night.
An annular eclipse, by contrast, occurs when the moon is farther from Earth in its slightly elliptical orbit and looks a little smaller than the sun. Instead of blocking the sun completely, it leaves a bright ring of sunlight encircling the moon — the striking "ring of fire" effect.
Where and when can I see the Feb. 17, 2026 annular solar eclipse?
The path of the annular solar eclipse on Feb. 17, 2026. (Image credit: Michael Zeiler/EclipseAtlas.com)
Here are the very limited places the ring of fire may be seen during the annular solar eclipse on Feb. 17, 2026:
Location: Concordia Research Station (French-Italian)
Annularity duration: 2 minutes, 1 second
Time: 11:46 GMT
Sun height: 5 degrees above 241 degrees azimuth
Location: Mirny Station, Queen Mary Land, Antarctica (Russia)
Annularity duration: 1 minute, 52 seconds
Time: 12:07 GMT
Sun height: 10 degrees above west 264 degrees azimuth
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- https://www.space.com/stargazing/solar-eclipses/1-month-until-a-ring-of-fire-annular-solar-eclipse-2026-puts-on-a-show-mostly-for-penguins
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- QJFoSH4nxpAWbKjB6vh5qH
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- Sat, 17 Jan 2026 13:00:00 +0000Fri, 16 Jan 2026 21:02:32 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Artemis 2 rocket rollout latest news: Giant NASA moon rocket arrives at launch pad ]]>
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NASA is preparing to roll out its towering Artemis 2 moon rocket to Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center on Jan. 17, and we will have full coverage of the major event here.
The Artemis 2 moon rocket consists of NASA's second Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft, and is scheduled to launch four astronauts around the moon as early as Feb. 6. See our full coverage.
NASA to hold press conference on Artemis 2 rollout
Hello, Space Fans! NASA is one day away from its historic rollout of the Artemis 2 rocket that will carry four astronauts to the moon for the first time in over 50 years.
The Artemis 2 rocket, NASA's second Space Launch System booster, is currently scheduled to head out to Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Saturday, Jan. 17, at 7 a.m. EST (1200 GMT). It should take several hours for the towering 322-foot rocket to reach the launch pad.
Space.com's Josh Dinner is on the scene at Kennedy Space Center for the Artemis 2 rollout, and will share insights on what the view is like there.
But first, NASA will hold a press conference today at 12 p.m. EST (1700 GMT) to discuss the Artemis 2 rollout, plans for the Feb. 6 launch of the 10-day mission around the moon.
You can watch that press conference live in the window above.
NASA Artemis 2 rollout press conference begins
NASA's press conference on the Artemis 2 moon rocket has begun. You can watch it live on this page, as well as on NASA's YouTube here.
Speaking during the event are:
John Honeycutt, Artemis II mission management team chair
Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, Artemis launch director, Exploration Ground Systems
Jeff Radigan, Artemis II lead flight director, Flight Operations Directorate
Lili Villarreal, landing and recovery director, Exploration Ground Systems
Jacob Bleacher, chief exploration scientist, Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate
"I will say, it really doesn't get much better than this," Honeycutt says in opening remarks." This is making history."
Artemis 2 rocket ready for rollout, fueling test set
NASA officials say the Artemis 2 moon rocket is ready to head out to its Florida launch pad early tomorrow, but it will be a slow trip.
The Artemis 2 Space Launch System will take between 8 to 10 hours to make the 4-mile trip from NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad 39B. Once the the rocket makes it to the pad, NASA will then connect it to pad infrastructure for fueling atop its Mobile Launch Platform.
Artemis 2 Launch Director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson says NASA plans to conduct a fueling test, called a "wet dress rehearsal," on Feb. 2. Based on the rocket's performance during that test, NASA will decide if Artemis 2 will be ready for a Feb. 6 launch.
The February launch window runs from Feb. 6 to Feb. 10. In addition to the fueling tests, NASA will need to perform a series of SLS and Orion spacecraft checks, as well a run through with Artemis 2 astronaut crew.
Overall, it appears NASA is ready to move the 322-foot-tall Space Launch System rocket out to Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Saturday, Jan. 17, but time appears tight for the space agency's hope to launch the four Artemis 2 astronauts to the moon in February as planned.
Artemis 2 is NASA's first crewed Artemis mission and the first astronaut mission to the moon in over 50 years. As such, a series of tests on both the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft for the mission must go well before it will be clear for astronauts to fly on then.
NASA has launched an SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft before, on the Artemis 1 mission in November 2022, but that was an uncrewed test flight. The Orion spacecraft on Artemis 2 is the first to include many life support systems to sustain astronuts on the 10-day mission.
NASA also wants to complete a fueling test on Feb. 2 that will help the space agency decide if it can proceed with a February launch. The February launch window is limited to a series of days between Feb. 6-10.
It took three attempts to launch Artemis 1, with fuel leaks contributing to two delays. NASA believe its has fixes in place, but needs to test them before Artemis 2 can launch.
If Artemis 2 is unable to launch in February, NASA can try again in March and April.
Artemis Launch Director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson said NASA has launch opportunities every month for Artemis 2, ranging from a few days to up to a week.
Artemis 2 launch in February on a tight timeline
If you're looking for a deeper dive into NASA's Artemis 2 timeline for its potential February launch, we've got you covered.
Our Spaceflight Staff Writer Josh Dinner at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida is there for tomorrow's planned rollout of the Artemis 2 rocket to the launch pad. He filed this report from today's press briefing and media events. Check it out:
With NASA's Artemis 2 moon rocket is ready to roll out to the launch pad, you may be wondering if you'll be able to watch it live online on Saturday, Jan. 17. Well, yes. Yes, you can.
NASA's livestream of the Artemis 2 roll out will begin at 7 a.m. EST (1100 GMT) and will be available in the window at the top of this page. You can also watch it directly from NASA via YouTube.
Here's our full guide from Spaceflight Editor Mike Wall:
Now that we're all set for rollout, this will be our final post of the day.
Thanks for joining us and we'll see you bright an early on Saturday for rollout.
Rollout day begins for NASA's Artemis 2
Good morning, Space Fans!
Rollout day is here for NASA's Artemis 2 moon rocket and the livestream for the giant moon rocket's move is underway. It could take up to 8 to 10 hours for NASA's Crawler Transporter 2 to haul the combined 11 million pound stack of the Artemis 2 Space Launch System rocket, mobile launch platform and Orion spacecraft to the pad.
Space.com's Josh Dinner is on the scene and shared a first update before dawn at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
First motion for today's rollout occurred at 7:04 a.m. EST (1204 GMT) as the huge rocket began its daylong trip to the launch pad. It is about 4 miles to Pad 39B from NASA's 52-stroy Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), where the SLS for Artemis 2 was stacked and assembled.
"It takes us a little while to get out of the building, but about an hour after we get that first motion, you'll begin to see this beautiful vehicle cross over the threshold of the VAB and come outside for the world to have a look," Artemis 2 Launch Director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson said Friday.
Here's a look at our report from Friday's Artemis 2 press conference:
As we near the 2-hour mark of NASA's up to 10-hour move of the Artemis 2 rocket to its Florida launch pad, the 322-foot-tall Space Launch System is fully visible and has exited its massive Vehicle Assembly Building hangar.
Above is an amazing image from Space.com's Josh Dinner at the Kennedy Space Center as he's monitoring the rollout to Pad 39B.
Here's a video update from Josh via the Space.com TikTok channel.
"The place is basically a rocket cathedral," Dinner says of the VAB.
NASA's Artemis 2 SLS moon rocket on the road to the Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida about 3 hours after starting its daylong jouney. (Image credit: NASA TV)
NASA's Artemis 2 moon rocket, the second-ever Space Launch System booster, is slowly making progress along the 4-mile journey to its Florida pad at Launch Complex 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
It's a slow roll for the Artemis 2 SLS. NASA's giant Crawler Transporter 2 carrier vehicle is carrying the 11 million pound stack at about 1 mile an hour. That's it's top speed. The massive carrier vehicle was originally built to move NASA's Saturn V rockets in the Apollo era, and later moved space shuttles to the pad as well.
Here's a video of the 32-story rocket as it emerged from NASA's cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building earlier today.
Artemis 2 rocket continues toward launch pad in hour five
The NASA team behind the scenes making Artemis II possible. Thank you. https://t.co/B699LjmWTLJanuary 17, 2026
NASA has now passed the five-hour mark of today's Artemis 2 moon rocket roll out to the launch pad. We should be just over halfway to the pad, or slightly more than halfway, depending on if NASA's progress is following its eight-hour schedule or 10-hour plan. Here's a wrap on how things havce gone so far:
NASA said it could take between 8-10 hours for the Artemis 2 Space Launch System to reach the pad due to the slow and steady pace of its Crawler Transporter, which moves at a top speed of 1 mile per hour, but does go slower on the turn toward Launch Pad 39B, as well as on the incline up to the pad.
That slow pace is necessary to keep the massive 11 million pound load of the 322-foot-tall SLS rocket and its Mobile Launch Platform stable.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has taken the time to thank the vast team supprting today's rollout for Artemis 2.
"Thanks to all those who have worked hard to get Artemis II to the pad! Just a few more hours to go," Isaacman wrote in a social media post.
"The NASA team behind the scenes making Artemis II possible. Thank you.," he added.
Artemis 2 arrives at launch pad for moon launch
🚀 Our moonbound Artemis II rocket is on its launch pad! The Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft rolled out from @NASAKennedy’s Vehicle Assembly Building, reaching Launch Pad 39B at 6:42pm ET (2342 UTC). Read more: https://t.co/NdRCRBfQGA pic.twitter.com/1oATLb7sTDJanuary 18, 2026
The Space Launch System rocket that will launch NASA's Artemis 2 astronauts around the moon arrived at its pad at Launch Complex 36B at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida at 6:42 p.m. EST (2342 GMT), more than 11 1/2 hours after leaving its Vehicle Assembly Building hangar.
"In the coming days, engineers and technicians will prepare the Artemis II rocket for the wet dress rehearsal, a test of fueling operations and countdown procedures," NASA officials said in an update. "At the end of January, the team will load the rocket with cryogenic, or super-cold, propellants, run through the countdown, and practice safely draining the propellants from the rocket – all essential steps before the first crewed Artemis mission."
That fueling test is actually scheduled for Feb. 2, just days ahead of theopening of NASA's first Artemis 2 launch window on Feb. 6.
"Additional wet dress rehearsals may be required to ensure the vehicle is completely checked out and ready for flight," NASA wrote. "If needed, NASA may rollback SLS and Orion to the Vehicle Assembly Building for additional work ahead of launch after the wet dress rehearsal."
With the Artemis 2 SLS at the launch pad, this will be our final post of the day.
Thanks for joining us for our live coverage of the SLS rollout and have a great weekend!
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- https://www.space.com/news/live/artemis-2-nasa-moon-rocket-rollout-jan-17-2026
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- aYQ9qNvg4uoxSrtxgXz6MQ
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- Sat, 17 Jan 2026 12:17:31 +0000Sun, 18 Jan 2026 00:58:10 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Crew-11 astronauts arrive in Houston after 1st-ever medical evacuation from ISS ]]>
- The four astronauts of SpaceX's Crew-11 mission made it to Houston today (Jan. 16), just a day after their unprecedented medical evacuation from the International Space Station.
The Crew-11 spaceflyers — NASA's Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, Kimiya Yui of Japan and cosmonaut Oleg Platonov — splashed down off the coast of Long Beach, California early Thursday morning (Jan. 15). They then spent a day and night at a local medical facility before heading east to Texas.
"The four crew members of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 mission have arrived at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where they will continue standard postflight reconditioning and evaluations," NASA officials wrote in an emailed update on Friday afternoon (Jan. 16).
"All crew members remain stable," the update adds. "To protect the crew’s medical privacy, no specific details regarding the condition or individual will be shared."
Crew-11 launched in early August for a planned six-month stay aboard the International Space Station. But one of the four crewmates experienced a medical issue in orbit last week, prompting NASA to cut the mission short by five weeks or so.
The orbiting lab is currently staffed by a skeleton crew of three — NASA's Chris Williams and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikayev, both of the Russian space agency Roscosmos.
Recovery teams attend to Crew-11's Crew Dragon capsule shortly after splashdown on Jan. 15, 2026. (Image credit: NASA/SpaceX)
The orbiting lab won't return to its baseline of seven crewmembers until SpaceX's Crew-12 mission arrives. Crew-12 is currently scheduled to launch on Feb. 15, though NASA and SpaceX are studying the possibility of moving that timeline up a bit if possible.
Crew-12 isn't the only astronaut launch that NASA is preparing for at the moment. The agency is also gearing up for the liftoff of Artemis 2, which will send four people on a 10-day mission around the moon.
Artemis 2's Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule will roll out to the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Saturday (Jan. 17). If all goes well with the rollout and subsequent testing, Artemis 2 could launch as soon as Feb. 6.
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- https://www.space.com/space-exploration/human-spaceflight/nasa-says-its-crew-11-astronauts-have-arrived-in-houston-after-1st-ever-medical-evacuation-from-space-station
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- UBrsqYcAiL8vrk5ZFw9cR9
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- Sat, 17 Jan 2026 05:04:07 +0000Sat, 17 Jan 2026 05:04:08 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Watch NASA roll huge Artemis 2 moon rocket out to the launch pad today ]]>
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NASA will roll its Artemis 2 moon rocket out to the launch pad today, and you can watch the slow-moving action live.
The 4-mile (6.4-kilometer) trek began today just after 7 a.m. EST (1200 GMT) and will likely take eight to 10 hours. You can watch it live here at Space.com courtesy of NASA, or directly via the space agency.
"We will be at a cruising speed of just under 1 mile per hour," NASA Artemis Launch Director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson said of today's move on Friday. "It'll be a little slower around the turns and up the hill, and that journey will take us about eight to 10 hours to get there."
The Artemis 1 stack sits atop Launch Complex 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center on March 18, 2022, following its hours-long rollout. (Image credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky)
Artemis 2 will send NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency, on a 10-day trip around the moon and back. It will be the first crewed mission to lunar realms since Apollo 17 way back in 1972.
After rollout is complete, NASA will conduct a number of checkouts with Artemis 2's SLS and Orion. One of the most important tests is a wet dress rehearsal, during which teams will load the rocket with its cryogenic propellants and conduct a simulated launch countdown.
That milestone is currently planned for Feb. 2, and how it goes will help set the timeline for launch. And a smooth wet dress is far from guaranteed.
Wet dress rehearsals for the Artemis 1 mission, for example, revealed leaks of liquid hydrogen. NASA rolled the Artemis 1 stack back to the VAB multiple times to deal with the issue, which, among other factors, delayed the mission's launch significantly.
Artemis 1 successfully sent an uncrewed Orion to lunar orbit and back. The mission lifted off on Nov. 16, 2022 and ended with Orion's Pacific Ocean splashdown on Dec. 11 of that year.
NASA has not yet announced a target launch date for Artemis 2 and will not do so until the wet dress and other key checkouts are in the books.
There are three liftoff windows for the mission at the moment, which feature potential launch opportunities on Feb. 6, 7, 8, 10 and 11; March 6, 7, 8, 9 and 11; and April 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6, respectively.
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- https://www.space.com/space-exploration/artemis/artemis-2-sls-orion-rocket-rollout-launch-pad-ksc-webcast
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- DxuqbDfiMuutiwwU3973Kk
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- Fri, 16 Jan 2026 23:00:00 +0000Sat, 17 Jan 2026 15:44:09 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Congress passes $24.4 billion NASA budget, rejecting Trump's deep cuts ]]>
- Congress just sent NASA a monetary lifeline.
On Thursday (Jan. 15), the U.S. Senate passed a "minibus" spending bill that allocates $24.4 billion to NASA for fiscal year 2026 (FY26), which began on Oct. 1. The House of Representatives passed the same legislation last week, which means the bill now just needs President Donald Trump's signature to become law.
And the president is expected to sign, according to the nonprofit Planetary Society, even though the legislation is a rejection of the deep cuts Trump proposed for NASA last spring.
The president's 2026 budget proposal allocated just $18.8 billion to NASA, a 24% reduction from 2025 levels. The deepest cuts were to the agency's science programs, which had their funding slashed by 47% — a figure that, if enacted, would have terminated more than 40 NASA missions.
But influential members of the House and Senate had long signaled that they were not on board with this budgetary plan — a key fact, obviously, as Congress controls the nation's purse strings.
And they backed their words up with votes over the past week: The minibus passed the House 397-28 and the Senate 82-15.
The legislation consists of three appropriations bills, called Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies (which deals with funding for NASA and the National Science Foundation); Energy and Water Development; and Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies.
"Today, we sent funding bills to the president's desk that reject the steep cuts he wanted and protect investments that families across America depend on every day," Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and ranking member of the Energy and Water Development Subcommittee, said in a statement on Thursday.
"This package saves a key program to save families on their energy bills, sustains our investments in scientific research, and protects essential funding for our public lands and Tribes, among so much else," she added.
The new legislation almost completely rejects Trump's deep cuts to NASA science. The White House proposed just $3.9 billion for the agency's Science Mission Directorate for FY26, but the minibus allocates $7.25 billion — just a 1% drop from enacted 2025 levels.
The new funding saves dozens of missions that were slated to be terminated under the White House's budget proposal, including the Da Vinci and VERITAS Venus probes (which have yet to launch) and the New Horizons Pluto mission, the Juno Jupiter orbiter and the OSIRIS-APEX asteroid project (which are all operational in deep space).
One big-ticket item remains canceled, however: Mars Sample Return (MSR), NASA's planned campaign to bring to Earth pieces of the Red Planet collected by its Perseverance rover. But the baseline MSR architecture has faced delays and cost overruns for a while now, and NASA is already looking for new ways to get the samples home.
The newly passed legislation isn't the whole story on NASA's 2026 funding, by the way; the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," which Congress passed last summer, allocates $10 billion to the agency over the next six years, mostly to fund human spaceflight activities, as The Planetary Society pointed out.
"The result is that NASA will receive slightly more than $27.53 billion in FY 2026. Based on the data available in our Historical NASA Budget Data tracker, this is the largest budget for NASA since FY 1998, when adjusted for inflation," Jack Kiraly, director of government relations at The Planetary Society, wrote in an update on Thursday.
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- https://www.space.com/space-exploration/in-rejection-of-trumps-deep-cuts-congress-passes-usd24-4-billion-budget-for-nasa
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- 6eLwagxTBh9YzmNW5WgTWN
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- Fri, 16 Jan 2026 22:00:00 +0000Fri, 16 Jan 2026 21:30:20 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Astronomers searching for alien life are sharpening our cosmic clocks. Here's why ]]>
- Astronomers at the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute have learned to read the subtle "twinkle" of a distant cosmic lighthouse, revealing how interstellar space distorts radio signals as they travel across the galaxy.
The research shows that gas between stars can shift the arrival time of a pulsar's signal by mere billionths of a second.
While imperceptible to humans, these tiny delays are significant for experiments that rely on pulsars as ultra-precise cosmic clocks, the researchers say, particularly efforts to detect low-frequency gravitational waves and to search for signs of intelligent life beyond Earth.
"Pulsars are wonderful tools that can teach us much about the universe and our own stellar neighborhood," study lead author Grayce Brown of the SETI Institute said in a statement. "Results like these help not just pulsar science, but other fields of astronomy as well, including SETI."
Beginning in late February 2023, Brown and her team conducted a nearly daily observing campaign lasting 10 months using the SETI-operated Allen Telescope Array in California. The team tracked subtle changes in radio signals from the pulsar PSR J0332+5434 — the fast-spinning remnant of a neutron star located more than 3,000 light-years from Earth and the brightest pulsar visible to the telescope.
From nearly 400 observations, the team identified changes in the pulsar's "twinkling" pattern, known as scintillation, over timescales of hundreds of days. As the radio waves blasted from the pulsar's poles travel through space, they pass through clouds of charged gas, primarily free electrons, that bend, scatter and slightly delay the signal. This interaction produces scintillation, the radio equivalent of how stars appear to twinkle in Earth's atmosphere, according to the study.
As Earth, the pulsar, and the intervening interstellar gas move relative to one another, bright and dim patches form across radio frequencies and evolve over time. These shifting patterns subtly alter when the pulses arrive, introducing timing delays on the order of tens of nanoseconds, the statement says.
Such tiny discrepancies between the predicted and observed arrival times of pulsar pulses can have outsized consequences. Pulsar timing arrays search for low-frequency gravitational waves by looking for correlated deviations in pulse arrival times caused by the stretching and squeezing of spacetime. If delays introduced by interstellar gas are not properly accounted for, they can obscure — or even mimic — the faint signals researchers are trying to detect, the study notes.
Beyond helping to improve pulsar timing, scientists say the findings also provide a valuable tool for SETI researchers working to distinguish genuine cosmic signals from human-made interference. "Noticeable scintillation can help SETI scientists distinguish between human-made radio signals and signals from other star systems," the statement reads.
"We need some way to differentiate between signals coming from Earth and signals coming from beyond our Solar System," Brown told The Debrief. "Because of this research, we know how much scintillation to expect from a radio signal traveling through this pulsar's region of interstellar space."
"If we don't see that scintillation," she added, "then the signal is probably just interference from Earth."
The observations were part of a broader effort that monitored roughly 20 pulsars over about a year, following a pilot phase in late 2022. While the team did not identify a repeating pattern in the scintillation changes, the study notes future observing campaigns lasting longer than a year could further refine predictions and improve corrections for interstellar distortion.
The study was published on Dec. 10, 2025 in The Astrophysical Journal.
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- https://www.space.com/space-exploration/search-for-life/astronomers-searching-for-alien-life-are-sharpening-our-cosmic-clocks-heres-why
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- djjcWtRMX6jMhjZUJJGmc9
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- Fri, 16 Jan 2026 21:00:00 +0000Fri, 16 Jan 2026 19:35:56 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ NASA hopes to launch Artemis 2 astronauts to the moon next month, but it's going to be tight: 'This is not a rush' ]]>
- CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA is about to roll its massive new Artemis 2 moon rocket out to the launch pad.
Artemis 2's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket is expected to roll out of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) here at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) tomorrow morning (Jan. 17) around 7 a.m. EST (1200 GMT). It's roughly 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) from the VAB to Launch Complex-39B, which the rocket will traverse over eight to 10 hours aboard the agency's Crawler-Transporter 2 vehicle.
Once its journey to the pad is complete, mission managers and ground teams will conduct a series of systems integrations and tests to ready SLS for a fueling and countdown simulation called a "wet dress rehearsal," which is currently scheduled for Feb. 2. If everything goes according to plan, NASA hopes to get Artemis 2 off the ground during the mission's first launch window, which opens Feb. 6 — but that is a very big "if."
Artemis 2 is the second mission of NASA's Artemis program, after Artemis 1, which successfully sent an uncrewed Orion to lunar orbit and back in late 2022. The coming mission will be the first to fly astronauts to the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. Apollo 17 put astronauts down on the lunar surface, but Artemis 2 will not do so; its four crewmembers will loop around the moon on a "free-return trajectory" and come back to Earth after about 10 days in space.
Those astronauts — NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen — will fly farther from Earth than any humans in history, observing the far side of the moon and testing Orion's systems to ensure the spacecraft can sustain a crew in space. Their mission will set the stage for Artemis 3, which will perform the program's first crewed lunar landing in 2027 or 2028, if all goes to plan.
NASA's goal to perform Artemis 2's wet dress rehearsal on Feb. 2, then turn the pad over for a launch as early as Feb. 6 would basically mean every single thing needs to go right. And that's far from guaranteed. During Artemis 1, for example, SLS experienced fueling issues, hydrogen leaks and ground infrastructure process failures that delayed launch for over six months.
Crew-11's recent departure from the ISS leaves a skeleton crew of only three, and an increasing impetus for NASA to launch their replacements as soon as possible. NASA is currently targeting Feb. 15 for the launch of Crew-12, which puts it just after the end of the first Artemis 2 launch window.
Coordinating the preparations for both missions, though, is not something NASA officials see as a conflict. "This is not a rush," said Jeff Radigan, NASA's lead flight director for Artemis 2, during a pre-rollout press conference today (Jan. 16).
"It's not prudent for us to put both those [missions] up at the same time, but we also have to ensure that both of them are ready to go," he added. "We may run into an issue, and the last thing we want to do is make a decision too early and then lose an opportunity."
Whether Artemis 2 will be ready to fly at any point in its February window — which features possible launch opportunities on Feb. 6, 7, 8, 10 and 11 — can only be determined once it's at the pad and the checkouts are done.
"I think wet dress is really the driver to that and how it goes. It would be hard to say that you could not [have SLS ready to launch in February]," Artemis 2 Launch Director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson said during today's press conference.
John Honeycutt, the Artemis 2 mission management team chair, stressed that NASA will not bite off more than it can chew during prep for these two crewed missions.
"We're going to do our job to be ready to go fly," Honeycutt said today. "I'm not going to tell the agency that I'm ready to go fly until I think we're ready to go fly."
If Artemis 2 misses the February window, NASA will reload for another try in March (with opportunities on March 6, 7, 8, 9 and 11) or April (April 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6).
]]>
- https://www.space.com/space-exploration/artemis/nasa-hopes-to-launch-artemis-2-astronauts-to-the-moon-next-month-but-its-going-to-be-tight-this-is-not-a-rush
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- YsEWz5zvxJa4oqdBwP8coB
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- Fri, 16 Jan 2026 20:30:00 +0000Fri, 16 Jan 2026 21:55:44 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Meet a trio of intrepid cadets boldly joining 'Star Trek: Starfleet Academy' (interview) ]]>
- The blazing launch of Paramount+'s "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy" is now in the books this week, and avid fans can look forward to a galaxy of new characters as showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau take us into the far future of the "Trek" timeline for a 32nd-century education amid the stars.
Beginning with the two-episode premiere that just happened Jan. 15, creator Gaia Violo's 10-chapter "Starfleet Academy" series lifts off to chronicle the first new class of Starfleet cadets in 120 years after The Burn, a devastating cosmic event documented in the third season of "Star Trek: Discovery."
We recently connected with Bella Shepard (Genesis Lythe), Zoë Steiner (Tarima Sadal), and Karim Diané (Jay-Den Kraag) — part of this inspiring collection of prospective cadets — to hear what they're most excited about in this debut season, connecting with their characters, and the significance of forever being an official part of "Trek" history.
Bella Shepard as Genesis Lythe in "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy" (Image credit: Paramount+)
"There's so many gratifying aspects of it," Shepard tells Space.com. "The fans' reception of it is very gratifying. And also being able to work together with these guys has meant a lot to me. And also working with Holly [Hunter] and Paul [Giamatti] and Bob [Picardo] and Frakes [Jonathan] Tig [Notaro] and everyone we've met from just being in this world is a big deal for me.”
"And the writing that something like 'Star Trek' allows is so fleshed out," Steiner adds. “It's obviously otherworldly and outer space and larger than life in that sense, but it's very grounded in reality. And that's a really great combo to have as an actor."
Zoë Steiner as Tarima Sadall in "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy" (Image credit: Paramount+)
Karim Diané, who portrays the young Klingon recruit Jay-Den Kraag, had a reality check moment when he first reclined in the USS Athena's honorary center seat.
"I think walking onto the bridge and sitting on the captain's chair blew my mind," he recalls. "I was like, 'This is crazy.'"
Regarding their "Starfleet Academy" roles, the cast offered views on their parts and pondered how alike or different in real life they are compared to the characters.
"I look nothing like Jay-Den in real life," admits Diané. "I wish I had them long dreads and piercing eyes and wrinkly forehead. Basically, we look different, but internally we're very much the same. I’m West African and Central African after my mother. So I'm half-Guinean and half-Congolese. My tribe is a Mandingo tribe. So I really do relate to being a part of this ancient tribal culture.
"As a Mandingo man, we were warriors of West Africa. Growing up, I've been expected to be a warrior in a modern way. To be a sports star and play basketball and football, and I have no interest in sports. I just want to be an artist. And that's very similar to Jay-Den, he doesn’t want to be a fighter, he wants to be a lover and a healer."
Karim Diané as Jay-Den Kraag in "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy" (Image credit: Paramount+)
"Genesis and I are very similar in our drive and our ambition," Shepard notes. "Personally, there are many things I want to do with my life, and I want to do it all.
"Genesis has a lot of pressure on herself from her relationship with her father, and I relate to pressure in general. We're also dissimilar in that our insecurities are very different, and it's been so fun to play Genesis and create this raw human-like alien."
"Tarima and I share how strong our connection is to our emotional landscape," says Steiner. "Tarima is nicer, maybe, and she’s also very generous. I’d like to be as compassionate as her."
"Star Trek: Starfleet Academy" streams on Paramount+ starting on Jan. 15.
]]>
- https://www.space.com/entertainment/space-movies-shows/meet-a-trio-of-intrepid-cadets-boldly-joining-star-trek-starfleet-academy-interview
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- SyhxvT3RnLYneNk4KtxeWS
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- Fri, 16 Jan 2026 20:00:00 +0000Fri, 16 Jan 2026 23:26:21 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ SpaceX launches its 1st national security mission of 2026, sending US spy satellites to orbit ]]>
- SpaceX launched its first national security mission of the year on Friday night (Jan. 16), sending a batch of spy satellites aloft from California.
A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base Friday at 11:39 p.m. EST (8:39 p.m. local California time; 0439GMT on Jan. 17), kicking off a mission for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) called NROL-105.
NROL-105 was the 12th launch devoted to building out the NRO's "proliferated architecture," a new reconnaissance constellation that prioritizes flexibility, speed of deployment, cost efficiency and resilience.
"Having hundreds of small satellites on orbit is invaluable to the NRO's mission," NRO Director Chris Scolese said in the NROL-105 press kit, which you can find here.
"They will provide greater revisit rates, increased coverage, more timely delivery of information — and ultimately help us deliver more of what our customers need even faster," he added.
The proliferated architecture satellites are built by SpaceX and Northrop Grumman. All of them have reached orbit aboard Falcon 9 rockets launching from Vandenberg. The first such mission, NROL-146, lifted off in May 2024.
The Falcon 9's first stage returned to Earth safely on Friday, touching down at Vandenberg about 7.5 minutes after liftoff. It was the second launch and landing for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description.
We don't know how many satellites went up on NROL-105, or where and when they're scheduled to be deployed; the mission description does not reveal this information.
And we didn't get it during the webcast; SpaceX ended its livestream shortly after booster landing, likely at the NRO's request.
NROL-105 was SpaceX's seventh mission of 2026. Four of those launches have been devoted to building out the company's huge Starlink broadband megaconstellation.
Editor's note: This story was updated at 11:50 p.m. ET on Jan. 16 with news of launch and booster landing.
]]>
- https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/spacex-nrol-105-spy-satellite-mission-launch
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- xxfLebDcKYn8ceochoBHhA
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- Fri, 16 Jan 2026 19:00:00 +0000Sat, 17 Jan 2026 04:54:36 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Watch SpaceX Crew-11 spacecraft blaze a fiery trail through the sky during medical evacuation from ISS (video) ]]>
- Stunned Californians have shared spectacular footage of the Crew-11 SpaceX Dragon spacecraft cutting a fiery path through the night sky as four astronauts returned to Earth as part of the 1st-ever medical evacuation from the International Space Station (ISS) on Jan. 15.
NASA's Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke along with JAXA's Kimiya Yui and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov had their tour aboard the ISS cut short by an unspecified "medical concern" that arose on Jan. 7 and affected an undisclosed member of the Crew-11 mission.
Endeavour's descent carved a spectacular glowing trail through the night sky bright enough to be seen across swathes of California. Residents looked on in awe as atmospheric friction brought on by the blistering speed of re-entry wreathed the capsule's heat shield in glowing plasma.
@SpaceX Crew-11 coming in hot with a plasma wake. Viewed from Berkeley shores with SF in the background. pic.twitter.com/Hz4pdCIceEJanuary 15, 2026
Its meteor-like passage was captured in breathtaking clarity by Cindy Vejar from the city of Morgan Hill, California, who witnessed the capsule streak through the pre-dawn sky en-route to its watery landing off the coast of San Diego, as depicted in the video above. "This is my first time to see something like this and I was absolutely amazed at what I was seeing. Very spectacular!," Vejar told Space.com in an email.
I got to see crew-11 aboard the Dragon fly by on their re-entry back to earth. That was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen (the sonic boom hit about 5 minutes after) pic.twitter.com/Gou182S2XqJanuary 15, 2026
Some onlookers also reported hearing sonic booms accompanying the sight of the Crew-11 spacecraft, which entered the atmosphere while travelling thousands of miles per hour before decelerating to just 120 miles per hour (193 kilometers per hour) before deploying its final set of main parachutes to slow down. "I got to see Crew-11 aboard the Dragon fly by on their re-entry back to earth," wrote X user Mel the Honeybee after spotting the Dragon blaze through the night sky. "That was the coolest thing I've ever seen (the sonic boom hit about 5 minutes after)"
Dragon and @NASA’s Crew-11 return to Earth, splashing down off the coast of California pic.twitter.com/Kc7c6VX14AJanuary 15, 2026
The four person crew of Endeavour were swiftly extracted from the capsule and are due to return to Houston after undergoing a post-landing medical at a San Diego hospital. NASA administrator Jared Isaacman announced that the crewmember affected by the medical concern is "doing fine" in a press conference following the successful return to Earth and that the agency would share updates on their health "as soon as it's appropriate to do so".
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- https://www.space.com/space-exploration/human-spaceflight/watch-spacex-crew-11-spacecraft-blaze-a-fiery-trail-through-the-sky-during-medical-evacuation-from-iss-video
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- qvdqcXkGU2yBMaWAKxJBFY
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- Fri, 16 Jan 2026 18:00:00 +0000Fri, 16 Jan 2026 17:14:59 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Northern lights may be visible in 15 states Jan. 16-17 ]]>
- The northern lights may appear in skies across the northern U.S. tonight (Jan. 16), according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center.
Earth is currently being buffeted by a high-speed solar wind stream from a colossal coronal hole on the sun. When this speedy solar wind arrives at Earth, it can impact our magnetosphere enough to cause periods of geomagnetic storming at the minor (G1) to moderate (G2) levels. This, in turn, can lead to impressive aurora displays.
According to NOAA's SWPC, this current speedy solar wind stream could trigger minor (G1) geomagnetic storm conditions with a chance of isolated moderate (G2) storming at times through Jan. 18. If G2 levels are reached, auroras could extend farther south than usual, with possible visibility as far south as parts of the northern U.S., including states like Idaho and New York, as well as Canada and northern Europe.
Where can I see the northern lights tonight?
Possible aurora view line for tonight courtesy of NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center. (Image credit: Map: NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center, background image: Daisy Dobrijevic. Graphic created in Canva. )
States that could see auroras tonight
Based on the latest NOAA aurora forecast map, the following 15 U.S. states appear fully or partially above the aurora view line:
Alaska
North Dakota
Minnesota
Montana
Wisconsin
Michigan
South Dakota
Idaho
Maine
Vermont
New Hampshire
Washington
Iowa
Wyoming
New York
But remember, auroras can be very fickle. The list is based on current forecast data at the time of publication, but if conditions strengthen, northern lights could reach much farther south than expected. Equally, if conditions don't align, we could end up twiddling our thumbs, with no auroras at all.
Northern Hemisphere aurora forecast courtesy of the U.K. Met Office
What time should I look for the northern lights tonight?
The northern lights could be visible across 15 U.S. states tonight (Jan. 16-17) as soon as it gets dark, so it's worth keeping an eye on the sky (and your aurora alerts) throughout the evening, especially in areas with clear, dark skies.
According to NOAA's 3-day forecast, geomagnetic storm activity is expected to be best at the following times:
1 a.m. - 7 a.m. EST (0600-1200 GMT): Minor (G1) geomagnetic storm conditions possible.
How can I see the northern lights from where I live?
If you're in one of the 15 U.S. states where auroras might make an appearance tonight, a little preparation can go a long way toward improving your odds of seeing them.
Start by finding a spot with an unobstructed view toward north, preferably somewhere dark and well away from city lights. The clearer your view of the northern horizon, the better.
Start scanning the sky with your phone's camera as they are usually good at picking up faint auroral glows that aren't immediately obvious to the naked eye, helping you identify where activity may be starting.
Dark adaptation is crucial and often overlooked when aurora chasing. If you can, give your eyes at least 30 minutes to fully adjust to the darkness so you can detect subtle auroral features. Keep in mind that even a quick look at a bright light or phone screen can reset the process, forcing you to start over
Dress for the wait. Aurora shows can be unpredictable and if conditions look promising you may find yourself waiting outside for a while. Make sure to wear plenty of layers!
We recommend downloading a space weather app that provides aurora forecasts based on your location. One option I use is "My Aurora Forecast & Alerts," available for both iOS and Android. However, any similar app should work well. I also use the "Space Weather Live" app, which is available on iOS and Android, to get a deeper understanding of whether the current space weather conditions are favorable for aurora sightings.
]]>
- https://www.space.com/stargazing/auroras/northern-lights-may-be-visible-in-15-states-tonight-jan-16
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- PWXVqA5fX6sEmBw6aUD8UR
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- Fri, 16 Jan 2026 17:00:00 +0000Mon, 19 Jan 2026 13:47:05 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Bundle up and look up: 5 winter sky wonders every stargazer should look out for ]]>
- In the northern United States, enjoying the starry winter sky requires protection against the prevailing low temperatures. Fortunately, that's easy to manage — as any ski enthusiast will tell you. Indeed, many assiduous skywatchers observe outdoors with little discomfort.
You don't need to bundle up like Ralphie in the holiday movie A Christmas Story. One of the best garments is a hooded ski parka, which is lightweight yet provides excellent insulation. Ski pants are far superior to ordinary trousers, and most important of all is to remember your feet. Two pairs of warm socks inside loose-fitting shoes are often adequate, but for extended observing sessions in truly penguin-like conditions, insulated boots are a must.
Under a clear, crisp and cold winter sky, there are many celestial sights that can be enjoyed with the unaided eye, binoculars, or a small telescope. We'll assume that you're gazing skyward as soon as evening twilight has ended and complete darkness has fallen — roughly 90 minutes or so after sunset. What follows is my personal Top Five list of deep-sky objects visible during the early evening hours of January and February.
Putting together a list of the best is, of course, very subjective. From your own nights of skywatching, you may try compiling your own list and see if you agree with me.
5. Messier 35: A superb star cluster!
Messier 35 open star cluster to the left and the open star cluster NGC2158 to the lower right. (Image credit: knickohr/Getty Images)
About halfway up in the eastern sky are the Gemini Twins, Pollux and Castor. They appear in the sky as two matchstick men holding hands. During this winter of 2026, brilliant Jupiter happens to be residing right in the middle of this constellation, like a brilliant silvery "star." Henry Neeley (1879-1963), who was a popular lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium during the 1940s and '50s, would often refer to the "long wedge" of Gemini, composed of the stars Pollux and Castor (the heads of the Twins) and Alhena, which marks one of Pollux's feet.
With binoculars, it's well worth sweeping the region westward from Alhena toward the fainter stars of Tejat and Propus. Just above and to the right of Propus lies Messier 35, located near Castor's trailing foot.
On dark, clear nights, M35 is faintly visible to the unaided eye. Through low-power binoculars, it may first appear as a dim, unresolved interstellar cloud, but look again. Even through light-polluted suburban skies, 7x binoculars reveal at least a half dozen of the cluster's brightest stars against the whitish glow of about 200 fainter ones. M35 has been described as a "splendid specimen" whose stars appear in curving rows, reminding one of the bursting of a skyrocket.
The late Walter Scott Houston (1912-1993), who wrote the Deep-Sky Wonders column in Sky & Telescope magazine for nearly half a century, called M35: ". . . one of the greatest objects in the heavens. A superb object that appears as big as the Moon and fills the eyepiece with a glitter of bright stars from center to edge."
4. The Double Cluster of Perseus
Double Cluster in Perseus captured with the Vaonis Vespera Pro from Nottingham, U.K. (Image credit: Daisy Dobrijevic/Future)
If you look halfway up in the northwest, you'll be able to see the familiar zigzag of five bright stars forming the constellation of Cassiopeia, the Queen. Extend an imaginary line about one and a half times the distance from Gamma Cassiopeiae through Delta Cassiopeiae (Ruchbah), and you'll encounter a faint blur of light.
Binoculars quickly reveal this glow as two magnificent open clusters — NGC 869 and NGC 884 — collectively known as the Double Cluster. Traditionally associated with the sword handle of Perseus, it is among the most spectacular sights in the winter sky.
Each cluster spans about 45 arc minutes, or about one-third larger than the apparent diameter of the moon. So, you should use very low powers to get both clusters together in the same field of view. Much higher powers will cause the star field to be spread out and not as impressive. Close inspection with a good telescope will reveal a fine ruby-colored star near the center of 884.
3 & 2: The face of the angry bull (The Hyades) and The Seven Sisters (The Pleiades)
Hyades star cluster to the left and the Pleiades to the right. The bright orange star Aldebaran is prominent in the upper left of the image. (Image credit: m-gucci/Getty Images)
High in the southern sky shines Taurus the Bull, home to two of the sky's most famous star clusters: the Hyades and the Pleiades.
These star patterns belong to the deep-sky category of open, or galactic clusters (of which Messier 35 and the Double Cluster are as well), concentrated along the plane of the Milky Way. In winter, we are looking directly into our galaxy's local spiral arm — called the Orion Arm — where both bright stars and rich clusters abound.
The Hyades lie about 150 light-years away, making them the nearest major open cluster to Earth. Their stars form a distinctive V-shape that outlines the bull's face. The bright orange star Aldebaran appears to complete this pattern, but it is actually a foreground object only about 65 light-years away — a chance alignment that fooled ancient skywatchers and helped cement Taurus's identity in classical mythology.
The Pleiades, by contrast, sit about 440 light-years from Earth and resemble a tiny dipper. Beginners often mistake them for the Little Dipper. At first glance, they look like a shimmering patch of light, but careful viewing reveals six or seven bright stars, with keen-eyed observers spotting many more under excellent conditions.
For the very best view, use 7x binoculars or a small telescope at 15-20x with a wide field of view. The stars glitter like an array of icy blue diamonds on black velvet. Or, as Tennyson wrote, in the opening passage of Locksley Hall, they ". . . glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid."
The Pleiades isn't composed of just seven stars; recent research reveals it's a vast "Greater Pleiades Complex" with over 3,000 stars, though the familiar, bright core contains about 1000 members.
1. The Orion Nebula
The Orion Nebula captured with the ASKAR 107PHQ telescope. (Image credit: James Yu/Getty Images)
Orion, the Mighty Hunter, is now high toward the south-southeast by nightfall. Below Orion's famous three-star belt is undoubtedly one of the most wonderfully beautiful objects in the sky: Messier 42, the Orion Nebula. It appears to surround the middle star of a fainter trio of stars in a line that marks the hunter's sword. It's invisible to the unaided eye, though the star itself appears a bit fuzzy. It is resolved in good binoculars and small telescopes as a bright gray-green mist enveloping the star. In larger telescopes, it appears to be a great, glowing, irregular, translucent fan-shaped cloud. A sort of auroral glow is induced in this nebula by fluorescence from the strong ultraviolet radiation of four hot stars entangled within it: Theta-one Orionis, better known as the Trapezium.
Edward Emerson Barnard (1857-1923), for many years an astronomer at Yerkes Observatory, once remarked that it reminded him of a great ghostly bat and that he always experienced a feeling of surprise when he saw it. William T. Olcott (1873-1936) called it "A glorious and wonderful sight . . . words fail utterly to describe its beauty."
The Orion Nebula is a vast cloud of extremely tenuous glowing gas and dust, approximately 1,500 light-years away and about 30 light-years across (or more than 20,000 times the diameter of the entire solar system). Astrophysicists now believe that this nebulous stuff is a stellar incubator; the primeval chaos from which star formation is presently underway.
Certainly, all you need to do is take one look through the eyepiece of a good telescope and you will see for yourself why this interstellar nursery is my choice as the number one sky object to look for on a clear, dark winter's night.
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- https://www.space.com/stargazing/bundle-up-and-look-up-5-winter-sky-wonders-every-stargazer-should-look-out-for
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- Fri, 16 Jan 2026 16:00:00 +0000Thu, 15 Jan 2026 20:48:16 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Jupiter has more oxygen than the sun, new simulations reveal ]]>
- Deep beneath Jupiter's stormy skies lies a crucial clue to how all the planets in our solar system formed.
In a new study, scientists used advanced computer models to peer beneath Jupiter's dense swirling cloud tops and tackle a question that has lingered for decades: How much oxygen does the gas giant actually contain? The study suggests that Jupiter holds about one and a half times more oxygen than the sun, helping explain not only the gas giant's origins, but also the early history of the solar system.
"It really shows how much we still have to learn about planets, even in our own solar system," study lead author Jeehyun Yang, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago, said in a statement.
Observations dating back more than 360 years show that Jupiter's skies are dominated by immense, long-lasting storms, including the iconic Great Red Spot, which is bigger than Earth. However, directly measuring Jupiter's deep atmosphere is extremely difficult. Spacecraft like NASA's Juno mission can probe the planet's gravity and magnetic fields, while past missions have sampled only the uppermost layers of gas. But oxygen on Jupiter is mostly locked away in water, which condenses deep below the visible clouds, far beyond the reach of instruments in orbit around the gas giant.
To get around that problem, researchers from the University of Chicago and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory developed the most detailed simulations yet of Jupiter's interior atmosphere. Their models combine atmospheric chemistry with hydrodynamics, tracking not just which molecules are present but how gases and cloud particles move through the planet over time.
That combination turned out to be key. Earlier studies often treated chemistry and atmospheric motion separately, leading to wildly different estimates of Jupiter's water and oxygen content. By modeling both together, the new analysis shows how water vapor, clouds and chemical reactions interact as material slowly circulates from deep, hot layers to cooler higher altitudes, according to the statement.
The results point to a Jupiter that has about 1.5 times more oxygen than the sun. That finding supports formation models in which Jupiter grew by accreting icy material early in the solar system's history, likely near or beyond the so-called snow line, where water ice was abundant. Forming so far from the sun's warmth would have allowed Jupiter to naturally incorporate more oxygen-rich material locked in frozen water than the sun itself.
The simulations also suggest Jupiter's deep atmospheric circulation is slower than previously assumed, with gases taking weeks — not hours — to move between layers. That insight could reshape scientists' understanding of how heat, storms and chemistry interact inside the planet.
Planets preserve chemical fingerprints of the environments in which they formed, making them time capsules of planetary history. Understanding which conditions give rise to different kinds of planets not only clarifies the solar system's evolution, but also helps guide the search for habitable worlds beyond our own.
Their findings were published Jan 8 in the Planetary Science Journal.
]]>
- https://www.space.com/astronomy/jupiter/jupiter-has-more-oxygen-than-the-sun-new-simulations-reveal
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- FUuDPLQUa3DeGic3ausJoS
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- Fri, 16 Jan 2026 15:00:00 +0000Fri, 16 Jan 2026 16:44:44 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Hubble Telescope sees baby stars hard at work | Space photo of the day for Jan. 16, 2025 ]]>
- Stars don't start out fully formed. Instead, they begin when clouds of diffuse gas and dust clump together, becoming denser than their surroundings. Gravity does the rest, pulling material inward until a collapsing knot becomes a compact, warming core: a protostar, still feeding on the cloud that created it.
Protostars are messy and dynamic, gulping down material in spurts and fits and ejecting powerful outflows of wind and jets that punch into the surrounding clouds. The result is a constant push-and-pull between growth and disruption as the star accretes from its disk while simultaneously blasting material away, carving cavities and shaping the environment that neighboring stars and planets will inherit.
In places where the starlight leaks out and bounces off dust grains, it can illuminate a cloud in phenomenon known as a reflection nebula, as two dark stripes flank the bright point of the growing star. According to Hubble researchers, the stripes are the signature of a protoplanetary disk and the disk's shadow cast across the larger envelope of material that still surrounds the young star.
A protostar, reflection nebula and young stars dominate this stunning image from the Hubble Space Telescope. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, K. Stapelfeldt (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and D. Watson (University of Rochester); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America))
Why is it amazing?
Regions like NGC 1333 are key for astronomers to better understand the nitty-gritty details of star formation. By mapping these areas in both infrared and visible wavelengths of light, different aspects of this scientific process are revealed. Recent work in the broader NGC 1333 area has used high-resolution observation of protostellar jets to read outbursts like "time stamps," which help astronomers connect bursts of activity to changes in the flow of material, showing that star growth is episodic rather than smooth.
Ultimately, understanding how stars form is inseparable from understanding our own beginnings. Every rocky planet, ocean or atmosphere has begun with the same ingredients: gas, dust, gravity and time. Images like this don't just show how stars can form but also reveal how their dynamics help shape the universe around us.
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- https://www.space.com/astronomy/stars/hubble-telescope-sees-baby-stars-hard-at-work-space-photo-of-the-day-for-jan-16-2025
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- Fri, 16 Jan 2026 14:00:00 +0000Fri, 16 Jan 2026 16:44:44 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ After a month of no answer, NASA will try hailing its silent MAVEN Mars orbiter today ]]>
- After waiting out a planned two-week communication blackout, NASA is set to listen again for a Mars orbiter that abruptly went silent more than a month ago.
The renewed contact attempt for the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission, or MAVEN, comes after the end of a solar conjunction today (Jan. 16) — a period when the sun sits between Earth and Mars and charged solar particles can interfere with or corrupt radio signals. Communications with spacecraft are typically suspended during these events to avoid sending partial or distorted commands that could trigger unintended, potentially dangerous behavior.
"NASA will not have contact with any Mars missions until Friday, Jan. 16," the agency said in a Dec. 23 statement. "Once the solar conjunction window is over, NASA plans to resume its efforts to reestablish communications with MAVEN."
NASA lost contact with MAVEN on Dec. 6, after the spacecraft passed behind Mars — a routine maneuver during which the planet temporarily and predictably blocks communications with Earth. When MAVEN emerged again, however, the agency's Deep Space Network was unable to reconnect with it.
Telemetry received before the blackout showed all systems operating normally, NASA said in a Dec. 9 statement. However, analysis of a fragment of tracking data recovered from Dec. 6 suggested MAVEN "was rotating in an unexpected manner when it emerged from behind Mars" and was no longer in its planned orbit, NASA said in a Dec. 15 update.
MAVEN has remained silent since Dec. 6 despite repeated attempts to contact it, according to NASA. As part of the recovery effort, the Curiosity rover attempted twice to image MAVEN when it was expected to pass overhead, "but MAVEN was not detected," the agency said in its most recent update, issued Dec. 23.
Due to the solar conjunction, NASA paused communications with all Mars missions on Dec. 29 and planned to restart them on Jan. 16.
"We will start looking again, but at this point it's looking very unlikely that we are going to be able to recover the spacecraft," Louise Prockter, director of NASA's planetary science division, said Jan. 13 during a meeting of the Small Bodies Assessment Group in Maryland, SpaceNews reported.
Launched in November 2013, MAVEN entered orbit around Mars in September 2014 to study the planet's upper atmosphere and its interaction with the solar wind. Originally designed to operate for just one year, MAVEN celebrated its 10th anniversary in September 2024. The mission has helped scientists understand how Mars lost its once-thick atmosphere, and has also collected extensive data on Martian dust storms, winds and auroras.
Beyond science, MAVEN plays a critical operational role as a communications relay, transmitting data between Earth and surface missions such as NASA's Curiosity and Perseverance rovers. While other orbiters — NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Odyssey, and the European Space Agency's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter and Mars Express — can also provide relay support, MAVEN carries a significant share of the communications workload.
With MAVEN offline, NASA said it has adjusted rover operations to rely more heavily on the remaining orbiters, scheduling additional passes to support surface activities and modifying daily plans for Curiosity and Perseverance to continue science operations.
MAVEN's silence is particularly concerning given its history of technical challenges. In 2022, the spacecraft spent about three months in safe mode after problems with its onboard inertial measurement units, or IMUs, which determine its orientation in space.
Following earlier issues with its primary IMU, the mission switched to a backup unit that experienced accelerated wear, leaving MAVEN unable to fully rely on either system. To reduce dependence on aging hardware, the mission team accelerated development of an "all-stellar" navigation mode, which allows MAVEN to orient itself by tracking stars. While less precise than IMU-based navigation, the system is sufficient for routine operations, though not for delicate maneuvers.
The three-month outage and an extended recovery period in 2022 also forced MAVEN to miss observations of several powerful solar flares and temporarily limited its role as a communications relay, reducing science output both from MAVEN and from Mars missions overall.
Despite its age, MAVEN has enough fuel to remain in orbit until at least 2030, and the mission was formally extended in 2022 through September 2025.
If efforts to contact MAVEN continue to come up empty, it would deal another blow to the Mars science community, which is already contending with the potential cancellation of the flagship Mars Sample Return program — a long-delayed mission designed to return Martian rocks collected by the Perseverance rover and return them to Earth, with MAVEN intended to serve as a crucial communications relay.
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- https://www.space.com/astronomy/mars/after-a-month-of-no-answer-nasa-will-try-hailing-its-silent-maven-mars-orbiter-today
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