This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

During a visit to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Aug. 28, 2026, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to create a United States Space Academy

The proposal, which would establish a NASA-led institution set up along the lines of a military academy, is a new one. As a space policy expert, I see several open questions and potential problems related to the vision Trump’s executive order described.

The proposal

During his first term in office, Trump undertook several actions supporting space exploration.

He established the Artemis program, to return astronauts to the Moon, in 2017. A year later, he announced his support for a new branch of the military dedicated to space. In 2019, this became reality with the establishment of the Space Force.

Given this record, it’s not surprising that Trump has continued to show interest in space during his second term.

During his remarks in Texas, Trump stated that the U.S. Space Academy will “serve both the United States Space Force as well as NASA and the civilian spaceflight industry.” Further, he said the school would be comparable to the other service academies such as West Point, the U.S. Air Force Academy and the U.S. Naval Academy.

The actual executive order doesn’t create a space academy outright. It establishes a commission that must gather information and give a report within 120 days about the feasibility of a U.S. Space Academy. The commission will be led by Jared Isaacman, the NASA administrator, and will include, among others, the secretary of defense, the national security adviser and the director of the Office of Management and Budget.

That order says the academy would “develop a professional corps of civically grounded leaders prepared to advance American interests within the space domain.” As a NASA-led federal academy, it would be the first nonmilitary service academy that the government would run. The commission would then determine what exactly would be taught.

Open questions

Both Trump’s speech and the executive order leave several open questions. First, former NASA leaders and members of Congress have expressed concerns about the relationship between a space academy and the military.

The president’s comparison of the space academy to the military academies and his use of the Space Force in justifying a space academy contradict the executive order’s description of the effort as NASA-led, as NASA is not part of the military.

This confusion even extends into reporting on Trump’s order, with news outlets running headlines like “A West Point for Space?” Since the 1950s, American space policy has separated civilian space efforts like NASA from military ones. While this division hasn’t always been perfect, the U.S. Space Academy proposal reignites a debate over this civilian-military split.

This leads to another question about what a space academy would teach. Military academies like West Point combine military training and education with typical college degree programs like engineering or the social sciences. It remains unclear what a space academy would teach and how much of its curriculum would be about military uses of space, versus exploration and science.

The executive order opens up other questions about the academy’s relationship to civilian and military space programs. These include whether there are any potential obligations to serve in the Space Force and the extent to which Space Academy students would receive military-specific training.

A second problem involves Congress. Not only is Congress responsible for establishing new bureaucratic organizations, but it must also provide funding for them. So, congressional action will be required to actually create the U.S. Space Academy.

While getting the exact funding numbers for the military service academies is difficult, one member of Congress estimated that each service academy costs roughly US$1 billion per year. Starting an entirely new academy would require significantly more than that. If, as the executive order suggests, NASA would lead the academy, funding may be even more difficult because funding NASA is not mandatory. In fact, it is often one of the first agencies to suffer budget cuts.

Other questions also remain: How will students be selected? Or will they apply? Where will the academy be located? And what degrees will it offer?

Implications

Establishing the U.S. Space Academy could be a wise decision, as space is becoming more important in everyday life. The pace of space activities — civilian, commercial and military — has increased significantly in the past decade and is poised to continue. For example, satellite constellations like SpaceX’s Starlink provide internet access globally, and the Global Positioning System, GPS, is a vital part of the economy worldwide. A space academy could help educate the next generation of engineers, scientists and spacecraft operators.

But the biggest implication of this space academy proposal is that it would almost certainly lead to a reconsideration of the relationship between military and civilian space. The distinction between these two areas has been a cornerstone of U.S. space policy for over 65 years. While the lines have been blurred at times, a U.S. Space Academy that serves as both a military and civilian institution confuses them even further.

As tensions in space between the United States and its potential adversaries continue to rise, balance will be necessary to avoid any potential escalation. Space activities that are civilian in nature, like scientific exploration, should not be confused with those that are distinctly military-related, such as missile warning or defense, that might be seen as more aggressive. Keeping this distinction clear will help to clear up any confusion about U.S. intentions in space.

It will also be important to define the precise purpose of the space academy and who exactly it will serve. What advantage does a space academy offer over civilian schools and universities that offer similar programs? Will commercial space companies have an opportunity to be involved? And what would that look like?

While some might see the proposed U.S. Space Academy as a step on the way to Star Trek’s Starfleet Academy, there are many real-world questions that need to be answered first.

On Sept. 12, 1992, NASA astronaut Mae Jemison became the first African American woman to go to space.

In NASA's early days, women and people of color were never selected to go to space. NASA didn't send a woman to space until the seventh space shuttle mission in 1983. NASA launched the first Black man in space, astronaut Guion Bluford, on the following mission that same year.

• Women in Space: A Gallery of Firsts

But it would take another nine years for NASA to finally select a Black woman to fly on STS-47, the 50th space shuttle mission. Jemison was a trained engineer and licensed physician who served in the Peace Corps before applying to become an astronaut.

She worked as a mission specialist on STS-47 and logged over 190 hours in space. STS-47 was her only mission. In 1993, she retired from NASA and went on to found her own company, the Jemison Group, which is a technology consulting firm.

Why it mattered

Mae Jemison's historic launch on STS-47 was a milestone for Black astronauts and NASA's growth into a more diverse space agency.

Jemison, who was born in Alabama and grew up in Chicago, joined NASA's astronaut corps in 1987 as an astronaut candidate after years working as a the Area Peace Corp Medical Officer for Sierra Leone and Liberia in West Africa (from 1983 to 1985). Before that, she earned a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from Stanford University (where she also studied African American Studies), and later a doctorate in medicine from Cornell University. She was serving as a General Practitioner in medicine when she applied to be a NASA astronaut.

Jemison has said she was fascinated by space from a young age and found inspiration the Star Trek's Lt. Uhura, a Black woman in space on television, before going on to university. (We'll return to Star Trek in a minute).

As the science mission specialist on STS-47, Jemison oversaw 44 different experiments for Japan and the United States inside the Spacelab module aboard space shuttle Endeavour. She was also the co-investigator on a bone cell study that flew on the same mission.

Jemison spent eight days in orbit on STS-47, logging 190 hours, 30 minutes and 23 seconds in space, before returning to Earth on Sept. 20, 1992. It would be her only spaceflight.

Jemison retired from NASA in 1993 and founding her Jemison Group. as a consulting firm that same year. Remember Jemison's Star Trek inspiration? It came full circle in 1993 when Jemison appeared as a lieutenant on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" in the episode "Second Chances" during the sixth season.

Jemison has also led the 100-Year Starship project to encourage the development of a mission visit another star. In 2017, Jemison became an official Lego minifigure in the Women of NASA Lego set.

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

On Episode 227 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik are joined by Michael Okuda, who with wife and others have been central to the look, feel, and substance of the Star Trek universe.

Hold onto your phasers, but it's been 60 years since Star Trek's debut, and the franchise is still going strong.

From the LCARS computer graphical system to alien languages to the designs and color schemes, and even the digital effects remastering of the original series, Mike has been the Cardinal of Canon when it comes to all things Trek. He has also been involved with many more space-related shows, books, and NASA projects. Join us for this very special episode.

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

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

Space news of the week

• China on track to launch Mars sample-return mission in 2028: 'If accurate, this represents a Sputnik moment'
• US military practices orbital dogfighting in 1st-ever 'live fly' exercise in space
• 25 years ago, a NASA astronaut witnessed the tragic 9/11 attacks from space. Here's what he saw.
• Michael Okuda on X
• The Roddenberry Archive

Model Falcon 9!

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

About This Week In Space

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

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

Raise shields and charge phasers, because we're running down the best "Star Trek" spaceships from across the galaxy.

When Matt Jefferies started designing the original USS Enterprise, "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry told him he didn't want to see rockets or jets propelling the ship. "I bought whatever I could find on 'Buck Rogers' and 'Flash Gordon' and pinned it up on the wall," Jefferies explained. "I said, 'That we will not do.'"

It's fair to say the artist came up with a truly brilliant solution, as the saucer/warp nacelle design of Kirk's Enterprise became a cultural icon. Its legacy survives 60 years later, with an updated version of that famous ship currently flying through "Strange New Worlds", and every other "Trek" spin-off featuring a descendant of that famous design. Starfleet crews have also faced off against some similarly iconic alien spacecraft along the way.

Now, 60 years after James T Kirk launched his original five-year-mission, we've looked back at some of the most memorable vessels ever to leave Spacedock (or its non-Federation equivalents).

We've limited ourselves to three Enterprises — Captain Archer's NX-01 did not make the cut — but you'll find plenty more of the best "Star Trek" spaceships below, whether friendly or hostile.

1. Galileo shuttlecraft

"Star Trek" famously got around the challenge of landing on a new planet every week by inventing the transporter beam. There are times, however, when only a shuttlecraft is up to the task, and the Galileo flew its first mission in "Star Trek"'s first season — it even gives its name to an episode, "The Galileo Seven".

It's essentially just a box with warp nacelles stuck to the bottom, but the design is so timeless that the shuttlecraft of "The Next Generation" era and beyond are essentially variations on the same theme. The Galileo may be small, but it's also perfectly formed.

2. USS Enterprise (Constitution Class, post-refit)

Matt Jefferies' Original Series Enterprise was — like the crew's uniforms — an instant design classic, but the NCC-1701 reached its peak when it got a top-to-bottom refit for "Star Trek: The Motion Picture".

Andrew Probert's update replaced the cylindrical nacelles with a squarer, sleeker look, and thoroughly modernized the saucer and stardrive sections. This iteration would ultimately be destroyed in "The Search for Spock", but the follow-up NCC-1701-A used the same blueprints. Arguably the most iconic Enterprise of them all.

3. USS Reliant (Miranda Class)

The script for "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" necessitated Kirk's crew going head-to-head with another Starfleet vessel. A clone of the Enterprise would have made things confusing, while a complete design overhaul would have seemed incongruous.

The USS Reliant was the perfect halfway house, a design that kept things consistent with its trademark Federation saucer section, but shook things up by putting the warp nacelles under the primary hull. Less elegant than the Enterprise, perhaps, but still much more noteworthy than "The Search for Spock"'s USS Grissom and USS Excelsior.

4. HMS Bounty (Klingon Bird of Prey)

It was the Romulans who flew Birds of Prey in the Original Series, and they were all set to be the primary antagonists of "The Search for Spock" until Paramount executives pushed for the more famous Klingons. Luckily, Commander Kruge was allowed to hold on to the ship, because variants of this design went on to become a mainstay in later movies and into the "Next Generation" era.

There's a pleasing, "Star Wars"-like grubbiness to the hull, while the powerful weapons and movable wings make it look like an apex predator. The cloaking device is helpful, too, particularly when Kirk takes the rebranded "HMS Bounty" to the 20th century to pick up some whales in "The Voyage Home".

5. The whale probe

It's never entirely clear whether the whale probe is a vessel or a lifeform in its own right, but we're going to assume the former. What is obvious is that this vast probe possesses great power, enough to threaten human existence as it tries to make contact with humpback whales who — thanks to their extinction in the 21st century — have stopped phoning home.

It's the probe's design that's the masterstroke, however: a minimalist and surprisingly effective combination of giant log, energy beam and floating ball. The spacecraft's unknowability — along with its haunting cry — is what makes it so intimidating.

6. USS Enterprise-D (Galaxy Class)

Probert also designed the flagship of "The Next Generation", albeit with a very different brief. Set decades after the voyages of Kirk and Spock in an even more enlightened future, the new show needed a friendlier home for its space explorers.

"I felt like it was an ambassador for Starfleet," said Probert. "It should look unthreatening, it should be very soft." That meant an oversized saucer section, a curvier secondary hull, and plenty of room for families.

It also has the rarely used capability to split into two sections — something that came in very handy in the brilliant episode "The Best of Both Worlds".

7. Romulan Warbird (D'Deridex Class)

Nobody had heard a peep from the Romulans in decades when they turned up in "The Next Generation" episode "The Neutral Zone".

It turned out they'd gone back to the starship drawing board in a big way, replacing the veteran Bird of Prey with a creepy, green design light years away from the shiny white exteriors beloved of the Federation.

The front of the hull is reminiscent of "Battlestar Galactica"'s OG Cylon helmets (Probert worked on both), while their decloaking maneuver is disconcertingly ghostly.

8. Borg Cube

It may look like what happens when other ships get crushed at a scrapyard, but the standard-issue Borg Cube is one of the most intimidating sights in the "Star Trek" universe.

Lacking a front or back — or, indeed, any distinguishable features — the design's uniformity is a cover for seemingly limitless power. Frustratingly impervious to most forms of attack, capable of self-repair, and surprisingly speedy (largely thanks to their ability to negotiate transwarp conduits), Borg Cubes are something you never want to see on your viewscreen.

9. Cardassian Galor Class

Cardassian designs had a major role in "Deep Space Nine", seeing as they built the original Terok Nor station.

Their most significant contribution to "Star Trek" aesthetics, however, may just be their military cruiser, an elaborate design inspired by the emblem of the Cardassian Union (Not the last time a Trek ship would be designed around a logo, as "Starfleet Academy"'s USS Athena also looks a lot like the combadges worn within the faculty).

The Galor Class isn't much to look at in profile, but from above there's a definite invertebrate vibe to the silhouette, even if the ship's back-to-front styling makes it look like it's perpetually in reverse gear.

10. USS Defiant (Defiant Class)

"Deep Space Nine"'s space station setting ensured it was more static than its predecessors, with the crew's occasional away missions undertaken on Runabouts.

The onset of the Dominion War ensured Sisko and co were given something with a little more punch, a "tough little ship" built for battle, supplied with special "ablative armor" and — thanks to a unique deal with the Romulans — its own cloaking device.

Color scheme aside, it's a complete break from Starfleet norms, the design owing as much to the Millennium Falcon as the USS Enterprise. So iconic that — following the destruction of the original USS Defiant — the replacement USS Sao Paulo took its name.

11. USS Voyager (Intrepid Class)

Unlike the Enterprises, Voyager was never designed to be the flagship of the Federation. This was always a more midtable vessel, equipped with some state-of-the-art technologies but only headline-worthy thanks to its extended jaunt across the Delta Quadrant.

Still, this nimble ship is one of the most good-looking in the fleet, with saucer and drive sections that feel like an organic whole, and — in a cool innovation — nacelles that move before a jump to warp.

It also, in season 2 "Voyager" episode "The 37s", became "Star Trek"'s first lead ship to intentionally land on the surface of a planet.

12. USS Enterprise-E (Sovereign Class)

After the Enterprise-D's saucer section crash-landed on the surface of Veridian III in "Generations", Picard and the "TNG" crew needed a new home.

The new-look USS Enterprise-E is more divisive than its predecessors, though it was a result of designer John Eaves' efforts to create a ship that looked better at multiple angles than the notoriously hard-to-shoot Enterprise-D model. In canon, the design reflected the Federation's shift to a more warlike stance after tussles with the Borg and the Dominion.

This was a more functional ship, crafted for battle rather than comfort, with a flatter, more streamlined profile, and — controversially — an elongated saucer section.

13. The Phoenix

AKA where it all began. The Phoenix is the ship warp pioneer Zefram Cochrane used to break the lightspeed barrier, attract the attention of some passing Vulcans, and usher in an era of (give-or-take) galactic peace.

The irony that it's constructed from a World War III nuclear missile is noted, though it's the optional extras that make the Phoenix so memorable — it's like a pair of extendable warp nacelles have been added to a modern-day rocket. There's also a built-in sound system.

The Phoenix is so important to the 'history' of spaceflight in canon that it featured alongside Apollo and the International Space Station in "Star Trek: Enterprise"'s opening credits.

14. Species 8472 Bioship

"Babylon 5"'s computer-driven VFX meant the show featured organic designs from its early days, but with "Star Trek"'s space scenes still dominated by model work, the debut of Species 8472 in the 1997 "Voyager" episode "Scorpion" brought a whole new breed of starship to the franchise.

These squid-like vessels (created in "fluidic space", but similarly adept in a vacuum) were more than a match for the Borg and could join forces to fire a single energy blast of Death Star-esque proportions.

Astrophotographer Osama Fathi created this incredible view of Perseid meteors streaking through circling star trails above Egypt's Western Desert on Aug. 13-14, the night following the shower's peak under dark new-moon skies.

Fathi imaged the star trails in 240 consecutive 25-second exposures, which captured the apparent motion of the stars in Earth's sky as they seemed to circle the celestial north pole and the North Star Polaris. The length of each trail reveals how far the stars appeared to move as Fathi captured their ancient light with his Sony A7 III camera and a 16-35 mm lens during the 100-minute shoot.

But Fathi wasn't alone beneath the desert skies as he captured the scene.

"Capturing this photo in Egypt's Western Desert during the Perseids was an unforgettable experience," Fathi told Space.com in an email. "The night was exceptionally clear and I was surrounded by around 200 fellow astronomy enthusiasts sharing stories, stargazing and photographing the sky."

Perseid meteors appear as unbroken streaks of light, captured in a single exposure as tiny particles — often no larger than a grain of sand — burn up in Earth's atmosphere in the blink of an eye.

Dotted trails closer to the horizon depict the trajectories of satellites as they passed silently through the skies over Egypt's Western Desert. Fathi captured the landscape and starscape separately before combining, or stacking, the images into a mesmerizing image.

The result is a gorgeous nightscape that highlights the beauty of the natural landscape, the rotation of Earth and the natural light show of the Perseid meteor shower that we experience as Earth passes through the trail of debris shed by comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle.

Want to capture beautiful images of the night sky for yourself? Then be sure to read our guide to photographing star trails, along with our picks of the best cameras and lenses for astrophotography available in 2026.

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

We've been studying the moon for a long time. NASA has gathered mountains of data over decades of lunar missions and studies. The data collected by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) alone, for example, exceeds that of all NASA's other planetary missions combined.

Analyzing all this information takes lots of time and effort from researchers. So, NASA and IBM have developed an AI model to help sift through the moon data — an advance the agency announced on Thursday (Sept. 10). The open-source model, called the NASA-IBM Lunar Foundation Model, is currently available for free at Hugging Face.

"NASA has spent decades building an extraordinary scientific record of the moon, but collecting data is only part of the job," NASA's Kevin Murphy, chief science data officer and acting chief data and AI officer, said in the announcement.

The new AI model can help researchers with tasks like mapping craters, finding young volcanic features, and modeling possible locations of water ice near the lunar poles, according to NASA.

In the announcement, Murphy said that NASA needs to make scientific data easier to explore and use. To this end, NASA has been developing and releasing science-focused AI models with IBM. Previous models include one focused on Earth observation and another for heliophysics.

This is part of a larger trend of AI use in planetary science. Space agencies and private space companies around the world have been looking into how AI models can help with analysis to increase scientific productivity, reduce costs and streamline workflows.

"The NASA-IBM Lunar Foundation Model shows what's possible when we bring AI to NASA's petabytes of scientific data," Murphy said in the announcement. "That's a real opportunity we see with AI: turning large-scale data into new discoveries."

The AI model was mostly trained on data from the LRO mission. Over 17 years, NASA's lunar orbiter has compiled a nearly complete mosaic of images that detail the moon's surface in high definition.

Rocket Lab still holds out hope that it can build NASA's next Mars orbiter.

The agency picked Blue Origin for that job earlier this month, awarding Jeff Bezos' spaceflight company $700 million to develop, launch and operate the Mars Telecommunications Network (MTN).

Today (Sept. 11), however, Rocket Lab announced that it has challenged that decision, filing a formal protest with the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

"NASA's award decision appears to be inconsistent with the eligibility criteria mandated by Congress. In addition, the agency’s punitive review of Rocket Lab's technical volume was inconsistent, making incorrect assertions and conclusions," Rocket Lab said today in an X post that laid out its argument.

"Procurement standards exist to ensure fair competition and protect public investment," the California-based company added. "We are pursuing this review to ensure those standards are upheld for critical infrastructure that will underpin American exploration at Mars for decades to come."

As its name suggests, the MTN orbiter will serve as a communications link between mission controllers here on Earth and other NASA spacecraft studying the Red Planet. Just two agency orbiters fulfill that relay role these days, and both are quite old: Mars Odyssey launched in 2001, and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter lifted off in 2005.

NASA had been eyeing a new Mars telecom orbiter for years and finally got Congressional funding for it in July 2025 — $700 million, to be precise. The agency issued a request for proposals this past May, drawing considerable interest from the private sector.

Blue Origin and Rocket Lab were widely considered the front-runners, and NASA ended up going with Blue. The award calls for the company to deliver MTN (which, despite the "network" in its name, is a single spacecraft) to NASA no later than Dec. 31, 2028. It's expected to be up and running at the Red Planet by 2030.

Blue Origin has been in Rocket Lab's shoes before, and has behaved similarly. Bezos' company filed a protest with the GAO in 2021 after NASA picked SpaceX to provide the first crewed moon lander for the agency's Artemis program.

The GAO denied the protest in July of that year. Blue Origin then sued NASA but lost in court in November 2021. The story has a happy ending for the company, however: NASA decided to select a second Artemis lander as well, and Blue Origin won that contract in 2023. We'll see how this story plays out for Rocket Lab...

Some stargazing feels like you know exactly what you are looking for, but you're still slightly unsure whether you are actually seeing it. Zodiacal light — meaning "light from the circle of animals" — is often like that.

I have chased this so-called "false dawn" for years, and the first few minutes are always the same. I stare toward the horizon and wonder whether the sky is genuinely brighter there, or whether I am simply seeing distant light pollution, the first hint of morning twilight, or something my eyes have invented because I badly want to see it.

However, under a genuinely dark sky — and particularly in a long-exposure image — its cone shape becomes obvious.

Zodiacal light is enormous. It appears as a broad, softly glowing pyramid rising from the horizon. It can be fainter than the Milky Way and has no hard edges, which is precisely why it is so easy to overlook.

This week is a particularly good time to try because the new moon occurs on Sept. 10-11. With no moonlight interfering with the predawn sky, the main problems become familiar ones to any skywatcher: clouds, haze and artificial light.

The phenomenon itself could hardly be more epic. Zodiacal light is sunlight scattered by dust spread through the inner solar system, concentrated broadly around the plane in which the planets orbit. From Earth, we see that dusty structure edge-on along the ecliptic — the path through the sky followed by the sun, moon and planets. It's home, of course, to the 12 (actually 13) constellations of the zodiac — from Pisces the fish to Leo the lion. This is the circle of animals.

From the Northern Hemisphere around the September equinox, dust-hunting observers should look east before morning twilight, when the ecliptic rises steeply away from the horizon, and the faint glow becomes easier to separate from the murk below. It will reach about 30 to 40 degrees above the horizon.

Zodiacal light is the solar system itself made faintly visible — and one of the most subtle and strangest sky sights of all.

What's happening and when to look

For observers at mid-northern latitudes, September mornings offer one of the year's best windows for spotting the "false dawn" — but it's not easy to see. The essential ingredients are an unobstructed eastern horizon (preferably over the ocean or a large body of water) and no light pollution. You'll need to start looking before astronomical twilight begins rather than waiting until the sky is already visibly brightening, which means getting up very early in a very dark place.

Check the time astronomical twilight begins at your location and aim to be outside before then, giving your eyes at least 20 to 30 minutes to adapt to the darkness. The zodiacal light should appear as a broad triangular glow, widest and brightest close to the horizon and narrowing as it climbs.

It's easy to confuse it with a distant town, but artificial skyglow tends to form a rounded dome above one location on the horizon. In contrast, zodiacal light reaches diagonally — or almost vertically upward — along the ecliptic.

Give your eyes time and save up that one vital ingredient, a vanishing human trait any skywatcher must constantly nurture — patience. Zodiacal light is not something you can walk outside and instantly see. It comes only to those who work for it.

How and when I'm photographing it

A little like a faint aurora, a camera almost always detects zodiacal light before your eyes become completely convinced. The easiest way is to use a tripod and a wide-angle lens, preferably something around 14-24mm, compose with plenty of eastern sky and include a simple foreground to make the triangular shape obvious. A starting point of around f/2.8, ISO 1600, and an exposure of roughly 10-20 seconds usually puts you in useful territory, though sky brightness and lens speed change everything.

Shoot RAW, focus manually on a bright star and capture a series of images. Then, once you've photographed it, try to stop looking at the screen — the entire point is to see it with your own eyes.

Stargazer's corner: September 11-18, 2026

With a new moon on Sept. 10, this week sees a run of dark evenings before our natural satellite gradually returns. On Sept. 14, look shortly after sunset for a slender waxing crescent moon beside Venus, extremely low in the western twilight. By Sept. 16-17, the moon moves on towards Antares, a reddish star at the heart of Scorpius. Then Sept. 18 brings a first quarter moon (perfect for exploring with binoculars or a small telescope) and Venus at the greatest brilliancy of its current apparition as the "Evening Star."

Constellation of the week: Orion

Orion is normally thought of as a winter constellation, so September seems an odd time to go looking for it. However, if you're venturing out to an extremely dark place to look for zodiacal light, you're going to be staring Orion in the face. In September, the Hunter is in the eastern sky before dawn, where its stars sit along the same general strip of sky occupied by the zodiacal light. Its famous belt stars will be up, as will be bright Sirius, below. This is one of the pleasures of observing before sunrise. The sky is effectively showing you a preview of another season. The constellations climbing in the September dawn are the ones Earth will face during winter evenings a few months from now. Jupiter and Mars will also be visible — right on the ecliptic where you'll also — hopefully — spy the "false dawn".

An extraordinary exploding star has been spotted in a distant galaxy, and astrophotographers are racing to capture it before it fades from view.

The supernova, called SN 2026aaiv, was first seen by the ATLAS survey on Sept. 1 in NGC 7331 (also known as Caldwell 30), a spiral galaxy about 45 million light-years away in the constellation Pegasus, visible in the Northern Hemisphere and at mid-latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere.

That makes this supernova a prime target for amateur astrophotographers and astronomers worldwide to capture an image of this rare event.

Hundreds of astrophotographers have already captured it, including Andrew McCarthy, who posted his image on Instagram on Sept. 7 with the message, "As luck would have it, I happened to be in the middle of a massive project with this galaxy, and caught the supernova." He shot four hours of data, two before and two after the supernova, as part of a 100-hour project. "The final image will be EPIC!" he said.

Tom Masterson, Mountain Operations Manager at the Mount Wilson Observatory, also captured it on Sept. 10 using a 60-inch telescope.

What you'll need to find SN 2026aaiv

At magnitude 15.7 on Sept. 11, 2026, SN 2026aaiv is relatively dim, but still brightening. Many of the images posted online were captured with large professional telescopes or remote telescopes in dark regions. However, you can find and photograph SN 2026aaiv with relatively modest equipment. You'll need a telescope or large binoculars to see NGC 7331 (at magnitude 10) at all, but the supernova is dramatically more challenging visually. To have a chance of seeing SN 2026aaiv, a large telescope is recommended (observers have confirmed seeing it using a 14-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope). Use the averted vision technique: look slightly to the side of the galaxy's core so the eye's more light-sensitive rod cells can reveal faint detail.

The easiest way is to use a smart telescope, which can quickly find and image the host galaxy NGC 7331. According to Seestar (Official ZWO Group) on Facebook, users of the Seestar S50 have managed to image the SN 2026aaiv with about two hours of 10-second exposures (the default mode).

How to find SN 2026aaiv

SN 2026aaiv has the coordinates RA 22h 37m 05.618s, Dec +34° 24′ 35.37″. From the Northern Hemisphere, turn toward the east after dark, and you'll see four large, bright stars rising in a vast diamond shape. This is the Great Square of Pegasus, part of the constellation Pegasus. At the northwestern corner of the Great Square is Scheat. Just above it, outside the square, is a dimmer star called Matar. NGC 7331 is close by. In light-polluted skies, only the central core of the galaxy is visible, according to NASA. The galaxy, which we see partially edge-on, has spectacular spiral arms that swirl around a bright central region.

What we know about SN 2026aaiv

SN 2026aaiv is a Type Ia supernova, a catastrophic explosion that occurs when a white dwarf in a binary star system gains enough material from its companion to trigger a runaway thermonuclear reaction, destroying the white dwarf. Remarkably, another Type Ia supernova, SN 2025rbs, was found in the same galaxy on July 14, 2025.

NGC 7331, imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2018, was first found in 1784 by British astronomer William Herschel, who cataloged over 2,500 deep-sky objects and discovered Uranus and its two largest moons. NGC 7331 is similar in size, shape and mass to the Milky Way.

Rocket Lab just launched a mystery mission to orbit.

An Electron rocket lifted off from Rocket Lab's New Zealand site on Thursday (Sept. 10) at 11:28 p.m. EDT (0328 GMT and 3:28 p.m. local New Zealand time on Sept. 11).

The launched kicked off a mission the company called "Happily Ever Faster," which we know little about.

Rocket Lab did not livestream the mission or reveal who booked it, saying only that it aimed to loft "a single commercial satellite to a 500 km low Earth orbit." That did indeed happen successfully, the company announced via X about 80 minutes after launch.

Speculation has worked to fill the information vacuum, as it generally does. For example, some outside observers think "Happily Ever Faster" carried up a "Gen-3" satellite for the geospatial intelligence company BlackSky.

These spacecraft are powerful Earth observers, capable of resolving features as small as 14 inches (35 centimeters) on our planet's surface. Rocket Lab has launched BlackSky Gen-3 satellites before, so this is a pretty good bet — especially since, in that post-launch X post, the company revealed that the deployed payload was an Earth-observing craft.

"Happily Ever Faster" was Rocket Lab's 16th launch of 2026, and the 13th involving the 59-foot-tall (18 meters) Electron, which gives small satellites dedicated rides to space.

The company has also launched three missions this year with HASTE, a suborbital version of Electron that tests customer equipment in a hypersonic flight environment. All 16 launches in 2026 have been successful.

The Star Trek franchise has hit the ripe old age of 60 this week. September 8 is the official 'Star Trek Day' and marks the anniversary of the 'Original Series', which first broadcast in 1966.

For fans of all things Star Trek, Paramount+ is the place to be with all seasons of the 'Original Series', plus the new series 'Star Trek: Strange New Worlds', which is currently in Season 4 and hits its exciting finale on September 24.

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A lot of exciting sci-fi series are coming in the next few months, including Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, widely considered the best new live-action Star Trek series. We're currently midway through the ten-episode season 4 of Strange New Worlds, which is streaming on Paramount+ every Thursday.

The crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise — led by Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) — has embarked on another season of thrilling and emotional adventures across the stars. Rebecca Romijn, who plays Commander Una Chin-Riley in the acclaimed sci-fi series, told fans, "We're so proud of this Strange New Worlds, and we're really proud of season 4; we think it's our best season yet."

Season 5 of Strange New Worlds is set for a 2027 release on Paramount+. If you can't wait until then, you'll also find classic Star Trek shows including 'The Next Generation', 'Deep Space Nine', 'Voyager', and 'Enterprise'.

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Our star and primary energy source that makes life on this planet possible may also be a cosmic cannibal. That's according to new research that suggests the sun may have swallowed a super-Earth planet billions of years ago in its early history. And our star may still be hiding the evidence.

The scientists behind this research think that the fingerprints of this violent consumption of a planet may still exist within the solar interior. Super-Earths are common occupants of other planetary systems, and these findings can explain why the solar system lacks such a world.

"Our new study suggests that a planet several times more massive than Earth may have fallen into the young sun and left a lasting chemical imprint deep inside it," Mutlu Yildiz, of Ege University, Turkey, said in a statement.

Yildiz and colleagues theorize that the sun's act of planetary infanticide may help to explain differences between observations of the sun and what is predicted by models of stellar evolution. This includes the depth of the sun's convection zone and the so-called sound-speed structure just below the convection zone.

It could also explain why the surface of the sun is depleted of the element lithium.

"By modelling the sun's evolution and comparing the results with precise observations of its interior, we find that the ingestion of a super-Earth could help explain long-standing differences between standard solar models and observations, including subtle changes in the sun's internal structure and its depleted lithium abundance," Yildiz said. "We were interested in whether these problems might have a common origin in the early chemical history of the sun."

The researcher explained that young stars like the sun during its infancy are surrounded by vast flattened clouds of gas and dust called protoplanetary discs, where substantial amounts of material can move between the disc and the star.

"Since planets are made of material that is chemically different from the gas in the disc, we wondered whether the early engulfment of a planet could have left a chemical signature inside the young sun," Yildiz said.

What happened to the sun's planetary meal?

Using advanced stellar evolution software, Yildiz and colleagues tested their idea by investigating different ways the sun could have swallowed a planet.

Their results found the best fit for the sun's current characteristics was the cannibalism of a planet between five and ten times the mass of the Earth, a type of planet called a super-Earth. This could explain the strange, unpredicted characteristics of the sun.

We thought planetary engulfment might affect the solar structure but did not expect the calculations to converge on such a specific super-Earth mass range," said Professor Yildiz. "That was one of the most interesting outcomes of the study."

The team's research is supported by previous studies that suggests one or more super-Earth planets could have formed with the orbit of Mercury, the closest planet to the sun.

These worlds would have then migrated through the protoplanetary disk surrounding the infant sun before crashing into the star.

But this new study leaves open the possibility that something else, other than this violent collision with the sun, may explain the discrepancies in measurements of the sun's interior and its lithium content. The team's model doesn't need a planet to have been totally engulfed by the sun.

Currently, this idea is based on computer modelling and unexplained solar features, but the researchers think that the predicted structural and chemical signature of a planetary engulfment could still exist within our star and could be detected.

"The earlier work proposed that a super-Earth could have formed and migrated into the young sun. Our paper asks whether the sun itself could still carry observable evidence that such an engulfment actually happened, and we believe it could," Yildiz concluded. "The next step is to see if these fingerprints can be independently detected."

The research was published on Thurs (Sept. 10) in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

To boldly dress as no one has dressed before… In another universe, that could have been the "Star Trek" mission statement.

Sure, the veteran franchise has spent much of its 60-year lifetime seeking out new life and new civilisations, but it's also been preoccupied with keeping crews fashionable as they explore the final frontier. It seems that nobody wants to make first contact sporting last year's jumpsuit.

The sheer volume of uniforms worn on Federation duty is mind-boggling, as Starfleet has turned regular style updates into one of its prime directives. So, as "Trek" celebrates its 60th anniversary, we take a warp-speed tour through the outfits Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway, and the rest have hung in their wardrobes. Make it sew, number one!

The Original Series era

Departments denoted by: Logos in Starfleet delta, color of sweater (Command: Gold/Green, Science/Medical: Blue, Operations: Red)

Rank denoted by: Bands on sleeve cuffs

Although the ranks were lifted directly from the Navy, "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry didn't want the Enterprise to feel militaristic — this was the enlightened 23rd century, after all, when exploration was more important than war. As such, the uniforms worn by Kirk and co were rather more casual than standard forces' issue.

By the time the Enterprise started its five-year mission in earnest, the outfits had been through a couple of subtly different evolutionary stages (in pilot episodes "The Cage" and "Where No Man Has Gone Before") before costume designer William Ware Theiss zeroed in on those now-iconic designs.

They featured sweaters and black pants for the men, peak-'60s minidresses for the women, and all of them were color-coded blue (Science/Medical), red (Operations), or green (Command) to show off the wonders of those new-fangled color television sets.

And yes, we did say green. The command sweaters worn by Kirk, Sulu, and Chekov were actually green in real life, but a combination of studio lights, early color TV tech, and the velour fabric made them appear gold on screen.

The casual wraparound number occasionally worn by Kirk was made from a different material, and hints at the green Theiss originally intended.

The Animated Series later retconned canon to match public perception, making gold Starfleet's official color of command.

The Motion Picture

Departments denoted by: Flash of color behind badge (Command: White, Science: Orange, Medical: Green, Engineering: Red, Operations: Gold, Security: Silver)

Rank denoted by: Bands on sleeve cuffs

The primary colors were ditched for Trek's first big-screen adventure, as director Robert Wise and costume designer Robert Fletcher opted for subdued "Space: 1999"-esque pastels.

The loose-fitting, pajama-like uniforms came in an exciting range of light blue and beige (newly promoted Admiral Kirk had his own special design), with departments denoted by a flash of color behind the Starfleet delta logo.

Uniforms came with a built-in fanny pack (a medical monitor, apparently), while engineering and security were given protective clothing. The crew also got jackets to wear on chilly away missions.

The other Original Series movies

Departments denoted by: Color of turtleneck (Command: White, Science: Gray, Medical: Green, Operations: Ochre: Operations, Red: Cadets/trainees)

Rank denoted by: Metal insignia on epaulettes/cuffs

"The Motion Picture" uniforms didn't last long, as "The Wrath of Khan" director Nicholas Meyer decided he wanted a more militaristic look for his "Hornblower in space" epic. "When I watched the TV show, I never understood why they were all running around in pajamas," he said, "so I tried to change some stuff".

The one thing that did remain from the Original Series was the voluminous cut of the pants, albeit enhanced by a natty red stripe down the side. Otherwise, this was a complete overhaul, as Fletcher introduced maroon tunics — arguably more flattering to the ageing crew's waistlines — over color-coded turtlenecks. The tunic was secured via a matching epaulette that also carried rank-specific insignia.

The "Wrath of Khan" look would remain intact until "Generations" 12 years later, and the design persisted in canon for decades — in classic "Next Generation" time travel episode "Yesterday's Enterprise", the doomed Enterprise-C crew still dressed in those maroon tunics, though by the mid-24th century they'd ditched the turtlenecks.

Variations appeared in later original crew movies, including bomber jackets and a vest which — handily for chief engineer Mr Scott — comes with multiple pockets.

The Next Generation era

Departments denoted by: Color of uniform/shoulders/turtleneck (Command: Red; Science/Medical: Blue, Operations: Gold)

Rank denoted by: Metal pips on collar

Loose fits were out as "Star Trek" reached the late 24th century. Roddenberry demanded a future free from the tyranny of zippers and buttons, while returning TOS costume designer Theiss instituted a "no wrinkles" rule for fabrics.

The resulting skintight Spandex suits were a nightmare for the "Next Generation" cast, causing so many back issues that Patrick Stewart's chiropractor intervened. The suits also had an unpleasant knack of retaining body odor.

They subsequently switched to a two-piece design for the show's third season, though there were variations. Jean-Luc Picard occasionally stepped out in a bespoke red jacket, Worf donned a Klingon sash, acting ensign Wesley Crusher introduced his own brand of smart/casual to the Enterprise bridge, and Counselor Troi seemingly wore whatever the hell she wanted. Early seasons also featured occasional sightings of men in dress-like skants, intended to be a reflection of a more progressive future.

There was also a color scheme switch, with red worn by command, and gold allocated to operations. Rank was now depicted by metal pips pinned into the collar, and the Starfleet chest badge became a portable communicator.

"Deep Space Nine" made comfort a priority, putting its crew in black jumpsuits with color-coded shoulders to denote department, and rank pips appearing on a light blue turtleneck.

They also turned up in the first "Next Generation" movie, "Generations", though that wasn't always the plan. The production had intended to dress the crew in new-look uniforms, but when they didn't work out, they instead turned out in a selection of "TNG" and "DS9" outfits.

Unfortunately, they didn't have time to tailor outfits for everyone, meaning that Jonathan Frakes (Riker) and LeVar Burton (LaForge) had to borrow suits previously worn by Avery Brooks (Sisko) and Colm Meaney (O'Brien) in "DS9" — rewatch the film, and it's clear they don't fit the actors properly.

When Picard and co returned to the big screen in "First Contact," they had new uniforms to go with their sparkly new Enterprise-E. The black jumpsuit look remained (albeit in a more tailored form), though everyone now sported the same blue/gray shoulders — the departmental color-coding was instead shifted to the obligatory turtleneck.

This design was quickly rolled out on board Deep Space Nine, though poor old Voyager — trapped thousands of light-years from Earth — had to stick with the old jumpsuits until the crew made it home.

The Enterprise era

Departments denoted by: Colored piping on jumpsuit (Command: Gold; Science/Medical: Blue, Operations: Red)

Rank denoted by: Metal pips on chest

The uniforms in the prequel series were closer to contemporary designs than those from other "Treks". In fact, you could almost imagine a modern astronaut wearing those blue jumpsuits, well stocked as they were with zippers and pockets. The outfits worn by the admiralty even featured old-school collars and ties.

The departmental color scheme was the same as the Original Series. Slightly incongruously, however, "Enterprise" utilized the same ranking pips as the "TNG" era — Starfleet seemingly ditched this system for a century or so, before bringing it back for the voyages of the Enterprise-D.

The Kelvinverse

Departments denoted by: Color of sweater (Command: Gold/green, Science/Medical: Blue, Operations: Red)

Rank denoted by: Bands on sleeve cuffs

Starfleet uniforms in this alternative timeline were remarkably similar to the original TOS models, though they were given a thoroughly modern makeover.

The classic sweaters from the '60s now came in two parts, with a colored top sitting over a black crewneck undershirt. Adding to the look, costume designer Michael Kaplan integrated loads of tiny Starfleet deltas into the fabric.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the Kelvinverse trilogy, however, was how many distinct uniform designs there were. There was seemingly something for every occasion, and even the regular crew uniforms went through a significant overhaul for the third film in the series, "Star Trek Beyond".

The new TV era

Discovery (23rd century)

Departments denoted by: Accents on uniform (Command: Gold, Science/Medical: Silver, Operations: Bronze)

Rank denoted by: Pips on Starfleet delta

When "Discovery" brought "Star Trek" back to TV in 2017, Starfleet had given its couture a major rethink. This time out, the crew wore figure-hugging uniforms that looked a lot like tracksuits, featured Roddenberry-defying zippers, and used shiny, magpie-friendly styling for the obligatory departmental color coding. The design also 'homaged' the Kelvinverse look by integrating tiny Starfleet deltas into the fabric.

Strange New Worlds

Departments denoted by: Logos in Starfleet delta/sleeve design, color of sweater (Command: Gold/green, Science/Medical: Blue, Operations: Red)

Rank denoted by: Bands on sleeve cuffs

When the Enterprise's Christopher Pike turned up in season two, he wore a modern riff on Original Series uniforms, which was subsequently given another update when he returned for "Discovery" spin-off/TOS prequel "Strange New Worlds". This borrowed heavily from the original Kelvinverse sweater/undershirt design, though with a more pronounced V-neck and tiny departmental logos (rather than Starfleet deltas) woven into the fabric of the sleeves.

Discovery (32nd century)

Departments denoted by: Color of uniform (Command: Red; Science: Blue, Operations: Gold, Medical: White)

Rank denoted by: Pips on Starfleet combadge, collar, and epaulettes

Meanwhile, when the USS Discovery blasted off to the distant future, the crew were introduced to the asymmetrical fashions of the 32nd century.

It was never quite clear why the two halves of the tunic didn't line up properly, though future Starfleet had, at least, decided to stick with the "Next Generation"-era color scheme. Rank was advertised in at least four different places (shoulders, neck, and chest).

Starfleet Academy

Departments denoted by: Color of uniform (Command: Red; Science: Blue, Operations: Gold, Medical: White)

Rank denoted by (when used): Pips on Starfleet combadge, collar and epaulettes

Similar rules now apply in "Starfleet Academy", though cadets — like admirals, strangely — wear predominantly gray outfits.

Lower Decks

Departments denoted by: Color of uniform (Command: Red; Science/Medical: Blue, Operations: Gold)

Rank denoted by: Metal pips on collar

And when "Lower Decks" and "Picard" returned to the (more-or-less) "Next Generation" era, the crews' stylists didn't break the wheel. The USS Cerritos uniforms were TNG-adjacent, though borrowed heavily from the aforementioned designs that were ditched ahead of "Generations"

They also allowed for some Chief O'Brien-homaging sleeve-rolling.

Picard

Departments denoted by: Color of uniform (Command: Red; Science/Medical: Blue, Operations: Gold)

Rank denoted by: Metal pips on collar

The outfits in "Picard"'s third season, meanwhile, were effectively the "Deep Space Nine"/"Voyager" jumpsuits given a Kirk-style wraparound update.

As to the fashion future, no one knows what Trek has in store for us. There are no new shows announced yet, and only vague whispers of a new movie in the works. Time will tell, but we can't wait to see what the 24th century innovations they can bring to the jumpsuit next.

In the meantime, you can check out all of Star Trek on Paramount+.

On Sept. 11, 1985, the International Cometary Explorer, or "ICE," became the first spacecraft to fly by a comet.

Originally launched as the International Sun-Earth Explorer-3 in 1978, ICE was one of three spacecraft built for the International Sun-Earth Explorer (ISEE) program, a joint effort by NASA, the European Space Research Organization and the European Space Agency.

The program's purpose was to study space weather, or the interaction between the Earth's magnetic field and the solar wind. After completing its original mission, the spacecraft did a maneuver to steer it toward Comet Giacobini-Zinner. It flew straight through the comet's plasma tail, but it didn't stop there! Six months later, it flew by Halley's Comet, too.

Why it mattered

The International Cometary Explorer has gone down in history as a mission of epic firsts, many of which occured after it completed its primary mission.

As mentioned above, NASA, ESA and the European Space Research Organisation teamed up to build and launch the probe in 1978, when it was called the International Sun-Earth Explorer 3, or ISEE-3. The mission was the third of three to study the sun-Earth environment, with ISEE-3 aimed at studying energetic particles, electric and magnetic fields and the plasma environment. It carried 14 different instruments, including a solar wind detector and gear to measure cosmic rays, X-rays and gamma rays.

For its primary mission, ISEE-3 flew to the L1 Lagrange point about 1 million miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth on the sun-facing side and spent three years conducting science. It was the first spacecraft ever to orbit a Lagrange (or libration) point, NASA has said.

But it was in 1981, once ISEE-3's core mission was over, that things got interesting for comet fans. NASA scientists at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland decided to squeeze more science from the probe by sending it through Earth's magnetic tail (another first), and then on to visit a comet.

That began in 1982, with the probe firing its thrusters and performing five flybys of the moon to set course for Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner. It was only then, once ISEE-3 was on course for the comet, that it was renamed the International Cometary Explorer, or ICE.

On Sept. 11, 1985, the spacecraft flew within 4,885 miles (7,862 km) of Comet 21P, confirming many theories about comets (including that they are dirty "snowballs" of the solar system) and collected detailed data about its tail. It also took a long-distance look at Halley's Comet on March 28, 1986, when it passed by at a range of 25 million miles (just over 40 million km).

While NASA shut down the ICE/ISEE-3 mission in 1995, it saw renewed interest in 2014 when a group of independent scientists attempted to reactivate the probe when its orbit brought it near Earth in August 2014. At the time, the probe still had five operational instruments and an active transmitter that allowed NASA to track it across the solar system. The group raised $125,000 in crowdfunding to support their effort.

The science group managed to successfully fire ICE/ISEE-3's thrusters on July 2, 2014, but subsequent efforts failed and it flew past the moon and continued on its long orbit around the sun. It should return near Earth sometime in 2031, NASA has said.

A tragic day seen from space

Another major event occurred in space history on Sept. 11, this time in 2001.

On that day, NASA astronaut Frank Culbertson was the only American in space to see the tragic 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York City, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania as part of a three-man crew on the International Space Station.

Culbertson was commander of Expedition 3 to the ISS and led a crew that included Russian cosmonauts Vladimir Dezhurov and Mikhail Turin.

"I didn't know exactly what was happening, but I knew it was really bad because there was a big cloud of debris covering Manhattan," Culbertson said in a NASA video released in 2011. "That's when it really became painful, because it was like seeing a wound in the side of your country, of your family, your friends."

You can learn more about Culberton's observations of the 9/11 attacks from space at NASA's Remembering 9/11 site here.

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

Are those purple, wavy, alien thumbprints? Or perhaps an otherworldly ocean? Nope! It's actually a dune field on Mars, colored purple.

What is it?

Across the Martian surface are all sorts of unique features in the rocky, dusty surface material. In this false-color image, snapped by the HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, you can see the incredible and strange ripples of a dune field on Mars.

"Our science goal for this observation is to observe any changes from a previous image we acquired in 2011," a statement sharing the image reads. "For this footprint, the target enlarged and centered more over the dune field, which is located on the floor in the northern half of an unnamed impact crater."

Why is it incredible?

Spacecraft like MRO, with its HiRISE camera, have opened our eyes to the incredible features across the Martian surface.

From dune fields like we see here to craters and ancient riverbeds, these views have helped scientists piece together the planet's incredible, dynamic history. For decades, observations from orbit around Mars and by rovers on the planet's surface have helped to solve at least part of the mystery of what Mars was once like.

Researchers are still looking for signs that unequivocally point to life once existing on the planet. But so far, observations have showed that, billions of years in the past, Mars had abundant surface water — lakes, rivers perhaps even a huge ocean. In analyzing the material in and near ancient waterways on the planet with NASA's Perseverance rover, researchers have already found evidence that could possibly link to biosignatures.

While this image might look like a strange but beautiful purple-colored desktop background, photos like it this can be essential clues for scientists hunting for answers.

A pair of private spacecraft just showed off some impressive maneuverability high above Earth.

The two probes — Mira satellites operated by the California startup Impulse Space — zoomed within 650 feet (200 meters) of each other in low Earth orbit (LEO) recently. The rendezvous demonstrated skills that could be useful to a variety of customers down the road, according to the company.

"These types of dynamic, agile maneuvers are how we unlock full access to space after launch and create new mission possibilities," Tom Mueller, CEO and founder of Impulse Space (and, prior to that, the first person Elon Musk ever hired at SpaceX), said in a statement on Tuesday (Sept. 8). "Our teams that design, build and operate Mira are leading the way toward a true space age, and customers across all sectors will be the beneficiaries."

Mira is an orbital transfer vehicle — a spacecraft designed to deliver customer payloads to precise locations in Earth orbit or beyond. The dishwasher-sized Mira can carry up to 660 pounds (300 kilograms) of gear and is highly maneuverable, as the recent rendezvous showed.

The operation involved Mira satellites that launched in January 2025 and November 2025, on missions that Impulse calls LEO Express 2 (LEO-2) and LEO Express 3 (LEO-3), respectively.

The action began this past February, when the LEO-2 Mira conducted a lengthy engine burn to close in on its counterpart. LEO-2 performed additional, smaller burns throughout the spring and summer, coming into orbital alignment with LEO-3.

"Then in July, LEO-2 executed a series of close approaches to LEO-3, starting at about 820 meters [2,690 feet] apart and subsequently moving closer to LEO-3," Impulse Space wrote in the Tuesday update. "Ultimately, for the closest approach, LEO-2 maneuvered to within about 200 meters of LEO-3."

Both Miras chronicled the rendezvous, snapping photos of each other with onboard camera gear. Two other companies, Starfish Space and HEO, worked with Impulse Space to pull off this orbital photo shoot.

Impulse has worked with Starfish before. The duo collaborated late last year on a rendezvous between LEO-2 and the first space-flown Mira, which launched on the Leo Express 1 mission in November 2023.

On that operation, called Remora, LEO 2 used Starfish Space navigation software to get within 4,100 feet (1,250 m) of LEO 1.

"We're showcasing some of the advanced capabilities that set Mira apart from other vehicles," Drew Damon, vice president of spacecraft programs at Impulse, said in Tuesday's statement. "Twice now, we've demonstrated that Mira has the agility and propulsion to support a new class of dynamic operations on orbit, and our team is excited to continue tackling the mission sets Mira is uniquely qualified to handle."

Impulse is not alone in developing and demonstrating orbital maneuverability. Such skills are a key priority of national governments, which want to service and upgrade their own satellites — and keep tabs on the activities of adversary craft. For example, earlier this year, two Russian spacecraft got within a mere 10 feet (3 m) of each other high above Earth.

Frank Culbertson had a birds-eye view of one of the most memorable and tragic events in American history.

The NASA astronaut was the only American off of Earth on Sept. 11, 2001. He was circling the planet aboard the International Space Station (ISS) when terrorists flew commercial jets into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing more than 2,700 people.

The ISS passed over New York shortly after the attacks took place, so Culbertson saw the devastation from an eerie remove. He shared his thoughts with Mission Control at NASA's Johnson Space Center in real time, chronicling the tragedy like no one else could.

"We could see New York City and the smoke from the fires," Culbertson said. "Our prayers and thoughts go out to all the people there and everywhere else here — I'm looking up and down the East Coast to see if I can see anything else — and to the people in Washington."

Terrorists hijacked four commercial planes on 9/11, flying two of them into the World Trade Center and one into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Passengers on the fourth plane overpowered the hijackers, forcing it to crash in a field in Pennsylvania rather than hit the terrorists' intended target, which was likely the U.S. Capitol building or the White House.

"I hope that the people responsible are caught and brought to justice as soon as possible," Culbertson added. "But first, our prayers and condolences to all involved. And I just wanted the folks to know that their city still looks very beautiful from space. I know it's very difficult for everybody in America right now, and I know folks are struggling very hard to to deal with this and recover from it. But the country still looks good, and, for New Yorkers, your city still looks great from up here."

Culbertson gave a more complete accounting of his thoughts in an open letter, which he published a day after the attacks.

"The world changed today. What I say or do is very minor compared to the significance of what happened to our country today when it was attacked," he wrote.

"It's horrible to see smoke pouring from wounds in your own country from such a fantastic vantage point," Culbertson added. "The dichotomy of being on a spacecraft dedicated to improving life on the Earth and watching life being destroyed by such willful, terrible acts is jolting to the psyche, no matter who you are."

Culbertson arrived at the ISS on Aug. 12, 2001 aboard the space shuttle Discovery along with cosmonauts Vladimir Dezhurov and Mikhail Tyurin. The trio comprised Expedition 3, the third-ever crewed mission to the orbiting lab, which ran through December of that year.

We're now up to Expedition 75, and there have been no breaks: The ISS has been continuously staffed by rotating astronaut crews since November 2000.

Expedition 3 was Culbertson's third and final spaceflight. He retired from NASA in August 2002 and went to work in the private sector. Among other roles, he led human spaceflight efforts at Orbital Sciences Corp., which built the Cygnus ISS resupply spacecraft. Cygnus still flies today, for the aerospace giant Northrop Grumman, which bought Orbital Sciences in 2018.

Culbertson, 77, retired from Northrop Grumman in 2018. He currently serves on the board of directors of the nonprofit Space Foundation, among other roles.

You can read more about Culbertson's experiences on NASA's dedicated 9/11 page. That page also outlines how the agency helped emergency managers assess the damage in New York City just after the attacks and discusses some of the ways NASA has honored 9/11 victims and their families over the years.

For example, NASA flew nearly 6,000 small American flags on the STS-108 mission of the space shuttle Endeavour, which launched on Dec. 5, 2001 and landed 12 days later.

"Students working out of Johnson Space Center in Houston assembled commemorative packages that included the space‑flown flags, which were then presented to victims' families," NASA officials wrote about the project. "Distribution began on June 14, 2002 — National Flag Day — during a ceremony at the American Museum of Natural History’s Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York."

Jase Parnell-Brookes has reviewed a huge range of skywatching optics, including the best telescopes, binoculars and image-stabilized binoculars. As our trusted authority and expert tester, when they recommend a product and you're in the market for it, their opinions and recommendations are worth paying attention to.

In their Nikon Stabilized 12x25 binoculars review, Jase reckoned they were without doubt the best compact image-stabilized (IS) binoculars they had ever tested. Right now they have $73 off and are at the best price we've seen since Black Friday 2025.

Get the Nikon S 12x25 binoculars, available for just $627 at Best Buy.

Jase awarded them with a perfect 5-star rating, which was mostly thanks to their excellent stabilization, their unobtrusive controls and incredibly small form factor. They also earned a place on our best binoculars guide as the best compact IS binoculars. This Best Buy deal is worthy of your attention if you're in the market for an incredibly versatile pair of binoculars that deliver still views in a compact body.

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

These image-stabilized (IS) binoculars punch well above their weight. Tipping the scales at a feathery 13.9 oz (395 g), they pack effortlessly into any bag, giving you rock-steady views wherever you roam. While the compact objective lenses yield a slightly dimmer view than the naked eye, they still deliver fantastic, crisp performance for casual stargazing.

In their testing, Jase managed to see the Andromeda galaxy (M31) with averted vision and the Orion nebula (M42), so these are worth taking out with you at night for a better look at the stars and some of the brighter deep sky objects.

They are also relatively cheap in the image-stabilized world where models can easily go for $1000 and up, depending on the model. Jase was happy to recommend these over another compact IS model, the Canon 8x20 IS binoculars, and they are actually lighter and smaller too. With their silky smooth steadying and clear views, they highly recommended them for anyone looking to get image-stabilized binoculars but doesn't want to spend big bucks.

Key features: 12x magnification, 25mm objective lens diameter, 4.5-degree angular field of view, 12.3mm eye relief, 13.9 oz (395 g) weight.

Product launched: November 2024

Price history: The Nikon Stabilized 12x25 binoculars usually retail for $699.95 on Amazon. This deal from Best Buy beats the Amazon price easily and, at just $626.95, is the best price we've seen since Black Friday 2025.

Price comparison: Best Buy: $626.95 | Newegg: $629.95 | Amazon: $699.95

Reviews consensus: Space: ★★★★★ | Digital Camera World: ★★★★

Featured in guides: Best binoculars, Best compact binoculars

✅ Buy it if: You are looking for an affordable way into image-stabilized binoculars and need a pair that you can slip into your pocket.

❌ Don't buy it if: You need really high magnification or bigger objective lenses. For more powerful image-stabilized binoculars, try the Canon IS 15x50 binoculars.

Check out our other guides to the best telescopes, binoculars, cameras, star projectors, drones, lego and much more.

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has found a brand new type of an otherwise familiar object – compact binary systems that steal gas from other stars, but which do so while emitting very low-energy X-rays but copious amounts of ultraviolet.

Chandra spotted 84 suspicious object emitting very low-energy X-rays in six galaxies – four evolved ellipticals and two spirals, namely our near-neighbor the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) and the Pinwheel Galaxy (M101).

"We've never encountered a group of objects that act like this," said Mustafa Muhibullah of the University of Alabama in a statement.

Compact objects, in the form of black holes, neutron stars and white dwarfs, are the remains of stars that have died. Their small size and powerful gravity means that they're adept at getting close to orbiting companion stars and ripping the stars' outer layers of gas away. The gas swirls around the compact object, falling onto its surface, and this accretionary process usually produces torrents of high-energy X-rays because the stolen gas becomes superheated by the compact object's gravitational vice-like grip.

Because of their weak X-rays, Muhibullah's team refer to them as 'hypersoft X-ray sources'. Since low-energy X-rays and ultraviolet light are next to each other on the electromagnetic spectrum, Muhibullah and his team suspect that the low-energy X-rays are spillover from objects emitting prodigious amounts of ultraviolet. Moreover, they think that these objects are lower-level compact binaries.

They're hard to find though, because the interstellar medium of hydrogen and helium gas between the stars absorbs ultraviolet light. This could be why we have yet to find any hypersoft X-ray sources in our own galaxy, because we have to look through the interstellar medium through the plane of the Milky Way.

Consequently, there could be a large population of hypersoft X-ray sources that remain undiscovered and they could have an important effect on the universe around them.

"These clandestine X-ray sources are actually among the most energetic objects in galaxies, and they could be solving two cosmic mysteries at once," said Muhibullah.

The interstellar medium is filled with ionized gas where atoms have been shorn of electrons. Hot, massive stars do output a lot of high-energy ultraviolet light, but there are not enough of these stars to account for all the ionization. If hypersoft X-ray sources are dumping torrents of ultraviolet into space, they could explain the ionization instead. For stars to form, gas has to be cold and not ionized, so hypersoft X-ray sources could be gently regulating star formation within galaxies.

The second mystery is the puzzle over how exactly type Ia supernova explosions detonate. We know that they are fueled by white dwarfs accreting matter from a close companion star and, once the accumulated matter raises the white dwarf's mass beyond 1.44 times the mass of our sun – known as the Chandrasekhar limit – it explodes, but the details of what on the white dwarf actually ignites and how are fuzzy.

Studying a new breed of compact binary might finally reveal the answers and offer more clues about when white dwarfs become ready to explode.

"If we could find a way to spot these type Ia supernova explosions before they go off, that would be really important," said Jimmy Irwin of the University of Alabama, who is a member of Muhibullah's team. "Right now, we study them after they've exploded and astronomers have struggled to understand what is actually ignited."

Since type Ia supernova explosions are used as markers on the cosmic distance ladder, used for measuring the strength of dark energy and the expansion of the Universe, the benefits from understanding them better are clear to see in our efforts to understand how the Universe is evolving.

The findings were published on Sept. 9 in Nature Astronomy.

On clear September evenings, I often find myself looking up just after dusk, expecting the sky to feel a little less like summer. Yet there, still commanding the overhead darkness, are Vega, Altair, and Deneb — the three brilliant stars of the famous Summer Triangle.

Their familiar pattern can make the season feel as though it is lingering above us, even as cooler nights and earlier sunsets suggest otherwise. In fact, even as late as mid-November, the Triangle is still nearly overhead soon after sunset at dusk. That contrast raises a simple but intriguing question: if this bright celestial landmark remains so prominent well into autumn, why do we still call it the Summer Triangle?

Why not simply call it the Autumn Triangle?

Why it belongs to summer

The answer lies not in the calendar, but in how the Triangle moves across the sky over the course of a summer night. The chief reason is that, at this time of year, the Triangle does not remain visible all night. By dawn, it has begun to drop beyond the west-northwest horizon. During summer, by contrast, it remains with us from dusk until dawn: already evident in the east-northeast at nightfall, near overhead around the middle of the night, and descending in the west-northwest as daybreak approaches.

A matter of distance and brightness

The stars that compose the Triangle — Vega, Altair, and Deneb — lie at very unequal distances from us, so their apparent brightness can give a misleading impression of their true luminosity.

The closest of the three is Altair, 16.7 light-years away, followed by Vega at 25 light-years. Deneb, however, is vastly farther off, at roughly 1,600 light-years, though various sources place it between 1,400 and 2,600 light-years. Even though we see Deneb by light that may have begun its journey during the last days of the Roman Empire, it still shines at first magnitude (+1.3, to be exact) because it is a brilliant blue supergiant, at least 55,000 times brighter than the sun.

But their apparent superiority is largely a consequence of distance: Vega and Altair are only a few dozen light-years away, while Deneb lies well over a thousand light-years from Earth. Compared with the stellar lighthouse of Deneb, Vega and Altair are, comparatively speaking, penlight flashlights.

How to say "Vega"

Before continuing with this discussion about the Summer Triangle, it is worth pausing briefly on the pronunciation of Vega, a point that became especially noticeable after the 1997 science fiction drama Contact. Based on Carl Sagan's 1985 novel, the film follows astronomer Dr. Ellie Arroway, played by actress Jodie Foster, as she discovers a radio signal from Vega containing a sequence of prime numbers.

Throughout the film, the star is pronounced "Vey-gah," perhaps echoing Chevrolet's Vega, the subcompact automobile sold in the 1970s. Astronomers, however, generally use a different pronunciation.

The traditional astronomical pronunciation is Vē-ga, with the stress on the first syllable. In professional astronomical usage, Dr. Arroway and her colleagues would almost certainly have said "Vee-ga," not "Vey-gah." George Lovi (1939—1993), who was widely respected for his knowledge of star nomenclature, often reminded audiences that "Vee-ga is a star and Vey-gah is a car."

Who named the Summer Triangle?

There has long been debate over who first christened the bright stellar trio of Vega, Deneb, and Altair as the Summer Triangle. Some credit the legendary British astronomer Sir Patrick Moore (1923—2012), who wrote, "During a 1958 television broadcast on the BBC, I introduced the nickname of the Summer Triangle, and everyone now seems to use the term, even though it is completely unofficial." Yet several years earlier, in his 1952 sky guide, The Stars — A New Way to See Them, H.A. Rey (1898—1977) referred to the three stars as a "right triangle," and in his 1954 children's book, Find the Constellations, Rey used the Summer Triangle moniker.

Still others believe the term was popularized through U.S. navigator training manuals during World War II. Interestingly, astronomer Oswald Thomas (1882—1963) described Vega, Altair, and Deneb as "Grosses Dreieck" ("Great Triangle") in the late 1920s and as "Sommerliches Dreieck" ("Summerly Triangle") in 1934.

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

On Sept. 10, 2011, NASA's GRAIL spacecraft launched on a mission to the moon!

GRAIL, which stands for Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, was sent to the moon to map its gravitational fields. Scientists could study the moon's interior structure by looking at maps of the moon's gravity.

Asteroid impacts from billions of years ago left dense pockets of material under the lunar surface, which can exert extra gravitational pull on spacecraft orbiting the moon. So by measuring that gravitational pull, the GRAIL mission could reveal information about what lies beneath the surface.

The mission actually consisted of two twin spacecraft named Ebb and Flow, which would fly in tandem around the moon to map variations in its gravitation field. Both lifted off on the same Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida and arrived in lunar orbit almost four months later.

They mapped the moon for about nine months before NASA decided it was finished with the mission, and the two orbiters crashed into the moon.

Why it mattered

The moon is a weird place. It may look like a cold, gray ball of solid rock, but its density varies from location to location due to odd "mass concentrations" (or mascons for short) buried under the lunar surface. That leads to a strange, lumpy gravity that's not uniform across the lunar surface.

• Holy GRAIL! Photos From NASA's Moon Gravity Mission

That's where GRAIL's Ebb and Flow probes came in. Each of the twin spacecraft carried three instruments to map the interior of the moon. Those included a Lunar Gravity Ranging System, a Radio Science Beacon and a camera called MoonKam Lunar-Imaging system.

Together, the instruments mapped the mascons on the moon in extreme detail to monitor where lunar gravity increased from the norm. Astronomers had long suspected that mascons on the moon and other planets formed during violent asteroid impacts.

"GRAIL data confirm that lunar mascons were generated when large asteroids or comets impacted the ancient Moon when its interior was much hotter than it is now," Jay Melosh, a GRAIL co-investigator at Purdue University, said in a NASA overview.

The MoonKam tool was actually a student experiment (MoonKam is short for Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle School Students). It was built by undergradutate students at the University of California, San Diego in partnership with the Sally Ride Science foundation to encourage younger students to study science and space. (The names Ebb and Flow as GRAIL probe names were also suggested by 4th grade students at Emily Dickinson Elementary School in Bozeman, Montana, as part of a national competition.)

The $496 million GRAIL probes orbited the moon in an extremely low orbit, coming within 30 miles (50 km) of the lunar surface at their closest approach. They were separated from each other at distances that ranged from 109 miles to 140 miles (175 km to 225 km).

NASA crashed the GRAIL probes into the moon on Dec. 17, 2012 once its fuel reserves reached the point that it could not maintain its low lunar orbit. They crashed into a crater rim near the moon's north pole to prevent them from randomly crashing uncontrolled into someplace like an historic Apollo moon landing site.

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

LINK, the satellite sent to boost the orbit of NASA's Swift Observatory, may have had to give up on its mission, but LINK's manufacturer and operator Katalyst Space hasn't completely abandoned the spacecraft to its cosmic demise.

NASA called off LINK's mission to rendezvous with its Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory when the specialized probe encountered a thruster control issue. LINK was delivered to orbit on July 3, aboard an air-launched Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket, but began to spin uncontrollably about three weeks after reaching space. Swift's orbit began decaying faster than expected last year, due to increased solar activity, and LINK was designed to rendezvous with Swift, grapple it, and then raise the observatory to a more stable altitude.

LINK's Swift Boost mission was considered a "Hail Mary" attempt from its onset. NASA's discovery of Swift's swiftly decaying orbit meant the Arizona-based Katalyst had less than a year to design, manufacture and test LINK before needing to launch. Now, with both of their missions on the short-track for destruction, NASA and Katalyst are left both trying to get the most out of their spacecraft with the time each has left.

LINK's failure means Swift is destined to burn up in Earth's atmosphere before the end of the year, and LINK itself is expected to fall to the same fate within just the next few weeks. But the probe's inability to save Swift hasn't stopped Katalyst from getting as much data from LINK as it can. Though a closer rendezvous is no longer in the cards, the spacecraft managed to successfully fire all three of its electric propulsion thrusters and adjust its orbit to fly within 7.5 to 9 miles (12 to 15 kilometers) of Swift. Katalyst was also able to deploy all three of LINK's robotic arms, which would have been used to grapple Swift for its orbital adjustment.

Swift launched in November 2004, and has been studying high-energy phenomena like gamma-ray bursts, supernovas, black-hole ejections and fast radio bursts across the universe for more than 20 years. Despite its impending demise, two of Swift's three science instruments — its X-ray Telescope (XRT) and Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT) — were turned back on in late August after being shut down in February to minimize atmospheric drag on the spacecraft in anticipation of LINK's now defunct orbital boost efforts.

With the option for LINK to raise Swift's orbit now off the table, Katalyst and NASA are working to perform whatever technology demonstrations are possible aboard the spacecraft, in the hopes the technology can be used to service other satellites on missions in the future.

A catalog of almost 3,000 white dwarfs that exploded as type Ia supernovas after overfeeding on companion stars indicates that dark energy, the mysterious force accelerating the expansion of the universe, is changing over time.

The discovery, in conjunction with data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES), backs results revealed from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) published in 2024 that suggested dark energy's influence is weakening.

That means that the team's research doesn't just involve the most comprehensive catalog of type Ia supernovas; it presents the clearest picture yet of the evolution of the universe and the influence of dark energy.

"We've rebuilt 3 decades of astronomical observations into a single, consistent framework," team member Ryan Camilleri of the University of Queensland said in a statement."We combined our data with other cosmic measurements, including relic light from the Big Bang and maps of how galaxies are distributed through space.

"Instead of confirming the standard model of cosmology, which assumes dark energy is fixed and unchanging, we have more evidence that dark energy may change over time."

How do exploding white dwarfs tell us about dark energy?

White dwarfs are the smoldering stellar remnants that are left over when stars with around the mass of the sun exhaust the fuel for nuclear fusion in their cores. This ends the outward pressure that supports a star against its own gravity, meaning the star's core collapses as the outer layers are shed. The core becomes a white dwarf, and for single stars, that is the end. But around 50% of sun-sized stars have a binary companion, and this can lead to renewed activity and a change in the star's fate.

If the white dwarf and its companion are close enough together, the dead star begins stripping away the outer layers of its companion. As this material builds on the white dwarf, it pushes the stellar remnant's mass over the so-called Chandrasekhar limit, allowing it to go supernova.

These cosmic explosions are called type Ia supernovas, and their light output is so uniform that these events are referred to as standard candles. They are of vital importance because measuring how their light has been redshifted as it travels means type Ia supernovas can be used to measure cosmic distances.

"Over the years we've learned a lot more about how supernovae behave so we've been able to go back and apply that improved understanding to older data," Camilleri said. "Extensive work has been done to link observations from different telescopes with different capacities and take into account issues such as cosmic dust and galaxy mass which can affect the light coming from a supernova.

"We also incorporated more subtle effects such as gravitational lensing, which is the bending and magnification of light around large objects as it travels from a supernova to Earth."

Combined with the 2024 results from DESI, this research could change our idea of what dark energy actually is.

"Our supernova data from DES in 2024 first showed hints that dark energy may be time-varying, and this new compilation also sees a deviation from the standard model, although in a slightly different direction," Davis said. "Similarly, results from DESI found hints of variations in dark energy in its surveys of relic sound waves from the early universe.

"So, two completely independent measurements have found hints of time variation in dark energy, challenging the standard model that dark energy doesn't change."

Davis added that, as well as revealing what dark energy actually is, this research may also hold the clue to explaining how gravity and quantum physics fit together. While quantum physics (the best theory we have of how the universe operates at subatomic scales) and Einstein's theory of general relativity (our best picture of gravity) have been highly successful in their own rights, scientists have so far been unable to unite them. In other words, there is no theory of quantum gravity.

“We know these two theories are each immensely successful in their own realms, so if we can figure out how to put them together, that would be a huge step in theoretical physics," Davis continued.

This effort will receive a boost when data is added to the team's already comprehensive type Ia supernova catalog. This will include observations from the Dark Energy Bedrock All-Sky Supernova program (DEBASS), which is detecting hundreds more local supernovas than even the DES survey.

The team's results are available on the repository site arXiv.

During the recent press rounds for Apple TV's Ryan Reynolds/Kenneth Branagh vehicle "Mayday", writer/director duo Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley talked about their plans for the next "Star Trek" movie. As well as confirming their story will feature an all-new crew, they mentioned that the in-development project will be inspired by a pair of hit films from the '90s and '00s, both of which — coincidentally — feature Denzel Washington operating at very different ends of the moral spectrum.

"Training Day" is a gritty police drama, where Ethan Hawke's rookie finds himself under the ethically dubious wing of the Oscar-winning Washington's corrupt cop Alonzo Harris. "Crimson Tide", meanwhile, is a tense submarine thriller in which Washington's executive officer argues with Gene Hackman's captain about whether to launch some nuclear weapons. The stakes? Only kicking off the Third World War.

The latter feels particularly suited to a Starfleet bridge. The greatest "Star Trek" movie of all, "The Wrath of Khan", also borrowed heavily from submarine movies, with the USS Enterprise given a naval makeover and space battles that played out like games of underwater cat-and-mouse. And while "Crimson Tide" doesn't necessarily fit with Gene Roddenberry's vision of a conflict-free professional environment, it's easy to picture a seasoned starship captain locking horns with an idealistic first officer about the right course of action.

In fact, if Paramount executives are having doubts about the premise, they should check out the latest episode of "Strange New Worlds", which has just given the premise a dry run. Because to all intents and purposes, "Orders of Magnitude" is "'Crimson Tide' in space" — and it's every bit as thrilling as that sounds.

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD! ANYONE YET TO WATCH "ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE" SHOULD PROCEED WITH CAUTION TO AVOID VIOLATING TEMPORAL PRIME DIRECTIVES.

The chances of Captain Christopher Pike and first officer Una "Number One" Chin-Riley coming to blows on the bridge are slim, especially as Michael Burnham's mutiny on the USS Shenzhou (in the opening episode of "Star Trek: Discovery") will still be fresh in Starfleet minds. Writer Alan B McElroy instead makes the smart move of marooning Pike and Chin-Riley on an alien planet, forcibly detained by a group of Andorian mercenaries.

So when self-proclaimed "wily old war dog" Admiral Simon Reeger (guest star Joe Morton) comes on board to commandeer the Enterprise for the top-secret pursuit of a cloaked enemy vessel, it's ranking officer James T Kirk — making one of his implausibly frequent visits to his future home — who steps up to become the ship's temporary number one.

Reeger initially seems like the ideal commanding officer, friendly and considerate enough to learn his subordinates' names before he arrives. But — as happened with Captain Ramsey and Lt Commander Hunter in "Crimson Tide" — it quickly becomes clear that this working relationship with Kirk is going to be a fraught one.

He scolds his new first officer for questioning his decision to leave Pike and the away team behind, and not being on the bridge quickly enough when red alert is sounded. This is a man who doesn't appreciate being undermined in public, for whom — as Dr M'Benga, who served under Reeger on the USS Constitution, puts it — the "mission is everything".

The story also hinges on a very "Crimson Tide"-like dilemma. In director Tony Scott's movie, the USS Alabama receives incomplete firing orders — Captain Ramsey believes this means they should launch nuclear weapons at the proposed target, but Hunter advises caution, insisting they should pause until the orders are verified.

In "Orders of Magnitude", meanwhile, Reeger surmises that the ship the Enterprise is pursuing — believed to be responsible for the deaths of five million people in the Vaardan Massacre — is hiding on the surface of Argus II. Concerned the cloaked vessel might escape, he orders the destruction of everything on the planet's surface — but with thousands of innocent lives on the line, it's an order that Kirk cannot, in good conscience, execute.

What follows is right out of the "Crimson Tide" playbook, as chains of command are stretched past breaking point, the "math of command" is questioned, and the bridge crew throw increasingly awkward glances between themselves. Kirk risks putting himself on the fast track to a court-martial, receiving radiation burns to sabotage the phasers, and drugging Reeger so M'Benga can declare him unfit for duty — an act M'Benga ultimately takes the rap for.

It also puts Kirk at odds with La'an (who's resolutely sticking to the admiral's orders), and forces him to ask big, potentially career-ending favors of big brother Sam.

"Orders of Magnitude" also makes things personal in a way "Crimson Tide" never did. Reeger lost his family on Vaardan and is out for revenge, but — perhaps more pivotally — he served with the Kirks' dad, George, on the Constitution.

Reeger became a hero after taking out several Klingon cruisers at the Battle of Zeta Reticuli, but he was actually incapacitated at the time and took the credit for George's heroic actions, stalling Kirk Sr's career in the process.

In the episode's climactic bridge showdown, the tone shifts to another '90s classic, as Jim Kirk goads Reeger into a confession about the Constitution scandal. The admiral's "You're damn right!" is pretty much a direct lift of Jack Nicholson's "You're goddamn right I did!" in the famous final act of timeless legal drama "A Few Good Men". And yes, Kirk can handle the truth — even if he doesn't want to.

It's unclear whether "Strange New Worlds" showrunners had any idea a "Star Trek" movie inspired by "Crimson Tide" was on the cards — or if Goldstein and Daley knew this brilliant episode was on the way. But if their movie does become "Trek"'s first big-screen outing since 2016's "Star Trek Beyond", they could do worse than taking a few notes from "Orders of Magnitude".

New episodes of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" debut on Paramount+ on Thursdays.

Wrinkles on the surface of Mercury have revealed that the closest planet to the sun is shrinking faster than scientists thought.

New research suggests that Mercury is shrinking between 10% and 30% faster than had been previously estimated. The team behind this research calculated that the planet has lost nearly 12 miles (19 kilometers) of its total diameter since it formed.

The researchers think that the extremity of this shrinking has gone unnoticed previously because bombardment from space rocks over time has created craters that obscured the evidence of this process.

Scientists say determining the extent of the shrinking of Mercury is key to investigating the composition of the planet's interior.

"More shrinking means Mercury could have a larger metal core, less light elements like silicon mixed into the metal core, or a higher starting temperature," team leader Gaku Nishiyama, of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) Institute of Space Research said in a statement.

Mercury's rocky past

Like all rocky planets in the solar system, Mercury was formed 4.5 billion years ago during a violent and turbulent time in the solar system's history, as rocks and asteroids collided with each other and were bound together.

These impacts generated heat, which Mercury has been losing ever since. As the interior of Mercury cooled, it also shrank. This caused geological wrinkles in the form of scarps and ridges to develop in the rocky outer layers of Mercury.

This cooling should result in Mercury shrinking in a roughly uniform way, and that would make these shortening structures common across the planet. However, asteroid impacts throughout its history have not only created craters that obscure signs of its geological history, but have also spread debris across the surface of Mercury. This makes wrinkles tougher to spot among the accumulation of billions of years' worth of geological features.

The team combined previous maps of Mercury's geology with new observations of the entire planet's surface roughness. They found the roughest terrain of Mercury featured the fewest wrinkles.

"It made us think that there's a process obscuring shortening structures," said Nishiyama, who thinks that impact debris in the roughest regions of Mercury is covering shrinking wrinkles.

The team then used the ridges and scarps in regions less affected by the dispersal of debris to estimate the amount of contraction. This indicated that missing features in rough areas could amount to 10% to 30% extra shrinkage over the 4.5 billion-year lifetime of Mercury. That amounts to a total change in diameter of up to 14.5 miles (23 kilometers) rather than the currently estimated 2.5 to 10 miles (4 to 16 kilometers).

"30% is a little bit surprising, but the corrected amount of contraction actually makes sense to me," Nishiyama said.

There may be more surprises in store. Nishiyama believes that the updated figures could still be an underestimate. This estimate is based on data collected by NASA's MESSENGER probe, which ended in 2015. MESSENGER could only distinguish features larger than around 3 miles (5 kilometers) across.

In November 2026, the BepiColombo mission will start conducting scans of Mercury's surface in much higher resolution than this, and that could reveal even more shrinkage features.

The team's research was published on Thursday (Sept. 10) in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Decades ago, Captain Kirk faced off against the Gorn on the uncharted desert planet Metron. But as we can see in new satellite imagery from NASA, that mysterious rocky world can actually be found right here on Earth in California.

What is it?

In this new image captured by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on NASA's Landsat 9 satellite, you can see the wide variety of rock and vegetation in the area around Vasquez Rocks Natural Area County Park in southern California.

The 25-million-year-old Vasquez Rocks is a magnificent natural area with an incredible range of unique, large rocks jutting out of the ground. In this false-color image, you can see the area in shortwave-infrared and near-infrared wavelengths that show the differences in vegetation across the landscape.

And this location hides some amazing history. Not only is Vasquez Rocks home to incredible rock formations and desert vegetation, it is also where Captain Kirk fought the Gorn in Star Trek the Original Series. It's not a surprise the series chose this location for its infamous fight scene (among many other Trek scenes), as the massive, sun-bleached boulders pointing to the sky and barren landscape give it a distinctly alien feel.

Why is it incredible?

While the rocky landscape of Vasquez Rocks is firmly fixed here on Earth, it has consistently made history as the backdrop to a whole host of iconic science fiction moments.

Indeed, Star Trek is one as Vasquez Rocks has been used for filming in a whole host of Trek episodes. It was even Spock's home world of Vulcan in the films Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and Star Trek (2009).

But beyond Star Trek, the site has been used for filming sci-fi classics like Galaxy Quest, Battlestar Galactica and Planet of the Apes in addition to a whole host of cowboy movies and more.

It turns out that right here on Earth, we can find perfectly good alien worlds.

Three of NASA's Artemis II astronauts are starting off the school year with new assignments.

Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman and pilot Victor Glover, both NASA astronauts, will transition into "emeritus status" in September, the space agency announced on Wednesday (Sept. 9). Meanwhile, Canadian mission specialist Jeremy Hansen shared a video on X on Tuesday (Sept. 8) concerning his already-announced transfer from active duty to reserve status in the Canadian military.

The fourth Artemis II astronaut, NASA mission specialist Christina Koch, appears to still be on active duty, as no announcements have been made saying otherwise.

The Artemis II quartet flew around the moon in April, becoming the first people to go beyond low Earth orbit since 1972. The historic journey was widely expected to be the last step in active astronaut duty for at least some of the mission's four astronauts, especially Hansen, who had waited for a flight assignment for 17 years in part due to how Canadian Space Agency funding is allocated. (Robotics provided by the CSA form a minority share of international space partnerships with NASA, and astronaut flight rates are tied to funding.)

The Artemis II astronauts made a series of public appearances together this summer, culminating on Aug. 28 when President Trump awarded them the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. Hansen was only the second non-American to receive the award, which had previously been given to just 30 astronauts total.

While NASA's Wednesday announcement about Glover and Wiseman did not explicitly state that the duo are exiting active astronaut duty, their new role is described as allowing the astronauts to assist NASA as consultants and "individuals with a high degree of technical and professional knowledge," while allowing them to do other things.

The two astronauts are expected to help NASA plan future Artemis program missions. "I'm grateful they will continue sharing what they learned with our astronauts, flight controllers and engineers as we prepare for Artemis III in 2027 and the missions that follow," NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said in the statement.

Glover, who also retired from the U.S. Navy recently, will now assume a full-time role at his alma mater, California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, which has aerospace and space programs. The news was announced by the university on Wednesday, but the position took effect on Sept. 1. Glover will be an administrative leader providing advice to senior leadership on education, research and workforce strategies, according to Cal Poly.

"The most meaningful moments of my NASA career were supporting astronauts and their families through missions, and mentoring interns and new hires as they began their own journeys in technical and public service," Glover wrote Wednesday in a post on X about the career change.

Wiseman did not share any specific updates about his career plans on social media. The astronaut also exited active astronaut duty temporarily between 2020 and 2022 when he was chief of the astronaut office for NASA, a role that precludes flying in space as the chief is involved in flight assignments. Wiseman left that role and resumed active astronaut duty before being assigned to Artemis 2, which occurred shortly before the public announcement of the mission's crew in April 2023.

"NASA gave me tremendous responsibility, supported me through two space missions — and my time as chief astronaut — and was always there for my family when we needed it most," Wiseman said in the NASA statement about his career change. "I'm thrilled to continue serving future missions and programs through the emeritus program."

Hansen's Artemis 2 duties officially concluded on Sept. 2, according to his X account, and the astronaut — who has been based out of Houston since 2009 — posted a new video of himself Wednesday walking in the woods in Canada. Hansen said he has retired as a colonel with the Royal Canadian Air Force and is now a reservist working with 3 Canadian Space Division, which is essentially Canada's Space Force.

"The intention of that is to continue to serve Canada and government — the Canadian Space Agency — when it makes sense, to help us take advantage of some of the extraordinary opportunities that are before us right now," Hansen said in the video, adding that he will divulge more details about that work shortly.

Hansen also said he accepted a role as honorary national president with the Canadian military's Air Cadet League of Canada, which the astronaut has often said helped equip him with both flying and leadership skills when Hansen was growing up.

Additionally, Hansen pledged to "continue to share the moon joy" both as an individual and with his crew. For example, he recently joined a Canadian keynote-speakers bureau in which he plans to speak about how to accomplish personal "moonshots." In October, Hansen will also co-release "Earthrise: A Canadian Astronaut's Journey Into Deep Space" (HarperCollins Publishers, 2026) — a book that discusses his career and Artemis 2 — which he co-wrote with Canadian author John Larsen.

Though their origins may be shrouded in mystery, fast radio bursts (FRBs) could be used to probe some of the universe's biggest puzzles. This includes probing the nature of dark matter, the invisible sort of matter that somehow dominates the universe, and dark energy, the mysterious force causing the expansion of our universe to accelerate. They could even shed light on the mysteries of neutrinos, or "ghost particles." Let's dive into how.

FRBs are brief but intense blasts of radio waves currently thought to erupt from rapidly rotating dead stars with the universe's strongest magnetic fields, called magnetars. As FRBs travel billions of light-years to reach Earth, they pass through dense clouds of gas and dust in galaxies. This "cosmic fog" changes the original FRB signal. What this means is these blasts of radio waves carry the fingerprints of how matter in the universe is distributed.

Mapping the distribution and "clumpiness" of ordinary matter in galaxies can then help trace the distribution of dark matter, the effect of dark energy and the mass of neutrinos.

"We've established that FRBs are a leading probe of the distribution of matter in the universe," team leader Kritti Sharma, a graduate student working with Vikram Ravi, a professor of astronomy at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and also part of the team, said in a statement. "These FRB data can be used to enhance cosmology experiments that are trying to answer questions about dark matter, dark energy, and the mass of neutrinos."

For this research, Ravi and Sharma analyzed a sample of about 100 FRBs. This represents the first time scientists have used FRBs to directly measure the impact of so-called "feedback" from galaxies on the clumpiness of matter in the large-scale regions between galaxies.

Cosmic ghosts and the dark universe

Ordinary matter, composed of atoms made up of electrons, protons and neutrons, accounts for just around 5% of the universe's energy/matter budget despite comprising stars, planets, moons, our bodies, next door's cat and everything we see around us on a day-to-day basis.

Of this budget, the other 95% is composed of dark energy (68%) and dark matter (27%). It's little wonder that scientists are very keen to better understand these two aspects of the cosmos, sometimes collectively referred to as the "dark universe."

Things get even more murky when considering how, of that 5%, the second most abundant particles in the universe, aside from particles of light or photons, are neutrinos. These get their nickname of "ghost particles" because they interact with other matter particles so infrequently that approximately 100 trillion neutrinos pass through your body every second without leaving any trace. This is possible because neutrinos are virtually massless, and scientists are keen to accurately measure the mass of these cosmic ghosts.

These three mysterious elements of the cosmos have played a vital role in the evolution of large-scale cosmic structures like galaxies and galaxy clusters. That means, in turn, that measuring the clustering of matter can reveal details about the aspects of the universe that influenced that clustering.

However, to do that, scientists also have to understand how other factors smooth out cosmic clumpiness. That includes the energy pumped out from the hearts of galaxies by feeding supermassive black holes, a type of cosmic feedback that smooths out clumpy cosmic matter lying outside galaxies.

"The feedback process thins the gas around the galaxies, redistributing matter across vast distances. It smooths out clumps of matter in a way that looks astonishingly similar to what massive neutrinos do, or what dark energy or dark matter theories predict," Ravi said. "Unless scientists can independently measure this contribution from feedback, they can't tell these effects apart."

That's where FRBs come in.

The researchers found that, while galactic feedback does indeed smooth surrounding material, making it less clumpy, the effect is weaker than has previously been measured.

"Our analysis of FRBs reveals how gas ejected by astrophysical feedback suppresses cosmic structure," team member Elisabeth Krause of the University of Arizona said in the statement. "This is amazing considering we only had about 100 FRBs in our sample. It's only the beginning."

The investigation of the universe with FRBs could get a major boost in 2029 when Caltech's Deep Synoptic Array (DSA) begins operating in Nevada. This powerful radio telescope is expected to find tens of thousands of FRBs, a major boon for cosmology.

The team's research was published on Tuesday (Sept. 8) in the journal Nature Astronomy.

SpaceX launched a secret mission for the U.S. Space Force today (Sept. 10) from California's central coast.

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base today at 11:42 a.m. EDT (1542 GMT; 8:42 a.m. local time), kicking off a mission called USSF-153.

The rocket's first stage came back to Earth about 8.5 minutes later, landing in the Pacific Ocean atop the SpaceX drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You." It was the 27th flight for this particular booster, which is designated B1801. The record for a SpaceX rocket is 37, set last month during a launch of the company's Starlink internet satellites.

USSF-153 is a classified mission, so little is known about its payloads — what they are or where exactly they're headed. We didn't get much clarity from the webcast, which ended shortly after the Falcon 9's first stage landed.

However, the location of that touchdown provided some potentially useful information about USSF-153, according to NextSpaceflight.com.

The mission might be carrying "a batch of classified LEO [low Earth orbit] satellites for a U.S. government entity based on SpaceX's Starshield satellite bus, based on locations of rocket stage drop zones being exact fits with previous Starlink Group 15 launches," the outlet wrote.

"Starshield leverages SpaceX's Starlink technology and launch capability to support national security efforts," SpaceX wrote in a description of the Starshield program.

Today's launch was the 104th Falcon 9 mission of 2026. Eighty of the rocket's flights this year have been dedicated to building out the Starlink megaconstellation, which currently consists of more than 11,000 active spacecraft.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 11:55 a.m. ET on Sept. 10 with news of successful launch and rocket landing.

A "forbidden" merger between two massive black holes may not have been quite as impossible as previously thought. That's according to new research that suggests the black holes involved were smaller than expected.

On Nov. 23, 2023, the gravitational wave detector LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) detected tiny ripples in spacetime caused by the merger of two black holes. What was incredible about this signal, designated GW231123, was that it seemed to be the result of a black hole with 140 times the mass of the sun colliding with another that holds 100 solar masses.

This raised eyebrows among researchers because usual models of stellar evolution struggle to account for such massive black holes, especially ones that seemed to be spinning as fast as these two. While scientists have been attempting to explain how such an odd black hole binary could form. The team behind this new research suggests it doesn't need to be explained at all. They think that the masses of these black holes were an illusion.

The key to this illusion is a phenomenon called gravitational lensing, first predicted by Albert Einstein's 1915 theory of gravity, general relativity, which also first predicted the existence of gravitational waves. This theory says objects with mass cause the curvature of space and time, united as a four-dimensional entity called "spacetime." The more mass an object possesses, the greater the curvature, and because gravity arises from this curvature, the greater the gravitational influence.

Gravitational lensing occurs when light from a background object passes a massive foreground object. The foreground object can warp the fabric of spacetime in such a way that the light's path is curved. This means light from the same background source can reach Earth at different times, depending on how much that light was diverted.

This difference in travel time can magnify a background source, and it has been used to great effect to observe distant and ancient galaxies ordinarily too faint to be seen.

This research team thinks the effect also applies to gravitational waves, suggesting the signal GW231123 is an example of gravitationally lensed ripples in spacetime that made the black holes appear larger than they actually are.

"Like light, gravitational waves can also be deflected, magnified and split into multiple signals by massive objects," team member Miguel Zumalacárregui, group leader in the Astrophysical and Cosmological Relativity Department at the Albert Einstein Institute (AEI), said in a statement. "For gravitational waves, diffraction and interference effects give us an additional way to identify and study lensed signals."

To investigate this possibility, the team developed a mathematical model of gravitational lensing and created software powerful and fast enough to analyze it.

"If we assume that GW231123 was deflected and distorted by a compact object of about 190 to 850 solar masses — or by an extended structure such as a globular cluster — we can understand the observed high masses," said team member Srashti Goyal, who was based at the AEI when conducting the research. "Moreover, the lensing interpretation does not require unusually high spins."

When the team modeled the event with that consideration factored in, they found the merger involved a system with a mass of 140 solar masses, rather than the 240-solar-mass system initially theorized.

The team doesn't quite know what massive object is responsible for lensing the gravitational wave signal GW231123. But no matter what it is, if the team is correct, the lens could be something quite special.

"The nature of the lens remains a major mystery in our analysis, as individual compact lenses with 100 to 1,000 solar masses should be exceedingly rare," Zumalacárregui said. "Future work will need to establish whether such lenses can form, or whether an ensemble of lighter objects, including stars, can explain this event."

The team can't yet conclusively say if GW231123 is the first gravitationally lensed gravitational wave signal. Finding future signals of the sort will require upgrades to the sensitivity of detectors like LIGO.

Though even before that happens, the research does point to the utility of gravitational wave astronomy to study some of the universe's most violent events.

The team's research was published on August 25 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Celebrations of Star Trek's 60th anniversary made it all the way to the final frontier.

Among the science and supplies delivered to the International Space Station (ISS) for European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Sophie Adenot's mission on orbit was a small piece of memorabilia to honor one of the most influential pop culture phenomena that has continually called for humanity to turn its gaze to the stars. Adenot carried a small Starfleet badge from one of Star Trek's newest series, Strange New Worlds, which she wore during a video posted by ESA and Star Trek.

"It's a small object, but it carries something bigger: sixty years of a story that taught us to dream about exploring together," ESA said in a separate post picturing the golden badge floating in front of the station's large Cupola windows. "From the crew of the USS Enterprise to the crews on the International Space Station, the mission hasn't really changed. Explore. Discover. Do it together," the post says.

Adenot launched to the ISS aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule on NASA's Crew-12 mission to the orbital lab on Feb. 13, and is serving as flight engineer for ISS Expedition 75. It's her first launch to space, and is set to wrap up soon, pending the launch and arrival of SpaceX's next Dragon spacecraft carrying the astronauts of NASA's Crew-13 mission, expected within just a few weeks.

In Adenot's video, she is seen donning the Starfleet badge on her ESA-issue ISS shirt, floating in ESA's Columbus laboratory module. "For me, exploration and science are about curiosity and cooperation, daring to go a little farther together, learning from what we discover and build, and turning that knowledge into a better future for everyone," she said.

Star Trek, too, has resonated with similar themes. Since its premiere on Sept. 8, 1966, the show has told stories that place social issues and cultural conflicts front and center in a way that 'demonstrates the best traits of humanity. It depicts, in its creator Gene Roddenberry's view, an idyllic version of humanity he believed was truly achievable through the act of simply accepting one another.

"The whole show was an attempt to say that humanity will reach maturity and wisdom on the day that it begins not just to tolerate, but to take a special delight in differences in ideas and differences in life forms," Roddenberry said in the 1976 album The Star Trek Philosophy. "If we cannot learn to actually enjoy those small differences — take a positive delight in those small differences between our own kind — here on this planet, then we do not deserve to go out into space and meet the diversity that is almost certainly out there."

ESA celebrated that philosophy, and the potential it holds for humanity. "Science fiction imagines the future. We build it," ESA's post said. "From the crew of the USS Enterprise to the crews on the International Space Station, the mission hasn't really changed. Explore. Discover. Do it together."

Using the ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) radio telescope, astronomers have watched as two stars come together to form a massive stellar binary. The observations revealed that these stars didn't form from the same collapsing cloud of gas and dust, as most binary stars are assumed to form, but instead came together later in their infancy.

Here on Earth, we are slightly prejudiced by our single sun to view stars as somewhat solitary bodies. However, around half of sun-sized stars in the Milky Way have a companion star. This percentage of stellar partnership rises to around 90% of massive stars. Eventually, these massive stars go supernova and shape their cosmic surroundings. Thus, understanding these binary systems is vital to our understanding of stars and of galaxies in general.

The team behind this research initially observed the still-growing massive stars, or protostars, in the binary system IRAS 07299−1651, located around 5,300 light-years away in 2019. At first, the researchers didn't see anything that suggested these stars didn't form from the same disk-shaped cloud of gas and dust that later fragmented. However, one thing really stood out: the disks of material surrounding and feeding these protostars are oddly misaligned.

Over the course of eight years, the team mapped subtle shifts in the position of the stars using ALMA in addition to the Very Large Array (VLA), as well as infrared images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Very Large Telescope (VLT).

"For the first time, we were able to watch two massive stars move around one another while they were still being born," team leader Yichen Zhang of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, said in a statement.

The team was able to reconstruct the full 3-dimensional structure of IRAS 07299−1651 for the first time, obtaining details about how the stars orbit each other, the way their disks are aligned, and the angle at which they blast jets into space.

"Each telescope revealed a different piece of the puzzle," team member Rubén Fedriani, of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA) in Granada, Spain, said. "The combination of radio and infrared observations provides the most exquisite detail on the formation of this massive protobinary system."

Unexpected chaos

The team's observations took them by surprise. They were expecting these stars to orbit each other in neat, near-circular orbits. Instead, the orbits were found to be highly flattened or "eccentric," almost parabolic.

If the stars had formed from the same disk of material, then even after it fragmented, the individual disks surrounding the stars would be aligned. However, that wasn't the case; the disks are tilted at a sharp angle to each other and to the orbits of the stars.

"It felt like solving a three-dimensional puzzle," team member Yao Wang of Shanghai Jiao Tong University said. "Each new observation added another piece, and eventually the orbit, disks, and jets all came together into a single, coherent picture."

The chaotic structure of IRAS 07299−1651, as observed by the team, is difficult to explain if the two stars emerged from the same disk of material.

Instead, the researchers theorize that the two stars were born in individual clouds of gas and dust, before a chance encounter brought the two infant stars and their respective natal cocoons together.

Tracing back the orbits of the stars, the researchers found that this encounter likely occurred around 60 years ago. Considering stars live for billions of years, that is an instant on a cosmic timescale. The disk-shaped pockets of material around the stars have thus far survived the encounter, retaining their well-defined structures.

"This study demonstrates that the early lives of stars can be quite chaotic, with a chance encounter leading to this gravitational dance and stellar coupling," team member Jonathan C. Tan of the University of Technology and the University of Virginia said.

What the team can't yet establish is whether these stars are destined to stick together or if they will eventually move apart. Indeed, this fate may not have been sealed yet; interactions with the surrounding gas could determine what shape this system takes in the future.

The team hopes that further observations of IRAS 07299−1651 will help to better understand what the future holds for these stars.

In the meantime, the long-term monitoring approach adopted by the researchers could provide scientists with a powerful new way of investigating other young massive binary systems. This could reveal how common encounters like this are and if more binary systems are composed of stars brought together by chance encounters.

The team's research was published on Tuesday (Sept. 8) in the journal Nature Astronomy.

A brand new observatory began its tenure on Aug. 30 — it's called the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, and it's equipped with a high-tech tool that can directly photograph planets beyond our solar system.

The tool is called a coronagraph; in simple terms, a coronagraph is a device that can be affixed to a telescope and block out the light of a star the telescope is looking at to study features around that star. Without such a device, starlight can be so overpowering that it outshines details nearby. You can think of a coronagraph as a way to recreate a total solar eclipse, except instead of the moon blocking out the sun it's a humanmade mask of sorts that does that trick.

But while coronagraphs have been used many times before, the one that just launched toward the stars is unprecedented. "The Roman Space Telescope is carrying the most advanced coronagraph that humanity has ever put into space," Dominic Benford, the telescope's program scientist, told Space.com.

If you can remember the striking "Pale Blue Dot" image of Earth that NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft captured while floating about 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) from the sun, this is the kind of thing scientists expect to see with Roman's coronagraph. A menagerie of Pale Brown Dots should soon make us feel the weight of our existence.

"I love the feeling of smallness that comes from understanding you're not alone in the universe," Vanessa Bailey, Roman's coronagraph instrument scientist, told Space.com.

How does it work?

Coronagraphs aren't really a new thing. Often, they're even used to study our own sun.

For example, NASA's PUNCH mission — which stands for Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere — launched in 2025 and consists of four spacecraft, one of which holds a coronagraph. This coronagraph blocks out the light of our sun in order to reveal the wispy tendrils of the sun's outer atmosphere, or corona.

"In fact, more than 100 years ago, astronomers used coronagraphs to create an artificial eclipse to study the sun's corona," Bailey said during a press briefing on Aug. 29, a day before Roman launched to space. "That's the reason for the name."

But when it comes to other stars, coronagraphs hold another purpose. They can block out a star's light in such a way that planets actually orbiting that star come into view.

"We can block that starlight until we have only a few parts per billion of the light of the star remaining," Benford said of Roman's coronagraph. As a result, he explained, "we can directly see the light bouncing off something like a Jupiter around another star, which we've never been able to do before."

This process will surely give us our Pale Brown Dots — but to take things a step further, scientists will also be able to dissect the light bouncing off the theoretical Jupiter to reveal what the atmosphere of the world is like, too.

To be clear, Roman isn't the only astronomy tool we have that utilizes a coronagraph while looking beyond our solar system. Even the James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope have their own, for that matter. However, Roman's is far more complex.

For one, the Roman's coronagraph doesn't exactly "block" out starlight like a standard coronagraph does. For the "moon" in its artificial eclipses, it uses a combination of patterned disks and special filters to create destructive interference with the light of a target star. Destructive interference means competing waves of light cancel one another out, leading to a zeroed amplitude. In effect, this blocks out the starlight as necessary and only allows light reflected off the planets of interest to pull through and reflect off the coronagraph's mirrors.

The first active coronagraph

Which brings us to the next special part about Roman's coronagraph: It's the first "active" coronagraph to fly in space.

What this means is it can adjust those mirrors in real-time to make sure its exoplanet observations are as clear as possible. This is important because as light reflects off the coronagraph's mirrors, it can create small distortions that mess up the delicate destructive interference dance. You'd need to adjust to bring the balance back, and these adjustments are possible because Roman's coronagraph has hundreds of tiny pistons built into its mirrors. This makes them deformable so they can change shape to account for distortions.

If it all works out, this coronagraph should be capable of detecting exoplanets that are about 100 million times fainter than their stars.

"These deformable mirrors are a real engineering feat," Bailey said during the press briefing. "They can be commanded with the precision approaching the size of an atom, and this is what really allows us to make this transformative performance."

As for what the specific hope is for Roman's coronagraph, Bailey explained there are a few nearby star systems the team is particularly interested in peering into because we have hints of Jupiter-like planets orbiting in those systems that still haven't been imaged. "Or," she said, "there may be really interesting remnants of dust and debris from the process of planet formation." Perhaps that dust could exist in the habitable zones of the stars Roman looks toward, and perhaps this could tell us more about the birth of planet Earth.

"That is interesting in its own regard but also interesting as a precursor to the Habitable Worlds Observatory," Bailey said, in reference to NASA's next great project that will be equipped with a more advanced version of Roman's coronagraph. "We can study how dusty these nearby systems are and understand whether any of them might have too much dust for us to be able to observe an Earth-like planet in the future."

While Roman will pretty much be focusing on Jupiter-like worlds because they're big enough to be detected with its current capabilities, HWO could certainly find another Earth someday.

From 6,000 exoplanets to 100,000

And before we wrap up, we must briefly mention this newly christened exoplanet hunter's partner tool, the majorly impressive Wide Field Instrument (WFI) that can survey huge swaths of sky in one go. It is because of the partnership between the WFI and its coronagraph that Roman will immensely expand our exoplanet gallery, says associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate Nicky Fox. The coronagraph won't be finding new exoplanets alone, but rather will be diving deeper into exoplanets the WFI finds first.

WFI will use two different techniques to contribute to our gallery. The first one is called the transit technique, and it's the same method big names like Kepler and TESS tapped into. It involves noticing dips in starlight that happen when a possible planet transits the face of a star from the telescope's vantage point. "If you see that happen multiple times," Fox said, "you can infer that it's a planet, and you can get the radius and the size of the planet from that observation."

The second technique has to do with gravitational lensing, which refers to how objects with mass in space (and therefore gravitational influence) can warp the very fabric of spacetime and alter the path of light traveling through the affected region. What comes to mind might be a mighty galaxy cluster twisting spacetime like a sheet of satin, but little things like stars and planets can do it, too. The so-called "microlensing" effect of smaller objects warping spacetime leads to the brightening of background objects.

Fox sums up WFI's two techniques in a nutshell: "If you see a little dip, that can suggest there's a transiting planet. You see a little brightening, that can suggest there's a microlensing planet."

For WFI, the microlensing technique will be sensitive to Earth-size planets in the habitable zones of their stars, while the transiting technique will be more sensitive to planets closer to their stars. And as Bailey reminds us, there are absolute heaps of planets to test Roman out on: "When you look up at the night sky, most of those stars have planets."

Right now, we only know of about 6,000 of those worlds. Fox believes this new space telescope could unveil 100,000 more.

Global warming will soon cross a critical threshold, surpassing a dangerous limit set years ago, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has found. But experts say it's still possible to cool things back down, emphasizing that the stakes are too high to stop trying.

In 2015, 196 nations and territories signed the Paris Agreement, pledging to restrict the average rise of global temperatures to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. Ideally, the rise was meant to be kept to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) above those levels. However, according to a new report detailed by the UNEP, we are on track to cross that 1.5 C line — and soon.

"This summer's scorching heat, raging wildfires and deadly floods are a warning of what lies ahead. We must make the overshoot above 1.5 degrees as small and short as possible. That demands an overshoot of ambition," U.N. Secretary-General Antőnio Guterres said in a statement.

According to the new report, experts have found that if we as a planet continue with business as usual, not only will we pass 1.5 C, but it will happen within just a few years. The report, however, maintained a positive tone. Rather than simply predicting a doomsday plot, the main purpose of this release is to outline a pathway with the necessary steps to set things on the right track.

"As global temperature rise gets set to cross 1.5°C, pushing climate risks and impacts to dangerous new heights, the world must strive to return to below 1.5°C as soon as possible and simultaneously reduce the vulnerability of societies, communities and economies to climate impacts," the report, titled "Limiting Overshoot: Navigating exceedance of 1.5°C and pathways towards return," states in its abstract.

Climate change is primarily caused and driven by human activities like transportation, industrial manufacturing, agriculture and more. According to the report, the two main aspects of this work need to be: reducing emissions and enabling adaptations to protect people impacted by the effects of climate change.

The U.N. states in the report the necessity of both an immediate and sustained reduction in the emissions of greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide. Not only do we need to find a way to cut emissions fairly immediately, but we also need to find a way to sustain that effort over time. The U.N. further states it is important to not only work toward removing carbon from the atmosphere, eventually reaching net-negative emissions where more emissions are removed by humans from the atmosphere than added to the atmosphere.

This sort of carbon capture technology is still fairly early in its development, but according to the U.N., it is essential we find ways to rapidly move toward a future where we can capture and store carbon from the air and therefore reduce the quantity of greenhouse gases around our planet.

In addition to these long-term emission reduction actions, in this report the U.N. has also asserted that this process will need to include "adaptation actions," or ways to support the many people and communities already affected by climate change.

Even if all of the world's nations start working immediately to drastically reduce emissions, we are already seeing the sometimes fatal and irreversible effects of climate change. From increasing the intensity of wildfire seasons to worsening natural disasters, climate change is far from a distant future. It's our reality, especially for those living in high-risk areas like coastlines. So, while the nations of the world need to work together to reduce emissions, it is also important that adaptations are found to reduce the existing and future impacts of climate change on our communities.

"There are no good outcomes if we remain above 1.5°C. Across the globe, extreme heatwaves are already proving that climate impacts will strike faster, hit harder, and last longer — costing more lives and causing deeper disruption," Inger Andersen, the Executive Director of UNEP, said in the same statement. "Now is the time we must double down on climate action. We can — and must — get on the right path. By cutting greenhouse gas emissions, strengthening resilience and adaptation, and ensuring exceedance of 1.5°C is as small and short as possible."

United States Space Command just held its first-ever "Apollo Maneuvers" exercise, which saw spacecraft maneuvering through simulated contested environments.

U.S. Space Command combines assets and personnel from each U.S. military branch (including the U.S. Space Force) to project American military power into and from orbit. It's unclear which or how many satellites or spacecraft took place in Space Command's recent Apollo Maneuvers 2026, but the exercise involved international partners, according to a command statement. What is known is that the exercise aimed to demonstrate "dynamic on-orbit operations, validate contested logistics and advance collective space maneuver doctrine."

To put it in plain English, this means that Space Command practiced maneuvering satellites and other spacecraft in proximity to one another in a simulated conflict environment, in order to continue refining the "orbital dogfighting" that the U.S. military has been hinting at for some years.

In military terms, dogfighting refers to the close aerial combat that fighter jets engage in, pitting two or more pilots against one another in contests of flying ability and firepower.

In terms of space, this involves "objects in space maneuvering in and out and around each other in synchronicity, and in control," according to Space Force's Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael A. Guetlein.

“That's what we call dogfighting in space," Guetlein told attendees at a conference in 2025, according to Air & Space Forces, while speaking about Chinese satellite operations observed in 2024.

From statements that U.S. Space Command leadership gave about its recent exercise, it sounds like Apollo Maneuvers practiced just that, but in space.

"We will take some of our existing satellites and work with partners to demonstrate what are some of the requirements and capabilities to be able to maneuver for advantage, not just maneuver when you have to change your orbital position," Space Force Gen. Stephen N. Whiting, commander of U.S. Space Command, told reporters last month during a briefing at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama, according to Air & Space Forces.

"The side that can maneuver persistently and at scale will set the operational rhythm in orbit."

When it comes to space and what appears to be the inevitability of a conflict extending to Earth orbit, we're still not quite sure what that will look like. But several nations have been developing capabilities and concepts for maneuvering satellites in close proximity to other satellites with the intent to destroy or disable them, or to deny or degrade their communications or intelligence-gathering capabilities.

The U.S. Space Force, in particular, has been developing an operations framework for fighting a war in space and has held multiple training exercises aimed at practicing "orbital warfare."

But Space Force and U.S. Space Command still appear to lack many of the technologies they say they need to wage such warfare. Speaking at the Space Foundation's Space Symposium in 2025, Whiting stated that that the United States needs "orbital interceptors" to fight in space.

"And what do we call these?" Whiting rhetorically asked attendees. "We call these weapons, and we need them to deter a space conflict and to be successful if we end up in such a fight."

But U.S. Space Force has ordered and executed recent missions that have demonstrated capabilities and technologies along the lines of what Whiting described.

In June 2026, for example, a Rocket Lab Electron rocket sent one of the company's Puma satellites to orbit, where it rendezvoused with a True Anomaly Jackal spacecraft that launched a month earlier. Once both spacecraft were in orbit, they maneuvered close to one another to simulate "dynamic engagements."

The mission showed Space Force's "readiness to lean on our commercial partners to deny, disrupt and counter any adversarial advantage — no matter where they try to operate in space," according to a Space Force statement.

A volcano on an Indonesian archipelago began erupting on Sept. 4, and satellites in orbit have been watching closely.

What is it?

The volcano Anak Krakatau started spitting out ash and lava on Sept. 4. On an archipelago between Sumatra and Java, the island volcano's sudden eruption grounded flights, closed schools and even stopped fishing in the area.

The volcano launched ash into the air and into the city of Jakarta and the Lampung province during a 25-hour-long eruption. But even following this eruption, Anak Krakatau remained active throughout the weekend. In fact, the volcano is still so active that it could erupt again soon.

But it wasn't just people on Earth watching the volcano erupt this past weekend. The Landsat 8 satellite, operated by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), spotted a white plume of volcanic gas billowing into the atmosphere all the way from space. The white plumes of gas are thought to mainly contain water vapor, carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide, while ash and debris make up the brown clouds surrounding the plumes.

Why is it incredible?

While Anak Krakatau simmers after this most recent eruption, this event isn't a major shock, as the volcano sits in what is known as the "Ring of Fire." This "ring" (a loose term, as it's not exactly a ring) snakes about 25,000 miles (40,000 kilometers) around the Pacific Ocean and includes over 750 volcanoes, some dormant and some active.

In fact, in Indonesia alone there are 500 volcanoes, and 127 of them are active, including Anak Krakatau. And this volcano has a particularly interesting story: It emerged from the sea in 1927, rising from the caldera formed by the 1883 eruption of Krakatau (also known as Krakotoa), which was one of the most famous and destructive volcanic events in history. (Anak Krakatau means "child of Krakatau" in the Indonesian language.)

While not all geologists agree on the exact margins of the Ring of Fire, it rests on a string of tectonic plates and has existed for over 35 million years. And not only is this ring home to hundreds of volcanoes, it's also a hot spot for earthquakes.

On Sept. 9, 1982, the first private rocket launched from a Texas cattle ranch.

The Conestoga 1 rocket was designed by Space Services Inc. of America (SSIA) and built from spare parts of other rockets. It was named after a type of covered wagon that used to transport American settlers westward to the new frontier during the 19th century.

The 36-foot rocket lifted off from a private launch facility on Matagorda Island, Texas and flew for 10-and-a-half minutes. It reached an altitude of 195 miles and became the first privately funded rocket to reach space.

The only payload on board was 40 gallons of water, which didn't serve much scientific purpose, but it was ejected from the spacecraft at peak altitude to serve as a visual marker so ground crews could watch.

Why it mattered

Private rocket launches may seem routine today (SpaceX alone launches hundreds each year), spaceflight in 1982 was primarily the purview of government agencies like NASA, the U.S. military and other national agencies.

That changed with the launch of Conestoga 1 by SSIA. The company, led at the time by legendary Mercury 7 and Apollo-Soyuz astronaut Deke Slayton, and entreneurs Charles Chafer and David Hannah, Jr., was based in Houston and raised $6 million from 57 supporters to develop their rocket, according to Wired. The company initially tried to launch a different type of rocket, called Percheron, in 1981, but it exploded on the pad, according to an account by Inc. magazine.

SSIA found success three years later with Conestoga 1, a solid-fueled rocket based on an old Minuteman missile second stage (which Wired said SSIA bought from NASA for $365,000). It launched on its suborbital mission from Matagordo Island, Texas, which is about 170 miles (274 km) north of what is now Starbase, Texas, home to SpaceX's Starship megarocket launches.

SSIA would go on to launch another suborbital sounding rocket carrying science experiments in 1989. The company attempted to launch a larger Conestoga rocket (Conestoga 1620), which included additional strap-on boosters, in October 1995 from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia, but it failed 46 seconds after liftoff, according to NASA.

Today, SSIA's subsidiary Celestis, a space funeral company, now offers memorial flights by arranging to fly human cremains into space on commercial spaceflights. (SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets have carried some such payloads. Another branch offers informal star naming services.

But the legacy of Conestega 1 lives on today in a robust commercial space launch industry that has seen a number of private companies enter the space marketplace. SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites have even built and flown private astronauts on suborbital (and orbital in SpaceX's case) missions. SpaceX, meanwhile, has built and launched the largest private rocket on Earth, the Starship and Super Heavy booster. It stands over 400 feet tall, is more powerful than NASA's mighty Saturn V moon rocket, and is designed to be fully reusable to allow missions to Earth orbit, the moon and Mars.

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

A photon, or particle of light, from the biggest cosmic explosion since the Big Bang, nicknamed "the BOAT" (for the brightest of all time), should not have reached Earth. That is, unless it defied rules defined by Einstein. Now scientists may know how it did this, with new research suggesting how the high-energy photon may have survived a journey of more than two billion light-years without being absorbed.

The BOAT, a gamma-ray burst officially designated GRB 221009A, was first detected on Oct. 9, 2022. Among the ocean of photons from the event that rained down on our planet was the highest-energy photon ever detected originating from a gamma-ray burst. It was detected by Carpet, an ultra-high-energy cosmic-ray detector located at the Baksan Observatory in the Russian Caucasus.

The problem is, according to all current rules of physics, a particle with such high energy shouldn't reach Earth from an explosion occurring such a vast distance away. That's because space isn't empty; it is filled with a "fossil" radiation field of photons left over from just after the Big Bang called the cosmic microwave background (CMB). It should be virtually impossible for a high-energy photon to travel 2 billion light-years without interacting with a CMB photon and being transformed. And still it came.

"We started from a very simple question: how did this photon survive a journey that, according to known physics, should have destroyed it?" team leader Giorgio Galanti from the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) said in a statement. "The new data from the Carpet experiment showed us that the explanations proposed so far were no longer sufficient.

"We therefore looked for a theoretical scenario capable of consistently describing what we observe, without resorting to arbitrary corrections to the equations."

A hypothetical transformation

To investigate the mystery of how this high-energy photon reached our planet, Galanti and colleagues turned to incredibly light hypothetical particles called axion-like particles (ALPs).

ALPS could serve as a solution to this puzzle via a mechanism that would allow photons to transform into ALPs as they travel and then convert back into photons as they reach the Milky Way. The problem is that this still can't account for such a high-energy photon.

This team combined the idea of ALPs with a proposed violation of one of the fundamentals of Einstein's 1905 theory of special relativity called "Lorentz invariance."

In short, Lorentz invariance says that observers moving at different speeds should experience the same physical laws. The team tested the idea that Lorentz invariance could be violated at high energies, thus changing how photons propagate through space.

In the scenario devised by the team the photon would have avoided being wiped out by interactions with the CMB as it would avoid interactionc with these fossil photons.

The new research therefore implies that at high enough energies, photons can take a "fast lane" through a transparent universe, dodging the physics that would normally force their destructive transformation.

Interestingly, there is some evidence relating to the BOAT that seemingly backs this theory. According to the picture developed by the team, this high-energy photon should have arrived at Earth around one hour after lower-energy particles of light originating from the BOAT. Indeed, that is exactly what happened.

"The most interesting aspect of our work is that, for the first time, it brings together two ideas that until now had been developed separately," team member Marco Roncadelli of the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) said. "If future observations confirmed this scenario, the universe would become a natural laboratory for studying quantum gravity at energies enormously higher than those achievable by any accelerator built on Earth."

The team's research is available on the repository site arXiv and has been accepted for publication in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Disney's Marvel movies have had their ups and downs, but James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy has never missed. Now, thanks to this deal, you can get 40% off this Lego version of Baby Rocket Raccoon's Ship, as seen in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. However, you'll have to hurry as this set has been retired by Lego and is selling fast.

Get the retired set of Lego Marvel Baby Rocket Raccoon's Ship, on sale for $21 at Walmart.

Put together this 330-piece set and you have a blocky replica of the vessel that Rocket Raccoon used to make his escape from—well, that would be getting into spoiler territory. But if you're a fan of this fuzzy little guy, you will want this Lego Marvel Baby Rocket Raccoon's Ship on your shelf. Just remember, this is a retired Lego set so when it's gone it's gone.

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

Alongside the usual interstellar shenanigans, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 revealed the origin story of Rocket Raccoon. This Lego model, which comes with an utterly adorable model of Baby Rocket, captures one of the most dramatic moments of the film, Rocket's escape from his captor. And if you're fast, you can grab this Lego Marvel Baby Rocket's Ship at a bargain price.

Made up of 330 pieces and for builders aged 8 years and up, this should only take you a couple of hours to build, maybe longer for little fingers. It's a seriously striking ship, and is sure to entertain Guardians of the Galaxy fans of all ages. Aside from Baby Rocket, it also comes with a minifigure of grown-up Rocket Raccoon, both of which can be perched in the opening cockpit.

Pilot's seat aside, there are several other play-friendly features. You can also lower the landing gear and given how light it is, you or younger builders can swoosh this striking ship around the house. Why not make up your own Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 4? Maybe you can catch up with Doctor Doom and prevent Avengers: Doomsday from happening.

You will need to hurry, though, because this set has been retired by Lego and this could be your last chance to get your hands on it, outside of paying double or triple the price on eBay. And for more MCU builds, we have rounded up the best Lego Marvel sets.

Key features: 330 pieces, for builders age 8+, Baby Rocket and Rocket Raccoon minifigures, 9 × 4.5 × 2.6 in. / 23 × 11 × 7 cm size.

Launched: April 2023

Price history: This set has dropped to $25 in the past when other retailers were selling their stock off, but this is the cheapest we've seen it at.

Price comparison: Walmart: $21 | Amazon: $38

Reviews consensus: Over at Walmart, this set's reviews are almost universally positive, praising it as a fun, straightforward build, with some of the praise coming from non-Marvel fans. At this price, you really can't go wrong.

✅ Buy it if: You want an easy-to-build, entertaining set that not only looks great on a shelf, it's fun to play with too.

❌ Don't buy it if: You want a lot of minifigures. Instead, consider some of the best Lego Marvel sets, such as this Lego Endgame Final Battle set.

Check out our other guides to the best telescopes, binoculars, cameras, star projectors, drones, Lego and much more.

Starting today (Sept. 9), skywatchers in the Northern Hemisphere have a chance to spot one of the night sky's more elusive sights: the zodiacal light.

Zodiacal light is a faint, pyramid-shaped glow rising in the east before morning twilight. It is caused by sunlight reflecting off interplanetary dust.

The phenomenon is sometimes nicknamed the "false dawn" because its soft glow can be mistaken for the signs of morning twilight. Unlike dawn, however, the zodiacal light appears as a distinct cone or wedge of light extending upwards from the horizon along the ecliptic — the apparent path the sun, moon and planets follow across the sky.

Early fall provides a good opportunity for northern hemisphere observers to look for zodiacal light before dawn, when the angle of the ecliptic helps the glow stand more prominently above the eastern horizon.

Timing and location are everything in order to observe the Zodiacal Light. You must be far from city lights, looking east, around 4:00 a.m. EDT. Give your eyes plenty of time to adjust to the darkness and avoid looking at your phone or other bright lights while searching for the faint glow.

How to find it

Trace the cone of light as high as possible. Under pristine, dark skies, you can follow this glow deep into the zodiacal constellations that lie along the ecliptic. The base of the light cone will start near Cancer, resting just above the horizon, stretching upward through Gemini, and reaching high into the predawn sky toward Taurus.

How to photograph it

Capturing the Zodiacal Light is very similar to photographing the Milky Way. You will want a fast, wide-angle lens (such as a 14 mm lens at f/2.8) to properly frame the sweeping diagonal of these constellations. Use a high ISO (1600 to 3200) and take a 15-to-20-second exposure on a fixed tripod.

China is making progress on its Tianwen 3 Mars sample return mission, which aims to bring back to Earth roughly 500 grams (17.6 ounces) of Red Planet collectibles in 2031.

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

If all goes to plan, Tianwen 3 will launch in 2028 on two Long March 5 heavy-lift rockets from the Wenchang Space Launch Site on the island of Hainan, China's southernmost province.

Sputnik moment

"The Tianwen 3 mission is progressing smoothly, with intensified efforts being made to overcome technical challenges," Hou Zengqian, the mission's chief scientist, recently told CCTV, a state-run Chinese broadcaster.

"The probe equipment has entered the prototype development phase, and scientifically, many scientist teams from across the country are working together to tackle the challenges in accordance with the mission's scientific objectives," Hou added.

Meanwhile, NASA's plans for hauling Mars samples to Earth are murky at the moment. So China appears to be in the lead to notch a major space milestone.

"If accurate, this represents a Sputnik moment," said former NASA "Mars Czar" Scott Hubbard, referring to the reported Tianwen 3 progress.

"China will not only grab the headlines but may be the first to find evidence of life on another planet," Hubbard, who also previously directed NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, told Space.com.

Top scientific priority

"The Tianwen 3 mission will look for microbial traces potentially similar to early forms of life on Earth, while also taking into consideration the possibility of unknown forms of life that may have emerged through Mars' unique evolutionary history, providing crucial evidence to answer this major scientific question," Hou told the state-run Xinhua news agency in a recent interview.

Searching for potential signs of life on Mars is the top scientific goal of the Tianwen 3 mission, Hou said on Sept. 3 during the 2026 International Deep Space Exploration Conference on, which was held in Hefei, the capital of eastern China's Anhui Province.

Landing site

China's Mars sample-return trek will be launched "around 2028" on two Long March 5 rockets departing from the Wenchang Space Launch Site in China's southernmost island province of Hainan. (Launch windows for Mars missions come around just once every 26 months. The next one opens in November-December of this year, and the one after that, which Tianwen 3 apparently is targeting, runs from December 2028 to January 2029.)

Hou also said China expects to finalize the landing site for the mission by the end of 2026, with Chinese specialists advancing work on a next-generation geological map of Mars in its entirety.

If everything goes according to plan, the mission will collect samples from the Martian surface and then send them back to Earth around 2031.

"Regardless of whether signs of life are found, the returned Martian samples will have irreplaceable scientific value," Hou said.

Tackle the challenges

Hou added that analyses of the returned samples at microscopic, molecular and isotopic scales could deepen our understanding of Mars' geology and environment, as well as the evolution of habitability and the conditions under which life may originate.

According to Hou, Mars sample return is an extremely complex project, with landing-site selection, planetary protection and contamination control, and the identification of potential signs of life among its key challenges.

Chinese Mars researchers are selecting candidate landing sites for the mission based on factors that include geological age, history of water activity, habitability and the potential for preserving biosignatures.

Planetary protection lab

Xinhua reported last month that a "planetary protection laboratory" is to be built in the first phase of Hefei's Deep-Space Science City in east China's Anhui Province, citing the Deep Space Exploration Laboratory (DSEL).

"The planetary protection laboratory will implement a two-way protection system that guards both the returning Martian samples and Earth's biosphere," Xinhua reports.

The lab's tasks encompass sample sterilization, unsealing, processing and biological risk assessment. "The facility is designed to support the implementation of major deep-space missions and to enable scientific research on Martian samples," added Xinhua.

China "will follow the planetary protection policies of the Committee on Space Research, to prevent biological contamination of Mars by terrestrial organisms and to protect Earth from any potential extraterrestrial life forms that may be carried back in the samples," said Li Hang, director of the development planning department at DSEL, according to Xinhua.

You can view a video about China's Mars sample return plans here.

Scientists may finally know why Venus, Earth's twin, lacks a moon, finding that the hottest planet in the solar system may have consumed its own natural satellite.

Venus is often referred to as Earth's twin due to its size, mass, rocky composition, and distance from the sun, but there are some glaring differences between the two planets. Aside from Venus' blisteringly hot temperature, which could melt lead, incredible surface pressure, violent high-speed winds, and clouds of sulfuric acid, one of the key differences between Earth and Venus can be seen from afar. While our planet has a constant companion in the form of the moon, Venus lacks a moon of its own. In fact, the only solar system planets lacking moons are Venus, the second planet from the sun, and Mercury, the closest planet to the sun.

One question that scientists have puzzled over for years is whether Venus always lacked a moon, or if the hottest planet in the solar system once had a natural satellite and somehow lost it. Now, a team of researchers may have arrived at an answer, determining the fate that would have befallen a hypothetical moon orbiting Venus.

"I have always had a fascination with moon formation and evolution in the solar system, and particularly with Venus since my research is centered around its evolution and potential for past habitability," team leader Stephen R. Kane of the University of California, Riverside told Space.com. "Venus is Earth's twin, and both are nearly identical in size, mass, and composition. However, Earth has a large moon, and Venus has no moon at all, not even a small captured satellite.

"Venus undoubtedly experienced large impacts, just as Earth has, and so has had as much, if not more, opportunity to form a moon similar to what we see in our own skies."

Kane and colleagues constructed a simulation to test their ideas of what could have become of the Venusian moon.

"The work involved going back to fundamental physics and creating the simulation from the ground up, which I validated by ensuring I could reproduce the evolution of the Earth-moon system," Kane said. "The moment I realized that our model provided a complete explanation for Venus not having a moon was an exciting one!"

Did Venus consume its own moon?

The team modelled a gravitational tug-of-war between Venus, a hypothetical moon, and the sun, following this forward over billions of years.

"This is the same physics that governs our own moon, which is slowly drifting away from Earth. We ran the calculations across a wide range of possibilities for how fast Venus was spinning and how massive its moon might have been, using two independent mathematical descriptions of how tides work," Kane explained.

The researcher said that this was done so the conclusions reached wouldn't hinge on one set of assumptions. They found in most cases a Venusian moon would not drift safely outward the way ours does. Instead, the modelling showed that a moon orbiting Venus would eventually reverse its course and spiral inward, causing it to be torn apart by the planet's gravity.

Kane and colleagues found that possessing an intimidating size wouldn't guarantee a Venusian moon's survival, either.

"An interesting aspect is that a heavier moon is destroyed faster, since a massive moon would drain Venus's spin so efficiently that it hastens its destruction," Kane added.

But are there any circumstances under which a Venusian moon could have survived?

"Survival came down to two main things: Venus had to be spinning fast when the moon formed, with a day shorter than about 12 hours, and the moon couldn't be too massive, up to roughly the mass of our own moon," team leader Stephen R. Kane of the University of California, Riverside told Space.com. "In that narrow window, the moon migrates outward and stabilizes, much as Earth's did. Outside that range, the moon is unfortunately doomed to be consumed by Venus.

"So a surviving moon would have had to be modest in size, orbiting a rapidly spinning early Venus, which are conditions that don't match what we think early Venus was actually like."

We may never conclusively know if Venus has indeed destroyed its own moon, as Kane thinks that collecting direct evidence from astronomical observations will be very difficult.

"Finding direct observational evidence is pretty tough. A moon lost billions of years ago would leave little to no direct trace we can point a telescope at today, so we can't observe the event itself," Kane said. "However, there are indirect avenues. For example, if a moon was destroyed and its debris rained down on Venus, it could have left a chemical fingerprint in the planet's surface or atmosphere, and upcoming missions to Venus, including NASA's DAVINCI (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging) probe, will measure atmospheric composition in detail."

If missions such as DAVINCI could help us develop a better understanding of the Venusian interior, then this would also improve the models such as the one used in this research. That is because the outcomes of such models depend on properties of Venus's interior, which aren't currently well understood.

"There's a broader test beyond our solar system because our results predict that slowly rotating, Venus-like planets around other stars should generically lack large moons, so as astronomers begin searching for moons around exoplanets, that's a prediction that can eventually be checked against real data," Kane said.

Kane and colleagues don't intend to rest on their laurels while further data from Venus or even Venus-like exoplanets are delivered. They have plenty to work on in the meantime.

"There are numerous implications of our work that I would like to explore further. These include the compositional and atmospheric effects of a Venusian moon consumption event that may be testable now," Kane concluded. I would also like to explore similar effects for Mercury and Mars, and conduct further studies on exoplanet cases where such moon collision scenarios may have occurred."

The team's research is available as a pre-peer-reviewed paper on the repository site arXiv.

Stoke Space has amassed a substantial sum during its latest round of financing and is revealing exactly where it plans to invest its new stack of cash.

The Kent, Washington-based company just raised $1 billion via its"Series E" capital campaign, bringing Stoke’s total investor haul to $2.3 billion. The Sept. 8 announcement provided a development update for Stoke’s fully reusable Nova Pathfinder launch vehicle and included plans for its never-before-seen Nova Block 2 rocket, a more powerful system designed to be able to deliver up to 15 tons to low Earth orbit (LEO).

“We are humbled by the trust our investors and customers have placed in us in pursuit of this critical generational challenge,” said Andy Lapsa, Stoke CEO and co-founder. “This investment enables us to scale toward delivering the capability and cadence our customers require.”

Nova Pathfinder is Stoke’s first orbital launch vehicle (the largest first rocket ever undertaken by a U.S. launch company, according to Stoke), and is based on the same technologies the company is building into its Block 2 design. Both two-stage vehicles are being manufactured with full and rapid reusability in mind, with Pathfinder serving as the proving ground for that architecture.

Pathfinder's first stage is powered by seven Stoke-designed full-flow, staged-combustion (FFSC) Zenith rocket engines, fueled by liquid oxygen and liquefied natural gas (LNG). The first stage on Nova Block 2 will be equipped with 14 Zeniths. Stoke calls FFSC “perhaps the most difficult rocket engine cycle to develop,” but highlights its advantages; the tech leaves fewer residuals like soot around the engines and reduces the amount of maintenance needed between flights, according to the company.

The upper stage of both rockets is the more atypical approach to spacecraft design, compared to other vehicles of the same launch class. The aft end of Nova’s second stage is designed with a heat shield to protect the vehicle during reentry through Earth’s atmosphere. Instead of the ceramic tiles historically used on the heat shields of previous spacecraft, the dome-like structure at the base of Nova’s upper stage is made of metal, which is actively cooled by the liquid hydrogen that fuels the stage’s Andromeda propulsion system.

Rather than a single large, vacuum-optimized engine bell at its center, Nova’s upper stage features 12 small dual-thrust chambers integrated into a circle around the outer edges of the vehicle’s heat shield. Stoke successfully completed a “hopper” test flight of Pathfinder’s upper stage engine system in 2023, flying the vehicle about 30 feet (10 meters) into the air before it safely touched down.

Scaling up to Block 2, Stoke plans to equip the upper-stage system with independent systems for each of the 12 engines, potentially increasing thrust by over a factor of five, according to the company. Block 2’s upper stage also drops Pathfinder’s tapered design in favor of cylindrical tanks, increasing propellant and payload volume to accommodate a 5-meter-wide (16.4 feet) fairing.

Stoke says the larger Block 2 configuration has been in the works alongside Pathfinder for several years. The company is developing the more powerful rocket to support large commercial and national security satellite constellations, of which there soon may be a high demand.

Nova Block 2’s closest competitors are SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Rocket Lab’s upcoming Neutron launch vehicle, which is still under development. And Falcon 9 is already being sundowned by SpaceX as the company gets closer to operational flights with its next-generation Starship rocket. While certain Falcon 9 flights for NASA, like crew launches to the International Space Station, are expected to continue until at least 2030, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said that Starship’s ultimate success “means winding down Falcon.” The timing should line up with when Stoke hopes to step in with Nova Block 2. Block 2’s first launch is targeted for 2029, with production and flight cadence expected to increase from there.

As Stoke ramps up development for its upgraded launch vehicle, the company’s fresh round of funding will also go toward construction of the physical infrastructure Stoke needs to build, test and eventually operate both vehicles. The company is planning a 475-acre (192 hectares) expansion to its 75-acre (30 hectares) Moses Lake Test Site in Washington to support propulsion and vehicle testing as Pathfinder nears its first launch and Block 2 hardware begins coming online.

Stoke is also expanding its operations at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) in Florida. The company was selected by the U.S. Space Force in 2023 to manage CCSFS’s Space Launch Complex-14, where it’s now building a new payload processing facility sized to accommodate both vehicles. And to complete its full reusability system, the company is also developing an offshore recovery platform.

Pathfinder has a much shorter timeline to the launch pad. Stoke is targeting early 2027 for Pathfinder’s debut launch, which the company plans to send to orbit with a customer payload. If that’s successful, Stoke hopes to fly multiple Pathfinder missions throughout 2027 and 2028 while Block 2 development and testing continue in parallel.

Once Block 2 does reach the launch pad, Stoke plans to keep Pathfinder in service. “We see value in having more than one way to serve the market, since some missions are particularly well suited to the Pathfinder configuration,” the company said.

September 8th, 1966 was a Thursday. Not a fresh-start-Monday or an exciting Saturday. A regular old Thursday; except that this one catalysed a cultural phenomenon. This was the Thursday that "Star Trek" was first broadcast, drawing viewers across the United States into a space-age world that revolutionised television.

The thing is, in 1966 no exoplanets (planets beyond our Solar System) had actually been discovered. Yet the franchise gave audiences a galaxy brimming with desert planets, ocean worlds, binary sunsets, and countless versions of Earth. Sixty years later, astronomers have confirmed more than 6,000 planets beyond the Solar System, known as exoplanets.

But how well do "Star Trek"’s fictional worlds compare with those astronomers have actually discovered?

When many of us think "Star Trek", the first planet that comes to mind is the dry, hot, and rocky Vulcan. Canonically, it orbits 40 Eridani A, a real star around 16 light-years from Earth. Real stars invite real observations, which led to astronomers announcing a possible planet in orbit in 2018. Of course, this was nicknamed Vulcan. However, later work has shown that this apparent signal was likely caused by stellar activity, rather than a planet in orbit.

This is, unfortunately, a common issue. Stellar activity, such as starspots, convection, and other magnetic activity, is very good at producing signals that look incredibly planetary.

Although the candidate planet was ultimately discredited, genuine hot, rocky planets do exist around other stars. Many of them orbit extremely close, completing an orbit in less than an Earth day. Some may have molten surfaces, atmospheres poisoned with vapourised rock, or even permanent day and night sides. While Vulcan itself may not be real, nature has produced rocky worlds considerably more hostile than Spock’s birthplace.

In contrast to Vulcan, "Star Trek" also gave us planets almost entirely covered with water. One particularly intriguing case is The Waters, from Voyager’s Thirty Days episode. The Waters is a sphere of water, with no solid core, kept together by a containment field. This is a little different to what an astronomer would refer to as a water world, but a planet-sized mass of water could theoretically be held together by its own gravity, without the need for a containment field.

However, the immense pressure deep inside this would transform much of the water into high-pressure ice rather than leaving it as one enormous liquid ocean. While no exoplanet has been definitively proven to have a global ocean, there are candidates like TOI-1452 b — a super-Earth orbiting a red dwarf star — that could contain a much larger proportion of water than Earth. It’s important to keep in mind, however, that a water-rich planet doesn’t necessarily make a good home. Water could exist beneath a chokingly thick atmosphere, as high-pressure ice, or sitting above an inhospitable interior.

Something "Star Trek" got very right is planets with two or more suns, such as Risa under its twin stars. The first confirmed planet orbiting two stars — known as a circumbinary planet — was Kepler-16 b. As it orbits a binary star system, it would experience a double sunset from the surface…if a surface existed.

Unlike many of the fictional planets in "Star Trek", Kepler-16b is a cold, gas giant; not somewhere we could sit and admire the view. In 1966, not only had exoplanets not yet been discovered, but astronomers had no observational evidence that planets could form and remain stable in dynamically complicated multiple star systems.

There are, however, many circumstances where reality goes far beyond what was imagined in "Star Trek".

Take WASP-76 b, an ultra-hot gas giant around 640 light-years away. The planet has a dayside so hot that iron vaporises, and it could be re-condensing into iron-rain on the cooler nightside. KELT-9 b is similarly hot, with molecules torn apart by the heat and metals existing in the atmosphere. 55 Cancri e is a super-Earth that orbits its host star every 18 hours, and could be covered by a magma ocean. There are also rogue planets, wandering through space with no host star.

"Star Trek" frequently invented strange planets by changing one familiar feature, but nature stared at the rulebook and ripped it to shreds. We’ve observed planets that have combinations of temperature, gravity, chemistry, and orbital architecture that writers in 1966 never could have anticipated.

The greatest scientific accuracy in "Star Trek" wasn’t the description of any given planet. Instead, it beautifully predicted that we live in a galaxy in which planets are abundant, gorgeously varied, found around a huge range of stars, and worth investigating even when they are nothing like Earth.

The necessity of a large population of conveniently habitable, human-safe worlds for "Star Trek"’s storytelling definitely set a limitation on the types of planets explored throughout the franchise. Our discoveries so far show that finding planets with Earth-like conditions is incredibly difficult, but not that they aren’t out there, somewhere.

"Star Trek" gave us a galaxy teeming with strange new worlds. Sixty years later, the surprise isn’t that these worlds exist, but that the real ones are even stranger than writers dared to imagine.

Astrophotographer Kevin Boardman captured this spectacular view of the Crescent Nebula, revealing intricate filaments of gas surrounding a massive star nearing the end of its life some 4,700 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.

Boardman's image represents a turbulent chapter in the life of the colossal Wolf-Rayet star WR 136 (HD 192163), which, visible as a blue point of light at the center of the image, is expected to end its life in a dramatic supernova explosion in about 100,000 years.

The 25-light-year-wide bubble is formed from stellar material cast off by WR 136 during its transformation into a red giant star, according to NASA. Repeated impacts by fast-moving stellar winds later send shockwaves through the outer shell, creating the complex filaments we see today.

Catalogued as NGC 6888, or Caldwell 27, the Crescent Nebula, gets its nickname from its crescent-moon like appearance when observed in certain wavelengths of light. Boardman revealed spectacular detail in the nebula by imaging it with a set of narrowband filters over 16 hours and 18 minutes spread across five nights in late July.

"In the image, orange-red H-alpha reveals the tangled filaments while blue-cyan [O III] outlines emission from doubly ionized oxygen around the shell," Boardman told Space.com in an email. Each filter isolates specific wavelengths of light emitted by ionized gases, allowing different structures within the nebula to stand out.

Boardman collected roughly 12 hours of narrowband data from the nebula itself, along with four hours and 20 minutes of data capturing the surrounding stars, before combining exposures using the astronomy software PixInsight during post-processing.

The Crescent Nebula is too faint to be spotted with the naked eye, but can be seen with a moderate-to-large telescope equipped with a light pollution filter throughout September.

First, locate the magnitude +2.34 star Sadr at the center of the cross-shaped constellation Cygnus, which appears high overhead for Northern Hemisphere observers in late summer.

Next, locate the dimmer magnitude +4.03 star Eta Cygni using the simplified star chart above, or with the aid of a smartphone astronomy app. The Crescent Nebula lies directly between these two bright stars and is best seen on the dark nights surrounding this month's new moon phase on Sept. 10-11.

Be sure to check out our roundups of the best cameras and lenses for astrophotography if you're looking to upgrade your equipment, along with our picks of the top telescopes for observing the night sky.

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

On Sept. 8, 2004, NASA's Genesis spacecraft crash-landed in Utah after its parachutes failed to deploy.

Genesis was NASA's first sample-return mission since the Apollo program, and the first attempt ever to bring back samples from someplace farther than the moon. The spacecraft picked up solar wind particles while orbiting the L1 Lagrange point, which is about 1 million miles from Earth. L1 is a "sweet spot" between the Earth and the sun, where the gravitational pull from both objects balances out.

Genesis collected samples of the solar wind using arrays made of ultrathin semiconductors called "wafers." Atoms and ions floating around in space stuck to these wafers, and Genesis was supposed to bring them back safely. But that didn't happen, because its parachute didn't work.

Instead, Genesis tumbled from the sky and slammed into the Utah desert. Scientists literally had to pick up the pieces after the wafers containing the solar wind samples shattered into thousands of tiny shards. Luckily, scientists were still able to salvage some of the samples.

Why it mattered

NASA's Genesis probe launched in August 2001 on a $264 million mission to collect samples of the solar wind. It was the first time NASA tried a sample-return mission since Apollo 17 in 1972 (which was a crewed flight), and this trip would be fully robotic.

In order to secure the Genesis solar wind samples safely, NASA opted for a tried and true approach for space retrieval: capturing a returning craft by the parachute using a helicopter. Similar techniques were used in the past to collect spy satellite film from military satellites.

But a design flaw in the parachute system, and a fairly basic one at that, doomed the Genesis spacecraft. Four gravity switches in the sample-return canister were installed backwards due to an error in the design schematics. It affected both the primary and backup parachute systems.

The switches were supposed to detect when Genesis began braking in Earth's atmosphere and trigger parachute deployment. That never happened, so the probe crashed into Earth instead.

NASA scientists were still able to glean some science from the shattered Genesis sample-return capsule, but the result was far from optimal, as you'd expect. The mishap also prompted reviews of NASA's Stardust comet sample return probe, which used the same type of gravity switches, but that spacecraft's switches were installed correctly and it made a successful landing in 2006.

Happy Birthday, Star Trek!

Speaking of things flying through space. There was another event that occurred on this day in 1966 that - while not actually being in space - has influenced our concept of spaceflight for a decade.

On Sept. 8, 1966, the first episode of "Star Trek" debuted on television. The iconic science fiction series, which has spawned a myriad of spin-offs and feature films (not to mention all the merch), has inspired countless engineers, scientists and space fans over six decades.

The Star Trek franchise celebrates its 60th anniversary in 2026, and you can find our Star Trek coverage here.

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

Looking for a quality camera that marries style and performance? Look no further than the Nikon Zf. Despite its vintage looks, it's one of the best Nikon cameras you can buy and with its excellent low-light performance, we also rank it as one of the best astrophotography cameras. Now, thanks to this deal, it's the cheapest it's been since last year's Black Friday.

Save $453 and get the Nikon Zf camera, on sale for $1,747 at Amazon.

In our Nikon Zf review, our expert called it "A great buy that offers excellent value for money when compared with some of the much more expensive Nikon models." Now less than $1,800, this is a steal for astrophotographers and photographers in general.

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

What's not to love about this Nikon Zf camera? We ranked it as the best camera under $2,000, before inflation pushed it past that price point, and this deal makes it the cheapest it's been since last Black Friday.

Not only does this full-frame mirrorless camera offer excellent low-light performance, so much so that we think it's one of the best cameras for astrophotography, it's a brilliant all-rounder too.

In their Nikon Zf review, expert Jase Parnell-Brookes awarded it four-and-a-half stars, discovering that its strengths go far beyond its vintage stylings, remarking that "It delivered an impressive dynamic range and performed well in various lighting scenarios."

And, while you can point and shoot, the Nikon Zf is packed with controls designed to enhance your experience. From changing the ISO and ISO sensitivity, through to switch to black-and-white mode, you have complete control over your images. That much choice may seem daunting but the buttons and dials are intuitive enough that using them becomes second nature.

There are Nikon cameras out there that can beat its 24.5 MP images, but you'd have to spend significantly more. The Nikon Z8, for example, is over half as much again. If you want to make your money count, the Nikon Zf is the camera to buy. However, you'll have to hurry if you want to make the most of this deal. As we write this, there are just a handful of units left in stock.

Key features: 24.5 MP FX CMOS Sensor, Z mount, 100-64000 (expandable to 204,800) ISO, 4K UHD 30p video, 1 lb 9.1 oz / 710 g weight, 1SD UHS-II + MicroSD UHS-I card slots.

Product launched: September 2023

Price history: This is the cheapest this camera has been all year. It last dropped to around this price last Black Friday.

Price comparison: Amazon: $1747 | Adorama: $2197 | B&H Photo: $2047

Reviews consensus: Reviewing the Nikon Zf, we awarded it four-and-a-half stars praising, in particular, its low light performance and how it stacks up to Nikon's more expensive cameras. We were also impressed by its vintage appearance, replicating the look of a film camera. Its Amazon reviews are just as positive, with just a few purchaser complaining about its weight.

Space: ★★★★½ | TechRadar: ★★★★½ | Digital Camera World: ★★★★½

Featured in guides: Best astrophotography cameras, best Nikon cameras, best cameras under $2000

✅ Buy it if: You want a vintage-styled but powerful camera that will let you take stunning shots of whatever you point it at, the night sky included.

❌ Don't buy it if: You want maximum image detail. You can get better than the Zf's 24.5MP sensor; consider the Nikon Z8 instead.

Check out our other guides to the best telescopes, binoculars, cameras, star projectors, drones, Lego and much more.

A team of researchers just chased a pair of reentering satellites in a private jet to learn about the pollution caused by space debris burning up in Earth's atmosphere.

The satellites in question were the European Space Agency's (ESA) Tango and Samba spacecraft, which once formed the Cluster constellation, together with the already de-orbited Rumba and Salsa. The quartet used to study the interaction of Earth's magnetic field with the solar wind. After 25 years of service, ESA took advantage of the Tango and Samba's controlled demise to help scientists learn what happens when satellites break apart and burn up during their spiral back to Earth.

The international team of researchers chased the two reentries, which occurred one day apart — on Aug. 31 and Sept. 1 — above the southern Pacific Ocean a few hundred miles from the Polynesian archipelago of Tonga.

Their goal was to understand what happens when satellites disintegrate and what chemical compounds arise in the process. Although companies such as SpaceX, Amazon and Blue Origin want to launch huge numbers of satellites to space in the next decade — SpaceX alone plans to loft 100,000 of its Starlink V3 spacecraft — very little is known about the effects of satellite reentries on Earth's atmosphere. Researchers are also still unsure which spacecraft burn up completely and how many fragments may reach the ground, putting lives and property at risk.

"We want to understand what happens to these bodies as they fly through the atmosphere, which causes friction and very high temperatures," Jiří Šilha, CEO of the Slovak company Astros Solutions, and one of the researchers aboard the plane, told Space.com. "We know that those satellites break up into fragments, which subsequently melt in the atmosphere."

The researchers chased the reentering spacecraft following exact calculations provided by ESA controllers, who were able to maintain connection with the spacecraft until the very last moment before they plunged into the atmosphere.

The satellite reentries, although they occurred during daylight, were visible from aboard the plane even to the naked eye, said Šilha, and created spectacular fireballs that lasted tens of seconds.

"Bolides and meteors only last a few seconds or less," said Šilha. "But satellites are slower. They enter the atmosphere at a shallower angle, and the atmosphere slows them down further."

But the researchers were there for science, not for a sky show. And it was a rare opportunity: The Cluster trajectories were so precisely known that the scientists could prepare for them and be at the exact spot at the exact time to witness those explosions from only a couple of hundred miles away.

The aircraft, a small commercial business jet, was packed with 30 cameras and spectrometers fitted with special filters to capture not only how the satellites disintegrated but also detect the spectral signatures of the chemical elements released as their bodies burned up.

Eight scientists were squashed on board the darkened jet operating the instruments through the aircraft's six windows as the pilots navigated to the vicinity of the spot where ESA analysts had predicted the breakup would occur.

"We were flying toward the object, and first it looked like a compact source of light as the material ablated," said Šilha. "At some point, there was a sudden explosion as the satellite disintegrated."

The plane allowed the researchers to overcome any clouds that could obscure the view from the ground, and also to bypass the thickest layer of the atmosphere, which would distort the measurements. As the satellites hurtled through the air, slowing down from the mind-boggling speed of 22,370 mph (36,000 kph) at which they hit the upper atmosphere, the jet approached them to within a distance of around 75 miles (120 kilometers).

"We begin observing it when it's at about 90 kilometers [56 miles] and it stops being visible at about 65 to 70 kilometers [40 to 44 miles]," Šilha said. "For about thirty to forty seconds after the explosion, you can observe an interesting structure as all those various fragments ablate in the atmosphere. Then they all either burn up or slow down."

Šilha said the cameras captured tens of fragments, in detail that had never been observed before.

The researchers also attempted to trace seven chemical compounds, including titanium, sodium and potassium, which get released as satellites burn up. The team was especially interested in aluminum, which makes up the majority of a satellite body. Aluminum is not naturally present in Earth's atmosphere and most likely forms aluminum oxide during the incineration. The potential presence of aluminum oxide in the atmosphere in higher concentrations worries scientists, as it could potentially trigger ozone depletion in the stratosphere.

"We tried to measure the aluminum at different altitudes, using specialized filters, which could tell us when this aluminum interacts with the atmosphere," said Šilha. "That's when the aluminum oxide likely forms, and that's something that has never been observed before. We don't know exactly how and in what quantities the aluminum oxide might be forming."

The researchers will now analyze the data to learn exactly what chemical reactions may be occurring during every second of the breakup and burn-up process. The data will help atmospheric physics and chemistry researchers improve their models to further our understanding of the potential damage the growing satellite industry might do to the planet and its climate in the future.

"The data will help us validate whether the models agree with reality," said Šilha.

The team previously chased the reentry of the first of the four Cluster satellites — Salsa — in September 2024. The lessons from that campaign helped the team get closer to the Tango and Samba spacecraft and obtain more and more accurate data.

The date of 'Star Wars Day' is based on a "May the fourth be with you" pun. The date of 'Alien Day' (April 26), meanwhile, is inspired by an extremely tenuous link to LV-426, a moon pivotal to the first two movies.

'Star Trek Day', however, is based on an actual date; September 8 is the anniversary of the Original Series' very first broadcast in 1966. This year's birthday is more important than most, as the "Star Trek" franchise reaches the ripe old age of 60 — Kirk and Spock's diamond jubilee.

Birthdays are traditionally a time to take stock of past, present and future, so we've taken this opportunity to deliver a status report on the legendary franchise, via TV, movies and 60th anniversary celebrations — including commemorative coins and record-breaking Vulcan salutes.

Will "Star Trek" continue to live long and prosper, or would Dr McCoy deliver one of his more pessimistic assessments, Jim?

It's time to give the veteran franchise a health check…

TV shows

Television is where the voyages of the starship Enterprise began, and still feels like the franchise's natural home. There have now been 12 separate TV shows set in the "Star Trek" continuity — 14 if you throw in "Short Treks" and pre-school YouTube series "Star Trek: Scouts" — and the final frontier has flourished on the small screen over the last decade.

Indeed, since "Discovery" first spooled up the spore drive in 2017, we've enjoyed the most bountiful period of "Trek" since the glory days of the '90s, when "The Next Generation", "Deep Space Nine" and "Voyager" became appointment viewing. In many ways it's been a masterclass of universe-building, as executive producer Alex Kurtzman (with his Secret Hideout production company) has overseen an impressively large and varied fleet of shows.

Although Disney+'s "Star Wars" TV adventures have all — with the notable exception of "Andor" — tended to be relatively uniform in tone, "Trek" has generally taken much bigger swings. "Discovery" warped off to the undiscovered country of the 32nd century, while "Lower Decks" proved that "Star Trek" and out-and-out comedy can be natural bedfellows.

"Star Trek: Picard"'s peerless final run of episodes (arguably the best season of "Trek" ever made) skilfully mixed masterful storytelling with unashamed "TNG"-era nostalgia. "Strange New Worlds" managed to recruit the franchise's best ensemble since the '90s. "Prodigy" was a kids' show grown-up fans could enjoy, too.

And for a brief period between May 2022 and April 2023, there were five active "Star Trek" shows at various stages of the production/release cycle. Little did we realize that would be a peak for the franchise and that — a little over three years later — we'd be facing the prospect of a future without any "Star Trek" TV at all.

At present, there are no "Trek" shows in production. "Strange New Worlds"' fifth season and "Starfleet Academy"'s second are already in the can, but both will be their respective show's final voyages; the sets have been dismantled, the casts have moved on to new projects.

Meanwhile, rumored spin-offs like "Picard" follow-up "Legacy" and "Strange New Worlds" sequel "Year One" seem destined to remain in the realms of Trekkie fantasy.

As "SNW" co-showrunner Henry Alonso Myers told TrekMovie in August 2026, "We haven't been told anything [about 'Year One']. It's not up to us. It's up to Paramount. We stand by and are ready to work at their discretion. We love 'Star Trek'. We'd be happy to do it again. It is out of our hands."

Rights holder Paramount (and its CBS subsidiary) is the unknown factor here. Skydance Media bought the studio last year, and — perhaps unsurprisingly — execs have been hesitant to invest in major new projects as they wait to learn the new regime's direction of travel.

Skydance's impending acquisition of Warner Bros may also be a factor — if, say, Paramount and Warner were to merge their respective streaming platforms, would "Trek" get as much prominence on HBO Max as it currently does on Paramount+?

Reports in early 2026 suggested that Kurtzman was in early negotiations to renew his production deal (the previous one expired with "Starfleet Academy"), but it's looking increasingly unlikely he'll return. Paramount, however, has reiterated the ongoing importance of the franchise to its bottom line.

"It's one of the reasons why Chris [Parnell, executive vice president of Paramount+ Originals] is here as the resident number one fan of the 'Star Trek' franchise," said head of Paramount+ Originals Jane Wiseman in an August 2026 interview with Deadline.

"And there’s so many people in this building, by the way, that are. It is our goal and it is our job to figure out what the next bounce of 'Star Trek' is. We're talking to a lot of writers, we are leaning on [production company] CBS Studios, and it is imperative that we figure out what the next iteration is in this franchise because it's just too important. We also are in touch with Paramount Pictures; they have a 'Star Trek' movie that’s in development." (More on that below…)

That still leaves an awful lot of questions. Would a new iteration of "Trek" stick with the current 10-episode format, or go back to the longer 20+ runs of the '90s? Has the disappointing "Section 31" killed the prospect of another "Trek" TV movie stone dead? Will Paramount see more value in its massive library of legacy "Trek" content? And how will "Trek"'s famously progressive and liberal outlook mesh with a new-look company whose CEO, David Ellison, is close to President Trump?

Like fellow veteran genre franchises "Doctor Who" and "Star Wars", "Star Trek" is still trying to find its place in a streaming world. There's little doubt that it will one day return to TV, as it did after a decade away following "Enterprise"'s 2005 cancellation. But the how and the when will have to wait for another day.

Movies

Nearly seven years elapsed between "The Rise of Skywalker" and "The Mandalorian and Grogu", but that's small fry next to the extended wait for a new "Star Trek" movie. It's now 10 years (and counting) since "Star Trek Beyond" brought the Kelvin-verse adventures of alt-Kirk and alt-Spock to a close, as movies from the final frontier took a backseat to their TV counterparts.

Having made a critically acclaimed start in 2009 — director JJ Abrams ramped up the fun, effectively using "Trek" as a calling card for "The Force Awakens" — this self-contained "Trek" offshoot gradually ran out of momentum. Released four years later, "Star Trek Into Darkness" made more money than its predecessor, but felt like a tired retread of past glories. "Star Trek Beyond" (2016) made less money than either, offering an enjoyable (though hardly memorable) planet-based romp that set up the crew for more voyages… voyages that would ultimately never happen.