A new U.S. intelligence agency report has seemingly released the first clear photograph of China's mysterious "dragon" space plane in orbit around Earth. The surprise snap reveals that the top-secret vehicle is very similar to its American counterpart and provides new clues about its capabilities.

The image is widely believed to show China's secretive Shenlong, or "divine dragon," space plane, which has been in action for just over six years. During this time, the reusable winged spacecraft has repeatedly made headlines after deploying various unidentified objects in low Earth orbit (LEO). As a result, government officials, private companies and individual researchers have closely monitored the vehicle using tools such as ground-based radar.

Until now, the only direct images of the space plane have been blurry snaps of light reflecting off the uncrewed vehicle toward Earth's surface — offering no clear clues to its specific design, capabilities or intended purpose. China has also never publicly shared any photos of the vehicle or revealed any key information about its design.

On Monday (Oct. 26), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) released the latest version of its "Challenges to Security in Space" report, which assesses the various factors that pose a risk to American space assets. Deep within the 130-page document (on page 53), the authors included a previously unseen image of a "PRC [People's Republic of China] Spaceplane." The image's brief caption revealed that the photo had been taken in 2024 by a satellite belonging to the private space company Maxar Technologies, now known as Vantor.

The surprise inclusion of the photo was spotted and shared on the social platform X by journalist Andrew Jones, who specializes in China's space program and has previously shared crucial information about other ongoing missions.

Neither the caption nor the related section of the report made any mention of the photo being the first of its kind or explained why it was previously classified, raising questions about whether the authors realized its significance.

There is one small caveat. The report notes that China has two active space plane designs — Shenlong and Tengyun, meaning "cloud rider" — and the image's caption does not specify which design we are looking at, according to The Aviationist.

However, there have been no confirmed launches of Tengyun to date. Existing photos of a potential prototype also hint that this vehicle's design looks markedly different from what we can see in the new photo. Therefore, most experts agree that the spacecraft in the image is most likely Shenlong.

What does the new photo tell us?

Until now, all we really knew about Shenlong is that it operates similarly to NASA's iconic space shuttles: It gets launched into space by a rocket and circles Earth before eventually gliding down to the planet's surface, where it can then be refueled and relaunched into LEO.

It is not the world's only active space plane. The U.S. Space Force has its own, the X-37B, which has already completed seven orbital missions since its first launch in 2010 and is currently in LEO experimenting with quantum navigation. Based on the new photos, Shenlong shares many similarities with its American counterpart.

"The Chinese spaceplane has delta wings, payload bay doors, a dark heat shield, and a rear-mounted service module with power-generating solar arrays," technology news site ArsTechnica reported. "In other words, the design of the winged ship is, to a great degree, a copy of the X-37B spaceplane flown by the U.S. Space Force."

However, the two spacecraft are not exactly the same: "The overall arrangement resembles the American vehicle, although differences in wing geometry show that the two spacecraft are not externally identical," according to specialist news site Global Defense News.

It is still unclear how large Shenlong is. The X-37B is 29 feet (8.8 meters) long and has a wingspan of 15 feet (4.5 m), according to Popular Science.

The new image also indicates that Shenlong is most likely not a military asset, Global Defense News reported, noting that "the image does not establish a weapons role."

However, China likely has other space-based weapons, similar to the mysterious "in-orbit" American weapons recently confirmed by U.S. Air Force Secretary Troy E. Meink.

"China has developed and will continue to advance weapons for use against satellites in orbit to disrupt, damage, and destroy other nations' space capabilities," DIA representatives wrote in a separate section of the new report. "Beijing aims to become the preeminent leader in space," they added.

The Shenlong story so far

Since first launching into space on an initial two-day mission in September 2020, Shenlong has completed two feature-length missions: an eight-month stint in LEO between August 2022 and May 2023, and a nine-month spaceflight between December 2023 and September 2024. (The new image was taken during the latter mission).

The space plane is currently on its fourth mission, which launched Feb. 7 on board a Long March 2F rocket from China's Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, Live Science's sister site Space.com previously reported. In total, Shenlong has racked up more than 800 days in orbit. However, it is unclear whether the same space plane was used on all four missions or if China has more than one space plane in use.

So far, Shelong has released at least nine unidentified payloads around Earth. These objects are most likely small satellites, known as cubesats, but their purpose remains unclear.

The most recent object was deployed in June this year, although astronomer Jonathan McDowell, who specializes in tracking spacecraft in LEO, has since suggested that the spacecraft retrieved the object, potentially with a robotic arm, and rereleased it in late August.

The new report also mentions that the space plane "appeared to maneuver with a companion satellite" during its second mission in November 2022, coming within 330 feet (100 m) of the smaller spacecraft and potentially even capturing and re-releasing it.

This may support an existing theory that the main goal of Shenlong is to "conduct rendezvous and proximity operations" with other spacecraft, and that its payloads may be targets for it to practice flyby maneuvers in orbit.

Editor's note: This article was updated on Oct. 29 to correct a typo. A previous version of the article abbreviated the People's Republic of China as "PCR" rather than "PRC". This has been corrected.

A pioneering NASA space telescope is no more. In sad news for Swifties everywhere, the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory has officially ended its mission after more than 20 years of tracking the most powerful explosions in the universe since the Big Bang.

According to a NASA announcement, the Swift team shut down the telescope's science operations Tuesday (Oct. 20) after the observatory fell too low in its orbit to continue taking reliable measurements of the cosmos. In the coming weeks, Swift will drop even further, eventually passing a point of no return and taking a fiery plunge through Earth's atmosphere.

The observatory is the latest victim of intense solar activity, which increases the drag on satellites in Earth orbit and makes it harder for spacecraft to stay aloft. Swift has been losing altitude for a while, but the final straw came in August, when a costly mission to boost Swift's orbit with a private spacecraft failed, ending with the would-be rescue craft burning up in the atmosphere after a series of hardware malfunctions.

Swift is now beyond saving and, orbiting at just 171 miles (275 kilometers) above Earth, can no longer take reliable observations of space. NASA expects the spacecraft to break up upon reentry "in the next few weeks."

NASA knew Swift was in trouble when it went in; soon, it'll be lying on the cold hard ground. However, the Swift mission surpassed its goals by decades. According to NASA, the satellite launched in November 2004 on a primary mission intended to last just two years. In the end, Swift survived for 22 years, surpassing its intended lifespan by more than 10 times.

In that time, Swift made thousands of observations of exploding supernovas, intense gamma-ray bursts, and black-hole-related episodes of stellar destruction, contributing data to about 7,000 scientific papers, according to NASA.

Designed as a multiwavelength observatory, Swift watched the sky in optical, ultraviolet and X-ray light that made it well suited to track the aftermath of powerful energy bursts. Its greatest asset, perhaps, was its rapid response time; if an explosion flashed somewhere in the sky, engineers could swivel Swift to study it within minutes, NASA said.

"Swift was designed as a satellite dedicated to studying gamma-ray bursts, outbursts that came and went so quickly that no one could target them with large telescopes to learn more," S. Bradley Cenko, the mission's principal investigator at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said in the statement.

Swift's fast-acting observations "played a major role in advancing our understanding of the changing universe and was part of a revolution in astrophysics," added Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA headquarters.

TENERIFE, Spain — The commander of NASA's Artemis II mission briefly feared that he and his crew would never return home from their trip around the moon after overshooting their turn-back point.

Commander Reid Wiseman and his three crewmates were supposed to reach 219,667 nautical miles (252,788 standard miles, or 406,823 kilometers) — farther than any humans have ever traveled from their home planet — before turning back toward Earth on the sixth day of their 10-day mission to the moon.

But the odometer on the Integrity spacecraft continued to tick upward as they shot past their intended point of return, leading the astronaut to fear that something had gone terribly wrong, he told an audience here at the Starmus VIII festival earlier this week. (This semi-annual event is held to celebrate achievements in science, exploration, and creativity.)

"Mission control in Houston had told us our maximum distance would be 219,667 nautical miles and that was the furthest we were supposed to be from Earth," Wiseman said. "I was watching this number, and I saw it hit 219,667, and I thought, 'Great, this is the farthest we will be from Earth, and the next number I will see will be 219,666 ‪—‬ we'll be going home.' But about three minutes later, I didn't see 219,666; I saw 219,668. It went up. I was like. 'Huh? That's weird.'

"And then about three minutes later, it goes to 219,669, and that was the moment that I felt real fear because I thought we had just gone too far ‪—‬ we're never going to come home ‪—‬ and so I was very scared," he added.

Then, at last, he saw the counter start to drop. Meanwhile, NASA astronauts Victor Glover and Christina Koch were at the window, doing science observations of the moon, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen was sending reports back to mission control ‪—‬ so Wiseman's moment of terror went unnoticed.

When Wiseman saw the odometer click back to 219,668 nautical miles, he said, "We're going home," and the crew let out a cheer. "I knew there was a good chance we might make it," he added.

In an interview with Live Science's sister publication The Week Junior Science+Nature, Wiseman paid tribute to NASA's Earth-based teams for the ultimate success of the mission.

"Getting home safely is a testament to the engineering rigor and the flight control teams back here on planet Earth, who put this rocket together and then who controlled it as we went out to the moon and came back. Those are the true heroes of this mission. They have real courage."

The Artemis II mission launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 1. It was the first crewed flight of the Orion space capsule and the first crewed mission to travel to the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972, taking nearly 10 days to fly around the lunar far side and return to Earth.

Nearly every moment of the crew's activities in the Orion capsule was livestreamed to the world, garnering massive public interest in the mission. The Artemis II crewmembers were awarded the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication at the Starmus VIII festival.

Are you a NASA nerd? See how well you score on our Artemis quiz to find out!

On Monday (Oct. 19), Japan's space agency launched a first-of-its-kind sample-return mission to Mars. The historic endeavor marks another major step toward humanity's shared goal of understanding — and perhaps eventually colonizing — one of our closest planetary neighbors, experts say.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Martian Moons Exploration (MMX) probe is an international effort, constructed with help from NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and others. Over the next few years, it will closely study the Red Planet's twin moons, Phobos and Deimos. The spacecraft will snap close-up photos of the pair before attempting to land on the larger satellite, Phobos, to scoop up rocky material that will hopefully be carried back to Earth in around five years.

If the mission is successful, the returned samples will finally settle a decades-old mystery about the origins of both moons. The findings could also help paint a picture of Mars' ancient history and provide clues about what the early solar system was like.

"This mission marks a transformative leap in our capacity to investigate the Martian system," Sonia Fornasier, an astronomer at the Paris Observatory who has studied Phobos and Deimos extensively and is a project scientist for MMX's infrared spectrometer instrument (MIRS), told Live Science. It "ranks very high" among the missions we have sent to the Red Planet so far, she added.

What will MMX do?

JAXA launched the MMX probe on board an H3 rocket, which lifted off from Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima prefecture at 3:41 p.m. EDT Monday (4:41 a.m. Tuesday local time), Live Science's sister site Space.com reported. (The mission was initially scheduled to launch in 2024, but it was delayed due to initial concerns about the H3 rocket.)

The camper-van-sized spacecraft successfully separated from the rocket's fairing just over an hour later, and on Wednesday (Oct. 21), JAXA announced that the mission had passed the "initial critical operations phase," meaning the probe is now locked into its roughly 140 million-mile-long (225 million kilometers) journey to Mars, which will take around 10 months.

"MMX took its first step today," Naoki Murakami, general manager of Mitsubishi Electric’s space division, which led the design of the MMX probe, said in a postlaunch news conference early Tuesday morning (Oct. 20), according to The Japan Times. "This marks the beginning of a long, five-year journey."

Once the probe arrives at the Red Planet in August 2027, it will insert itself into a "quasi-satellite orbit" around Phobos. In other words, MMX will circle Mars alongside the moon but will not be gravitationally bound to it, similar to around half a dozen "quasi-moons" that currently accompany Earth around the sun.

After collecting data from a distance for a few months, MMX will swoop down and attempt to land on the surface of Phobos ‪—‬ not once, but twice.

During the first landing, MMX will hover just above the moon and deploy a mini rover, dubbed Idefix, onto the moon's surface. The wandering robot, built by the French and German space agencies, will have to contend with extremely weak gravity as it trundles across the surface of Phobos: The rover weighs around 55 pounds (25 kilograms) on Earth but will weigh only around half an ounce (15 grams) on Phobos, according to ESA.

Once Idefix has completed its initial assessment of the moon's surface, the entire MMX probe will set down on Phobos, on top of the spacecraft's four-legged lander module. Mission scientists hope this goes a lot more smoothly than the attempted landings of Japan's "Moon Sniper" and Resilience lunar landers, which crash-landed on Earth's moon in 2024 and 2025, respectively.

Two of the MMX lander's legs contain built-in sampling devices ‪—‬ one that will drill into Phobos and another that will hoover up surface material. The second device, dubbed the Pneumatic Sampler (or P-Sampler), was built by the Blue Origin-owned private company Honeybee Robotics on behalf of NASA and will collect its material in a "matter of seconds," Kris Zacny, vice president of the Exploration Technology Group at Honeybee Robotics, said at an Oct. 15 NASA news conference. "You blink, and it's all done."

In total, JAXA aims to collect around a third of an ounce (10 grams) of material from Phobos. That would be around twice as much material as the space agency managed to snag on its most recent sample-return mission, Hayabusa2, which collected samples from the "spinning-top" asteroid Ryugu in 2019, finding materials rich in surprising organic compounds.

Once the samples have been acquired, at some point between late 2028 and early 2029, the probe will conduct a series of close flybys of Mars' smaller moon, Deimos, before beginning the long trip back to Earth in late 2030 — the first return flight ever attempted by a spacecraft sent to Mars.

When the probe returns to Earth in 2031, it will release its samples in a 20-inch-wide (60 centimeters) container that will fall back to our planet's surface, most likely somewhere in Australia, according to ESA.

What could we learn about Phobos and Deimos?

Mars' twin satellites, which were first spotted by American astronomer Asaph Hall in 1877, are nothing like Earth's constant companion. For starters, they are much smaller; Phobos is around 14 miles (22 km) across, while Deimos is just 7.5 miles (12 km) wide. The duo also have lopsided shapes and are between 12 and 64 times closer to Mars than the moon is to Earth. (Phobos, meaning "fear," and Deimos, meaning "terror," are named after the sons of the Greek war god Ares, the counterpart to the Roman war god Mars.)

Phobos is dominated by the 6-mile-wide (10 km) Stickney crater, which was left by an ancient asteroid impact. The larger moon is also slowly falling toward Mars and may eventually be ripped apart before it reaches the Red Planet's surface.

Other Martian spacecraft, such as the Emirates Mars Mission orbiter, have flown close to the moons, and NASA's Mars rovers have frequently looked up to see the satellites eclipsing the sun in Mars' sky (sometimes both at the same time). Yet many mysteries remain about the pair.

"Mars is right in our cosmic backyard, and yet we haven't explored the planet's moons," Nancy Chabot, a space exploration expert at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland and the deputy principal investigator of NASA's MEGANE instrument on board MMX, told Live Science in an email. "MMX will do this!"

The biggest mystery surrounding Phobos and Deimos is their origin. Some researchers suspect the satellites are asteroids, or maybe even comets, that have been captured by Mars' gravity, while others think the moons emerged from the debris of an ancient impact on the planet's surface, similar to how Earth's moon formed.

Neither theory is conclusive, meaning the moons' origins "remain enigmatic," Christopher Edwards, a planetary scientist at Northern Arizona University and one of NASA's participating scientists for MMX, told Live Science.

For example, explaining how Mars captured the moons is "quite hard from an orbital mechanics perspective," but if they did form from a debris disk from an ancient impact, they should have coalesced into better-defined spheres, Edwards said.

"MMX will solve this debate thanks to the spacecraft observations and the detailed analysis of the samples of Phobos on Earth," Fornasier said. The data the probe collects from its flybys of Deimos will also allow researchers to generate a "full characterization of this body," she added.

Fornasier is "particularly excited" by the possibility that the moons are captured asteroids because that would mean they would likely contain "organic and hydrated materials," which would have a big "astrobiological implication" and would shed light on what the early solar system was like.

What could we learn about Mars itself?

Regardless of how the twin moons formed, researchers also stand to learn a lot about Mars and how planets form and evolve.

"Phobos and Deimos are interesting, but not just in their own right," Tom Statler, an MMX program executive and scientist in NASA's Planetary Science Division, said at the Oct. 15 news conference. "Their presence is a key piece of the larger story of the Mars system. By uncovering the moons' origin, we'll gain new insights into the history of both Mars and Earth."

If the moons did form via an impact scenario, the samples MMX collects may also contain actual pieces of Mars for researchers to study.

"If these objects are in fact pieces from the Martian surface that have coalesced moons, we'll collect the best-preserved samples of the Martian surface," Edwards said. Other fragments of Mars have already reached Earth as meteorites. However, entry into Earth's atmosphere can transform them.

If Phobos is a chunk of Mars, that would be a real boon to NASA, which canceled its Mars Sample Return program — a mission that would have retrieved samples collected by the Perseverance rover — earlier this year. The agency's researchers will receive up to 15% of the MMX samples to analyze.

During its three-year stay in the Red Planet's system, the Japanese probe will also collect lots of data on Mars that could contribute to a wide range of future findings. "MMX will conduct in-depth studies of the Martian atmosphere, with a particular emphasis on dust and water transport mechanisms and the escape processes shaping Mars' atmospheric dynamics," Fornasier said.

This atmospheric data could temporarily fill a gap left by the recent death of NASA's iconic MAVEN spacecraft, which stopped sending data back to Earth late last year.

Analysis of craters on the Martian moons could also provide clues about other events in Mars' history. For example, some researchers think the Red Planet may have once had rings like Saturn or a larger moon.

Other experts are hopeful that the MMX findings could help lay the groundwork for future missions to explore ‪—‬ and perhaps colonize ‪—‬ Mars. "The samples from MMX will bring forth paradigm-shifting science on the Mars system for generations to come, especially as NASA prepares to send the first humans to Mars," Nicky Fox, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said in a recent statement.

The next sample-return trip to Mars will be China's Tianwen-3 mission, which is scheduled to launch in 2028 and will aim to land on and retrieve samples directly from the Red Planet's surface, according to Space.com.

Among the many risks astronauts face during long-haul spaceflight, an extended stay in microgravity is one of the most consequential for long-term health, with effects on vision, bones, muscles and many other aspects of the body.

One solution might be artificial gravity —‬ some way to create forces similar to Earth's gravity on a spaceship, akin to the giant rotating ring from Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film "2001: A Space Odyssey."

But is that technology ever coming, or will it remain science fiction?

"There's really no reason it couldn't happen," Torin Clark, an associate professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, told Live Science. "From a technical perspective, this is something that could happen in the very near future."

In fact, artificial gravity has almost made its way to space before. The Centrifuge Accommodation Module was a planned 8.2-foot-wide (2.5 meters) centrifuge for the International Space Station (ISS), but the project was canceled in 2005 for budgetary reasons.

"[Artificial gravity] is one of those things ‪—‬ like all of a sudden, it's super popular, and then all of the scientists at NASA and everybody … have a lot of funding to understand how to actually implement this, and then it just dies," Ana Diaz Artiles, an associate professor of aerospace engineering at Texas A&M University, told Live Science. "And then it comes back, and dies, and comes back. I've been going through a couple of these cycles in the time that I've been doing this."

Besides budgetary concerns, there are questions about how such a solution would be implemented.

"Everybody agrees it's a good thing to do. The problem is that we don't know how to implement it," Diaz Artiles said. "How much gravity do you need? How big does [the device] have to be? How long do you need it to be? And how long do you have to use this? Should we use continuous gravity or a short-radius centrifuge, something where you go in and out?"

Researchers have three main approaches for creating artificial gravity. One is the classic sci-fi idea: a giant ring that rotates passengers' entire living quarters so they live and work under forces similar to Earth's gravity.

"You have a relatively long radius, which means you don't have to spin very fast to create gravity," Diaz Artiles said. "But this is massive. You can't get all the parts up there in the same spacecraft — you need multiple spacecraft and to assemble everything. So, of course, you can see what a big endeavor this is."

A short-radius centrifuge is a more feasible option. It's essentially a tube with a radius of 6 to 10 feet (1.8 to 3 m) that spins to simulate gravity. A passenger sits or stands inside, with their head closest to the center of rotation, so the spin generates the strongest pull down toward their feet.

Instead of allowing passengers to live in artificial gravity, this smaller device would be used in short daily sessions. "It's kind of like an exercise device," Diaz Artiles said. "In the ISS, you have a treadmill, you have this resistive exercise machine, so you go there for 30 minutes to do your exercise, and then you get out."

The final option is for spacecraft to create gravity via linear acceleration. This works in the same way that an accelerating car pushes passengers back into their seats, except the spacecraft would be oriented to push an astronaut's feet into the floor. To slow down, the spacecraft would turn around, firing its thrusters in the opposite direction to decelerate smoothly while maintaining a roughly similar gravity for its occupants.

"But then you need something like an engine that is able to accelerate all the time," Diaz Artiles said. "And propulsion-wise, I think we're not there yet."

Although a short-radius centrifuge is the most feasible approach in terms of both cost and engineering, it does have some drawbacks. For one, its fast spin can induce the Coriolis cross-coupled illusion ‪—‬ a sensation of tilting or tumbling that happens when you tilt your head off-axis while rotating.

This is the effect that causes motion sickness, Clark said.

However, Clark and his team have found that people can build a tolerance to the sensation with training, simply by being in a slowly spinning centrifuge and gradually increasing the speed when they no longer feel the sensation.

"If you very slowly, incrementally increase the spin rate … and do that not just over one session but over multiple sessions across multiple days, as far as we could tell, anyone can be made to incrementally acclimate to the rotating environment [of] up to 20 to 30 rotations per minute," Clark said.

Would artificial gravity prevent harmful effects on the body?

But researchers still don't know how fast the centrifuge would need to rotate, or how long someone needs to spend inside it, to benefit. Long periods in microgravity can lead to bone and muscle loss, loss of aerobic fitness, blood clots, and visual issues from fluid shifts in the eyes. The hope is that artificial gravity could prevent those effects, but exactly how much gravity is necessary remains an open question.

Studies of people on head-down tilt bed rest ‪—‬ the standard research method for simulating spaceflight deconditioning ‪—‬ have found that 30 minutes a day in a centrifuge did prevent some loss of muscle function.

"Thirty minutes a day … maybe is not enough," Clark said. "Maybe an hour or even two hours a day, and maybe at higher G levels, would be beneficial."

But these studies are expensive and time-consuming. "It's very difficult," Diaz Artiles said. "I think people are interested in this concept, but we just don't have a good answer."

In the end, it's not a technological challenge that's keeping artificial gravity from being used in space; it's knowing the best way to employ it and securing the budget for it.

"We know how to do this. As humans, we have done more difficult things," Diaz Artiles said. "We need the money, but we also need to better understand the need."

See how much you know about human exploration into space with our spaceflight quiz!

Starship has made it to orbit for the first time ever. But the loss of an engine during its nail-biting ascent meant SpaceX's mission ended earlier than planned — with an explosion to boot.

The tallest and most powerful rocket ever built blasted off from SpaceX's Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas on Monday (Sept. 28) at 8.49 a.m. ET (7.49 a.m. local time).

Soon after launch, one of Starship's six main upper-stage Raptor engines failed after separating from the lower-stage booster rocket. A tense few minutes followed while the mission team deliberated over whether the mission should continue to orbit. Eventually, the call came through: "Go for orbit."

A short fire of Starship's boosters nudged the rocket into orbit, where it zoomed around Earth at a highest point of 170 miles (275 kilometers) above the planet's surface.

However, after successfully deploying 26 Starlink V3 satellites, SpaceX decided not to leave Starship up in space for the remainder of the mission, which was originally expected to last 10 hours.

The rocket splashed down in the Pacific Ocean after 3 hours and 8 minutes, and then promptly exploded with a fiery bang. An explosive landing was always expected for Starship, and there were audible cheers during that part of the SpaceX livestream of the mission, but SpaceX would have probably preferred to have kept its rocket intact — like it did on Flight 13.

SpaceX called this mission, Starship's Flight 14, the company's "most ambitious launch to date" during its livestream. Prior to this launch, Starship had only flown suborbitally, and this was SpaceX's first attempt to send its flagship rocket into orbit. The company said reaching orbit represents the "next phase" for Starship toward becoming a fully reusable rocket.

Starship flight 14

The day started with promise for SpaceX: Engineers weren't tracking any holds in the lead-up to launch; tanking and launch progressed smoothly; and Starship served up some spectacular images of Earth as it raced into space.

Shortly after launch, Starship's booster separated and safely splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico. Then the problems started. Starship had lost one of the 6 main engines on its upper-stage. Initially, commentary on SpaceX's livestream suggested that officials planned to abandon the push for orbit, but after several tense minutes, they confirmed the attempt was a go.

The latest mission had a few objectives. In addition to making it to orbit, SpaceX deployed Starlink V3 satellites, designed to boost the speeds and reliability of the internet services provided by its satellite megaconstellation.

The mission also tested the Starship's booster, which had experienced some hardware and software modifications after Flight 13.

SpaceX has experienced multiple setbacks with Starship. The seventh and eighth Starship test flights exploded and rained fiery debris from the sky. The ninth flight fell short of its target, and a Starship exploded on the launchpad during a routine test leading up to the 10th mission. However, Starship did end up having a successful 10th flight in August 2025, despite taking some damage, and its 11th run, in October, was clean.

The last two flights, in March and July 2026, saw successful launches and controlled landings but experienced booster problems.

To the moon?

The stakes are high for the rocket: Starship's success could be essential for NASA's plans to return humans to the moon in early 2028. The U.S. space agency needs a commercial lunar lander to ferry astronauts to the lunar surface during the upcoming Artemis IV mission. (Artemis III, a practice attempt above Earth, is slated for 2027.)

NASA wants to take astronauts to the moon in its Orion spacecraft, as tested in the Artemis II mission. Once in lunar orbit, the crew is then supposed to rendezvous with a commercial lander, which will take the astronauts to the surface and launch them back up to Orion for the trip home.

SpaceX has been developing a moon-landing variant of its Starship for that job. With rival Blue Origin (whose New Glenn rocket dramatically exploded in May) lagging behind, the Artemis program's success could be tied to Starship's.

During Artemis III next summer, NASA will test docking Orion with one or both of its commercial lander options in low Earth orbit. The space agency has made clear that lander readiness will determine which commercial provider gets to take astronauts to the lunar surface as soon as 2028.

There are some doubts about whether NASA will be ready by then. But today's Starship issues also leave key questions about whether SpaceX can meet the tight deadline.

Editor's note: This article was corrected on Sept. 30 at 1:15 p.m. ET. The article initially stated that one of Starship's 33 lower-stage booster engines had failed. In fact, it was one of the spacecraft's six main upper-stage engines that failed to fire. We apologize for this error.

An American spy satellite deployed during the Cold War has exploded above our planet without warning — and, so far, scientists can't explain why. The debris cloud from this sudden fragmentation, which experts are still trying to measure, could pose a very "real threat" to other spacecraft in a highly crowded region of low Earth orbit (LEO), experts warn.

The spacecraft, known as USA 32 or Farrah III, was launched by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in 1988. Its mission, which was only fully declassified earlier this year, was to intercept Soviet radar and radio signals from space, according to Futura. The cylindrical spacecraft, whose shape has been described as a giant "tuna can," likely stopped functioning decades ago and has been silently circling Earth ever since. (It was nicknamed after actor Farrah Fawcett, in line with the NRO's former custom of naming its satellites after famous figures from the 1970s and '80s.)

On Sept. 17, Space-Track — the satellite observation arm of the U.S. Space Force — announced that USA 32 suffered a sudden "fragmentation" event four days earlier, on Sept. 13. This essentially means the spacecraft exploded, potentially breaking apart into dozens, hundreds or even thousands of pieces. However, the agency did not specify what had caused this explosion or how many pieces of debris were created. And, as of Sept. 28, no one else has been able to answer either question.

Other organizations have since confirmed the fragmentation event, including the private satellite-tracking company s2a systems, which photographed the largest remaining piece of USA 32 in orbit.

The explosion occurred 480 miles (775 kilometers) above Earth's surface, according to Spaceweather.com. Considering the satellite's speed, the resulting debris likely spread into a giant ring around Earth within 24 hours after the spacecraft's sudden breakup, a simulation from the website suggests.

What happened to USA 32?

It is still unclear what happened to the Cold War-era spacecraft, but there are several potential explanations.

Collisions with other satellites or smaller pieces of space junk are one of the most common causes of satellite breakups. But no one has reported any other spacecraft being impacted, and researchers can often predict potential space junk collisions days or weeks in advance, making these scenarios unlikely. However, it is possible that an undetected space rock struck the satellite at high speeds instead.

Another leading theory is that the satellite died of old age. It was likely not designed for long-term spaceflight, and after nearly four decades of being exposed to the harsh conditions of LEO, the spy craft may have simply broken down, similar to the demise of the NOAA-17 satellite in 2021.

"Old spacecraft carry batteries and leftover propellant," Spaceweather.com representatives wrote. "After 38 years of heating and cooling, a pressurized tank or a battery cell on USA 32 may have simply ruptured."

But it is also too soon to rule out that the satellite was hit by some form of anti-satellite weaponry, according to Spaceweather.com. Earlier this month, U.S. Air Force Secretary Troy E. Meink revealed, for the first time, that the U.S. had launched unspecified weapons into orbit, and experts have long suspected that other countries, including China and Russia, possess similar technologies. (The latter country has already destroyed one satellite using Earth-based weaponry.)

However, there is currently no evidence that anti-satellite weapons were used in this instance, so "there may be nothing sinister about this event," Spaceweather.com representatives wrote.

Researchers will likely be able to establish the cause of the satellite's breakup by reverse-engineering the incident ‪—‬ first by identifying the resulting fragments, and then by retracing those pieces' trajectories back to the original explosion. However, this could take months, if not years. (For example, scientists are still trying to piece together what happened to the Boeing-made Intelsat 33e satellite, which similarly shattered out of nowhere in 2024.)

"The collision threat is real"

Regardless of the recent explosion's cause, experts are now concerned about the potential knock-on effects of its fallout.

The region of LEO where USA 32 exploded is thought to be home to at least 200 other satellites, and it is already littered with debris from a 2009 collision between American and Russian satellites. As a result, "the collision threat is real" for spacecraft in this area, Spaceweather.com representatives wrote, especially as the newly created fragments remain unquantified.

So far, the incident has not caused any issues or affected the launch of new spacecraft. For example, Russia went ahead with the Sept. 16 launch of a resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS), which orbits about 250 miles (400 km) above our planet, or roughly half the exploded satellite's altitude. (SpaceX also launched classified missions for the U.S. Space Force on Sept. 16 and Sept. 26, and it launched the first orbital test flight of its supersize Starship rocket on Sept. 28.)

Although the ISS and China's Tiangong space station are currently out of reach of the debris field, the fragments may shift over time as Earth's gravity and atmospheric drag pull them closer to our planet. In that case, the stations may have to carry out maneuvers to dodge the debris, as they have done dozens of times before.

Could it happen again?

As LEO becomes increasingly crowded with newly launched spacecraft, the risk that they will smash into one another or get struck by space junk has also shot up, which strongly suggests that this will not be the last fragmentation event.

Additionally, the longer these new spacecraft remain in orbit, the higher the chances they'll break apart suddenly due to accumulated wear and tear, as USA 32 may have. Previous research has also shown that if satellites were knocked offline, either due to a software malfunction or a powerful solar storm, they could start crashing into one another within days. And there's also the threat that they could be destroyed by anti-satellite weaponry —‬ a scenario that "worries" Live Science readers.

Some experts warn that, if we continue on our current path, we may be doomed to reach an irreversible tipping point, known as the Kessler syndrome, where the accumulation of space junk means we can no longer launch anything into space.

Moving toward Lagrange point L2 around a million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth, NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is about to begin its study of our universe.

Launched on Aug. 30, the space telescope has already released its first images before its 300-megapixel camera is fully calibrated, capturing clusters of stars as blurry green rings. Once Roman's Wide Field Instrument is fully functional, the telescope should produce images as crisp as those from the Hubble Space Telescope but encompassing an area 100 times larger in each snap, NASA has stated. Experts hope to use these images to uncover more information about dark energy and possible habitable exoplanets.

With Roman's first test images now published, we asked our readers what they're most excited about with this new space telescope.

Over 270 readers responded, with the largest voting group, 57%, picking "Habitable exoplanets" as their response.

When talking about the possibility of life on other planets, one reader commented, "I'm sure the telescope will find plenty of new worlds outside our solar system, and a fair amount in habitable zones as well, but on if these planets have life of any sort I can't imagine any space telescope will [be] able to detect any signs."

Following behind this majority, 27% of readers chose "The possible source of dark energy." One reader reflected their interest in dark energy by writing, "Since dark matter and dark energy seem to make up most of our Universe, it seems imperative that we at least know SOMETHING about them. Except that they exist."

Another commenter echoed this statement, writing, "Dark energy and dark matter, according to our current knowledge, composes the majority of the mass of the Universe yet we are not really sure what they are and exactly what their influence is on our Universe. That is a huge gap in our knowledge base. It is not something that would be good to know, it is something we must know before we go where no man has gone before."

The smallest voting group, representing 9% of respondents, admitted, "I don't know, but I will use its pictures for my desktop wallpaper." If you fall into that group, we recommend checking out our Space Photo of the Week and Earth from Space series to get more image options for all your devices.

NASA is moving forward with designing a new space telescope that can see even deeper into the infrared universe than the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) can.

The new mission, called PRIMA (Probe far-Infrared Mission for Astrophysics), is continuing its development to Phase B — the preliminary design and tech phase — according to a NASA statement. Managers will review the mission's progress before officially beginning the telescope's journey to launch; if all goes to plan, PRIMA will embark on a five-year mission no earlier than 2033.

PRIMA's objective is to use a 5.9-foot [1.8 meters] telescope to examine the cosmos in the far-infrared, in a different set of wavelengths than the more famous JWST, which launched in 2021. (Other telescopes, such as Hubble and the newly launched Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, can also see some infrared wavelengths, but JWST was specifically designed to detect near- and mid-infrared light.) PRIMA's mission focus will be to uncover more information about exoplanet origins, galaxy growth and black hole evolution.

"The key science questions that PRIMA aims to address in relation to planet formation are to quantify the role of water in driving planet formation, [and to] determine the total gas masses and carbon and oxygen abundances in disks to reveal where exoplanets form," Meredith MacGregor, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins University who studies how planetary systems form, told Live Science in an email.

"We can't actually address these science questions with JWST," MacGregor added, "because the spectral lines that are required are only in the far-infrared — longer wavelengths than JWST is sensitive to."

The University of Maryland (UMD) and Caltech, which helped develop the mission, each issued statements about the upcoming work.

"I'm most excited about the things I don't yet know," Alberto Bolatto, an observational astronomer at UMD and a co-investigator who leads galaxy evolution research for PRIMA, said in a statement. "I am elated to be part of the future of astronomy — to produce an instrument that is going to be an enormous tool for the astronomy community to move humanity's knowledge forward."

"I am particularly excited about how PRIMA will help us discover and understand the role of powerful molecular outflows in galaxies over cosmic time, and how they shape star formation and the growth of supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies," Lee Armus, a staff scientist at Caltech and the PRIMA co-investigator and science operations lead, said in a separate statement.

Dawn of the Probe Explorers

PRIMA has a project cost cap of $1.2 billion, excluding launch and other nonproject expenses; for comparison, JWST cost $10 billion at launch in 2021, not accounting for inflation or launch expenses.

PRIMA is also the first in a new class of spacecraft that NASA is calling Probe Explorers, which are meant to sit somewhere in between flagship, JWST-style missions and smaller agency efforts. Probe Explorers are a part of the decades-old Explorers Program that began with the Explorer 1 launch in 1958 and followed with more than 100 missions. Explorers perform "a wide variety of research and scientific exploration programs for Earth studies, space weather, the solar system, and the universe," according to the agency.

The Probe Explorers were implemented after a recommendation from astrophysicists through the 2020 Decadal Survey, which is a consensus report issued by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on behalf of the community. NASA funded two concepts at $5 million apiece in 2024 and considered both PRIMA and the Advanced X-ray Imaging Satellite before announcing the decision to proceed with PRIMA this week.

"NASA selected PRIMA for development after detailed evaluation of concept studies for Probe Explorer missions, based on their scientific merit in alignment with the Decadal Survey's recommendations, feasibility of their development plans on cost and schedule, and use of technologies that could support the development of future large missions," the agency stated Wednesday (Sept. 23).

Should the mission fly as hoped, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory will manage PRIMA, with contributions from numerous other NASA centers and international agencies.

Fusion-powered space travel has long held the promise of rapid trips across the solar system: Mars in weeks, Saturn in months, Pluto in years.

For decades, such possibilities have remained theoretical, like something plucked out of a science fiction novel. But several companies are now working to build practical nuclear fusion propulsion engines, with significant milestones being hit.

Pulsar Fusion, a U.K.-based startup, hopes to launch a demonstration mission to space in 2027, while Princeton University and Helicity Space in the U.S. are continuing their own work on fusion drives.

If any of these efforts prove successful, missions across the solar system for robots and humans could be unlocked like never before, turning us into a true spacefaring species.

"If we continue on the current trajectory, everything we know about space travel is going to change within a decade," Stephane Lintner, CEO and co-founder of Helicity Space, told Live Science.

But is it too good to be true? Can the dream of nuclear fusion propulsion ever be fully realized, or will it remain a sketchbook fantasy? After decades of dreaming, we might be on the cusp of finding out.

Fusion power

Nuclear fusion is a process whereby two atoms combine, or fuse, to form a heavier one, releasing excess energy in the form of light and heat. The best-known type of fusion is the process that occurs inside the sun at up to 27 million degrees Fahrenheit (15 million degrees Celsius), where atoms of hydrogen fuse to form helium.

If this process could be replicated on Earth, it would provide us with huge amounts of energy. "The holy grail is free energy for everyone," Lintner said. Entire cities and countries would be transformed, bringing about a new age of clean and abundant power.

Many experiments and tests have been performed, and large fusion experiments, like the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in France, are under construction. However, commercially viable fusion reactors have yet to be built. One of the main problems is keeping the turbulent, superhot plasma required for fusion confined and at the right temperature. The record is currently 22 minutes.

If you take the same concept and put it in space, you suddenly have a means to power a spacecraft. What's more, the same problems with sustaining the plasma don't arise. Instead, the plasma can be fired out of the spacecraft, providing a steady thrust that can be used to accelerate a spacecraft to enormous speeds in the frictionless vacuum of space.

"Fusion propulsion in some ways is harder, and in some ways is easier, than terrestrial energy production," Bhuvana Srinivasan, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the University of Washington, told Live Science.

A fusion-powered spacecraft could be accelerated to hundreds ‪—‬ or even thousands ‪—‬ of miles per second through this method, multiple times faster than any spacecraft in history. In the most optimistic scenario, such a spacecraft could reach significant fractions of light speed, making interstellar travel a possibility.

There are tremendous challenges, of course. A space-based fusion reactor must be small enough to fit inside a spacecraft on a rocket. That's no easy feat, considering fusion reactors like ITER are the size of houses. You also need a way to create the immense heat required for fusion to occur, a source of fuel and propellant, and powerful magnets to keep the plasma from burning through the engine's walls.

Producing meaningful thrust requires staggering numbers of fusion reactions every second. A quintillion reactions would provide about 10 newtons of thrust ‪—‬ equivalent to the weight of a 1-liter bottle of water in your hand. But a fusion-powered engine would provide this thrust for months, rather than minutes for typical chemical propulsion, allowing large speeds to be reached eventually.

At first glance, this might sound nearly impossible, but some recent tests have shown it could be plausible

First plasma

In March, Pulsar Fusion demonstrated "first plasma" inside a nuclear fusion engine for the first time. In the test, which took place at the company's facility in Bletchley, one of Pulsar's Sunbird engines briefly transformed krypton gas into a plasma, demonstrating how the company might confine plasma within its exhaust system.

The demonstration showed "the plasma will sit in the system where you want it to sit," confined by an electromagnetic field, Richard Dinan, the company's CEO and founder, told Live Science. "The difficult work now is to be able to heat the plasma to temperatures nearer to fusion."

Dinan founded Pulsar Fusion in 2011 with the goal of building a fusion-powered propulsion system. The company's plan is to fuse helium-3 and deuterium, a lighter form of helium and a heavier form of hydrogen, and use the energy produced to heat helium-4 and expel it as propellant to produce thrust. The amount of thrust that can be produced depends on "how good you are at diverting those particles out the back of the spacecraft," Dinan said. "And right now, nobody knows how efficient we can be."

Just a few hundred grams of deuterium and helium-3 fuel would be needed to sustain the fusion process on a trip to Mars, Dinan said, but he claims their rocket would need 10 to 20 metric tons (11 to 22 U.S. tons) of deuterium propellant to provide the thrust to reach the speeds they're hoping for.

If they can make it work, their plans are ambitious. The company imagines fleets of its Sunbird vehicles traversing the solar system, taking people and cargo to and from destinations at speeds of up to 329,000 mph (529,000 km/h) ‪—‬ about 10 times faster than the Voyager 1 spacecraft currently traveling outside the solar system.

At those speeds ‪—‬ which aren't reached instantly, as the spacecraft need months to accelerate and decelerate ‪—‬ travel time to Mars could be halved from the nine months it takes with conventional chemical propulsion. Weight could be freed up for equipment because fusion is more efficient and needs less fuel. Quicker missions to farther destinations, such as to Saturn's moon Titan or the metal-rich asteroid Psyche, would also be in reach.

"I think we will see fusion as a propulsion system pretty soon," Dinan said. "The demand is certainly there."

A billion degrees

Pulsar Fusion's method of propulsion is known as dual direct fusion, where the plasma from the process is directly used to provide thrust. Samuel Cohen, a physics professor at Princeton University, is working on a similar concept, the Direct Fusion Drive, as part of a project called Starfire.

Cohen and his team have been investigating this concept for more than 20 years. Their idea is to fuse deuterium and helium-3, which is rare on Earth but abundant on the moon. His team has built a prototype fusion thruster at Princeton with plasma that reaches 18 million F (10 million C).

"It's a start, but you've got to get to a billion degrees" Celsius for deuterium and helium-3 fusion to occur, Cohen told Live Science. There are a few promising approaches to reaching those temperatures, including squishing the plasma or heating it up with radio or neutron beams.

Using their current plasma, Cohen claims the team has demonstrated a small amount of thrust ‪—‬ a few milligrams, or a few hundred-thousandths of a newton. Now, they hope to get more funding to take their concept further. "We need a few million dollars to start things off," Cohen said.

With enough support, Cohen said, they could have a working fusion propulsion system in 10 to 20 years. Meanwhile, Pulsar Fusion, which has received support from the European Space Agency and the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority, hopes to perform a demonstration of its thrusters in orbit by 2027.

Helicity Space is targeting a launch of its fusion propulsion system in the 2030s. The company, which raised $5 million in 2023, is developing the Helicity Drive, which relies on pulses of plasma, rather than continuous fusion, to provide thrust.

"If you get a reaction every few seconds, that's an amazing science experiment on Earth, but you can't do anything with it," Lintner said. "In space, you have the most advanced electric propulsion drive ever built. You change the game for propulsion."

Lintner said the company is aiming "for fusion temperatures very, very soon," and is then "planning on flying a first prototype within three years." By the 2030s, Lintner hopes to reach net gain in its fusion engines ‪—‬ producing more energy than is put in ‪—‬ to have a true fusion drive ready for use in space.

Going interstellar

But not everyone is convinced that fusion drives will propel us through the solar system. John Slough, who is working on his own fusion rocket design called the Fusion Driven Rocket (FDR), said he is wary of "false promises" in the field. He noted that much of the underlying physics around fusion propulsion remains extremely difficult.

"It still relies on scientific discovery for us to push it," Srinivasan said. "We need to figure out, how do we keep this fuel stable? Have we sorted a lot of the engineering and scientific challenges? It's not going to happen next year."

Remaining challenges include not only keeping the plasma stable, but also developing walls that can sufficiently contain the plasma, and shrinking the fusion system to fit inside a spacecraft, she added.

Other forms of nuclear propulsion might be more promising. NASA is developing SR-1 Freedom, a spacecraft powered by nuclear fission, not fusion. The goal for the spacecraft, announced in March, is to launch to Mars by December 2028, where three small robotic helicopters would be sent to explore the surface. The fission reactor would split uranium-235 to generate thrust.

"SR-1 Freedom will pave the way for space nuclear hardware," Steven Sinacore, the Space Reactor-1 Freedom Program Director at NASA, told Live Science in response to questions via email. "To sustain a presence on the Moon, send crews to Mars, and explore the outer solar system, the nation needs power that works everywhere, independent of the sun, and fission is that power."

However, fission-based propulsion, while extremely useful, cannot match the speeds promised by fusion propulsion. That's because fusion systems magnetically confine the plasma, meaning much higher temperatures can be reached. Fission temperatures, by contrast, are limited by the materials of the reactor where the fission reactions take place.

If any of the proposed fusion concepts were to become a reality, however, the possibilities would be enormous. Last year, Elena Ancona, a flight dynamics engineer at the Polytechnic University of Bari in Italy, and her colleagues described how a direct fusion drive could enable a mission to Sedna, a remote icy dwarf planet far beyond Neptune. For that mission, time is of the essence.

The dwarf planet will reach its closest point to the sun in 2075, and it will not be that close again for another 11,000 years. "If we want to make this mission, it's either now or in 11,000 years," Ancona said. With a traditional chemical spacecraft, a mission would need to be launched 30 years in advance. But with fusion propulsion, it could get to Sedna in just 10 years.

Many more destinations would be within reach if fusion propulsion were to become a reality. Perhaps even interstellar travel would be possible much further down the line. "People have known that fusion is the answer to deep-space travel since the 1960s," Lintner said. "It's only in the last decade that, commercially, people started to spend a lot of time on cracking the fusion code."

But there's a long way to go. "It's not for the faint of heart," Lintner said. But if fusion propulsion is ever going to happen, the next few years look as good a bet as any.

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NASA's latest space telescope has officially taken its first photos of our universe. Launched on Aug. 30, the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope is on its way to Lagrange point L2, a "parking spot" in space about a million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth where it will begin scanning deep space.

Using its 300-megapixel camera, Roman captured hundreds of stars as green rings of light. The telescope's Wide Field Instrument hasn't been fully focused yet, which is why these balls of gas appear blurry in the debut test image. But once the instrument is calibrated over the next few months, it should produce images as clear as those taken by the Hubble Space Telescope — but which cover an area 100 times larger. Astronomers hope to use these images to help solve some of the biggest mysteries in our universe, including the possible source of dark energy and the search for alien life.

With Roman's first test images now available, what are you most excited about for the future of this space telescope? Answer in the poll below, and let us know your thoughts in the comments!

Imagine opening your eyes for the first time and seeing that the sky is full of green doughnuts.

This was the view that greeted NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which just activated its powerful, 300-megapixel infrared camera for the first time.

The telescope, which launched to space on Aug. 30, is partway through a months-long commissioning process, with NASA scientists testing and tuning each of the spacecraft's instruments as it undertakes a million-mile (1.6 million kilometers) journey to Lagrange point L2 — an orbital "parking spot" where the competing gravity of Earth and the sun will hold Roman in place, alongside the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and other scientific spacecraft.

Roman's camera system, known as the Wide Field Instrument (WFI), hasn't been fully focused yet, so the stars look like lime-colored loops in this debut test image. But so far, all systems are working as they should, according to a NASA statement.

By the time Roman is ready to beam home its first full science images in early 2027, it will be capturing cosmic snapshots as crisp and detailed as those from the Hubble Space Telescope ‪—‬ but each of Roman's images will cover an area 100 times larger than Hubble's.

"After years of effort to build and test the instrument on the ground, we now have confirmation that it is operational in space. This is a huge milestone," Josh Schlieder, chief WFI scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said in the statement. "There is much to do, but we are on our way to groundbreaking science."

The wavy rows of squares in the new image are key to Roman's photo-taking power. Each square represents one of Roman's 18 detectors, which translate photons from distant light sources into electrical signals that encode enormous images of the universe. Scientists are preparing for the telescope to beam roughly 1.4 terabytes of data — about five to 10 times the storage capacity of an average smartphone — back to Earth every day.

With all that data, NASA scientists expect Roman to push the frontiers of some of the biggest mysteries in astronomy. Planned long-term surveys of distant galaxies will help scientists discover new objects and calculate the expansion of the universe, potentially shedding new light on the phenomenon of dark energy.

The telescope will also contribute to the search for alien life. By selectively blocking out starlight with Roman's built-in coronagraph — another instrument that NASA successfully tested this week — the telescope will be able to zoom in on exoplanets with unprecedented precision, free from stellar glare. These observations could increase the number of known alien worlds from the current count of over 6,000 to more than 100,000 by the end of Roman's planned 10-year mission.

But in a final piece of good news, that 10-year mission now looks likely to double. According to NASA, a successful thruster burn (combined with bonus fuel loaded onto the spacecraft at launch) means that Roman may be looking at 22 years worth of power rather than 10. Like Hubble, which has continued operating far beyond its initial mission parameters, Roman may be an orbital gift that keeps giving for decades.

Are you a UFO fanatic? Find out with our extraterrestrials quiz!

The idea of weapons in space, once a plot of science fiction, became a reality Monday (Sept. 14), when U.S. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink revealed at the Air, Space and Cyber Conference in Maryland that the United States had deployed "on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action."

Experts are worried that with this new announcement, outer space may become the next frontier for an arms race. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty, signed by both the U.S. and the Soviet Union, dictated that no weapons should be placed in orbit. But the treaty had no enforcement mechanism, meaning the U.S.' announcement may not result in any international sanctions, which could instead encourage other countries to add their own weapons to the final frontier, experts suggested.

With the U.S.' recent deployment of these technologies, Live Science ran a poll to see how readers felt about the possible threat of weapons in space. The results reveal just how worrying this topic is.

More than 280 readers voted in the poll, with 80% choosing the option "Yes, I'm worried that space will become the next frontier for weapons."

The comments reflect this general trend. "Of course I am worried that the US have put weapons in space," one reader wrote, adding that they're worried by anything the administration in Washington is currently doing.

Other readers echoed this sentiment, with one commenter saying, "Peace in space depends on the calibre and wisdom of world leaders which currently is simply not up to the necessary standard to be unlegislated."

The next-largest voting group, 14% of readers, picked this option: "This is a bit premature, and I'm waiting to see how other countries will react."

One comment opined that the presence of weapons in space doesn't necessarily mean they are intended to set off a major conflict, with one reader writing, "I think the observation 'if you want peace, prepare for war' is most relevant here. There is no suggestion these weapons were put there to start a war, but if one eventuates one day we will be glad defensive measures are already in place."

For years, the idea of nuclear weapons in space sounded more like science fiction than a realistic threat. That changed Monday (Sept. 14), when U.S. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink announced at the Air, Space and Cyber Conference in Maryland that the U.S. had deployed "on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action."

While the officials have not said that these weapons are nuclear, the announcement has raised a question: If countries are now openly putting weapons in space, how far away are we from a future where nuclear weapons become part of that competition?

The concerns about nukes in space goes back to the 1960s. In 1967, the U.S. and the Soviet Union signed the Outer Space Treaty, in which the nations agreed to not place nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit around Earth. But this treaty never included an enforcement mechanism — and now, that tenuous compromise may have been violated entirely, inviting other countries to add their own weapons to the final frontier.

With the U.S.' recent announcement, are you worried about an arms race in space? Vote in our poll below, and leave your thoughts in the comments.

Mercury, which is about one-third the size of Earth, may have shrunk more in its evolution than scientists originally thought.

A new study suggests that the tiny planet may have contracted 10% to 30% more than previous models suggested — meaning the planet’s total diameter shrunk almost 12 miles (19 km) since Mercury was formed. (Mercury’s diameter today is roughly 3,032 miles (4,880 km).

Previous missions overlooked the extent of the shrinkage because impact-crater debris on Mercury's surface hid the evidence, according to a study published Thursday (Sept. 10) in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. That size difference is important when researchers consider the planet's history, said Gaku Nishiyama, a planetary scientist at the German Aerospace Center Institute of Space Research and an author of the study.

"Because Mercury's evolution is driven by its cooling, the amount of contraction — an indicator of the extent of cooling — is one of the most important observables that can be compared to models for estimating its evolution scenario," Nishiyama told Live Science in an email.

There could also be implications for the planet's composition. For example, more shrinkage at Mercury could mean the planet would have a larger metal core and fewer light elements, such as silicon, inside that core, according to an American Geophysical Union statement.

"The interior of Mercury would reflect its formation," Nishiyama said, and possibly hint at the innermost part of our solar system. "Therefore, to understand how our solar system has evolved up to now, information that can be extracted from this estimation — such as core composition and initial temperature condition — is critical."

A violent history

Mercury and the rest of the solar system planets formed due to the gradual collisions and aggregations of rock and gas upon asteroids and comets. Some of those impacts that created the planets also released a lot of heat. Mercury has been slowly cooling from those ancient impacts, and its interior has been shrinking along the way.

While this kind of cooling affects the entire planet's landscape, impact craters can mask the effects because each crash into the surface generates its own surface changes, including debris and new divots. The craters build up over time, making it difficult to spot more ancient geology underneath.

Nishiyama's team compared two sets of maps from Mercury, using data from NASA's MESSENGER mission, which orbited Mercury between 2011 and 2015. One set of maps charted geological features showing contraction, and the other set estimated the roughness of the planet's surface. Their work covered the entire surface and demonstrated that the most rugged spots on the planet have fewer wrinkles from shrinking. In other words, according to Nishiyama, the debris from more recent impacts is covering up the evidence of shrinking.

Nishiyama said more information will help to confirm the estimate. Such data could come from the European Space Agency's BepiColombo spacecraft, which began its arrival sequence at Mercury earlier this month after nearly eight years of space travel. Once the mission settles in, the spacecraft will take higher-resolution imagery of the surface than MESSENGER did. Nishiyama's team expects BepiColombo to pick up smaller impact craters, as well as scarps and ridges, that could further refine the measurements.

"Stay tuned for future topography measurements by BepiColombo," Nishiyama said. "Future data from laser altimetry on BepiColombo will collect more information on planetary contraction by measuring topography more precisely."

Somewhere in Earth orbit, the United States military has weapons ready to deploy against its adversaries, U.S. Air Force Secretary Troy E. Meink confirmed on Monday (Sept. 14) in a keynote address at the 2026 Air and Space Cyber Conference.

"We are increasing readiness against existing threats, and the United States has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action," Meink said at the conference, per a statement published to the U.S. Air Force website.

This is the first-ever confirmation that the U.S. has stationed weapons in space. Secretary Meink did not elaborate on what kind of weapons the Pentagon had deployed in orbit, or how many. But his admission nevertheless stoked worries that the U.S. is instigating an "outer space arms race" against rival nations like China, Guo Jiakun, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, said in a news briefing on Tuesday (Sept. 15).

"We urge the U.S. side to stop expanding its military force and preparing for war in outer space," Jiakun said in a regular news briefing, as reported by the New York Times.

While we have no indication that the U.S. military's space-based weapons are nuclear, the announcement has renewed decades-old fears about a nuclear arms war in space.

The United States and the Soviet Union agreed that such a race was too dangerous to enter when the two superpowers signed the Outer Space Treaty in 1967, in which they both agreed not to put nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit around Earth.

The problem, then and now, is that neither side has ever had a reliable way to confirm that the other is keeping its word. With the new announcement raising the possibility that at least one side might be rethinking their approach to weapons in space, how would we know what potentially dangerous technologies the world's militaries are hiding in orbit?

After nearly 60 years of uncertainty, a recent feasibility study from MIT physicist Areg Danagoulian proposes a possible solution: a satellite-based sensor that could search for the signature of nuclear material aboard another spacecraft, using high-energy protons trapped by Earth's magnetic field as a probe.

The telltale sign of a warhead in space would be a large burst of neutrons scientists expect to be produced when these highly energetic protons interact with radioactive elements, like uranium, inside a warhead. A detector roughly the size of an encyclopedia and equipped with specialized sensors could identify neutrons emanating from the direction of a possible warhead from about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) away after roughly a week of observation, according to the study's calculations. At closer range, the detection could come much faster.

The consequences of a space-based nuclear detonation are dire. But whether a detection system will prevent nuclear detonation in space will depend on several factors, some of which are technical but many of which are not, experts told Live Science.

What a nuclear blast does in space

On Earth, nuclear weapon tests leave telltale signals — like seismic waves, radioactive debris, and intense bursts of light and heat — that scientists have spent decades learning to detect. However, a warhead could be hidden inside an ordinary-looking satellite, potentially for decades, with nothing on the outside to give it away. If such a weapon were to detonate, it could jeopardize thousands of commercial, scientific and military satellites in a single blast, littering orbit with dangerous debris.

For most of the Outer Space Treaty's history, the missing verification mechanism has been a theoretical gap rather than an urgent one — in part because the world had already seen what a nuclear detonation in orbit does, and largely avoided repeating it.

The clearest example is Starfish Prime, one of a dozen high-altitude nuclear tests the U.S. ran between 1958 and 1962. On July 9, 1962, the U.S. detonated a 1.45-megaton warhead roughly 250 miles (400 km) above the Pacific.

The blast knocked out radio communications for hours, produced artificial auroras visible from Hawaii, and eventually damaged or destroyed eight of the 24 satellites in orbit at that time — including Telstar 1 and Britain's Ariel 1 satellite. Radiation from the blast lingered in orbit for about five years, leaving parts of near-Earth space hazardous for spacecraft. According to eyewitness accounts from the time, the radiation also knocked out roughly 300 streetlights in Honolulu and set off burglar alarms across Oahu.

The Soviet Union conducted its own series of high-altitude nuclear tests, known as Project K, in 1961 and 1962. Those explosions also produced damaging effects on the ground, including disruptions to power and communications in what is now Kazakhstan.

"It was one of the earliest instances where we began to have an understanding of the ways in which the space environment and the terrestrial environment are coupled together," John Barentine, an astronomer who has studied the environmental consequences of Cold War-era activities in space, told Live Science.

Diplomatic issues

Clearly, the impacts of a nuclear detonation in space are significant, and the new paper solves a long-standing problem by providing a way to detect weapons in space.

But is detection likely to work in practice? Getting a satellite close enough to observe another — and keeping it there for a week — would mean maintaining satellites closer than they ordinarily would be, experts say. That could raise suspicions about being spied on or attacked.

"Satellite operators get really freaked out," Thomas González Roberts, an assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology who studies how space powers engage with outer space governance, told Live Science. "If another satellite is spending too much time next to you, you might think that they're spying on you."

Any such workable system would require the cooperation of the country whose satellite was being inspected, and that raises a separate set of questions about the international norms for when and how such inspections could take place, according to Brian Weeden, director of civil and commercial policy for the Center for Space Policy and Strategy at Aerospace Corp.

"In my experience, the policy problems are always the bigger challenge than the technical problems," Weeden told Live Science.

Solution in search of a problem?

There's also a question of whether this is a solution in search of a problem. Despite those early tests, deliberate nuclear damage to satellites has stayed rare for good reason, Roberts said. An attacker might have one target in mind, he said, but "you're going to take out more than just that target, and you have limited control over which satellites are affected."

That creates a strategic problem for any spacefaring nation: Any state capable of destroying other countries' satellites with a nuclear weapon "also has a relatively large fleet themselves," Roberts said — meaning the attacker would likely damage their own spacecraft, too.

"There's very few examples of nuclear damage in space because it's so obviously a bad idea," Roberts said. "These weapons are not really designed to be used, if you ask me."

The stakes are higher than ever

In theory, then, rational actors should shy away from launching or detonating nuclear weapons in space. No country has detonated a nuclear weapon in orbit since the 1960s, and it remains unclear how many, if any, nuclear weapons are currently stationed in space undetected.

But the possibility became harder to dismiss in 2024, when U.S. officials said they had evidence that Russia was developing a nuclear anti-satellite weapon — a claim Moscow has denied. The alleged spacecraft, based on media reports, is the Russian military radar satellite Kosmos-2553, which in 2022 launched into a radiation-heavy orbit that most other communication spacecraft avoid, Mallory Stewart of the U.S. State Department said in a 2024 interview. .

While Russia said the mission was meant for accelerated testing of how onboard electronics handle radiation, U.S. officials said the radiation level at that altitude was not high enough for such testing. The satellite was later observed tumbling and making erratic movements. This behavior raised suspicions that the spacecraft could be maneuvering toward a target satellite to detonate as a nuclear weapon, given Russia's "demonstrated willingness to target US and allied on-orbit objects," U.S. Space Command representatives said, according to a report from The Guardian.

The stakes are higher now than they were decades ago. All three experts interviewed for this story agreed that a space-based nuclear detonation today would be catastrophic — largely because of Earth's cluttered orbit. In 1962, 24 satellites, operated by two countries (the U.S. and the Soviet Union), were in orbit. According to a tracker maintained by astronomer Jonathan McDowell, more than 48,000 objects launched by more than 190 countries are tracked in space today; together, they support the communications, navigation, weather forecasting, Earth observation and military systems the world now runs on.

Even satellites that aren't in the blast radius could be damaged by a nuclear explosion in orbit. Modern satellites are built with off-the-shelf, low-cost electronics to keep pace with commercial demand, and they "are probably not hardened against the kinds of radiation you would get from a nuclear detonation of space," Weeden said. "I think that is the biggest concern."

A federal government study had found that a single high-altitude nuclear blast could raise radiation in low Earth orbit enough to disable nearly all unhardened satellites within weeks to months, with direct financial damages approaching $500 billion and the total economic impact potentially topping $3 trillion. The potential losses have only grown as the number of satellites has exploded and the world's dependence on them has increased. At the same time, declining launch costs have lowered the barrier to entry for spaceflight, opening orbit to nonstate actors without sizable satellite fleets of their own. That dynamic makes it more attractive for such actors to exploit major powers' deep economic and military reliance on space, Roberts said.

"It's most attractive for a rogue state like North Korea," he added. "It's not attractive for a spacefaring state like Russia. Doesn't mean they won't do it; it's just that there's enormous amounts of cons to that type of attack."

Ultimately, whether space-based nuclear weapon detection methods like those proposed by the MIT study wind up being useful is a policy question, Weeden said.

Implementing such a detection system "would raise a whole bunch of new discussions about on-orbit inspections and what are the international norms around that," Weeden said.

Editor's note: This article was originally published on Sept. 7, 2026. It was updated on Sept. 15 to include new information following the announcement that the U.S. had deployed weapons in space.

When Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket suddenly blew apart on a Florida launchpad earlier this year, it sent sound waves racing more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) across the U.S., new data reveals. While imperceptible to human ears, the subtle vibrations have helped researchers analyze the blast in surprising detail.

New Glenn is the largest and most powerful of Blue Origin's commercial rockets. It stands at 320 feet (98 meters) tall, roughly the same size as NASA's Space Launch System (most recently used during the Artemis II mission), and is designed to compete with SpaceX's supersized Starship rockets. New Glenn has launched into space three times: first in January 2025; then again in November 2025, when it launched a pair of NASA spacecraft to Mars; and finally in April this year, when it reached space but failed to deploy a giant communication satellite. During the second launch, Blue Origin successfully landed the rocket's reusable booster on Earth, making it the second company to achieve this feat, after SpaceX.

But on May 29, during a static "hotfire test" at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, shortly before New Glenn's planned fourth launch, the rocket's booster violently exploded without warning. The blast shot bits of flaming debris into the air and unleashed a massive mushroom cloud that briefly lit up the night sky. On Aug. 5, Blue Origin revealed that a faulty oxygen valve likely caused the explosion, according to Live Science's sister site Space.com. (The company has not attempted to launch another New Glenn rocket since.)

The fiery failure is believed to be one of the most powerful prelaunch explosions ever seen. The damage caused to the launchpad alone could take at least a year to fix, according to Ars Technica. This not only affects Blue Origin's ability to launch rockets but could also delay NASA's proposed moon base, which will rely on New Glenn to launch some of its components.

Nobody was hurt by the explosion. But thousands of locals reported hearing a thunderous boom as they were hit with the resulting shockwave, which reached up to 135 miles (217 kilometers) from the launchpad, Florida Today previously reported. However, in terms of the sound produced by this event, this was just the tip of the iceberg.

In a new study, published Aug. 12 in the journal The Seismic Record, researchers analyzed data from special listening stations across the U.S. for signs of infrasound — ultra-low-frequency sound below the range of human hearing — that coincided with the blast. At least 36 stations picked up infrasound signals from the explosion, the farthest of which was located in northeast Texas, about 1,046 miles (1,684 km) from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

Detecting such distant low-frequency sound waves not only highlights the scale of the blast but also provided researchers with "a very rare opportunity to study [the] large real-world energetic event" in more detail, study first author Elizabeth Silber, a physicist and planetary scientist at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, wrote in a statement.

Based on the frequency and travel distance of the sound waves, the researchers estimated that the explosion had the equivalent power of 0.131 kilotons (144 U.S. tons) of TNT, which is slightly higher than the initial blast that destroyed the nuclear reactor at Chornobyl in 1986, according to a 2009 study.

The team also worked out how much of the rocket's fuel was consumed in the initial explosion. Although the exact amount of fuel in the booster is unknown, they estimate that between 3% and 6% of the rocket’s cryogenic propellant was used up in the initial blast. This may seem low, especially considering the size of the fireball, but it lies within the expected range, researchers said.

"In a large propellant accident, the fuel and oxidizer do not necessarily mix and react all at once," Silber said. "Some material can contribute to the initial blast, while other material can burn more gradually in the fireball and the plume."

The researchers believe that infrasound is an underutilized and potentially valuable tool for tracking spacecraft accidents or other large explosions across the globe.

The same team has also previously used the low-frequency sound waves to track meteors and spacecraft as they enter Earth's atmosphere, including the return capsule of NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission in 2023.

NASA's next-generation cosmic observatory — the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope — is set to launch this weekend on a potentially decade-long mission to hunt for distant exoplanets, map out the Milky Way and unravel some of the universe's biggest mysteries, such as the true nature of dark matter.

The Roman telescope and its payload are scheduled to lift off aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket Sunday (Aug. 30) at 7:26 a.m. EDT from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, according to NASA. A few hours later, the telescope will be released from the rocket's second stage and be exposed to the vacuum of space for the first time.

But even if everything goes according to plan, we will still have to wait a while to get a glimpse of Roman's first groundbreaking images.

As of Thursday morning (Aug. 27), the National Weather Service forecasts a 50% chance of thunderstorms at Kennedy Space Center Sunday, so weather could delay the launch. If that happens, a second launch window is available Monday (Aug. 31) at 7:22 a.m. EDT, when there is a reduced risk of thunderstorms.

You can watch the event on a SpaceX livestream and stay up to date with last-minute developments and postlaunch news via a live blog from Live Science's sister site Space.com.

What is the Roman Space Telescope?

The Roman Space Telescope is NASA's latest flagship observatory. It follows the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which launched in 2021, and the Hubble Space Telescope, which has been in orbit since 1990. Rather than replacing those spacecraft, Roman will work alongside them to help scientists scour the skies like never before.

The observatory is named after pioneering scientist Nancy Grace Roman, who served as NASA's first chief astronomer between 1960 and 1979. It is approximately 42 feet (12.7 meters) tall and 14 feet (4.4 m) wide and weighs around 18,000 pounds (8,000 kilograms) — about the same as a fully grown Tyrannosaurus rex, according to a NASA fact sheet.

Roman was fully completed in December 2025, almost a decade after construction began and within its initial $4.3 billion budget (less than half what JWST cost). Since then, it has been moved more than 900 miles (1,450 kilometers) from Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and undergone a series of final checks in NASA's "clean rooms." Having initially been slated for a 2027 liftoff, the telescope is technically launching ahead of schedule.

Roman will eventually be stationed around 1 million miles (1.6 million km) from Earth at what scientists call a Lagrange point — a fixed point relative to our planet where the gravity of two objects cancels out. Its specific Lagrange point will be Sun-Earth L2, where JWST and the European Space Agency's Gaia and Euclid space telescopes already reside.

Roman's initial mission will last five years, but experts hope it could survive at least twice that long. Some space telescopes far outlast their initial missions; for example, Hubble is more than two decades past its original mission parameters, and NASA's recently doomed Swift Observatory lasted 10 times longer than predicted.

What makes Roman special?

Roman has two key instruments that set it apart from its predecessors. The first is its Wide Field Instrument, a 288-megapixel camera attached to a 7.9-foot (2.4 meters) mirror, which gives it a field of view 100,000 times greater than Hubble's. It will also see the cosmos in infrared light, similar to JWST. These combined capabilities will allow Roman to observe the cosmos like never before.

But the telescope's secret weapon is arguably its coronagraph, which can block out the light from distant stars, allowing Roman to see fainter objects, such as the exoplanets that orbit these stars. Until now, scientists' main way of finding alien worlds was to wait for them to pass in front of, or transit, their home star, but Roman will be able to directly image exoplanets at almost any time in their orbital cycles. (Exoplanets remain out of view when they are directly behind their home stars.)

One of the biggest and most exciting claims researchers have made about Roman is that it could help reveal up to 100,000 exoplanets. Such discoveries would revolutionize how we study alien worlds, especially considering that we have uncovered over 6,000 exoplanets since the first one was spotted in 1992.

However, the telescope will also conduct long-term surveys that will help astronomers accurately map the Milky Way and find extremely distant galaxies, potentially helping scientists solve the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy that currently underpin a "cosmological crisis" surrounding the universe's expansion. And as with any new space telescope, scientists will likely find novel ways of using Roman once it is in operation.

"The mission will offer practically limitless opportunities for astronomers to conduct a broad range of additional science," NASA representatives wrote in the fact sheet. "From objects in our outer solar system and exploding stars to growing black holes and galaxies by the billions, very little will be beyond Roman's reach."

The spacecraft will beam roughly 1.4 terabytes of data — roughly 10 times the storage capacity of an average smartphone — to ground stations across Earth every day, according to the fact sheet.

When will we see Roman's first photos?

Roman's first snaps are arguably the most anticipated astronomical images since the debut photos from the ground-based Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which were released in June 2025.

But first, Roman has to travel to its Lagrange point, which is roughly four times farther away than the moon. This could take several weeks, although no exact timeline has been provided.

Once Roman is in position, there will be a roughly 90-day commissioning period, during which the telescope will fully power up its instruments and run a series of diagnostic tests to ensure everything is in order before its mission truly begins.

There is, therefore, a slim chance that we could see Rubin's first photos before the end of the year. However, NASA officials have tentatively predicted that the telescope will start snapping the stars in early 2027. It took JWST about seven months postlaunch to send its first full-color image to Earth.

NASA representatives have promised that "data from all of Roman's surveys will be made public as soon as it is processed, with no periods of exclusive access," so once the images are ready, everyone will be able to see them.

Scientists have finally gotten to the bottom of why astronauts struggle to poop in space, thanks to a new blood test. The findings also reveal an unexpected side effect of this cosmic constipation that may need to be addressed before humans take long-haul trips to Mars and beyond, the study authors say.

As soon as people started living in space, it became apparent that it was harder to go "number two" among the stars than down on Earth — and not just because of how complicated it is to use a space toilet. For most astronauts, this gastrointestinal change is just an inconvenience, but some have to take laxatives to overcome the problem. The drugs are routinely stocked on most space missions, including the recent Artemis II mission.

Constipation is one of several digestive issues astronauts contend with, including bloating, indigestion and acid reflux, according to NASA. And like most other health problems that can affect astronauts, researchers have long suspected that microgravity is the leading cause. However, it has been very hard to prove that hypothesis or understand the other effects that chronic constipation may have on astronauts' general health.

In a new NASA-backed study, published June 29 in the journal Nature Communications, researchers analyzed more than 400 blood samples from 52 astronauts who each spent more than two months at a time living on board the International Space Station (ISS). Their stays took place between 2006 and 2018.

In the blood samples, the team looked for specific metabolites — the byproducts of metabolic processes that break down food, drugs and tissue in the body. They identified 40 such compounds, but the most instructive were those that were produced by gut bacteria that help break down proteins in the intestines.

"We see changes in astronauts' blood samples that indicate that the gut bacteria begin to ferment protein to a greater extent than usual," study first author Giorgia La Barbera, an associate professor in the University of Copenhagen's Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, said in a statement. This happens "within weeks after the astronauts arrive in space" and can persist "until they are back on Earth," she added.

Protein fermentation occurs when gut bacteria begin to break down proteins instead of their usual food group of choice, complex carbohydrates such as fiber. This switch to protein can happen on Earth too, either due to a poor diet or digestive issues, such as lazy bowel syndrome. But in space, it is a sign of something else.

"The lack of gravity in space probably causes food to move more slowly through the intestine," study co-author Henrik Roager, head of the University of Copenhagen's Microbiome & Metabolomics research group, said in the statement. That means fiber has more of a chance to be thoroughly broken down, and gut bacteria eventually turn to protein instead.

This slower intestinal movement can "help explain constipation in astronauts," Roager added.

The researchers also found that changes to astronauts' diets ‪—‬ including altered caffeine, fish and fat intake ‪—‬ may influence constipation, Live Science's sister site Space.com reported. However, this dietary factor accounts for less than one-third of the observed metabolite changes, leaving microgravity as the primary cause, the researchers noted.

While it is unsurprising that microgravity is the main cause of astronauts' constipation, the discovery of increased protein fermentation raises some new concerns that may need to be addressed.

"We know that products of protein fermentation [are] often associated with negative health consequences, such as kidney damage, potential effects on mood or reduced ability to focus, among others," study co-author Lars Ove Dragsted, head of preventive and clinical nutrition at the University of Copenhagen, said in the statement. When it comes to intestinal health, products of protein fermentation have also been linked to inflammation and weakening of the gut's lining.

Over short periods, these potentially harmful metabolites, including ammonia and hydrogen sulfide, likely pose limited risks to astronauts' overall health. However, long-duration spaceflights — like those that may one day carry astronauts farther into the solar system — could cause these compounds to rise to harmful levels, the study authors said.

It is also unclear how prolonged periods of reduced gravity, like those experienced by future residents of NASA's upcoming moon base, could affect protein fermentation in the gut. (The current study covered only brief stints on the ISS.)

"When we plan for longer journeys in space — for example to Mars — countermeasures may be needed to mitigate negative effects of space travel on the intestines," La Barbera said.

Such countermeasures could include a more fiber-rich diet, probiotic supplements or the promotion of peristalsis — the wave-like muscle contractions that move food, fluids and waste through the digestive tract — either via massage or medication.

"This would help reduce protein fermentation and thus provide a healthy gut environment and avoid negative health consequences," Roager said.

The researchers think further study of cosmic constipation could shed light on increased protein fermentation in people on Earth, including patients on extended bed rest, who often have constipation as well.

This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.

NASA's Swift Observatory is set to come crashing down to Earth later this year after a private mission failed to save the tumbling telescope.

A rescue spacecraft named LINK, which was designed by private company Katalyst Space, launched on July 3 with the aim of raising the falling observatory to a higher orbit. However, in the weeks following launch, the rescue mission itself encountered problems and started spinning out of control. On Wednesday (Aug. 19) NASA announced that the rescue mission would not continue as planned.

The mission's failure means the observatory is doomed to continue falling back to Earth.

"This is not the outcome we were working toward, but it does not change why this mission was worth attempting," NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said in a statement.

The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory was launched in 2004 to detect gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the universe. Over time, the spacecraft has been hit by scattered molecules in the outer reaches of our planet's atmosphere, creating friction that slowed down its orbit and reduced its altitude.

On top of that, an uptick in solar activity in recent years has caused our outer atmosphere to expand, increasing the number of molecules the telescope encountered, pulling it closer to Earth.

The $30 million Swift Boost mission was contracted to the Arizona-based aerospace startup Katalyst in 2025. The plan was for this private craft to rendezvous with the aging observatory and boost it to a higher orbit. This gave Katalyst engineers less than a year to design and carry out the mission before Swift's clock ran out.

"We knew this was a high-risk, high-reward mission – a first-of-its kind attempt, developed on an unprecedented timeline driven by the Sun's activity," Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of NASA's Astrophysics Division, said in the statement.

LINK was due to rendezvous with Swift about a month after its launch, but at the end of July, electrical power issues affected two of the devices that control the spacecraft's orientation, and it began spinning out of control, Live Science previously reported.

While NASA has had to give up on the goals of the original mission, citing ongoing altitude control issues, officials say the project has not been completely cancelled. "LINK still will attempt to conduct rendezvous and proximity operations with NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory to demonstrate key capabilities for the future of space exploration," the space agency wrote in the statement.

They added that NASA and Katalyst will assess the best next steps for the two spacecraft to gather as much data as possible for future satellite servicing operations.

"We are going to learn everything we can from LINK's rendezvous attempt and put those lessons to work on the missions that follow,” Isaacman said.

With no further intervention, Swift will likely re-enter our atmosphere later this year, NASA said.

Scientists are preparing for an interstellar rescue of humanity's most distant spacecraft, Voyager 1, after fixing up its twin from billions of miles away.

According to a NASA statement released Aug. 4, a clever power-saving maneuver known as the "Big Bang" helped the agency avoid having to shut off another one of the Voyager 2 probe's three remaining science instruments later this year. The Big Bang procedure involves selectively shutting off some high-power instruments on the Voyager probes while switching on lower-power alternatives, all while keeping the spacecraft warm enough to operate in the frigid environment of interstellar space.

"The idea is to swap out a group of powered devices all at once — hence the nickname — turning some things off, and replacing them with lower-power alternatives, to keep the spacecraft warm enough to continue gathering science data," representatives from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the mission, wrote in an April blog post.

NASA carefully ran tests on Voyager 2 before implementing the procedure in May and June. Now, sharing the results of those tests in the Aug. 4 statement, NASA reports a successful power transfer that should keep Voyager 2 running a while longer.

"The savings should provide power to keep its three instruments operating for at least an extra year," NASA wrote of the Big Bang.

But power is dwindling on both nuclear-powered spacecraft, and Voyager 1 is in worse shape than its twin. Mission scientists were forced to turn off one of Voyager 1's last remaining science instruments in April.

Voyager 1's turn for a life-extending Big Bang will happen within a few months, to keep science operating there as long as possible, agency officials added.

Going out with a bang

Scientists decided to do the "Big Bang" on Voyager 2 first because it is in better health, and closer to Earth, than Voyager 1. Voyager 1 is nearly 171 astronomical units (AU, where 1 AU is the average distance between Earth and the sun) from our planet, while Voyager 2 is about 143 AU away. Both spacecraft are crucial for revealing clues about the region outside the heliopause ‪—‬ the sphere of influence the sun exerts upon our solar system ‪—‬ as they are the only working spacecraft at such a distance.

That distance is no small factor. In November, Voyager 1 will reach a milestone "light day" from Earth — when it takes 24 hours for a radio signal to travel one way from our planet to the spacecraft. Both spacecraft will also turn 50 years old in 2027, assuming they keep working.

Both Voyager probes launched in 1977, with Voyager 2 getting an opportunity for a "grand tour" of our solar system. An alignment of the outer planets — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — that occurs only once every 176 years allowed both Voyager probes to maneuver from one planet to the next with minimal fuel usage.

Voyager 2 flew by all four planets, finishing its Neptune encounter in 1989, while Voyager 1 was tasked with flying above the plane, or "ecliptic," of our solar system after its closest approach to Saturn in 1981. As each spacecraft finished its close-up imaging of these planets, some instruments were shut off to extend their mission for as long as possible. But as the two spacecraft aged, more instruments needed to go quiet.

Plutonium, which the spacecraft rely on for power, has a natural decay rate, with the spacecraft now losing roughly 4 watts of power a year, according to NASA. In recent years, power supplies have turned critically low on both spacecraft. Voyager 2 would have needed to shut off one of its remaining three science instruments later this year if measures were not taken, and Voyager 1 was in slightly worse shape after an unexpected power drop in February occurred following a planned maneuver in deep space. Only two of Voyager 1's 10 science instruments remain powered after the latest was shut down in April.

In the dead of night on Wednesday (Aug. 5), part of a defunct SpaceX rocket slammed into the moon at more than 5,000 mph (8,000 km/h) — and a Korean lunar satellite has just shared the first images of the aftermath.

A series of photos snapped by South Korea's Danuri lunar orbiter on Wednesday reveal a small, blackened crater at the alleged site where a used Falcon 9 upper stage crashed into the lunar surface around 2:35 a.m. ET. The crash occurred near Einstein crater, on the northwestern limb of the moon, close to the terminator zone where lunar day and night meet. The photos were shared by the Korea AeroSpace Administration on social media on Thursday (Aug. 6).

Because this region was on the sunlit side of the moon at the time, the initial flare from the crash was not visible from Earth; however, scientists at the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile reported seeing evidence of a debris plume lifting off of the lunar surface shortly after the collision, according to the CBC. (At this time, no photos of the debris plume have been released).

A preprint study shared earlier this week predicted that the crash would create a new crater on the moon measuring roughly 90 feet (27 meters) wide and up to 16 feet (5 m) deep — a dent too small to be seen from Earth, even with a good telescope. No measurements of the newfound crater have been shared yet, but they are likely to arrive in the coming days as other lunar orbiters, such as NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and Earth-based observatories get a chance to examine the crash site.

What caused the crash?

The pesky piece of space junk that hit the moon on Wednesday is the second (or upper) stage of one of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets that launched into space on Jan. 15, 2025. It was carrying a pair of lunar landers: the Blue Ghost lander developed by private company Firefly Aerospace, which successfully touched down on the moon in March 2025; and the Hakuto-R lander developed by Japanese company ispace, which lost contact with Earth and crash-landed on the moon in June 2025.

Unlike Falcon 9's first (or lower) stages, which can return to Earth for reuse, the rocket's second stages are discarded in orbit. This rocket piece spent nearly a year drifting in an elliptical orbit around our planet before a combination of solar radiation and the moon's gravitational pull nudged it away from us, according to Live Science's sister site Space.com. In May this year, independent astronomer Bill Gray first predicted the crash and when and where the collision would occur, before other experts confirmed his calculations.

The 4.4-ton (4 metric tons) rocket part is estimated to have struck the moon at roughly 5,400 mph (8,700 km/h). While many times faster than the speed of sound, that’s still much slower than the average meteoroid strike on the moon, making the crash that much harder to see.

More to come

This is not the first time that human-made objects have impacted the moon, nor will it be the last. Studying these crashes can lead to important insights about the moon’s composition.

For example, the 2009 crash of a Centaur rocket's upper stage near the moon's south pole was analyzed by NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite mission, which revealed subsurface ice in the area. As a result, the lunar south pole is now the most coveted location for missions that aim to establish a permanent human presence on the moon.

Studying human-made impacts like these will also be essential for managing the potential risks to future astronauts and missions, like the permanent moon base NASA hopes to build.

"Now that we're in an era where we're going to have more and more astronauts going back to the moon, perhaps permanently, we also want to understand how much of a risk these artificial impacts pose," Benjamin Fernando, a postdoctoral researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory and co-author of a recent study on the impact, told CBC.

"It presents a different set of hazards than say the Apollo astronauts faced on the lunar surface from the average background meteoroids that are striking the moon every day. And what we want to try and do with this event is understand both the direct [and indirect] hazards."

A private mission to rescue an ailing NASA space telescope may now need a rescue of its own. The LINK spacecraft — designed by private company Katalyst Space to boost the orbit of NASA’s ageing Swift Observatory — is reportedly spinning unexpectedly in the weeks after its launch, so much so that stabilizing the spacecraft will likely delay the telescope rescue.

Katalyst’s LINK spacecraft launched July 3 from a mid-air Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket mounted aboard a modified Lockheed Martin L-1011 airliner. The spacecraft lifted off after less than a year of development, on a mission to catch NASA's nearly 22-year-old Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory before the telescope falls back to Earth.

While teams at NASA and Katalyst are working hard to stabilize the new LINK spacecraft, the next few weeks will be a delicate balance of getting LINK ready before Swift falls back to Earth (which is expected to occur this autumn), while not putting Swift at undue risk.

NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said there’s still time. "We are not giving up yet," he wrote late Thursday (July 30) on X. "This remains a very cool, very low-cost, high-potential, high-reward mission, and another step toward a more autonomous future where missions like this routinely upgrade, repair, service, and boost satellites."

LINK was supposed to rendezvous with Swift about a month after its early-July launch, but now it looks like late August is the earliest possible date, according to the latest update. That’s because the $30-million LINK began spinning in recent days after electrical power issues affected two of the devices that control the spacecraft’s orientation, known as reaction control system (RCS) wheels. Only one of the three RCS is working properly.

As of Thursday (July 30), Katalyst’s mission blog said engineers reduced the rotation with engine fires from the spacecraft, and that work is ongoing to stabilize the spacecraft. LINK is now spinning at four degrees a second, instead of the previous nine.

"Over the last 48 hours, the Katalyst team has worked to reduce LINK’s rotation while assessing current spacecraft functionality and its control system," Katalyst representatives wrote.

All the troubleshooting has delayed LINK’s expected arrival near NASA's Swift Observatory — a legacy telescope designed to detect gamma-ray outbursts — into late August. Time is of the essence, as Swift is expected to fall too far for help by autumn. The observatory has already reduced its science work to stay as streamlined as possible, so that drag doesn’t pull it into the atmosphere this summer.

Swift must stay above a minimum rescue altitude of 185 miles (298 kilometers) for the mission to succeed, agency models suggest. For comparison, the International Space Station typically operates at about 250 miles (400 kilometers) in altitude.

NASA has noted that other systems on LINK are working well. "The spacecraft remains power positive and in communication with the Katalyst team," NASA officials wrote in a Tuesday (July 28) update. Assuming LINK’s attitude stabilizes and the spacecraft is healthy enough, teams "will then evaluate revised plans to approach and capture Swift," NASA stated.

Katalyst’s ultimate goal is to refuel and reboost Swift so that the observatory, worth roughly $450 million today when accounting for inflation, will be able to continue its mission. (The mission cost $250 million in 2004, which is much cheaper than the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope that launched almost five years ago.)

Swift was initially mainly tasked with looking at gamma-ray bursts, which are huge explosions that happen after a dying and massive star collapses into a black hole. Swift has gathered many observations of these bursts, but it also looks at other stellar changes (like supernovas or X-ray flares) as well as moving objects like comets and asteroids.

Its science remains valuable, a recent NASA statement noted. "Swift is NASA's multitool when it comes to studying the cosmos," S. Bradley Cenko, Swift's principal investigator and an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said in the statement. "It observes the sky using a wide range of light, and rapidly points at short-lived outbursts, alerting other facilities in space and on the ground to help coordinate follow-up observations."

If successful, the rescue mission could give Swift many more years — potentially decades — to continue surveying the cosmos, as long as its science instruments continue to function.

Hundreds of spectators who attended the recent launch of a Chinese rocket witnessed a truly shocking sight when a bolt of lightning struck the ascending vehicle in midair.

Stunning photos show the exact moment the zigzagging beam of electricity surged around the rocket's fuselage and through its exhaust plume before shooting down toward Earth's surface.

Despite being hit with at least 100 million volts of electricity, the uncrewed rocket safely reached space and successfully deployed its payload in orbit.

The stricken spacecraft, a Long March 3B rocket, lifted off from Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China on July 23 at around 8 p.m. local time, Live Science's sister site Space.com reported. But around 30 seconds after leaving the ground, the rocket was suddenly hit by lightning, which illuminated the sky in the blink of an eye.

Video footage from the launch (see below) shows a large crowd of people with raincoats and umbrellas collectively gasping as lightning hits the rocket and then loudly cheering as the spacecraft continues its climb, unimpeded by the electrical discharge.

A translated statement from the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. released later the same day said the mission was a "complete success" and that the Long March 3B correctly deployed its payload, the Tianlian-2 (06) satellite, a geostationary relay satellite that will help support China's Tiangong space station.

However, the statement did not mention the lightning strike.

Modern spacecraft are designed to have highly conductive shells that divert massive electrical charges around their exteriors without impacting critical interior infrastructure or any crew they might be carrying. This works similarly to a Faraday cage, a protective enclosure that prevents certain types of electromagnetic radiation from entering or exiting. Similar designs are also used in commercial planes, which are struck by lightning at least once per year, on average, according to the National Weather Service.

Despite this, rockets normally launch only in good weather to minimize the risk.

Previous incidents

It is unclear exactly how many rockets have been struck by lightning throughout the history of spaceflight, but there have been several notable examples.

Perhaps the most famous incident was during NASA's Apollo 12 mission, which successfully landed a trio of astronauts — Charles Conrad, Alan Bean and Richard Gordon — on the lunar surface in November 1969. Shortly after liftoff, the Saturn V rocket carrying the astronauts was struck by lightning twice as it climbed into the atmosphere. Some nonessential instruments and sensors experienced "permanent effects" from the strikes, according to one recently released report. However, these issues did not stop the spacecraft from safely ferrying the astronauts to the moon and back.

Most recently, in 2019, a Russian Soyuz rocket was struck by lightning while carrying a communications satellite into low Earth orbit, Ars Technica reported.

Lightning can also hit rockets on the launchpad, which is what happened in the lead-up to the Artemis I mission in 2022. The uncrewed Space Launch System rocket, which launched NASA's first moon mission in 50 years, was struck by lightning during a "wet dress rehearsal" around seven months before launch. However, strikes like these are exceedingly rare nowadays, as most launchpads are surrounded by towers designed to attract lightning away from standing rockets, according to The Institution of Engineering and Technology.

Although these spacecraft remained relatively unscathed, the same cannot be said for an Atlas-Centaur rocket (dubbed AC-67) that was destroyed in 1987 after being struck by lightning 48 seconds after lifting off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. A NASA report later revealed that the electrical discharge had triggered a "single-word memory alteration" in the rocket's navigational computer, which caused it to veer sideways and completely break apart.

For thousands of years, humans looked at Mars and wondered what lay on its surface. Fifty years ago this week, we finally found out when NASA's Viking 1 became the first spacecraft ever to land on the Red Planet and transmit images from its surface. It was humanity's first view from the surface of another planet.

Viking 1 had been programmed to take its first image just 25 seconds after touchdown, according to NASA. It occurred at 7:53 a.m. EDT on July 20, 1976 — exactly seven years after Apollo 11 landed on the moon. It was supposed to coincide with the U.S. Bicentennial on July 4, 1976, but the landing was delayed by the search for a flat landing zone.

Although the spacecraft landed safely at Chryse Planitia, north of the equator, mission controllers still had to wait another 19 minutes for the radio signal confirming success to cross the 212 million miles (340 km) between Mars and Earth.

Forty minutes after touchdown, the confirming image began appearing on monitors at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, slowly building line by line from left to right. Dr. Thomas Mutch, leader of the Viking lander imaging team, never forgot the moment.

"I studied the black screen, waiting for that narrow strip that will signal the first few lines of the first picture," he said. "Rocks and sand are visible and — finally at the far right — one of the spacecraft foot pads, a symbolic artifact that stamps our accomplishment with the sign of reality … Time and time again I repeat, 'It's incredible.'"

The image revealed a solid, slightly rocky surface, with dust and pebbles thrown up by the landing already settling back onto the spacecraft. Viking’s first color image came the next day, with a panorama following a few days later.

The Viking mission consisted of four spacecraft: two orbiters and two landers. Viking 1 was joined six weeks later on the surface by Viking 2, which landed in Utopia Planitia, also in the northern hemisphere. Meanwhile, the two orbiters mapped Mars and relayed data — including more than 52,000 orbital images and 4,500 photographs from the surface — back to Earth.

Viking transformed our understanding of Mars, but its most intriguing scientific result remains unresolved. The landers carried the first experiments designed to detect life directly in Martian soil. Although the mission's official conclusion was that no convincing evidence of life had been found, some scientists have continued to argue that one of the experiments produced a genuine biological signal; others argue that Viking’s experiments destroyed the very evidence of life that they sought to prove. Discoveries by later missions — including organic molecules detected by Curiosity and perchlorate salts found by Phoenix — have prompted some researchers to revisit the Viking data.

Viking 1 fell silent in 1982, two years after Viking 2, following a software error during an update. The intrepid spacecraft showed us the surface of another planet for the first time, but whether Viking 1 also found the first hints of life off-Earth remains one of planetary science's most enduring mysteries.

What do you know about the Red Planet? Test your knowledge with our Mars quiz!

There's nothing more disorienting than falling asleep in transit only to wake up and find you've somehow drifted billions of miles beyond the orbit of Pluto.

Fortunately for NASA's New Horizon spacecraft, which scientists just awakened from a nearly yearlong hibernation at the solar system's edge, all systems are in "good health," according to a NASA statement. Now, with the probe recovered from its 321-day sleep and beginning to transmit science data again, New Horizons appears ready to continue its mission of studying the mysterious boundary where the sun's realm ends and interstellar space begins.

"Every status report through this hibernation period was 'green,' meaning all was well aboard New Horizons each and every week," Alice Bowman, the New Horizons mission operations manager at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, said in the statement.

New Horizons launched in 2006, breaking the record for fastest-ever space launch at roughly 36,400 mph (58,500 km/h). On its way to the edge of the solar system, the spacecraft picked up speed during a flyby of Jupiter in 2007 and then again while passing Pluto in 2015. Today, New Horizons is about 5.9 billion miles (9.5 billion kilometers) from Earth, or roughly 64 times the distance from Earth to the sun (64 astronomical units, or AU).

With the exception of the twin Voyager probes that launched in 1977, New Horizons is the farthest working spacecraft in the universe. (Two other probes, Pioneer 10 and 11, have traveled farther, but each stopped working several decades ago.)

Like the Voyager twins, New Horizons is on a trajectory toward the heliopause — the extreme outer edge of the sun's influence, where solar wind collides with the interstellar medium.

The Voyager probes proved that this dividing line is a measurable, physical boundary in space, marked by a hot, thick plasma barrier. However, New Horizons will eventually pass this boundary with far more sensitive instruments than the Voyagers held, enabling it to collect the most detailed data about this region ever.

But there's still a long way to go. The heliopause is estimated to begin about 120 AU from the sun — nearly twice as far as New Horizons has traveled so far. In the meantime, a long and lonely journey through the Kuiper Belt awaits. In the coming weeks, the spacecraft will begin conducting a study of hydrogen in the outer reaches of the heliosphere as it sends back the hoarded trove of data from its year in hibernation.

According to NASA, each transmission between New Horizons and Earth takes about 8 hours and 52 minutes, with that delay growing all the time.

In the Kuiper Belt, New Horizons may also have the chance to study peculiar, icy objects similar to the peanut-shaped space rock Arrokoth, which the probe flew by in 2019. This was the furthest object in the solar system ever to receive a close spacecraft flyby; whether New Horizons will break its own record again in the coming years is an open question.

On April 6, the four crewmembers of NASA's Artemis II mission swooped around the far side of the moon in their Orion spacecraft, disappearing from Earth's sight and losing all contact with humanity for roughly 40 minutes.

At the same time, some 250,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) away, Chris White, the mission's lead communications officer, was nervously pacing the halls of NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston, waiting for the chance to do his job again.

"It was all nerves," White, the lead integrated communications officer (INCO) on Artemis II, told Live Science. In addition to maintaining communication with the Orion spacecraft (an impossible task while the moon blocked every signal), the INCO team also controlled its exterior cameras — a job White had previously done for the International Space Station (ISS).

The team knew for over a year what Orion's lunar flyby would entail, and which shots the cameras should capture. They had sent a checklist of nearly 300 commands to Orion that morning, telling the cameras exactly what to do after the spacecraft vanished behind the moon. All that remained was to wait.

After 40 minutes, bits of telemetry data started popping up on White's monitor as the Orion crew reemerged safely from behind the moon. Voice contact soon followed. But it would still take another day for Orion's flyby photos to traverse the space between the moon and Houston. When White finally opened the file the next morning, his body failed him.

"I opened a photo — the eclipse photo — and I couldn't breathe," White said. "I was like, 'There's no way that this turned out this well on the first try.'"

The INCO team's incredible Orion spacecraft photos have now been viewed by tens of millions of Earthlings. Live Science recently spoke with White to get the inside story of the images and the entire Artemis II mission as it was seen from NASA mission control.

Brandon Specktor: In a nutshell, what was your job on the Artemis II mission?

Chris White: During the mission, the INCO console manages all of the communication systems on the spacecraft, as the name kind of implies. We handle not just the video and the camera system but also the onboard audio system — which was the first flight for that — the system for radio communication and the optical communication system, which was a laser system on Artemis II. We also handle a couple of other minor systems.

BS: What was the vibe during liftoff?

CW: So, for liftoff, I was in the back, in a support room. The vibe was intense. Everybody was laser-focused on the task at hand. During simulations leading up to it, we had fake, simulated CGI views [of liftoff] to give us an idea of what we were going to see. I always thought, "Man, it's going to look so much cooler in real time." But then during liftoff, I looked up from my console screen zero times to look at the live video. So I didn't see a lot of that footage until the next day, when I had a chance to breathe.

The INCO team was basically flat-out busy for at least the first three flight days. For a lot of my team, it wasn't until after flight day three where things — and I'm going to use air quotes — loosely "calmed down." I don't think any of us truly relaxed until the vehicle was safely in the water.

BS: Let's talk about the lunar flyby. What was your experience watching along with the crew as they got closer and closer to the moon?

CW: It was incredible. I've seen the moon through the ISS cameras, and I'd watched the moon, over the course of the previous five flight days, slowly get larger and larger. But there was something logarithmic — almost like it just got really large very quickly on flight day six as we got close to the moon.

And the moon looked wrong, which sounds kind of crazy to say. We're so used to the way that the moon looks from our perspective here on the Earth, that when the vehicle was coming at it from an angle, you could see more of the backside of the moon. So you're in awe of it approaching and getting larger and realizing what's about to happen ‪—‬ but also my brain hurt trying to reconcile what I was seeing, because it didn't look correct. The shape and texture were different than what my brain expected.

BS: And the colors too, based on what the astronauts said. Did you notice anything unusual about the moon's coloration?

CW: It was hard to tell. The bandwidth limitations of being that far away from Earth made it hard to distinguish a lot of those finer details. But there was a moment where we looked at it and we were like, "I think we can tweak the exposure on this." It was a little too dark, and then we bumped it up a little bit. And all of a sudden, these muted grays became a little bit more brown. I was not expecting to be able to see that from our cameras.

You see it much more in some of the high-res photos that the crew took. But it was honestly shocking to see how much more color shows up even just a little bit as you get closer.

BS: As you were doing that flyby, did you have a strict checklist of shots you had to take?

CW: Yeah, absolutely. Flyby was a heavily choreographed event for the Orion cameras, as well as the crew and the science community. But we had started working on that plan well over one year earlier, and we knew exactly what shots we wanted and when we wanted them. The timing of all that shifts slightly, depending on exactly when you launch. So we had a framework in place, and then we just tweaked the timing in the 24 hours leading up to the events.

I think it was something like 290 total commands over the course of eight hours. We just scripted and time-tagged and put them on the vehicle, so it just clicked through them.

BS: How does that work during the eclipse phase, when you were out of contact?

CW: So we knew when Earthset ‪—‬ and, therefore, the start of the loss of signal (LOS) ‪—‬ would be and when Earthrise would be. And so we had the cameras flip into kind of a time-lapse mode at that point and then take a 30-second interval time lapse as the Earth got smaller and smaller and smaller behind the moon. All of that was scripted.

And then, behind the moon, during the LOS, it continued to take photos at a slower pace. I think it was like once every few minutes. We had all that on a timer, basically.

BS: How soon after the lunar flyby did you get to see the images?

CW: Luckily, we had a great optical comm pass that same night. So all those photos came down via laser to the Earth, and I saw them the next day. I didn't see them in the moment; I saw them the next day.

And I opened that photo — the eclipse photo — and I couldn't breathe. I was like, "There's no way that this turned out this well on the first try."

BS: Is that the photo that stands out most to you from the flyby?

CW: Yeah, it absolutely is. A lot of the photos you take in space, people are like, "Oh, where are the stars?" And it's because you have to expose the camera to the very bright, shiny spacecraft in front of you, and all the stars fade away into the blackness in the background.

But because the sun was behind the moon, you have the moon in the foreground in focus, the sun kind of bleeding out from behind it. The stars and the planets are all there. You can see Venus; you can see Saturn; you can see Mars. And then you have the glow of the spacecraft — it's not lit by the sun, but by the Earth — in the foreground. It was an incredible photo.

BS: What were you guys doing during that loss-of-signal phase? What was the vibe like then?

CW: I was pacing around the control center. The INCO team is responsible for keeping communication with the vehicle as much as we can, and there's not really much that we can do about that when you put a celestial body between us and the crew.

It's all nerves. It's all of the, "Hey, did we configure everything correctly? Are communications going to come back on the other side?" So just to distract myself for the 40 minutes that we were at LOS, I just kind of walked around the building and chatted with other people, just to try to keep myself distracted.

It wasn't until about three or four minutes after Earthrise that we started getting stable video, and then the crew called down. And that was really when I breathed a sigh of relief, once I heard voice coming down from the vehicle again.

BS: Do you feel different after this mission?

CW: People keep asking me that. I don't know that I've had quite enough time to fully unpack the mission. But I think it's slowly sinking in that we just sent four people around the moon, literally further away from Earth than ever. And I think, not only did we change them and the flight control team from that experience, but I think we changed a lot of people's perceptions of the moon, which is awesome.

BS: Do you know what your role for Artemis III is going to be?

CW: I definitely still plan to be on the INCO team for Artemis III. I will not be the lead for that mission. But I definitely still plan to be on console and hope to take some even more incredible photos during that mission.

BS: Any closing thoughts?

CW: I just want to stress what a team effort this was. The vehicle cameras had a script and a plan that involved not just the INCO team. But to point these cameras, I have to get the solar arrays swung forward in a specific direction, so I have to coordinate with the power guys. I have to sometimes ask the GNC [guidance, navigation and control] team to rotate the vehicle itself, which is entirely different from how we do things on ISS. There was our imagery team handling camera settings and proper exposure. There's the engineers who developed these systems.

This was not just me and the INCO team on console. It was truly a full flight control team effort to get these.

Editor's note: This interview has been condensed and edited lightly for clarity.

Are you a NASA nerd? See how well you score on our Artemis quiz to find out!

A secretive Chinese spacecraft has captured the first-ever close-up photo of one of Earth's temporary "quasi-moons" after arriving there for a potential first-of-its-kind landing.

The space probe is supposed to scoop up samples from the newly imaged space rock and return them to Earth next year. However, the blurry photo and the timing of its release hint that this may be trickier than initially thought.

The Chinese National Space Administration (CNSA) probe, named Tianwen-2, launched from Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southern China on May 28, 2025, according to Live Science's sister site Space.com. Its primary target is Kamo'oalewa, also known as 2016 HO3, a fast-spinning asteroid that is classified as a quasi-satellite of Earth. That means it circles the sun alongside our planet, making it appear as if it were gravitationally bound to Earth when, in fact, it isn't. (This is only a temporary association; Kamo'oalewa will eventually fall out of sync with Earth and drift away from us.)

The CNSA has released minimal information about the parameters and timeline of the Tianwen-2 mission and only shared the first photo of the spacecraft several weeks after its launch. Based on one unverified timeline, Live Science previously reported that the probe had most likely arrived at Kamo'oalewa on June 7. However, Chinese officials have remained tight-lipped about the probe's progress.

But on Monday (July 6), the CNSA finally confirmed that, after a roughly 400-day-long journey spanning more than 600,000 miles (1 million kilometers), Tianwen-2 is now circling Kamo'oalewa, according to the state-run news outlet Xinhua. The agency also revealed that the probe first inserted itself into the asteroid's orbit on June 7, as originally predicted.

The announcement was accompanied by the first clear photograph of Kamo'oalewa, captured at a distance of around 12.5 miles (20 km) from the quasi-moon. The blurry image suggests the space rock is around 130 feet (40 meters) across, according to the South China Morning Post, which is on the lower end of previous estimates that suggested the asteroid was up to 330 feet (100 m) wide.

Initial readings also suggest that Kamo'oalewa is a rubble-pile asteroid, which means it is loosely bound together and has an unstable surface. Until now, researchers were unsure of the asteroid's composition and hoped it had a solid, rocky surface, which would have allowed the spacecraft to attempt a first-of-its-kind landing using an "anchor and drill" technique. (It now seems unlikely that this sampling method will be used.)

The asteroid's small size, fragile composition and fast spin will make it harder for the probe to collect samples from the space rock's surface, even with other tried-and-true techniques. The new image also hints that there are few flat spots on the space rock where the probe could land safely.

"This greatly increases the complexity of the sampling process and the risk of the mission, making it much more difficult," CNSA representatives wrote in a report, according to the South China Morning Post.

The unverified mission timeline, which correctly predicted the probe's arrival date, stated that the sampling attempt would commence July 4. However, the fact that this has seemingly not happened yet further suggests that Chinese scientists are struggling to figure out how to collect their desired samples.

CNSA officials wrote that the probe "will progressively conduct more detailed scientific exploration to acquire data on the asteroid's morphology, material composition and internal structure, laying the groundwork for subsequent sample collection operations."

If Tianwen-2 does manage to snag some samples, the probe will release them in a capsule during a flyby of Earth in November 2027, and they will reenter the atmosphere at around 27,000 mph (43,500 km/h). This would make China the third country to successfully collect and return asteroid samples to Earth, following Japan, which returned samples from the asteroid Ryugu in 2020, and the U.S., which acquired material from the space rock Bennu in 2023.

Researchers hope the returned samples will help unravel the secrets of the early solar system and potentially shed light on how key compounds, such as organic molecules and water, ended up on Earth. They may also shed light on the seven other quasi-moons that are currently known to co-orbit the sun with our planet.

Some experts previously theorized that Kamo'oalewa may be a fragment of the moon that was knocked loose from our permanent companion by an ancient meteor strike. Others have even attempted to pinpoint which crater the asteroid may have come from and hope that the samples will help confirm their hypothesis.

"I am curious to find out the answer about its origin, since the debate on its [potential] lunar origin is still very open," Marco Fenucci, a mathematician at the European Space Agency's Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre who has co-authored multiple studies on Kamo'oalewa, previously told Live Science. Any returned samples should "definitely give us an answer to this matter," he added.

After its close approach to Earth next year, Tianwen-2 will slingshot farther into the solar system to begin its secondary mission to study 311P/PanSTARRS — a peculiar object beyond Mars that displays characteristics of both comets and asteroids — in 2035.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is continuing to have a disruptive impact on ever more parts of humanity. But what does it mean in the long run? A new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv from Austrian researcher Sergey Ivliev, extrapolates what the wide scale adoption of AI means for the future of humanity in space — and in particular what it means for the ultimate question of whether we're truly alone in the galaxy or not.

A framework for much of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence came from famous physicist Enrico Fermi, who simply asked "Where is everybody?" at a lunchtime discussion at Los Alamos in the 1950s. Though never officially published, Fermi's lunch partners from that day have passed down an oral history of that conversation that has cemented it into the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), at least until Michael Hart formally laid out the argument and mathematics for the underlying question in a paper in 1975.

There are plenty of potential answers to the Fermi Paradox, many of which can be found floating around the internet — and some are likely more valid than others. But Ivliev, a Ph.D. in Mathematical Economics and founder of environmental project consultancies such as Peatland Ecosystems and Vlinder, suggests a new resolution: the Quiet Expansion filter.

The central argument of the paper is that there aren't thousands of alien mega-structures lighting up the night sky because once a civilization reaches the threshold of Autonomous AI-Cosmoindustry (AICI), "loud", resource-hungry empires motivated by prestige or romance become irrational. However, this does not mean expansion stops; instead, it shifts to a "quiet" mode driven by rational goals like survival diversification, knowledge preservation, and scientific observation.

The AICI threshold is reached when a civilization possesses a self-sustaining off-planet industrial and computational system capable of designing, manufacturing, repairing and launching space hardware through AI-mediated autonomy. We're already taking tentative steps in this direction with the advent of space-based data centers, but true AICI —where a civilization can extend its infrastructure beyond its home planet without continuous biological intervention — is leaps and bounds beyond our current capabilities.

In this vein, Ivliev is drawing on work done by astrophysicists Sergey Popov, who noted that a truly rational AI system would reject human-like motivations for space travel — such as romance, conquest, or prestige. Instead, AI would view space expansion as simple risk management.

To an AI, putting all your eggs in one basket — whether that basket is a single planet, solar system, or even galaxy, can lead to a single point of failure. Therefore, expansion is highly logical as a way of mitigating the risk posed by that single point of failure. At the point where we have reached AICI, the cost for sending a 10kg interstellar probe to another star at 1% of the speed of light is roughly 4.5x10^13 Joules — a tiny fraction of the overall energy budget of such a civilization.

One key aspect is that the 10 kg probe doesn't contain any actual people — it simply holds the "seeds" to restart life elsewhere in case a catastrophe happens back in the home system. It would contain a civilization's knowledge, and possibly some of its biological material, enabling a sufficiently advanced AI to rebuild the entire civilization from scratch. This is the "Quiet Expansion" where an AI sends low-mass and hard to detect "seed systems" instead of moving millions of biological entities around in massive interstellar space ships.

There are some additional constraints on this method of expansion, including selecting promising exoplanets discovered by remote sensing and deploying minimal local resources to maintain themselves until needed. Additionally, the AI would restrict self-replication of the probes in order to avoid any "grey goo" scenario with a probe attempting to take over entire swathes of the galaxy.

This has obvious implications for why we've never found "loud" technosignatures. In this scenario, a "null" result of being unable to find the thermal signature of a Kardashev-III scale civilization doesn't mean a galaxy is empty. It just means that the successful civilizations are residing in a "quiet" state in case its back-up plans are needed.

But there's another, more ominous implication from this framework. If interstellar backups are cheap to make, and we haven't found any in our own backyard, that means either we're one of the first civilizations to make it to that point or the transition from a planetary industrial society to a space-based one is a narrow path to tread. Admittedly the probes such civilizations would send out are probably hard to find even in our own solar systems, but if we're unable to, it means we're ending uncharted territory — and might just run into a filter that had silenced the rest of the galaxy. That's a sobering thought, but one to keep in mind as we start to advance our own AI capabilities.

The original version of this article was published on Universe Today.

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Editor's note: This article was updated at 06:53 EDT on July 3 with news that the mission has launched and reached orbit.

A rescue spacecraft set to speed toward a NASA telescope to prevent it from falling into Earth's atmosphere has launched into orbit.

The first-of-its-kind mission reached orbit after launching at 4:36 a.m. EDT (0836 GMT) Friday (July 3) from the Marshall Islands, carrying a robot-arm spacecraft named Link into the sky aboard a modified Lockheed Martin L-1011 airliner. In midair, a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket fired Link into orbit, where it will now rendezvous with NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, a gamma-ray telescope that has been slowly falling toward Earth and headed for an untimely demise.

The launch follows two consecutive scrubs that caused delays to the mission on July 2 and 3, the first due to weather conditions and the second a software fault. Now that Link has reached orbit, mission engineers are working to acquire a signal from the craft to confirm that its solar panels have deployed and its power systems are working, NASA wrote in an update.

Link was developed by private company Katalyst Space for $30 million. Katalyst's goal is to meet up with the falling Swift Observatory, which launched in 2004, and pull it to a higher orbit, using Link's robotic arms and thrusters. Swift is still scientifically useful but is rapidly losing altitude due to the natural drag of Earth's atmosphere. Without help, Swift will likely meet its demise later this year, scientists say.

"This is a high-risk, high-reward mission," Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of NASA's Astrophysics Division, said in a statement. "We have much to gain by attempting this boost, which is more affordable than trying to replace Swift's capabilities, and allows NASA to advance the nation's satellite servicing industry, for the benefit of all."

Swift cost $250 million in 2004, which is roughly $450 million today when accounting for inflation — a relatively cheap observatory compared with the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope. The Swift mission was originally designed to study gamma-ray bursts ‪—‬ cosmic explosions that occur when a massive, dying star collapses into a black hole. Swift has made many observations of these bursts in the past 20-plus years while also watching for other signs of stellar activity, like X-ray flares or supernova explosions, as well as transient objects, like comets and asteroids.

In sum, Swift helps us see how the universe is changing over short periods.

"Swift is NASA's multitool when it comes to studying the cosmos," S. Bradley Cenko, Swift's principal investigator and an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said in the statement. "It observes the sky using a wide range of light, and rapidly points at short-lived outbursts, alerting other facilities in space and on the ground to help coordinate follow-up observations."

High-risk rescue mission

The rescue mission comes with several challenges. Swift was not designed to be serviced when it launched, making the logistics of the mission something of a puzzle. Moreover, NASA only gave the contract to Katalyst in September, after high solar activity in recent years ballooned Earth's atmosphere and unexpectedly accelerated the spacecraft's fall due to increased drag. This meant the mission had to be ready for space in less than a year after the usual punishing requirements of design, build and testing.

Katalyst accepted the challenge because the company hopes to do this kind of work more often. "If we're going to build an enduring presence beyond Earth, we need the capability to manipulate our environment in space," Katalyst CEO Ghonhee Lee said in the statement. "That means deploying robotic spacecraft that can reposition, repair, refuel, and refit satellites after launch."

Unless Swift altered its operations plan, however, the spacecraft would have been irrecoverable in July. So, to give Link as much time as possible to rescue Swift, the operations team at Penn State's Eberly College of Science made some changes.

For example, Swift's science was minimized so that the spacecraft looks at targets only if the telescope is put in a "streamlined position" to minimize drag, NASA explained. Power consumption has also been slashed to let Swift's solar panels fly "in a more aerodynamic orientation," which also reduces the drag that is making the spacecraft fall into the atmosphere.

These changes will allow Swift to stay above the minimum rescue altitude of 185 miles (298 kilometers) until autumn, agency models suggest. Katalyst will use that time to do the usual spacecraft "commissioning" on Link to make sure all systems are well. It will take Link about a month to rendezvous with Swift, according to NASA.

Following those steps, Link will approach Swift for evaluation, and Katalyst will use Link's robotic arms to latch onto the NASA observatory. Link will then use its propulsion system to gradually bring Swift's orbit to about 370 miles (595 km) ‪—‬ well above the pathway of the International Space Station, which orbits roughly 250 miles (400 km) over Earth.

NASA did not say how much longer Swift would be able to keep observing, should it reach its new altitude safely. However, figures from the European Space Agency suggest that spacecraft at an altitude of 310 miles (500 km) reenter the atmosphere within about 25 years. This would suggest that as long as Swift's instruments hold out, scientists would have many years of observations to look forward to.

Researchers have proposed creating a novel satellite constellation, dubbed StormWall, that could shield Earth from the worst effects of solar "superstorms" that we are otherwise unable to mitigate. The innovative idea, which would essentially create a giant airbag in front of our planet, could prevent trillions of dollars in potential damage and is "quite feasible," experts say.

Over the past few years, we have been bombarded by dozens of solar storms as the sun reached the most active phase of its roughly 11-year solar cycle, called solar maximum. These events are often triggered by large clouds of incoming plasma, or coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which often follow powerful explosions on the sun's surface known as solar flares. Such storms frequently paint vibrant auroras across our skies, but their effects are not always benign.

Every century or so, the sun spits out a supercharged storm, such as the Carrington Event of 1859, that is several orders of magnitude stronger than a typical CME. If such a storm were to hit us today, it could wipe out every satellite orbiting Earth, dose astronauts with lethal levels of radiation, damage power grids and even knock out the internet.

Currently, the only way we can prepare for the next superstorm is to get better at forecasting them and design our spacecraft and ground-based infrastructure to deal with their arrival as best as possible. However, a new study published June 2 in the journal Space Weather presents a more proactive approach.

In the new paper, researchers propose launching six bus-sized satellites into a geosynchronous orbit, around 22,500 miles (36,000 kilometers) above Earth. At this altitude — far above the International Space Station and most other satellites — the mini spacecraft swarm would sit and wait for the next "big one." If and when such a storm were spotted, the satellites would empty giant canisters of gas around the edge of Earth's invisible magnetic shield, or magnetosphere, creating a giant wall of plasma that would cushion and divert an incoming CME.

The team’s simulations show that this plasma wall could cut the intensity of a superstorm down by more than half. This would not completely shield us, but it could help avoid any worst-case scenarios, similar to having an airbag during a car crash, study co-author Daniel Welling, a space physicist at the University of Michigan, told Science magazine. "It's as if you could install an airbag in the magnetosphere," he said.

Because we currently have no way to defend ourselves against these storms, the researchers argue that such a system is vital and should be constructed as soon as possible.

"It's like people in a village who see a river flooding — maybe they can predict when that will happen, but probably what's even better is if they could build a storm wall. That's what we're proposing here," study first author Brian Walsh, a plasma physicist and space weather expert at Boston University, said in a statement. The only difference is that "it would help all people on the planet," he added.

Protecting the planet

StormWall was inspired by Earth's natural response to a solar storm. When CMEs impact our planet, they temporarily weaken the magnetosphere — known as a geomagnetic disturbance — allowing solar radiation to flood the upper atmosphere and trigger auroras. But this also causes oxygen ions to rise into the magnetosphere, where they accumulate on the sun-facing side of our planet, creating a bubble that helps shield us from incoming radiation while the magnetosphere is compromised.

The idea of StormWall is to create this protective barrier before the storm arrives so that the geomagnetic disturbance is not as strong as it otherwise would be. To do this, the proposed satellites would dump around a dozen oil trucks' worth of a reactive gas — such as barium, lithium, sodium or calcium — into the magnetosphere. This gas would accumulate on the sun-facing edge of the magnetosphere and quickly become ionized by the sun, creating a massive plasma barrier that would not only push back against an incoming CME but also help divert it around our planet.

To demonstrate StormWall's potential effectiveness, the team simulated how the satellites would have impacted the May 2024 solar storm (also known as the Mother's Day storm), which occurred when a series of CMEs struck our planet in quick succession, triggering the most powerful geomagnetic disturbance since 2003. They found that the satellites could have reduced the intensity of the resulting geomagnetic disturbance by as much as 84%.

"When you apply some really serious physics to it, it does work," Walsh said. "And the amount of mass we need, the launch capacities — it's all within our capabilities."

One of the most surprising aspects of the new proposal is the amount of gas being released by the satellites: It equates to only around one-millionth the weight of a typical CME, yet this can cut a solar storm's power in half — so the "scheme punches far above its weight," according to Spaceweather.com.

"I definitely would want this"

Some concerns need to be addressed before StormWall could become a reality. For example, similar geoengineering projects — most of which have been proposed to tackle the effects of human-caused climate change — have been criticized for the inadvertent impacts they may have on our planet.

However, while follow-up studies will be needed to make sure it is safe, the researchers are confident that the ionized gas would not affect Earth's magnetosphere or upper atmosphere in any way. Once deployed, the plasma wall would quickly dissipate and be blown clear of our planet by solar wind.

There is also the issue of money. The StormWall satellites, with their massive gas canisters, would be among the heaviest spacecraft ever launched and would likely require massive rockets, such as SpaceX's Starship, to put them into geosynchronous orbit. While a proper cost analysis has yet to be completed, this would likely cost billions of dollars.

However, considering the potential damages from solar storms, the researchers argue that StormWall would be well worth the money. The May 2024 solar storm, for example, cost U.S. farmers around $500 million due to malfunctions with GPS equipment. And that's just a drop in the bucket compared with what a Carrington-level storm would cost; the study researchers estimate that such a superstorm could cause up to $3.4 trillion in damage.

Another issue is that StormWall is a one-and-done solution. Once the gas canisters are empty, they need to be refilled or completely replaced, which would create a substantial additional cost. But again, if the benefits significantly outweigh the cost, this would be a no-brainer.

Even when taking all of these challenges into account, several experts believe StormWall is not only a good idea but also achievable on a relatively short timescale.

The proposal is "highly innovative and appears to be quite feasible in the near term," Allison Jaynes, a space physicist at the University of Iowa who was not involved in the study, told Science magazine.

And given that there are currently no viable alternatives, it would help put people at ease about the next superstorm.

"If I knew that a 100-year disturbance was coming and it would knock out power grids, I definitely would want this," David Sibeck, chief of heliophysics at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, told Science magazine.

China's top-secret space plane just released another unknown object over Earth, raising concerns about exactly what the mysterious vehicle is up to. The clandestine spacecraft has now deployed at least nine payloads around our planet since 2022 — and we don't know what any of them really are.

The Shenlong, or "divine dragon," space plane is a reusable, robotic spacecraft that China has repeatedly launched into low Earth orbit (LEO) on board vertical rockets, before reentering the atmosphere for a horizontal runway landing — similar to the iconic spacecraft from NASA's now-defunct Space Shuttle program.

The space plane has never been photographed by outside nations, so we have no clear idea what it looks like or how large it is. Officials from China's space sector have yet to reveal any meaningful information about its design or purpose.

Shenlong first launched into space on a two-day mission in September 2020, before completing an eight-month stint in LEO between August 2022 and May 2023, and a nine-month spaceflight between December 2023 and September 2024. It released its first payload shortly after the launch of its second mission and deployed seven more objects during its third mission, six of which were ejected simultaneously.

The space plane's fourth and ongoing mission began on Feb. 7 when it launched atop a Long March 2F rocket that lifted off from China's Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert, according to Live Science's sister site Space.com. And to date, there has been no news of its current activities.

But on June 22, the private space surveillance firm LeoLabs, which specializes in tracking spacecraft in LEO, detected "an unknown object in the vicinity [of the spaceplane]," according to a post on X. The mystery payload was initially picked up by one of the company's radars in New Zealand and did not match any other object in the company's catalog.

Later on the same day, LeoLabs representatives added in an update to the post that, following additional observations from across the company's radar network, they had "independently cataloged this object and assessed with high confidence that it was released from the Chinese space plane."

On June 23, Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer and satellite tracking expert at Durham University in the U.K. and previously with the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, confirmed in another X post that the new object originated from Shenlong and was being tracked by the U.S. Space Force.

McDowell also speculated that it could be a "cubesat" — a small, often box-like satellite frequently deployed as a secondary payload alongside larger spacecraft. However, as with the previously released objects, it is unclear what its purpose might be.

Space News previously reported that Shenlong's primary goal might be to conduct rendezvous and proximity operations with other spacecraft and that its payloads may be targets for it to practise flyby maneuvers in orbit.

Others have speculated that the mystery objects could be covert surveillance satellites or possess anti-satellite weaponry, according to Gizmodo. However, to date, there have been no reports of any spacecraft being sabotaged by the space plane or its payloads.

Shenlong has now spent nearly 700 cumulative days in LEO. During that time, amateur photographers snapped some blurry shots of light reflecting off the mysterious space plane. The most intriguing image, captured in August 2024, revealed a bright appendage extending from the main spacecraft. This was most likely a solar array, experts speculated, which is unsurprising considering that most spacecraft are at least partially powered by sunlight.

China is not the only country with a secretive space plane. The U.S. also has its own version, the X-37B, whose two operational models have collectively spent more than 4,200 days in LEO since 2010. However, American officials have been much more forthcoming in revealing information about their space plane's design, mission parameters and research goals.

A Chinese spacecraft has arrived at one of Earth's temporary "quasi-moons" and will soon attempt to land on the space rock to scoop up samples that will be returned to our planet next year. The ambitious mission could help researchers uncover secrets about Earth's main moon and provide clues that may benefit space exploration and planetary defense, experts say.

The Chinese National Space Agency (CNSA) probe, named Tianwen-2, launched from Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southern China on May 28, 2025, Live Science's sister site Space.com reported at the time. The car-sized spacecraft sent back its first images a few weeks later, giving us our first glimpse of its secretive design, followed by a selfie with Earth a few months later.

The mission's primary target is 469219 Kamo'oalewa — also known as 2016 HO3 or simply Kamo'oalewa — a near-Earth asteroid discovered in 2016 by astronomers at Hawaii's Haleakala Observatory. It likely spans somewhere between 130 and 330 feet (40 to 100 meters) across and is a "quasi-satellite" of our planet, meaning it's orbiting the sun right alongside Earth in a temporary partnership. (Kamo'oalewa means "oscillating celestial fragment" in Hawaiian.)

Tianwen-2 is predicted to have arrived at Kamo'oalewa on June 7 and inserted itself into an orbit alongside the asteroid, according to an unverified timeline shared by freelance journalist Andrew Jones, a leading expert on China's space program. Around a month later, on July 4, the probe is expected to descend upon the space rock to collect samples from its surface, potentially employing a never-before-seen drilling technique to do so. (The CNSA has not released an official timeline for the mission or shared any recent updates about its progress.)

If successful, the samples are expected to be returned to Earth on Nov. 29, 2027, according to the same timeline. At this point, Tianwen-2 will then slingshot around our planet and head farther out into the solar system for its secondary mission: to rendezvous with and study 311P/PanSTARRS — a peculiar object beyond Mars, which displays characteristics of both comets and asteroids — in 2035.

Samples from Kamo'oalewa could help answer many interesting questions, including the true origin of the object, which some experts believe may have broken off from the moon.

"What makes [this mission] extraordinary is that we don't yet know [the object's] composition or origin," Li Chunlai, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences' National Astronomical Observatories and chief commander of Tianwen-2's ground application system, said in a state-sanctioned video translated to English. "We'll only obtain definitive answers after completing our exploration."

What is Kamo'oalewa?

There are currently eight known quasi-moons orbiting the sun alongside Earth, following the most recent quasi-moon discovery in September 2025. Unlike the similarly named "minimoons," which are asteroids that are briefly captured by Earth's gravity for a few months or years at a time, quasi-moons are temporary satellites that slowly circle our planet but are never gravitationally bound to it.

This relationship can last decades, or even centuries. For example, experts think Kamo'oalewa has been accompanying our planet for at least 100 years and could remain alongside it for another 300 years before it starts to fall out of sync with our solar orbit.

"The way Kamo'oalewa moves with Earth is kind of like a dog that might tag along with you for a while on a long walk through the woods, but it's not your dog," Richard Binzel, a planetary scientist and asteroid expert at MIT, told Live Science in an email.

The Ferris-wheel-size space rock is one of the closest quasi-moons to us, with a minimum distance of around 2.9 million miles (4.6 million kilometers) from Earth, or around 12 times farther away than our actual moon. It is also one of the fastest-spinning quasi-moons, rotating around its axis every 30 minutes. But unlike other quasi-moons, which likely originate from the solar system's main asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter, our current best guess is that Kamo'oalewa is actually a piece of the moon.

This hypothesis is based on observations from 2021 that showed Kamo'oalewa absorbs and reflects light similarly to the moon, hinting that the space rock may be a chunk of lunar material ejected by a long-ago meteor strike. More recently, in 2024, researchers narrowed down the most likely impact crater from which the asteroid originated: the 13.6-mile-wide (22 km) Giordano Bruno crater, located on the far side of the moon. However, there is still a chance that Kamo'oalewa is a main-belt asteroid that just happens to look an awful lot like lunar material.

"I am curious to find out the answer about its origin, since the debate on its [potential] lunar origin is still very open," Marco Fenucci, a mathematician at the European Space Agency's Near-Earth Objects Coordination Centre who has co-authored multiple studies on Kamo'oalewa, told Live Science. This mission should "definitely give us an answer to this matter," he added.

Scientists are also unsure whether Kamo'oalewa is a "solid monolithic rock," like the $100,000 quadrillion asteroid Psyche (the target of NASA's ongoing Psyche mission), or a "rubble-pile-like asteroid," such as Bennu or Ryugu, both of which have been explored by sample-return missions in recent years, Fenucci said.

Scooping up samples

Having arrived at Kamo'oalewa, Tianwen-2 will spend the next few weeks mapping the asteroid's surface at altitudes between 1,000 feet and 12.5 miles (300 m to 20 km) above its surface, according to limited mission details revealed by Chinese scientists in a January study. The resulting map will allow researchers to estimate the asteroid's density and work out the best landing spot.

On July 4, the probe is expected to swoop down and scoop up around 3.5 ounces (100 grams) of surface material, or regolith, from the asteroid, which is slightly less than what NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission managed to grab from Bennu. However, there are multiple ways this sampling process could play out.

If the asteroid is a pile of rubble, the probe will utilize a touch-and-go approach, which involves hovering just above the surface and using a robotic arm to reach out and grab the sample. This method was also used by OSIRIS-REx for Bennu and by Japan's Hayabusa2 mission, which scooped up samples from Ryugu.

But if Kamo'oalewa has a more solid surface, Tianwen-2 will attempt to land directly on the space rock and anchor itself in place before drilling into the asteroid. This has never been attempted before and could allow for longer contact time and "more controlled sampling," according to The Planetary Society.

After collecting samples, the probe will remain alongside the asteroid and conduct further analysis of its size, shape and trajectory.

In late April 2027, Tianwen-2 will depart Kamo'oalewa and begin the six-month journey back to Earth, where it will dump its samples in a return capsule that will fall to our planet's surface as the probe begins its long journey to rendezvous with 311P/PanSTARRS.

The return capsule will reenter Earth's atmosphere at around 27,000 mph (43,500 km/h), researchers wrote in the January study. That's slightly faster than the Orion capsule carrying the Artemis II astronauts traveled as it fell back to Earth in April.

What could we learn from Tianwen-2?

In addition to ending the debate over Kamo'oalewa's origin, samples from Tianwen-2 could reveal more about the solar system and our place within it.

For example, previously returned asteroid samples have helped to "tell us where Earth's water came from, how complex organic molecules were distributed in the early solar system, and how surface processes like space weathering alter asteroid properties over time," Fenucci said. These samples can also be used to "establish a link to known meteorites found on Earth" and help us learn more about these space rocks, he added.

The proximity of quasi-moons and minimoons to Earth also makes them valuable assets for future space exploration missions. Some researchers have proposed using them as temporary bases or refueling stations that could serve as stops on the way to Mars or other faraway destinations. These objects "could become literal stepping stones for human missions to practice what it is like to leave the Earth-moon cradle," Binzel said.

One particular idea that scientists want to explore is whether water can be extracted from these objects. And if Kamo'oalewa is a piece of the moon, that could have implications for NASA's planned moon base. "Someday, it might be possible to extract that water to provide resources for thirsty astronauts or even generate usable rocket fuel from the hydrogen," Binzel said.

Some near-Earth objects also pose a potential risk to our planet. And while Kamo'oalewa will likely never hit us (and would probably only cause localized damage if it did), there are much larger nearby space rocks that could trigger global catastrophes if they were to impact our planet.

"Over the time scale of centuries, these kinds of objects have a chance of striking the Earth," said Binzel, who invented the Torino scale used to measure the impact potential of near-Earth objects. Therefore, a better understanding of space rocks like Kamo'oalewa "can prepare us in how to deal with a threatening object if one were ever discovered," he added.

Finally, this mission will likely provide another opportunity to assess China's space exploration capabilities, which could hint at whether the country could overtake the U.S. as the top nation in space, as some experts predict.

At age 19, John McFall thought he might never walk again after his right leg was amputated above the knee following a motorcycle accident. Fast-forward more than two decades, and he is now on the verge of becoming the first physically disabled person in space.

McFall, 45, is a British surgeon and former Paralympic athlete who won multiple medals as a T42-class sprinter. In 2022, he joined the European Space Agency's (ESA) Fly! program, which aimed to see if a person with a physical disability could live and work in low Earth orbit. And in February 2025, he became the first member of the program to be cleared for a potential future mission to space.

More recently, on June 2, the U.K. government announced that McFall had been selected as a prospective member of the first crew to live on Haven-1, an upcoming commercial space station from U.S. company Vast that is scheduled to be the first of its kind in low Earth orbit, if it launches on time early next year.

If everything goes according to plan, the roughly 30-day mission will help answer a series of interesting questions about how living in space might be both challenging and advantageous for people with physical disabilities.

Live Science spoke with McFall about what it would mean to break new ground, wearing a prosthesis in space and how microgravity might uniquely affect him.

Harry Baker: How did it feel to get the news that you might be going to space next year?

John McFall: Awesome. Very awesome, very exciting. And it feels like we're one step closer to realizing this amazing opportunity and achieving this very exciting milestone in human space exploration.

HB: What would it mean to you personally to become the first physically disabled astronaut in space?

JM: To me personally, it doesn't make a difference. In terms of "what an achievement for me," I don't tend to think of it like that. However, I am very aware that the broader message that it sends to wider society about what people are capable of — whether they have a disability or not — is very interesting and powerful. So I'm proud to be a very small part of that movement, if you like, and the journey of making society a more tolerant and inclusive place.

HB: What advantages do you think your disability might give you in space compared with other astronauts?

JM: It's a good question because we don't actually know. We can hypothesize, but until we actually get into space and conduct some science that's specifically relevant to my disability, we won't know. But there are some theoretical benefits.

One is that when you live in microgravity, you get a shift of fluid from the lower part of your body up into the upper part of your body and your cranium. This can cause swelling of the optic disk, which can temporarily affect vision. It's called spaceflight-associated neuro-ocular syndrome (SANS), and it affects around 70-75% of astronauts. I would hypothesize that, having a reduced lower limb volume to start with, you're going to get a proportionally smaller fluid shift in microgravity, relative to your physiological capacity to process it, reducing the risk of things like SANS.

Another is that in microgravity, because you're weightless, you're not using your bones as much, and your body naturally resorbs them. So your bones get weaker and thinner. And one of the byproducts of this is that you have to excrete a lot of calcium, and you do this via peeing it out. As it [calcium] passes through your renal system, or kidneys, this causes an increased risk of kidney stones in microgravity. So again, having lower bone mass to start with — but retaining the same physiological capacity to metabolically process calcium — there is potentially a lower risk of kidney stones.

So those are two small-but-hypothetical benefits of my particular disability in space. But the real answer is, we don't know until we do the science (i.e., urine samples, blood samples and eye examinations in orbit).

HB: How might space be more challenging for you than for other astronauts?

JM: Again, we don't know. The question is, do you really need both your lower limbs to help you stabilize and support yourself whilst your hands are doing tasks? And is having two legs useful in what we would call normal intravehicular operations [conducted inside the spacecraft], whether it be cargo operations, maintenance, this sort of stuff?

When we went through the feasibility initiative, trying to think of and work out all these scenarios, we couldn't really think of a disadvantage other than maybe having to work slightly harder.

HB: Will you be wearing a prosthesis in space?

JM: The plan is to wear a prosthesis. We deemed quite early on that wearing a prosthesis in a spacecraft would be a necessity, mainly at launch time. If there was an emergency that required me to get out of the spacecraft and get off the crew access arm and away from the launch site, it would be ideal wearing a prosthesis to do that.

But in space, we don't know whether it's going to be an advantage or be required for these intravehicular activities. Where I would definitely need to use one is on a long-duration mission where I need to exercise lots. I use a prosthesis to exercise on Earth, and I would use a prosthesis to exercise in orbit. However, short-duration missions [like this one] do not.

The prosthetics I use are modular, so I wear a socket — that's what's left of my leg goes inside — and then the hardware, what we call the terminal device, is attached to the socket. What I would envisage doing is always wearing the socket, because that way, you maintain consistency. But [for] the terminal device itself, I have a quick-change adapter that you can just unplug the device, and you can take it off and, likewise, put it back in again.

It's "plug and play," if you like, and [it will allow me to] make assessments of whether it's useful or not.

HB: Will your prosthesis need to be specially made for the trip?

JM: Not really. We are certifying a number of prosthetic hardware items to fly, but they're all what we call "commercial, off-the-shelf items." So they're products that are widely available.

However, there are some very small changes that we need to make to make them compliant with the safety requirements of the space station environment and the spacecraft, such as fireproof tape around certain parts of the device or changing the hydraulic fluid so it's less toxic in case there is a leak.

We're also doing a small amount of redesigning to the shape of the foot to make it more ergonomic to interface with things like rails and straps inside the space station, because you often slip your foot under rails and straps.

HB: Could anything you learn from your mission help physically disabled people back on Earth?

JM: Yeah, I think so, certainly from a prosthetics point of view. There are prosthetic developments that we have made that will benefit other prosthetic users in the future.

I mentioned this quick-change adapter. We have revised or reengineered this particular device to perform in a certain way, which I think will have advantages for a whole range of lower-limb amputees. The socket technology ‪—‬ the interface between my stump and the prosthesis ‪—‬ is [also] going to be redesigned and potentially has very beneficial applications for lower-limb amputees again.

HB: Are you hoping to be selected for more missions in the future? And would you like to become the first physically disabled person on the International Space Station (ISS) or the moon?

JM: Yeah, absolutely. I hope that we use this opportunity to demonstrate that it is very feasible, and I hope that that would put me in line for selection of missions in the future.

I would love to, in the future, potentially spend longer in space, demonstrating that it's possible for someone with a disability to live and work in space and cope with everything that comes with that.

And absolutely, I would love to go to the moon. You know, someone with a lower-limb disability, when you propose that against walking on the moon, it's quite a powerful statement, and I would love to do that.

Editor's note: This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Since it launched from Kennedy Space Center on April 1, 2026, we've been treated to some truly incredible photos of NASA's historic Artemis II mission, including a dump of 12,000 images captured by the crew. But a blurry snap, which shows the crewed Orion capsule as nothing more than a handful of black and white pixels, is a contender for the most impressive Artemis II photo — because it was captured by an Earth-based telescope more than 200,000 miles (320,000 kilometers) away.

This makes the photo a candidate for the longest-distance image of humans ever taken from Earth. (Images like the "Pale Blue Dot," which were taken from space, don't count.)

The trippy image, shared May 6 by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), was captured by the U.S. National Science Foundation Green Bank Telescope (NSF GBT) in West Virginia. NSF GBT consists of a 328-foot-wide (100 meters) radio dish on a circular rail, making it the world's largest fully steerable radio telescope. It played a key role in tracking the Orion capsule (nicknamed Integrity) throughout the Artemis II mission.

The pixelated photo shows the radio waves emitted by Integrity as it slingshotted around the moon at around 2,000 mph (3,200 km/h) ‪—‬ as fast as a speeding bullet. The camper-van-sized capsule was approximately 213,000 miles (343,000 km) away when the image was captured on April 6 (the sixth flight day of the mission), meaning it was on the same side of the moon as Earth. It was, therefore, taken either just before or just after the crew temporarily disappeared behind the moon's far side and broke the record for the farthest distance traveled from our planet.

At first glance, the photo might not seem striking, but when you start to think about what you're actually looking at and the technology required to capture it, it becomes much more impressive.

"There are four people in those pixels," Will Armentrout, a NSF GBT astronomer who helped track Artemis II, commented to his colleagues when they first saw the image, according to an NRAO statement.

Those four people were mission commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and mission specialist Christina Koch of NASA, as well as mission specialist Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency — each of whom broke a different individual spaceflight record during the mission.

Tracking NASA's return to the moon

The Artemis II crew launched to the moon on board NASA's mega Space Launch System rocket and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on April 10, after reentering Earth's atmosphere at around 25,000 mph (40,000 km/h) — the fastest speed any humans have ever traveled.

Throughout the mission, spaceflight enthusiasts watched the livestream from Earth, keeping tabs on everything that happened, from early toilet troubles and lunar meteor strikes to a touching tribute to Wiseman's late wife and a rather awkward interview with President Donald Trump. But they were not the only ones watching.

The NSF GBT team was also keeping a close eye on Artemis II and helped to accurately track the crew's progress during six-hour observation windows on each of the five days Integrity was closest to the moon. The telescope's extreme sensitivity and precision helped provide crucial data that will help NASA prepare for future Artemis missions, which aim to establish a base on the moon.

"With the GBT, we were able to track the movement of the spacecraft within 0.2 millimeters [0.008 inches] per second of what NASA calculated in its projections," Anthony Remijan, the NSF GBT's site director, said in the statement. "It's like having a speedometer in your car that can track your speed within 0.0004 decimal places per hour."

This is a great example of how scientific institutions across the globe contributed to the mission.

"To get big things done like we're doing in this capsule … you need a big team behind you," Hansen said during an interview while on board Integrity.

This article was first published May 14, 2026.

Artemis II quiz: Is your knowledge of NASA's historic moon mission out of this world?

When NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman pointed his camera back at Earth — just as the Artemis II crew's Orion spacecraft departed for the moon on April 2 — he captured what looks, to the untrained eye, like a regular “Blue Marble” image. But look closer, and you will see a series of hidden details that make this one of the mission's most unique and poignant images.

When Wiseman took this photograph (with a Nikon D5 camera), he and his record-breaking crew were on the night side of Earth. Yet it looks very much like daytime, because the globe was lit by bright light from the Pink Moon, which had turned full on April 1 — the day before Artemis II launched from Florida's Kennedy Space Center.

What Wiseman's camera captured was sunlight reflected by the moon onto Earth, a subtle light he could only capture by maximizing his camera's sensitivity. Look at the originals, archived on the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth, and you can see what this view looked like to the naked eye.

Being illuminated largely by moonlight allowed nighttime features to stand out in unusual detail. Look carefully, and you’ll see city lights. From the astronauts' position above the mid-Atlantic, urban lights can be seen in parts of Spain, Portugal, northern Africa, sub-Saharan Africa and Brazil.

But it’s not just the cities that are aglow. Because this global image includes both the North and South Poles, Wiseman managed to capture an extremely rare display of simultaneous auroras on opposite sides of the Earth. Look at the top left and bottom right segments of the planet, and you’ll spot rival bands of green — the northern and southern lights, generated as charged particles of solar wind race along magnetic field lines and collide with molecules in Earth’s atmosphere.

You can also see a sliver of sunlight shining through Earth's atmosphere on the bottom-right limb of our planet; evidence that it’s one day past full moon. In another, otherwise identical image taken with a faster shutter speed, the illuminated atmosphere appears only as a slim blue crescent.

Beyond that crescent is a bright fuzzy patch of zodiacal light, a faint glow caused by sunlight scattering off interplanetary dust. It’s sometimes called “false dawn” and “false dusk” when it’s seen near the horizon in very dark locations on Earth (typically during twilight close to the equinoxes). Beyond that bright patch, in the bottom-right corner, shines the planet Venus.

The image of Earth in the foreground, auroras at the poles, sunlight bending through the atmosphere, glowing cosmic dust and Venus make this shot feel like a family portrait of the inner solar system.

In a single frame, Wiseman turns Earth from a familiar “Blue Marble” into something rarer: a moonlit, solar-charged, living planet seen in its true cosmic setting.

See more Space Photos of the Week

Editor's note: On Friday (June 12) the X-59 broke the sound barrier for a second time, achieving a top speed of Mach 1.4 (about 924 mile per hour), according to NASA. The achievement came just a week after the X-59 first exceeded the speed of sound. This article has been updated accordingly.

NASA's X-59, an experimental supersonic aircraft developed in partnership with Lockheed Martin, has broken the sound barrier twice in a row, during test flights conducted roughly one week apart. The tests represent an important step toward "quiet supersonic" flight, in which a craft surpasses Mach 1 — the speed of sound — with a small thump rather than a deafening crash.

On June 5, test pilot Jim "Clue" Less flew the craft from Edwards Air Force Base in California for an 81-minute round trip, NASA announced in a statement. During that time, the X-59 reached a speed of Mach 1.1 ‪—‬ 713 mph (1,147 km/h) ‪—‬ at an altitude of 43,400 feet (13,200 meters). Then, in a subsequent test on June 12, the X-59 reached Mach 1.4 (about 924 mph) at an altitude of 55,000 feet (16,700 m).

However, despite passing these key tests, the craft’s "quiet" supersonic capabilities are still not well defined; during both flights, the X-59 was trailed by an F-15 fighter jet, whose loud supersonic boom cloaked the noise from the X-59. Further testing planned for later this year will better demonstrate the experimental aircraft’s progress on the noise-reduction front.

Breaking barriers

The world's first supersonic flight took place in 1947, when U.S. Air Force test pilot Charles "Chuck" Yeager flew the Bell X-1 aircraft over California's Mojave Desert. Yeager piloted the craft to a speed of Mach 1.06, opening a new frontier of possibilities in aviation — but not necessarily for commercial air travel.

"We always kind of joke that the X-1 broke the sound barrier and now we're trying to fix it," Catherine Bahm, NASA's Low Boom Flight Demonstrator project manager, who oversees the X-59's development, told the BBC in 2023.

When a plane moves forward, it pushes aside the air molecules in front of it. This causes the air to vibrate, creating sound waves that spread from the aircraft like the wake trailing a boat. When a craft breaks the sound barrier, the air pressure waves behind it compress and build into a shock wave, which releases energy as a thunderous "sonic boom."

A sonic boom can exceed 110 decibels ‪—‬ as loud as a fully operational steel mill and above the threshold where most people feel ear pain. Sonic booms have even been known to damage property, such as by shattering windows and, in at least one case, fish tanks. For this reason, in 1973 the Federal Aviation Administration banned non-military aircraft from breaking the sound barrier above U.S. soil.

Although Air France and British Airways' Concorde, which ran between London or Paris and New York City from 1976 to 2003, was the world's first commercial supersonic flight, that aircraft was allowed to operate only because it broke the sound barrier over the Atlantic Ocean. It was ultimately decommissioned after one flight crashed during takeoff from France's Charles de Gaulle airport, killing everyone aboard.

The X-59's ultra-long, skinny nose is designed to minimize the shockwave its sonic boom creates. A plane that produces a quieter sonic "thud" could allow for faster-than-sound commercial domestic flights over land. That would mean passengers could, for example, get from Los Angeles to New York City in under three hours (compared with the current five-to-six-hour flight time). However, NASA has not yet released information about how many decibels X-59's first sonic boom produced.

Beyond its commercial possibilities, quiet supersonic flight has obvious military applications, as it makes secret missions significantly stealthier.

When the Japanese Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) spacecraft, nicknamed the "Moon Sniper," face-planted onto the lunar surface in 2024, an experimental rover told Earth scientists what happened. Rolling autonomously through the lunar dust, the transforming sphere-shaped robot — not unlike Star Wars’ BB-8 droid — photographed and transmitted images of the upside-down lander to Earth, completing its mission while SLIM slowly froze.

Now, a new paper, published Wednesday (June 10) in the journal Science Robotics, describes how that feat was possible and explains the role such rovers could play on future moon missions.

"The results highlight the potential of such platforms … as independent explorers, capable of accessing environments beyond the reach of a primary large spacecraft," the research team wrote in the paper, which was led by Daichi Hirano, a scientist with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency who designed the rover.

The ball-shaped rover, called the Palm-Sized Lunar Excursion Vehicle 2 (LEV-2), was one of the payloads on SLIM, which made a soft lunar touchdown on Jan. 19, 2024. The feat made Japan the fifth nation to reach the moon, but trouble arose when SLIM couldn't generate power with its solar panels.

While SLIM was running on reserve battery power, it deployed LEV-2 — a morphable, spherical robot that could change shape using two wheels inside the ball, depending on the terrain it encountered — as well as LEV-1, a rover that "hopped" across the terrain. After being deployed, LEV-2 operated for about 100 minutes and relayed information through LEV-1, before losing communication.

Despite its short life, LEV-2 proved crucial to the mission's troubleshooting, as it showed that the SLIM lander had fallen upside-down on the surface, the authors wrote in the new paper.

"The palm-sized rover accomplished autonomous lunar exploration by navigating around the SLIM lander, capturing images of both the SLIM lander and its environment and transmitting selected images through wireless communication on the lunar surface," the team explained.

Against the odds, SLIM managed to get just enough solar power to survive three frigid lunar nights (each lunar night lasts about 2 weeks, when the moon’s Earth-facing side is angled away from the sun). SLIM transmitted to controllers in February, March and April, before falling silent and being declared dead in late August. Meanwhile, LEV-2 met its primary mission objective to obtain and transmit images of the spacecraft, "thereby providing critical supplementary data for a comprehensive assessment of the lunar landing outcome," the team wrote.

LEV-2 also demonstrated technologies that would be crucial for future missions to the moon and Mars, the authors added. For example, its morphable mobility tech successfully propelled the rover around the surface, and the robot showed "autonomous navigation and control systems” while processing images to traverse the lunar surface.

Lessons learned

The team also extracted some "lessons learned" from the mission to improve on the morphable rover design for future excursions.

First, they will aim to record the vehicle status more frequently. LEV-2 sent telemetry every 32 seconds, which "limited direct observation of status changes and actions."

Second, there's a need to enhance communications. Communication dropouts between LEV-2 and LEV-1 "limited the available telemetry needed to reconstruct state [spacecraft-shape] transitions during surface operations," the team noted.

Finally, there's a need to improve the rover software. Controllers could see LEV-1 recovering from wheel-rotation locks and issues with its attitude, due to its fault detection and recovery systems. But the software had a limited number of states and transitions preloaded, which could present an issue on longer missions, especially if the unexpected happens.

While the small vehicle had limitations, the investigators noted that LEV-2 met its goals and that the technology has room for improvement.

"In the long term, this approach may enable more flexible, robust, and cost-effective planetary exploration missions," they said. "The lessons learned from this mission provide practical guidance for the design and operation of next-generation distributed space robotic systems."

NASA has named the crew for its upcoming Artemis III mission, which the space agency says will be one of the most complex missions in history.

The four-person crew will consist of NASA commander Randy Bresnik, ESA astronaut and pilot Luca Parmitano, and NASA mission specialists Andre Douglas and Frank Rubio, alongside NASA backup crew member Robert Hines. Targeted for 2027, this next phase of NASA's moon program will launch astronauts into low Earth orbit to test one or both commercial lunar landers developed by SpaceX and Blue Origin.

If the orbital test goes according to plan, it paves the way for the next mission, Artemis IV, which in 2028 will send Americans to land on the moon for the first time in 54 years — assuming NASA sticks to its latest Artemis timetable.

The mission is set to last almost two weeks, four days longer than Artemis II's 10-day flight. This will give NASA more time to test key life support systems, as well as in-flight docking.

And NASA has a lot more riding on Artemis III than its human crew. The space agency has an ambitious plan to establish a permanent presence on the moon in the coming years, but to get astronauts back on the lunar surface, it is relying on SpaceX and Blue Origin, each of which have been assigned to develop a lunar lander and have suffered notable recent setbacks.

Meet the crew

Luca Parmitano is a European Space Agency astronaut who will serve as the pilot for Artemis III. Parmitano was the first-ever Italian International Space Station commander.

"I apologize in advance if I get emotional. First and foremost, I'm grateful," Parmitano said at a June 9 news conference. "I'm grateful that NASA has allowed me to be a part of this incredible group of people, of this crew and for letting me fly."

"But we wouldn't be going anywhere without fuel," he added. "And the fuel that lets everything move is right here — Maya, Sarah, Marta, my extended family. You are the energy that feeds my soul and your love is the spark that unites every passion. Thank you, grazie."

Randy Bresnik, a NASA astronaut who will serve as commander for Artemis III, is a former F/A-18 test pilot and a member of the Space Shuttle mission STS-129. Bresnik trained as a "cave-a-naut" and aquanaut to test human survival in Earth's most extreme environments.

Meanwhile, mission specialist and NASA astronaut Andre Douglas was a backup crew member for the Artemis II test flight, but will be front and center this time.

"Wow, what an amazing day it is today," Douglas said at the news conference. "My brain, it is going a mile-a-minute right now, but my heart, my heart, it is so warm, it is so full."

And finally, Frank Rubio is a NASA astronaut and mission specialist who has spent more than 28 years as an aviator and physician in the U.S. Army, reaching the rank of colonel. Rubio spent 371 days at the International Space Station from 2022 to 2023, breaking the record for the longest single duration spaceflight by a U.S. astronaut.

To the moon?

The crew's test flight will prove pivotal for the future of the Artemis program, as major setbacks suffered by the Starship and New Glenn rockets have raised troubling questions about their readiness for a moon mission.

Both rockets will be indispensable in transporting landers to an orbital rendezvous with the Artemis crew, yet both are currently grounded by the Federal Aviation Administration following explosive failures, with a May 28 "anomaly" by the New Glenn rocket being a contender for the largest non-nuclear detonation in American history.

However, NASA says it is working closely with Blue Origin to get the New Glenn rocket's development back on track.

"While we recognize the request about how Blue Origin's recent anomaly impacts our plans, setbacks are a learning opportunity," Jeremy Parsons, acting assistant deputy associate administrator for NASA's Moon to Mars Program, said at the news conference. "We are confident that New Glenn will be ready for Artemis III, along with Blue Origen, but NASA is stepping in and bringing all of our expertise and capabilities to bear."

Representatives from Blue Origin and SpaceX also spoke during the announcement. John Couluris, the senior vice president of lunar permanence at Blue Origin, said that Blue Origin was making "excellent progress" on the investigation into what happened during the May 28. "anomaly," and in cleaning up the pad. Couluris added that the company's lunar engineering and production teams were continuing production for Artemis vehicles.

Meanwhile, SpaceX's vice president, Jessica Jensen, spoke of the company's "substantial progress" on developing Starship for the NASA mission.

The outlook is less cloudy for NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which already demonstrated it was capable of sending humans on a trip around the moon during the spectacular Artemis II mission earlier this year. NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen, rode to the moon and back in NASA's Orion spacecraft.

The space agency plans to repeat that success in 2028 by slingshotting astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft around Earth to place them into the moon's orbit. At the same time, a separate New Glenn or Starship rocket will launch, bringing a lander that will dock with Orion so two of the four astronauts can climb aboard. The commercial lander will then lower astronauts down onto the moon's surface and then launch them back up to Orion for the trip home.

Originally, the Artemis III mission was supposed to include a moon landing — the first since the Apollo era. However, the mission was retooled as part of a sweeping overhaul of the Artemis program that changed Artemis III to a test flight orbiting Earth. The moon landings are currently scheduled for Artemis IV and Artemis V in 2028, with Artemis V to lay the foundation for NASA's permanent lunar base.

"While this is a mission to Earth orbit, it is an important stepping stone to successfully landing on the Moon with Artemis IV," Parsons said in a statement in May. "Artemis III is one of the most highly complex missions NASA has undertaken. For the first time, NASA will coordinate a launch campaign involving multiple spacecraft integrating new capabilities into Artemis operations."

NASA has made it clear that lander readiness will determine which commercial provider gets the nod for the planned 2028 moon landings. Artemis III will be a pivotal step in determining that readiness, with one or both lander candidates scheduled to take part. If they both fail, the Artemis program will face its most significant setback yet.

Despite the success of Artemis II, the Artemis program is behind schedule and over budget. NASA was supposed to be back on the moon by now, but a string of delays has left it chasing increasingly ambitious targets.

In March, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced "near‑impossible" plans for the U.S. space program, including a $20 billion moon base and humanity's first nuclear-powered interplanetary spacecraft, which is also supposed to launch in 2028.

Beyond looming lunar lander woes, other commercial sector delays beset NASA's procurement pipeline. For example, NASA chose Axiom Space as a rover partner even though its late spacesuits could push the moon landings out to 2031. Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines, meanwhile, were selected to send payloads, but both failed in their only other lunar delivery missions to date.

Besides testing key systems, the Artemis III crew will also be working with NASA's science team to closely study the Earth's atmosphere, the environment around Orion during the mission and the impact of space's influence within the Orion capsule. One key phenomenon under investigation will be orbital drag, which causes spacecraft in low Earth orbit to lose altitude over time and is sensitive to space weather.

"While Artemis II was all about moon joy, Artemis III will be about Earth joy," Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA science, said at the news conference. "By observing Earth's atmosphere and how space weather impacts it, we can better understand how to protect the critical space-based technology there and all that we rely on, as well as our future astronaut crews traveling through that region."

Editor's note: This article was updated at 12:30 p.m. EDT with additional information about the Artemis III crew and mission.

An emergency evacuation alert given to NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) has been lifted following urgent repairs of leaks within the Russian segment of the orbital laboratory.

The four astronauts of NASA's Crew-12 mission to the ISS — consisting of U.S. astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, French astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev — were ordered to put on their spacesuits and shelter inside their docked Crew Dragon spacecraft on Friday (June 5) while two members of the station's Russian crew attempted fixes on structural faults leaking air out of the station.

"Following new leaks, Roscosmos has elected to proceed with a more extensive repair operation on Friday, June 5," NASA press secretary Bethany Stevens wrote on X on Friday as the situation developed. "Out of an abundance of caution, NASA has directed all four of the agency's SpaceX Crew-12 members and NASA astronaut Chris Williams to assume an elevated safety posture in the Dragon spacecraft while the repair is underway."
(Williams, a NASA astronaut, launched to the ISS as part of Russia’s Soyuz ms-28 mission, and would have had to evacuate with the Russian cosmonauts had the emergency continued.)

After initial efforts by the Russian crewmembers to patch the leaks, one of which was successful, Roscosmos announced a pause to its structural repair efforts "as more measurements and data is assessed," Stevens wrote in a follow-up post on X. "NASA has instructed the crew members inside the Dragon spacecraft to end the safe haven procedures and return to planned operations aboard the International Space Station."

A persistent problem

The location of the leaks is the PrK module, a transfer tunnel that connects the Russian Zvezda Service Module to a docking port used by Progress, a spacecraft used for delivering Roscosmos cargo.

Air leaks caused by micro-cracks in this module have been a recurring headache for both NASA and Roscosmos since 2019, requiring constant monitoring and for the hatch leading to the Zvezda module to be closed except for when the station is receiving cargo.

Despite multiple attempts to patch up these leaks, they have persisted. Additionally, despite downplaying their severity in public, NASA considers the leaks from the Roscosmos module to be both high in likelihood and high in consequence, with potential for "catastrophic failure," according to Ars Technica.

While the threat posed by the worsening leaks appears to have been stemmed for now, this event will likely further complicate plans to extend the ISS's lifespan. The station was originally due to be retired by the end of 2030, when it would be nudged through Earth’s atmosphere before plunging into the Pacific Ocean.

However, NASA and the U.S. Congress have been eyeing plans to extend the station's lifespan to at least 2032 to give controversial private space stations time to come online. Russia, for its part, has repeatedly signaled a desire to withdraw from the ISS as soon as possible.

After 11 years studying Mars from above, NASA's MAVEN spacecraft is officially dead, the agency announced in a statement on Wednesday (June 3). The culprit: a drained battery, triggered by an as-yet-unknown anomaly.

MAVEN (short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) began orbiting Mars on Sept. 21, 2014, on a mission to study the Red Planet's mysterious atmosphere. Circling Mars roughly 6.6 times every Earth day, the spacecraft has facilitated countless discoveries over the last decade — including the first direct observations of a multi-million-year process that has been steadily stripping Mars of its atmosphere.

But on Dec. 6, 2025, NASA unexpectedly lost contact with the probe when it swung behind Mars during a regular orbit. At the time of the probe's expected reemergence, NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) could not detect a signal from MAVEN. (DSN is an international array of radio antennas that connects Earth with various spacecraft).

The agency convened an anomaly review board in February to assess the probe's status. Now, the team has shared their findings: The spacecraft is not recoverable, and its mission is officially at an end.

The precise cause of MAVEN's death remains unknown, and NASA will continue its assessment over the coming months. However, the board did share some preliminary details. A "brief fragment of telemetry data" obtained by the DSN indicated that MAVEN was rotating at an unusually high rate when it reemerged from behind Mars in December, indicating a change in its orbital trajectory.

"The review board concluded that due to this rotation, the batteries on the spacecraft had drained, causing the communications system to lose power and rendering MAVEN in an unrecoverable state," NASA officials wrote in the statement.

NASA hosted a public media teleconference to discuss the anomaly, as well as highlights of MAVEN's mission, on June 3 at 2 p.m. EDT.

In the teleconference, MAVEN's principal investigator Shannon Curry praised the spacecraft as "the best observer of atmospheric escape anywhere in the solar system." She said the MAVEN team likened the mission's sudden end to the "loss of a loved one."

MAVEN's discoveries

Even with MAVEN officially offline, data collected by the spacecraft will continue to inform scientific discoveries for years to come. Earlier this month, researchers used MAVEN data to identify a previously unknown phenomenon in Mars' atmosphere, hinting that its thin magnetic shield defends the planet against solar radiation more than previously thought.

MAVEN has also revealed the first direct evidence of "sputtering" — a process by which solar wind collides with Mars' upper atmosphere and flings particles into space, gradually eroding the Red Planet's atmosphere. This could explain why Mars became a dry, ostensibly dead planet while Earth has flourished.

The spacecraft also detected several types of auroras on Mars, and showed that Mars' magnetosphere can balloon outward by thousands of miles when solar wind calms down. All of these discoveries paint a more detailed and complex picture of how Mars' atmosphere and magnetic shield interact with solar radiation — which will be crucial to understand before sending human astronauts to the Red Planet.

Editor's note: This article was updated on June 3 at 4:10 p.m. to include comments from the NASA teleconference.

What do you know about the Red Planet? Test your knowledge with our Mars quiz!

China just launched its rival to SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket for the first time, reportedly without providing any advance safety warnings.

The 236-foot-tall (72 meters) March 12B rocket blasted off at 4.40 p.m. local time (4.40 a.m. EDT) on Monday (June 1), from the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Test Zone in Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region of northern China.

The China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC), a state-owned rocket and missile manufacturer, announced the launch after it had already happened. The rocket had recently been sighted on its launchpad, but there were no apparent airspace notices issued for a launch, SpaceNews reported.

International airspace and maritime notices are issued to warn aircraft and boats of hazards associated with a launch, such as the potential for falling debris. They are standard global safety procedures for rocket launches, though analysts have warned that China's space activities don't always follow international norms, Scientific American reported.

The Long March 12B is a reusable, commercial rocket designed to assist in China's internet satellite missions. In this case, the launch didn't include a recovery test, though a first-stage recovery test is planned for a later date, according to CASIC.

The Long March 12B is China's latest step toward developing reusable rockets that perform propulsive landings instead of being discarded after launch — a maneuver that has dramatically reduced the costs for SpaceX to build satellite megaconstellations in orbit. As a more powerful follow-on from last year's Long March 12A, the Long March 12B has a low Earth orbit payload capacity of about 22 tons (22 metric tonnes).

The rocket successfully carried the 10th batch of China's Qianfan, or "Thousand Sails," satellites into low Earth orbit. China is building a megaconstellation of internet service satellites to rival SpaceX's Starlink. And much like Starlink, the "Thousand Sails" satellites exceed brightness limits proposed by astronomical authorities, meaning they are a problem for astronomers studying the night sky.

The new space race

China is ramping up its rocket launches as part of a new space race with the U.S., which includes positioning key infrastructure in Earth's orbit and further afield. For example, both countries are planning to establish a permanent presence on the moon in the coming years. NASA's current schedule plans to put astronauts on the moon in 2028, while China intends to land its taikonauts on the lunar surface before 2030. However, there's no guarantee that the U.S. will colonize the moon first.

China pledged to accelerate its moon program in the wake of NASA's historic Artemis II lunar flyby, Asia Times reported. The country plans to send humans to the moon in the Mengzhou spacecraft, taken into space on a Long March 10A rocket — the Long March 12B's much larger crewed cousin, which was tested in February. Another rocket is then supposed to transport a Lanyue lunar lander to the moon on a separate flight, before rendezvousing with Mengzhou around the moon, Nature reported.

As astronauts prepare for long-duration missions to the moon and Mars, sustaining human life far from Earth will depend on solving a gauntlet of technological challenges. Yes, researchers need to perfect the towering rockets and futuristic habitats that will keep astronauts safe on their journey to other worlds — but they’ll also need to figure out how to do the laundry.

Now, a new lab experiment that tested a water-free approach to doing laundry in space using controlled jets of supercharged plasma suggests the technique could help meet that challenge.

Doing laundry in space may sound tedious (as it is on Earth), but astronaut health — and preventing hitchhiking Earth microbes from contaminating other worlds — literally depends on it.

On the International Space Station (ISS), astronauts typically wear the same clothes until they become too dirty and then discard them as waste that later burns up in Earth's atmosphere during reentry. Even so, and despite rigorous cleaning protocols across the station, swabs from locations such as handrails and air vents have revealed dense populations of microbes on surfaces that appear spotless, with some of these microbes even adapting to thrive on metal surfaces.

Future long-term missions to the moon or Mars, however, will not have the luxury of regular resupply missions from Earth, making some form of sustainable "space laundry" necessary.

Comfortable clothing and furnishings that could make future months-long missions more livable, like a couch to sit on or a proper bed to sleep in instead of sleeping bags, can quickly become breeding spaces for the microbes humans constantly carry and shed as part of everyday life. Though most are harmless — even beneficial, in fact — studies suggest that some adapt to the stresses of spaceflight and behave differently in microgravity, potentially becoming more likely to cause disease or even damaging spacecraft systems by corroding metal surfaces.

But sanitizing these layered "soft goods" is especially challenging in space, where limited water supplies make conventional laundry impractical.

"You have a couch that six astronauts, or however many, are sitting on day in, day out. How do you keep that thing sanitized so that they don't spread germs to each other?" Gabe Xu, a professor at the University of Alabama who led the lab experiment, told Live Science. "It's a challenging problem, but it's something that we're going to need to really deal with."

A matter of health, not stains

Many disinfectants commonly used on Earth, such as Lysol, are poorly suited to spaceflight, where airborne droplets and chemical fumes can linger in enclosed habitats and pose risks to crew health, Xu said.

In the lab experiment, Xu and microbiologist Chelsi Cassilly, a planetary protection engineer at NASA, tested whether plasma — an energized gas akin to a controlled form of lightning — could offer a solution.

The researchers cut an ordinary cotton T-shirt into small samples and seeded them with Staphylococcus caprae, a common skin bacterium that has also been detected aboard the ISS. Then, using a cellphone-sized device, the team treated the samples with a pencil-thin, bright-purple jet of charged gas, or plasma, to test how effectively it killed the microbes.

The results show that the technique killed the bacteria more effectively than methods currently used on the ISS, including dry vacuuming and chemical surface wipes. .

"It is not going to remove the coffee stains from anyone's T-shirt," Xu told Live Science, but "it will remove the stuff that will make you sick."

When directed onto fabric, the plasma generated highly reactive oxygen and nitrogen species that penetrated the fibers and ruptured bacterial cell membranes through oxidative stress. Across tests lasting from 30 seconds to five minutes, the treatment showed no noticeable damage to the fabric fibers, Xu said.

"We think that it's probably not any worse than just normal wear and tear," he told Live Science.

The novelty of the technique, he added, is that it requires little more than electricity and a working gas, so there's no need for water-intensive cleaning systems. The team is now expanding the work to test additional microbial species known to thrive in human environments and aboard spacecraft.

"We're focusing on things that we know exist up there, or that we know that people produce just as a matter of fact throughout their day, since these are the things that would likely be in a space habitat," Xu said.

Eventually, the researchers envision scaling the technology into a handheld device that astronauts could use as part of routine housekeeping aboard spacecraft and future habitats, Xu told Live Science. The team presented their preliminary results at The Astrobiology Science Conference in Madison.

See how much you know about human exploration into space with our spaceflight quiz!

A spectacular explosion of Blue Origin's gigantic New Glenn rocket has plunged NASA's plans to build a permanent base on the moon into uncertainty.

The 321-foot-tall (98 meters) rocket erupted into a gigantic fireball just seconds into a "hotfire test" at Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at around 9 p.m. EDT (1 a.m. GMT) on Thursday night (May 28), an explosion that was captured on stream by SpaceFlight Now.

The force of the blast — among the most powerful rocket explosions filmed in over 50 years and a contender for the largest in American history — destroyed parts of the rocket's launchpad, shaking nearby homes and sending debris flying. The detonation bathed the sky in an orange light that was reportedly seen as far as Sarasota, roughly 175 miles (280 kilometers) away.

Nobody was injured in the blast, but it has likely bruised NASA's ambitions to build humanity's first lunar outpost, which were revealed just two days earlier on Tuesday (May 26). NASA awarded Blue Origin the contract to launch the first of three missions planned to deliver initial payloads to the moon this year, alongside $468 million for two uncrewed landers.

The first of those three payloads, Moon Base 1, was set to be transported on Blue Origin's robotic Blue Moon Mark 1 "Endurance" lander, mounted atop a New Glenn rocket. The company is also competing with Elon Musk's SpaceX to build a crewed lunar lander for the Artemis IV mission, which is set to land astronauts on the moon in 2028.

The exact cause of last night's explosion remains unknown, although it appears to have originated in the rocket's first stage, which houses seven liquid methane BE-4 engines.

"All personnel are accounted for and safe. It's too early to know the root cause but we're already working to find it," Jeff Bezos, the former president and CEO of Amazon and the founder of Blue Origin, wrote on X not long after the explosion. "Very rough day, but we'll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying."

Less than 15 minutes after Bezos' post, NASA administrator Jared Isaacman wrote on X that the space agency was aware of an "anomaly" at Launch Complex 36 involving Blue Origin's rocket. "Spaceflight is unforgiving, and developing new heavy-lift launch capability is extraordinarily difficult," he added. "We will work with our partners to support a thorough investigation of this anomaly, assess near-term mission impacts, and get back to launching rockets."

This isn't the first recent mishap involving New Glenn this year. On April 19, Blue Origin successfully reused the rocket's booster for the first time, but the AST SpaceMobile satellite it lofted into space was dropped into a critically low orbit, rendering it useless, representatives from the satellite maker wrote at the time.

The upper-stage malfunction responsible for this previous error led to New Glenn's grounding by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), an order that was lifted just four days ago. (The FAA has yet to comment on last night's incident.)

Besides being a major setback for Blue Origin, the explosion will be a headache for NASA. Experts have already voiced strong skepticism about the feasibility of the agency's ambitious timeline for a return to the moon, citing the untested nature of much of the technology included in its commercial lunar contracts.

For example, NASA chose Axiom Space as a rover partner despite its late space suits risking significant delays to the Artemis program. Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines, meanwhile, were selected to send payloads, but both failed in their only other lunar delivery missions to date. And SpaceX's Starship, New Glenn's main rival, has suffered ​at least two years of delays since NASA selected the rocket as an astronaut moon lander ‌in 2021.

"Most unfortunate," Musk wrote on X soon after Thursday's explosion. "Rockets are hard."

Editor's Note: This story was updated at 1:30 p.m. EDT on May 29 to note that the FAA is the Federal Aviation Administration, not the Federal Aviation Authority

NASA has revealed the next steps in its plans to build humanity's first lunar outpost, with three uncrewed missions to the moon targeted for later this year.

The missions, announced by the U.S. space agency at a news conference on Tuesday (May 26), are the first of many to begin laying the foundations for a permanent base on the moon's surface, which NASA hopes will one day pave the way to sending humans to Mars.

"America returns to the moon again, and this time to stay," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said at the news conference.

NASA has been proposing concepts for a permanent lunar presence since the 1950s, and hinting at establishing a "sustainable lunar presence" since the rollout of the Artemis program in 2019. But the agency made these ambitions more concrete at its Ignition event on March 24 of this year, where it announced its $20 billion plans to build a Moon Base to act as a hub for scientific and technological research and development, as well as exploration of the moon's surface.

"The Moon Base will be America’s and humanity’s first outpost on another celestial world," Isaacman said in a statement after Tuesday's news conference. "Every mission, crewed and uncrewed, will be a learning opportunity as we return to the lunar surface, build the infrastructure to stay, and master the skills required to live and operate in one of the most demanding and dangerous environments imaginable."

The base, which NASA hopes to build near the lunar South Pole, could one day look like a sprawling city, Moon Base program manager Carlos García-Galán said at the press conference. "We envision the moon base to be hundreds of square miles, with different assets all building up to the objective of permanent lunar presence on the moon."

The first three missions

At Tuesday's event, the space agency revealed its first steps toward building that outpost.

• Moon Base I, scheduled to launch as early as fall 2026, will deliver NASA payloads to the lunar surface. This will include instruments to study how thrusters interact with the moon's surface and technologies to allow for more precise tracking of objects on the moon by orbiting spacecraft.
• Moon Base II, planned for later this year, will deliver lunar rovers and other mobility systems for getting around on the moon.
• Moon Base III, also planned for this year, will deliver payloads from NASA, alongside several other space agencies, whose main aim will be to study how the lunar surface changes over time and how different materials withstand its extreme conditions.

These three missions are part of NASA's phase I Moon Base plan, which aims to create the first tangible footprint for a base on the moon. Phase II, scheduled for 2029 to 2032, aims to transition to semi-permanent infrastructure and early habitation, while phase III, scheduled for 2032 and beyond, aims to scale operations to achieve a sustained human presence.

In the news conference, the agency also announced that the first mission would be conducted by Jeff Bezos's space company Blue Origin, using the company's Blue Moon Mark 1 Endurance lander to deliver the required payloads. Blue Origin was the biggest winner from yesterday's announcement, netting $468 million in contracts.

However, many experts are skeptical about the feasibility of NASA's ambitious timeline, alongside the untested nature of much of the tech included in the contracts. (Axiom Space, for example, has been chosen as a rover partner despite its late space suits risking significant delays to the Artemis program; and Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines, chosen to send payloads, both failed in their previous lunar delivery missions.)

While Isaacman said that scientific discovery was at the forefront of these missions, NASA is also under significant political pressure to return humans to the moon. China is continuing to hit "major milestones" on its own roadmap to land astronauts on the moon by 2030, and a report by the Commercial Space Federation in September 2025 warned that China could soon overtake the U.S. in the "new space race."

Despite the recent success of Artemis II, NASA's Artemis program — which aims to land humans on the moon by 2028 — is over budget and behind schedule; originally, the agency had planned to land humans on the moon by 2024.

Citing these setbacks, Simeon Barber, a Lunar Scientist at The Open University, told BBC News: "It would not surprise me at all if China gets there first."

Barber added: "It sounds to me like [NASA] feel they're in a position where they have to start saying they've got plans. So I think there's a lot of political drive behind this."

However, NASA remains optimistic. "We are building the Moon Base for all we will learn, the innovation that will improve life on Earth, the inspiration for the next generation of explorers, and to master the skills needed for where we will inevitably go next...Mars," Isaacman said in a post on X. "The Golden Age of lunar exploration has begun."

Long before Neil Armstrong piloted the first crewed lunar lander onto the moon and uttered his now-famous words "The Eagle has landed," there were grave concerns that any craft attempting to land on the moon would be swallowed up by an unforgiving ocean of dust.

"It would have been one of the most anticlimactic and horrific moments in history," radio astronomer Emma Chapman, an astrophysicist at the University of Nottingham in England, told Live Science. "And I doubt the space program would have continued."

Luckily, radio astronomy existed. By the 1960s, scientists knew the moon was not made of quicksand (or cheese, for that matter) because radio astronomers had been mapping it for decades by bouncing invisible particles of light off of its surface and then studying the slightly altered light that returned to their receivers on Earth. In this way, it was radio astronomers who made "first contact" with the moon, Chapman wrote in her new book, "The Echoing Universe: How Radio Astronomy Helps Us See the Invisible Cosmos" (Basic Books, 2026) — making the dream of the Apollo era possible.

But it's not just the moon. From probing violent supernovas to sending peaceful messages to (hypothetical) intelligent aliens, radio astronomy touches every murky and mysterious corner of the universe. In her new book, Chapman briefly peels back the dark shroud of the optical universe to give us a rare view of the invisible beauty beneath. Live Science recently spoke with her about her book, the benefits of radio astronomy, and why she's optimistic that extraterrestrials are waiting for us to answer their call.

Brandon Specktor: If human eyes could see radio light, what would the sky look like by day and by night?

Emma Chapman: If you had radio eyes, the sun would all but disappear. And the moon would always look full.

You would just see a swath of galaxy — like the Milky Way at night in a very dark location, but much brighter. You'd be seeing the gas, not the stars. The way I like to think of it is, if you had a black sheet of paper and you had pinpricks letting light in from the other side, that's kind of what you see with your optical eyes and the pinpricks of the stars. But the radio world is reversed, and you see the scaffolding, all of that gas. And so it's like seeing in between all of it.

All of that seemingly empty space suddenly fills up, and you see, for example, big lines, which are magnetic-field lines. You see spinning stars that have been kicked out of their own individual solar systems. You see them running; you see their trails. You see supernovae — exploding stars — and you see the shells of those stars kind of expanding very, very slowly.

And at nighttime, you'd see something exactly similar. And that's the point — because you do not need the sun to go down to do radio astronomy.

BS: It'd probably be a little overwhelming to see all that, all the time.

EC: I mean, can you imagine? Even in this room, I'd be seeing all of the text messages and the Wi-Fi signals and the radio stations. … It would be horrendous. Like, thank God nobody can sense these things in any way. That's the wonderful thing about radio signals: They just pass straight through, and nobody's wiser.

BS: In your book, you write that radio astronomers made "first contact" with the moon long before the Apollo astronauts actually landed there. How do radio waves help us explore the moon?

EC: I watched Artemis II launch live, and I was as overwhelmed as every other space fan. I'm a huge proponent of space exploration. I recognize it's hugely expensive — but it's worth it. And it's also quite dangerous. It takes some very brave people to do that.

What you can do with radio astronomy, and what we did in the 1950s, was we can send photons instead. We can use a big antenna to send little packets of radio light to the moon, and it takes about 1.5 seconds for them to get there. They bounce off the surface of the moon, it takes 1.5 seconds to get them back, and we've barely had time to blink. And the way in which that light has changed — for example, its intensity or its polarization, which we can think of as the direction that the light is traveling — can tell us something about the surface of the moon, or the shape of it, or what it's made of.

We can also do an active form of astronomy where we send [radio waves] with a radar. Why this is important now more than in the Apollo era is that this form of astronomy can dig. And it can get into every crevice and cranny and cave on the lunar surface, bounce around, and basically give you an underground scan.

Now it's very early days, it's still quite a crude technology, but you can get underground scans of lava tubes on the lunar surface. That's important because Artemis IV, and any missions after where humans stay on the moon for any length of time ‪—‬ they need to know where the hell to run if there's a big solar storm. With just a few seconds of radio astronomy, you can start getting an idea of where are the best places to land and where are the best places to build long-lasting human settlements.

BS: NASA is talking about building a radio telescope on the far side of the moon. Why would that be useful?

EC: I have major skin in the game in this one, so a big personal bias. But the reason that you'd want to put a radio telescope on the far side of the moon is because Earth is getting really noisy with radio waves, and has been for many, many, many, many decades. But with Starlink, it's gotten really noisy. And radio waves are very, very faint. So we need the quietest place in the solar system to listen, and that is the far side of the moon.

Even on the moon, it's getting noisier very quickly, which is concerning. But there are plenty of very good, exciting plans. Do you know Arecibo, the big 300-meter [980 feet], beautiful dish set in the Puerto Rican jungle [until it collapsed in 2020]? One idea is to use a moon crater instead of a dish, like Arecibo. So to fly up just a few incredibly lightweight boxes, basically, which autonomously land at the side of the crater, unfurl copper wire, which is like the big antenna that's going to receive all the light, and the crater acts as a dish, focusing the radio light and gathering huge amounts of it.

Now, that's just utterly cool. And I think that could easily get funded. I could easily see it happening within a decade, which is very short for a space mission.

BS: You said the moon is getting noisier. How?

EC: Because a lot of people are going up there ‪—‬ for example, Artemis and all of the other national space agencies are sending exploratory probes. China is landing; India is landing. All of these landers and probes need to communicate with their owners on Earth. And to do that, you need a relay satellite orbiting the moon, and then relaying, amplifying and transmitting radio signals back to Earth — and that's bloody noisy. It's like having a radio antenna for the national news next to your house.

BS: That's an unfortunate paradox of space exploration: The more space infrastructure we build, the more noise we introduce into observations.

EC: Yeah, but I think there's a middle ground. I'm not completely against satellite constellations like Starlink. I think they do wonderful things for equalizing Wi-Fi access across developing countries. I think it's fabulous for that. My argument is always: OK, but why do we need a million satellites from 10 different companies? Why can't we work together a little bit more? Because it does cause environmental damage.

I wish more people would consider space and the exploration of it as our environment, and we need to do it in a sustainable and ethical fashion. Does that mean profits can't still be made? No, it means that we're balancing it, just as we balance profiteering on Earth.

We don't always get that right — by a long, long, long way — but there are laws. So I'm willing to lose a percentage of my radio data from the far side of the moon in order to further space exploration. But can we just work together to make sure it's not all of the data, please?

BS: The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is arguably the most famous use of radio astronomy. Where does SETI stand today?

EC: I think it's a very patient search. SETI scientists are some of the most patient and reflective scientists I've met. They know very well that this is a very long experiment. This is an experiment where we are relying on an external party to have made that communication and guessing where in the sky that communication has come from and when. That's very, very difficult.

And the more dishes, the more telescopes, the more wavelengths that you can scan at once, the faster you can create a survey, which really ups the probability of us picking up the phone just as somebody calls. But it's a numbers game. That's what fascinates me with this area, is that it could be this afternoon. It could be 6 p.m. this afternoon that this happens, or it could be in 200 years. It depends on us looking at the right place at the right time.

BS: Do you personally think there is extraterrestrial intelligence out there?

EC: Yes, I do. I think more and more now, we're seeing that almost every star like the sun has multiple planets. We are finding more and more planets that are a whisker away from being within the habitable zone, and we haven't even got the telescopes that are perfectly tuned for finding those perfect habitable zone planets. Soon, I think we'll start finding habitable planets everywhere we look when we get those more powerful telescopes.

And then it comes down to the fact that physics is the same everywhere. And so any intelligent life that does form is going to want to communicate over long distances. How do they do that? Radio waves. OK, but radio waves can escape the atmosphere. Brilliant! That means that they don't even have to want to contact us; they are leaking radio waves, just like we are leaking radio broadcasts. It would take an enormously powerful antenna to pick it up, but it is within the realm of possibility.

But to be very clear, do I believe there has ever been a visitation from an extraterrestrial intelligence? Absolutely not. No respected SETI researcher does.

BS: What if the call does come tomorrow? Say we get a radio signal from a billion light-years away and we're able to confirm it's some kind of alien message. Where do we go from there?

EC: Yeah, I don't know. I mean, there are protocols within individual collaborations of scientists. So first of all, a load of scientists is going to check their answer. So, if they hear something funny, they're going to check that it's repeated. They're going to check that nothing in nature as we know it could create that, and then they're going to work out whether there is a planet from that area.

But if they're now at the point where we think this is intelligence, then I'm not sure. Would they have to let the president know first? Would they have to put it on Facebook? Like, can you even imagine if they were like, "You know what? We're going to really troll the government, and we're just going to subtly drop an Instagram reel."

And then the question is, what would we do? Like, what would you do? Would you riot? Would you panic? Would you call your partner? Would you bring your kids home? Would you be like, "Hey, that's cool," and get on with your day? I don't have an answer.

BS: It would change everything — and yet we still have to go on being humans here on Earth.

EC: Yeah, and to be more serious, I think there would be a huge responsibility on every capable science communicator out there. Because anybody without an understanding of this area would quite rightly start to think, "Oh my God, it's ‘Mars Attacks!’"