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.

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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!’"

But let's say it comes from one of the closest kinds of habitable planets, 70 light-years away. OK, so they sent that message 70 years ago. And anything that we could send back is going to take 70 years to get there. This is not something which could happen in a human lifetime, and the aliens certainly just can't rock up suddenly, unannounced — because, again, physics is the same everywhere. We can't create the kind of technology to have warp drives or the energy required for that. Stars output the same amount of energy everywhere. I don't want to close my mind off completely to physics that I have not come across yet, but the likelihood is, they'd never visit.

We'd become pen pals at most. That's a crazy idea: just really long-distance pen pals. It takes like a whole generation to send and receive one message. Imagine if we were like, "Hey, guys, have you worked out nuclear fusion, because we've got a really big energy crisis right now," and it'd be like 70 years along the line, and then we'd get an answer like, "Oh, we hadn't actually worked it out yet. Thanks!" That would be amazing.

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

China has become the first nation to send "human artificial embryos" to space in a bid to better understand how microgravity and cosmic radiation may affect human reproduction. The results could have big implications for our ability to set up self-sustaining colonies on the moon and Mars.

The embryo-like structures, made from living human stem cells, arrived on the Tiangong ( "Heavenly Palace") space station in the early hours of May 11 as part of the Tianzhou-10 resupply mission, state officials revealed. The mission also delivered around 7 tons (6.3 metric tons) of cargo — including food, fuel, spacesuits and other scientific experiments — to the Chinese astronauts currently living on the station.

The Tianzhou-10 spacecraft, which is similar to the cargo ships that deliver supplies to the International Space Station (ISS), lifted off from Wenchang Space Launch Site around five hours earlier, at 8:14 p.m. EDT on May 10, Live Science's sister site Space.com reported.

Stem cells in orbit

The artificial embryos are made from collections of stem cells that can divide and multiply like a normal embryo but are unable to properly develop into a fetus or baby, allowing researchers to carry out their work with fewer ethical concerns.

"This is not a real human embryo and does not have the ability to develop into an individual," Leqian Yu, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' (CAS) Institute of Zoology who is leading the experiment, said May 14 in a CAS statement. "However, it can serve as a model for studying early human development."

Two types of artificial embryos, representing different phases of embryonic development between 14 and 21 days after fertilization, were used in the experiment. The first is a peri-implantation model, which mimics the critical phase where an embryo attaches itself to the uterine wall. The second is a peri-gastrulation model, which replicates the point in early development when a single layer of cells reorganizes into distinct layers that will eventually form different tissues and organs.

The embryos will be allowed to grow for five days before they are frozen and later returned to Earth for analysis. "The experiment is going very well," Yu said in the statement. (By now, the embryos have likely already been put on ice.)

As the embryos were developing in space, researchers in China grew and froze identical artificial embryos, which will serve as the control group for the experiment. "We hope that by comparing the development of space and ground samples, we can identify the factors affecting early human embryonic growth in the space environment, and address the risks and challenges humans may face during long-term space habitation," Yu said.

Similar experiments involving zebrafish embryos and mouse embryos were also launched on board Tianzhou-10.

Making babies in space

The ability to reproduce in space will be crucial if humanity is to establish a permanent presence on the moon, Mars and other more distant worlds. However, several issues need to be overcome before this can happen, if it is even possible at all.

Experts have warned that as space tourism becomes more mainstream, non-astronauts will likely start having sex in space, which could lead to babies being conceived off-world.

Previous research has hinted that the high levels of radiation in space could damage developing embryos, while microgravity is also expected to be a major stumbling block.

Yu told state-run media that the artificial embryos "were brought to space to explore whether life, which has evolved under gravity for hundreds of millions of years, is affected by its sudden absence."

Studying the very early stages of embryonic development will be particularly important for determining the feasibility of natural reproduction under these conditions. It is "a critical window in early human development, during which the building blocks for future organs begin to form, and the entire body axis — which determines the head and the tail — is established," Yu told state-run media outlets.

A recent study also revealed that microgravity could disorient sperm cells, making it much less likely for egg fertilization to occur. And it's been known for a while that stem cells age much faster in space than they do on Earth, which could also be a serious issue.

Given these challenges, it may be necessary to turn to in vitro fertilization to help grow babies in space, which is an idea already being explored by several private space exploration companies.

OTTAWA, ONTARIO — On their record-setting journey around the moon and back, the Artemis II astronauts experienced awe that remains hard to put into words, the team said at a recent public appearance in Canada.

One of the crew’s most memorable mission moments was watching the sun disappear behind the moon for 53 minutes on April 6, marking a unique solar eclipse visible only from space. NASA’s Reid Wiseman, however, wasn't initially focused on the celestial sight. He had his responsibilities on his mind.

"As that sun was behind the moon, we had a lot of science to do," Wiseman told an audience of hundreds of space fans, including kids in homemade astronaut costumes, gathered here at Canada's National Arts Centre Wednesday (May 13).

But the commander of the moon mission noticed his crew was distracted. "Very quickly, I heard gasps. I heard, 'Oh my God.' I heard, 'I can't believe this.'"

Wiseman diligently kept working behind the camera, but once he finished, NASA pilot Victor Glover invited him to the docking tunnel. Wiseman floated there and looked through the window. The sight, captured in photography, is spectacular — the three-dimensional moon curving like a ghost ship, backdropped by a gorgeous solar corona. On top of that, Earthshine — the reflected light of our home planet — makes the moon glow eerily in the dark.

But seeing it in person was something else. "I don't think the human mind has evolved to the point of being able to understand what we're looking at," Wiseman recalled saying to Glover. (Glover's laconic response, broadcast to the world: "We just went sci-fi.")

Braids and maple cookies

Wiseman, Glover and the other two Artemis II astronauts — mission specialists Christina Koch of NASA and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) — shared their lunar experiences during the crew's first visit to Canada since the mission's conclusion on April 10.

The National Arts Centre's outdoor screen in downtown Ottawa, within a short walk of the Parliament of Canada, included giant avatars of the astronauts and a welcome message to the crew. Space-themed banners lined nearby streets, while temporary image displays showcased Canada's 40-plus years of astronaut missions. Boxes of tulips, as a part of the city's annual Tulip Festival that runs in mid-May, adorned the space display.

Accompanied by the CSA's Jenni Gibbons, one of the mission backup crewmembers who served as capsule communicator for Artemis II, the moon astronauts focused on international collaboration — even in food choices. According to the team, a sweet snack from the CSA played a key role during the crew's time on the far side of the moon, while the crew was out of communication with Earth.

"One of the things that we decided to do was to have a maple cookie," Glover said, then paused. "I don't know if I can give maple cookies a better endorsement."

The crowd roared with laughter. Minutes later, a lucky few people got to ask the famous astronauts a question. One woman thanked Koch for the astronaut's iconic Earth selfie showing Koch's braid floating in the window.

"When I originally took the braid selfie, I saw the braid and I was, like, 'Oh, it's kind of in the way," Koch answered. But Koch ‪—‬ who holds the record for the longest consecutive spaceflight by a woman, at 328 days ‪—‬ realized "what it meant" and sent the picture down as is.

That said, Koch had no idea that people around the world were commenting on the braid, or really following the mission at all, until a late-mission video call with her husband. Koch's husband shared that "this mission is having an incredible impact down here,” she said. "It's moving people across lines. Everyone is paying attention."

'I started to cry'

Koch said that, until that point in the mission, including their historic flight around the moon, she thought only a few people in mission control and the tight-knit space community were watching the broadcasts.

"We just thought we were on a screen for our best friends," Koch said. "We knew that our audio was going out publicly, but I didn't realize that impact. I just stared back at him on the screen and started crying."

The reason she was in tears, she continued, was that the crew had a special message to share and were grateful so many people were witnessing their care for each other.

"All we ever wanted was to be able to move the needle, to hopefully tell people that our shared humanity is the most important thing we have," Koch said. "That we live on a precious lifeboat, that we are a crew, And the fact that that was resonating down here was the gift that you all gave us. And thank you for that."

Hansen, the first non-American to leave low Earth orbit, emphasized why that message crosses borders. He used an expression, "the joy train," which harks back to what he said is the point of everyone's life on Earth: to experience joy.

When things get difficult among the crew, "We have gotten adept at getting back on the joy train, because we make the assumption of a good intention," he said, and the same attitude can also hold true of Canada's relationships around the world.

The Artemis II crew had just met with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney hours before the public event, following a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in late April. Hansen appeared to reflect on those experiences in his remarks.

"The one we talk a lot about right now in the news is Canada-U.S," he said, alluding to recent tensions between the two countries. "But we know overall, the intentions are good," he continued. "That love, that interdependence, is real. And that's what we have in this crew."

SpaceX will launch its next-generation Starship — the tallest and most powerful rocket ever built — as early as Tuesday (May 19), the company announced.

Starship V3's maiden voyage to space will be a big test for SpaceX, which wants to land humans on the moon for NASA in 2028 and hopes to avoid the kind of spectacular explosions that have plagued some previous Starship tests.

The launch window for what will be Starship's 12th test flight opens at 6.30 p.m. EDT at Starbase in southern Texas. As with previous Starship tests, the launch countdown schedule doesn't end with "Starship liftoff" but rather "excitement guaranteed."

SpaceX has experienced its fair share of setbacks with Starship. Last year, the seventh and eighth Starship test flights saw fiery debris rain from the heavens. The ninth fell short of its target, and a Starship exploded on the launchpad during a routine test before the 10th. 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 latest Starship, made up of a Starship spacecraft and a Super Heavy rocket, stands 407 feet (124 meters) — taller than a football field is long and about 85 feet (26 m) taller than the NASA Space Launch System that carried the Artemis II mission to orbit. It boasts a suite of upgrades over its predecessor, including new Raptor 3 engines, and it will lift off from a newly designed launchpad, according to a statement from SpaceX.

What will happen during the Starship V3 flight?

If all goes according to plan, the upcoming test flight will last a little over an hour. Starship is supposed to go up in a suborbital trajectory. The spacecraft will detach from the Super Heavy booster, which will flip around and return to Earth for a water landing in the Gulf of Mexico. SpaceX is known for returning its rockets to land. But because this is the first test flight of a "significantly redesigned vehicle," the company won't attempt its landing site "catch."

After it ditches the Super Heavy booster, the Starship spacecraft is scheduled to deploy 22 Starlink simulator satellites. These dummy satellites will be similar to the next generation of Starlink satellites. Two will also scan the Starship's heat shield, which SpaceX has deliberately compromised.

"For Starship entry, a single heat shield tile has been intentionally removed to measure the aerodynamic load differences on adjacent tiles when there is a tile missing," a SpaceX spokesperson wrote in the statement.

Finally, a successful test flight would see the spacecraft practice relighting one Raptor engine in space, before dropping down for a controlled splash landing in the ocean. (SpaceX didn't specify where.)

Changes to Starship

The third version of the Super Heavy booster has a variety of novel features, including new grid fins at the bottom of the booster for stability during landing, and a completely redesigned fuel transfer tube to allow all 33 of the new engines to ignite at the same time. The Raptor 3 engines themselves are supposed to deliver more thrust than previous models.

Starship V3 also boasts new features. For example, the spacecraft has a redesigned propulsion system that allows for a new engine startup method, a higher fuel tank volume and an improved reaction control system for steering, according to SpaceX. Finally, changes to Starship's launchpad include increased storage capacity for the propellant and more pumps so the rocket can be filled faster.

The company said these changes "aim to unlock the vehicle's core functions, including full and rapid reuse, in-space propellant transfer, deployment of Starlink satellites and orbital data centers, and the ability to send people and cargo to the Moon and Mars."

What does this mean for the moon?

NASA is relying on commercial partners to help return humans to the moon. This includes a commercial lunar lander that NASA needs to ferry astronauts to the lunar surface during the upcoming Artemis IV mission. SpaceX has been developing a moon-landing variant of its Starship for that job, but the company faces competition from rival Blue Origin and its Blue Moon lander.

NASA's moon-return plan is a little complicated, but basically, the space agency aims to send astronauts to the moon in its Orion spacecraft, as tested in the historic Artemis II mission, before rendezvousing with a commercial lander in lunar orbit. The commercial lander will then take the astronauts to the surface and launch them back up to Orion for the trip home. Next year, NASA will test docking Orion with one or both of its commercial lander options in low Earth orbit.

NASA is clear that lander readiness will determine which commercial provider gets to take astronauts to the lunar surface in 2028. Of course, this assumes NASA is also ready by then. The Artemis program is behind schedule and over budget and, at the time of writing, doesn't have suitable spacesuits for a moon landing, which it is waiting on from another commercial provider.

Astronauts could complete a round trip to Mars in less than a year someday, potentially cutting current mission timelines in half, according to a new study that drew inspiration from asteroid trajectories.

Under current mission profiles, reaching Mars, which is located about 50% farther from the sun than Earth is, takes roughly seven to 10 months. Because Earth and Mars align for fuel-efficient transfers only every 26 months, astronauts must wait for a return window, stretching a full round trip to nearly three years.

However, the new findings, published online in the journal Acta Astronautica in April, suggest that early, imprecise orbital estimates of near-Earth asteroids — which were historically used to assess impact risks, before being discarded in favor of more precise data — may contain valuable geometric clues for designing faster interplanetary routes.

"Maybe this can change the idea that we need more than two years to go to Mars and return," study author Marcelo de Oliveira Souza, a cosmologist at the State University of Northern Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, told Live Science.

"I was not looking for this"

Souza first stumbled on the idea in 2015, when he was studying near-Earth asteroids. One object in particular, 2001 CA21, caught his attention because early estimates suggested it followed a rare path crossing both Earth's and Mars' orbital zones.

Although later measurements refined the asteroid's true trajectory, its initial geometry during the October 2020 opposition — when Earth and Mars were aligned on the same side of the sun, and closest together in their orbits — hinted at the possibility of "ultra-short" routes between the two planets, Souza noted in the paper.

"This was a surprise for me — I was not looking for this," he told Live Science.

As more observations allow astronomers to refine an asteroid's orbit, those early trajectories change, so someone analyzing it later wouldn't have seen the same path, Souza added. "Maybe I was in the right place at the right time," he said.

Round trip to Mars?

For the October 2020 opposition, Souza's calculations showed that a very fast, roughly 34-day trip from Earth to Mars is geometrically possible if a spacecraft follows a path similar to the asteroid's early orbital plane.

However, such a trajectory would require departure speeds of around 32.5 kilometers per second, well beyond current rocket capabilities, and a spacecraft would arrive at Mars traveling around 64,800 mph (108,000 km/h) — too fast for existing landing systems to handle safely, Souza noted in the paper.

Instead, Souza used the asteroid-inspired geometry to explore possible trips during future Mars oppositions in 2027, 2029 and 2031. By using a standard method for calculating paths between two points in space (called the Lambert analysis) and constraining those paths to remain within about 5 degrees of the asteroid's orbital tilt, Souza found that only the 2031 alignment offered a viable opportunity for rapid travel using near-term technology.

In that window, a round-trip mission from Earth to Mars could be completed in just 153 days, or roughly five months, according to the study.

In that scenario, a spacecraft would depart Earth on April 20, 2031, at about 27 kilometers per second, arrive at Mars by May 23 after a 33-day journey, spend about 30 days on the surface, depart June 22 and return to Earth by Sept. 20, with the return leg taking roughly 90 days.

Souza also identified a lower-energy alternative within the same window, requiring a launch at about 16.5 kilometers per second for a mission lasting about 226 days, or about 7.5 months ‪—‬ still significantly shorter than current mission timelines.

Still, the concept remains largely theoretical and would depend heavily on mission specifics — including spacecraft design, payload mass and propulsion capabilities — all of which would shape whether such fast transfers are feasible in practice.

The method, however, could still prove useful as a way to narrow the search for viable trajectories. The required velocities are comparable to those achieved by missions such as New Horizons — the NASA probe, which, when launched in 2006 on a mission to flyby Pluto at 16.26 kilometers per second, was the fastest human-made object ever launched from Earth.

Such high-speed trajectories could be within the reach of next-generation rockets such as SpaceX's Starship or Blue Origin's New Glenn, Souza told Live Science.

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

For 10 days in April, NASA's Artemis II crew took a record-breaking trip around the far side of the moon and back. And like any group of friends on an epic spring break odyssey, the astronauts took way too many photos — more than 12,000, to be exact.

We've seen some of these photos already, from a rare view of the moon's far side during a solar eclipse to evocative shots of our planet disappearing behind the lunar horizon. But this weekend, NASA quietly uploaded thousands more to its public archive of astronaut photography. You can view the entire Artemis II gallery here.

Snapped from inside the Orion crew capsule by NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch and Victor Glover and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, the photos capture the crew's view of the mission from their first day in Earth orbit to their lunar flyby and back. If you don't have time to scour all 12,000 thumbnails, here are some of our favorites from the vast new collection.

Knock, knock

Who's that looking in through the Orion capsule window? Oh, just every human being in existence (well … minus the few on the International Space Station at the time). These images showing the spacecraft's interior and windows have become some of the most popular online, underscoring that four intrepid humans put themselves in extraordinary circumstances to bring us these rare views.

Sun-kissed moon

Sun rays rain down on the moon and glint off the Orion capsule's window as the crew snaps a furious salvo of photos during their lunar flyby on April 6. At their closest, the crew flew within 4,067 miles (6,545 kilometers) of the lunar surface, giving them a rare view of the entire moon from the front, side and back.

Crater close-up

Large, overlapping impact craters appear in remarkable detail as the team approaches the moon's terminator — the moving boundary that separates the sunlit side of the moon from the dark side. In this ultra-high-contrast region, the team spotted several impact flashes from renegade space rocks.

Farewell, Earth

While orbiting around the far side of the moon, the Artemis II crew snapped some instantly iconic photos of Earth setting behind the moon. This alternate view shows one of the last moments before the pale blue dot disappeared from view, barely peeking out over the lunar horizon.

Earthset through the glass

Here's the same view of the final moments of Earthset — this time, with the edge of the Orion spacecraft's window in view, complete with glare and reflections on the glass. It's just another reminder that, behind these incredible photos were four friends floating in a capsule the size of a camper van.

Mountains of the moon

As the crew flew around the far side of the moon, they witnessed a rare total solar eclipse from space. Just before the final rays of the sun gave way to utter darkness, white light from the solar corona (outer atmosphere) stabbed past the horizon, highlighting bumpy mountains on the moon's edge.

End of the eclipse

After 40 minutes in silence and darkness, the crew reemerged from the far side of the moon. The moon's sunlit side came into view again, while zodiacal dust — clouds of tiny, interplanetary dust particles — reflected the sun's light in the distance.

Parts unknown

On their way to and from the moon, the Artemis II crewmembers also had the chance to snap photos of the Milky Way without the obstructing lights of Earth in the way. The densest, most star-filled part of our galaxy glows in a scene similar to the view space telescopes like Hubble get all the time

Say, "the moon is made of cheese"

Koch smiles for a portrait with Earth, which is barely visible as a slim crescent outside the Orion capsule window.

Cheshire Earth

The sunlit side of Earth hangs like a smile on an invisible face as the astronauts leave the moon behind and head back toward their final destination in the Pacific Ocean.

Earth, the moon and the astronaut

In another through-the-window shot, interplanetary dust clings to Orion's glass as one of the astronaut's reflections creeps into the frame alongside the moon and a crescent Earth.

Come round again sometime

The moon fits perfectly in a round porthole on the Orion capsule as the crew makes their approach.

Artemis II is done, but these images will keep scientists busy for years to come as NASA prepares to return humans to the moon — this time, to land on the surface — as soon as 2028.

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

A discarded piece of a SpaceX rocket carelessly left adrift in space will likely crash into the moon this summer, a new report finds.

The renegade rocket poses no risk to the moon or any working spacecraft, the report stresses. However, the collision — which is predicted to occur Aug. 5 on the border of the moon's near and far sides — may be of "minor scientific interest" if it creates a new crater that can later be studied.

"It doesn't present any danger to anyone, though it does highlight a certain carelessness about how leftover space hardware (space junk) is disposed of," according to report author Bill Gray, a professional astronomer and developer of the Project Pluto software used to track near-Earth objects.

What's happening on the moon?

The object in question is a 45-foot-tall (13.8 meters) upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket that launched in early 2025 and has been orbiting the Earth-moon system ever since. The rocket delivered two spacecraft to the moon — 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 later that June.

According to Gray, various asteroid surveys observed the rocket's used upper stage more than 1,000 times over the past year as it tumbled through Earth orbit, staying roughly at the same distance as the moon. With this data, Gray used his software to predict with high certainty the likely time and place of the impending impact: approximately 2:44 a.m. EDT on Aug. 5, near a crater known as Einstein on the edge of the moon's Earth-facing side.

"The motion of space junk is mostly quite predictable; it simply moves under the influence of the gravity of the earth, moon, sun, and planets," Gray wrote. He added that radiation pressure from the sun's light could nudge things slightly, but isn't likely to drastically change the time or place of impact.

Unfortunately, any impact flash from the event will likely be too faint to be seen from Earth, even with a large telescope. Any scientific value will come by studying the fresh crater left behind by the debris.

A growing trend?

This isn't the first time Gray has predicted a lunar rocket crash. In 2022, he correctly predicted that a used rocket part would slam into the moon on March 4, getting the time of the crash right within a few seconds and the location correct within a few miles. (Gray initially predicted that the spent rocket was a Falcon 9 upper stage — in reality, it turned out to be a Chinese rocket booster.)

Gray's new report has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal, but he did ask several astronomers to review his findings. He predicts the debris will hit the moon at roughly 5,400 mph (8,700 km/h), or about seven times the speed of sound on Earth.

Although there is currently no human infrastructure on the moon for the incoming debris to damage, that may not be the case just a few years from now. Both the United States and China plan to increase the cadence of lunar launches, with the U.S. aiming for annual moon missions starting with Artemis IV and V as soon as 2028. China, meanwhile, plans to land its first taikonauts on the moon by 2030.

With international interest in building permanent bases near the lunar south pole, the region could soon become crowded with cargo, crews and spacecraft. In the meantime, it will be increasingly important for space agencies and corporations to mitigate the downstream hazards of space junk by sending used rocket stages into orbit around the sun, rather than around Earth and the moon.

Editor's note: This article's headline and lead image were changed on May 12, 2026. The article was republished because the topic is trending on social media.

How quickly can you name all 12 Apollo astronauts that walked on the moon? Find out with our moon landing quiz!

Mars is out; the moon is in. And this time, we may be going there to stay.

On March 24, NASA administrator Jared Isaacman announced new plans to build a "sustained human presence" on the moon, complete with a permanent lunar base. Construction of humanity's new home away from Earth could begin as soon as 2027, Isaacman said.

The announcement came just a month after SpaceX CEO Elon Musk similarly ditched his company's plans to visit Mars in favor of establishing a "lunar self-growing city" within the next 10 years.

It's an exciting prospect — but scientists say lunar colonization won't be as simple as packing up and lifting off. The moon's environment is harsh: think razor-sharp, electrified dust and a constant stream of radioactive particles travelling at light speed. Scientists still aren't sure how this increased dose of cosmic radiation, coupled with the moon's weaker gravitational pull, relative to Earth, will affect the human body in the medium- to long-term.

And then there's technological feasibility: Where will astronauts live, and with what resources? At the moment, these big questions are still awaiting answers that may not arrive in time for NASA and Musk's proposed plans.

"I don't think we're quite ready," Caitlin Ahrens, a researcher at University of Maryland and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center who studies the lunar environment, told Live Science. "A decade may seem far away to some people. To a scientist, it's the blink of an eye."

Satellite of horrors

Moondust is rather different from what we call dust on Earth. Without wind and liquid water, the moon's dust doesn't soften over time. "We're talking very, very sharp little pollen[-size] shards here," Ahrens said.

It's also easily electrified. Simply walking on the moon kicks up dust clouds, and rovers traversing the lunar landscape shoot up "rooster tails" of electrically charged, levitating dust, which sticks to anything in its path, Ahrens said. Energized dust can clog breathing vents in potential living quarters, scratch up spacesuits and coat solar panels, potentially overheating and breaking them. (Dust clogs have already spelled doom for several Mars rovers).

Without the soft blankets of Earth's atmosphere and magnetic shield, moon inhabitants would also be constantly blasted by radiation. Cosmic radiation is "pretty much omnipresent anywhere you go into space," including on the moon, Dr. Emmanuel Urquieta, an aerospace medicine researcher at the University of Central Florida, told Live Science. "It's incredibly difficult to shield."

Cancer is a potential risk, but because health effects of radiation take time to develop, we wouldn't know for certain if this is a major risk factor until potentially decades after landing human settlers on the moon. "Every person that goes to space… will absolutely be test subjects," Urquieta said.

We're not ready for self-defense

Humans on the moon would need hefty building materials to protect lunar habitats against these hazards. Metal or glass domes, subterranean habitats and housing made of 3D-printed moon soil are all potential options being investigated.

But Ahrens, who also works on lunar risk assessment, doesn't think we're ready to plan construction. For example, if NASA decides to invest in an underground habitat — perhaps the most surefire way to avoid radiation — scientists still have no idea how to dig on the moon, she said.

Even with sufficiently protective living quarters, the moon's weaker gravitational pull — just one-sixth that of Earth — may pose health risks. From previous space travel we know that, without the gravitational force humans evolved with, our bones and muscles need significant amounts of exercise to prevent them from withering away. But it wouldn't be practical to lug heavy treadmills, like those used on the International Space Station, to the moon, Urquieta said.

A lack of gravity may also redistribute the body's natural balance of fluids, with potentially disastrous effects. Normally, due to the downward tug of gravity, up to 80% of our blood is in our legs at any given time, Urquieta said. But on the moon, more fluids would flow to the body's upper half, causing loss of blood as the body attempts to rebalance itself, as well as potential swelling at the back of the eye and jugular vein thrombosis, a condition that causes potentially fatal blood clots in the neck. Compared to zero gravity, lunar partial gravity may or may not pose similar health risks. Urquieta said researchers won't know until people spend some time there.

The future of lunar settlement

Ultimately, Ahrens said, these challenges boil down to the need for more data, which scientists are hoping to gather with missions like NASA's Artemis campaign to return humans to the lunar surface as soon as 2028. But she envisions a much slower timeline than Musk's and Isaacman's plans; scientists haven't even taken a sample of the moon's ice yet — a resource lunar settlement planners are banking on.

Depending on its depth and composition, lunar ice could provide water, rocket fuel and rare earth metals. But until scientists get a physical sample of ice, they can't rely on its usefulness or economic prospects. For now, scientific knowledge of the ice's actual chemical composition is very limited: "We know it's cold, and we kind of know where it is," Ahrens said.

When it comes to the moon and its offerings, "we have to be very careful not to sell something which [we] don't have," said Giuseppe Reibaldi, president of the Moon Village Association, a non-profit group focused on international collaboration in lunar activities.

Reibaldi told Live Science that what we find in the moon's ice could be the difference between the lunar equivalent of California's gold rush boomtowns — where settlements sprang up in response to mining opportunities — and Antarctica, where a small number of scientists come and go for solely research purposes.

But even if permanent settlement doesn't happen as soon as hoped, Ahrens said she is optimistic about the forecast for lunar development. "I think it's not all sunshine and rainbows, but it's also not dark rainy clouds either," she said.

Editor's note: The headline and lead art for this story were changed on April 29, 2026.

Moon landing quiz: How quickly can you name all 12 Apollo astronauts that walked on the moon?

A rock discovered by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover contains "the most diverse collection" of the building blocks of life ever seen on the Red Planet, including seven never found there before, new research confirms.

In 2020, Curiosity discovered and drilled into the rock, which has now been confirmed to contain organic molecules that bear the life-friendly element carbon. While scientists can't yet prove if the molecules formed due to biological or geologic processes, their findings add new evidence to the theory that ancient Mars was hospitable to life.

"Their discovery renewed confirmation that ancient Mars had the right chemistry to support life," officials at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which manages the mission, wrote of the organics. "What's more, the molecules join a growing list of compounds known to be preserved in rocks even after billions of years of exposure on Mars to radiation, which can break down these molecules over time."

By the Martian seashore

The new analysis, published April 21 in the journal Nature Communications, shows that the rock sample included 21 carbon-containing molecules, including seven never seen before on the Red Planet. The newly found molecules included nitrogen heterocycle (a predecessor to RNA and DNA) as well as benzothiophene, which may have been key to bringing life-friendly chemistry to solar system planets aboard meteorites, the authors wrote.

The sample was nicknamed "Mary Anning 3," after the English paleontologist famous for discovering the first fossil ichthyosaur and plesiosaur. Much like the aquatic fossil environments Anning sought out, the Martian organics were found in an area of Mars that was teeming with lakes and streams before the planet dried out billions of years ago.

"This oasis surged and dried up multiple times in the planet's ancient past, eventually enriching the area with clay minerals, which are especially good at preserving organic compounds," JPL officials wrote.

Drilling for life

Last year, Curiosity also found the largest-ever organic molecules on Mars. These were "long-chain" hydrocarbons, including decane, undecane and dodecane.

These organic finds in 2020 and 2025 used an instrument on Curiosity called Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM). Curiosity first drills rocks using its robotic arm. Then, it turns the rocks into powder samples and lets the powder fall into SAM. The instrument contains a high-temperature oven that heats up the powder, allowing the compositions of the gases inside the rover to be measured.

SAM also contains small cups of solvent that can perform "wet chemistry." The Mary Anning 3 sample was the first to use tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH) — a substance that breaks apart organic molecules, of which Curiosity only carries two cups — because the sample was considered of the highest value.

Curiosity's findings were verified on Earth using a space rock that's well known to science, the Murchison meteorite, which is 4 billion years old and includes organic molecules.

"A Murchison sample exposed to TMAH was found to break much larger molecules into some of the ones seen in Mary Anning 3, including benzothiophene," JPL officials wrote. "That result verifies that the Martian molecules found in Mary Anning 3 could have been generated from the breakdown of even more complex compounds relevant to life."

Curiosity, which has been on Mars since 2012, recently used its last TMAH cup on "weblike boxwork ridges, which were formed by ancient groundwater," according to JPL. The results will be written up in a future study.

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

With Artemis II complete, NASA is pushing ahead with plans to build a permanent human habitat on the moon, and retired Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield wants to make sure one crucial piece of technology is awaiting the future crop of lunar settlers: a guitar.

"We keep a guitar on the International Space Station ... and as we start to settle the moon over the next five or 10 years, we're going to need a musical instrument there," Hadfield told Live Science in an interview. "Music is really important. Even NASA, a very strict science and engineering organization, recognizes how important it is for mental health."

On his three trips to space between 1995 and 2013, Hadfield broke many records: He was the first Canadian to perform a spacewalk, the first Canadian to command the International Space Station and the first astronaut to record music in orbit. Using a small acoustic guitar that NASA supplied to the space station in 2001, Hadfield performed a microgravity cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity," which has since been viewed by tens of millions of people.

For Hadfield, connecting with the Earthbound public isn't just a perk of an astronaut's job; it's the main point. On Thursday (April 23) Hadfield brought that mentality to his home province of Ontario, Canada, where he sang and played guitar alongside a stacked lineup of musicians as part of a fundraising concert for the SickKids children's hospital in Toronto.

Live Science caught up with Hadfield before the concert to chat about his reactions to the Artemis II mission, why astronauts need to be sources of inspiration in unsettling times, and the orbiting guitar that has "done more world tours than Keith Richards."

Brandon Specktor: Hi, Chris. It's been an exciting few weeks for spaceflight. What was the most memorable moment of the Artemis II mission for you, as a former astronaut?

Chris Hadfield: [Canadian astronaut] Jeremy Hansen announcing to the commander [NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman] and the world that they were naming a newly formed crater on the moon after Reid Wiseman's late wife. That moment was so honest, and beautiful, and thoughtful, and personal — and yet he shared it live, in real time amongst all the technical stuff.

And there's a lot of other things on the mission that are huge for me and fascinating and resonating. But I think, if you really want to know what it's like to be an astronaut, watch how the Artemis II crew shared their spaceflight.

This is the first time we've ever gone to the moon with such a high bandwidth of connectivity. And [footage] didn't just come down to NASA, who then would share a piece of it with a TV station, who would then maybe share a piece of it briefly over the news — this was live to anybody who wanted to watch it all around the world, all the time.

And so that combination of helping people to see what's going on, and then the magnificent work that the crew did in sharing it with everybody so that people could truly see what it's like to commit your life to take enormous risk — to fly a rocket ship no one ever flew before, to fly a spaceship no one ever flew before, to trust a heat shield with your lives that no one ever trusted before — and yet at the same time be joyful, and respectful, and competent, and sharing … that, to me, was the big benchmark impact of Artemis II.

BS: You were once described as the "most social media savvy astronaut to ever leave Earth." How should astronauts keep up that level of connection as we plan to send humans farther and farther from our planet?

CH: Well, part of it is why I'm playing music tonight — I don't have to do that. And there's lots of musicians on stage.

Some people don't care [about space exploration], and that's fine. But, in a time of a lot of unrest, and uncertainty, and direct conflict — right to the worst human failure of all, which is war — it is really good to have strong, undeniable public examples of something that is positive, and beneficial, and inspiring, and right on the edge of what people can do when they cooperate together and do things right. And we need that. Everybody needs something to look up to, literally.

I think people forget, or at least have a false memory, of what the Apollo program was like. Apollo 8 was sort of startlingly similar to right now: the Vietnam War, huge civil unrest, race riots going on in the United States, tremendous dissatisfaction, a corrupt U.S. president, and just nothing good ‪—‬ everyone just feeling so helpless.

And yet, NASA decided, "OK, even though it's early and risky, we're going to send Apollo 8 around the moon and back." Now it wasn't nearly as well shared, because they didn't have the technology and you couldn't see any imagery until they got back. But it was just before Christmas, and all three of the crewmembers read from the Bible on Christmas Eve. And it had a beautiful impact. It was slower and more carefully shared, but it had a big impact.

But then Apollo 9, nobody knows anything about. Everyone thinks the Apollo era was like, everyone was holding their breath with every flight — not at all. No one cared at all.

Apollo 11, for a few days, got the world's attention because they were actually landing. It was unprecedented. It was the most watched event in human history, and it inspired an entire generation of young people. The number of people that did Ph.D.s in the years following Apollo 11, per capita, has never been matched. People saw themselves differently, and all because of the sharing that the Apollo 11 crew did and NASA's efforts to use the best tech they could to get those grainy, slow-updated video images of Neil [Armstrong] coming down the ladder and get his audio — and it inspired me.

And people may go, "Well, I never wanted to be an astronaut — that's silly." But it inspired the people that built your car. It inspired all kinds of people that chose to go into tech, and go into science, and go into medicine, because they thought, "Wow, if we could do that, then what am I being so fearful about?" And it had a measurable, enormous global impact that still resonates today. We now use the word "moonshot" as a common vernacular. And so that is now just as important now, and so that's why the crews take it so seriously.

So, as we look to the next moon landing with Artemis IV, the number-one thing is getting the technology right — but number two is human impact. And it's really important to share it so that other people can be inspired by it, such that they can make different choices with their lives — braver choices, more challenging choices, things where they will accomplish more. And so that's what motivated me.

BS: Settling the moon is one of NASA's big ambitions. What do you think are the biggest challenges we still need to figure out before having a more permanent human presence there?

CH: Well, apart from the straight engineering challenge of landing — which has been done, but not recently and not by the machines we're using now — there are a couple of specific things.

One is moon dust. If you're landing in the vicinity of anything else, with only one-sixth the gravity of Earth and no air to slow the particles down, the blasted particulate becomes a real problem. And the dust isn't eroded dirt like on Earth; it's like shattered glass. And so if you could imagine a rocket ship coming down and blowing shattered glass in all directions, where it goes much farther than intuitively you'd think because of the much-weakened gravity and no air to slow it down, that is a problem. We have solutions with berms and hardened landing pads; we just have to build them.

The second concern is water. Is there water available in the shadowed craters of the moon or not? We think there is, but until we actually go ‪—‬ you know, lick them ‪—‬ we won't know. These craters are supercold because they're permanently shadowed; it's as cold a place as we know in the universe. And so, how do you even harvest or break up whatever the water is frozen into? It's probably at least hard, frozen dust, if not actually frozen into the rock itself.

Is it readily accessible? That's a big, big question. If it is, that's a boon. Because we know that at the lunar south pole, the sun shines almost all the time — so you've got solar power. And any place where you have power and water, you can live, so long as you have a good habitat.

So we have to go there. And we have probes doing that, we have landers doing that, and eventually, we'll have people doing that. So those are the challenges on the engineering side.

There are challenges on the human side, as well. One is, how does the human body do for an extended period at one-sixth gravity? We think because of what we've learned on [the] space station, we're going to be fine. Because we've lived on [the] space station for decades now, and some people for almost 1,000 days — multiple years, they've lived on [the] station — and they're fine. You obviously have some effects, but so long as you have exercise equipment and you get a chance to rehab when you come back to Earth, you're fine.

BS: You're performing Thursday night (April 23) in the "A Night at the Opera" fundraiser for the SickKids children's hospital in Toronto. How did you get involved, and will you be playing guitar?

CH: We have three kids, and I've done multiple things over the years with SickKids in Toronto, which is just world-class care for young people. So when friends of mine were organizing a chance to raise funds for SickKids, and combine it with a really fun evening of music, I signed right up. And I've been doing it for, gosh, six or seven years. It's an annual event, and it's a lot of fun, with some world-class musicians on stage having a good time.

The band that I sing with is just so talented. We'll be covering some fun songs this year — and yeah, I'm playing and singing.

BS: Before we go, tell me about the guitar on the space station.

CH: People think that I brought it up there, but that's a misnomer. That was put there as psychological support by the NASA psych support team, and it's been up there since the summer of 2001, that little Canadian Larrivée guitar.

But that guitar is just up there because we need music. And there's always at least one astronaut who can play some guitar, and the music is really important.

I think, if you do the math, that guitar has gone around the world about 145,000 times by now. We joke that it's done more world tours than Keith Richards.

BS: You probably couldn't fit an acoustic guitar in the Orion capsule used for the Artemis missions. What instruments would you recommend for a smaller spacecraft?

CH: Well, there have been flutes on board the ISS. [NASA astronaut] Cady Coleman — we've played in bands together for decades — she brought a flute up. In fact, she brought one of Jethro Tull's flutes, and also an old flute from the Irish band The Chieftains. It was [flautist] Matt Molloy's wooden flute from the mid-1800s.

But having a small-body guitar is kind of perfect because you can still get a big sound out of it. Lots of people can play a six string, and it just tucks out of the way. So the reasons that guitars are so ubiquitous on Earth, the same applies to a spaceship. On an Orion vehicle, you'd want something even smaller; maybe a ukulele would make sense.

As we start to settle the moon over the next five or 10 years, we're going to need a musical instrument there. Maybe one of the cargo ships up there will throw another Larrivée in, or it'd be really fun if we could transfer the one from the space station to the moon. That would be the coolest thing!

Editor's note: This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. It was updated on April 24 to indicate the concert already happened.

Artemis II aced its trial-by-fire reentry, despite some concerns that the Orion spacecraft's heat shield would not hold up, a ghostly photo of the spacecraft's underside taken soon after splashdown reveals.

NASA's preliminary post-splashdown investigation indicates that Orion's heat shield suffered minimal char loss, its ceramic tiles were uncracked, and the reflective thermal tape was still present in numerous places — ensuring that the capsule’s four-person crew was safe during their fiery plunge through Earth’s atmosphere.

"Initial inspections of the system found it performed as expected, with no unusual conditions identified," NASA officials wrote in a statement released Monday (April 20). "Diver imagery of the spacecraft’s heat shield initially taken after splashdown and further inspections on the recovery ship found the char loss behavior observed on Artemis I was significantly reduced, both in terms of quantity and size."

The Artemis II heat shield, an ablative coating of silica fibers inside a polymer resin, was designed to protect the mission's crew from the 24,664 mph (39,693 km/h) reentry — a blistering speed that transformed the surrounding air into a plasma inferno half as hot as the sun's surface.

But the shield's doubtful suitability for this final leg of the journey left experts concerned. Notably, Charles Camarda, a former NASA astronaut and heat-shield research engineer who flew on the first space shuttle following the Columbia disaster, lambasted the decision as "playing Russian roulette" with the crew's lives.

That's because the Artemis II mission's heat shield was the same as the one used for Artemis I, and that shield cracked and charred upon reentry.

For the uncrewed Artemis I mission, NASA performed a "skip" reentry, in which Orion bounced off Earth's upper atmosphere, like a stone on a lake, before reentering. According to NASA, this maneuver would extend the range that Orion flew between reentering the atmosphere and splashing down in the Pacific Ocean, thereby improving landing accuracy and making the ride smoother for astronauts.

But a later inspection of the heat shield alarmed NASA engineers, revealing that the shield's Avcoat material had charred and cracked, and was missing several bolts. Ground testing at NASA's arc jet facility replicated the conditions of reentry, finding that the skip return had enabled pockets of gas to build up inside and fracture the shield.

This led NASA to opt for a lofted entry profile for Artemis II (the same type of reentry used in the Apollo missions), sacrificing accuracy and astronaut comfort to send the mission's "Integrity" spacecraft on a more direct path through the atmosphere. The early analysis appears to show the agency's bet paid off.

Meanwhile, the mission's Space Launch System rocket, once notorious for its numerous leaks and launch scrubs, also performed well, according to NASA. The agency got its numbers right too, achieving a landing with pinpoint precision similar to those of the Apollo missions.

"Orion splashed down with precision, just 2.9 miles [4.7 kilometers] from the targeted landing site," NASA representatives wrote in the statement. "Initial assessments showed entry interface velocity was within one mile-per-hour [1.6 km/h] of predictions."

While NASA is using its initial assessments to herald future missions in the Artemis program as being "on track," doubts persist. Artemis III is slated to launch for an Earth-orbit docking test with its lunar lander module in 2027 before Artemis IV and V target successive moon landings in 2028. Whether those landers ‪—‬ alongside other mission-critical hardware, such as lunar spacesuits ‪—‬ arrive in time or delay the program further remains to be seen.

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

NASA's next-generation spacesuits still aren't ready, and the delay could push back the Artemis moon landings by more than three years, an audit report claims.

The new report by the NASA Office of Inspector General (OIG) found that design and testing delays in line with recent historical averages will mean that demonstrations of the Artemis spacesuits, provided by private contractor Axiom Space, won't occur until 2031. NASA is supposed to be sending humans to the moon in 2028.

And the space agency can't do the planned missions without new lunar suits. NASA's more than 50-year-old Apollo suits aren't suitable, and the current International Space Station (ISS) spacesuits are also due a major redesign, because they carry "significant safety risks," according to the report.

The OIG found that NASA's acquisition strategy hindered the success of its spacesuit providers, while its spacesuit schedule was overconfident.

"We found that the original demonstration schedules were overly optimistic and unrealistic," Deanna Lee, the audit assistant director at the NASA Office of Inspector General, said in a video statement. "In fact, both suits are at least a year and a half behind schedule."

This will likely lead to future moon missions being delayed. "Although NASA is taking proactive steps to enable Axiom's success, it may be forced to significantly adjust the Artemis timeline if Axiom cannot meet the Agency's needs," she added.

Axiom Space is currently NASA's sole spacesuit provider. Jonathan Cirtain, the CEO and president of Axiom Space, said that Axiom Space welcomed the review and was committed to delivering next-generation spacesuits on time.

"Our focus remains on delivering a safe, capable spacesuit that enables American astronauts to return to and explore the lunar surface in 2028," Cirtain told Live Science in an emailed statement.

NASA has its sights on two crewed landing missions in 2028, with the Artemis IV and Artemis V missions. The Artemis program is already behind schedule and over budget — NASA had originally planned to be back on the moon by now. On the flip side, the agency has demonstrated that it's still capable of sending humans on a trip around the moon with its historic Artemis II mission.

Why NASA needs new spacesuits

NASA has been trying to acquire new spacesuits since 2007. These efforts have included several in-house attempts and separate efforts with external contractors. In 2022, NASA awarded contracts worth over $3 billion to Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace to develop suits that the agency would then rent for missions.

In 2024, Collins backed out of its spacesuit contract, with NASA citing an inability to meet the agreed schedule. That left NASA reliant on Axiom to produce two new suit types — one for the ISS and another for lunar landings.

The new Artemis suits need to communicate with various Artemis systems, including the Human Landing System (contracted to SpaceX and Blue Origin, and facing its own delay and crew safety risks).

The Apollo mission suits had various modifications to make them suitable for the lunar surface, including protective gloves and boots to guard against sharp rocks and dust. But those Apollo-era suits were custom-fitted for their wearers, are outdated and weren't designed for long-term durability, meaning they won't work for the Artemis astronauts, according to the report.

The Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) spacesuits that NASA uses for ISS spacewalks, meanwhile, were designed for the Space Shuttle program. These suits have been good for more than 200 spacewalks but haven't undergone a major redesign in the last 20 years. They also have design flaws, such as water leaking into the helmet and issues with thermal regulation.

The report noted that if Axiom cannot meet its obligation to produce new spacesuits, then astronauts may have to keep using the "problematic" EMUs until the end of the ISS's lifespan, scheduled for 2030.

NASA could begin accepting spacesuit bids from other contractors at any time, with the report noting that multiple other companies are developing spacesuit capabilities that could compete with Axiom, including SpaceX. However, for the time being, NASA officials don't think that will help, according to the report

In the meantime, the space agency is identifying potential supply chain issues, ramping up its spacesuit testing and collaborating more widely with other government agencies.

The geopolitical stakes behind the delay are high. If NASA doesn't have the suits until 2031, then China could return humans to the moon before the U.S. Both countries are planning to establish a permanent presence on the moon's South Pole as part of a new space race, with China targeting a moon landing before 2030. Nonetheless, NASA administrator Jared Isaacman remains bullish.

"I am confident that when NASA is ready to land on the Moon in 2028, our astronauts will be wearing Axiom suits," Isaacman wrote on the social platform X on Monday (April 20).

After nearly half a century in space, the Voyager 1 spacecraft just shut down one of its last remaining science instruments in a desperate attempt to preserve power. NASA's decision to turn off the instrument comes just ahead of a last-ditch "Big Bang" moment that mission managers hope will give the two Voyager probes an extra boost of life later this summer.

On Friday (April 17), Voyager 1 was commanded to shut down the Low-Energy Charged Particle (LECP) experiment, an instrument that has looked at ions, electrons and cosmic rays surrounding the spacecraft for the past 49 years.

But now, Voyager 1 is running critically low on nuclear power, especially after a planned roll maneuver on Feb. 27 created an unexpected power drop.

The spacecraft launched in 1977, initially to survey Jupiter and Saturn, before its mission was extended again and again. In 2012, Voyager 1 officially crossed into interstellar space, becoming the first spacecraft to send data from outside the solar system. It remains the most distant spacecraft in history.

The twin probe Voyager 2, which surveyed all of the outer planets from Jupiter to Neptune, entered interstellar space about six years later, and the two spacecraft are still transmitting from the black.

But their time is running short. Both spacecraft rely on a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, which converts decaying plutonium into power. The spacecraft lose roughly 4 watts of power a year.

"Power margins have grown razor thin, requiring the team to conserve energy by shutting off heaters and instruments while making sure the spacecraft don't get so cold that their fuel lines freeze," representatives from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which manages the Voyager program, wrote in an April 17 blog post.

After the latest shutoff, only two of Voyager 1's 10 science instruments remain powered, while three instruments are currently running on Voyager 2. These instruments have helped scientists characterize the conditions of space beyond the solar system, as well as the physical properties of the heliopause, the boundary where the solar wind clashes with the interstellar medium.

A "Big Bang"

This latest Voyager 1 instrument shutoff will grant the spacecraft only about one year of life, as things stand, but there's a plan to get more out of the spacecraft: JPL will use a "Big Bang" procedure to try extending the dwindling power reserves of not only Voyager 1 but also Voyager 2.

"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," JPL representatives wrote in the blog post.

For now, two instruments on Voyager 1 are examining magnetic fields and waves of plasma (superheated gas). But if all goes according to plan, the team hopes to gain back enough power from the Big Bang to turn the LECP back on. In fact, engineers decided to keep a small, half-watt motor for LECP running for now, just in case the instrument can be used again.

In May and June, JPL will run some Big Bang tests on Voyager 2, which has more power supplies available and is slightly closer to Earth. Assuming all goes well, the riskier Voyager 1 Big Bang moment would happen no earlier than July.

Sending any commands to Voyager 1 takes 23 hours because it is so far from Earth ‪— ‬15 billion miles (25 billion kilometers) away. After JPL relayed its commands, the LECP shutdown process took a little more than three hours. Starting it up again, especially given the cold and distance, could be a bit trickier.

The successful Artemis II trip around the Moon was a historic achievement — the first crewed lunar fly-by in more than 50 years, and the greatest distance yet travelled by humans from our "pale blue dot".

The mission was marked by engineering, scientific and technical feats, by the astronauts and team at NASA and beyond, who got the crew there and back safely.

With the technical achievement came symbolic firsts, too. The first woman and the first person of color to orbit the moon. As astronaut Victor Glover put it, "people need to be able to see themselves in the things that they dream about".

Artemis II deserves celebration. But the celebration should not crowd out political scrutiny.

Power and resources on the moon

Artemis II is one mission in a broader US program to start establishing a permanent moon base by 2030.

This is about more than exploration. As US President Donald Trump has said, it is about asserting "American space superiority", establishing a "sustained American presence" and developing a lunar economy. The US colonial thinking of a "manifest destiny to the stars" returns.

The bigger picture is that the US sees itself in a "space race" with what NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has called its "geopolitical adversary", China.

One point of conflict is access to finite, valuable resources at the lunar south pole, where water ice could sustain life and provide rocket fuel for missions to Mars. More speculative, profit-driven visions also play a part, from mining helium-3 to extracting resources from asteroids and bringing them to Earth.

Global rules — beyond the globe

International space treaties, largely forged during the 20th century Cold War, have little to say about appropriating resources off-Earth.

The US wants to shape the rules, and the US-led Artemis Accords are part of that effort. They are non-binding principles, but consequential.

Grounded in the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, they offer a "blueprint" for how resource activities, and other unsettled topics, may be governed.

Many observers see the Artemis Accords as more transparent and open than China's counterpart, the International Lunar Research Station. However, critics argue the Artemis Accords undermine multilateral, consensus-based processes.

Sixty-one countries have signed the Artemis Accords. Only nine new signatories have joined since Trump's return as US president, versus 19 in the year prior. It remains to be seen if the trend continues.

Why US leadership in space demands scrutiny

US leadership in space is often discussed only in contrast to China. This binary view can help the US escape scrutiny, especially in allied nations.

Consider America's recent actions here on Earth. As Artemis II drew our gaze skyward, the US–Israel war on Iran was intensifying.

In an expletive-filled post on Truth Social, Trump hinted at a nuclear attack with a threat that "a whole civilization will die tonight" unless Tehran reopened the Strait of Hormuz.

The US also threatened to target civilian infrastructure, after one strike hit a school, reportedly killing more than 150 people.

All of this occurred amid the ongoing crisis and civilian casualties in Gaza, where Trump's "Board of Peace" has faced criticism for seeking to function as an "alternative UN".

Trump has also revived territorial ambitions toward Greenland, saying: "We need it". He floated annexing Canada as the fifty-first US state. He spoke of the "honor of taking Cuba". He declared he would "run" Venezuela.

All of these places have natural resources that would give the US strategic advantages, including in critical minerals and oil.

This conduct has raised concerns from international lawyers and international organizations. Even US allies have spoken up, whom Trump criticized for not joining the Iran war.

Hard questions about a US-led future in space

A disregard for international law on Earth leads us to question how the US will ultimately act in space.

Scholars from the Global South, notably law professor Antony Anghie, have long argued that the US uses international law selectively and in line with its own interests. This is not new with Trump, even if the pattern has now become more visible and more intense. What may be changing is that more of the world is taking notice, including states that once benefited from that status quo.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos this year, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney described the "rules-based order" as "partially false", in which "international law applied with varying rigor depending on the identity of the accused or the victim". He was not speaking about space — but his point applies here too.

This puts question marks over US leadership in space — and whether it will abide by agreed rules when control over lunar resources is no longer just a hypothetical question. Even America's own Artemis Accords principles may prove optional if they stop being convenient to US interests.

That question is worth considering, given Trump has already justified withdrawing from many international instruments and organisations for this reason. Even NATO may be next.

No superpower should be immune from scrutiny — on Earth or beyond.

This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

NASA's Artemis II mission, which shot humanity back to the moon for the first time in over 50 years, has captivated people around the world. As part of NASA's Artemis program, the 10-day flight tested key systems designed to return astronauts to the lunar surface, where NASA says it will establish a lunar base that will act as a staging post for future missions to Mars.

Data from the mission will be used to advance our understanding of human health in space, including the impacts on sleep and the effects of increased radiation and microgravity on health. The four Artemis II crewmembers were also trained in geology to make observations of the lunar surface, including identifying impact craters and ancient lava flows.

How much do you remember about humanity's greatest adventure in half a century? Remember to log in to put your name on the leaderboard; hints are available if you click the yellow button. Good luck!

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NASA has published a "Moon Base User's Guide" detailing the many challenges the agency will need to overcome for it to complete 73 planned moon landings and build a permanent lunar base.

The document, published April 6, is a bare-bones nine-page list of what NASA needs to achieve the "near-impossible" space plans announced March 24 at the agency's "Ignition" event.

NASA wants a torrent of robotic and uncrewed lunar missions — landing on the moon 21 times within the next three years alone — to lay the groundwork for its $20 billion moon base and prepare for the first crewed missions in 2028. The space agency has also said it will launch a nuclear-powered "Freedom" spacecraft to Mars by 2028.

Although the splashdown of Artemis II's crewed lunar flyby last week demonstrated that NASA can still fly humans to the moon, the Moon Base User's Guide clearly highlights lots of gaps in NASA's current capabilities. These limitations include aspects of landing systems, habitation systems and power systems — basically, everything humans need to land and live on the moon.

If it sounds fanciful, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman seems to agree, telling attendees at the 2026 Space Symposium in Colorado Springs on April 14 that NASA does its best when it is "undertaking and achieving the near impossible," Space.com reported.

"We want to land lots of stuff, and it's okay if some of it breaks," he added. "We're going to learn."

The Moon Base User's Guide is part of a larger shake-up to American space plans. In recent years, NASA has struggled to get astronauts back to the moon and thereby set the stage for sending humans to Mars. The success of Artemis II notwithstanding, the Artemis program is over budget (costing more than $100 billion thus far) and behind schedule, with NASA originally targeting a crewed moon landing in 2024.

Isaacman, who has been in his post since December 2025, is attempting to ramp up lunar activities to realize NASA's goals for the moon and Mars. This overhaul includes scrapping work on humanity's first lunar space station, the lunar Gateway, to focus on establishing a presence on the lunar surface. To achieve this, the Artemis program has been retooled to add a second crewed lunar landing mission in 2028, as well as ramping up launches and landings.

The guide was followed by an April 14 White House memorandum stating that "NASA will, within 30 days of this memorandum, initiate a program to develop a mid-power space reactor with a lunar fission surface power (FSP) variant ready for launch by 2030, and an option for a space variant for a nuclear electric propulsion (NEP) demonstration."

The backdrop for this shake-up, aside from Artemis's spiraling costs and delays, is the new space race. China is threatening to overtake the U.S. as the leader in space exploration, with plans to land its own astronauts on the moon before 2030. And both nations are eyeing the same hydrogen-fuel-rich lunar south pole landing sites.

How to build a moon base

NASA's planned 73 moon landings will occur across three phases, according to the Moon Base User's Guide and previous Ignition documents. It's unclear how many of these will be crewed, but NASA has said that it's starting with a rapid series of robotic and early uncrewed missions, while moon crew rotations are expected to be routine by Phase 3.

Phase 1 will comprise 25 launches and 21 landings to establish frequent and reliable access to the lunar surface. This phase is scheduled to be completed by 2029, according to NASA's Building the Moon Base plans, published March 24.

Phase 2, which is planned for between 2029 and 2032, will consist of a further 27 launches and 24 landings and will establish the initial moon base infrastructure and semiannual crewed missions. Phase 3, from 2032 until an undisclosed future date, will then have another 29 launches and 28 landings to establish uncrewed cargo return technology and a continuous human presence on the moon.

Of course, this is considerably easier said than done. NASA famously landed humans on the moon as part of the Apollo missions more than 50 years ago. However, building a base on the moon's south pole comes with many more challenges, starting with establishing the basics, like a consistent power source.

"The Moon Base elements and development will occur in the lunar South Pole region, which has an incredibly different lighting environment than the equatorial maria and highlands visited by Apollo," NASA wrote in the document. "At the Moon Base, the Sun will remain low on the horizon, casting dramatic shadows that hinder solar electricity generation and subject systems to prolonged periods of extreme cold and dark."

NASA needs precise knowledge of lighting conditions and solar array performance to develop suitable solar power options, which will also need to be robust enough to survive contact with razor-sharp, electrified lunar dust.

The document also noted that NASA requires detailed knowledge of the lunar environment and systems that can operate there to use its radioisotope thermal generators — nuclear batteries that generate heat and electricity. NASA's long-term plans for power also include building a nuclear reactor on the moon.

Simply landing on the moon as frequently as NASA plans also presents hurdles. For example, the document notes that NASA needs to develop precision landing systems that can accurately measure the altitude of low-visibility terrain, as well as hazard avoidance systems. Some of the power and landing gaps were flagged as architecture-driven technology gaps and will require "entirely new technologies or significant advancement in performance" of current technologies, according to the guide.

There are also unknowns barely mentioned in the document, such as the human body's response to long-term stays in the lunar environment. These include the impacts of lunar dust, microgravity and cancer-causing cosmic rays, alongside logistical challenges related to life support, exercise and nutrition.

NASA writes that it is working on filling in the many technological and data gaps highlighted in the document. It also highlights "Mars-forward" considerations, which are the things NASA needs to develop with the moon program to achieve its ultimate aim of landing humans on Mars.

The Mars considerations included data on astronaut health in deep space and the development of nuclear power systems on the lunar surface. These nuclear systems will be useful for building similar systems on Mars and benefit the development of NASA's planned nuclear-powered spacecraft, according to the document.

Only time will tell if NASA can achieve its ambitious plans, but recent history is not on the space agency's side. Only two days after Artemis II's historic launch on April 1, the White House released a budget plan calling for a 23% cut in NASA's budget, amounting to around $5.6 billion.

And while NASA has said it will build its moon base on a $20 billion budget, the average estimated cost of a single Space Launch System rocket is $2.5 billion.

The crew of NASA's Artemis II mission have made their first public comments following their record-breaking test mission to the far side of the moon and dramatic more than 24,000 mph (38,600 km/h) reentry.

The four-person crew ‪—‬ commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and mission specialist Christina Koch of NASA and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency ‪—‬ splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego at 8:07 p.m. EDT (12:07 a.m. GMT) on April 10.

"Victor, Christina and Jeremy, we are bonded forever, and no one down here is ever going to know what the four of us just went through," Wiseman said at a news conference held at Ellington Field Joint Reserve Base in Houston yesterday (April 12). "And it was the most special thing that will ever happen in my life."

"I have not processed what we just did"

The Artemis II mission sent humans farther from Earth than ever before, reaching 252,760 miles (406,777 kilometers) from our home planet ‪—‬ more than 4,100 miles (6,600 km) farther than the record set by Apollo 13 in 1970. The Orion spacecraft took just seven hours to swing around the far side of the moon on April 6, when the crew laid eyes upon never-before-seen regions of our lunar neighbor.

The mission clearly had a profound impact on the crew. Wiseman said he had "absolutely no idea what to say," while Glover added, "I have not processed what we just did, and I'm afraid to start even trying." The crewmates hugged multiple times throughout the conference, with Hansen even joking that "this is the furthest I've been away from Reid in a long time."

During his welcoming address, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman noted the immense impact their mission has had on people here on Earth. "Thank you for showing us the moon again," he said. "Thank you for showing us planet Earth again."

Indeed, the Artemis II crew snapped many breathtaking images during their journey — the first trip to the moon since 1972. Among them is a photo of Earth framing the silhouette of Koch (the first woman to leave low Earth orbit and visit the moon) peering at Earth through one of the Orion spacecraft's main cabin windows. The photograph already has 2.1 million likes on Instagram, highlighting her profound impact on inspiring young women and girls in STEM.

But when looking back on the mission, Koch said she wasn't necessarily struck just by Earth.

"It was all the blackness around it," she said at the news conference. "Earth was just this lifeboat hanging undisturbingly in the universe."

"Can I get a hug?"

Koch recounted how her 10-day journey started and ended with simple human moments. "Ten days ago, this journey started with our mission manager, Sean Duval, knocking on my door in crew corridors and whispering, 'Christina, we're going for launch. Get up,' she recalled. "And it ended last night, when my nurse on the ship put me to bed and said, 'Ma'am, can I get a hug?'"

Hansen noted how, beyond all the scientific knowledge to be gained, the mission's biggest take-home message for the crew is a new perspective of our shared humanity and home planet.

Wisemen agreed, saying "it's a special thing to be a human, and it's a special thing to be on planet Earth."

Isaacman said NASA is already preparing Artemis III, which is expected to launch in 2027 and will test the Orion spacecraft's ability to work with several potential lunar landers in Earth orbit. Then, the Artemis IV and V missions will target two landings on the moon's surface in 2028.

"Artemis II was the opening act in America's return to the moon," Isaacman added. "As we stand here this evening, the mobile launcher is preparing to go back to the VAB [Vehicle Assembly Building], Artemis III will start being assembled, and the next crew will begin preparing to play their part as we return to the lunar surface, we build a base and we never give up the moon again."

Since its historic April 1 launch from Kennedy Space Center, NASA's Artemis II mission around the moon has delivered a stream of extraordinary moments, from Earth fading into the distance to a rare solar eclipse seen from deep space.

After the crew returned safely to Earth on Friday (April 10), we've collected the most remarkable images from humanity's first journey to the moon since 1972.

1. Artemis II launch

The April 1 launch from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39B signaled the beginning of humanity's first crewed lunar mission since Apollo 17. Powered by NASA's most powerful rocket, the Space Launch System, on only its second flight, Artemis II sent four astronauts on a 10-day, 695,000-mile (1.1 million kilometers) journey. The team's Orion crew capsule, nicknamed Integrity, sits at the top.

2. Spaceship Earth

In a mission of firsts, NASA astronaut Christina Koch became the first woman to leave Earth's orbit and travel around the moon. Here she is on April 2, peering out one of the Orion spacecraft's main cabin windows at the delicate blue sphere of Earth. As Artemis II traveled toward the moon, Earth's continents and clouds blurred into a single living world.

3. Earth's dark side

This image of Earth with the sun behind it was taken just after Orion's translunar injection burn on April 2, in which Orion sped out of Earth orbit and toward the moon. Earth became a glowing crescent suspended in darkness, with its night side sitting in shadow, almost entirely hidden from view.

4. Hello, world

Also captured just after Orion's boost toward the moon on April 2, this image contrasts sharply with later views. Here, a longer exposure reveals Earth's unlit side, but several other features make it unique. In addition to being the first image ever to feature auroras at both poles, it includes a crescent Earth, Venus (bottom right) and a smudge of zodiacal light (sunlight reflecting from dust in the solar system's asteroid belt).

5. The terminator

As Orion sped away from Earth on April 3, commander Reid Wiseman took this image of the terminator line, a sharp divide separating night from day on Earth — an everyday phenomenon transformed into a striking view from deep space.

6. A moment with the moon

Seen on April 6 just before lunar flyby observations began, a vast circular scar — the 600-mile-wide (1,000 km) Orientale basin — marks one of the moon's most dramatic impact features. This lava-filled relic of ancient volcanic activity was formed by a colossal impact billions of years ago.

7. Shadows at the edge of a lunar day

On April 6, the crew took this image of the terminator on the moon. It's where low sunlight skims the lunar surface, casting dramatic shadows that exaggerate craters, ridges and mountains — the perfect time to study the moon's rugged terrain. According to pilot Victor Glover, who monitored the terminator line through Orion's window, the craters in front of him were so dark, they looked like "you'd fall straight to the center of the moon if you stepped in some of those."

8. Total solar eclipse

Apollo astronauts saw total solar eclipses on their way to the moon, but the Artemis II crew was the first to witness one from the moon's far side. On April 6, totality lasted an extraordinary 54 minutes from Orion, during which the crew saw the sun's corona,stars and distant planets become visible nearby. It's a vantage point impossible on Earth.

9. Eclipse safety first

Even at the moon, safe solar viewing remains essential. Before and after totality, the four astronauts — Wiseman, Glover, Koch and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen — donned the same eclipse glasses distributed for the recent solar eclipses in North America.

10. Integrity comes home

At 8:07 p.m. EDT on Friday (Apr. 10), the Integrity capsule splashed safely into the Pacific Ocean after a nail-biting 13-minute descent through Earth's atmosphere. Soon after, a Navy recovery crew opened the capsule, welcoming its four record-setting passengers back to Earth after their historic mission to the moon.

The Artemis II mission ended in a dramatic fashion on April 10, 2026, when NASA's Orion spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, just off the coast of San Diego, closing out humanity's first crewed journey to the moon in over 50 years.

The four-person crew — consisting of commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen — returned to Earth after a 10-day mission that tested the systems NASA plans to use for future lunar expeditions. NASA said the splashdown occurred at 8:07 p.m. EDT or 5:07 PST, with recovery operations led by the US Navy's USS John P. Murtha.

"The vehicle is in excellent shape," said NASA's mission commentator, Rob Navias, during the April 10 livestream.

An extreme homecoming

Re-entry tends to be one of the more dramatic and dangerous parts of a mission, especially for Artemis II.

Unlike return missions from the International Space Station, which begin in low Earth orbit and thus don't need nearly as much speed to return to Earth, Artemis II flew back into Earth's atmosphere from the moon at near-record-breaking speeds. Orion came back at roughly 24,600 mph (39,600 kmh), around 24 times the speed of a bullet. That faster speed meant that the capsule's heat shield endured around twice the amount of heat as a spacecraft coming back from the ISS.

Unlike Artemis I, which launched in 2022, Artemis II's re-entry took a more direct path through the atmosphere due to concerns about the capsule's heat shield. In the end, the shield endured temperatures of up to around 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit — half the temperature of the sun — before Orion landed safely in the Pacific Ocean.

'Bullseye' landing ends historic mission

The re-entry could not have gone more smoothly, NASA said, as Orion and its systems did exactly what they were designed to do. After a nail-biting six minutes of radio blackout, during which a cloud of superheated plasma enveloped the capsule, Orion appeared safe and sound in a near-cloudless sky.

Then, at 22,000 feet the three main parachutes unfurled, helping to slow the crew module down to a gentler 20 miles per hour (32 kmh) before the capsule landed in the ocean. As the astronauts emerged onto the floating recovery raft accompanied by U.S. Navy recovery divers, mission control in Houston erupted into raucous cheers.

"I'm still at a loss for words," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in NASA's livestream. "Childhood Jared right now can't believe what I just saw. This is just the beginning, we are gonna get back into doing this with frequency, sending missions to the moon until we land on it in 2028 and start building our base"

The Artemis II crew have captivated millions around the world with their voyage, beaming back stunning images, scientific insights, laughter and some tears as they made history and laid the groundwork for humanity's return to the moon.

"I took a brief moment to say a short prayer of gratitude for being sent on this mission and trusted with bringing back scientifically relevant information," Glover said not long after the crew had reappeared from their flyby behind the moon on Monday (April 6). "And I also just felt like I was hoping that people looked up and were watching to see when we came back into communication, and that maybe there was a chance that folks would feel a sense of togetherness."

The Artemis II Orion spacecraft is expected to splash down later today (April 10) as the world waits to welcome back the mission's record-setting crew. So far, the Artemis II moon mission has been a tremendous success, but this final leg of the journey has some experts concerned.

There's an issue with the Artemis II heat shield, which is meant to protect the astronauts from the blistering heat of reentry. NASA is confident that a tweak to the reentry path is enough to mitigate the heat shield problems observed during the Artemis I test flight, and to keep the astronauts safe today.

Live Science spoke with Ed Macaulay, a lecturer in physics and data science at Queen Mary University of London who recently wrote about heat shield safety concerns in The Conversation, to discuss the heat shield and its impact on the Artemis II mission.

Patrick Pester: What is Orion's heat shield and why is it important?

Ed Macaulay: The heat shield is an absolutely essential part of the Orion spacecraft. When the Orion spacecraft comes back and reenters Earth, it's going to be travelling at a speed of about 25,000 mph (40,000 km/h) — it's just an unbelievably fast speed. For context, at that speed, it would cover the distance of the London Marathon [or the New York City Marathon] in about four seconds.

Because of that speed, the capsule is going to approach temperatures on reentry of about half that of the surface of the sun [5,000 degrees Fahrenheit or 2,800 degrees Celsius]. The heat shield is essential to protect the capsule from this scorching heat of reentry. Without it, the capsule would just completely melt and burn up.

PP: Can you explain why some experts are concerned about the heat shield?

EM: There have been some concerns raised about the heat shield because Artemis II is a crewed version of the uncrewed Artemis I mission that flew a few years ago. This was designed to be exactly the same mission profile, but without any humans on board. When the Artemis I capsule returned to Earth, it did make it safely through the atmosphere, but the damage and effects to the heat shield were more severe than had been anticipated from the modelling.

The heat shield is designed to burn away due to the heat; it's not designed to stay completely intact and completely pristine. You can almost think of it as a bit like the crumple zone of a car, but for heat. In a car, the crumple zone is designed to get compressed on impact so that the passengers are going to be safe. The heat shield is designed to burn away and fragment away, and carry away that heat.

What was surprising with the Artemis I heat shield is that parts of the heat shield had burnt away in large chunks. It wasn't ablating [gradually eroding] away evenly. This seems to be caused by hot gases that are trapped in the heat shield. As they heat up, they expand, they break away chunks of the heat shield and cause that damage.

For Artemis II, NASA has decided to keep the heat shield the same as with Artemis I. Instead, what they've decided to do is to change the reentry profile to put less stress on the heat shield. So, hopefully we're going to get even ablation through the heat shield and not have it burning away in these big chunks.

PP: Am I right in saying NASA is going to take a more direct approach rather than go for a skip reentry, which may have caused the problems the first time around?

EM: In a nutshell, that's exactly what they're doing. The skip reentry profile was designed in principle to make the reentry easier on the capsule and on the crew. Because you're coming into the atmosphere at 25,000 mph and in the space of a few minutes, all of that speed has to get cooked off, has to get turned into heat.

The idea with the skip reentry profile is that before going directly back into the atmosphere, the capsule just grazes off the surface of the atmosphere, burns off a bit of that speed, and then comes back out, and then later comes back in for the full reentry. In principle, that's going to put less stress on the capsule in terms of the temperature, in terms of g-loading [gravitational force].

What seems to happen in practice, though, is that because that whole process takes a longer amount of time, there's more time for these trapped gases in the heat shield to heat up and expand and cause damage. That's why, for Artemis II, the capsule is just going to go for a direct reentry profile; the same reentry profile used in the Apollo missions.

Hopefully, there's going to be less time for gases to cause damage. The other advantage with the direct reentry is that it's more straightforward to model. The team at NASA and all the related engineers have spent a huge amount of time doing computer simulations of these reentry profiles, trying to work out how much the heat shield is going to heat up, and what the damage is going to be.

With a skip reentry, the whole process is more complicated. You're trying to model how something's going to bounce and then come back in. With direct reentry, it's more straightforward. I almost think of it as a bit like, it's better the devil you know.

PP: So, maybe slightly more uncomfortable for the crew, but better for the heat shield?

EM: Yeah, I think that might be the trade-off. And the crew of Artemis II are all such complete pros when it comes to experiencing g-forces. So, if you're talking about g-forces of 4 Gs or something like that, they're not even going to bat an eyelid. They train for far higher g-loadings. Pulling a few Gs for a few minutes, that's not going to be any drama at all for the crew of Artemis II.

PP: Would you be comfortable betting your life on that heat shield?

EM: The short answer, if you're asking me, I wouldn't. I think there are reasons to be confident about it because even with the Artemis I heat shield burning off in big chunks, the crew still would have been safe had there been humans in there. I think what that shows is that there is an element of safety margin in this heat shield. Even if things are slightly, as they say at NASA, "off nominal" — not entirely normal — there's a kind of reasonable safety margin in what the heat shield is able to take. That's not quite the same as asking me personally, would I be next in line to go on Artemis II?

The crew of Artemis II are clearly a very extraordinary bunch of astronauts. They all clearly have the right stuff. And what they are doing on this mission is really extraordinary. They're going so much further than humanity has been in more than half a century.

I am sure that they will all have studied all of these details because nobody is more invested in this heat shield than they are. And I'm sure that they will all be confident in the work that all of the scientists and engineers involved with the heat shield have done.

With the Artemis II mission so far, it has been an extraordinary success from a technical point of view. I think that does give reasons to be confident about the reentry because it looks like there's every reason to expect that the trajectory is going to be absolutely nominal, absolutely what it is designed for. And hopefully, that's going to give them the best possible ride through reentry.

PP: But you wouldn't personally want to assume the risk, or you wouldn't want to be an astronaut in general?

EM: Personally, I'm a nervous flyer. And I think it's easy to forget just how much risk is involved with human spaceflight and how much greater the risk is than anything we would normally experience day-to-day. Only a few hundred people have ever gone into space. We haven't even had 1,000 people go into space. And, very sadly, even with just a few hundred human space missions, there have been some fatal missions.

PP: Is there anything else you'd like to add as we wrap up?

EM: My personal take is that this mission has just been an extraordinary success so far, for all kinds of reasons. From a technical point of view, the mission has been an incredible success; the Space Launch System [rocket], the boosters, going into that initial orbit, the translunar injection — the performance of the system has been incredible.

But more than that, these four astronauts have just been absolutely amazing. Not just performing their technical duties, but providing that human connection, that human perspective, and taking the rest of planet Earth along for the voyage.

Part of why I am so excited is that it's not like this is all going to end when Artemis II comes back for reentry. This is just the start of a whole new chapter: NASA's recently announced very ambitious plans for this continued human presence on the moon and exciting, concrete plans for the next Artemis missions. So, it really is just the start of a whole new chapter.

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

The Artemis II astronauts are about to return from a record-setting trip around the moon, but is their Orion spacecraft's heat shield safe to bring them home? NASA and the astronauts say yes, but not everyone agrees.

The Artemis II mission, which launched April 1, is set to end with a dramatic splashdown in the Pacific Ocean late Friday (April 10). NASA's first crewed flight to the moon since 1972 has led to some stunning images and poignant human moments. However, the reentry — which will occur at over 25,000 mph (40,000 km/h) to make the crew the fastest humans in history — will be the most dangerous hurdle yet.

That's because Artemis II's heat shield, which sits at the bottom of the Orion capsule and is designed to protect the crew as they hurtle through Earth's atmosphere, is almost exactly the same as the one used for Artemis I. And that heat shield cracked upon reentry.

"The capsule is going to approach temperatures on reentry of about half that of the surface of the sun," Ed Macaulay, a lecturer in physics and data science at Queen Mary University of London, told Live Science. "The heat shield is essential to protect the capsule from this scorching heat of reentry. Without it, the capsule would just completely melt and burn up."

The shield is made of a material called Avcoat, which is supposed to erode gradually upon reentry. However, NASA found that during Artemis II's predecessor, the uncrewed Artemis I mission in 2022, Orion's heat shield lost chunks of material, suffering much more than predicted.

To address this issue, NASA hasn't replaced the heat shield, however. Following an investigation, the agency concluded that it could ensure the safety of its crew by tweaking the flight path instead.

For Artemis II, Orion won't skip as high as its predecessor did on reentry; instead, it will make a little "loft" movement. The spacecraft will come in at a steeper angle and spend less time in the part of the atmosphere where the problems with Artemis I occurred.

NASA is confident this modification is sufficient to keep the astronauts safe. However, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has acknowledged that this approach "is not the right way to do things long term" and that there is no plan B.

"The heat shield has to work," Isaacman said in an interview shared by The Free Press on Tuesday (April 7). "I'm going to be thinking about that constantly until they're back in the water."

"I have no doubt the team did the right analysis on this," Isaacman added. "We altered the mission profile — the whole reentry profile is very different than Artemis I to account for what I would describe as the 'shortcomings' of the current heat shield on that vehicle."

It's important to note that Artemis I's heat shield didn't fail: there was plenty of Avcoat left, and data collected inside the capsule revealed that internal temperatures remained normal. If astronauts were aboard Artemis I, they would have been fine.

What happened to the Artemis I heat shield?

Some charring was expected as the Artemis I Orion capsule came racing down to Earth, reaching temperatures of around 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,800 degrees Celsius).

However, when the uncrewed Orion capsule finally splashed down off the coast of Mexico on Dec. 11, 2022 — completing the hottest and fastest reentry ever — NASA immediately saw that the heat shield had lost chunks of material, suffering more than predicted.

"When the Artemis I capsule returned to Earth, it did make it safely through the atmosphere, but the damage and effects to the heat shield were more severe than had been anticipated from the modeling," Macaulay said.

So although the shield didn't fail, given this "char loss," it didn't pass with flying colors, either. In May 2024, NASA's Office of Inspector General released a report on NASA's readiness for Artemis II. The report found that the heat shield had worn away "differently than expected" in more than 100 areas, Live Science's sister site Space.com reported. At the time, the recommendations were for NASA to get to the root cause of the problem prior to the Artemis II launch.

But NASA had already committed to the heat shield for Artemis II. Technicians at NASA's Kennedy Space Center attached a heat shield to the Artemis II Orion spacecraft in July 2023, well before NASA had finished investigating the heat shield issues on Artemis I. NASA had delayed the Artemis II mission, in part to understand the issue with the heat shield, but the space agency couldn't stop working on Artemis II.

In December 2024, NASA pushed the Artemis II launch to 2026 and finally announced that it had identified the root cause of the Artemis I heat shield char loss: Essentially, the Avcoat material that's so vital to the heat shield's success couldn't "breathe."

"Engineers determined as Orion was returning from its uncrewed mission around the Moon, gases generated inside the heat shield's ablative outer material… were not able to vent and dissipate as expected," a NASA spokesperson wrote in a statement at the time. "This allowed pressure to build up and cracking to occur, causing some charred material to break off in several locations."

Tweaking the reentry

Part of the problem, it turned out, was the mission's unprecedented reentry.

For Artemis I, NASA performed a "skip" reentry, in which Orion bounced off Earth's atmosphere. The capsule skipped like a stone on a lake, dipping into the upper part of the atmosphere and then flying back out again, before reentering a second time. This strategy extended the range that Orion could fly between reentering the atmosphere and splashing into the Pacific Ocean, according to NASA. The idea was for the spacecraft to splash down closer to the U.S. and improve landing accuracy. A skip entry was also supposed to make reentry smoother for the astronauts.

As part of the heat-shield investigation, NASA replicated the Artemis I entry trajectory environment at NASA's Ames Research Center in California. Investigators found that thermal energy accumulated inside the Avcoat between dips. This caused pockets of gas to build inside the Avcoat faster than they could disperse, thereby creating pressure spikes that fractured parts of the material.

NASA had attempted to replicate the skip reentry on the ground prior to Artemis I, but the agency had tested at higher temperatures than Orion ultimately experienced. The heat shield's thermal performance had actually exceeded NASA's expectations, but it was the temperature drop that caused the problem.

"The less severe heating seen during the actual Artemis I reentry slowed down the process of char formation, while still creating gases in the char layer," the NASA spokesperson wrote. "Gas pressure built up to the point of cracking the Avcoat and releasing parts of the charred layer."

NASA found that in areas where the Avcoat was permeable, the heat shield didn't experience cracking or char loss — those parts of the heat shield could vent, so pressure didn't build up.

This isn't ideal news for Artemis II, which is using an even-less-permeable heat shield. (Around 6% of the Artemis I heat shield was permeable, whereas no areas of the Artemis II heat shield are permeable, CNN reported.) NASA made that change before the Artemis I test flight.

Why is NASA so confident?

After extensive testing and an independent review, NASA concluded that it had gotten to the bottom of the issue and that altering the reentry strategy would mitigate any risks. The Artemis II reentry won't replicate the temperature environment that NASA blames for Artemis I's heat shield problem.

Further assurance came in January 2026, when Isaacman assembled NASA's heat-shield engineers, the chair of the independent review team and senior human spaceflight officials to meet with outside experts — a meeting that also included two members of the press, Ars Technica reported.

This meeting included an analysis of what would happen if large sections of the heat shield were to fail completely. The engineers concluded that Orion's thick composite base, which contains a titanium framework, could keep the crew safe even if the Avcoat blocks outside it were entirely stripped away.

Danny Olivas, a former NASA astronaut and member of NASA's Advisory Council, was one of the experts who had attended the meeting and came away satisfied that NASA addressed the issue.

"NASA had a very difficult problem to solve but I'm pleased to share that team did an outstanding job of working the problem," Olivas wrote in a LinkedIn post following the meeting. "Hindsight is always 20/20 but this effort reinforced my appreciation of the commitment that NASA has to the safety and wellbeing of the crew."

However, not everyone is as confident in NASA's decision. Charles Camarda, a former NASA astronaut and heat-shield research engineer who has been publicly critical of the space agency, also attended the meeting and continued to speak out against the mission. In a response on LinkedIn, Camarda said NASA did not do its due diligence in defining and correcting the problem.

Camarda told CNN earlier this year that he had tried for months to get NASA leadership to heed his warnings. He is among a group of former NASA employees who don't believe the crew should have flown on Artemis II.

"The reason this is such a big deal is that when the heat shield is spalling — or you have big chunks coming off — even if the vehicle isn't destroyed, you're right at the point of incipient failure now," Dan Rasky, an advanced entry systems and thermal protection materials expert who worked at NASA for more than 30 years, told CNN. "It's like you're at the edge of the cliff on a foggy day."

Four astronauts are flying on Artemis II: Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen. Although some experts are concerned about the astronauts, the crew has expressed confidence in the heat shield, Aerospace America reported in July 2025.

"If we stick to the new reentry path that NASA has planned, then this heat shield will be safe to fly," Wiseman said.

Macaulay, who identifies as a "nervous flyer," wouldn't bet his own life on the Artemis II heat shield. However, he noted that there were plenty of reasons to be confident ahead of Friday's reentry, including that humans would have been safe aboard Artemis I and that the Artemis II mission has been successful thus far.

"It has been an extraordinary success from a technical point of view," Macaulay said. "I think that does give reasons to be confident about the reentry because it looks like there's every reason to expect that the trajectory is going to be absolutely nominal, absolutely what it is designed for. And hopefully, that's going to give them the best possible ride through reentry. I think there really are good reasons to be confident about this."

Artemis II has once again made history by carrying humans farther from Earth than ever before, surpassing the record of 248,655 miles (400,171 kilometers) set by Apollo 13 in 1970.

The previous record fell today (April 6) at 1:57 p.m. EDT (17:57 GMT) as the Orion capsule "Integrity" began its loop around the far side of the moon. NASA says the mission will reach a maximum distance of 252,760 miles (406,777 kilometers) from Earth during the six-hour lunar flyby, which will break the previous human-spaceflight record by roughly 4,100 miles (6,600 kilometers).

"On April 15, 1970, during the Apollo 13 mission, three explorers set the record for the farthest distance humans have ever traveled from our home planet. At that time, over 55 years ago, [Jim] Lovell, [Jack] Swigert and [Fred] Hayes flew 248,655 statute miles away from Earth," Jenni Gibbons, a Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut and capsule communicator (Capcom) on the Artemis II mission, said to the crew as they broke the record. "Today, for all humanity, you're pushing beyond that frontier."

Not long after breaking the record, the crew's trip around the moon became even more poignant as they spotted a crater between the moon's near and far sides. They called down to mission control to request it be named after Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman's late wife, Carroll.

Mission specialist Jeremy Hansen said that there was a feature on "a really neat place" on the moon "just on the near-side" of the far-side boundary.

"So at certain times of the moon's transit around Earth, we will be able to see this from Earth," Hansen said, his voice cracking. "We lost a loved one; her name was Carroll. The spouse of Reid, the mother of Katie and Ellie."

"It's a bright spot on the moon. We would like to call it Carroll," he concluded before he and the crew hugged Wiseman.

The astronauts also saw another crater they asked to be named after their capsule, "Integrity."

"Integrity and Carroll crater. Loud and clear," mission control responded.

Lunar flyby

The Orion spacecraft will move about 3,139 mph (5,052 km/h) as it passes around the moon.

During the lunar flyby, the four Artemis II astronauts — Weisman, Hansen, Christina Koch, and Victor Glover — will photograph around 30 science targets on the lunar surface. These include the huge Orientale basin, a roughly 600-mile-wide (1,000 km) impact crater that straddles the moon's near and far sides, and Hertzsprung basin, an older crater on the far side.

"I wish you were up here to see the smiling faces," Artemis II commander and astronaut Reid Weisman said today (April 6) during NASA's livestream of the lunar flyby.

The Artemis II mission will have a higher view of the moon than the Apollo missions, giving a different vantage point of the lunar surface, according to the NASA livestream. These observations are meant to give scientists fresh, close-range views of lunar geology from multiple angles during the flyby.

"It is blowing my mind what you can see with the naked eye," Glover said during the NASA livestream.

The flyby is expected to produce some of the mission's most dramatic images. From the Orion spacecraft, the crewmembers will see "Earthset" as Earth slips behind the moon, followed later by "Earthrise," as our planet reappears over the lunar horizon. The first "Earthrise" image was famously captured by the Apollo 8 mission in 1968.

According to the Associated Press, the Artemis II astronauts woke up today with a recorded message from Apollo 8 astronaut Jim Lovell shortly before he died in August 2025: "Welcome to my old neighborhood. It's a historic day and I know how busy you'll be, but don't forget to enjoy the view."

The mission's timeline will also allow the astronauts to witness a solar eclipse as the moon passes in front of the sun. Using solar eclipse glasses and special camera lenses, the crewmembers will be able to see and photograph the sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, as it peaks around the lunar edge.

"We are ready to deliver," Koch said during the NASA livestream.

What do you know about the moon? Test your knowledge with our moon quiz!

The Artemis II mission's four crewmembers have officially reached the moon system, ‪and you can watch their historic lunar flyby live along with them.

The crew's anticipated six-hour flyby of the moon begins at 2:45 p.m. EDT Monday (April 6). During this time, the astronauts — who are flying farther from Earth than any humans in history — will see the entire lunar disk outside their cabin window and have a rare chance to make up-close scientific observations of Earth's natural satellite. NASA's broadcast of the flyby begins at 1 p.m. EDT, and you can watch it right here or on the agency's YouTube page.

While the entire flyby promises to fascinate (we'll catch views of the moon's mysterious far side never seen before by human eyes), there are several key moments to watch for. Several hours into the flyby, the astronauts will swoop around the lunar far side, temporarily losing all radio contact with Earth and becoming the most remote group of humans in history. Shortly after the Orion capsule reemerges, the team will make their closest approach to the moon's surface while reaching their maximum distance from our planet.

Here's everything you need to know about the record-shattering Artemis II flight.

How far from Earth ‪— ‬and how close to the moon ‪—‬ will the astronauts get?

During their closest approach to the moon at approximately 7:02 p.m. EDT, the Artemis II crew will be about 4,066 miles (6,540 kilometers) from the lunar surface. This is significantly farther afield than the Apollo missions, which flew about 70 miles (112 km) over the surface, according to NASA.

Minutes after their closest approach to the moon, the astronauts will also reach their maximum distance from Earth. At 7:05 p.m. EDT, the crew will hit 252,757 miles (406,772 km) from the planet — surpassing the previous record, set by the Apollo 13 crew in 1970, by about 4,100 miles (6,600 kilometers).

When will the Artemis II astronauts lose contact with Earth, and for how long?

The Artemis II crew's communication blackout with Earth is expected to begin at 6:44 p.m. EDT Monday, according to NASA.The blackout is estimated to last 30 to 50 minutes as the moon blocks radio transmissions between the crew and NASA's Deep Space Network. During this quiet time, the astronauts will focus on taking photos and observations of the lunar far side, which will be about 20% illuminated by the sun at that time.

When was the last time humans visited the far side of the moon?

The last time humans reached the far side of the moon was during the Apollo era, when NASA astronauts passed behind the moon on missions that entered lunar orbit. The mission that made history first was Apollo 8 in December 1968. It was the first crewed mission to leave Earth orbit, the first to reach the moon and the first to carry astronauts to the far side.

Humans continued to visit the far side during later Apollo missions that orbited the moon, the most recent of which was the last crewed Apollo mission, Apollo 17 in 1972. That means the lunar far side has not been seen by human eyes since the Apollo program ended more than 50 years ago.

Is it really lonely there?

Yes — at least, Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins thought so.

While his crewmates Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to the lunar surface to take their famous walk, Collins waited in the crew capsule as it drifted around the lunar far side. In an iconic Apollo 11 photo, Collins snapped Aldrin and Armstrong in their lunar lander with the blue Earth hanging in the distant background — simultaneously capturing every human in existence, except for Collins.

"I am alone now, truly alone, and absolutely isolated from any known life. I am it," Collins wrote in his book "Carrying the Fire" (Cooper Square Press, 1974). "If a count were taken, the score would be three billion plus two over on the other side of the moon, and one plus God knows what on this side." (At least the four Artemis II astronauts will have each other.)

What's the view like on the far side of the moon?

The lunar far side is rougher, brighter in many places, and more heavily cratered than the Earth-facing side we're familiar with. Instead of the broad, smooth, dark patches (called "maria") we observe from Earth, the astronauts are likely to see a rugged landscape of crater rims, lava fields and scarred terrain that shows the moon's ancient history of being bombarded by asteroids.

The Artemis II crew will see about 20% of the lunar far side illuminated by the sun. A NASA visualization shows what their view will look like moment to moment.

Here's a photo to look forward to: During the flyby, the astronauts will witness a total solar eclipse from space as the sun, moon and Orion capsule fall into perfect alignment. This will allow the team a rare chance to study the sun's corona (its bright outer atmosphere) and to look for the flashes of meteorite impacts on the moon, according to NASA.

Why is there a "dark side" of the moon?

The moon's far side is also called its "dark side," but it is not permanently dark. The moon is tidally locked to Earth, which means we always see the same side of the moon. Sunlight still reaches both hemispheres of the moon over the course of a lunar month; when the near side is bright, the far side may be dark and vice versa.

What previous research has been done on the moon's far side?

Research on the lunar far side began with robotic missions long before Artemis. The first came in 1959, when the Soviet Luna 3 mission returned the first photographs of the lunar far side. That was the first evidence that the far side had fewer maria and a much more cratered appearance, which raised major questions about how the moon formed and evolved.

Human observation began with Apollo 8 and subsequent Apollo missions. However, not all crewmembers on these missions observed the far side of the moon, because visibility depended on the orbit and lighting. This means the Artemis II astronauts may provide views of some areas no human has previously seen directly with the naked eye under those conditions.

Since the Apollo era, the most detailed far-side research has come from robotic orbiters. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which launched in 2009, has produced high-resolution images, topographic maps, temperature data and measurements, as well as helped to identify future landing sites, potential resources and radiation conditions that could affect human missions.

What sort of data will the astronauts collect?

Artemis II's crew will collect both lunar science data and spaceflight data. For the moon itself, the astronauts will analyze and photograph geological features on the far side, including impact craters and ancient lava flows, and practice describing subtle differences in shapes and textures. They will also record audio observations, which give scientists more context about what the crew saw in real time.

At the same time, the astronauts will collect data on themselves as the first humans to travel beyond low Earth orbit in decades. NASA says studies on the mission will examine sleep, stress, cognition, teamwork, immune responses, motion sickness, nutrition, heart health, muscle performance, eye and brain changes, and even shifts in the community of microbes living on their bodies. Data will come from monitoring devices on the astronauts' wrists; preflight and postflight testing and surveys; and biological samples, including blood, urine and saliva.

When are the Artemis II astronauts coming home?

The Artemis II astronauts are expected to return 10 days after their April 1 launch, so they will splash down sometime Saturday, April 11.

What do you know about our moon? Test your knowledge with our moon quiz!

Freelance space writer Roger Guillemette has witnessed close to 100 rocket launches since 1975. On Wednesday (April 1), he was on the ground at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, reporting live on the Artemis II moon launch for Live Science. Here's what he saw at the historic liftoff:

There was palpable excitement at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) press site for the Artemis II launch, unlike anything I've experienced in my many years of reporting on human spaceflight from this iconic location.

Journalists from all over the world — both grizzled veterans and wide-eyed newcomers — were positively giddy about witnessing astronauts returning to the moon after so many decades.

Bright television lights glowed atop the news organization trailers along "media row" as the major networks assembled their A-teams to cover the landmark event. Morning and evening national newscasts originated from KSC, with the Vehicle Assembly Building's huge American flag and NASA "meatball" logo (first unveiled in 1959) serving as a dramatic backdrop. What was old suddenly felt new again.

Those of us on the older end of the age spectrum have fuzzy, fading memories of the Apollo era. For me, the historic Apollo 11 lunar landing mission in July 1969 filled the week of my 10th birthday; a few years later, in December 1972, a buddy and I "camped out" in his finished basement, watching color (!) television until after midnight to see Apollo 17 light up the heavens over Florida's Space Coast on what would be the final crewed voyage to the moon for 50 years and counting.

After those heady years of the "moon race," the closest experience to Artemis II for me was the first flight of the space shuttle Columbia, STS-1, in April 1981. As a college senior, I stood just a few hundred yards from the spot where I watched Artemis II, witnessing a brand-new, never-flown space plane soar skyward into the dawn. I remember watching Columbia leap off the launchpad while I softly whispered, "Go, go," with tears welling in my eyes. I found myself unconsciously doing the same for Artemis II (now with a few added colorful epithets).

Artemis II's launch was impossibly bright to witness in person. Still images or video simply do not capture the sheer brilliance and intensity of the Space Launch System's ignition and liftoff. Seeing the brilliant white-orange plume concentrate beneath the rocket was like looking at the sun itself, and it appeared much more dazzling than any space shuttle launch I ever witnessed. You don't simply watch the mighty rocket rise — you feel it, shaking the ground beneath you, its powerful, staccato thumping reverberating through your chest.

More than five decades after Apollo 17 astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison "Jack" Schmitt reluctantly departed the spectacular rolling hills and massive boulders of the lunar valley known as Taurus-Littrow, the United States (with its international partners) is once again taking the bold steps to continue exploring the strange new world it abandoned generations ago.

The goal has always been in sight. On a clear winter night, it rides high in the heavens, bringing light to barren, snow-covered landscapes. On a cool autumn evening, it hangs impossibly large on the eastern horizon, casting a warm orange glow on farmers and stargazers alike — each witness sharing the feeling that they can almost reach up and touch it.

Almost.

The goal has never been out of sight. It beckons us all to stop and renew an old acquaintance: our neighbor, the moon.

Think you know about the moon? Test your smarts with our moon quiz!

The Artemis II mission astronauts have released their first video messages from space, giving the public a glimpse of deep-space travel roughly two days into their historic journey.

In the crew's first broadcast, the astronauts describe the stunning view outside Orion's windows.

"You can see the entire globe from pole to pole," NASA astronaut Reid Weisman said. "It was the most spectacular moment, and it paused all four of us in our tracks."

The other astronauts echoed Weisman's awe of the view. "Trust us; you look amazing," NASA astronaut Victor Glover said about Earth. "You look beautiful."

Along with Weisman, Glover, NASA astronaut Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, the fifth "crewmember" to tag along on the mission is Rise, a small, white moon plushie. Designed by 8-year-old Lucas Ye, the moon-themed mascot was chosen from more than 2,600 entries and was inspired by the famous "Earthrise" image from Apollo 8. Once Orion reached weightlessness, Glover was seen playing with the floating plushie during the crew's early broadcast, using it as a traditional signal that the spacecraft was in zero gravity and a lighthearted way to stay active in space.

Koch also added humor to the broadcast by recounting her fix of the jammed $30 million Orion toilet. NASA representatives said the crew and mission control worked together to troubleshoot the problem and later reported that the spacecraft's toilet had been restored to normal operations.

"I'm proud to call myself the space plumber," Koch joked in the broadcast.

NASA's Artemis II mission successfully lifted off from Florida's Space Coast Wednesday (April 1) around 6:35 p.m. EDT. But today (Thursday) marked the mission's next crucial step: the translunar injection burn, the long push that sends the spacecraft out of Earth's orbit and into deep space, where it will rendezvous with the moon about four days from now.

"[The burn] propels Orion on a path toward the moon and sets it on the free-return trajectory that will ultimately bring [the] crew back to Earth for splashdown," NASA officials wrote in the Artemis II press kit. "Though only two days into the mission, it essentially doubles as Orion's deorbit burn as well."

The translunar injection burn is the last turning point for any moon mission. Because the astronauts are still in Earth's orbit, they have an easier chance to return home if the mission management team deems the mission unfit to proceed. After the spacecraft leaves Earth's gravity, there's no way back but to swing around the moon as planned.

Thankfully, NASA's mission management team found no issues and gave the green light for the burn. Scheduled for 7:49 p.m. EDT, the burn lasted 5 minutes and 50 seconds. According to NASA, the Orion spacecraft has "6,000 pounds of thrust, enough to accelerate a car from 0 to 60 mph in about 2.7 seconds."

"We personally felt the power of your perseverance through every second of that burn," Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen said after the completion of the burn.

With the burn now complete, Artemis II stopped circling Earth and began the mission it was built for: a 10-day test flight around the moon and back, meant to prove NASA can safely send astronauts into deep space again. The results of the mission will directly influence the planning of future missions in the Artemis campaign, which aims to return humans to the lunar surface no earlier than 2028.

"With this burn to the moon, we do not leave Earth. We choose it," Artemis astronaut Christina Koch said before the burn commenced.

The Artemis II crew is expected to reach the moon Monday, April 6, on the sixth day of the mission, and return to Earth Saturday, April 11, after a 10-day mission.

Test your knowledge of the moon below with our moon quiz!

On April 1, four astronauts blasted off on what will be a 10-day voyage around the moon and back. Their mission, the first to send humans to the moon since 1972, will test key systems for two lunar landings in 2028, which will, in turn, lay the foundation for a permanent base on the moon's surface.

The Artemis II crew — which consists of commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen — are slingshotting around Earth before initiating a translunar injection burn to send them on a roughly 245,000-mile (394,000 kilometers) flight to lunar orbit.

Here's the launch of the historic mission in pictures.

Sunrise over moonshot

At 322 feet (98 meters) in height, the Artemis II rocket stack is taller than the Statue of Liberty and provides over 8.8 million pounds (4 million kilograms) of thrust to a capsule the size of a camper van.

Taking a seat

Artemis II's launch has been hotly anticipated, with NASA originally targeting a moon landing by 2024 back in 2019.

Still, given the numerous delays and setbacks suffered by Artemis II and its predecessor mission, setting up this early was an act of faith by many onlookers.

Onto the tarmac

To avoid health issues in space, it's standard protocol for astronauts to quarantine before a launch.

The Artemis II astronauts quarantined with their families and, just before exiting, played a card game — one of many prelaunch rituals intended to "use up" bad luck before heading out to the launchpad.

Locked and loaded

The astronauts experienced up to four times Earth's gravity during their ascent to orbit, accelerating to speeds of up to 10,000 mph (16,000 km/h).

Those speeds pale in comparison to those at reentry, in which the Artemis II astronauts will fall at slightly over 25,000 mph (40,000 km/h), becoming the fastest humans in history.

Liftoff

To reach orbit, the SLS rocket burns through more than 730,000 gallons (28,000 liters) of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen in its core stage alone.

The core stage's four RS-25 engines consume propellant at a rate of 1,500 gallons (5,700 liters) per second during their eight minutes of operation. That's more than enough to drain an Olympic-size swimming pool in that time.

Live from Cape Canaveral

This image of the liftoff was taken by Roger Guillemette, Live Science's Artemis II launch correspondent, for our live Artemis II coverage.

Guillemette has witnessed close to 100 piloted spaceflight launches, from the July 1975 Saturn IB launch of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project to the final launch of the Shuttle Atlantis on STS-135 in July 2011.

A screaming across the sky

The SLS rocket produced a thunderous noise measuring 176 decibels during liftoff ‪—‬ loud enough to cause serious eardrum damage and to be heard up to 30 miles (50 km) away.

As the world watched

Up to 400,000 people watched the rocket take off from along Florida's Space Coast, with tens of millions simultaneously watching online, according to early viewing estimates.

Rocketing skyward

It took around seven seconds for the SLS rocket to clear the launch tower after its two solid-fuel boosters ignited for liftoff. The rocket broke the sound barrier just under a minute into the flight.

Onward to the moon

Upon entering space, the Orion capsule detatched from the rocket's core stage.

The crew will now swing around Earth, performing a gravitational slingshot maneuver to pick up speed.

This will be followed by a translunar injection burn that puts the crew on their final trajectory toward the moon.