On Nov. 4, 2015, the United States Air Force planned to launch an experimental rocket for small satellites from the Pacific Missile Range Facility off Barking Sands, Kauai, Hawaii. The launch didn't according to plan.

For this mission, the Air Force was testing out the Super Strypi rocket. The rocket used a rail to help with the liftoff.

Super Strypi left the ground, but the rocket quickly spun out of control. When it crashed, it destroyed all of the tiny satellites riding aboard the rocket. The cause? Likely a problem with the first stage motor.

The mission lost 13 tiny satellites known as cubesats. Cubesats are a popular option for space missions, because they are small and cheap, and they often operate in swarms. After failing to launch this batch of cubesats, the Super Strypi program never recovered from its failure, and the Air Force never tried launching another one.

Why it mattered

The Super Strypi rocket was a 21st century take on a 1960s rocket. It was designed to be a modern version of the three-stage Strypi sounding rocket used for for reentry vehicle and anti-missile target tests. Its three stages, powered by Aerojet Rocketdyne solid rocket motors, was designed to reach orbit, rather than suborbital trajectories common to most sounding rockets.

The U.S. Air Force hoped Super Strypi would be a new tool for quick-response launches based on national security needs. Altogether, it was designed to launch small payloads of up to 300 kilograms into space for a mere $15 million per mission.

The rocket's primary payload was the ORS-4 satellite, short for Operationally Responsive Space 4, which was built for the Air Force by engineers at the University of Hawaii (who nicknamed it HiakaSat). It was designed to capture Earth imagery and monitor the environment over the course of a year.

The 12 other payloads on Super Strypi included eight cubesats for NASA's Edison Demonstration of Smallsat Networks mission, and as well as four others for universities that had been added as secondary payloads.

Since the Super Strypi failure, neither the Air Force or Space Force has opted to use the rocket for a new mission. The Space Force has turned instead to commercial companies for fast-turnaround launch support.

In June of this year, the U.S. Space Force teamed up with Rocket Lab to launch the Victus Haze mission with just 17 hours of notice, a new record to demonstrate short-turnaround launch response.

President Trump issued a declaration yesterday (Nov. 3), proclaiming space open to all humanity for exploration, and the right of American citizens to develop and settle the solar system according to United States laws.

"The American Declaration of Freedom in Space," describes space as the "province of all humans" and asserts that the United States will lead humanity's expansion into the cosmos. The proclamation reiterates the administration's goals with NASA's Artemis program to return American astronauts to the moon by 2028 and eventually sending astronauts to Mars, but introduces no new funding, programs or policy directives.

"Our Nation will lead the way in the exploration, development, use, and settlement of these new frontiers — forging an interplanetary civilization founded on the enduring and inalienable rights of freedom and individual liberty," the document says.

Trump invoked America's "frontier spirit," highlighting Apollo 11 astronauts as the first people in history to walk on the moon's surface and robotic rovers exploring Mars as examples of U.S. leadership, and emphasized the country's flourishing commercial space sector helping ensure "American space superiority for all eternity."

"The nation that leads in space will shape the future of humanity," the declaration says, and pledges that America will carry the values of faith, freedom and individual liberty into an interplanetary civilization.

The proclamation also highlights the success of NASA's Artemis II mission in April, which carried four astronauts on a 10-day journey around the moon and set a record for the farthest humans have ever traveled from Earth. The follow-up to that mission, Artemis III, is scheduled to launch next summer (2027), and will test rendezvous and docking operations between NASA's Orion spacecraft and the program's two commercial lunar landers in low Earth orbit.

Artemis IV will be the program's first lunar landing mission, and is targeted for 2028. A December 2025 executive order from the President reaffirmed the goal of meeting that timeline, as well as the deployment of the initial elements for a permanent lunar outpost by 2030.

Trump's declaration yesterday does not establish new NASA programs, allocate additional funding or issue instructions to federal agencies. Its sweeping language, though, does echo some of the principles in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which guarantees freedom of exploration while prohibiting national sovereignty claims on other planets.

Marvel fatigue? Think again, especially after Spider-Man: Brand New Day made over $2.5 billion worldwide and Avengers: Doomsday is looking hot, hot, hot!

But even after the uneven Multiverse Saga ends (hopefully on a high note), Marvel Studios won’t be stopping. So, we've put together a list of all the upcoming MCU movies and shows confirmed so far.

While the MCU isn't stopping, Marvel has slowed its roll, with the powers that be returning to the “quality over quantity” approach that defined Marvel Studios’ Infinity Saga output. This means no more than three movies per year and, perhaps more importantly, severely cutting down on TV productions, with a focus on multi-season shows rather than limited series that should’ve been a movie.

It’s a time of change for both Disney and Marvel, but it seems everyone agrees the big screen reigns supreme, so expect a thinner streaming output and more relevant movies starring characters you actually know.

More will be revealed in due time, but for now, here’s what lies at the Multiverse Saga’s end and beyond...

Spoilers ahead for the Marvel Cinematic Universe so far.

Avengers: Doomsday — December 18, 2026

Release date: December 18, 2026 | Director: Anthony & Joe Russo | Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal, Robert Downey Jr.

Earth’s Mightiest Heroes (from different Earths, actually) are assembling again in December 2026.

Avengers: Doomsday's cast looks ridiculously stacked, and it’ll finally realize the dream of bringing together the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men (Fox’s original ones, that is) on the big screen. It’s a lot to absorb, and we don’t really know what's going on, but the trailers released so far are promising.

Anthony & Joe Russo (Captain America: The Winter Soldier & Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War & Endgame) are returning to direct, so that’s a good reason to be hyped even if the duo’s post-Marvel career hasn’t been the most exciting. Stephen McFeely (one of their two go-to scribes) is also back, and Michael Waldron (Loki) is helping out as well. It’s an all-star team for the most ambitious MCU project to date, at least until it all culminates in...

Daredevil: Born Again (Season 3) — March 2027

Release window: March 2027 | Showrunner: Dario Scardapane | Cast: Charlie Cox, Mike Colter, Finn Jones, Krysten Ritter

Daredevil: Born Again’s debut season was far from perfect, but most viewers agreed that Season 2 was a marked improvement.

Hopefully, that energy will continue in the third and final outing, as the Defenders reunite, with Finn Jones, Krysten Ritter, and Mike Colter all returning from their Netflix shows. Another shocker is the (unofficially) confirmed return of Elodie Yung’s Elektra.

We suspect some of these characters will be transferred to movies post-Secret Wars. In any case, Born Again’s final season should be packed, especially if Marvel Television is sticking to eight or nine episodes.

Avengers: Secret Wars — December 17, 2027

Release date: December 17, 2027 | Director: Anthony & Joe Russo | Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal, Robert Downey Jr.

Practically nothing about the follow-up to Avengers: Doomsday has been revealed yet (though we assume the MCU’s main players will be part of the ensemble), but we know it fully starts shooting in late 2026 and is eyeing a Christmas 2027 arrival. The plan is to leave a year-long wait between the two event movies, leaving fans hanging like back in the MCU’s glory days.

The title comes from Jonathan Hickman’s Secret Wars (2015), which is probably the main source of inspiration for the upcoming big-screen event. Incursions (realities bleeding into each other) have already been set up during the Multiverse Saga, and we know Doomsday directly deals with the multiverse’s breaking point, so it’s easy to see where the larger picture is going.

No spoilers here, but prepare for a very different kind of Avengers flick if Battleworld is indeed the main setting.

Untitled X-Men film — May 5, 2028

Release date: May 5, 2028 | Director: Jake Schreier | Cast: Kit Connor, Sadie Sink, Adam Driver, Christopher Abbott

Whatever happens in Secret Wars (we’ve heard Marvel Studios intends to soft-reboot), Phase Seven of the MCU will kick off with a long-awaited, fresh take on the X-Men — now part of the larger Marvel universe housing all characters. Thunderbolts* director Jake Schreier will be directing, with the same writing team from that movie joining him for another Marvel adventure.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day already did some heavy lifting when it came to setting up one of its leads (Sadie Sink’s Jean Grey), but it’s unclear how the whole group will be assembled.

We know for sure Cyclops (Kit Connor), Rogue (Inde Navarrette), Emma Frost (Samara Weaving), Storm (Maya Boyd), Angel (Asa Germann), Charles Xavier (Christopher Abbott), and Mr. Sinister (Adam Driver) are confirmed to appear, but the cast should grow in the coming months.

Just don’t expect to meet Magneto… yet.

Ghost Rider — July 28, 2028

Release date: July 28, 2028 | Director: Shawn Levy | Cast: Ryan Gosling (more to be confirmed)

Phase Seven’s second movie will be an unexpected one, but the fan reaction to its reveal was glowing: Ghost Rider, starring Ryan Gosling, with Deadpool & Wolverine’s Shawn Levy directing.

The duo worked together on Star Wars: Starfighter, and it seems it went so well that Disney and Marvel are happy with them reviving the Spirit of Vengeance as the MCU expands its dark borders.

It’s too early to even know which Ghost Rider that Gosling will be playing (Johnny Blaze or Danny Ketch) or where the plot is going, but considering Levy’s past movies, we’re expecting an adventurous tone that blends well with Ghost Rider’s very striking, hellish visuals and darker themes.

Of course, this project is an invitation to add more magical beings to the MCU and explore the Strange-adjacent side of it. Maybe it’s our first step towards a Midnight Sons event movie? We can only hope.

Black Panther 3 — December 15, 2028

Release date: December 15, 2028 | Director: Ryan Coogler | Cast: David Jonsson, Denzel Washington, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke

Ryan Coogler has taken a break from Marvel to make the excellent Sinners and help create a new iteration of The X-Files, but he’s confirmed to be coming back to wrap up his epic Black Panther trilogy. A while back, he confirmed he’d convinced Denzel Washington to join the MCU, and it sounds like those plans haven’t changed.

We also have a new T’Challa: David Jonsson (Alien: Romulus), who’s meant to play the son of the original T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman). If the years don’t make sense considering he was a kid in Wakanda Forever, wait until Secret Wars’ “soft reboot” for the answers.

What we know for sure is that series veterans Letitia Wright and Winston Duke are expected to stick around, but no plot details are available yet.

Zodiac — TBA 2028

Release window: 2028 | Showrunner: Unconfirmed | Cast: Unconfirmed

Revealed at NYCC 2026, Zodiac is set to be Marvel Television’s next ongoing series after Daredevil: Born Again is over. Little is known about the premise at this point, though TV boss Brad Winderbaum has confirmed it’s a “globetrotting, international espionage show about secrets and lies and betrayals” with a packed cast of characters.

Word is the show is, more specifically, a British spy thriller with three leads, two male and one female. It’s expected to shoot in London during spring 2027, and chances are we’ll know much more about it well before that.

Of course, longtime Marvel TV fans are hoping for an Agents of SHIELD revival of sorts (its canonicity was never entirely clear), but it seems this show isn’t exactly that, though Clark Gregg (Agent Coulson) might be involved.

We’ve learned to never say never when it comes to Marvel comebacks, so stay tuned for more news.

Marvel Zombies: The Winter Soldier, The Fist of Khonshu & The Last Guardian — 2027/2028/2029

Release windows: October 2027 / October 2028 / October 2029 | Showrunner: Bryan Andrews | Cast: Unconfirmed

Following a four-episode season in 2025, the animated series Marvel Zombies will be returning for three consecutive years (starting in 2027) just in time for Halloween.

The twist is that we’re now looking at three two-part specials: The Winter Soldier, The Fist of Khonshu, and The Last Guardian. It’s a huge departure from the previous plans with the Zombies and What If...? series, but it's one that could pay off.

Nothing is known about these small-scale projects at this point, but we know Marvel Zombies was a large enough hit on Disney+ to warrant more, and we’re okay with being surprised when it comes to format.

One has to assume these specials could work as one-shot comic books, but it’ll be interesting to see whether Marvel Television can tell cohesive and compelling stories with even shorter story arcs.

When "Star Trek" celebrated its 60th anniversary in September, it was a strangely muted affair. Sure, there were fan events, screenings, and even an attempt at a world record for the biggest simultaneous Vulcan salute in history, but the lack of a "Doctor Who"-style birthday episode felt like a glaring omission. It was like everyone had shown up for the party, but the organizers had forgotten to book the headline entertainment.

Luckily, there were rather more fireworks for the show's 30th birthday, when both "Voyager" and "Deep Space Nine" marked the occasion in style. "Voyager" episode "Flashback" took Tuvok (Tim Russ) back to his days on the USS Excelsior bridge alongside Original Series vets Hikaru Sulu (George Takei) and Janice Rand (Grace Lee Whitney).

But it was "DS9"'s "Trials and Tribble-ations" that turned out to be the more memorable voyage to "Trek" past, as Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) — with the help of some then-state-of-the-art digital trickery — came face-to-face with a young Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner).

While "Flashback" aired within days of "Trek"'s September 8 birthday, fans had to wait a little longer for "DS9"'s contribution to the celebrations. Showrunner Ira Steven Behr was keen to avoid disrupting the space station-set drama's story arc for a comedic diversion, meaning that "Trials and Tribble-ations" didn't debut until November 4, 1996.

In the wake of "Flashback" — not to mention Spock and Scotty's comebacks in "The Next Generation" stories "Unification" and "Relics" — the "DS9" writers' room had already decided they needed to take a very different approach.

Early on, "Battlestar Galactica" creator Ronald D. Moore pitched a follow-up to Original Series episode "A Piece of the Action" (aka the one where the residents of Iotia brought 1920s gangsters to life). In an extremely meta concept that predated "Galaxy Quest" by three years, the story would have taken the Enterprise crew to a planet of Kirk and Spock impersonators.

"For the thirtieth anniversary, you go back, and you're basically going back to the planet of 'Star Trek' fans," Moore recalled in "The Fifty-Year Mission" by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross. "They have conventions; they know all the adventures. It's a phenomenon, and you could comment on 'Star Trek' as a whole. I thought it would be interesting. But [fellow writer] René Echevarria thought it was a dangerous show to do, that we would be talking down to the fans on some level, and perhaps it wasn't the best way to go."

Instead, Echevarria suggested telling a story in the vein of Woody Allen's "Zelig" or "Forrest Gump" (then a zeitgeisty, multi-Oscar-winning box-office smash) and integrating the "Deep Space Nine" crew with the events of an Original Series episode.

"I thought, 'What bigger treat could there be than to go back into the past and board the original Enterprise and have a mission there?'" Echevarria said in a 1996 making-of documentary. "And Ron immediately said, 'It's gotta be "The Trouble with Tribbles!"'"

"The Trouble with Tribbles", a 1967 episode from "Star Trek"'s second season, is one of the most famous in the franchise's history. As well as featuring some minor scuffles with Klingons, it sees the Enterprise and Deep Space Station K-7 infested with the eponymous tribbles — cute, cuddly furballs of calm that reproduce at a dangerously exponential rate.

In "Trials and Tribble-ations", a timey-wimey incident involving the Bajoran Orb of Time transports the USS Defiant (one of the best "Star Trek" spaceships) back to the era of Kirk and Spock's famous five-year mission.

As Sisko recounts the adventure to a pair of agents from Starfleet's Department of Temporal Investigations (named Dulmur and Lucsly in homage to "The X-Files"), we learn how he, Dax (Terry Farrell), O'Brien (Colm Meaney), and Bashir (Alexander Siddig) spent a day playing Original Series cosplay on Kirk's Enterprise. It's "Star Trek"'s answer to "Back to the Future: Part II", as the crew interacts with established events while taking pains not to mess with history.

Although most of the guest stars from "The Trouble with Tribbles" had passed away over the intervening decades, one actor who'd played a pivotal role was still around. By the time he turned up in "Star Trek", 20-something stand-up comedian Charlie Brill had already brushed shoulders with pop-culture legend, having shared the bill with the Beatles when they made their famous appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in February 1964.

Three years later he'd swapped Lennon and McCartney for Kirk and Spock, playing a Klingon spy masquerading as human Arne Darvin, whose cover is ultimately blown by the famously Klingon-phobic tribbles. In the newer episode, the older Darvin travels back in time to assassinate Kirk, plotting his revenge with a bomb implanted in an unfortunate tribble. Thwarting the evil scheme — and preserving the timeline — forms the basis of Sisko's mission.

Brill's return was seemingly written in the stars. When planning the episode, Behr and the other writers met for lunch at Mulberry Street Pizza in Beverly Hills and noted that the actor was alive and still working in the business. Then, just as they were talking about him, they happened to spot Brill across the very same restaurant.

"What were the chances that we would be talking about this old TV episode from 30 years ago, and the guy who we were talking about to bring back on the show would be standing there ordering a slice of pizza?" Behr recalled at the Trek Talks telethon (via TrekMovie).

But however strong its story, "Trials and Tribble-ations" was always going to live and die by its recreation of ' 60s-era "Trek". The production team subsequently pulled out all the stops, with Behr suggesting at the time that it may have been the most expensive hour of TV ever made.

The actors were kitted out in era-appropriate primary-colored outfits and given '60s hairdos. The make-up team also recreated the appearance of the Original Series' Klingons, whose very different look — "We do not discuss it with outsiders," says Worf — would later be explained away in a "Star Trek: Enterprise" two-parter.

The late Walter Koenig (who'd featured as Chekov in "The Trouble with Tribbles") showed the younger officers how to flip open a communicator, and the stunt team choreographed fights to look like the cheesy, Western-inspired brawls of a bygone era.

Behind the scenes, production designer Michael Okuda and his team used a mixture of original plans and scans of the episodes to painstakingly recreate the sets, while the visual effects team constructed an exact half-scale replica of the original 11-foot Enterprise shooting model housed in the Smithsonian.

The biggest magic trick, however, was dependent on CG technology — then very much in its infancy — making everyone believe that Sisko and co were walking the same corridors as Kirk. VFX supervisor Gary Hutzel had provided proof-of-concept early in the process:

"He showed us a clip from the old show," said Behr. "We looked at it and said, 'Okay, that looks good, but what does that have to do with us?' And he said, 'Well, you see that guy coming in through the door? That's not from the 1967 episode. That's one of our people!'"

Shooting in front of blue- and green-screens, the actors' performances were meticulously matched to the Original Series episode. Early on, Moore had identified two sequences from "The Trouble with Tribbles" that would be perfect for selling the concept: Kirk dressing down a line-up of officers after a bar room brawl and Tribbles raining down on Kirk from a storage container.

O'Brien and Bashir were digitally pasted over the original actors in the former, while the latter was explained away by Sisko and Dax's madcap dash to find the elusive explosive tribble. In most other shots, the DS9ers became background observers in existing scenes.

But there were still debates to be had over whether the two captains should meet. "It led to one of the most vociferous arguments we've had," said Behr, a passionate advocate for the "yes" camp. "We were so deadlocked, and there was so much emotion in the air, we actually turned to the writer intern and said, ‘What do you think?’ End of stalemate. Of course, being an intern and being a smart guy, he sided with his executive producer. And life went on." (The scene in which Sisko hands Kirk a duty roster for approval was actually lifted from another Original Series episode, "Mirror, Mirror", with Brooks replacing Barbara Luna (Lt. Marlena Moreau) on the bridge.)

It was all worth the effort. "Trials and Tribble-ations" was the most-watched episode of "DS9"'s fifth season, bagged nominations for three Emmys and a Hugo, and is now widely regarded as one of the best "Trek" episodes of all time.

David Gerrold, who wrote "The Trouble with Tribbles" and appeared as an extra in "Trials and Tribble-ations", described it as "possibly the best episode of 'Star Trek' after the Original Series," and various members of the writers' room have described it as a highlight of their time on the final frontier.

"From the writers to the director to the lighting, costumes, the set, sound effects, visual effects — everybody really put in so much time on that episode to really recreate the original Enterprise in any way they possibly could," said Moore. "Everybody was staring at film clips, doing research into [prop/costume] materials. It was a mania, and everybody just threw themselves into it. They wanted to make it great. And it shows."

'The Trouble with Tribbles' and 'Trials and Tribble-ations' are available to stream on Paramount+ in both the US and UK.

NASA's Swift space telescope has reached the end of its long and winding road.

Swift fell uncontrolled to Earth today (Nov. 4), 22 years after it launched but just three months after a private spacecraft was supposed to boost it to a higher, life-extending orbit.

The 3,200-pound (1,450 kilograms) observatory reentered Earth's atmosphere at 7:39 a.m. EST (1239 GMT) today over northern Sumatra, according to satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell, who cited U.S. Space Force data. The fall likely didn't make much of an impact; NASA officials predicted beforehand that most of the minibus-sized Swift would burn up as it fell, and they put the odds of any of the surviving pieces hurting anyone on Earth at just 1 in 2,100.

Swift — officially known as the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Explorer — launched to Earth orbit in November 2004 on a two-year mission to study gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), the most powerful explosions in the universe. "Swift" was not an acronym but rather referred to the spacecraft's observational agility.

"Swift needed to detect and locate gamma-ray bursts, communicate their position to other observatories, and then swing its telescopes around to image the burst locations before their afterglows faded out," S. Bradley Cenko, Swift's principal investigator (PI) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said in an Oct. 23 statement. "This typically took Swift about a minute to do."

Swift didn't just observe GRBs. It also studied a variety of other cosmic bodies and phenomena, from faraway supernova explosions and feeding black holes to asteroids and comets in our own solar system.

And it kept doing this long after its warranty expired — for about 20 years after, in fact. The space telescope didn't conduct its final science observation until this past Oct. 20. (Swift underwent a name change during this stretch: In 2018, it was rechristened the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory after its first PI, who died the previous year.)

"Swift delivered an incredible, lasting return on investment for the nation, designed for a two-year primary mission but productive for more than 10 times as long," Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of NASA's Astrophysics Division, said in the same Oct. 23 statement.

"In that time, Swift played a major role in advancing our understanding of the changing universe and was part of a revolution in astrophysics that showed how critical rapid-response observations are to the entire community," he added.

Swift was incredibly productive, observing more than 2,000 GRBs and 1,400 supernovas over the course of its long scientific life. But it could have gathered even more data, had a dramatic rescue mission worked out.

In September 2025, NASA awarded the Arizona company Katalyst Space a $30 million contract to design, launch and operate a robotic spacecraft that would meet up with Swift and boost it to a higher orbit, thus extending its operational life.

Swift was falling back to Earth: It had no onboard thrusters to counteract the effect of atmospheric drag, which had been pulling the observatory down ever since it launched. The process was accelerating as Swift got lower, so Katalyst had to work fast. And the company did: It launched its refrigerator-sized, three-armed LINK servicing spacecraft on July 3, targeting an August capture of Swift.

That didn't happen, however. LINK suffered problems with its propulsion system and orientation-maintaining reaction wheels, which nixed the planned meetup. Still, it was a worthwhile effort, according to NASA.

"From the beginning, this was a high-risk, high-reward mission," Domagal-Goldman said in a statement on Sept. 25, the day that LINK itself crashed back to Earth.

"And while we'll be sad to see Swift's mission come to a close, we knew this boost effort would be worthwhile either way — advancing U.S. spacecraft servicing technology, challenging us to meet unprecedented mission timelines, and testing how we operate satellites to extend their time in low Earth orbit," he added.

Swift's crash today wasn't exactly unusual, by the way. At least three large objects — dead satellites or spent rocket bodies — fall back to Earth every day on average, a 2025 report found. And that number is bound to rise in the coming years, as humanity builds out more and more megaconstellations in Earth orbit.

Scientists have long suspected that Mars is geologically "dead," but new spacecraft observations suggest the Red Planet's volcanoes are merely sleeping.

That means that Olympus Mons, the extinct Martian volcano that at around 16 miles (26 kilometers) above the surrounding Martian plains is the largest mountain in the solar system, may in fact be a slumbering giant.

The observations were made with the European Space Agency (ESA) mission ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) as it studied volcanic fissures along the Alba Mons region of the Red Planet. Alba Mons is in the Tharsis region of Mars, the same area that is home to Olympus Mons. While the latter is the tallest volcano in the solar system, at 374 miles (600 km) across, about the size of Arizona, the Alba Mons region is the largest volcano when considering surface area.

TGO detected gas containing hydrogen chloride making its way to the surface of Mars through the Alba Mons fissures. The same gas is commonly found escaping from magmatic vents on Earth, with the compound coming from hot magma beneath the surface. Detecting it on Mars is a sign of dormant Martian volcanism.

Orbital imagery had previously shown some volcanoes appear to have been active within the last few million years, and seismometers have detected the rumbling of "marsquakes," both implying the Red Planet is volcanically active. However, eruptions and lava flows have been conspicuous by their absence.

"Our findings suggest that Mars has retained enough internal heat to support volcanic activity until recently, and possibly still does," team co-leader and scientist at the Space Research Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Daniel Mège, said in a statement sent to Space.com via email. "The TGO was able to find the smoking gun. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack."

Evidence of dormant Martian volcanism is rising

Mège and colleagues were first alerted to something strange happening on Mars when they noticed spikes of hydrogen chloride during Martian summer and on the northern hemisphere of the Red Planet. That is both a time and place at which hydrogen chloride shouldn't be detected.

The gas usually peaks in the northern hemisphere during winter on Mars, disappearing in the summer. This variation is connected to the water and dust cycle on Mars. An exception to the rule occurs over volcanic fissures on the flanks of the Alba Mons volcano, in early summer.

The TGO followed up on this by detecting fresh and narrow fissures, in some cases hundreds of feet long, in the Alba Mons region. A clear sign of volcanism.

"It's truly amazing that it spotted a handful of molecules from a perhaps intermittent source, whilst moving continuously along its orbit to monitor the whole Martian atmosphere," Mège said.

The team thinks that these gases have been rising from the interior of Mars during the Martian winter, becoming blocked by ice. When this ice sublimates, changes directly from solid to gas, during summer, the gas is released, prompting spikes in hydrogen chloride seen by the TGO.

"Looking at the spatial distribution of the seeping, it became instantly obvious to me that there was something volcanic behind it, but it had to be demonstrated," said Mège. "A huge part of the work consisted of examining all the possible chemical processes going on in the Martian atmosphere.

"We needed to be rigorous, critical and creative to explain the presence of hydrogen chloride. The data were complex, but also excellent brain food."

Implications for life on Mars?

Mège and colleagues theorize that the gas is connected to "volcanic plumbing" in the form of a dormant magma chamber under the surface of Mars.

Regions like this could become hotspots (pun not intended) in the search for life on Mars. That is because magmatic gases like hydrogen chloride would have been more abundant in the past, creating a thicker Martian atmosphere and warmer climate.

Not only would this have led to liquid water covering much of the Martian surface, but when lava bubbled through the Martian crust and met groundwater, warm habitable niches ideal for microbial life could have been forged.

"Looking for Martian life in the seeping fissures of the Alba Mons region would make a lot of sense. If hydrothermal systems are active, they could contain the ingredients and energy needed for microorganisms to develop, and shield microorganisms from the hostile and changing environment above the surface," Mège concluded.

The team's research was published in the journal Science Advances on Wednesday (Nov. 4).

The launch of NASA's Artemis II mission in April 2026 caused significant disturbances in Earth's ionosphere that could have triggered temporary, localized errors in GPS positioning, a new study has found.

The study, by a team of researchers from National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan, analyzed data from high-precision networks of fixed, ground-based GPS receivers, used by U.S. scientific institutions to measure the minuscule motions of Earth's tectonic plates in the lead-up to earthquakes. By measuring how long it takes GPS signals to travel from space to ground stations, the researchers were able to reconstruct how the passage of the Artemis II mission's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket changed the concentrations of free electrons in the ionosphere — the electrically charged layer of Earth's atmosphere at altitudes above 30 miles (50 kilometers).

The measurements found that the ionospheric disturbances resulting from the sheer power of the Artemis II launch were more significant than any caused by other rocket launches to date and up to ten times more intense than those observed following the test launches of SpaceX's Starship, which is twice as powerful as the SLS based on liftoff thrust.

Artemis II saw humans return to the lunar space for the first time in more than fifty years, a mission that NASA hopes will pave the way for lunar landings and eventually the establishment of a sustained human presence on the moon.

During the mission's launch, ground-based GPS stations detected changes in the ionospheric electron density equivalent to positioning errors of several meters. Such inaccuracies could easily throw self-driving cars off track, potentially causing traffic collisions, according to Charles Lin, an earth science professor at National Cheng Kung University and one of the co-authors of the paper.

"A positioning error of a couple of meters is enough to cause an autonomous car to change lanes," Lin told Space.com. "It could have a strong impact not only on self-driving cars but also on drone positioning."

GPS receivers determine their position on Earth's surface at any single moment by measuring their distance to four different GPS satellites. When concentrations of free electrons in the upper atmosphere change — for example during a solar storm or after a rocket passage — the signal reaches Earth either faster or more slowly, resulting in inaccurate measurements.

Satellites of the U.S. GPS constellation and other Global Navigation Satellite Systems orbit Earth at an altitude of around 12,550 miles (20,200 kilometers), far above the upper edge of the ionosphere, meaning the positioning, navigation and timing signal these satellites transmit must pass through this volatile atmospheric layer to reach Earth.

Severe solar storms can disrupt GPS signals for days by dumping energy into the atmosphere in the form of charged particles from the sun. The impact of rocket launches, triggered by the supersonic flight of the rocket body through the high-altitude air, is much more short-lived. As the rocket soars up, it creates a shock wave, which virtually punches a hole into the ionosphere.

In the aftermath of the Artemis II launch, the researchers observed two such holes — one left behind by the 212-foot-long (65 meters) SSL core stage, and the other caused by two subsequent thruster burns of the rocket's upper stage. In both cases, these holes stretched across the American continent from East to West like giant 3,100-mile (5,000-kilometer) contrails.

Despite the enormous power of the SLS core stage, the disturbance caused by the second-stage burns directly inside the ionosphere was far more prominent.

Those two burns, at altitudes around 115 miles (185 kilometers), took place more than an hour after lift-off and allowed the Orion capsule to break free from Earth's gravity and head for the moon.

"Rocket launches from the ground to space produce that kind of effect, but we have never seen this kind of orbital maneuver in an interplanetary mission," said Lin. "In the future, as we are going to see many more missions going to the moon and to Mars, these space weather effects will become much more significant."

The study was published as a pre-print online in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Students gathered under the stars in Hawaii recently to explore the awesome nature of the night sky together.

What is it?

From Oct. 19 to Oct. 22, more than 1,400 students on the Big Island of Hawaii gathered for the Journey Through the Universe event to explore astronomy together.

The Journey Through the Universe program is currently in its 23rd year. It was originally developed by the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education (NCESSE) and later introduced in Hawaii by the international Gemini Observatory, a program within the U.S. National Science Foundation's NOIRLab (National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory) that works with the Department of Education Hilo-Waiākea.

The program aims to introduce students in the Hilo-Waiākea public school system to astronomy as well as the incredible science that happens across Hawaii. The students who participate range from preschoolers to seniors in high school, so the program introduces some students to astronomy and helps others explore possible careers in STEM fields.

This year, the program brought in 19 volunteer educators from scientific institutions like Maunakea Observatories and supported hands-on activities and lessons that went from the classroom to under the Milky Way.

Why is it incredible?

This image shows a growing love for astronomy in progress. From the red glow of a skywatching night (red light doesn't interfere with our ability to see at night like white light does) to the scattered telescopes and students standing under the stars, this scene paints a larger picture.

This is just one program, but in bringing together volunteers, educators, scientists and students, the program has created an incredible and enduring learning experience.

Whether or not students walk away wanting to pursue a career in STEM, this incredible immersion in astronomy can help to foster a lifelong appreciation for science and nature. It's always a great idea to gather under the stars and explore together.

In May 2026, four Russian military satellites came close to ICEYE-X36, a private synthetic aperture radar satellite widely believed to be providing battlefield intelligence for Ukraine, in an apparently aggressive and risky "grey zone" maneuver that spooked many in the space industry.

Close enough to jam or interfere with the satellite's signal, blind it with a laser, fire a metal dart at it or, simply, force it to maneuver and burn fuel, the satellites' seemingly intimidatory behavior has increased the West's desire to develop defensive technology for satellites. In October 2026, it was reported that one of those same four Russian satellites passed within 500 meters (1,650 feet) of the same ICEYE satellite.

Now, U.K. startup Shield Space is racing to apply the lessons of drone warfare in Ukraine to develop swarms of up to 100 very small, low-cost, attritable drone-like autonomous spacecraft called cubesats. Released by a car-sized carrier in Earth orbit, these microwave-sized spacecraft will act as interceptors to protect Western satellites, and their deployment will mark a next step in the evolution of orbital warfare. Shield Space says that these space drones will use "effectors" like lasers or microwaves, or "kinetic standoff" techniques, to defend Western satellites even if controllers lose contact with them.

"We're talking about deploying 100 cubesats on a protect-and-defend mission for less than £100 million [$134 million US], which is how [much] you would pay for one satellite previously," said Graeme Ritchie, co-founder and CEO of Shield Space.

Launched in 2023, NASA's civilian project Starling demonstrated that a swarm of four small satellites can cooperate and operate autonomously in space on a civilian science mission without relying heavily on real-time commands from ground control. But that seems like a far cry from the adversarial or defensive missions Shield Space and its competitors imagine. It is telling that the leading space powers appear not to have demonstrated swarm combat in space — although they tend to be reluctant to reveal their space warfare capabilities.

In the fourth quarter of 2027, Shield Space plans to take this next step in space warfare's evolution by demonstrating rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO) with two very small spacecraft. This effort, named Project Broadsword, will launch on SpaceX's Transporter-21 rideshare mission. It will send up an 8U cubesat and a smaller 3U target craft, which Shield Space plans to maneuver from 100 kilometers (62 miles) apart to within 100 meters (330 feet) of each other and, through four stages of autonomy, from human-in-the-loop to "approximately" fully autonomous. (A cubesat unit, or U, is a cube that measures 10 cm, or about 4 inches, on a side.)

The gaps between a true satellite-defense capability and this demonstration appear to be great, in terms of the technological and practical challenges of squeezing propulsion and power systems, AI compute power, sensors, the lasers the swarm needs to communicate and weapon systems onto small, lightweight maneuvering satellites. But it is a gap that Shield Space believes it can bridge through the purchase of relatively cheap off-the-shelf technology rather than more expensive bespoke designs.

"Yes, it's a problem because of size, weight and power," Ritchie told Space.com. "We've had to totally innovate from scratch some elements of the mission… but we have only got roughly 100 cm by 100 cm [40 by 40 inches], so saving space or having systems that are already completely integrated is the main aim."

"We have commissioned EnduroSat to build us an autonomous 8U cubesat that has chemical propulsion and its own imagery-collecting capability, which we will put our software on," said Dan Molland, co-founder and CTO of Shield Space, "and which we will then use to conduct our RPO.

"The good thing about cubesats is they're very standardized and they're very off the shelf," he added. "There's always some level of adjusting you've got to do, but these cubesats are a lot more plug and play than more conventional platforms, which are usually all custom-built."

Yet to focus on the technical issues may be to miss the point. "It takes an extraordinary amount of data to train the models and algorithms to achieve a fully autonomous mission," said Ritchie, "and the problem [unlike in the Ukraine war] is that data is not readily available.

"We can train AI using synthetic data, but it's just not quite good enough for space. It's incredibly important to gather data from missions like this if we really want autonomous missions in the future."

There is also the complexity of the AI needed in a war-fighting system. "Starling is a really great example," Molland told Space.com. "With Starling, you're essentially just asking a guidance system to make sure you stay within a given range of this or that satellite… But if you are controlling a swarm to deliver [a] military mission, you have a much more complex set of questions."

It also comes with the challenge of ensuring that AI complies with any rules of engagement.

But Ritchie and Molland believe these technical challenges can be overcome, and they have an aggressive schedule of demonstrations planned that they think will prove it.

Bleddyn Bowen, associate professor of astropolitics at Durham University in the U.K. and author of the book "War in Space: Strategy, Spacepower, Geopolitics" (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), is more cautious about Shield Space's plans for the evolution of space warfare.

"They remind me of a late Cold War missile-defense scheme called Brilliant Pebbles," he told Space.com. "It was one of the more advanced research and development programs in the Strategic Defense Initiative."

The plan was to defend the U.S. against Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) by using thousands of small autonomous orbiting interceptors to destroy them by collision.

"With enough investment, a lot is feasible," Bowen said. "But you're looking at many years of development and testing, solving the problem of testing kinetic weapons in space without leaving debris, and finding someone to buy the system."

It is clear from Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine that the future of warfare includes swarms of low-cost autonomous drones — and Shield Space is already planning an aggressive schedule of missions to prove that this pattern applies to the final frontier as well.

According to Ritchie, the startup hopes to quickly go from the first RPO demonstration to testing two full-sized 16U cubesats. It will then move on to a full carrier of 10 such cubesats, and then to a "super carrier" of 10 carriers, which will be deployed across multiple orbits.

"We then get towards our future vision, which we call space-based carrier strike," said Ritchie. In this scenario, "responsive launch or pre-positioned carriers will give us an ability to protect and defend entire orbits, should you choose."

With countless VPN options on the market, finding the best vpn service that reliably nails speed, streaming support, and bulletproof security can be the proverbial minefield.

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It also allows you to stream your favorite sci-fi and space series, including 'Dark Matter season 2', which premiered in October on Apple TV.

Joel Edgerton reprises his role as Jason Dessen in Blake Crouch’s mind-bending Apple TV sci-fi thriller, starring alongside Jennifer Connelly, Alice Braga, Ellen Wong and Jimmi Simpson.

Picking up after the frantic multi-reality escape of the debut season, season 2 follows Jason and his family navigating the perilous corridors of the multiverse as they search for a safe timeline to call home—only to confront the devastating emotional and physical fallout of their fractured identities.

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

There is a load of exciting sci-fi series currently available to enjoy, including 'Silo season 3' (Apple TV) and 'Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4' (Apple TV), which recently premiered the season finale with a nod to two of 'The Next Generation's' greatest-ever episodes.

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

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

Heads up stargazers! The Taurid meteor shower is upon us, bringing multiple peaks of activity that could see spectacular shooting stars and fireballs brighten November's sky. Here's where and when to look.

What is the Taurid meteor shower(s)?

Every autumn, Earth plows through streams of debris left behind by Comet Encke, a 3-mile-wide (4.8-kilometer) ice body that orbits the sun once every 3.3 years.

These debris streams produce two branches of the Taurid meteor shower: The Southern Taurids, active from Sept. 20 to Nov. 20 and the Northern Taurids, active from Oct. 20 to Dec. 10.

As Earth plows through the debris streams, tiny particles slam into our atmosphere at 65,000 miles per hour (104,607 kilometers per hour), producing dazzling streaks of light across the night sky.

Both branches of the Taurid meteor shower appear to travel away from a point of origin — or radiant — located in the constellation Taurus, which rises in the southeastern sky during November evenings.

The Taurids are known for spawning brilliant fireball meteors, which can flare brighter than Venus as pebble-sized pieces of debris enter and burn up in the atmosphere.

When to look for Taurid shooting stars

The Southern Taurid shower features two distinct yearly peaks, the first of which occurred on Oct. 14. The second takes place overnight on Nov. 4-5 and is associated with an increase in fireball activity, when up to five meteors per hour could be seen blazing across the sky.

The Northern Taurid stream, meanwhile, is expected to peak overnight on Nov. 11-12 with the same predicted hourly rate of up to five meteors per hour streaking across the dark, near moonless sky.

How to spot Taurid meteors

Head out to a dark sky location around midnight on the night of the peaks, when the shower's radiant in the constellation Taurus is positioned high in the southeastern sky, maximizing the number of meteors that can be seen.

Remember not to stare directly at the radiant. Meteors seen close to the constellation Taurus strike our planet almost head-on, and so will have the shortest trails. Instead, pick out a patch of sky a little distance away, where the shooting stars will be at their most eye-catching as they skim through Earth's atmosphere.

Never use a telescope or binoculars to hunt for meteors, you want to take in as much of the sky as possible, not limit your field of view! And be sure to wrap up warm and allow 20-30 minutes for your eyes to adapt to the dark — a vital and often overlooked step for anyone hoping to catch even the faintest of meteors.

Check out our picks of the best cameras and lenses for astrophotography, along with our guide to capturing fast-moving meteors if you want to create a permanent memory of the next big shower.

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

NASA is reviving discussions to rescue the Hubble Space Telescope, which is operating well but is on track to reenter Earth's atmosphere about six years from now.

The agency issued a request for information (RFI) on Oct. 29 for "in-space servicing" capabilities, which could include boosting Hubble's orbit (which is naturally degrading due to atmospheric drag), or even a mission to "enhance its capabilities" in some way.

Hubble, which launched in April 1990 in partnership with the European Space Agency, was serviced five times by astronauts on space shuttle missions, the most recent being in 2009. The observatory's groundbreaking achievements include helping to show that the expansion of the universe is accelerating — a discovery that won the Nobel Prize — as well as a swath of finds about planets, galaxies, stars and other parts of the universe.

Hubble also regularly teams up with other telescopes for science work, and its observations have led to the publication of at least 23,000 scientific papers, NASA figures suggest. And, despite its age, Hubble remains in high demand. "Astronomers request about seven times as much observing time as is available each year," the agency stated in September.

Hubble is also widely appreciated by the public. People have long enjoyed and celebrated its iconic images, such as the Eagle Nebula's "Pillars of Creation," a gorgeous shot that has been revisited several times over the decades. As such, this is not the first time in recent years that discussions have opened about keeping the famed observatory running for a while longer.

In 2022, for example, billionaire tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman proposed using SpaceX hardware to mount a Hubble-servicing mission. (Isaacman also purchased and commanded two crewed SpaceX missions to Earth orbit, which flew in September 2021 and September 2024.) NASA declined, however, citing possible risks to the healthy observatory.

But things have changed, apparently. Isaacman, who in December 2025 became NASA administrator, said in an Oct. 30 agency statement that Hubble's science return means the agency should "be looking at every reasonable opportunity to keep it delivering for as long as possible" — especially if doing so would be a cost savings compared with launching another mission.

In an Oct. 30 post on X, Isaacman added that it's "still worth exploring the options" and noted that NASA had previously considered "a far lower-cost solution" to keep the observatory flying. "That was then. Still worth the effort — Hubble deserves it," he added.

The new RFI also allows for alternative scenarios, however, which could include a "safe, controlled reentry into Earth's atmosphere or orbital disposal at the end of Hubble's mission."

Hubble will naturally enter the atmosphere in 2033 or 2034 due to orbital drag, so any attempt to service it would have to be in 2032, the agency stated.

Earlier this year, NASA worked with Katalyst Space Technologies on a $30 million mission that aimed to boost the orbit of the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, which is also falling back to Earth due to orbital drag.

That long-shot rescue mission — which was developed quickly to race against accelerated solar activity, which ballooned Earth's atmosphere and increased drag — launched successfully this summer. But control issues prevented Katalyst's LINK spacecraft from meeting up with Swift. Swift is expected to reenter Earth's atmosphere tomorrow (Nov. 4) after 22 years of operations — far past its two-year design lifetime.

New research suggests that collisions between stars in the early universe were common, which could help explain the rapid growth of supermassive black holes and the existence of strange Little Red Dots seen by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

The team behind this research performed simulations of the early universe and found stellar systems were densely packed, leading to stars frequently slamming into each other. While rapid collisions would have destroyed the stars involved, slower collisions would have led to repeated mergers, creating single over-massive stars, which could collapse and form larger-than-usual black holes at the end of their lives. These could be the seeds of the first supermassive black holes.

Dense stellar environments do still exist in the modern universe at the hearts of galaxies; however, these aren't conducive to the types of collisions that would birth ultra-massive stars. That is because there are already supermassive black holes at the hearts of modern galaxies, and their immense gravitational influence speeds up orbiting stars, meaning collisions that do occur are high-speed and destructive, thus failing to birth overmassive stars.

"Perhaps the strangest outcome of our simulations is that stars can merge repeatedly within the cluster until they form one gigantic star with a mass equal to that of an entire cluster," team member Claire Williams, of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), said in a statement. "When a star this huge reaches the end of its life, models suggest that it may have no option but to collapse into itself and form a massive black hole."

My, haven't you grown? How did supermassive black holes get so big so fast?

The existence of supermassive black holes before the universe was even 1 billion years old is something that has puzzled astronomers since the JWST started spotting them in 2022.

This is because black holes should need at least 1 billion years to complete the feeding and merger processes that result in a "supermassive" status of possessing millions or billions of times the mass of the sun.

One suggestion put forward by scientists to explain this is that supermassive black holes don't start out from scratch. Instead, they form from black hole seeds called intermediate-mass black holes.

Normally, when a massive star collapses, it births a stellar-mass black hole possessing a mass between 10 and 100 times the mass of the sun. This is considerably smaller than supermassive black holes that dominate the hearts of all modern galaxies with masses millions to billions of times the mass of our star.

Intermediate-mass black holes are thought to sit between these two families of cosmic titans with masses between 100 and 100,000 times that of the sun. The problem is, no single star should have enough mass to collapse and create an intermediate-mass black hole. But that is valid only for the conditions we see in the "modern" 13.8-billion-year-old universe in our immediate cosmic vicinity. Conditions were very different further out into the universe and further back in time.

Indeed, such seeds emerged from these new simulations in environments of dense star clustering, which could solve this mystery by allowing those growth processes to get a head start.

"Dense star clusters provide a natural birthplace for massive black-hole seeds in our model," Williams said. "The same environment that forms the black hole can also provide stars and gas that influence its subsequent growth."

However, this could be a two-for-one deal. The JWST has also been routinely discovering astronomical bodies called Little Red Dots in the early universe. Little Red Dots are curious because they seem to have completely disappeared by the time the cosmos reached 2 billion years old.

Little Red Dots the cosmic elephant in the room

Little Red Dots are extremely compact objects in the early universe that get their moniker from the fact that they look like red dots.

"Little Red Dots are a hot topic in astronomy. You can compare studies of people trying to understand Little Red Dots to the tale of blind people who are trying to describe an elephant by touching it, and each person describes it differently based on what part they’re touching," team member and UCLA researcher Smadar Naoz said. "Our research connects several of those perspectives together and may help us see more of the elephant."

There have been many suggestions about the true nature of these objects, but one theory suggests that they possess a rapidly growing black hole at their hearts.

The team's simulations suggest that Little Red Dots may be dense star clusters that are constantly being rocked by repeated stellar collisions. This results in a very large star, which eventually collapses to become an intermediate-mass black hole.

But if that is the case, why were there no Little Red Dots around to celebrate the 2 billionth birthday of the universe?

Less than 1 billion years after the Big Bang, the universe was devoid of well-ordered spiral galaxies, but was instead filled with dense and chaotic clusters of star birth. As these regions were rocked with frequent star collisions, the conditions were right for ultra-massive stars to form and collapse into intermediate-mass black holes.

However, as the universe cooled and expanded, these sites became the building blocks of far less chaotic galaxies. Thus, if Little Red Dots are chaotic star clusters needed to form intermediate-mass black holes, progress toward an equilibrium state could explain why they suddenly disappeared from the universe. The cosmos just wasn't extreme enough to maintain Little Red Dots anymore.

The team's research was published on Monday (Oct. 26) in the Astrophysical Journal.

The three Americans currently living off Earth just made sure their electoral voices were heard.

Anil Menon told us today (Nov. 3) that he and fellow NASA astronauts Luke Delaney and Jessica Watkins voted in the U.S. midterm elections from the International Space Station (ISS).

"Yes, you can even vote from space! All three U.S. crew members had the privilege of voting from space station. We filled out an electronic ballot and sent it securely to the election officials," Menon wrote in an X post this morning.

That post included a 29-second video, in which Menon — wearing, like many of us today, an "I voted" sticker — shows us his "voting booth."

It's actually his room on the ISS, Menon explained. "Inside of it is my computer, where I was able to fill out an electronic form and send it to Harris County so I could vote today," he said.

Most NASA astronauts register to vote in Texas' Harris County; it's home to Johnson Space Center in Houston, the agency's human spaceflight hub.

Americans have been able to vote from space since 1997, when Texas passed a law allowing this to happen. The first person to take advantage of the legislation was NASA astronaut David Wolf, who cast his ballot from Russia's Mir space station that same year. (The ISS didn't welcome its first crew until November 2000.)

"Just like any other American away from home, astronauts may fill out a Federal Post Card Application to request an absentee ballot," NASA officials wrote in an astronaut-voting explainer.

The process is somewhat involved, however.

"After an astronaut fills out an electronic ballot aboard the orbiting laboratory, the document flows through NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System to a ground antenna at the agency's White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico," they added. "From New Mexico, NASA transfers the ballot to the Mission Control Center at NASA Johnson and then on to the county clerk responsible for casting the ballot. To preserve the vote's integrity, the ballot is encrypted and accessible only by the astronaut and the clerk."

Delaney and Watkins launched to the ISS on Oct. 1 on SpaceX's Crew-13 mission. Menon has been there since mid-July, arriving aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

The trio currently share the orbiting lab with four other people — Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk and cosmonauts Anna Kikina, Pyotr Dubrov and Sergey Teteryatnikov. Kutryk and Teteryatnikov are members of Crew-13, whereas Dubrov and Kikina shared the Soyuz with Menon.

If you were on the Internet in the early 2000s looking for free browser games to play, OGame was a blooming sci-fi strategy sensation that couldn't be ignored. With online servers providing the structure for a living and evolving universe where players fought, traded, and created empires from scratch, its limited visual presentation was no issue.

Times have changed, but GameForge hasn't gone anywhere. OGame has been ported to mobile devices, and content updates have kept it alive and fresh for much longer than a plethora of installable MMO games.

With the Orion update, which will hit the newly launched universes (servers) on November 6, OGame is introducing conflicts against non-player-character (NPC) enemies, wave-based battles, co-op missions, and completely new systems that can also be disrupted by other players.

The game's endurance and such a major reinvention are stunning achievements, so we asked GameForge's Martin Liedtke (Director, Products of Browser Games) and Enrico Mareth (Senior Project Manager for OGame PC and Mobile) about the many challenges of working on OGame alongside the community for so long, what Orion is bringing to the table, and what's next for this worldwide phenomenon.

Some quotes have been editorialized and lightly trimmed for better flow.

"OGame has an enduring core: You build an interstellar empire, and your decisions matter... Keeping it fresh means adding meaningful choices to that foundation," said Liedtke. "Orion adds missions against automated opponents (PvE) alongside missions open to other players (PvP)... It supports different appetites for risk."

The GameForge veteran noted, however, that it's the community that "supplies another kind of freshness" after the studio releases the new content. "We develop the systems; players create much of the history."

Part of this approach is keeping tabs on how very different kinds of players approach what's available. "Some commanders concentrate on their economy; others enjoy expeditions or carefully coordinated fleet operations... Orion follows that approach; more experienced players can dig into fleet composition, progression, and cooperation. The aim is to offer worthwhile choices."

Liedtke also noted that "OGame's PvP has become a sophisticated contest of information and coordination" over time. Some players like to scout targets and organize combined attacks when enemy fleets are vulnerable. Those battles resolve automatically, but it's the planning that "can be remarkably intricate," especially after so many years of updates.

The PvE in Orion doesn't sacrifice any of those intricacies or density. In fact, it's adding a "more structured layer" that gives players clear objectives. In most cases, they'll have to cooperate to obtain better rewards. "There is a strong case for introducing that kind of cooperative PvE earlier. It gives players another reason to build and use fleets together."

Over two decades later, how people choose to engage with OGame has changed, pushing GameForge to consider supporting new platforms. Today, mobile devices have become essential to free-to-play games' success over time.

Mareth told us their importance "has made touch controls, navigation, and clarity on smaller screens central development considerations," even if thousands of players still remain attached to PC as their main platform. "We're currently working on a design overhaul of the app, combining what we've learned with players' feedback."

Liedtke also said there is more overlap between PC and mobile players than you might imagine.

"The same player might check their empire on a phone and spend a longer session planning in the browser." Liedtke also noted that "Different playstyles also have different needs," adding that activities like mining and trading fit "comfortably" into short mobile sessions, but complex fleet operations benefit from sitting in front of one's PC.

While it's a game of interstellar conflict and sci-fi spaceships, OGame does take a lot of inspiration from real-life science, even if it stretches that science well past its limits. "When ships are destroyed in battle, the debris field can form a moon around a player's planet," explains Liedtke. "The chance (of that happening) is linked to the real lunar cycle: it is higher around a full moon than a new moon."

He noted it's a "playful connection" to astronomy, "rather than a simulation of how real moons form," but the developers thought it was cool to influence the game via things that happen in our own sky.

This possible in-game "event" also led to one of the best examples of player ingenuity in OGame: Moonshots. Liedtke explained that "players organize deliberate battles and exchange sacrificial fleets to help one another obtain those valuable moons. They have turned destruction into a cooperative project. For a designer, the lesson is to examine what players can achieve together, as well as what an individual action rewards."

As the team figured out how to develop "the more imaginative side of science fiction" in OGame's universe, they also decided to explicitly use deuterium for fusion research and as fuel. Star Trek fans will recognize this as the starship fuel of that universe, but it is a real substance: one of two stable isotopes of hydrogen. "Those scientific references give the universe familiar foundations," remarks Liedtke.

In OGame's shared galaxy, Orion is introducing "anomalies" as a central new feature, which Liedtke described as "mission sites you uncover with a new scanner" before it's required to send in ships. "Combat missions ask you to hold position against waves of automated fleets; peaceful missions put your cargo ships to work collecting rewards." The twist is these missions are open to co-op... but also to rival commanders that can attack the objectives marked as PvP. While you can theoretically ignore them, better rewards await for daring commanders.

With PvE bringing all sorts of new design opportunities to the table, Liedtke pointed out the Orion update "gives us a foundation to learn which kinds of missions players find rewarding" as GameForge looks to the strategy MMO's future. "Personally, I would like to explore encounters that make commanders reconsider what to send and how to work together. Discovery becomes more interesting when it changes your plan."

Sounds exciting, though Liedtke quickly added that this isn't an official announcement of future features.

OGame's 25th anniversary is in 2027, and while the team is tight-lipped on what the team has planned, Liedtke noted that "Reaching a quarter of a century in 2027 will be an extraordinary moment for OGame. We owe that longevity to the team's continued work and, above all, to the players who keep building empires, forming alliances, and giving this universe its stories."

OGame is available on PC (via browser and GameForge's own platform) and on mobile devices via the App Store and Google Play. The Orion update arrives on November 6, 2026.

Europe's Hera planetary defense spacecraft is closing in on the binary asteroid system targeted by NASA's DART deflection test, and can now tell the two rocky bodies apart.

Hera is nearing the end of its voyage to the Didymos asteroid system, having launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in October 2024. The spacecraft snapped the image of Didymos and the smaller Dimorphos on Oct. 18 from a distance of 795 miles (1280 kilometers) from the pair, which are currently about 122 million miles (197 million km) from Earth.

"With this image, the smaller Dimorphos asteroid becomes visible for the first time," Michael Kueppers, Hera project scientist at the European Space Agency (ESA), said in a statement. "Before this acquisition, the spacecraft was still resolving the Didymos system as a single dot. But now, even though Dimorphos is made up of only around one pixel in this initial image, it is clearly well separated from its parent body."

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) smashed into Dimorphos in September 2022, changing the asteroid's orbit in a pioneering planetary defense demonstration. Hera's job is to survey the damage and refine our understanding of the impact, as well as the asteroids themselves.

Hera performed braking maneuvers earlier in October to slow its approach and put it on course to rendezvous with the binary system. The spacecraft is designed to make follow-up observations of the asteroids using 12 payloads, providing new insights that will prove valuable for planetary defense efforts. The mission also carries a pair of cubesats for a closer look and eventual landing on the 495-foot-wide (151 meters) Dimorphos.

For now, Hera is continuing its approach and preparing for arrival, with a big reveal expected to occur later this month.

"Our views will grow much sharper as Hera comes closer," said ESA's mission manager Ian Carnelli. "We will unveil the first detailed images of Dimorphos — the first object in the solar system to have had its orbit measurably shifted by human action — on 25 November."

Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have investigated a cosmic cat's tail, finding it likely formed after two Pluto-sized bodies smashed together.

The feature, nicknamed the Cat's Tail, extends out from the debris disk known as Beta Pictoris which is located in a planetary system located 63 light-years away. This tail would put that of the average tabby to shame: It's so long that it could curl around the sun-Earth system about 500 times. That's about as long as 200 trillion house cats.

The major difference between our solar system and the planetary system that hosts the Cat's Tail is the latter's relative youth. While our solar system is around 4.6 billion years old, Beta Pictoris is a cosmic kitten no more than a few million years old. That means it is still host to collisions between planetary bodies similar to the ones that rocked the solar system during its infancy.

The team behind this research gained new insights into the Cat's Tail using 14 years of observations. This allowed them to solve the long-standing mystery of the violent conditions under which it formed.

"The Cat's Tail is thought to be the aftermath of a collision between large bodies — think something like Pluto," team leader Arin Avsar of the University of Arizona said in a statement. "Oddly, this feature had previously only been seen with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which detects infrared light, but remained invisible at shorter wavelengths, which has puzzled the community for a while."

Cosmic cat tail is also pleasingly fluffy

Comparing Beta Pictoris and our solar system, one thing rapidly becomes apparent: our cosmic neighborhood is relatively well-ordered. The planets orbit the sun with most space rocks neatly delegated into bands: the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and the Kuiper belt out beyond the orbit of Neptune.

However, this is a stark contrast to the solar system's violent and chaotic youth. Back then, the solar system was host to an infant star surrounded by a swirling disk of gas and dust in which collisions between bodies called planetesimals — the building blocks of planets — were commonplace.

Astronomers can't look back to the solar system's infancy, so to learn more about how our cosmic backyard took shape, they study nearby young planetary systems. Systems like Beta Pictoris. That doesn't mean it has been quick to divulge its secrets, though.

"We think the Cat's Tail has eluded our observations in visible light until now because of what it's made of," Avsar explained. "It consists almost entirely of what we call organic refractory material, which is heavily carbon-based. These long chains of carbon atoms absorb visible light, so they're quite black."

This new study revealed that the feline feature is cat-like in more ways than just its shape. It's also pleasingly fluffy, Hubble observations suggest. That's because the grains that compose it are extremely porous.

"How you can get dust grains that small that are as porous as we see here no one really understands, and that's part of why we study this feature," Avsar said.

"It's possible that the velocities involved in the collisions were so high that the carbon grains vaporized, turned into gas, and then recondensed as they cooled, and that's how they became so porous," team member Kevin Wagner of the U of A said.

The scientists also discovered a hitherto undiscovered feature in the Cat's Tail — a warp that seems to be the result of an interaction between the trail of material and one of the planets in the system, Beta Pictoris b, a gas giant planet 10 times more massive than Jupiter.

"This gives us another line of evidence into how giant planets influence comets through their immense gravitational force," Avsar said. "It's a testament to how much these massive planets really influence their surrounding dust and icy bodies out to hundreds of astronomical units [one astronomical unit being the distance between Earth and the sun]."

The team's research was published last month in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

On Aug. 2, 2027, the moon's shadow will sweep across some of the most iconic filming locations from Star Wars, plunging them into darkness during what's being called the "eclipse of the century".

The path of the 2027 total solar eclipse will cross southern Tunisia, where several locations were used to bring the fictional desert planet Tatooine to life. From the dunes of Mos Espa to the rocky Jundland Wastes, Star Wars fans will have the rare opportunity to experience totality at the very places where their favorite scenes were filmed

But not every famous filming location will experience totality, so choosing where to watch will be crucial. Here are four locations that fall directly in the moon's shadow. All times, totality durations and historical cloud cover data come from Time and Date.

1. Eriguet dunes (Mos Espa)

With a massive budget and three prequels to make, Lucasfilm built a new film set that would double as the Mos Espa spaceport on Tatooine for The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. This is where Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jar Jar Binks and Padme get stranded, where they meet Anakin Skywalker and where the podrace takes place. Now abandoned, it's in the middle of nowhere, between two huge salt lakes and subject to the intense heat and moving Eriguet dunes — but it is firmly within the path of totality. Nearby are two other shooting locations — the Ong Jemel outcrop, where Darth Maul arrives on the scene, and Yardang, where Qui-Gon and Darth Maul battle — the first-ever lightsaber duel filmed on location.

2. Maguer Gorge (Jundland Wastes)

Often called "Star Wars Canyon" by fans and crew, Maguer Gorge in Jebel Sidi Bouhlel doubled as the Jundland Wastes of Tatooine in Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope. It's where Luke Skywalker is attacked by Tusken Raiders, where Obi-Wan Kenobi first appears and where Luke and Obi-Wan discover the slaughtered Jawas. The canyon also provided the distant view of Mos Eisley — the famous "wretched hive of scum and villainy." On Aug. 2, 2027, you'll likely be pointing your macrobinoculars at the eclipsed sun rather than Tusken Raiders.

Steven Spielberg later filmed here for Raiders of the Lost Ark, including the scene in which Indiana Jones threatens to destroy the Ark with a bazooka. Just south of Dghoumès National Park is a desert oasis called Bouhlel Sdada, used for the archaeological dig scenes in Raiders.

3. Ajim (Mos Eisley)

Djerba Island's palm trees, beaches and Mediterranean horizons will make it a popular destination for eclipse chasers after a long totality away from the heat and crowds of Luxor in Egypt. It's also home to three notable Star Wars filming locations. The original movie's Mos Eisley footage was shot here, with Ajim doubling as a Stormtrooper checkpoint ("These are not the droids you're looking for"), the Cantina exterior, and an alley near Docking Bay 94 where stormtroopers watch the Millennium Falcon blast off. In reality, it's an abandoned bakery.

4. Amghar Mosque (Obi-Wan Kenobi's house)

Just north of Ajim, this mosque — originally a fisherman's house — was used as a stand-in for "Old Ben's" house, where Obi-Wan Kenobi gives Luke Skywalker a lightsaber. It was used purely for photography, and no actors set foot here. It was also cut from the movie's Special Edition in 1997, so you'll only find it in the original version. Completists might also want to check out Sidi Jemour Mosque to the north, which was used for scenes with Biggs Darklighter that didn't even make the final cut. IYKYK …

How to go on a Star Wars tour in Tunisia

Tunisia's Star Wars locations are spread across the south, so the easiest way to see several is on an organized tour or with a private driver and guide. Tozeur is the main base for visiting Mos Espa, Ong Jemel and Jebel Sidi Bouhlel, with local operators offering half-day and full-day 4x4 excursions into the desert. Djerba Island is the other major hub for three sights. Longer multi-day tours typically connect Tozeur with Matmata, home to Hotel Sidi Idriss — the Lars Homestead — as well as Djerba.

One tour company, Star Wars Tours, is running a (sold-out) special departure called "Eclipse tour from the Outer Rim" that witnesses totality at the Mos Espa set. Other Star Wars-focused tour operators include Galaxy Tours, though one-day trips to the Mos Espa set from Tozeur are also available.

Where else to watch the eclipse in Tunisia

Tunisia is surely one of the most attractive destinations for the Aug. 2, 2027 total solar eclipse. Historical cloud cover is exceptionally low, while totality reaches around five and a half minutes near the centerline. It also offers established tourism infrastructure and generally lower August temperatures than Egypt, making it an obvious alternative for eclipse chasers hoping to avoid the biggest crowds around Luxor.

You can, of course, visit the Star Wars sets in the days before or after the eclipse. For Tunisia's maximum duration of totality, consider Sfax, where darkness lasts 5 minutes, 41 seconds, or nearby Chaffar Beach, with its long, open Mediterranean coastline. Offshore, the low-lying Kerkennah Islands get around 5 minutes, 39 seconds. Inland, Sidi Bouzid offers about 5 minutes, 33 seconds beneath typically dry skies, while the spectacular Roman amphitheater at El Jem gets 4 minutes, 23 seconds. On Djerba Island, meanwhile, beaches and extensive resort infrastructure make combining an eclipse chase with a conventional Mediterranean vacation particularly easy — with a view of Mos Eisley thrown in for good measure.

On Nov. 3, 1957, a Soviet space dog named Laika became the first animal to orbit Earth. Laika was a 3-year-old stray husky-spitz mix from the streets of Moscow, and she was recruited by the Soviet space program for her small size and calm temperament.

Unfortunately for Laika, this mission was a one-way trip. The Soviets didn't design a way to bring her back down to Earth. With only 7 days worth of oxygen and a little bit of food on board, Laika launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with a Russian Sputnik rocket. This was the same kind of rocket used to launch the first Sputnik satellite.

Laika was alive when she reached orbit, but she died shortly afterward because the spacecraft's heat shield had broken off. Laika overheated before she had the chance to die of starvation of oxygen deprivation.

Why it mattered

Laika has remained one of space history's most beloved and tragic figures. People around the world have dogs as pets who they love as members of their own families. And even nearly 70 years after this flight, it is so heartbreaking to think of Laika on that frightening journey from which she never returned.

Laika was one of many different animals that were used in early spaceflight testing. Both the U.S. and Russia launched a number of primates on flights testing early flight technology. Sadly, like Laika, many of these brave creatures did not make it back.

Unbelievably, though, some did survive the journey. For example, the chimpanzee named Ham and nicknamed the "astrochimp" survived a 1961 test flight to space. Though, the team behind that flight was so unsure of how it would go that Ham didn't get his name until after it was found that he'd survived his return.

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

A tiny robot cube is zipping around the International Space Station, trying to help astronauts with the endless challenging tasks onboard.

What is it?

Reminiscent of Rocky rolling around the lab helping out Dr. Ryland Grace in Project Hail Mary, the Astrobee robot is a helpful assistant for astronauts aboard the space station.

A metal cube about the size of a toaster, the Astrobees are free-flying robotic assistants that NASA developed to help out astronauts. The first two Astrobee robots (named Bumble and Honey) were sent to the station in 2019. The third Astrobee robot, named Queen, joined later that year, and 7 years later, the program is still going strong.

So what can a free-floating cube help with? The robots are designed to assist the astronauts onboard with testing new technologies in microgravity and helping mission team members back on Earth to better observe inside the station. The little robot cubes can even help astronauts with everyday chores in space.

In this image, snapped by NASA astronaut and Crew-13 commander Jessica Watkins, we can see one of the Astrobee robots helping out in the station's Kibo laboratory.

Why is it incredible?

The idea of a robot assistant helping out with chores and technology development aboard an orbiting space laboratory sounds positively science fiction.

While Astrobee is certainly not the first robot in space or aboard the space station, its compact shape and ability to fly autonomously gives it a unique quality. It really looks like a companion aboard the space station.

While the robotic space helpers of today might be cute little cubes, the success of the Astrobee program begs the question of how robots in space might continue to evolve. Will astronauts on the moon have robotic companions autonomously exploring and helping out? What will they look like?

NASA's Artemis IV moon mission will be a complicated affair — especially if SpaceX's Starship ends up being the lunar lander.

For all of the changing components of the Artemis program over the past several years, one of its most persistent may be the question of how many refueling flights Starship will need to land astronauts on the moon.

By summer 2021, it was common knowledge that Starship would require multiple launches to pull off an Artemis moon landing. A Government Accountability Office audit at the time, for example, estimated that it could take up to 16.

Earlier this month, a member of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel said the refueling number could be as high as 22. But that estimate was quickly refuted by SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk, who posted on his social media platform, X, that it would actually be closer to six or eight.

Perhaps an even bigger head scratcher, though, is how the refueling process will be carried out. Where (and when) will Starship's upper stage gas up when it's off planet? NASA released a graphic during a recent Artemis update that outlined an order of operations for the spacecraft on Artemis IV, which will be the program's first crewed lunar landing.

The mission will launch a Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with the four Artemis IV astronauts aboard NASA's Orion capsule to high Earth orbit, where they will rendezvous and dock with the Starship lunar lander.

Using Starship's engines, the two spacecraft will burn for the moon, and separate upon their arrival in low lunar orbit. Two astronauts will remain aboard Orion, while the other two will head down to the lunar surface in Starship.

After a little run through the regolith and a celebration of America's triumphant return to the moon, the duo will board Starship again to launch back to lunar orbit and dock with Orion before beginning the trip back to Earth.

All that seems well and good for a mission to the moon, and even has some resemblances with missions from NASA's Apollo days. What doesn't seem as immediately obvious when mapping out the Artemis IV mission outline, though, are the steps that Starship will be taking during its refueling process before the astronauts ever make it to space.

Orion will rendezvous with Starship in high Earth orbit — but that's not where the lander will launch initially. According to NASA's Artemis IV outline, SpaceX will first launch a depot ship to low Earth orbit (LEO), which will serve as the repository for all the fuel the Starship lander will eventually need.

The graphic shows a tanker Starship docked with the depot with "(multiple)" written next to it, so we don't know how many refueling flights will be needed for this initial depot fill. Once that's done, SpaceX will launch the Starship lunar lander to join the depot in LEO for its first pit stop.

Then, and this is where some of the head scratching begins, Starship will undock from the depot and raise its altitude to what NASA has labeled the "final tanking orbit," or FTO.

At some point after the Starship lander departs LEO, SpaceX will launch another round of "(multiple)" tanker ships to fill the depot with even more propellant. It will apparently then send the depot to meet the lander for another refill in FTO, where, as the name suggests, the two will dock for the pair's final fuel transfer.

After bidding the depot a second farewell, Starship will ascend to high Earth orbit to meet Orion.

NASA's graphic shows SLS launching Orion before Starship gets the last of its fuel, and the agency's website explainer for Artemis IV says the unusually choreographed order of operations for the mission does serve a purpose.

However many fuel boosts Starship ends up needing to get from LEO to the surface of the moon, its staggered orbital staging will apparently create some flexibility around when SLS can launch the Artemis IV astronauts to begin their mission.

And while Starship's orbital dance seems unnecessarily complicated, NASA says the new approach will actually reduce the amount of fuel SpaceX needs for the mission.

That's partly because Starship will take Orion directly to low lunar orbit, instead of the much higher orbit envisioned in previous mission plans.

But keep in mind: None of this is set in stone. If SpaceX can't demonstrate that its orbital refueling strategy works, or if it can't pull off an uncrewed lunar landing mission by the end of next year, NASA could still select Blue Origin's Blue Moon lander for Artemis IV — assuming Blue Moon is able to check its required boxes in time. Regardless of which company's lander delivers the first Artemis astronauts to the moon's surface, exactly how the pieces of those missions will come together should become clearer as the launch date gets closer. So, while SpaceX's refueling remains an open one for the time being, it's one of many for which we'll soon have an answer.

Betelguese, one of the brightest stars in the night sky, has been putting on quite a show lately — but not in the way you might expect.

The famous red supergiant in the constellation Orion has been growing noticeably fainter in recent months.

Of the 21 brightest stars in the night sky, Betelgeuse is perhaps the most enigmatic. Its changing brightness poses a puzzle: how do the star's pulsations, dust eruptions, and a possible companion contribute to its fading?

A giant star with a puzzling name

Even the translation of Betelgeuse's name is contentious. For a long time, it was thought to be a corruption of three Arabic words, usually translated as "The Armpit of the Giant." However, other experts in star nomenclature now dispute that interpretation, proposing instead "The Hand of al-Jauzā," with al-Jauzā referring to Orion.

Although classified as a red supergiant, Betelgeuse usually appears more orange than red— golden orange or deep topaz. It is one of the most famous stars in its class. Henry M. Neely (1877-1963), for many years a popular lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium, described its restless behavior in his book A Primer for Stargazers:

"(Betelgeuse) expands and contracts spasmodically, like an old man with his strength almost entirely spent, panting in the asthmatic decrepitude of old age."

The rhythms of a changing star

Betelgeuse naturally expands and contracts like a beating heart. As an aging red supergiant, it has a regular pulsation cycle of roughly 430 days: when it expands, its outer layers cool and it dims; when it contracts, they heat up and it brightens. Among first-magnitude stars — the brightest category of stars in the night sky — it is the only marked variable. Its scale is equally remarkable: located 650 light-years away, Betelgeuse is among the largest and most luminous stars of its class, with a luminosity of about 14,000 suns at maximum and 7,600 suns at minimum. Only a few such objects have been identified in our galaxy.

British astronomer Sir John Herschel (1792-1871) first noticed Betelgeuse's variability beginning in 1836. Astronomers describe apparent brightness using magnitude: lower numbers mean brighter stars. In April 2023, Betelgeuse reached magnitude 0.0 — as bright as Vega, the fifth brightest star. At minimum brightness, such as in 1927 and 1941, its magnitude may fall to +1.2, making it appear about three times fainter.

Three threads run through this mystery: Betelgeuse's roughly 430-day pulsation, its much longer recurring dimming cycle, and the exceptional Great Dimming of 2019—2020. Keeping them, separate helps explain why one cause need not account for every change in brightness.

A longer cycle and a possible companion

Alongside its roughly 430-day pulsation, Betelgeuse shows a mysterious 2,100-day (5.75-year) dimming cycle. Known as a "Long Secondary Period," this longer cycle puzzled astronomers for a century. Some suggested that one or more stars might orbit Betelgeuse; others found no evidence for such companions or actively refuted their existence.

At long last, in January 2026, researchers using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT) located in on Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, published the clearest images and direct evidence of a faint companion star orbiting the red supergiant. Formally named Alpha Ori B, Jared Goldberg, an astrophysicist researching the phenomenon, nicknamed the companion star "Betelbuddy," though in deference to the new definition of Betelgeuse's name meaning "the hand of al-Jawzā," the name Siwarha was ultimately chosen for the probable companion star, which means her bracelet in Arabic.

In this explanation, Siwarha orbits deep within Betelgeuse's outer chromosphere, a layer of its atmosphere, circling about every six years. As it moves through gas and dust ejected by the supergiant, its gravity creates a dense wake of gas, with ripples and shockwaves that disrupt stellar winds and mass loss. When the concentrated dust trail passes between Earth and Betelgeuse, it can make the main star appear decidedly dimmer.

Compare Betelgeuse with Aldebaran

Betelgeuse recently experienced another sharp drop in brightness. Since this past August, it has faded from magnitude +0.5 to +0.95 and now appears just a trifle dimmer than the similarly hued orange star Aldebaran in Taurus the Bull. This decline may be another example of the dimming described above, although the brightness change alone does not establish its cause.

Aldebaran can be used as a comparison to Betelgeuse, since they both happen to be in the general vicinity of each other. If you want to make such a determination yourself, keep in mind that Aldebaran currently rises in the east-northeast before 7 p.m. local standard time, followed about 90 minutes later by Betelgeuse, which will emerge from beyond the eastern horizon. By 11:30 p.m., both stars will be well placed for viewing in the east-southeast part of the sky.

Betelgeuse marks Orion's right shoulder. To locate Aldebaran, look for the three bright, evenly spaced stars that form Orion's belt. Draw an imaginary line through the three belt stars and extend it upwards and to the right. Follow that line for about two fists' width at arm's length (roughly 22 degrees) until you hit a sideways, V-shaped cluster of stars known as the Hyades, which forms the face of Taurus. Aldebaran sits right at one end of that V-shape, glowing with a distinct orange-red color as the "angry eye" of the bull charging toward Orion.

View them late tonight; which star appears brighter?

The Great Dimming of 2019—2020

The changes visible now invite comparison with a far more dramatic episode: The Great Dimming Event of 2019—2020.

Between October 2019 and February 2020, Betelgeuse experienced an unprecedented, dramatic plunge in brightness — losing over two-thirds of its luster, falling from magnitude +0.5 to +1.7; the rank of a second magnitude star. It then returned to a more normal brightness, reaching an unusually bright peak of 0.0 by the spring of 2023. While the sudden dimming caused internet and media speculation that Betelgeuse was about to die as a spectacular supernova, infrared structural and chemical models showed no significant change in the star's luminosity; Betelgeuse was still firmly in its helium-burning phase and is expected to live for another 100,000 to perhaps many hundreds of thousands of years before it explodes.

So, what caused The Great Dimming? The mystery was ultimately solved by compiling data from the Hubble Space Telescope and ground observatories.

Apparently, Betelgeuse "sneezed."

A massive bubble of superhot plasma rose from a giant convection cell inside the star and blasted into space. As this ejected gas moved millions of miles away from the star, it cooled rapidly and condensed into solid silicon monoxide dust. This giant stardust cloud acted like a literal screen, blocking a substantial portion of the star's light from our viewpoint. This event was exacerbated because the massive eruption perfectly aligned with the lowest point of the star's 430-day pulsation cycle as well as the orbital interference of the companion star Siwarha.

From the standpoint of producing the absolute maximum possible dimming of Betelgeuse, this cosmic trifecta was the perfect storm!

Untangling the mystery

Betelgeuse has long been known as a variable star, and recent breakthroughs are helping astronomers untangle its erratic behavior. Internal pulsations and massive dust eruptions contribute to its changing brightness, while gravitational interactions with the newly reported, probable companion explain the longer dimming cycle. Together, these mechanisms paint a richer picture of why Orion's giant star fades and brightens.

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

"Star Trek" celebrated its diamond anniversary last month, marking 60 years since it first aired on NBC on Sept. 8, 1966. There were a bunch of Trekkie-themed celebrations and news stories over September, including festive documentaries, special screenings, tributes, parade floats, interviews, and even a Galileo shuttle story.

Now, publishers Penguin Random House and Ten Speed Press are releasing "Star Trek: The Original Voyages: A Visual History" on Nov. 10, 2026.

This coffee table book promises unprecedented exploration of the pioneering space fantasy television series and enduring pop culture property that bolstered the space race and ignited sci-fi audiences' imaginations by taking us to strange new worlds and civilizations in the final frontier.

It's a striking 416-page hardback written by Kyle Newman and Jeff Bond, documenting all the classic characters and plotlines that are still inspiring artists, filmmakers, authors, and astronauts around the globe six decades later, and we’ve got our hands on a primo copy to show off.

"When the original 'Star Trek' series burst onto the screen in 1966, few could have anticipated the enduring legacy it would create," states the synopsis.

"Although it lasted just three seasons and 79 episodes, 'Star Trek' left an indelible mark on popular culture, and it soon spawned an animated television series, a blockbuster major motion picture franchise, and for its most dedicated fans, a way of life.

"The story of the U.S.S. Enterprise and her crew—James T. Kirk (William Shatner), Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley), Montgomery Scott (James Doohan), Nyota Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig), and Hikaru Sulu (George Takei)—as well as the behind-the-scenes story of its creators, The Great Bird of the Galaxy Gene Roddenberry and his many collaborators, is extraordinary."

Inside this classy collector's edition, which is the first volume of a two-book series gazing back at the complete history of "Star Trek," readers will behold a wealth of archival photos, costumes, storyboards, cast and creators' chats, behind-the-scenes ephemera, props, and filming models.

"Star Trek: The Original Voyages" chronicles not just the iconic TV show but also the short-lived animated series and all six of the big-screen "Star Trek" feature films up to the year 1991.

Above and beyond the dramatic cover emblazoned with reflective lettering, this beefy "Trek" book truly leaps into warp speed, covering all the licensed toys, comic books, convention memorabilia, media parodies, promotional roadshows, trading cards, and vintage magazine covers.

"Star Trek: The Original Voyages: A Visual History" lands on Nov. 10, 2026.

Budget primes can be, surprisingly, excellent choices for photographers shooting all subjects. It’s all too easy to get carried away with the best specs, such as a large maximum aperture and impressive optical design often seen in more expensive options. But affordable lenses like the Viltrox AF 35mm f/1.8 II FE (APO) have the potential to impress and delight in equal measure.

The 35mm f/1.8 is a compact and lightweight lens offering a reasonably fast maximum aperture, making it a prime candidate for astrophotography. It’s also the same size and almost the same weight as the Viltrox AF 55mm f/1.8 FE (APO), another lens that could potentially grace your camera bag.

With a highly attractive price tag of just $399 / £385, and mount options for Nikon Z and Sony FE, many astrophotographers will be wondering if this is a lens worth considering. It features 13 elements in 10 groups, as well as featuring an apochromatic (APO) design for reducing chromatic aberration as much as possible. As much as possible is key here because not all lenses are as successful as the manufacturer claims, although that’s not a comment on the 35mm f/1.8. Read on to discover if this could be one of the best lenses for astrophotography.

Viltrox AF 35mm f/1.8 II EVO FE (APO) lens review

Viltrox AF 35mm f/1.8 II EVO FE (APO): Performance

• Sharp images for the price
• Sweet spot at f/8-f/11, not ideal for astro
• Some astigmatism at the edges of the frame

For a budget lens, the 35mm f/1.8 produces great, yet not perfect, image quality. On the plus side, images are nice and sharp, particularly in the centre, even when shooting wide open at f/1.8. At this aperture setting, though, there is some astigmatism at the left edges of the frame. This is where stars appear as crosses. This is a surprise since it’s an APO lens, and, equally surprising, it’s isolated, but it is something you have to consider.

You do have to zoom into the image to see it, so it may not be a dealbreaker. Photos shot at f/1.8 are sharpest in the centre, with some fall-off towards the edges, with the corners exhibiting the least sharpness. There’s also the strongest vignetting at f/1.8. At the time of writing, there’s no Adobe Lightroom lens profile for the lens, but you can manually remove the vignetting and even create a preset of your own.

The vignette disappears as soon as f/4, with a gradual increase in sharpness across the frame between f/2.8 and f/5.6. f/8 and f/11 appear identical in terms of sharpness and occupy the sweet spot, while diffraction is clearly at work when you stop down to f/16. In reality, it’s unlikely you’d shoot beyond f/11 with this lens, even if you were shooting landscapes.

Overall, image quality is impressive despite not being perfect and stopping down to f/2.8 when shooting astro does provide greater clarity across the frame. This is, as you know, at the expense of having to shoot at a slightly higher ISO setting to compensate.

Viltrox AF 35mm f/1.8 II EVO FE (APO): Design

• Compact and lightweight
• Manual aperture ring
• Weather sealed

While f/1.8 lenses may not have the speed and light-gathering capabilities of faster f/1.4 and f/1.2 lenses, they’re considerably smaller and lighter. The lens only has a 58mm filter thread, so if you use any night filters, they will be at the less expensive end of the price scale.

For some photographers, the slight speed reduction of f/1.8 is a worthy compromise, and at 3.33 x 4.37 in / 69 x 76 mm with a weight of 12.52 oz / 355 g, the 35mm f/1.8 is beautifully compact and balances well with camera bodies.

Build quality is excellent, and it’s fair to say the lens belies its budget price tag. The metal build alongside the manual aperture ring gives the 35mm f/1.8 a much more premium look and feel.

The aperture ring can also be set to A for in-body aperture adjustments, as well as offering the ability to switch the aperture click on and off. The latter is most popular with videographers. There’s also a customizable Fn button on the side.

The lens is weather-sealed against light rain and dust, with a rubber gasket on the lens mount. The front element also features a water and smudge-resistant coating, which is certainly useful for outdoor photography. Plus, there’s a minimum focusing distance of just 13.4 in / 34 cm, which is useful for daylight photography but of no consequence for astrophotography.

The 35mm f/1.8 is made up of 13 elements in 10 groups, and as previously mentioned, features an APO design, which is intended to eliminate chromatic aberration in high-contrast scenes.

The elements include two extra-low dispersion (ED), three high refractive index (HR) and one ultra aspherical (UA). The UA lens is claimed to be Viltrox’s LAB Series quality, which matches the Viltrox flagship line-up.

Viltrox AF 35mm f/1.8 II EVO FE (APO): Functionality

• Smooth manual focus
• Internal focusing
• Stepping motor-powered AF

When it comes to features, prime lenses are always pretty basic, with few features to shout about. The 35mm f/1.8 is certainly no exception, but its build quality and overall design hold up alongside its image quality and reasonably fast maximum aperture. It does, however, have a few points worth mentioning.

One feature that many Viltrox lenses have, including the 35mm f/1.8, is a USB-C Port on the lens mount. This allows you to use a smartphone app or a desktop app to quickly and easily update firmware. This is so much easier than having to download a file to your memory card and installing lens updates via the camera, which is how most native lenses have to be updated.

The manual aperture ring features click and clickless operation via a switch on the side, so you can easily see what aperture you’re using at a glance. The focusing ring is smooth and offers comfortable resistance, making manual focus a breeze. It’s also wide enough to rotate using gloves, although, being a compact lens, it’s narrower than what you’d expect on a larger and faster prime lens.

Autofocus (AF) is reasonably fast and silent, being powered by an stepping motor (STM). The AF performance seemed to improve after the firmware update that was installed via the desktop app before testing fully commenced.

This functionality isn’t, of course, relevant to astrophotography, but it’s still a useful point to mention in case you intend to use the lens with autofocus in the day. Focusing is also internal, so the front element doesn’t rotate during focusing like cheap and cheerful kit lenses.

How we tested the Viltrox AF 35mm f/1.8 II EVO FE (APO)

The Viltrox AF 35mm f/1.8 FE (APO) was tested with the Sony A7R V, which offers an unforgivingly high resolution. The lens was tested at night with a focus on astrophotography, and in daylight to assess sharpness, distortion and general functionality for an all-round approach to testing.

Viltrox AF 35mm f/1.8 II EVO FE (APO): User reviews

Online reviews echo one another, praising the AF 35mm f/1.8 for its sharpness and cost. Users appreciate that while it’s certainly not in the league of Sony’s premium G Master lenses, it represents great value for money. Some reviewers mention great build quality and looking good when paired with their Sony camera.

Should you buy the Viltrox AF 35mm f/1.8 FE (APO)?

Prime lenses can be expensive, especially if you’re looking at those with an f/1.4 or f/1.2 maximum aperture. The Viltrox AF 35mm f/1.8 FE (APO) is a budget option in the Viltrox line-up, but with decent overall performance alongside impressive image quality for the price, this is a great 35mm lens for those on a budget. It’s also compact and lightweight, which could be useful if you often head out shooting with several lenses in your kit bag.

Just going back to image quality, images are sharp, but when shooting astrophotography at f/1.8, there was some astigmatism at the left edges of the frame. This is where stars appear as crosses. You can only really see this when you zoom in to 100%, but it’s worth bearing in mind if you’re looking for the closest to optical perfection you can find.

When a weather-sealed prime lens with a manual aperture ring costs just $399 / £385, you can’t help but take notice. Build quality is excellent and the lens undoubtedly looks and feels like it would be more expensive than it is.

Considering all of this and the image quality, the lens is fairly priced and is still at the release price, so it could become more affordable in the future. Just like other Viltrox lenses, in the box you get the lens, a lens hood, front and rear lens caps and a soft lens case.

If this lens isn't for you

The Viltrox AF 35mm f/1.2 LAB FE is part of Viltrox’s flagship lens series and offers a much faster maximum aperture, as the name suggests. It’s also more expensive, larger and heavier.

If you’d like a wider lens, the Sony FE 20mm f/1.8 G is a fantastic option offering exceptional image quality alongside a compact build and light weight. A potential must-have for Sony users.

If you’d like to go wider still, the Sigma 14mm f/1.4 DG DN Art is an absolute beast of a lens, offering an ultra-wide light-gathering field of view alongside a fast f/1.4 maximum aperture.

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Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), scientists have found that the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS was built from tiny grains of ice mixed with dust that are quite different from the solar system’s comets.

These ice grains do, however, bear striking similarities to some icy bodies located at the edge of the solar system, beyond the orbit of Neptune, so-called trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs).

3I/ATLAS was discovered entering the solar system in the summer of 2025. It was only the third object found entering the solar system from farther afield in the Milky Way after 1I/'Oumuamua, seen in 2017, and 2I/Borisov, detected in 2019. This meant the interstellar comet offered a rare chance to glimpse the conditions under which such bodies form in other star systems. Thus, the JWST was quickly on the trail of 3I/ATLAS.

"We designed [JWST] to be ready the moment an active interstellar comet was found and to follow it over time," Martin Cordiner of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and the Catholic University of America said in a statement.

Cordiner leads the JWST program to study objects such as 3I/ATLAS, and he is a co-author on a new research paper describing some of the findings.

The unclear origins of 3I/ATLAS

Researchers know that 3I/ATLAS wasn't born in the solar system, but nobody knows around which star 3I/ATLAS formed. What scientists are more sure of is the fact that this interstellar comet was produced within a planet-forming disk of gas and dust around a young star, possibly as long ago as 10 to 12 billion years. That's over twice the age of our solar system. It was then ejected from its home system somehow and left to wander interstellar space before encountering our solar system.

Like the familiar comets in our solar system, 3I/ATLAS is composed of grains of ice less than a micron – a millionth of a meter – in size. When the surface of the comet is warmed by the sun, gas erupts outwards, carrying ice grains into the cloud of ice and dust surrounding the comet, its coma, and its tail, where JWST can detect them.

When viewed spectroscopically, the water-ice in comets native to our solar system creates a strong absorption line in a comet’s spectrum at a wavelength of three microns, as well as less-prominent absorption lines at 1.5 and two microns.

Yet when the JWST’s Near-Infrared spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument viewed 3I/ATLAS three times between August 2025, before its closest approach to the sun, and after closest approach in April 2026, scientists found the 1.5- and two micron absorption lines were missing, though the three-micron line remained strong.

"That combination was a puzzle," research lead author Silvia Protopapa of the South-west Research Institute said. "The strong three-micron band points to water-ice in the coma, but the weak or absent shorter-wavelength bands suggest the ice is not in the form we usually see in solar system comets."

The JWST's muddy 3I/ATLAS findings

Whenever presented with an unusual observational signature such the JWST delievered for 3I/ATLAS researchers turn to modeling to find the physical characteristics that best fit the spectrum.

The modeling suggested to Protopapa’s team that 3I/ATLAS was composed of sub-micron grains of dirty water-ice, rich in dust. In comparison, the grains from the solar system’s indigenous comets are much cleaner, with almost pure water-ice relatively uncontaminated by dust.

"What seems to set [3I/ATLAS’ grains] apart is how much dust is mixed into the ice," said Protopapa. "Those grains hold clues to the conditions where the comet was born."

Comets are made of primordial material found in the planet-forming disk of gas and dust that surrounds a young star, and therefore the composition of comets can provide a window into the conditions in which planets form.

Whereas solar system comets tell us about the birth of Earth, an interstellar comet can tell us about conditions in which planets formed around another star, and how similar or dissimilar those conditions were to the birth of the solar system.

Yet comets are not the only icy remnants that date back to such primordial times. There are various families of bodies in the outer solar system, and 3I/ATLAS’ spectrum bears a resemblance to the spectrum of some medium-sized TNOs that are rich in carbon-dioxide ice and organic compounds (organic meaning containing carbon atoms). Indeed, in a separate 2025 study led by Cordiner, the JWST found 3I/ATLAS to have one of the greatest abundances of carbon dioxide ever seen in a comet.

TNOs are sizable bodies that are located far beyond the orbit of Neptune, The TNOs in question would have formed in a different part of the Sun’s protoplanetary disk than most comets and their composition reflects that.

On the other hand, the results imply that 3I/ATLAS was formed around its star of origin from similar icy material to that which produced some of the TNOs in our solar system, showing that the building blocks of planets around other stars share a common range of properties with the building blocks that formed our solar system. Indeed, 3I/ATLAS could even be a fragment of a TNO-like body that was shattered in a collision.

"At first glance, 3I/ATLAS looks different from the icy comets we know," said Protopapa. "But when we placed it alongside distant icy worlds in our own solar system, it no longer looked out of place.

"This suggests that the icy building block of planets, here and around other stars, may share ice in the form of tiny, micron-scale grains, ranging from relatively pure ice to ice mixed with dust, with 3I/ATLAS toward the dusty end."

What this tells us is that these sub-micron-sized icy grains must form first in planet-forming disks, to then be incorporated into large bodies such as comets and protoplanets.

The team's findings were published on Monday (Oct. 26) in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

On Nov. 2, 2000, the International Space Station welcomed its first long-term residents: NASA astronaut Bill Shepherd and two Russian cosmonauts, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev. The mission was called Expedition 1.

Before this expedition, NASA had launched five, one-week-long Space Shuttle missions to help build the space station and bring up supplies. But this time, the crew would be staying for four and a half months, and they weren't taking the shuttle. Instead, they took a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, and this was the first Soyuz to ever dock at the space station.

During their stay at the space station, they unpacked supplies and installed new equipment, including the first solar arrays. They left on the space shuttle Discovery, which brought up the Expedition 2 crew that would take their place.

Why it mattered

As of today, there has been a continuous astronaut presence in space aboard the International Space Station for 26 years. For all of these years, not a day has gone by without someone living in space, orbiting our planet from aboard the space station.

While the ISS was not the first space station, it has been the longest-running space statin by far. This first crew were pioneers, showing how humans could actually live and work aboard this station. This exploratory mission proved that the station could successfully support astronaut crews.

Since this mission 26 years ago, there have been literally hundreds of astronauts from around the world who have flown to and lived aboard the ISS. While NASA has stated that the station might be decommissioned in the coming years, these accomplishments will remain forever in spaceflight history.

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

This rainbow-hued rocky plain looks like the landscape of an alien world. And, it turns out, it is.

What is it?

In this image, we can see an ancient, rocky hill on Mars. In the Red Planet's Southern Highlands, this alien terrain is chock-full of minerals, which we can see clearly defined in this color-enhanced view of the region.

This image was snapped by the HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which has been studying the planet's surface, atmosphere and climate since arriving in Martian orbit in March 2006.

But this isn't exactly what the surface of the planet would look like through our eyes; the image is color-enhanced. Why would scientists take a natural-color image and turn it rainbow? Doing so enhances the slight color differences in these rocks, allowing researchers to pick out the different minerals.

Why is it incredible?

As pointed to above, enhancing colors in scientific images can be an incredibly useful tool for exploration.

For instance, in this image, the blue- and green-toned rocks could be full of minerals like pyroxenes and olivine, according to scientists analyzing the image. And they think that the yellow, orange and red patches may contain minerals formed by past interactions with liquid water.

By exploring the mineral content of rocks like this, researchers can peel back the layers of history within the Martian bedrock. The discovery of certain minerals, for example, can show that water flowed on Mars long ago, pointing to potentially habitable conditions.

So, as we can see, this striking rainbow image isn't just a beautiful landscape; it's also hiding serious clues to Mars' history.

Marvel Studios' existential superhero series "VisionQuest" has arrived on Disney+, and we've already been treated to four intriguing episodes that delve into the complex life of Vision, Paul Bettany's intelligent android and former card-carrying member of The Avengers.

The staggered storyline leading up to this show began with 2021's "WandaVision" and the 2024 follow-up, "Agatha All Along," with Marvel Studios proclaiming "VisionQuest" to be "the final vision of the groundbreaking trilogy." So, for those trying to catch up on current events in this trilogy of MCU shows starring Vision, and to avoid any lingering confusion, let’s take a step back to fill in the gaps.

And now, this isn't as simple as just "watch all the Marvel movies and shows in order," because that is a frankly ridiculous undertaking and entirely too much homework to do before watching a show. We're distilling it down to just what you need to know to understand VisionQuest.

Spoiler warning: It should go without saying, but there are spoilers for previous Marvel movies and shows in this article. You have been warned!

TLDR: Marvel shows and movies you need to watch ahead of VisionQuest

We'll go into some detail on all the connections below, but if you just want a list of the essential Marvel shows and movies to watch before VisionQuest, here it is.

Note that this is just the essentials. There are loads of small references to other movies and shows in the MCU, but they're just nods.

• Avengers: Age of Ultron
• Avengers: Infinity War
• WandaVision
• Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness*
• Agatha All Along

*This one is debatable. It continues Wanda's story from WandaVision, but it's not really essential for understanding the events of VisionQuest.

Both are the true vision. Neither is the true Vision

We kick things off with 2018's "Avengers: Infinity War," where the mighty Thanos murdered Vision by plucking out his golden, forehead-mounted Mind Stone for his Infinity Gauntlet. From that moment forward, Vision was dead, and Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) was cast into unfathomable grief and not-so-repressed anger.

From there, we pick up the story in the 2021 Disney+ series "WandaVision." Set weeks after "Avengers: Endgame," this show features two separate versions of Vision.

One was a new synthezoid version, Frankensteined together from the components of the old Vision by S.W.O.R.D., nicknamed White Vision. The other Vision is a supernatural manifestation, brought to life via Wanda Maximoff’s sorcery; he is known as Hex Vision.

So, which of these two Visions appears in "VisionQuest"? That's the fun (and confusing) part, because the answer is both of them. At the end of "WandaVision," Hex Vision restores the lost memories of White Vision, essentially merging two entities into one.

So, the Vision we see in "VisionQuest" is the physical body of White Vision, injected with thoughts and remembrances of the model that was magically resurrected by Wanda. Confused yet? Don't worry, it's going to get weirder.

Voices inside my head

In addition to the two versions of Vision from "WandaVision," numerous other AIs exist within Vision's skull and are all represented by human avatars acting as factions of his ravaged psyche.

Cast your mind all the way back to 2015's "Avengers: Age of Ultron," and you'll remember that Vision was conceived from a combination of the artificial brain of Ultron, the Mind Stone, and fragments of Tony Stark’s AI butler companion, J.A.R.V.I.S., who was named after the real Jarvis seen in the "Agent Carter" TV series.

J.A.R.V.I.S. appears in "VisionQuest" as his own unique entity, alongside another of Tony Stark's AI helpers, E.D.I.T.H., aka the AI in the smart glasses that Stark left to Peter Parker after his death. She shows up in "Spider-Man: Far From Home," which is a great movie but not an essential viewing if you're preparing for "VisionQuest."

Then let's toss in the fact that papa Ultron (James Spader) is buzzing around in Vision’s cranium, creating what’s been described as more or less an "Age of Ultron" and a "WandaVision" sequel at the same time. As it turns out, Vision did not destroy Ultron at the end of "Age of Ultron"; he copied his code and absorbed him, so now the rabid robot lives on in Vision’s brain.

Like father, like son

The show’s narrative is centered around the complicated relationship between Vision and his son Tommy Maximoff (Ruaridh Mollica). Tommy was created by Wanda's Hex and should have disappeared when it collapsed, but both he and his brother Billy survived through magical shenanigans that are explained in 2024's "Agatha All Along."

Those two Maximoff boys, Tommy and Billy, both vanished from existence at the conclusion of "WandaVision." "Agatha All Along" exposed the truth that their consciousnesses entered the ether before expiring, only to reemerge into the souls of two teenage boys who had just perished, therefore returning them to life. Are you still with us? Good, just checking.

The finale of "Agatha All Along" hinted at the return of the estranged Tommy, and "VisionQuest" dives into that dangling plot point with relish!

Palad-in for a bad time

Every show needs an antagonist, and the voices in Vision's head can't do all the work. "VisionQuest" has introduced a duo of villains for Vision to contend with. Neither of them has shown up in the MCU previously, though, so you don't need to do any research here.

With a massive bounty on his head after breaking free from S.W.O.R.D.'s control, White Vision must contend with a new villainous foe in the form of a mysterious mercenary named Paladin (Todd Stashwick).

This enigmatic Marvel Comics character was created by Jim Shooter and Carmine Infantino and was first seen prowling the pages of "Daredevil #150" back in 1978. He's basically a gun-for-hire in the Marvel universe, often hired to fight alongside or against various heroes depending on the story. We don't know much about his motivations in the show, but we'll learn more as it goes on.

"VisionQuest" also shines a spotlight on the bizarro character of Ultron's "bride," Jocasta, though the MCU version of this character diverges wildly from the comic book inspiration.

It's enough to drive one to madness! Between all the father-son dynamics dancing around the eight scheduled episodes, being hunted down by mercs, and his transcendent search for meaning, Vision and his saga are hopefully headed to a peaceful end.

Created by Terry Matalas ("Star Trek: Picard," "12 Monkeys") and airing two new chapters each Tuesday night on Disney+, VisionQuest is bolstered by a cast that includes Ruaridh Mollica, T'Nia Miller, Lauren Morais, Orla Brady, Diane Morgan, Polly Frame, Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, Emily Hampshire, and James D’Arcy.

SpaceX is building and operating two satellite networks at the moment, Starlink and Starshield. What’s the difference between the two, and who uses them?

For more than a week in October 2026, Ukrainian drone operators found their high-speed satellite links shut off. Officials in Kyiv said that terminals for SpaceX’s Starshield network stopped working at speeds of above 160 kilometers per hour (100 miles per hour) from Oct. 14, hampering efforts to conduct defensive operations and intercept Russian drones. Full connectivity was restored on Oct. 24, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The arguments over who did what continue, but the affair highlighted how little is publicly understood about Starshield — what it is, how it relates to Starlink, and how it is operated.

What is Starlink?

Starlink is SpaceX’s commercial, mass-market satellite internet service. The company says it now has more than 11,000 Starlink broadband and mobile satellites in orbit, operating approximately 342 miles (550 kilometers) above Earth. This follows years of deployment using the company's Falcon 9 rocket..

The network serves consumers, enterprises and government customers across more than 160 countries. It is owned and operated by SpaceX. Anyone from a rural household to an airline can buy a terminal and a service plan.

Governments are also customers, with public agencies using Starlink for a range of purposes including connectivity, disaster response and national security, notably in the case of Ukraine in the wake of the invasion by Russia, which began in February 2022 and is ongoing.

What is Starshield?

Starshield is SpaceX’s network for serving national security customers. The company announced the program in December 2022, stating it would apply Starlink technology and SpaceX's launch capability to government needs, initially in three areas: Earth observation, communications and hosted payloads.

"They are using the same satellite buses," says Bleddyn Bowen, associate professor of astropolitics at Durham University in the U.K. “They look the same, but they have a lot more kit on them that allows them to do more things. They provide similar broadband internet, but with more secure hardware and software and hardened systems.”

The company says it has won multi-billion-dollar, multiyear contracts from the U.S. military in 2026 for Starshield-related services.

Some Starshield satellites may also carry sensors for intelligence and surveillance. But much about Starshield is secretive, with its finances not revealed and launches often classified.

Starshield makeup

Starshield is made up of a range of different assets, including spy satellites, military data satellites, and secure communications for ground users.

The spy satellites are sent into orbit in launches for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), for a "proliferated architecture" of spy satellites, including electro-optical, radar and relay spacecraft. The NRO does not use the Starshield name, but said earlier this year that it had launched more than 200 satellites in recent years, many of which are for its proliferated architecture.

Then there is the Space Data Network Backbone. The U.S. Space Force awarded SpaceX a $2.29 billion fixed-price contract to build the network, previously known as MILNET, using Starshield satellites. It is meant to move data quickly between missile-warning sensors and interceptors as part of the Trump administration's Golden Dome missile defense plan. A prototype is due by the end of 2027. A Space Force official has described MILNET as government-owned and operated by SpaceX as a contractor, under Space Force oversight.

Starshield provides encrypted connectivity for military users through terminals. These can be dedicated Starshield terminals, or Starlink terminals for Starshield services.

Crucially, the networks overlap. "Those Starshield satellites are physically separate from Starlink satellites, but the Starshield satellites can use the Starlink network if they need to," Bowen said. That interoperability is available to U.S. national security users, he added, "but not if you're a commercial user of Starlink."

Use restrictions differ, too. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said that Starlink's terms of service bar its use for offensive drone strikes, while decisions about Starshield use rest with the U.S. government.

Who controls Starshield is a question that entered the public consciousness in the wake of the Ukraine Starshield speed limit affair. The U.S. government is the customer, and also in some cases the owner, but SpaceX builds the satellites, operates the underlying Starlink network on which some Starshield services run and, in some arrangements, operates the Starshield satellites themselves. How this command is divided between the government and SpaceX is unclear.

Bowen compared it to the U.K.’s Skynet military satellite system, in which contractor Babcock operates the satellites. "The actual button punching is done by the contractors, but the military and government are in the room and are calling the shots,” he said.

That question matters, because it determines whether SpaceX can act on its own or only with government oversight and approval.

What’s next?

Starshield appears set to become more central to U.S. military space. The Space Data Network Backbone prototype is expected next year, while NRO launches will continue, according to contracts. With SpaceX now a public company, quarterly reports could provide more insight into the system. For now, however, much remains classified.

Rocket Lab launched its 99th mission to date today (Nov. 2), sending a private Japanese Earth-observing satellite toward orbit.

An Electron rocket lifted off from Rocket Lab's New Zealand site today at 11:41 a.m. EST (1641 GMT; 5:41 a.m. on Nov. 3 local New Zealand time).

The mission, which Rocket Lab calls "The Sea God Surveys," is carrying an Earth-observing radar satellite to low Earth orbit (LEO) for the Japanese company iQPS. All went according to plan: The spacecraft was deployed at an altitude of 357 miles (575 kilometers), Rocket Lab announced about 56 minutes after launch.

"The Sea God Surveys" was Rocket Lab's 10th launch to date for iQPS, which is assembling a constellation of three dozen synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites in LEO.

SAR satellites offer advantages over those that view our planet in optical wavelengths. They can peer through cloud cover, for example, and study our planet at night as well as during the day.

Today's launch was the 99th overall for Rocket Lab and the 90th for the two-stage, 59-foot-tall (18 meters) Electron, which gives small satellites dedicated rides to space. The workhorse vehicle has now flown 17 times this year.

Rocket Lab's other nine launches to date have been conducted by HASTE, a suborbital version of Electron that allows customers to test their tech in the hypersonic flight environment. HASTE (short for "Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron") debuted in June 2023 and generally flies classified payloads.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 11:55 a.m. ET on Nov. 2 with news of successful launch, then again at 1 p.m. EST with news of successful satellite deployment.

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond was, unfortunately, not the return many were hoping for when it finally arrived on Nintendo Switch consoles in 2025. After five years in development at Retro Studios, the original makers of the Metroid Prime series, fans were greeted with annoying side characters, a bike for Samus to roam the barren landscape on, and a deeply unsatisfying ending.

It’s a shame, considering how beloved the Metroid Prime series has been since the first title’s 2002 debut for the Nintendo GameCube. Many franchises were jumping from 2D to 3D at the turn of the millennium, and there were plenty of failures — but Metroid wasn’t one of them. The two sequels would enhance how players control Samus with powerful weapons and a multiplayer mode, but the 18-year gap between Metroid Prime 3 and 4 left players expecting something special.

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond’s average reception left fans wondering where the series can go next. It’s admittedly strange that Metroid Prime 2 and 3 have yet to debut on Nintendo Switch, either through the Nintendo Online service or as remasters.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake has just dropped for Switch 2, and seeing Nintendo leverage one of the best games of all time for a modern take has given us an idea: let's give the Metroid Prime trilogy the remake treatment, taking inspiration from Capcom’s efforts with Resident Evil.

To Prime and Beyond

From 2002’s Resident Evil remake to the more recent successes with Resident Evil 2 & 4, Capcom has managed to recreate the feeling and survival horror tropes of the originals while modernizing the gameplay.

Whether it's the constant tension of being stalked by a Terminator-like Mr. X in 2019’s Resident Evil 2, or the palpable paranoia you feel exploring in Resident Evil 4 — the skin might be new, but the bones are undeniably "Resi."

Even recently-announced Resident Evil: Veronica — whilst a remake of 1999’s Code: Veronica — looks set to be a brand new take that evokes the feeling of the original game, but brings it into the modern era.

Prime 4 felt like a game out of time. Sure, it looked the part, but it felt decidedly like a GameCube game. So why not take a leaf out of Capcom's book, apply their "recapturing the vibes" mindset for a Metroid Prime Trilogy Remake, using the Prime 4 engine as its foundation.

2023’s Metroid Prime Remastered showed off the venerable title with better textures and widescreen support, but a remake powered by the fourth game’s engine could showcase the opening and Tallon IV in a whole new light.

Similar to 2002’s Resident Evil Remake with the Spencer Mansion, places would feel familiar but fresh, thanks to updated graphics, better sound, and support for HD Rumble 2 that could help the player become more immersed in the game. And of course, you can change a few things to play off people's expectations.

If Nintendo is feeling brave, the reimagining could even begin at the end of Zero Mission, which is set just before Metroid Prime. Controlling Samus with all her abilities, facing off against Mother Brain in an area not seen in 3D, could be a great introduction to old and new players, as well as giving the opportunity to remake an area from a previous title. Then, players could escape to Samus’ ship, with the ability to pilot it to the Orpheron ship, where Prime begins.

The Return of Metroid Prime Multiplayer

A remake (or remakes) would obviously mean a big step-up in graphics and gameplay across all three games, but it could also herald the long-awaited return of its multiplayer mode from Metroid Prime 2, something that Metroid Prime 4: Beyond bizarrely left out.

Up to four players could take part in one of two modes here - Deathmatch and Bounty Mode, which had players compete against one another by collecting coins to win matches. There were four arenas to choose from, with an additional two to unlock when players got far enough in Prime 2’s single-player mode.

It was a fun time, and its absence in Prime 4: Beyond felt like a big miss, especially with the prospect of playing this mode online with others and using the Switch 2 features like Game Chat.

A remake could fix this injustice, and even expand on the concept by offering new multiplayer modes alongside maps based on locations from across the Prime series. You could even add a co-op mode for the campaign, and a horde mode for co-op fans to enjoy online too.

Give Samus the Itchy Tasty Treatment

As it stands in 2026, the Metroid series feels adrift once more. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond will be lost to the sands of time, a mediocre entry in a series filled with bangers. As the latest Nintendo Direct eagerly showcased Donkey Kong, Zelda, and plenty of third-party releases, Samus was notably absent. Sure, she's just had a game, but it's hard not to be nervous after the drought that Metroid players had to suffer in the 2010s.

Capcom was in a similar lull after 2012’s disappointing Resident Evil 6, a bloated and confusing entry that made players fear the end of the series. But the seventh entry, alongside the Resident Evil 2 Remake in 2019, breathed new life into the franchise, which has proved as tough to kill as any of Umbrella's bioweapons.

Metroid's fate feels equally in the balance right now, and in a world where game studios are closing down and rivals like Microsoft are shrinking their focus to big-hitter franchises, Nintendo could easily let Metroid fall back into obscurity. Refocusing on what makes the series iconic is the key to its success, and modern remakes of the originals might just be what they need to rediscover that Metroid magic.

There are some easy wins out there to keep fans engaged; it’d still be great to see more games appear on the Nintendo Online service, like Metroid Prime 2, and we'd love more 2D entries after the excellent Metroid Dread, but nothing hits like Prime, and Prime isn't hitting right now.

If not, then I fear Samus will be riding her Vi-O-La into the sunset, deep within the barren wasteland of Sol Valley for the foreseeable future.

It came from outer space, exploding high above the South Atlantic off the coast of Argentina.

That April 1 event — an incoming meteor, also termed a bolide — was observed by both U.S. space-based military and civil sensors.

Hush-hush U.S. government satellite sensors detected the speedy fireball cutting through our atmosphere. The object's brightness peaked at an altitude of nearly 60 miles (90.5 kilometers) over the South Atlantic.

That dazzling spectacle was also caught by the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration's GOES-E and Europe's Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) Imager-1 satellite. Those two independent spacecraft in geostationary orbit detected the bolide via onboard lightning imagers.

This skyfall show is among a number of recent episodes that spotlight the value of combining multi-sensor data to not only portray fireball dynamics but also to help appreciate human-caused space debris impacts, as well as strengthening planetary defense knowhow.

Catastrophic fragmentation

Take, for instance, another extraterrestrial incident.

In this case, an April 24, 2025 fireball over south-central Alaska yielded one of the most densely recorded "seismoacoustic" datasets ever obtained for a nature-made bolide en route to busting up.

A network of 37 seismic stations, 16 single infrasound sensors, and four infrasound arrays recorded 30 ballistic and multiple fragmentation arrivals. All this was complemented by Doppler weather radar detections of falling meteorites and independent optical video observations.

Now, toss in for good measure yet another encounter.

A roughly 12-foot-wide (3.7 meters) space rock plowed through Earth's atmosphere over northwest Queensland, Australia, on May 20, 2023, accompanied by a raucous round of sonic booms. And U.S. government space-based sensors caught the fall.

Researchers later determined that the object underwent catastrophic fragmentation, producing one of the 20 most energetic events reported by NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) since 1988 and the most energetic seen over Australia. It was equivalent to the explosion of a 7.1-kiloton bomb.

Location, time and estimated energy

"For many fireballs, U.S. Government detections reported through NASA's CNEOS database provide an important starting point by establishing that an event occurred and, in many cases, providing basic parameters such as location, time and estimated energy," explained Elizabeth Silber, a senior research and development physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico.

"Civil and scientific observing systems can then add independent measurements that help refine and validate that initial characterization," said Silber.

CNEOS, which is based at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, is NASA's center for computing asteroid and comet orbits and their odds of striking Earth. CNEOS computes high-precision orbits for such objects in support of NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office.

Different and complementary information

"The Alaska event is an especially useful example, because it was not reported by U.S. Government sensors in the CNEOS database. In this case, the event was reconstructed almost entirely from civil and scientific observations," Silber told Space.com.

She said that the seismic and infrasound data constrained the trajectory and acoustic energy, the video provided independent optical information, and the weather radar detected material from the fireball falling to Earth.

"So, the real strength is that these systems provide different and complementary information," said Silber. "When a U.S. Government detection is available, civil data can independently validate it and add much more detail. When one is not available, as in this case [for Alaska], the civil networks can still provide a surprisingly complete reconstruction."

Independent view

The Alaska study shows how valuable it is to put together diverse types of observations once an event has occurred, said Silber. Each measurement responds to a different part of the event.

"Seismic and infrasound sensors record the atmospheric shock waves and can constrain the trajectory, fragmentation and energy," she added. "Optical observations provide an independent view of the luminous flight. Doppler weather radar can detect surviving material after it has slowed and entered dark flight."

Bottom line: no single sensor tells you everything.

"Combining independent observations lets us move from simply knowing that an event occurred to determining how the object traveled through the atmosphere, where it fragmented, how much energy it released, and whether material may have survived to the ground," said Silber.

'Hard rain' is gonna fall

Researchers got pretty lucky with the April 1, 2026 event over the South Atlantic, according to NASA's Rob Landis, a planetary defense specialist: Two civilian spacecraft located at different locations in geosynchronous orbit allowed them to conduct a rather unique investigation of this bolide.

"With two civilian resources, we can actually discuss things more openly," Landis, who's now a visiting vehicle integration manager for the International Space Station at NASA's Johnson Space Center, told Space.com.

Lightning-watching instruments not designed for detecting bolides, he said, "afford the science community to discuss these events and these sensors in a forthright, open manner. These lightning imagers give us opportunistic bonus science for those who study the 'hard rain.'"

Landis said that, in his personal view, there's a lot of smaller stuff getting through the atmosphere.

"To the casual observer, these certainly produce wonderful natural fireworks and are mostly harmless," Landis said. But, he stressed, it's important to be able to distinguish between natural events and human-made ones.

"It would be a horrific tragedy if any nation responded to a natural event — if they misinterpret it as a preemptive strike," cautioned Landis.

Real-world tests

So, in the big picture, having collaborative, multiple and independent ways to observe atmospheric entries is of benefit to planetary defense thinkers.

"Planetary defense is not only about finding an object before it reaches Earth," Silber said. "It is also about understanding what happens during atmospheric entry — that is, how the object fragments, where it deposits its energy, how accurately we can reconstruct its trajectory and whether material survives to the ground."

Incoming events provide "real-world tests" of the methods and models used to answer those questions, said Silber.

Harkening back to the recent Alaska fireball fall, Silber said, was particularly valuable because it was unpredicted, yet the dense ground-based network allowed the trajectory and energetics to be reconstructed in considerable detail.

"From a planetary-defense perspective, that kind of redundancy is extremely useful. Space-based observations, seismic and infrasound networks, optical cameras, and weather radar each provide different information, and each has its own limitations," Silber said.

When several observation techniques are available, researchers can cross-check one another and produce a much more complete characterization of an event.

"That improves post-event situational awareness, helps validate physical models and strengthens our ability to interpret future atmospheric entries, whether they involve natural objects or artificial reentries," Silber concluded.

On Nov. 1, 1962, the Soviet Union launched the Mars 1 spacecraft on a mission to fly by the Red Planet.

While it did end up flying by Mars, the mission was not exactly a success. After it separated from the rocket, it deployed its solar panels and started cruising toward Mars.

When mission controllers were checking out the telemetry it transmitted back to Earth, they found out that Mars 1 had sprung a leak in one of the gas valves that controls the spacecraft's orientation. And without a working orientation system, Mars 1 would have a hard time pointing its antennas in the right direction. It lost contact with Earth when it was about halfway to Mars.

Why it mattered

Ever since Galileo Galilei pointed his telescope to the red-tinted star and identified as a planet, Mars has captivated scientists' interests as to its nature. So it was of no surprise that as soon as we gained the ability to send missions into space, that the focus turned to the "fourth rock from the Sun."

As it turned out, though, reaching Mars, let alone entering its orbit or landing on its surface,, was and continues to be difficult.

Mars 1, despite its name, was actually the Soviet Union's fourth attempt at sending a probe to the planet. The first three ended in launch failures. Similar problems faced the United States, as well, but it was NASA's Mariner IV mission that became the first to successfully fly by Mars two years later.

Still, as humanity continues to push forward to the day people land on, explore and live on Mars, the 1962 Soviet mission stands as the first to get close to revealing the first details about the planet.

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

Update for 2:45 p.m. ET on Nov. 4: NASA's Swift space telescope fell to Earth today at 7:39 a.m. EST (1239 GMT) over Indonesia. Read our story here.

NASA's Swift space telescope is expected to crash back to Earth in the next few days.

The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory will reenter Earth's atmosphere in an uncontrolled fashion, after a robotic rescue mission failed to boost the scope to a higher orbit.

Swift launched to Earth orbit back in November 2004. Over the next two decades, it studied gamma-ray bursts — the most powerful explosions in the universe — and other cosmic objects and events using a trio of telescopes: a Burst Alert Telescope (BAT), an X-Ray Telescope (XRT), and its Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT).

On Oct. 20, NASA reported that Swift's orbit had decayed to 171 miles (275 kilometers) above Earth and that the roughly 3,300-pound (1,500-kilogram) observatory was no longer able to compensate for the effects of the increased drag. It entered safe mode, followed by Swift's operations team at Pennsylvania State University sending a command to the spacecraft that effectively ended its operations ahead of its destructive and fiery nose-dive.

It's unclear at the moment exactly when and where Swift will plunge to Earth. But researchers definitely have their eyes peeled.

A surge of reentries

In physics fashion, for the most part, what goes up must come down — with more space hardware to follow.

Thanks to the growing surge in low Earth orbit constellations and technology refresh cycles, there are 10 times more objects reentering per year than there were just five years ago, said Darren McKnight, a senior technical fellow at LeoLabs, a company that keeps a watchful eye on what's going on above our planet.

"It is unfortunate that Swift was not 'reorbited,' but from a reentry hazard perspective it is a small portion of the stuff coming back in. The rub on this, of course, is that, while many people bemoan the reentry of more objects, I am much more upset about the rapid rate of abandoning massive objects above 400 miles [644 km]," McKnight told Space.com.

Swift will likely disintegrate sufficiently upon reentry to not pose a ground casualty hazard, McKnight said. However, the internal workings of the observatory's X-ray and optical telescope might survive, McKnight said.

Where in the world?

Similar in view is Dean Sladen, a quality manager and aerospace engineer at the U.K. precision-components supplier Accu Components.

"Once Swift falls to about 120 kilometers [75 miles], the end usually comes within a few minutes. The air in front of it heats up so much that the satellite will start to glow. Solar panels and antennas are typically the first to tear off, and at around 78 kilometers [48 miles], roughly eight times the height of a passing airliner, the main body breaks apart. Most of it will melt and vaporize," said Sladen.

While it isn't yet known exactly where any surviving pieces will land, Sladen noted that Swift's orbit only passes over a band within about 21 degrees of the equator.

"That band is mostly ocean, though it also crosses populated parts of Africa, South and Southeast Asia and Latin America," he said.

Surviving leftovers

As for which parts are most likely to survive and reach ocean or ground, Sladen pointed out that most of Swift's body is aluminum, wiring and electronics, which melt away early in the reentry process. What reaches Earth is usually small, dense and heat-resistant, such as titanium, steel and glass.

"The most likely survivors are its six heavy reaction wheels, the spinning flywheels it used to aim itself, along with tougher telescope parts such as lenses and mirrors. Its mask of around 52,000 tiny lead tiles will almost certainly melt. Only a handful of small, scorched fragments are expected to make it down — nothing recognizable as a telescope," Sladen said.

Sladen said that, at the current time, it appears that no detailed risk assessment has been published for Swift's fall.

"However, this does not mean NASA has not done the work," said Sladen.

"NASA's own orbital debris requirements state that the risk of human casualty from surviving debris shall not exceed one in 10,000, so it is highly likely this work has been completed but not published," he told Space.com. "Personally, I believe it should be published, as NASA has done with previous satellites. The risk is almost certainly very small, but it would give people a clear, factual picture rather than guesswork."

Design for demise

Sladen added that there's far more focus on how a satellite's life ends these days than there was in the past.

"Many now carry enough propulsion to steer themselves into a remote stretch of ocean, or are built from materials designed to burn up completely, an approach called 'design for demise.' NASA and the European Space Agency limit the chance of anyone being hurt by a reentry to one in 10,000, and if a satellite can't meet that, it's expected to come down in a controlled way," said Sladen.

So, should people be worried about having a nasty run-in with Swift leftovers?

Sladen doesn't think so. NASA has said that harm to anyone on the ground is unlikely, and LeoLabs also describes the risk as very small. Most of the spacecraft will burn up, and any surviving pieces will most likely fall into the sea, he said.

"The real concern is the long-term trend. With more satellites being launched than ever, the number of uncontrolled reentries is growing, which is why designing satellites to come down safely matters more and more," Sladen concluded.

This is a great month for planet watching, either in the evenings or mornings. During convenient evening hours, the planet of choice is Saturn, visible well up in the southern sky during mid-to-late evening hours. Telescopically, the southern side of its famous ring system is currently tilted about 6½ degrees to our line of sight.

Around the middle of the night, Mars and Jupiter come into view above the east-northeast horizon and just before the break of dawn are in excellent position, soaring high in the southern sky in the vicinity of the Sickle of Leo the Lion. Watch how Mars approaches Jupiter early in the month, passes it on Nov. 16, then spends the rest of the month sailing away to the east.

Meanwhile, in the predawn morning sky, Venus literally vaults into prominence as the month progresses. And from midmonth on through the end of November, Mercury asserts itself, appearing as a very bright "star" to the far lower left of Venus.

In our schedule, remember that when measuring the angular separation between two celestial objects, your clenched fist held at arm's length measures roughly 10 degrees. Here, we present a schedule below which provides some of the best planet viewing times as well directing you as to where to look to see them

Reminder: On Nov. 1 — where applicable — change clocks back one hour from Daylight Saving Time. On this date, the clock hour from 1 to 2:00 a.m. is repeated, thus making this day the longest of the year: 25 hours long. The mnemonic is: "Spring Ahead, Fall Back."

Mercury

Mercury, hidden during inferior conjunction with the sun on Nov. 4, will emerge in the eastern morning sky after the second week of the month to undergo an excellent morning apparition for the Northern Hemisphere. This rocky little world arrives at its greatest western elongation (20 degrees) from the sun on Nov. 20; its most favorable morning apparition of the year for mid-northern observers. From Nov. 16 to Nov. 26 speedy Mercury will rise in the east-southeast before the beginning of astronomical twilight, more than 95 minutes before sunrise.

Venus

Venus is a good reason to be up at the crack of dawn in November; it's a silvery lamp that rises above the east-southeast horizon. Venus was at inferior conjunction on Oct. 24. But the steep angle of the ecliptic at dawn in late autumn helps Venus vault noticeably higher with each passing day for observers at mid-northern latitudes. On Nov. 1, it rises 55 minutes before the sun. But just several days later on Nov. 5, viewers around 40 degrees north latitude can see Venus come up one hour and 25 minutes before the sun and shine 15 degrees above the horizon at sunrise. As November ends, Venus rises nearly 3½ hours before the sun and hangs nearly 35 degrees up at sunrise.

All month Venus brightens impressively and on the penultimate day of the month it will reach the pinnacle of its magnificent brightness, shining at magnitude -4.9, rising almost 3½ hours before the sun. If there's snow on the ground, check for shadows made by Venus's light. Through a telescope, the phase of the planet looks most remarkable early in the month. That's when you may be able to glimpse Venus when it's only a few percent illuminated, a hairline crescent close to an arcminute long; about 1/30 the apparent diameter of the moon. Venus is not alone in the dawn sky.

Its leap takes it up into the proximity of the bluish 1st-magnitude star Spica in Virgo on the morning of Nov. 3. The star will be sitting 2.4 degrees to the upper right of Venus. During this month, Venus seems to perform a dos-à-dos with Spica and at first seems destined to soar up and catch it. Instead, the closest it gets to this star is 1.8 degrees to its upper left early on the morning of Nov. 19.

On the morning of Nov. 7, a striking array of a waning crescent moon, brilliant Venus and Spica awaits early risers low in the east-southeast sky about an hour before sunrise. The trio will be bunched together inside of a circle measuring only about 2½ degrees in diameter.

Mars

Mars, shining at magnitude +0.9, is in Leo in the morning sky and is easily found on the morning of Nov. 2, using the moon as a guide. That day it sits a couple of degrees to the left of the moon. In addition, on that date, Mars is positioned 5 degrees to the upper right of much brighter Jupiter.

Mars has been hiding in the glare of the sun, or in the dead of the early morning hours, for the last year and a quarter. Now it finally rises in the east before midnight. Each night, watch the orange-yellow planet move a little closer to Jupiter. They'll be in conjunction on Nov. 16 (See Jupiter below).

On the morning of Nov. 26, Mars, having brightened to magnitude +0.6, passes 1.7 degrees to the upper left of the first magnitude star Regulus in Leo. The color contrast between the orange-yellow planet and blue-white star is striking, especially in binoculars.

Jupiter

Jupiter is high enough for a steady telescopic view by 3 a.m. But its dusky cloud belts and Red Spot can be seen more clearly when the planet is highest in the southeast soon after dawn breaks.

On Nov. 3, shortly after 1 a.m. local time, look low toward the east-northeast horizon to watch the moon slowly ascend the sky. The 1st magnitude star Regulus will be evident sitting a degree to the moon's left. And sitting about 5 degrees above the moon will be Jupiter, appearing as a brilliant "star" shining with a steady, silvery light.

Mars passes 1.2 degrees to the upper left of Jupiter on Nov. 16; the giant planet outshining the red planet 13-fold. Late on Nov. 29 and into the early hours of Nov. 30, look low toward the east-northeast horizon for a gathering of the waning gibbous moon, with Jupiter, Regulus and Mars. These four celestial bodies cover an expanse of roughly 7 degrees going from right to left. Best views will come around the time of the break of dawn when they'll appear to soar high in the southern sky.

Saturn

Saturn is situated in the northeast corner of the non-zodiacal constellation of Cetus the Whale (or Sea Monster). It crosses the southern meridian around 9:45 p.m. at the beginning of November and about two hours earlier at the month's end. All evening, it is excellently placed for telescopic viewing of its glorious ball and rings. At magnitude +0.6, Saturn is easily the brightest point of light in its section of the heavens. It can also be told from the stars by its steady, yellowish light.

On the evening of Nov. 18, take note of Saturn mimicking a bright "star" shining about 6 degrees below the waxing gibbous moon.

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

Abandoned, possessed, or infested spaceships in sci-fi films, books, and video games are usually not a welcoming place to hang your helmet and kick back inside.

Many are distinctly marked as DO NOT APPROACH zones and equipped with clearly articulated warning messages to keep your distance, but that doesn't ever seem to stop scavengers, space pirates, or evil industrial mega corporations from waving off these dangerous signs to board anyway.

Other creaky craft are apt to contain nasty alien hitchhikers or biological hazards not exactly conducive to a pleasant star-trekking voyage. Whether these nefarious neglected craft have just reappeared from the other side of a black hole or have been lying dormant for eons on a hostile planetoid, visitors are usually infrequent.

So ignore those distress beacons at your own peril and step into this alarming armada of 9 nightmarish sci-fi spaceships before orbits decay.

Happy Halloween!

This is not a ranked list, just a collection of our favorites.

1. USG ISHIMURA — "DEAD SPACE" (2008)

It's basically a perfectly good interstellar mining vessel owned by the Concordance Extraction Corporation if you forget about the nasty reanimated corpses found lurking on nearly every deadly deck.

The pesky Necromorphs are a resilient crop of creatures and are extremely inhospitable when it comes to having uninvited guests, yet they don't mind if you're staying for dinner.

This plague of hungry zombified corpses is a real drag, unless you happen to have a flaring plasma cutter in your back pocket and your name is Isaac Clarke.

2. THE GRENDEL — "JASON X" (2002)

Things would be much more peaceful aboard the Grendel if a notorious undead slasher named Jason Voorhees wasn't stashed in the cargo bay, but when scientific discovery enters the equation, many questionable choices follow.

The Grendel is a 25th-century medical research vessel on a field trip from hell to an overly polluted Earth, where the frozen Jason is kept at the Crystal Lake Research Facility and shipped back home to Earth 2 for cellular research.

Once thawed, the ship becomes his private killing field with an ample supply of student bodies until the fiery finale when Jason becomes an inhuman meteor in the sky. Next time, take the school bus.

3. RAMA — "RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA" (1973)

This spooky classic novel written by "2001's" legendary author, Arthur C. Clarke, focuses on a massive alien spaceship entering Earth's atmosphere.

The 31-mile-long cylindrical spaceship does not parallel park easily and is quite spacious inside. In fact, it’s primarily hollow at first and likely offers up a fantastic location for some echoey yodeling. As we later learn, Rama aliens are apparently collecting forms of intelligent life from around the galaxy, employing their ginormous Rama spacecraft.

As an ice ring thaws and forms a vast ocean, astronauts explore the ship’s cavernous confines, only to find automated bio-machines and weird metallic towers, curved alloy cliffs, and fantastic geometric city-like structures. The myriad mysteries that unfold are enough to drive sane humans to absolute madness!

4. THE SCOPULI — "LEVIATHAN WAKES" (2011)

Ignore that glistening brown protomolecular goo, and come on in and sit a spell in the Scopuli, a light Martian freighter used by the Outer Planets Alliance for clandestine missions and ransacked by the evil security firm Protogen in an attempt to hijack its alien cargo.

Hailing from James S.A. Corey's first book in "The Expanse Series", the Scopuli was found moored to an asteroid by James Holden and his Canterbury crew. The amber-brown mess discovered inside the rigged ship is not to be trifled with, let alone inhaled, eaten, or touched.

Come to think of it, it’s probably much wiser to get out while you can and move along!

5. THE DERELICT — "ALIEN" (1979)

Anything that looks like an organic hammer-headed horseshoe lying canted in a rocky ravine on a hostile, uncharted planetoid is best to avoid. Especially when its repeating SOS beacon is translated into its true message… a dire warning to keep curious rubberneckers the hell away!

Once its strange, sexually suggestive openings are penetrated by Nostromo crew members, seeing fossilized giants and oceans of squishy egg pods in the cargo hold would make most reasonable people flee in terror.

We're better off leaving this sleeping nightmare in its resting place.

6. CHALLENGE 142 — "IT, THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE" (1956)

One of the inspirations for Ridley Scott's "Alien", this Golden Age goodie brings us aboard the sleek silver rescue rocketship, Challenge 142, and locks us inside after a bloodthirsty reptilian alien from Mars decides to catch a lift back to Earth with its new astronaut friends in the far-flung future of... 1973!

Mute, clawed monsters with insatiable appetites for human flesh are never good travel companions in the confines of a steel spacecraft. A wiser choice would have been to have stayed on Mars and used the Challenge 142 as a stylized red planet potato farm.

7. ICARUS 1 — "SUNSHINE" (2007)

Need a glowing golden suntan? This vessel was launched from Earth to detonate a nuclear payload within the sun's fury to keep its fusion furnace burning and was never heard from again.

A sister rescue vessel, the Icarus 2, was dispatched as a last resort and encountered this long-abandoned ship drifting near the scorching star. Inside the Icarus 1, its over-tanned Captain Pinback has been caught in an addictive ritual of basking in the sun's brilliant embrace and has gone quite insane.

Back out quietly and toss him a nice bottle of aloe vera lotion.

8. THE EVENT HORIZON — "EVENT HORIZON" (1997)

Lawrence Fishburne's Captain Miller thinks this place is a tomb! Well, that's not a very polite way to describe what I think is one of the most ominous spaceships ever seen on screen.

The fact that this foreboding vessel, designed after the cathedral of Notre Dame, has appeared in Neptune's orbit following its disappearance after entering a black hole should be enough to keep the crew of the Lewis and Clark from steering anywhere close. Nothing good can be happening on that doomed craft considering the seven-year absence.

One second after discovering that the craft punctured a route straight to Hades and returned with some extra baggage, I'd be running for the exit hatch! The welcome mat is out, but there's no need to knock on this airlock.

9. THE SHENANDOAH — "CREATURE" (1985)

Basically an "Alien" ripoff, this low-budget cult sci-fi flick has its following, but only from those midnight runs to the video store in the '80s to grab the tape with the craziest-looking alien on the cover.

The Shenandoah is a prospecting explorer sent by a ruthless corporation to claim an alien archaeological site on Saturn's moon, Titan. Assorted chaos ensues when a rival West German spaceship is discovered at the dig site, only for our protagonists to find the crew slaughtered.

The carnivorous monster that creeps onto the Shenandoah suffers from little monster syndrome, but its bite is impressive. Best to have never touched the metallic pods in the subterranean cave and just skipped this homicidal mission entirely.

On Episode 234 of This Week In Space, Tariq Malik and Mike Wall are joined by Than Putzig of the Planetary Science Institute about a NASA-backed payload bound for the Marius Hills Pit on the moon.

In our ongoing quest to develop a moon base, could we possibly utilize the area beneath the surface of the moon in order to make the moon habitable? Could Marius Hills Pit, a roughly 50-meter-wide opening that may lead into a lunar lava tube, become the Moon's first living habitat for humans?

Putzig explains how geophysical instruments on a rover could detect hidden voids beneath the surface and measure the size of these lava tubes. We also ask Than how these lava tubes form, what a follow-up robotic explorer could reveal, and how this research fits alongside NASA’s Artemis plans for a south polar moon base. Join us!

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

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

Space news of the week

• China's secretive space plane caught on camera in incredible new photo released by US military
• Watch Virgin Galactic's new 'Delta-class' space plane take to the skies for the 1st time
• Patrick Stewart, renowned actor and ‘Star Trek’s’ Captain Picard, dies at 86
• 'Star Trek' legend and sci-fi luminary Walter Koenig dies at 90
• NASA's hunting for a secret underground cave on the moon
• Journey Across The Moon - Stunning Images From The SELENE Lunar Orbiter
• LPI - Marius Hills
• NASA Adds New Science Investigations for Moon Base

Model Falcon 9!

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

About This Week In Space

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

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

On October 31, 2015, an asteroid shaped like a human skull flew by Earth. It arrived with excellent timing on Halloween, which made the already-creepy asteroid even creepier.

During its closest approach, the creepy asteroid was about 300,000 miles from Earth, or 1.3 times the average distance between Earth and the moon. So, it didn't pose a threat to our planet. It was discovered by astronomers at Hawaii's Pan-STARRS observatory only three weeks before the flyby, and it was given the official designation "2015 TB145." But no one knew what it looked like until the day before Halloween, when the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico captured the first radar images.

NASA called the asteroid the "Great Pumpkin," while others called it the "Halloween Asteroid."

Why it mattered

Be afraid, be very afraid... Okay, not really, but there is reason to be concerned about near-Earth objects and the time in which they are detected.

"According to the catalog of near-Earth objects (NEOs) kept by the Minor Planet Center, this is the closest currently known approach by an object this large until asteroid 1999 AN10, at about 2,600 feet (800 meters) in size, approaches at about 1 lunar distance (238,000 miles from Earth) in August 2027," NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) reported in 2015.

NASA’s Near-Earth Object Observations Program, sometimes called “Spaceguard,” works to catalog these type of objects and predicts some of their paths if they could be potentially threats to our planet. While there are no known credible impact threats to date, it doesn't mean the "Great Pumpkin," or rather a great impactor, isn't real.

As for 2015 TB145, it did return to Earth's vicinity in 2018, but at a much more distant pass of about 24 million miles (38 million kilometers), "or about a quarter the distance between Earth and the sun," according to JPL.

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

The moon dives towards the glowing heart of the constellation Leo for a spectacular rendezvous with Mars and Jupiter overnight on Nov. 1-2, as the glittering stars of the Beehive Cluster shine nearby. Here's what you need to know.

Look to the eastern horizon an hour after midnight to see the 45%-lit waning moon shining less than 5 degrees from the red light of Mars — roughly the width of your three middle fingers held at arm's length to the night sky.

Jupiter's bright light will gleam just below the red planet, with the bright star Regulus lining up beyond to form a dazzling procession leading back to the horizon. The stars of the Beehive Cluster (M44) can be found twinkling 10 degrees from the unlit side of the lunar disk around this time, in the middle of the constellation Cancer.

Stargazers in Australia, Indonesia and a host of other island nations and territories will see the moon pass directly in front of Jupiter, hiding its light in an event known as an occultation starting at 3:45 p.m. EST (2045 GMT) on Nov. 2 , according to In-The-Sky.org. However, the exact visibility and timings depend on location.

The cosmic pile-up serves as a spectacular reminder of the scale and diversity of targets on display in the night sky. After all, the moon appears largest from our Earthly perspective, but in reality it's less than half the diameter of Mars.

Jupiter, meanwhile, is over 20 times wider than the red planet, while mighty Regulus is up to four times larger than the sun, andcould easily fit all the planets of the solar system in its vast expanse.

By moonrise on the night of Nov. 3, the lunar crescent will have leapt past Jupiter and Mars, to appear just 1 degree from the blue-white light of Regulus for viewers in the U.S. Meanwhile, viewers in several South American countries including Brazil, Peru, Argentina and Bolivia will see the moon occult Regulus beginning at 6:59 EST (1024 GMT) on Nov. 3. The exact timings for a selection of South American countries can be found below, courtesy of In-The-Sky.org.

Want to get a closer look at the moon and planets of the solar system? Then be sure to check out our picks of the best telescopes and binoculars for exploring the night sky, including the Celestron NexStar 8SE, which we rank as the best motorized telescope out there.

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

Something spooky is stirring in the shadows of the infamous star Betelgeuse, a cosmic poltergeist that is disrupting the atmosphere of the red supergiant.

New radio observations have shown Betelgeuse's smaller stellar companion, Siwarha (not Betelguese Betelguese, unfortunately), cutting through the supergiant's extended atmosphere and leaving a wake in its path, like a jet boat slicing through a lake.

Because the name of this red supergiant star located about 650 light-years away from Earth, marking the shoulder of constellation Orion, is Betelgeuse, which means "the hand of al-Jawza" in Arabic, the companion was named Siwarha, meaning "her bracelet."

"This companion is orbiting so close to the star that it actually passes through its extended atmosphere," Lynn Matthews, the principal research scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Haystack Observatory who led the new observations, said in a statement.

Astronomers turn cosmic ghost hunters

Using data collected from 2021 to 2026 using the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array in New Mexico and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, Matthews and colleagues found that Betelgeuse's atmosphere stretches into an egg shape when the companion star is farthest away and rounds out when the companion passes in front of or behind it.

The same data also showed that Betelgeuse itself has largely recovered from the "Great Dimming" that made headlines in 2020. This recovery comes after the red supergiant "sneezed" in 2020, dramatically ejecting tons of gas and dust and fading to its dimmest in more than a century.

Among the long-standing mysteries of Betelgeuse, scientists have puzzled over a brightening and dimming cycle that lasts roughly 2,100 days. Recent studies pointed to a low-mass companion orbiting deep inside the star's atmosphere, and its existence was confirmed in early 2026.

Though Siwarha itself is too faint to detect directly at radio wavelengths, its influence shows up in the star's shape, the new study found. To confirm the effect, the researchers say, they will need to observe more of the companion's orbit, especially at radio frequencies that have so far been sparsely sampled.

The Next Generation Very Large Array, a planned telescope, should make this kind of monitoring far more routine, according to the team. With sharper vision, researchers could see how red supergiants like Betelgeuse shed their material as they near the end of their lives, and how a close companion might affect that process by tugging on that ejected matter.

This research is described in a paper published in The Astronomical Journal.

There could be more than just ghosts and ghouls lurking in the skies this Halloween! From Saturn's spectacular rings to shooting stars and even a space station flyover, the night sky has a few treats of its own in store for U.S. skywatchers on Oct. 31.

Based on the latest national forecast, skies will be mainly clear on Saturday evening over most of New York State, northeast Pennsylvania, northern New Jersey and New England as well as a swath of the southern and central Great Plains, central Rockies, a portion of the Pacific Northwest and central and south Florida, as costumed kids arrive at the door looking for candy or some other Halloween treat.

Temperatures will be mostly in the chilly 40s across the Northeast US, upper 50s and 60s for the nation's midsection, warm 70s to near 80 for the southern US, including Florida and the Gulf Coast, and 40s for much of the western US. Unfortunately, a storm moving across the nation's heartland may spell rainy skies for parts of Iowa and Nebraska, south to the Gulf Coast.

For those blessed with a generally fair evening, there will be views of mid-autumn stars and constellations plus a bright planet shining prominently in the early evening sky. If you plan to accompany children around your neighborhood, you might want to enlighten them by pointing out some of those objects that will be visible in the sky. Better yet, if you have a telescope, give your visitors a treat of a different kind: Give them a close-up view of some of those celestial sights.

At the top of the viewing list: The lord of the rings

At around 7 p.m. local time, tell your young audience to make a clenched fist with their hands and then hold them out at arm's length. Now, tell them to go "two fists" up from the east-southeast horizon and they will see a bright star, shining with a yellow-white hue. Now, direct your telescope toward that "star" and when you gaze through the eyepiece, you will not be looking at a star at all . . . but a planet!

Saturn.

This sixth planet out from the sun, just might be the most beautiful of all. Its rings are still readily evident, although currently they appear somewhat edge-on with the south face tilted only about 6 and a half degrees to our line of sight. A telescope magnifying 30-power will bring them out; they appear to bisect the ball of the planet. While this is far from their appearance compared to other years, the view should still look impressive to those who have never seen the ringed planet for themselves.

And watch out for fireballs!

Because they are active over Halloween, the Taurid meteor shower is sometimes called the "Halloween Fireballs." The bits of debris that make up the Taurids are a little larger than average, so they can result in brighter meteors and even fireballs, or exploding meteors (called bolides), that streak across the sky and leave incandescent trains in their wake. While they are most active during the second week of November, a few forerunners can show up on Halloween night, darting from out of the east-northeast part of the sky. So, if you or your young visitors see something resembling a flare from a Roman candle sweeping majestically across the evening sky, it may very well be a Taurid meteor.

And for those in the Northeast U.S., a space station!

Not the International Space Station, but the Tianhe-1 core module, the first module to launch of the Tiangong space station. It was launched into orbit on 29 April 2021, as the first launch of the final phase of the Tiangong program, part of the China Manned Space Program (Project 921). On Halloween evening, Tianhe-1 will be following a track from Chicago to New York at an altitude of 240 miles (385 km) and should be readily visible to the naked eye across the Northeast US within a few minutes of 7 p.m. EDT, wherever skies are reasonably clear.

The Tiangong Space Station should appear to resemble a very bright star moving across the sky on a general west-to-east course. For places near and along the flight path, the Space Station will appear to pass almost directly overhead. For those situated south of the track, Tiangong will reach its highest point above the northern horizon; those situated north of the track will see the station peak high in the south.

If you see it, tell your young viewers that three astronauts are currently living and working aboard the Tiangong Space Station, of which the Tianhe core module serves as the main living quarters. If you would like specific details on when and where to see the Space Station from your hometown, check out Heavens-Above, a non-profit website and mobile application that tracks satellites, the International Space Station (ISS), comets, and astronomical events in real time.

Another website that provides live information, including an orbit map on Tianhe-1, is NY2O.com. Check its menu list on the right side of the page and look for the blue box: "10-Day Predictions for CSS (Tianhe-1)."

Helpful hints for young telescope viewers

In the September 2019 issue of The Astronomical League Magazine "Reflector," author Richard W. Schmude Jr., offered some tips for those who plan to do public outreach for astronomy on Halloween:

"Firstly, children sometimes grab or touch the eyepiece, so use an inexpensive one. I gently warn children not to touch the telescope. In my area, parents have learned to tell their children not to touch the telescope. In some cases, a child will grab the eyepiece, causing the telescope to shift. For this reason, a Dobsonian telescope with a good finderscope is a good choice for Halloween outreach. A small stool or booster ladder may help very small viewers. Sometimes, parents hold their children up to look through the eyepiece. One may also place a monitor-connected video camera in the telescope and people can easily see the object on a screen." "Finally," adds Mr. Schmude, "I have my bag of goodies next to my telescope so that the children get two treats!"

Whatever your weather, Happy Halloween from all of us at Space.com!

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

SpaceX celebrated Halloween with an early-morning launch from California.

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base today (Oct. 31) at 12:04 a.m. EDT (0404 GMT; 9:04 p.m. on Oct. 30 local time), sending 27 of the company's Starlink internet satellites to low Earth orbit (LEO).

The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth as planned, touching down about 8.5 minutes after launch on the SpaceX drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You," which was stationed in the Pacific Ocean.

It was the 18th flight for this particular booster, which is designated B1093. The record for a SpaceX first stage is 37, set this past August by the booster B1067.

The Falcon 9's upper stage did its job as well today, deploying the 27 Starlink satellites into LEO about 62 minutes after launch. They're joining more than 11,000 spacecraft in the Starlink megaconstellation, which is by far the largest satellite network ever assembled.

Today's launch was the 118th Falcon 9 flight of 2026 so far. More than 70% of these missions have been devoted to building out the Starlink network.

SpaceX has also launched its Falcon Heavy and Starship rockets three times apiece this year. Falcon Heavy is an operational vehicle, but Starship remains in the test-flight phase. The company is currently gearing up for another Starship launch, which is expected to take place sometime in November.

As we all begin to absorb the bitter news of Patrick Stewart's death at the age of 86, a flood of personal tributes are pouring in, reflecting this global treasure's wonderful life lived with a dignity and bravado that few mortals possess.

We’re getting just a hint of what Patrick Stewart meant to those who worked with him or knew him throughout his stellar career. Whether on stage with the Royal Shakespeare Company, on TV as the dashing Captain Jean-Luc Picard in "Star Trek: The Next Generation," and in Hollywood spectacles like 1984's "Dune," four "Star Trek" feature films, and the many "X-Men" movies in which he portrayed Professor Charles Xavier, Stewart was always the consummate professional. His final screen performance arrives on Dec. 18 with "Avengers: Doomsday" where he’ll present his Charles Xavier character once more.

"Before everything else, Patrick was defined by being born and bred in Yorkshire, the proud county in the north of England which he loved to the end," Ian McKellen wrote on Instagram of his "X-Men" co-star and friend. "You could hear it in his accented voice and in the stern honesty with which he told you what he thought and felt. Yorkshiremen have no truck with half-truths or avoidance of big issues. He wore his heart on his sleeve, which made him a man to rely on, to admire and, in my case, love."

William Shatner, a fellow Enterprise captain, offered his profound sense of loss on Stewart's passing. The legends shared the screen in 1994's "Star Trek: Generations."

"What a heartbreaking week it has been. Sir Patrick Stewart was a friend, a colleague, and a magnificent actor," Shatner posted on Facebook. "From the stage to the bridge of the Enterprise, he brought intelligence, grace, and a deep sense of humanity to everything he did. Captain Picard stood for the best of us, and so did the man who played him. I was filled with affection and admiration for him and his work. My heart goes out to Sunny and his family. He will be deeply missed."

Akiva Goldsman, co-creator of Paramount+'s "Star Trek: Picard" and "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds," delivered a sorrowful message in the aftermath of Stewart's death

"Patrick was not only a true lion of the profession, he was the rarest of alchemists, one who could literally turn the written word into flesh and blood," Goldsman wrote. "Patrick was kind, strong, fiercely intelligent, collaborative, vulnerable and wise. His Captain Jean-Luc Picard permanently expanded the universe of 'Star Trek' without measure. He will be deeply missed by this one fan and by so many more."

Stewart's "Star Trek: The Next Generation" family shared their grief and offered up poignant words to try to describe what effect he had on their lives and profession.

"There's no one on this planet that I have acted with or directed more often than my late great friend Patrick Stewart," revealed actor and director Jonathan Frakes, who co-starred for over 35 years with Stewart as Commander Will Riker, in a touching statement. "He will be with me forever. May he rest in Peace."

Finally, Marina Sirtis posted a teary-eyed video in which she explained how much of an impact Stewart had on her life during their time together on "The Next Generation" series and films, in which she portrayed Counselor Deanna Troi beside him.

"Patrick, I loved you with all my heart," she said on Instagram. "I know you're up there now, reunited with all those that you've loved. But to say that you'll be missed down here is probably the understatement of the century. It was an honor to work with Patrick. It was more than an honor; it was the privilege of my life to work with him."

Our time on our "space mission" underwater was coming to an end, and I felt like what I imagine an astronaut on the International Space Station (ISS) must feel before returning to Earth. On one hand, you are excited to return to your home and loved ones, as well as to fresh food and normal hygiene. On the other, you know you will miss your crew and the incredible experience of being in space.

While my SEA STAR crew and I had not left Earth during our mission, we were separated from the surface of our home planet for five days. All we saw was a green alien water world surrounding us. We did this to live and work like astronauts on the ISS. Instead of dealing with the challenges of space that astronauts face, we problem-solved sometimes equally difficult issues that divers have to manage when performing research in sea water.

Our "wet ISS" was the Jules' Undersea Lab, which is located near Key Largo, Florida, at 22 feet (7 meters) underwater. By the end of our mission, we had all officially become aquanauts. An aquanaut is an undersea explorer who remains underwater for more than 24 hours, without returning to the surface, in a state known as saturation.

In this sense, saturation refers to the physiological condition achieved by a person who breathes underwater long enough for the body's tissues to absorb the maximum possible amount of inert gas (like nitrogen), for a specific depth and pressure. The term aquanaut derives from the Latin word "aqua" (water) and the Greek "nautes" (sailor).

There were a lot of things I wasn't going to miss about being an aquanaut. They included the constant loud noises our life support systems made to keep us alive underwater, as well as bathroom plumbing issues and some health concerns linked to living under pressure. We also had to be very careful when performing our "spacewalks" (scuba dives), due to the low visibility of the environment around us.

Nonetheless, I experienced a sort of "underview effect" during this mission. Most astronauts report experiencing an "overview effect" after seeing our whole planet from space, which usually makes them value our unique planet even more. I felt a similar thing when I saw the sun's rays come through the water. I couldn't reach them, but I enjoyed them from afar. My everyday life felt so close, yet so far away. It gave me both a feeling of longing and more determination to take even more care of our home world than before.

I'm grateful that we were able to perform all of the different scientific projects we planned for our mission. As the Commander of the crew, I usually have my work cut out for me managing the crew and overseeing their research projects, as had been the case for most of the 40 simulated space missions that I led previously. Fortunately, this time my crew was made up of experienced analog astronauts and divers, so the mission was mostly smooth sailing.

The research we chose for this mission was relevant for long-duration space missions. Since we can only send a small number of astronauts to the ISS with a limited number of research activities to perform, underwater stations provide us with a valuable way to conduct analog, or simulated, space missions instead. We also performed some environmental conservation work using a type of underwater vacuum device to help protect the nature around the Jules' Undersea Lab.

My scientific project was focused on studying whether our cognitive abilities and reaction times changed under pressure. This study is part of my collaboration with the Center for Hyperbaric Medicine, Faculty of Medicine of the University of Ostrava and City Hospital Ostrava in the Czech Republic. The whole crew definitely felt like their response times to these tests were slower during the mission than before it.

We were also interested in seeing how microgreens seeds were affected by the changes in pressure. Our Health & Safety Officer, Dr. Brandy Nunez, grew some of our kale and super salad mix before we started our mission, while other seeds started their growth journey underwater. All seeds were transferred to our underwater station using two varied pressure settings (gradual and sudden pressure release during their descent). After we harvested them, we could see that the latter types of seeds did indeed experience some barotrauma (damage caused by the sudden increase in air pressure).

Executive Officer Paul Bakken's work was related to managing the internal pressure of logistical transfer containers when they are exposed to significant environmental changes in pressure. The fourth crewmember, Mission Specialist Jenn Pint, worked with Interstellar Performance Labs to develop a taxonomy for analyzing environmental and crew interaction factors during simulated space missions.

On top of these projects, we also performed neutral buoyancy experiments during our underwater spacewalks, as well as the testing of environmental sensors developed by high school and university students in Slovakia. The sensors provided important supplemental information to the cognitive study about our simulated space habitat's living conditions.

Just like astronauts on the ISS, we dedicated some of our time to outreach and educational work, too. In our case, we called Cosmic Region, a simulated space station in Slovakia, and gave the team there a tour of our underwater habitat. My crewmembers kindly went into the water at that time and performed a spacewalk to show what our work during the mission was like.

As I put on my "spacesuit" (scuba diving gear) one last time, I breathed the stuffy undersea air once more and then dove out to return to "Earth." My crewmembers and I then took a long detour around the lagoon around us to help our bodies adjust to lower pressures. Even though we were only 22 feet underwater, there was still a small risk of decompression-related problems that aquanauts can face after living under saturation for some time. The final step was to breach the surface at long last. That's when we all enjoyed breathing fresh air again and feeling the sun on our faces, though the temperature in Florida made us quickly hide away from it again 😉.

You can follow Dr. Michaela Musilova at her website and on social media: @astro_michaela (Instagram, TikTok and Threads), @Dr. Michaela Musilova (Facebook) and @astro-michaela.bsky.social (Bluesky).

India bolstered its homegrown satellite-navigation system today (Oct. 30).

A GSLV Mark II rocket launched the nation's NVS-03 satellite from Satish Dhawan Space Centre today at 2:21 p.m. EDT (1821 GMT and 11:51 p.m. India Standard Time).

Everything went well: The rocket deployed NVS-03 into geostationary transfer orbit as planned, officials with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) announced on X about 30 minutes after liftoff.

NVS-03 is the third next-gen satellite that India has launched for the Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC), its version of the United States' Global Positioning System (GPS).

NavIC operates on a smaller scale than its American counterpart, however. It's "a regional navigation satellite system designed to provide accurate Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT) service to users in India as well as the region extending about 1,500 km [930 miles] beyond the Indian landmass, which is its primary service area," ISRO officials wrote in the NVS-03 launch brochure.

The Indian constellation currently consists of three fully functioning satellites, and it requires four to provide PNT services. So today's launch was a big deal — and a lot of eyes will be watching NVS-03's commissioning and checkout phase.

Today's launch was the 14th to date for the GSLV (Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle) Mark II, a three-stage rocket that stands 170 feet (52 meters) tall. Twelve of those 14 liftoffs have been successful.

The GSLV Mark II debuted in 2010, the same year its predecessor retired. That previous launchers, the Mark I, flew a total of six times, with two failures.

NVS-03 was the fourth Indian launch of 2026 and the third operated by ISRO. The fourth was mounted by Skyroot Aerospace, which in July became the first Indian company ever to successfully reach orbit.

In space, no one can hear you scream... not unlike in the empty theater screens that aging horror franchises play to when the lustre has gone and their final installments limp to the public. It is perhaps little wonder that some horror franchises go to space to die... or take long breaks, at least.

In celebration of Halloween, we're running down some horror franchises that made the journey to the final frontier, resulting in films that range from the sublime and outrageously campy fun to just pure awful.

Absent from the list are space horror movies that have space baked into their natural fabric. So no Event Horizon, no Alien, and no Critters 4 (they were aliens, so they just went back to space; that doesn't count).

1. Jason X (2001)

2001 was a really weird time for the Friday the 13th franchise. New Line had acquired the series in the wake of the terrible box office returns and critical panning of Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan. Known as "the house that Freddy built," New Line's plan was clear: pit Voorhees vs. Kruger in a battle of horror icons for the ages.

However, the studio had to keep Jason in the public eye to ensure the eventual crossover lived up to expectations. The first move in that effort, 1993's Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, was an odd start. The movie apparently kills Voorhees, with his iconic hockey mask seized by the equally iconic bladed glove of Freddy Krueger at the end of the film and dragged into the dirt.

Fun bit of trivia: the hand wearing the glove isn't that of Freddy actor Robert Englund but belongs to Kane Hodder, arguably the best Jason Voorhees, meaning Hodder played both Jason and Freddy!

Still, the crossover has stalled in the preproduction process by 2001, as a script couldn't be agreed upon. New Line wanted a new Friday film but in a different environment than the typical Crystal Lake setting. After rejecting a winter-themed movie that would see Voorhees killing cross-country skiers in a snow-covered Camp Crystal Lake, New Line decided to put Jason on ice in a different way, cryogenically freezing Pamela Voorhees' baby boy and sending him to space in Jason X, the tenth movie in the series.

Jason X would see the Crystal Lake Killer slaughter David Croenberg, get his ass kicked by a feisty robot, and double up on his iconic sleeping bag kill from Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (one of my favorites, massively underrated), all on the way to getting a major upgrade from some very unhelpful nanobots to become Uber Jason.

Jason X has a mixed reputation and isn't regarded as one of the better entries in the series, but the movie has a load of positives going for it.

The kills are super inventive, the nitrogen head smash being arguably one of the best in a series known for over-the-top brutality; Kane Hodder is great during his final shift as Jason, and there are a load of laughs. Jason X isn't as tongue-in-cheek as one of the following movies on this list, but it is definitely self-aware and so much better for it.

In honor of arguably the best of these space-relocated horror movies, we'll rate this and the following movies in Uber Jasons out of five. For campy space-based horror featuring a character that is a fish out of water, Jason X is near perfect.

4.8 Uber Jasons out of 5. Hail to the king, baby.

2. Amityville in Space (2022)

Alien is often referred to as "a haunted house movie in space." The elements are all there: isolation, a hidden, poorly understood danger lurking in the shadows, victims picked off one by one. Of course, that is figurative, but Amityville in Space shows why filmmakers should never make things too literal.

Amityville in Space is bad. Not so bad that it is good. So bad, it is bad.

Your opinion on Amityville as a franchise likely depends on your tolerance for utter hogwash. The first movie, The Amityville Horror, released in 1979, is an effective, often quite creepy horror. Since then, the loose Amityville Horror franchise spans nine core Amityville movies and between 50 and 90 low-budget independent additions to the franchise.

Amityville in Space is definitely at the cheapest end of the low-budget spectrum, and as the name suggests, it takes 112 Ocean Avenue further than ever before, to the year 3015 and the edge of a distant black hole.

Literally, the only thing worth watching in Amityville in Space is the hilarious opening that sees a failed exorcism attempt cause the Amityville house to literally blast off the surface of Earth like a rocket.d

Unfortunately, Amityville in Space isn't a corny "so-bad it's good" movie. It's just frustratingly bad. Perhaps disappearing into a black hole is the fate Amityville deserved all along, though with the name being in the public domain, Amityville movies will just keep coming. At least I didn't have to watch Amityville Death Toilet (yes, that really exists).

0 Uber Jasons out of 5. Avoid like a demonic pig called Jodie

3. Leprechaun 4: In Space (1996)

Leprechaun 4 sees the franchise that launched the career of Jennifer Aniston blast its titular antagonist into space. The Leprechaun, played by the unparalleled Warwick Davis, makes the voyage to the final frontier with tongue planted firmly in cheek, and the results are bloody glorious.

The film sees the Leprechaun's attempts to woo a space princess rudely interrupted by space marines and the minor inconvenience of being blown apart by a grenade.

The Leprechaun then exacts his revenge on the spacecraft of the marines, an impressively realized set for a straight-to-video horror movie in the mid-90s.

If you want some camp horror fun on Halloween, the sight of the Leprechaun emerging fully formed from the pants of a space marine is probably going to be unbeatable.

Fans of British sitcoms will be equally delighted by the appearance of Guy Siner ('Allo 'Allo's Lt. Hubert Gruber) as Dr. Mittenhand. While the rest of the cast play the ludicrousness of a leprechaun rampaging through a spaceship offing space marines relatively straight, Davis and Siner don't just chew the scenery; they suck it in like thespian black holes.

As Mittenhand says: "Thank you, Harold, I do the jokes!"

Of course, there is plenty of ropey CGI, as is standard for a 90s genre movie, but there is a wonderful practical creature at the movie's conclusion that pays tribute to David Cronemburg's The Fly. Less Brundle-Fly, more Mitten-Spider. Plus a death that is pure Looney Tunes and a Kaiju-sized leprechaun. Take that, Uber Jason.

4.5 Uber Jasons out of 5. Thank your Lucky Charms

4. Hellraiser 4: Bloodline (1996)

Another horror franchise heading to space for its fourth installment, and this one also came out in 1996. Hellraiser 4: Bloodline marks a real downturn in the fortunes of Hellraiser, being the last in the series to receive a theatrical release and the last to benefit from input from creator and horror maestro Clive Barker.

The film has a portmanteau style beginning in 2127, as Dr. Paul Merchant attempts to solve the mystery of the Lament Configuration, then flashing back to its creation by Merchant's ancestor Phillip LeMarchand in France in 1796. The movie then jumps to 1996, when the Lament Configuration has inspired a skyscraper built by another of Merchant's ancestors.

This second section also sees the franchise's figurehead Pinhead, played by Doug Bradley, come into conflict with the demonic Angelique. A conflict that is carried into 2127.

Arguably, the CGI in Hellraiser: Bloodline is no better or worse than that of Leprechaun 4; the problem is the latter isn't taking itself seriously, but the former really is.

You can't really expect a "fun" Hellraiser movie; that has never been their vibe, and they are better for the serious tone. But it means a poorly realized move to space really doesn't work.

Arguably, the biggest crime of Hellraiser 4: Bloodline is that it's a bit dull. The in-depth investigation of the Lament Configuration is only going to appeal to hardcore Hellraiser fans who will probably just end up wishing they'd watched Barker's original 1987 magnum opus movie instead.

And it was all downhill for Hellraiser after this. The franchise became the poster boy for straight-to-video horror, with some later installments developed from scripts that initially had nothing to do with Hellraiser at all. A real insult to a franchise that felt fresh, daring, and even dangerous at its outset.

Pinhead probably wished he'd stayed in space.

2 Uber Jasons out of 5. You'll need your eyes pinned back to finish it

5. Dracula 3000 (2004)

When you have been around since 1897, it is pretty hard to keep your routine fresh. By 2004, Dracula had pretty much exhausted gothic horror; a relocation to a modern setting hadn't saved Christopher Lee's Dracula in the 1970s and had arguably resulted in the worst entries in the Hammer series.

Where else to take the Count in a new millennium but into space? That's the approach taken by Dracula 3000, which doesn't connect to any other Dracula cinema outings but features character names and locales that pay homage to Stoker's original novel.

The primary protagonist is Captain Abraham Van Helsing, played by Casper Van Dien, fresh from battling space bugs in Starship Troopers. Dracula — here bizarrely called Count Orlok in an unnecessary nod to Nosferatu — is found on the abandoned ship Demeter by Mother III salvage crew member Mina Harker. Unfortunately, the connections to the source material and the infinitely better Nosferatu are present in name alone. The gothic goodness is gone.

However, something strange happened to me as I was watching Dracula 3000. I found myself enjoying it. Dracula 3000 is... fun?

The acting is more wooden than a stake, the dialog is cringy, the characters are so 2D that it is a wonder Drac could draw any blood at all, and the effects are poor. But there is so much here I found myself wanting to show my friends.

Vampire Coolio is a show-stealer; Dracula looks like he has wandered in from a neighboring studio, swanning around a sci-fi setting in full Victorian cape and collar garb. The Demeter hails from the planet Transyvannia, known to be populated by vampires. Drac had no issue procuring oak coffins for his thrall in space. It's all wonderfully silly, and I loved it.

Dracula 3000 isn't as fun as Leprechaun 4, but it definitely isn't boring like Hellraiser 4: Bloodline, and it isn't whatever the heck Amityville is Space is.

3.5 Uber Jasons out of 5. Livin' in a vampire's paradise.

For my money, Leprechaun 4, Dracula 3000, and Jason X would make a cool triple-header of space-horrors for Halloween night. But only 'cause we didn't get the following franchise entry....

Dishonorable mention: Howling IV: Werewolves on the Moon (1988)

OK. Don't Google it. This isn't the Mandela effect at work. The Howling franchise never went to space.

The Howling IV was released in 1988 under the tagline "The Original Nightmare," and though in modern parlance that would indicate a prequel to Joe Dante's 1981 classic, this film is actually a far inferior remake of that first entry in the series.

What a missed opportunity! Though the trope of a fourth film in a franchise going to space, or returning to space in the case of Critters 4, wouldn't be firmly established until 1996, The Howling could have set the ball rolling with its fourth installment.

After all, few horror franchises had suffered the drops in quality seen between the first Howling, a stone-cold classic, and Howling III: The Marsupials (they aren't even werewolves, guys!), with the awful Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf between the two.

The Howling was dying like a werewolf with a silver bullet in its guts already by the fourth film; so an early move to space would have been justified. Come on, at least give us werewolves on the moon!

The franchise would limp on for another four films after the Original Nightmare, including a lame duck reboot in 2011, never answering the question: what would happen to a werewolf on the moon? Is the moon always full on the moon, or is it never full because the werewolf can't see it?

Fans would forgive this missed opportunity. OK, maybe just me.

1,000 Uber Jasons out of Five. It's werewolves on the moon, people. C'mon!

Happy Halloween!

In the winter of 1946, two men from very different walks of life walked into California's Mojave Desert together, where one of them became convinced an extraordinary experiment they had been conducting had finally succeeded.

One of the men was pioneering rocket scientist Jack Parsons, a self-taught chemist who helped establish what would become NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and whose innovations in rocket propulsion would help lay the groundwork for the Space Race that would erupt in the years that followed. His unlikely companion was none other than L. Ron Hubbard, then a science fiction writer who had yet to compose the writings that would form the underpinnings of the Church of Scientology that he later established.

Despite Parsons' work with rockets and his companion Hubbard's fictional writings about them, their work together in the early months of 1946 had nothing to do with rocket propulsion, spacecraft, or other technological innovations that would eventually carry humans to space. Instead, Parsons and Hubbard were engaged in an elaborate series of occult ceremonies at the time, whereby they intended to summon an elemental feminine goddess known as "Babalon" (not to be confused with Babylon) to help them bring an otherworldly entity into physical existence.

Their efforts, known today as the "Babalon Working," represent one of the most unusual affairs in American history, with tangential connections to the history of space exploration.

Given its strangeness, the episode has garnered attention from several scholars and historians over the decades, who have sought to understand a series of events at the intersection of science and the occult involving one of the most unconventional innovators behind modern rocket propulsion.

Rockets and magic

Parsons, born in 1914, would become a key figure in the early development of American rocket technologies by the 1930s and 1940s in California, ultimately helping establish what would become the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). His contributions included the historic experiments at Pasadena's Arroyo Seco on Halloween Day in 1936, which NASA now recognizes as the foundational experiments that launched JPL.

Very much in contrast with his scientific aptitudes, Parsons also cultivated an interest in ceremonial magic during this period. By the early 1940s, he had immersed himself within the California chapter of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), the organization associated with the infamous British occultist Aleister Crowley and his religious philosophy known as Thelema. In 1943, Parsons became the new leader of the organization's Agape Lodge, which subsequently began operating out of his Pasadena residence on South Orange Grove Avenue.

Parsons' occult interests became particularly focused on the evocation of supernatural entities during this period, which the young rocket scientist seemed to genuinely believe could be manifested in the physical world through ritual practices. Ultimately, this led him to undertake an ambitious — and utterly bizarre — series of ceremonies aimed at conjuring what was supposedly one of Thelema's most powerful supernatural entities.

The Babalon Working

Parsons first became acquainted with L. Ron Hubbard in the summer of 1945, and shortly after meeting, Hubbard became a resident of the scientist's Pasadena home.

While Hubbard had no formal training in the occult arts, Parsons felt he demonstrated the kinds of aptitudes that would make him a promising partner for a serious ceremonial magic undertaking. Thus, in the first days of January 1946, the pair embarked on a series of rituals, which Parsons documented in a manuscript that later became known as The Book of Babalon.

"In the introduction to this text [Parsons] explained that the underlying philosophy for the Babalon Working is that the present age is under the influence of a violent force," noted University of Gothenburg scholar Henrik Bogdan in a 2016 article published in the journal Numen. "The invocation of Babalon was thus, according to Parsons, an attempt to prevent the world from being destroyed."

Specifically, Parsons believed the force of Babalon could be manifested in a specific woman. "In this sense, the Babalon Working was not only an exercise in ritual magic, but a deliberate attempt to bring a divine feminine force into human form," Bogdan notes. With this goal in mind, during the first two weeks of January 1946, the pair worked to invoke this divine feminine figure, associated with liberation and spiritual transformation according to Crowley's Thelemic system.

High strangeness in the Mojave Desert

On January 18, 1946, Parsons and Hubbard traveled into the Mojave Desert, where, according to Parsons' later writings, a change in atmosphere involving their ritual work suddenly became apparent. Now believing their operation had been a success, Parsons declared their work completed, and the two returned to Pasadena.

Soon afterward, Parsons reported to Hubbard that his elemental mistress had seemingly manifested with the sudden appearance at his home of a blue-eyed, red-haired artist named Marjorie Elizabeth Cameron. A former member of the U.S. Navy's WAVES program, Cameron had been invited to Parsons' residence by a colleague who, like Hubbard, was also lodging there at the time. Upon seeing her, Parsons became convinced this was the elemental lover he and Hubbard had worked to conjure, thereby confirming that the Babalon Working had produced its intended result.

Soon, Parsons and Cameron began a relationship, and borrowing ideas from Crowley's 1929 novel Moonchild, Parsons now believed that his romance with Cameron could facilitate the incarnation of a supernatural force through the literal conception of a child using ritual sex magic. The result, Parsons believed, could help to bring about a transformative new dawn in humanity's spiritual development.

This phase of the Babalon Working mainly involved magic rituals and Enochian incantations performed by Parsons and Cameron, with Hubbard present and assisting (in addition to having proposed Rachmaninoff's "Isle of the Dead" as an eerie sonic backdrop for the occasion). For Parsons, the ultimate goal had been to conceive a "magical child" that would become the newborn Thelemic messiah.

Aftermath

Following completion of the rituals in late February 1946, Cameron left on a trip to New York, and Parsons returned to the Mojave Desert where he completed a short treatise entitled Liber 49, believing it to be a "channeled" fourth and final portion of The Book of the Law, Crowley's foundational Thelemic text.

Upon returning from New York, Cameron even claimed to have observed an unusual aerial object—something akin to what later became known as "flying saucers" in the summer of the following year—which she believed to represent the "war engine" referenced in Crowley's work.

Crowley, however, was considerably less enthusiastic about all this. Upon learning what Parsons, Hubbard, and Cameron had been involved with, the famed British occultist confided to a colleague in an April 1946 correspondence that "Apparently he [Parsons] or Ron or somebody is producing a Moonchild. I get fairly frantic when I contemplate the idiocy of these louts."

Ultimately, a growing divide between Crowley and Parsons would cost the rocket scientist his leadership of the Agape Lodge, prompting his departure from Crowley's OTO before the end of 1946. His relationship with Hubbard similarly dissolved due to Parsons' worsening financial situation. Nevertheless, Parsons soldiered on, marrying Cameron in October 1946 and continuing his efforts to usher in a new spiritual age.

On June 17, 1952, Parsons' unusual life ended prematurely when an explosion occurred in his home laboratory, resulting in fatal injuries. He was only 37 years old. Questions still surround the circumstances of his death; while it was ruled an accident, there have been allegations that it was suicide or even a murder.

The strange legacy of Jack Parsons

During his short life, Parsons still managed to make significant contributions to the science of rocket propulsion, securing a place in the history of American space exploration — albeit one that is often overshadowed by the interest historians and scholars have taken in his occult activities.

Nonetheless, Parsons remains a key figure responsible for helping lay the early foundations for what would become America's space program. Although decades before NASA would begin sending its spacecraft in pursuit of answers to cosmic mysteries, one of its early technological pioneers had been seeking answers to such cosmic questions in a very different way: by exploring the boundary between our physical world and the supernatural realms beyond.

Bibliography

Anthony Testa, The Key of the Abyss: Jack Parsons, the Babalon Working and the Black Pilgrimage Decoded (2006), p. 128.

"Babalon Working." Occult Wiki. Accessed Oct. 29, 2026.

Bogdan, Henrik. "The Babalon Working 1946: L. Ron Hubbard, John Whiteside Parsons, and the Practice of Enochian Magic." Numen, Vol. 63, No. 1, 2016, pp. 12–32.

Carter, John. Sex and Rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons. New edition. Feral House, 2004.

Josephson Storm, Jason Ānanda. "Sex, Magic, & Rockets or the Implications of the Babalon Working for Theories of Belief and Rationality." Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol. 37, 2025, pp. 323–335.

Riggins, Marleigh. "Shocktober: Babalon Working." LAist, Oct. 26, 2004.

I used to make a basic mistake with meteor showers — I treated the zenith hourly rate (ZHR) like a timetable. If a shower were advertised at 20 meteors per hour, I'd go outside expecting something roughly every three minutes. After 10 quiet minutes, I'd start wondering what I was doing wrong. After half an hour, I'd start to doubt the whole idea of meteor showers.

The Northern and Southern Taurids cured me of all that. Two linked meteor showers that peak around Nov. 4-5 and Nov. 11-12 this year, they each manage only about five meteors per hour under ideal conditions. In reality, you may see fewer. You may spend a long time seeing none. So what's the point?

I've come to regard their paucity of "shooting stars" as a feature, not a flaw, for the Taurids have taught me to stop counting meteors and instead just observe the sky. I go outside for Taurus, the Pleiades, Auriga, and whatever else happens to be visible. If a Taurid crosses the sky, excellent. If not, the evening hasn't failed. The reason is that they are also known for occasionally producing very bright meteors, or fireballs — although "occasionally" is important. Don't go outside expecting a procession of them.

What's happening and when to look

The Taurids hit Earth's atmosphere at about 18 miles (29 kilometers) per second. That's relatively slow for a meteor shower. It's one reason Taurids can be more memorable than meteors from faster showers.

For observers across much of the Northern Hemisphere, Taurus rises in the east during the evening and becomes increasingly well placed as the night progresses. Later evening into the overnight hours is therefore the best time to watch.

I love looking at the night sky around Taurus, but you really don't need to stare at it if you're looking for Taurids. The radiant is indeed within Taurus (close to the Pleiades), but meteors can appear anywhere in the sky. Look roughly east or southeast, then watch as much sky as possible for an hour or so.

This year the moon helps out. The new moon falls on Nov. 9, leaving only a young waxing crescent around the shower's peak. It sets during the evening, giving us properly dark skies later on.

How and when I'm watching it

My Taurid observing strategy involves doing little direct meteor observing. I'll likely head outside once Taurus is reasonably high in the eastern sky, probably sometime in the later evening, and give myself other things to look at. The Pleiades are an obvious target — it's exciting to have this little open cluster back in the evening sky. So are the Hyades open cluster and bright orangey Aldebaran, also in Taurus. I'll probably set my smart telescope on the Pleiades and leave it alone to build up a long integration while I spend as much time as I can taking in the whole sky. Meteors are a naked-eye event and demand your attention — the second you avert your gaze from the night sky, a "shooting star" will appear. All stargazers know that!

I won't travel for hours to find perfect darkness. A darker location will reveal fainter meteors, for sure, but the Taurids' occasional bright members can be seen from less-than-perfect skies. A backyard is fine for this one — make travel plans only for August's Perseids and December's Geminids (moon phases allowing).

Nor will I keep score. Meteor rates are statistical descriptions, not promises. Five per hour does not mean one meteor every 12 minutes. You could see two close together and then nothing at all for hours. We're all so used to being told exactly what to expect, but the night sky doesn't work like that — you need to be open to whatever it throws at you (or not). Once you stop expecting the sky to do what you want, meteor showers become more enjoyable.

Stargazer's corner: Oct. 31-Nov. 5, 2026

The moon is moving out of the early evening sky this week, which is exactly what stargazers wait for at this time of year. It reaches third quarter around Nov. 1, rising later at night and leaving the evening dark. That gives us a useful 10-night window for observing before moonlight becomes an issue.

I'm planning to use it for the Andromeda galaxy. From a genuinely dark location, M31 can be spotted with the naked eye as a faint patch. From brighter suburban skies, binoculars make life much easier. The beginner mistake is expecting anything resembling the photographs. Through binoculars, I'm looking for a subtle misty glow, not spiral arms. If you want a more impressive view, get yourself a smart telescope — they do a wonderful job on M31.

There's another practical change this weekend. Daylight saving time ends across most of the U.S. and Canada on Nov. 1. The stars haven't changed their schedule, of course, but getting outside under a dark sky after dinner — and even before — suddenly becomes much easier.

Constellation of the week: Taurus

Although you don't need to stare at Taurus, the Bull, to see Taurids, it's an obvious target this week. It's climbing into the eastern sky during the evening. Bright orange star Aldebaran — a red giant 67 light-years from the solar system (and the most luminous star within 100 light-years) — marks the bull's eye. It appears to sit within a V-shape of stars that forms the bull's face. This is the Hyades, the closest open cluster of stars to the solar system at just 150 light-years.

My latest stargazing obsession

The origin story of both Taurid meteor showers is genuinely awe-inspiring. They're associated with debris left in the inner solar system by Comet 2P/Encke, which orbits the sun once every 3.25 years (1,200 days) — the shortest orbital period of any known comet in the solar system, according to NASA. The second comet ever discovered, Encke, was discovered in 1786 and spans about 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) in diameter. It last reached perihelion — its closest point to the sun — on Oct. 22, 2023, and is due to do so again on Feb. 10, 2027, but Earth encounters debris associated with the comet every year.

The picture is more complicated than a single comet trail. The Southern and Northern Taurids are part of the broader Taurid Meteoroid Complex, a vast swarm of interplanetary dust, rocks, comets and asteroids thought to be related to Encke. It's thought that it originates from a much larger object that fragmented as it got close to the sun, perhaps just 5,000 to 6,000 years ago or as much as 20,000 years ago. Fears that huge, mile-wide "planet killer" asteroids may still reside in the Taurid Meteoroid Complex appear to have been ruled out. Phew.

Each fall, Earth passes through different parts of this sprawling stream, producing two overlapping meteor showers — and, occasionally, the larger fragments responsible for the Taurids' famous fireballs.

This has been a pretty rough week for "Star Trek" royalty on this 60th anniversary year with the deaths of both Walter Koenig, "Star Trek's" Lt. Pavel Chekov on Sunday, Oct. 25 and Patrick Stewart, the storied sci-fi property's Captain Jean Luc-Picard on Wednesday, Oct. 28.

With the passing of Walter Koenig at the age of 90 this past week, franchise luminaries of all degrees are coming out with heartfelt condolences, kind words of remembrance, and tearful reflections.

William Shatner, 95, and George Takei, 89, represent the final remaining members of the U.S.S. Enterprise's core crew from "Star Trek: The Original Series" and they both took to social media to express their deep sorrow over losing one of their fellow travelers in the final frontier.

"I am deeply saddened to learn of Walter Koenig’s passing," Shatner posted on Instagram.

"Although we did not know each other well away from the set, we shared the later seasons of the original 'Star Trek' series and the six films that followed. What I observed, and what so many fans have expressed over the years, was a man who genuinely loved the 'Star Trek' community.

"At conventions, Walter was rarely content to remain behind a signing table. He preferred to be among the people who had kept 'Star Trek' alive for so many decades. That kind of genuine connection is rare, and it will be remembered by everyone who came into contact with him.

"My condolences to his family, his friends, and the countless fans whose lives he touched."

George Takei, who portrayed Lt. Hikaru Sulu and co-starred with Koenig on two seasons of "The Original Series" from 1967-69, as well as six subsequent "Star Trek" feature films, offered similar thoughts in memoriam.

"My heart is heavy. Walter Koenig, our Ensign Pavel Chekov, passed away early today," Takei shared on his Instagram page.

"Walter and I met on the bridge of the Enterprise in the 1960s, and we stayed friends for nearly six decades. When Brad and I married in 2008, Walter stood beside us as our best man. Just last month, on Sept. 14, he turned 90, on the same day Brad and I celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary. I will always treasure that he and I shared that date.

"Walter was more than Chekov. He was a writer, a teacher, a thoughtful man, and a loyal friend. To the fans who loved him for so many years, thank you. He loved you too.

"Rest well, my dear friend. Keep navigating a steady course."

On October 30, 1964, NASA's Lunar Landing Research Vehicle, or LLRV, took to the skies for the first time.

The LLRV was a bizarre, four-legged flying contraption commonly known as the "Flying Bedstead." NASA used it to simulate moon landings and liftoffs on Earth to prepare for Apollo 11, the first crewed lunar landing.

The first person to give it a whirl was the X-15 pilot Joe Walker. During this test flight, he reached an altitude of about 10 feet, and he hovered there for about a minute. He did this two more times that same day. In all, he completed more than 30 test flights with the LLRV.

These test flights took place at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. That facility has since been renamed the Armstrong Flight Research Center after Neil Armstrong, who also piloted — and famously crashed — the "Flying Bedstead" before he went to the moon.

Why it mattered

Over 60 years ago this LLRV test flight was a critical step toward landing humans on the moon for the first time, a historic moment that both served an important political purpose while also showcasing the result of monumental scientific and technical progress.

While images from this test flight might look like the team are having a bit of fun out in the desert, and perhaps they were, it was also deadly serious. The astronauts who signed onto these crewed missions were doing something that had never been attempted. They were putting their lives on the line for this progress, and this testing was a major piece in reassuring them and NASA that lunar landing could be accomplished, and safely.

Today, as we return humans to the moon with NASA's Artemis program, we see parallels between testing done over 60 years ago and testing today. Right now, SpaceX and Blue Origin are testing their lunar landers for crewed lunar landings in the near-future. While we have now been to the moon and have safely and successfully landed humans before, these tests remain critical for the safety and success of the missions.

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