The European Space Agency's (ESA) Hera spacecraft has gotten its first close-up look at the Didymos binary asteroid system. If that system sounds familiar, it's because it made headlines in September 2022 when NASA's DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft smashed into it.

The aim of the DART mission was to test whether an impact could divert an asteroid away from a collision course with Earth. The purpose of Hera is to follow up on DART by making up-close observations of the Didymos system.

"The first thing we said was, 'Wow,'" Hera Principal Investigator Patrick Michel said in a statement about the image, which ESA released on Thursday (Nov. 5). "This is the other side of Didymos from the one that DART’s camera showed us shortly before impact, so this feels like looking at a whole new world."

What is it?

The Didymos system consists of the eponymous 2,560-foot-wide (780 meters) space rock and its "moonlet" Dimorphos, which is about 530 feet (160 m) in diameter.

The DART mission impacted Dimorphos on Sept. 26, 2022, with the aim of causing a change in the orbital period of the moonlet. And it worked: Before the impact, Dimorphos completed one lap around Didymos in around 11 hours and 55 minutes. The DART collision reduced the length of this period by around 33 minutes.

The change is a result of the fact that Dimporphos is now traveling at around 2.7 millimeters per second more slowly than it did before the collision.

The newly released photo shows Didymos in detail. Just a sliver of Dimorphos is visible, below and slightly to the left of the main asteroid.

Why is it incredible?

The changes caused by DART were small. But in a real Earth-threatening scenario, even such a tiny shift could help divert an asteroid on a collision course — as long as scientists get enough advance warning of its approach.

Hera's observations should help reveal what other changes have occurred on and around Didymos.

Scientists are already seeing that, while Didymos has the same central ridge along its equator as before the impact, many changes have occurred. This includes the creation of multiple boulders, craters, and patterns of grooves or ridges.

"Since we expect a lot of impact-ejected material to have made it across the approximately 1 kilometer [0.62 miles] of space from Dimorphos to Didymos, it may be that some of these characteristics originate from this transport of material, and we have exciting work ahead of us to sort it out," said Michael Kueppers, ESA’s Hera mission scientist. "We look forward to seeing much more of both bodies and systemically mapping all the changes we identify."

Stay tuned to Space.com for more Hera findings from Didymos.

As of 2026, Elon Musk is the world's richest man and CEO of SpaceX, Tesla, and xAI. Not only that, but he is also one of the most polarizing figures in popular culture. Some laud him as a new Magellan; the eccentric billionaire set on colonizing Mars. Others believe he should keep his eyes on the stars and stop meddling in politics.

Whatever you think about Elon Musk, it has to be said that you do think about him. Perhaps that's precisely the reason that he is the subject of Alex Gibney's 4-hour documentary, detailing the astronomical rise of Musk and his metamorphosis into the polarizing figure he is today.

Below, we explain how to stream "Musk" online and from anywhere with this VPN.

• Stream securely from anywhere with Nord VPN (75% off)

When is the "Musk" release date & time?

"Musk" premiered in theaters on Oct. 9 and is available to buy digitally in North America from Nov. 6 at 12 a.m. ET, which is 9 p.m. PT on Nov. 5.

The documentary boasts a mammoth runtime of 3 hours and 55 minutes, combining archive footage with first-person interviews.

Here's how to watch "Musk" from anywhere with a VPN.

How To Watch "Musk"

"Musk" is available to buy digitally in North America on Amazon Prime Video starting November 6 for $19.99.

The documentary will also be available for purchase on Apple TV and Fandango at Home, also costing $19.99

If you want to stream "Musk" or any of Prime's other great films, TV shows and live sports while you're abroad, Nord VPN will let you access your subscription from anywhere in the world.

"Musk" trailer

Who are the "Musk" cast and creators?

The documentary was created by Alex Gibney. the film features insights from Musk's ex-wife Justine Musk, Ashley St. Clair, Kara Swisher, Zoë Schiffer, Martin Eberhard, and Geoffrey Hinton.

More from Space.com

• SpaceX fires up Starship upper stage ahead of landmark Flight 15 test launch
• SpaceX could make $500 billion in 2028, Elon Musk says

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.

The northern lights could put on an impressive display this weekend as a colossal coronal hole on the sun fires a stream of high-speed solar wind toward Earth.

Minor (G1) geomagnetic storm conditions between Nov. 6 and Nov. 8, with a chance of moderate (G2) conditions on Nov. 7 and Nov. 8, according to NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC).

If G2 conditions materialize, the northern lights could be visible as far south as New York and Idaho.

What is happening?

The culprit behind the potential uptick in northern lights is a large coronal hole on the sun, a region where the sun's magnetic field opens up. They allow streams of charged particles known as the solar wind to escape more easily into space. Coronal holes appear darker in ultraviolet images because they are cooler and less dense than their surroundings.

And this particularly large — and rather oddly shaped — coronal hole is sending some seriously speedy wind our way.

The U.K. Met Office forecasts solar wind speeds between 342 and 404 miles (550-650 kilometers) per second, considerably faster than the typical speed of around 249 miles (400 km) per second.

The fast solar winds are expected to arrive around Nov. 6-7 and could persist through much of the weekend. It could interact with Earth's magnetic field, potentially triggering geomagnetic storms and fueling spectacular aurora shows. The stronger the storm, the farther south the northern lights can potentially be seen.

Where will auroras be visible?

Under G1 conditions, auroras may be visible from northern Michigan and Maine, but if activity intensifies to G2 levels, skywatchers farther south, including those in New York and Idaho, could be in for a treat.

But remember! Aurora forecasts are notoriously tricky. Much depends on the strength and orientation of the magnetic field carried by the incoming solar wind, particularly whether it points southward, allowing more energy to transfer to Earth's magnetic field.

Northern Hemisphere aurora forecast courtesy of the U.K. Met Office

To give yourself the best chance of seeing the northern lights, keep an eye on those aurora forecasts, head somewhere dark away from city lights if you can, with a view of the northern horizon.

To stay updated on space weather and know the best times and places to catch auroras, consider using a space weather app tailored to your location. One app I recommend is "My Aurora Forecast & Alerts," available on both iOS and Android. Another great tool is the "Space Weather Live" app on iOS and Android, which offers more in-depth insights into current space weather conditions and their potential for aurora activity.

NASA will host a first-of-its-kind air show and aerospace expo on Florida's Space Coast this weekend.

The show, called Max Power, will take place Saturday and Sunday (Nov. 7 and Nov. 8) at and around NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC). That name should be familiar to "Simpsons" fans, by the way: Max Power is an alias that Homer uses in the 13th episode of the show's 10th season. (He got it off a hair dryer.)

There will be a lot to see at NASA's event, so you should consider dropping by if you're on the Space Coast this weekend. (Tickets are required; you can buy them here.) Here are a few of the highlights.

Saturday, Nov. 7 (all times local, EST):

• 11:15-11:30 a.m.: Overview of NASA's "quiet" supersonic jet, the X-59
• 12:30-1:00 p.m.: Discussion of NASA's science and exploration goals by Nicky Fox and Lori Glaze (the heads of NASA's Science Mission Directorate and Human Spaceflight Mission Directorate, respectively)
• 12:45-1:00 p.m.: Q&A with the four astronauts of NASA's Artemis III mission
• 1:00-1:30 p.m.: "How Is NASA Preparing Astronauts to Live and Work on the Moon?" with Suzanne Bell, who leads NASA’s Behavioral Health and Performance Laboratory at Johnson Space Center
• 1:30-2:00 p.m.: Discussion of NASA's planned lunar outpost, with Moon Base program head Carlos García-Galán
• 2:00-2:30 p.m.: Summary of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope mission, by senior project scientist Julie McEnery

Sunday, Nov. 8

• 11:15-11:30 a.m.: "How NASA uses aircraft for research! Topic: Connecting flight to research"
• 12:45-1:15 p.m.: Update on the U.S. Space Academy with NASA Deputy Administrator Matt Anderson
• 12:45-1:00 p.m. (different stage): Q&A with NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, of SpaceX's Crew-12 mission to the International Space Station
• 1:00-1:30 p.m.: Discussion of SR-1 Freedom, NASA's planned nuclear-powered spacecraft that will launch mini-helicopters to Mars in 2028
• 1:30-2:00 p.m.: "The X-Factor: NASA's Flight Revolution Topic: X-Planes"
• 2:00-2:30 p.m.: Conversation with an (as yet unnamed) NASA astronaut
• 3:00-3:15: "In the Cockpit: Meet the NASA Pilots!"

NASA will also hold a livestreamed press conference on Saturday at 5 p.m. EST (2200 GMT) about its moon base plans. It will feature Fox, García-Galán, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and Dayna Ise, the acting director of the Utility and Infrastructure Office for the Moon Base Program.

There will also be dramatic flyovers on both days of Max Power, some of them by Isaacman, who's an accomplished pilot as well as a private astronaut. (He funded and commanded SpaceX's Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn missions, which flew to Earth orbit in September 2021 and September 2024, respectively.)

According to NASA's Max Power schedule, Isaacman will perform flyovers both Saturday and Sunday at 11:58 a.m (in an F-5 jet) and 1:31 p.m. (in a MiG-29).

There will also be a lot to see as you're wandering the grounds at the Max Power sites.

The event "will showcase the newest aircraft, autonomous vehicles, technologies, and more defining the future of air and space," agency officials wrote in a Max Power description. "NASA will display its quiet supersonic X-59 plane, and agency partners will showcase moon rovers, spacecraft and more."

The Pococo Galaxy Star Projector has firmly established itself as a fan-favorite home planetarium, backed by almost 3,000 Amazon reviews and a stellar 62% five-star rating. Its standout performance easily earned it a permanent spot on our buyer's guide to the best star projectors as the best value choice on the market. This early Black Friday deal is offering 24% saving off the retail price, with a $25 discount.

You can get the Pococo Galaxy Star Projector, on sale for just $79.99 on Amazon.

If you're looking for an early Christmas gift, then the Pococo Galaxy Star Projector is currently at its best price of the year and is worth picking up now, as this deal is marked as a limited-time offer.

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

With an impressive $25 discount, the Pococo Galaxy Star Projector hits a genuine sweet spot for both casual stargazers and detail-obsessed space fans, easily doubling as ambient mood lighting for unwinding, studying or meditation.

During testing, its no-fuss operation proved to be a real highlight. The interface is stripped back to just three intuitive buttons dedicated to power, rotation, and an auto-shutoff sleep timer.

Cord-free convenience is another massive win; the integrated battery charges via standard USB-C, letting you easily shift the projector from a bedside table to a shelf without tethering it to a wall socket. Eco-conscious buyers will also appreciate the thoughtful chassis construction, which incorporates recycled plastics.

Unlike cheap novelty lasers, the Pococo relies on swappable, scientifically accurate optical discs to cast high-fidelity snapshots of the cosmos across your walls and ceiling.

You get two discs included in the box to get you started immediately, with optional themed expansion packs available for roughly $53. However, if you wish to add to your disc collection straight away, the Pococo Expansion Packs are also currently 20% off on Amazon. That takes these six disc sets down to just $43.19, from the usual $53.99. Expansion packs include a series of packages, including the Moon and stars, fixed stars and nebulas and also the immersive planets.

Key Specs: Dimensions: 6.2 x 4.7 x 4.7-inches (157 x 120 x 120mm), weight: 1.7 lbs (771g), max. size of projection: 39 x 39 ft (12 x 12m), rechargeable battery.

Product launched: September 2022.

Price history: With a launch price of $120, the price has dipped over time and sat around the $99 mark, only dipping for sale events, like Black Friday. However, the current $79.99 price is one of the lowest prices we've seen.

Review consensus: The Pococo Star Projector ticked all the boxes for us as an overall excellent projector, and we think it's a worthwhile competitor to more expensive rivals. It has a similar functionality to the best in guide Homestar Flux, and we think its imagery is just as good. Add the fact that the Pococo Galaxy Star Projector is rechargeable, and with its current discount, it's arguably better.

Space: ★★★★

Featured in guides: Best star projectors

Buy if: You don't want to drop too much money and want a star projector that combines soothing lights with detailed imagery of planets, constellations and nebulas.

Don't buy if: You're looking for the best money can buy; the Homestar Flux Home Planetarium Star Projector is our best in guide, currently priced at $259 on Amazon.

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

A rose-colored rock discovered in the Sahara Desert may hold some clues to Mars' ancient geological history.

The meteorite, named Teghaza 001 after the salt plain in Mali where it was discovered in 2022, weighs roughly 1.8 pounds (800 grams) and formed more than 4.1 billion years ago. Blasted off Mars by an impact before eventually landing on Earth, it is one of the three oldest Martian meteorites ever found.

The extraordinary age and unusual mineral composition of Teghaza 001 offer a rare glimpse into the formation of Mars' early crust and how volcanic materials may have been altered by water, according to a statement from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

"It was only after we started looking closely that we realized this meteorite is really unique,” research leader Yang Liu of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California said in the statement. "One of the paper’s reviewers called it a Rosetta Stone for Mars."

A Rosetta Stone for Mars

Unlike many Martian meteorites, Teghaza 001 contains a distinctive combination of igneous minerals and textures that preserve evidence of its complex history. Its mineral composition resembles materials observed in Mars' southern highlands by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Although researchers can’t pinpoint exactly where the meteorite originated on Mars, they have identified 13 potential locations on the planet where it may have formed.

"This is really our first piece of Martian crust from a part of Mars we’ve never had a sample of before," team member Lee Saper, NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, said. "It records interactions of water and rock and maybe even an imprint of the Martian atmosphere as it was losing water."

The meteorite was initially identified as Martian based on its oxygen isotopes. To determine its age, scientists then examined tiny zircon crystals embedded in the rock. Using a specialized rubidium-strontium dating technique, researchers analyzed individual mineral grains on its surface, preserving it for future analysis.

The results revealed that Teghaza 001 was altered by water around 4.1 billion years ago, suggesting the rock itself formed even earlier. The mineral and chemical evidence points to a dynamic water cycle on ancient Mars, when liquid water interacted with the planet's crust and potentially left traces of its atmosphere as it gradually lost water.

Scientists believe further analysis of Teghaza 001 could reveal more about how water shaped the Martian surface and influenced the planet's evolution. The study also marks the first time researchers have used rubidium-strontium dating to analyze an ancient Martian meteorite, opening the door for the technique to be applied to other samples in the future.

"We've only scratched the surface," Liu concluded.

Their findings were published on Thursday (Oct. 29) in the journal Science. A separate study examining the meteorite's water content was published on June 10 in the journal Science Advances, offering additional insight into early Mars.

Just as NASA is preparing to demonstrate "Max Power" on the ground, two astronauts on a spacewalk have provided the International Space Station (ISS) with the same.

Expedition 75 flight engineers Anil Menon of NASA and Joshua Kutryk of the Canadian Space Agency installed and deployed the eighth and final ISS Roll-Out Solar Array (iROSA) on Thursday (Nov. 5), augmenting the space station's legacy solar array wings to produce as much as 30% more electricity.

"We got it done!" said Menon at the end of the 6-hour-and-59-minute spacewalk. The EVA (extravehicular activity) began at 8:36 a.m. EST and ended at 3:35 p.m. EST (1336 to 2035 GMT).

Repeating many of the same tasks as they did on an Oct. 29 spacewalk that added the penultimate iROSA, Menon and Kutryk worked this time on the starboard side of the station's backbone truss on the 3B power channel. The two retrieved the 750-pound (340 kilograms) iROSA assembly from a temporary stowage platform, carried it to the worksite by way of the Canadarm2 robotic arm and mounted it to its previously assembled bracket kit.

Menon then attached the cables to tie the iROSA into the station's systems but ran into a problem.

"We are seeing half of the expected shunt current that we want," radioed Nichole Stilwell, a NASA astronaut serving as the spacewalk officer in Mission Control. "In this current config, we are not necessarily going to deploy."

To address the issue, the connectors needed to be inspected. Out of safety concerns — given that the arrays generate electricity whenever lit by the sun — the astronauts needed to wait for the space station to enter the shadow of Earth to see what could be done. In the interim, they spent the time cleaning up their worksite and returning the Canadarm2 to its park site as they would have done after the deployment.

Fortunately, they were able to clear the issue.

"We are seeing good shunt currents on the ground, so we are go for deploy," said Stilwell.

After releasing two bolts, Kutryk and Menon watched as the array started to unfurl to its full 63-foot (19 meters) length. No motor was needed; the iROSA, as designed, used only the potential energy stored by its rolled-up carbon composite booms to extend itself. The entire process took about 10 minutes.

"Today marks the completion of not just one solar array but, over 15 years after its development, eight arrays," said Menon at the close of the spacewalk. "These solar arrays are incredible. Half the size of the old ones and bringing 40% more power."

Each of the eight iROSAs and their mounting assemblies were delivered to the space station by SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft. Beginning in June 2021, four teams of two astronauts did as was done on Thursday to deploy each array. In addition to Kutryk and Menon's work on the 2A and 3B power channels, the spacewalkers included Shane Kimbrough of NASA and Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency for the 2B and 4B channels; Josh Cassada and Frank Rubio, both with NASA, on 3A and 4A in December 2022; and NASA's Steve Bowen and Woody Hoburg on 1A and 1B in June 2023.

The need for the iROSA augmentations was discovered by flight controllers when the space station's eight original arrays began to show degraded power output as they exceeded their 15-year design life. The iROSAs provide the additional electricity needed to support ISS operations through its retirement and controlled deorbit, which are currently scheduled to occur in late 2030.

"Congratulations to you all on your stellar work to finish the last of the roll-out solar arrays and the upgrades to the ISS power system that will take it to the end of its journey," said Stilwell, addressing Menon and Kutryk. "It is fitting that we just surpassed 26 years of constant human presence on the International Space Station, and you all showed us what the best of humanity looks like executing one of the most difficult and dangerous [things] humans do and making it look easy. Congratulations!"

Menon has now logged 33 hours and 30 minutes on four spacewalks, while Kutryk has tailed 14 hours and 10 minutes on two EVAs. Thursday's spacewalk was the 101st U.S. EVA at the International Space Station without a space shuttle being present and the 286th overall in support of ISS assembly, maintenance and upgrades. It was the ninth spacewalk of 2026 and the sixth conducted by the station's 75th resident crew.

Hot off the tremendous theatrical success of this year's "Project Hail Mary," adapted from Andy Weir's 2021 novel of the same name, the New York Times bestselling author is rocketing back into deep space with a brand new Audible Original release landing on Nov. 5, 2026, titled "Exoplanet."

Weir ("The Martian") is executive producing this ambitious full-cast audiobook drama with acclaimed author and ace comic writer Benjamin Percy ("Wolverine") for the first in a series of curated sci-fi projects for Amazon's Audible.

The seven-episode sci-fi thriller stars the vocal talents of Anthony Mackie, Ariana DeBose, and John Leguizamo in a wild time-travel space disaster odyssey that also benefits from Lucasfilm’s Skywalker Sound, which provided the show’s immersive acoustic elements.

"One crew. One planet. Three timelines. No one survives alone," states the official synopsis. "When a quantum anomaly tears apart the starship Wild Blue Yonder, each surviving crew member crash-lands in a different era on the same deadly exoplanet—hunted, alone, and running out of time."

Ahead of the audio drama's launch, we sat down with Weir and Percy to find out more about this exciting science fiction adventure.

When Percy was first approached by Audible about this challenging endeavor, it was part of a bake-off situation where he was competing with several other writers, all jockeying for position.

"I think the thing that set me apart is my understanding of how to channel legacy properties," Percy tells Space. "Having written for DC and for Marvel, I can take 'Star Wars' or 'Predator' or Wolverine or Batman and honor that legacy but also put my own unique spin on it.

"When it came to the banner of 'Andy Weir Presents,' my job was to write my best version of an awesome Andy Weir story. So I thought about space disasters, big-hearted hopefulness, quippy humor, and a roller coaster plot, and then I nested into all of that a time-travel story."

Writing an audio drama is unlike the comic work that Percy is known for, but as he explains, it's also quite different from working on conventional shows and movies too.

"If you’re watching TV or film, you’re passive and letting it wash over you. You’re taking in the story as a passenger," notes Percy. "But when you're listening to audio, you're invited in with the dialogue, the narration, the sound cues. You’re invited to fill in the vacancies. As a result of that, you become like a co-author in the experience. I was super excited to jump into this project."

The genesis of "Exoplanet" started with Audible approaching Weir with the basic idea, but what they didn't know was that he had already been thinking about resurrecting great radio dramas of the past.

"Earlier on in my life, even before 'The Martian,' I wanted to bring back audio-only entertainment with full-cast productions and sound effects," shares Weir. "I got into listening to things like 'The Lone Ranger' and 'The Shadow' and, of course, the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes adaptations. Also, 'Zorro' was a radio show, and there were a lot of good westerns.

"At the time, I wasn't yet famous or a writer, but I thought I could do this myself. I could write something, narrate it, throw in some sound effects, and put it up online," Weir recalls. "But then I didn't because I’m really lazy. Then many moons later, Audible comes up to me, and I have an opportunity to participate in that exact thing. I especially like the part where all the hard work is done by Ben. That’s my favorite part."

As Weir points out, he's thankfully not the one wielding the pen this time around, but he did select Percy to be his champion.

"We got a bunch of different story concepts submitted to us from lots of talented authors, and Ben's was the one that stood out head and shoulders above the rest. It’s a really interesting concept," says Weir.

"It's not just trope sci-fi with an evil empire of bad guys and some plucky rebels. Ben came up with a unique story with a unique angle. Audio is quickly becoming a larger and larger medium. Everyone's on the go, and now for the first time in history we all have computers in our pocket capable of storing multiple audiobooks to last us years. It's a great time to revive the old art of radio plays, and I think this is a great way to do it.”

Weir's enthusiasm for the project is clear, and we can't wait to check it out. And we won't have to, because it releases today!

"Exoplanet" is available starting Nov. 5 exclusively from Audible for members of its subscription tiers or as an a la carte option.

Blue Origin's big rocket is getting a little bigger.

Jeff Bezos' company announced today (Nov. 5) that it has developed a third stage for its New Glenn rocket, which it says will make the powerful launcher more capable and flexible.

The stage, called the GS3, "enhances New Glenn's capabilities," Blue Origin said in a blog post today. "The third stage enables direct deployment of satellite constellations to GEO [geostationary orbit] and supports heavy-lift science and exploration missions to the moon and deep space."

New Glenn is a two-stage vehicle at the moment. Its reusable first stage is powered by seven of Blue Origin's BE-4 engines, and its second stage features two of the company's BE-3Us. The rocket stands 322 feet (98 meters) tall and can haul 14.3 tons (13 metric tons) to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) and 50 tons (45 metric tons) to low Earth orbit (LEO).

These are the specs for the standard, or "7x2," version of New Glenn. Last year, Blue Origin announced that it's developing a super-heavy variant known as the 9x4, because it will feature nine first-stage BE-4s and four upper-stage BE-3Us. The 9x4 will be nearly 400 feet (122 m) tall, and it will be able to loft 15.4 tons (14 metric tons) to GTO and 77 tons (70 metric tons) to LEO, according to Blue Origin.

New Glenn has flown three times to date, each time in the 7x2 configuration. The rocket debuted in January 2025, then launched again in November 2025 and again on April 19 of this year.

Things didn't go according to plan on that latest mission. The rocket deployed AST SpaceMobile's BlueBird 7 communications satellite into the wrong orbit, and the spacecraft ended up being lost.

Another setback came just a month later: On May 28, New Glenn exploded on the pad during a routine engine test at Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Blue Origin has been working ever since to rebuild the pad and get New Glenn ready for its fourth flight, which is expected to occur late this year.

We now know that Blue Origin has also been working on the GS3 while those repairs were underway. The new stage will be powered by one BE-7 engine, which the company developed for use on its Blue Moon spacecraft, one of the two private vehicles that NASA selected to be crewed lunar landers for its Artemis program. (The other is SpaceX's Starship.)

Blue Moon landing missions won't need to launch on GS3-equipped New Glenn rockets, according to Blue Origin. But the third stage "can support sustained operations around the moon," the company wrote in today's blog post. "By delivering significant payload mass directly to trans-lunar injection (TLI), GS3 enables faster transit times while preserving propellant for on-orbit operations."

And there's already demand for such services: Blue Origin also announced today that a government customer (which it did not name) has booked a GS3 mission to cislunar (Earth-moon) space, with launch targeted for 2028.

And the company dropped yet more news today — that it's working on a new first-stage engine, called Northstar.

Like Blue Origin's other booster engine, the BE-4, Northstar burns liquid oxygen and liquid methane propellant, a combination known as methalox. But the new engine is more powerful and less complex.

"Compared to the BE-4 engine, Northstar reduces mass by 30% and parts count by 50%, while increasing thrust from 640,000 to 715,000 pounds-force," Blue Origin said in a second blog post today. "Manufacturing advancements have also significantly shortened production timelines, enabling assembly in less than a day."

Northstar went from program approval to development testing in just 11 months, according to the company. But today's update did not say when the new engine will fly for the first time.

Earth has caught itself a new mini-moon, and it is sticking around for Christmas.

The space rock, designated 2026 QQ8, was first observed in August 2026 after entering orbit around Earth in April 2026. The discovery was reported by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center on Thursday (Oct. 29).

The stay of QQ8 is a temporary one. The mini-moon will remain in the thrall of Earth's gravity through December before breaking away in 2027.

Scientists have recreated the orbital path of QQ8, finding that it takes 359 days, or about 0.98 of an Earth year, to orbit the sun. QQ8 closely approaches Earth around once every ten years, but this time the object came so close that Earth has been able to gravitationally seize it.

According to the Minor Planet Center, the closest QQ8 will come to our planet during this stay is around 353,000 miles (568,000 kilometers). That is around 110,000 miles (177,000 km) further out than the average distance between Earth and the moon.

Even if QQ8 were to come close enough to collide with Earth, it would likely be completely destroyed in our planet's atmosphere before it reaches the surface, as it is only around 6 feet (2 meters) in diameter.

This is far from the first time Earth has snagged itself a mini-moon, more accurately called a temporary satellite. In fact, research last year suggested that our planet could be orbited by as many as six mini-moons at any given time, with many of these being fragments of our more permanent natural satellite, the moon.

While QQ8 is tiny, it is larger than the average mini-moon. That is according to modelling earlier this year that suggested the average size for a temporary satellite is 75 centimeters (30 inches) across.

The same modelling suggested the average stay for such an object would be around nine months.

So if QQ8 was captured in April 2026, that means it should move away in January 2027.

The researchers behind those findings suggested that, were Earth to gravitationally grip a space rock around 10 feet (3 meters) wide, it could serve as a mini-moon for 10 to 20 years.

On Nov. 5, 2002, NASA's old Galileo spacecraft was almost out of fuel. But the Jupiter mission still had some science to do. Galileo flew by a small moon called Amalthea. Amalthea is small, but it's interesting for scientists.

The Jupiter moon Amalthea is the reddest object in our solar system. It also generates more heat than it gets from the sun. Scientists think Amalthea creates electrical currents as it orbits in Jupiter's huge magnetic field. Near this little moon, strong radiation from Jupiter is dangerous for spacecraft.

The flyby caused some problems for Galileo. The spacecraft went into safe mode only 30 minutes after going past Amalthea. NASA said it was ready for problems, because Galileo was on its last legs, and the radiation near Amalthea was strong. However, NASA quickly fixed the problem and got Galileo working again.

Less than a year later, Galileo threw itself into Jupiter's atmosphere. The spacecraft was crushed by the high pressure in Jupiter's atmosphere, but its data still survives on Earth.

Why it mattered

The Galileo spacecraft was running on cosmic fumes by the time it reached Amalthea and the flyby would be the last time the probe would ever swing by one of Jupiter's moons.

While it may not look like it in Galileo's black and white images above and below, Amalthea is tinted red due sulfur contamination on its surface. The moon is small, about 168 miles long, and orbits about 112,468 miles (181,000 km) from Jupiter (much closer to the planet than the Earth and its moon).

Galileo flew within 99 miles of Amalthea during its flyby, which also marked the closest Galileo would get to Jupiter before its death dive in September 2005.

"Scientists studying data from NASA's Galileo spacecraft have found that Jupiter's moon Amalthea is a pile of icy rubble less dense than water," NASA announced in May 2005

"Amalthea is throwing us a curve ball," Torrence Johnson, a study co-author on the Almathea flyby and project scientist for the Galileo mission at JPL, said in 2005. "Its density is well below that of water ice, and even with substantial porosity, Amalthea probably contains a lot of water ice, as well as rock."

Originally known as Jupiter V (because it was the fifth Jupiter moon discovered after the so-called Galilean moons Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto), Amalthea was named after naiad, or water nymph, from Greek mythology.

It is fitting that Amalthea was the last of Jupiter's moons to be visited by the Galileo spacecraft. The moon was also last Jupiter moon to be discovered by visual observations when it was first disovered by astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard in September 1892 using the Lick Observatory telescope in California.

The Galileo spacecraft ultimately crashed into Jupiter on Sept. 21, 2005, less than a year after its Amalthea flyby.

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.

TENERIFE, Canary Islands — Imagine traveling over 250 million miles from home, watching Earth disappear behind the moon and losing contact with the billions of people who call it home. What would you miss most?

For Artemis II astronaut Victor Glover, the answer wasn't a particular place, a familiar view or even the comforts of home. It was something much more fundamental: human connection.

Speaking during a discussion with former astronaut Chris Hadfield at the Starmus VIII festival on Oct. 18 in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Glover reflected on the extraordinary experience of traveling around the moon and how being so far from Earth had given him a renewed appreciation for the people living on it.

"The greatest reason to go to space, it isn't to be a swashbuckler hero," Glover said. "It's to do something that only 651 people have been able to do: miss Earth and miss other Earthlings."

Glover was one of the four astronauts aboard NASA's Artemis II mission, which launched on April 1, 2026, marking humanity's first crewed journey to the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. Alongside NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman and Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, the crew traveled farther from Earth than any humans before them.

As the Orion spacecraft traversed the far side of the moon, the Artemis II crew watched Earth disappear below the lunar horizon before losing radio contact with our planet. Around 40 minutes later, Earth came back into view as the spacecraft emerged from behind the moon.

For Glover, however, the experience was about much more than the view. He believes that if everyone on Earth had the opportunity to make the same journey, they would come away with a similar appreciation for what they'd left behind.

"I think all of us would say something in our native language, in the most basic way we can communicate about love, joy, hope and inspiration," Glover said.

Although Glover shared the extraordinary journey with three fellow astronauts, the four of them were separated from the rest of humanity by hundreds of thousands of miles.

And for Glover, that distance brought with it a strange contradiction: the farther he traveled from humanity, the more he longed to connect with it.

"At the point of ultimate disconnection, [there is] this longing for connection," Glover said.

The experience gave him a perspective that he carried back into everyday life.

"There are moments where I am rushing through traffic and want to get where I'm going because I'm being selfish," Glover admitted. "But I don't have to stay there."

Instead, he remembers what it felt like to look back at a planet so distant that everyone who has ever lived could be covered by his hand.

"I wish you could all feel what it's like to come back home after that disconnection," he said.

The 'sea level effect'

Astronauts often describe experiencing the "overview effect", a profound shift in perspective that can come from seeing Earth from space. But Glover believes that there's something equally powerful waiting to be discovered much closer to home.

When asked by a Starmus VIII attendee whether people needed to undergo something extraordinary to develop a greater sense of kindness toward others, his answer was no.

Glover encouraged people to look more closely at the natural world around them, whether that meant walking along the beach, watching the ocean or simply examining a leaf held up to sunlight.

Even something as ordinary as a leaf, he explained, is capable of turning sunlight into food through photosynthesis. And although science can explain how that happens, understanding the process doesn't make it any less remarkable.

"We have to choose to be moved by these things," Glover said.

He worries that modern life, with its endless technological distractions, has made it all too easy to overlook the extraordinary things happening around us.

"Familiarity breeds contempt. Have you heard this? I think it's worse than that. Familiarity breeds indifference," he said.

Glover has a name for this perspective he hopes people can rediscover without traveling into space: The sea level effect.

It's about finding the same sense of wonder and connection that astronauts experience in orbit, but right here on Earth, where most of us spend our lives. And ultimately, Glover believes the greatest wonder isn't the moon, the stars, or even the incredible complexity of nature. It's the people we share our planet with.

"I think the hardest place to see this miracle is in the actual greatest miracle in the universe: other humans," he said.

"We all feel it with babies, but when we get old enough to have opinions, we start to want to argue with each other."

Glover hopes that by taking the time to appreciate the natural world, people might become a little more willing to appreciate one another too.

"That's the mission that I want to be part of for the rest of my life," Glover said.

Voyager, 1, humanity's most distant spacecraft, is back in contact after briefly losing touch with Earth last month.

The spacecraft stopped phoning home for about 48 hours between Oct. 18 and 20 due to a communications glitch that Voyager 1 resolved on its own, before engineers could send the long-running spacecraft a remote fix.

"This is the first time we've seen the spacecraft do something like this, but we are also at a point in the mission where we have to expect the unexpected," Kareem Badaruddin, Voyager mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), said in an agency statement about the incident on Oct. 29.

Voyager 1 is almost one light-day from Earth, meaning that a command takes nearly a day to reach the spacecraft and a response takes another day to come back to our planet. The spacecraft will reach the light-day milestone on Nov. 18, at 16.09 billion miles (25.89 billion kilometers) from Earth.

NASA's Deep Space Network of three antennas does check-ins to make sure the spacecraft is doing well. On Oct. 18 and 19, Voyager 1 did not respond. Its signal fortunately reappeared on Oct. 20.

"Engineers still are investigating what caused the communication loss," JPL added in the statement, but said it appears Voyager 1 went into a sort of safe mode. "The team has so far determined that one group of thrusters went offline and their backups turned on. Such a swap is programmed to occur automatically if the spacecraft computers detect something amiss with the active thrusters."

Voyager 1 and its still-operational twin, Voyager 2, both launched in 1977 on an initial mission to explore planets in the solar system. The two spacecraft took advantage of a rare alignment that allowed them to swing from Jupiter to Saturn to Uranus and Neptune using a minimum of fuel, although funding to explore the more distant planets and moons was not guaranteed at launch.

The spacecraft duly swung by Jupiter's and Saturn's systems (some months apart from each other) to great acclaim before parting pathways. Voyager 1's close-up view of Saturn's rings as well as the moon Titan — which may have prebiotic or pre-life chemistry — altered the spacecraft's trajectory to put it high above the plane of the solar system. Meanwhile, Voyager 2 flew on to Uranus and Neptune in 1986 and 1989, respectively, providing the only up-close view of these planetary systems to date.

Running on nuclear power, and continuing to deliver valuable science from deep space, the Voyagers saw their missions extended repeatedly. Both crossed into interstellar space a few years ago, and are still operational.

But with age comes a cost: the plutonium power sources on both spacecraft are diminishing, requiring engineers to periodically shut off instruments or come up with other clever ways of saving power. Voyager 1 just underwent one of those power adjustments, nicknamed the "Big Bang" because it reconfigured a number of spacecraft instruments.

"In early September, engineers successfully turned off three devices on the Voyager 1 spacecraft and substituted them with three lower-power alternatives," JPL wrote of the effort, noting that Voyager 2 also had a "Big Bang" about six weeks previous to that.

JPL did not provide an estimate for how long the missions could keep running, but noted each spacecraft loses four watts of power a year — each launched with 470 watts — and that the spacecraft could continue operating science instruments "longer than previously anticipated" due to the Big Bang. On Voyager 1, for example, the falling power would have otherwise meant switching off another instrument possibly as soon as next summer.

In 2022, Suzanne Dodd, project manager for Voyager at JPL, stated the hope was the mission would continue to operate into the 2030s.

Spacewalks are hard work, so sometimes you need to take a break for a moment and snap a gorgeous selfie with your home planet in the background.

What is it?

During a pre-Halloween spacewalk on Oct. 29, 2026, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk took a moment to pose for a photograph.

In this moment, the International Space Station to which he was tethered was orbiting 267 miles (430 kilometers) above the South Atlantic Ocean down below on Earth.

During this spacewalk — the first for a Canadian since 2019 — Kutryk and NASA astronaut Anil Menon worked together to install a new roll-out solar array on the station while also performing some "get ahead" tasks to prep for the next spacewalk, which is happening today (Nov. 5).

During today's excursion, the same two astronauts will venture out into space, tethered to the space station, to install the eighth and final roll-out solar array. These eight new arrays will boost the station's available power by a total of 30%, according to NASA officials.

Why is it incredible?

When we think of astronauts working in space, we might think of the important science and research they're doing aboard the station. Astronauts work on everything from biomedical research to plant science and physics experiments. But the job also includes work on the space station itself.

Sometimes they have to venture out into the vacuum of space to fix urgent problems. These situations can be tense, and there's a lot of pressure to get things absolutely right.

But even spacewalks that do relatively mundane maintenance work, like the one on Oct. 29, come with pressure. Every minute that astronauts spend outside of the space station, there are countless risk factors floating around. Earth orbit is a very harsh environment, after all, even if it does allow for some pretty amazing selfies.

When Jessica Watkins became commander of her mission to the International Space Station, she didn't just fulfill her duty as an astronaut — she made history.

Watkins is commanding SpaceX's Crew-13 mission, which launched her and three other astronauts to the International Space Station on Oct. 1. As their Crew Dragon capsule lifted off atop a Falcon 9 rocket that day, Watkins became the first Black woman to command a crewed mission to space. Spaceflight and space science are historically white and male-dominated fields, so this milestone carries incredible significance.

"This is certainly an important milestone, I think both for our agency and for the country," Watkins said in a press briefing ahead of Crew-13's launch.

This is Watkins' second spaceflight. She previously flew on SpaceX's Crew-4 mission in 2022 and has spent more than 200 days in space to date, though that number will keep climbing for a while, as Crew-13 is set to be an approximately six-month mission. A geologist, astronaut, aquanaut and former professional rugby player, Watkins brings an incredible variety of skills to her new role as mission commander. And, in addition to what she's bringing to her colleagues on mission, she's also providing some serious inspiration for those back on Earth.

"Jessica is an inspirational symbol to a lot of people," commercial astronaut and fellow geologist Sian Proctor, who became the first Black woman to pilot a spacecraft on SpaceX's private Inspiration4 mission to orbit in September 2021, told Space.com. Sian shared that the two even crossed paths years ago, when their astronaut training aligned.

"It just means so much to so many people when you see a diverse crew, and particularly women, and women of color, in leadership positions," Proctor said. "And it means something for America."

The visibility of Watkins' accomplishments and missions carries significant cultural weight. However, in addition to recognizing her many achievements, "you also should celebrate the fact that she's African American and a role model for her community," Proctor said.

Proctor, who similarly made spaceflight history with her mission, sees Watkins' role in Crew-13 as potentially more than just an exciting moment. Hopefully, she said, it will help lay the foundation for a more diverse future in human spaceflight.

"When they announced Jessica, I was super excited because it shows progress," Proctor said, sharing that she finds incredible importance in the "idea of looking at your crew and recognizing the fact that diversity makes the crew stronger."

While Watkins' historic milestone has been celebrated on social media and across the broader media landscape, NASA did not make a public statement commemorating the historic achievement. However, the agency confirmed its pioneering nature in an email to Space.com.

"NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins launched on her second spaceflight on Oct. 1, 2026, as commander of the agency's SpaceX Crew-13 mission to the International Space Station, becoming the first Black woman to command a crewed space mission," a NASA spokesperson wrote in the email.

"Watkins was selected as commander of Crew-13 based on her spaceflight experience, leadership, and ability to help the mission accomplish its objectives," the spokesperson added. "As a member of NASA's astronaut corps, she represents the best of America's talent, dedication, and spirit of exploration."

The future of spaceflight

To date, the U.S. and the Soviet Union are the only nations to have launched Black astronauts into space. (The Soviets beat the U.S. to this milestone, launching Cuba's Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez in 1980. NASA's Guion Bluford became the first Black American in space three years later.) But, as Proctor shared, perhaps moments like this could serve to inspire other nations to follow suit.

"We can be a leader in saying, Look, if your country is diverse and has people from all different backgrounds, you should be encouraging them to apply and have a chance to be selected," Proctor said.

And, as a commercial astronaut herself, Proctor added that commercial space can continue to play a vital role in diversifying spaceflight.

"Jared did not even hesitate when he offered me the mission pilot seat for Inspiration4," Proctor said of her own selection as mission pilot by Jared Isaacman, the tech billionaire who funded and commanded the SpaceX mission. He now serves as NASA administrator.

"Commercial space has opened up so much opportunity and access. We are celebrating that because that's another way in which the space industry has diversified so much," Proctor added. "You can look at the history of space exploration and who's had access, and then you look at what commercial's done in the last five years, and it's incredible."

On the topic of the future of space exploration, Proctor expressed confidence that future crewed moon landings with NASA's Artemis program will be diverse.

"NASA is going to send diverse crews to the moon because they've done a good job of selecting diverse individuals with different heritages in their background," she said. NASA's current astronaut corps is roughly 45% women and 25% people of color. However, to-date only 6 Black women (including Watkins) have ever flown to space.

"Do I want to see more? Do I want women of color? Absolutely. They only have two Black women," Proctor said. But with the current diversity in NASA's astronaut corps as well as the continued development of commercial spaceflight, she is optimistic about a diverse future on the moon.

So far, NASA's Artemis program has been making some inroads when it comes to diversity. With Artemis II, we saw four people launch to the moon which included Victor Glover, the first person of color to ever travel beyond low-Earth orbit, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen who became the first woman and first non-American to make the same leap.

Additional pressures

In reaching her own historic milestone as the first Black woman to pilot a spacecraft, Proctor understands that a historic moment like this carries not just incredible significance but a fair amount of personal pressure as well.

"If something goes wrong, because of who you are, maybe your gender or your ethnicity or race, you're looked at differently," she said. "When it goes right, you're not necessarily celebrated. But if it goes wrong, then that [adds to] that whole idea of 'not being qualified,'" that can come from prejudice.

"Because of who you are and the community you represent, you become the scapegoat," she added. "So, there's pressure to not have things go wrong and do everything you can to be better than the best."

But whether or not these pressures weigh on Watkins' mind, "we're all celebrating" back on Earth, Proctor said. "We're proud of her."

NASA has revealed a glimpse of its next X-plane, known as the X-70 Fractal.

Or at least what it thinks the X-70 will look like once built. The agency released a short statement on Wednesday (Nov. 4) announcing the X-plane, or experimental plane, declaring it to be a highly maneuverable test bed with a "rapidly reconfigurable flight-control technology," allowing NASA to swap both external and internal components on-the-fly. This modular architecture will allow NASA to "explore aircraft maneuverability in ways never before demonstrated in crewed flight," according to the agency's statement.

The announcement was made alongside an AI-generated image showing two canted vertical tail fins emerging from swirling smoke. Little can be gleaned from the image about what final form the X-70 might take, but the tail fins are somewhat reminiscent of the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor or Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet.

"The X-70 Fractal gives NASA a crewed, high-performance platform to test advanced flight-control, maneuverability, and other cutting-edge technologies in real flight," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in the statement. The NASA chief called the aircraft "just one part of this new beginning for aeronautics" and said that the agency expects the X-70 to make its first flight within two years.

"This is why people come to NASA: to build, to learn, and most importantly, to fly," Isaacman added.

NASA's statement fleshes out a few details about the X-70's capabilities. According to the agency, Fractal will fly at a cruise speed of Mach .75, about the same as a Boeing 737 Classic. The X-70 will be able to reach altitudes of up to 45,000 feet (13.7 kilometers), and will have a range exceeding 1,726 miles (2,777 kilometers, or 1,500 nautical miles).

The X-70 Fractal will also be able to carry around 2,000 pounds (900 kg) of experimental payloads both internally and externally, which will allow for a "wide range of research and flight-testing opportunities," NASA said in the statement.

NASA adds it will have a takeoff weight of 10,000 pounds (4,535 kilograms), around the same weight as the Scaled Composites- and Northrop Grumman-developed Model 437 Vanguard experimental aircraft. In fact, the two aircraft share a similar silhouette — at least in the AI image of the X-70 Fractal NASA has released so far.

The agency's most recent X-plane, the X-59, has been flying for over a year. That jet features a radical long-nosed geometry without a forward windscreen; pilots fly by way of an augmented reality screen that combines views from sensors and a forward-facing camera.

That geometry dampens the shockwaves coming off of the X-59 when it flies faster than the sound barrier, allowing it to fly at speeds over Mach 1 without the thunderous sonic booms that typically accompany supersonic flight.

There are numerous experimental aircraft being developed by private companies, such as Boom Supersonic's X-1 jet, which, like the X-59, aims to develop technologies that lessen the auditory impact of sonic booms on the ground.

In terms of other government X-plane projects, Boeing is working on the F-47, a next-generation stealth fighter for use by the U.S. military, and DARPA, the Pentagon's research agency, has an X-plane project of its own known as CRANE.

China has given us some details about the epic moon landing it plans to pull off a few years from now.

Chinese officials laid out the roadmap for its crewed lunar campaign at the 7th Manned Space Symposium, which was held Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 in Beijing. The campaign consists of four missions, culminating in a crewed touchdown "before 2030," according to media reports.

That timeline — which is consistent with previous statements made by the China Manned Space Agency — keeps the pressure on the U.S., which aims to put its own astronauts down on the moon in 2028, via NASA's Artemis program.

China shooting for the moon

The first mission in China's four-part lunar campaign is scheduled to fly in 2027, according to CNSpaceflight, an X account that keeps a close eye on China's activities in space. The outlet cited an X user who shared a presentation slide of the plan.

That launch — the first of of China's new Long March 10A rocket — will send an uncrewed Mengzhou spacecraft to low Earth orbit (LEO) for a series of tests. Mengzhou, whose name means "Dream Vessel," is the next-gen crew capsule that will carry Chinese astronauts to lunar orbit.

Mission number two, launching in 2028, will involve a different set of hardware — the more powerful Long March 10 rocket and the Lanyue ("Embracing the Moon") lunar lander. This will also be an uncrewed flight, and it will mark the debut of the Long March 10, which will send Lanyue to orbit around the moon. If all goes to plan, Lanyue will touch down on the moon and then launch itself back to lunar orbit.

Mission number three, flying in 2029, will also target an uncrewed lunar landing, but it will feature two Long March 10 launches — one apiece for Mengzhou and Lanyue. The two spacecraft will conduct a rendezvous and docking rehearsal in lunar orbit, then separate for Lanyue's trip down to the surface.

This will set the stage for mission four — the real deal, in which two Long March 10s launch a crewed Mengzhou and an uncrewed Lanyue "before 2030." The two vessels will dock in lunar orbit, and the astronauts will move into Lanyue for their historic lunar landing.

Three astronauts will apparently launch on Mengzhou, and two of them will land on the moon aboard Lanyue, according to CNSpaceflight. The duo will spend three days on the lunar surface, conducting moonwalks on each of those days.

And about that "before 2030" timeline: The wording may have been chosen very carefully.

"One reading is that 2029 coincides with the 80th anniversary of the current government, creating a strong internal incentive to achieve the landing that year. At the same time, the technical schedule (new Long March 10 family, Mengzhou, Lanyue, dual-launch operations) remains aggressive; committing publicly to 2029 would create significant political exposure if any major test slips," CNSpaceflight wrote in a Nov. 2 X post.

"Using 'before 2030' therefore functions as deliberate wording flexibility: a 2029 landing can still be presented as an early historic success, while a slip into 2030 remains inside the stated goal without requiring a formal target revision. You just need to put 'year-end' after 'before 2030,'" the outlet added.

NASA's plan

NASA's Artemis program has already sent astronauts around the moon, doing so this past April on the Artemis II mission. The agency is currently gearing up for Artemis III, a crewed flight to LEO that will test rendezvous and docking procedures between NASA's Orion capsule and one or both of the Artemis program's two private crewed landers — SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon.

Artemis III is currently on track to fly in the summer of 2027, NASA officials have said. But an on-time liftoff is far from guaranteed, as both Starship and Blue Moon still have some boxes to check.

Starship just reached Earth orbit for the first time on Sept. 28, for example, and it has yet to demonstrate off-Earth refueling, which will be a crucial part of any Starship mission beyond Earth orbit. And Blue Moon has yet to leave the ground at all. The Blue Origin lander is scheduled to fly for the first time next spring, on an uncrewed test mission that will send it to the lunar surface.

If all goes well on Artemis III, NASA will be clear to start prepping for Artemis IV, which will put astronauts down near the lunar south pole aboard either Starship or Blue Moon. (It's unclear at the moment which lander NASA will choose.)

NASA is currently targeting early 2028 for the launch of Artemis IV. If that schedule holds, the agency will beat China and pull off the first crewed lunar landing since Apollo 17 back in 1972.

But the new moon race won't end there, because this one isn't all about flags and footprints. Both NASA and China aim to build bases on the lunar surface over the next decade or so, setting up humanity's first true outpost on a world beyond Earth. The stakes are high, NASA and U.S. military officials have stressed: Whoever does so first can claim the best spots and get the best access to key lunar resources such as water ice. The leader will also get to establish norms of behavior on the moon, which at the moment is a bit of a Wild West of exploration.

Black Friday is still weeks away but we've spotted this early telescope deal on a Celestron telescope designed with beginners in mind.

The Celestron Travel Scope 70 is a great entry-level telescope that delivers better views of the moon, planets and some deep-sky objects. It's also suitable for children while you decide if you want to drop serious money on a bigger telescope further down the line.

You can buy the Celestron Travel Scope 70, on sale right now for $90 on Amazon.

• Check out our Black Friday page, where we bring you the best deals of Black Friday 2026, including early telescope deals.
• We've also got you covered with reviews and rankings of the best telescopes, binoculars, star projectors, cameras, drones, Lego, streaming and more.

Moving from stargazing with the naked eye to using specialist optics, like binoculars and telescopes, is a wonderful experience. You get to see those wonderful objects in the sky up-close and in much more detail. The problem? A lot of the best telescopes cost eye-watering prices or are so big that you have to sacrifice floor space in your home. You might want one of those models and are still figuring out which one to buy. What to do in the meantime?

Grabbing a small budget model like the Celestron Travel Scope 70 won't dent your bank account and will provide you with better views of the moon, planets and stars without requiring its own observatory. We reviewed the Celestron Moon Mission Travel Scope 70 and gave it three and a half stars for its portability, affordability and the great views of the moon it delivered.

It is especially ideal for beginner astronomers or children and a great starting telescope to nurture a lifelong hobby and interest in the night sky. It won't give you the most HD views but it is great for getting a better view of the moon, Jupiter and some star clusters.

With Black Friday arriving Nov. 27, we are expecting prices to drop across a range of skywatching gear, technology and Lego, so stay tuned to our Black Friday page for the best prices on gear we have experience with.

Key features: 70mm aperture, fully coated optics, a carry bag, a collapsible, full-height tripod, 10mm and 20mm eyepieces, a finderscope and Celestron's Starry Night Software Basic Edition.

Price history: This scope dipped to $81 during Amazon's June Prime Day event, but this is the cheapest it has been since then.

Price Comparison: Amazon: $90 | B&H Photo: $90 | Best Buy: $90

Review consensus: This is a great beginner-friendly telescope and comes with a couple of eyepieces to get new users on their skywatching journey. It has a strong review consensus on Amazon that praises the ease of assembly and portability of the model.

✅ Buy it if: You are a total beginner or just need something light that can be taken away on a trip.

❌ Don't buy it if: You want something that has more room to grow with you as you get more experience stargazing. Our best telescopes guide has other options that are more expensive, but many of them offer more room to grow after you have learned the basics.

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

Two spacewalking astronauts will finish upgrading the International Space Station's power system today (Nov. 5), and you can watch the action live.

NASA astronaut Anil Menon and the Canadian Space Agency's Joshua Kutryk will install the eighth and final International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Array (iROSA) today, during a roughly seven-hour spacewalk that's scheduled to begin at 8:30 a.m. EST (1330 GMT).

You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, beginning at 7 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT).

Today's extravehicular activity (EVA) will be the second in a week for Menon and Kutryk, who installed the station's seventh iROSA during an Oct. 29 spacewalk. That excursion was the 100th U.S. spacewalk from the ISS to date, and the first EVA for a Canadian astronaut since 2019.

Today's spacewalk will wrap up an ambitious ISS power upgrade that has taken more than five years to pull off.

"The installation job will complete the years-long process that began in June 2021 to augment the space station’s power generating capacity from 160 kilowatts to about 215 kilowatts," NASA officials wrote about the EVA in a blog post on Tuesday (Nov. 3). That's a boost of about 30%.

Menon and Kutryk are currently sharing the ISS with five other astronauts — NASA's Luke Delaney and Jessica Watkins and cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov, Anna Kikina and Sergey Teteryatnikov.

Delaney, Kutryk, Teteryatnikov and Watkins arrived at the ISS on Oct. 1, on SpaceX's Crew-13 mission. Dubrov, Kikina and Menon got there in mid-July, aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

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.

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.

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.

Several videos circulating on social media appear to show the spacecraft's fiery reentry, though it has yet to be independently verified.

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.

Editor's note: This article was updated on Nov. 5 at 4:45 a.m. EST (0944 GMT) to include social media videos that may show the spacecraft's fiery demise.

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 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," he added, "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."

Editor's note: The original version of this story suggested that Shield Space may be working on "kinetic impact" satellite-defense techniques. The company says it is not doing this, so the story was updated to that effect at 10:45 a.m. ET on Nov. 5.

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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Following our hands-on testing, we awarded NordVPN a 5-star rating, and it is the VPN service we recommend for 2026. Our tech colleagues at both TechRadar and T3 also agree, and its blistering speed, robust threat protection, and consistently dependable global network are some of its standout features.

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.

A VPN is a brilliant solution to geo-blocking when it comes to viewing your streaming services. Assuming it complies with your broadcaster’s T&Cs, you can use a VPN to unblock the streaming services you're subscribed to and allow for uninterrupted viewing from any location.

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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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.