The diets of penguins on Antarctica's Danger Islands can be seen from space. At least indirectly.

Using satellite images captured by the Landsat 8 spacecraft operated by NASA and the United States Geological Survey, scientists can track changes in Adélie penguins' diets based on the color of their guano, or droppings.

What is it?

The image above shows pinkish-orange guano staining large sections of some of the Danger Islands, Heroína Island and Beagle Island. The penguins that live there eat a diet rich in krill, small marine crustaceans that are bright pink in color due to a specific type of algae upon which they feed.

The bright pink color of the penguins' droppings stands out in satellite imagery, allowing researchers to monitor the birds' populations from space. But scientists wanted a closer look, and collected drone imagery as well, as seen in the image below.

Why is it incredible?

It's pretty amazing that the diet of a specific population of birds can be monitored from 438 miles (705 kilometers) above Earth's surface. The imagery collected by Landsat-8 helped scientists locate where the penguin colonies might be, allowing them to find them in-person and collect guano samples. Those samples contained evidence of what the penguins were eating over time.

Researchers are using those satellite images and samples to track how the penguins' diet might be affected by changes in sea ice conditions, according to a NASA statement.

"Sea ice is such a hugely important factor in the Antarctic marine environment," said Clemson University biologist Casey Youngflesh who led a study comparing the penguins' diet and sea ice conditions. "The structure of the region's food web is changing in response."

Radio telescopes are designed to listen for signals from the stars and from distant galaxies, but scientists are also pointing out that these instruments can also track objects somewhat closer to home: junk in Earth's orbit.

Engineers have used the famed radio telescope at Jodrell Bank in the U.K. as part of an international plan to watch high-altitude space debris. Normally, old satellites and bits of spacecraft stuck up in geostationary orbit are too high up for our normal ways of watching space debris. However, said international project, called Long Baseline Multistatic Radar (LBMR), successfully used a radio telescope to get around this problem.

"That's the first time that's ever been done," Simon Garrington, associate director of Jodrell Bank, said in a video about the project.

A pressing problem

It's hardly a secret that junk is rapidly piling up in Earth's orbit — dead satellites, rocket remnants, rubble from satellite collisions or anti-satellite missile tests, and more. And as we keep filling Earth's orbit with thousands more satellites each year, we're also increasing the risk that one is struck by a debris fragment. We need to track this debris.

Most satellites exist in low Earth orbit (LEO) below altitudes of 1,250 miles (2000 kilometers), and indeed space debris is more concentrated at LEO. Still, there’s good reason to be just as concerned about debris in the much higher geostationary orbit (GEO), which falls 22,500 miles (36,000 kilometers) in altitude. Crucial communications and weather satellites lie in GEO, for instance, and space debris doesn't need to come in great quantities to pose a threat — just one unfortunate strike can cripple a satellite.

This leaves debris-hawks with a conundrum. They typically track space junk in LEO with radar, but most ground-based radar systems aren't sensitive enough to watch GEO's heights. Instead, they rely on optical telescopes to see objects in GEO. These telescopes are good for tracking larger objects (larger than about 4 inches, or 10 centimeters, across), but they can't resolve smaller objects as well as radar can. Yet these smaller objects can be just as deadly and destructive as their larger counterparts. If we want to see them with radar, we'll need especially sensitive receivers.

Fortunately, that equipment already exists, too — that's where radio telescopes can help.

Engineers have tried debris-watching with radio telescopes as early as the 1990s, but LBMR, backed by NATO and the U.K. Space Agency, wanted to go further and watch debris in real time.

LBMR's engineers drew up a scheme to make this work. They would broadcast radio waves with a radar installation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory in the U.S. These radio waves would glance off debris and fall back into the dishes of U.K. radio telescopes such as the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank. Back on the ground, the radio telescope's signal would be processed and analyzed in real time.

Aligning a radar transmitter with a radio telescope on the far side of an ocean, then processing its signals, is far easier said than done.

"This idea started about seven years ago. It sounded at that time like a crazy idea, because we had no synchronization. We had assets on one end of the ocean and other assets on the other end of the ocean," said Marco Martorella, an electronic engineer at the University of Birmingham and another member of LBMR, in a video. "But we were crazy enough to continue."

This required years of work, but the researchers have now successfully demonstrated that they can receive a signal with a single antenna. This has allowed them to track the distance to a piece of debris, and how quickly that distance is changing, in real time.

Next, the LBMR researchers hope to demonstrate that they can receive radar reflections of the same object with multiple radio telescopes at once. This, the researchers say, would allow debris-hawks to use the radio telescope technique to truly track debris in three dimensions.

In satellite data captured over Antarctica, what appears to be a beautiful, colorful hummingbird emerges from the crest of a mountaintop.

What is it?

While there are no hummingbirds flying around Antarctica, we can see what looks like a small, purple bird in a new satellite image of an Antarctic mountain. The dark belly of this "bird" at the center of this image is actually the top of the mountain Nunatak Zaterjavshijsja in East Antarctica.

What looks like a bird's tail is a stream of ice flowing northeast all the way out to the ocean, and what appear to be feathers splaying outward from the mountaintop are actually crevasses down the mountain. These crevasses are formed by a glacier fracturing the mountain's surface as it flows in the icy current toward the ocean.

This view was captured by radar instruments onboard the satellite NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) that launched as a collaboration between NASA and ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation). The director of NASA's Earth Science Division called NISAR "the most sophisticated radar we've ever built" in a pre-launch briefing last year.

Why is it incredible?

At first glance, this image is puzzling. What could it possibly be? Its bold colors and sharp lines evoke almost alien qualities. But the strange beauty of the shapes and colors in this satellite image reveal important information about glacier movements on the mountain.

"First, it's a beautiful image, with rich details of features that provide insights to how the glacier is moving. Then, because radar can often see through snow and deep into the ice, NISAR can observe fundamentally different properties of Antarctic ice than can be seen in optical imagery," Seongsu Jeong, the signal analysis engineer who produced the image at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement. "With NISAR we're seeing what's hidden beneath the surface."

And now anyone can explore NISAR's data. Earlier this week, on July 20, NISAR started making the data from its radar instruments public. Moving forward, mission teams will be rolling out this data so researchers everywhere can use it to study and protect our ever-changing planet.

An amateur astronomer's plans for a camping vacation two years ago transformed into a possible crater find in Canada's north.

Amateur astronomer Joël Lapointe, using Google Maps to figure out his route for the 2024 vacation, saw some odd terrain in Quebec's Côte-Nord region centered on Lake Marsal. Lapointe suspected it was an impact crater from a meteorite, and made a report on Impact Earth — a crowdsourcing website for craters with Canada's Western University in London, Ontario near Toronto. Western planetary geologist Gordon Osinski made a visit to the region in 2025, provisionally not only confirming the crater, but saying it's probably one of the biggest discovered in recent years. The 390-million-year old feature is roughly 15 miles (25 kilometers) wide.

In an email interview with Space.com while on travel in Scotland, Osinski — known as "Oz" by the space community — said to his knowledge the last discovery of that scale was the approximately 31-km (19-mile) Hiawatha structure, also possibly a crater, spotted in Greenland in 2018. "However, that structure is completely buried by ice, so its diameter is uncertain and there is still some controversy about its origin," Oz said.

But in the case of the new crater, called Uhackatik with approval from the Innu Council of Ekuanitshit in whose traditional lands the crater lies, there is no doubt at all where the crater came from. Oz's expedition to the area revealed "shock metamorphic effects", which are deformations to the rocks induced by the shock waves and heating produced by a meteorite impact.

"Impact melt rocks are like they sound: large volumes of rock that are melted by the impact event, but then cool and crystallize to look a lot like volcanic rocks," he said. "Finding these preserved — as they are usually some of the first parts of a crater to be eroded — was a big surprise."

While most of the features are microscopic, Oz said in the field he and his collaborators could easily see "shatter cones", which are branching features in rock layers produced by the shockwave of impact. The research is not yet peer-reviewed, but it will be presented at the 88th Annual Meeting of the Meteoritical Society in Frankfurt, Germany in August.

While 400-million-year-old impact craters on Earth are hard to find, as geologic activity as well as erosion change their features over time, the precious evidence is helpful for scientists to better understand meteorite impacts on the moon, Mars and other rocky extraterrestrial bodies.

In terms of age, Oz noted, the moon's prominent Tycho crater best represents what Uhackatik probably looked like 390 million years ago. But On Earth, one of the best comparisons to Uhackatik is a moon-like crater used to help the Artemis II astronauts get ready for their moon mission this year.

That Earth crater is called Kamestastin (also known as Mistastin) in northern Labrador, Canada. Oz regularly runs expeditions there in consultation with the Mushuau Innu First Nation, as the crater lies within their traditional hunting grounds. Kamestastin includes anorthosite, a common mineral found in craters at the moon's south pole, where NASA hopes to land astronauts under the US-led Artemis program.

Artemis II astronauts Jeremy Hansen (from the Canadian Space Agency or CSA) and Christina Koch (NASA), as well as CSA backup astronaut and lunar-flyby capcom Jenni Gibbons, did an expedition to Kamestastin crater in 2023 alongside Oz and collaborators.

"For comparative craters [to Uhackatik], Kamestastin is actually a great one as the size is very similar," Oz said. "Kamestastin is well-preserved and I've worked there a lot … so in my mind, I was using Kamestastin as a template for exploring this new potential crater."

To fully confirm Uhackatik's extraterrestrial origin, Oz and collaborators are examining samples microscopically for more evidence of shock effects, such as chemistry indicating a high-temperature melt, or deformation effects in the quartz. In the meantime, Oz's lunar work with NASA continues: he will be part of the geology teams supporting the moon-landing astronauts during the Artemis 4 and 5 missions, which will touch down as soon as 2028.

The wildfires tearing across Canada are so extreme that the smoke billowing upward can be seen from space.

What is it?

Over 850 wildfires are currently devastating Canada, as reported by the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center. The fires are spreading across Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Ontario; most remain completely uncontrolled.

In addition to the immense destruction caused by the fires themselves, the smoke from these fires is causing serious concerns about dangerously poor air quality all across Canada and even in the northeastern United States. As far as New York, the air quality on Thursday (July 16) was labeled "very unhealthy" after the state activated emergency air quality protocols.

The smoke is so expansive it's clearly visible in this image captured on July 14 from Earth orbit.

Why is it noteworthy?

Studying wildfires and wildfire smoke from orbit can give us a bigger picture view of these catastrophic event. This data is important for disaster relief in the short term — but also in the long-term. With climate change continuing to progress due to human activities like burning coal for cheap power, we can expect natural disasters to worsen. Among the many effects of climate change, this includes longer and more intense wildfire seasons, especially in regions that are already susceptible to fire such as these regions across Canada.

The new image was captured by the NOAA-21 satellite with the instrument VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imagine Radiometer Suite). You can see massive plumes of smoke over southeastern Canada treading into the northeastern U.S. Thick smoke covers swaths of Canada's landscape and wisps of smoke trail all the way down through New York and across the U.S.

Most of this smoke, at least the smoke we can see in this satellite image, is coming from wildfires in northwestern Ontario. As the wildfires continue to burn, satellites like NOAA-21 will be keeping watch.

Towering glaciers flow down the Himalayas' northern slopes like icy giants cascading onto China's Tibetan Plateau.

What is it?

Back in May, from aboard the International Space Station 259 miles (417 kilometers) above Earth, NASA astronaut Jessica Meir peered out the station's windows with her camera and captured a breathtaking sight.

In that fleeting moment from space, she captured the northern slopes of the Himalaya mountains stretching into China. And atop the mountains, slow-moving rivers of glacial ice carve their way downhill.

This view shows the enormity of this mountain range, which separates Nepal from China's Tibetan Plateau. The Himalayas have the highest mountains in the world, including Mount Everest, with over 110 mountain peaks surpassing 24,000 feet (7,300 meters) of elevation above sea level. Ranging across five countries (Nepal, India, China, Bhutan and Pakistan) the mountain range is about 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) wide.

Why is it incredible?

With the range being so incredibly expansive, this view from space offers a unique vantage point from which we can see a large swath of the mountains in motion. Even in a helicopter, you would get a fairly localized view of individual mountains in the Himalayas. This view provides a striking scene that you cannot see from the surface of our planet.

This view is also a reminder of how important space is in our evolving understanding of climate change. As our planet continues to change and sea levels rise with warming temperatures, we can see glacial movement from space. This is an important resource to researchers fighting to better understand climate change so we can better fight it. With access to information about glaciers and how they melt, move and flow across the world, we can be better prepared to protect our planet and its inhabitants.

Environmental and scientific organizations are banding together to demand federal environmental reviews of space-based data center projects, which plan to put more than a million new satellites in Earth orbit over the coming years.

Over the last few months, a number of different companies have requested licenses from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to launch data centers into space. SpaceX's proposal alone requests licenses for up to one million satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO). But the requested licenses don't come with any environmental review of the impacts that the satellites — especially collectively — could have on dark skies, wildlife or our atmosphere. In response, a coalition of environmental and scientific organizations represented by the environmental nonprofit Earthjustice have petitioned the FCC for this review.

"Allowing a million orbiting data centers with no environmental review isn’t just irresponsible — it’s reckless," Tim Whitehouse, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said in a statement on Wednesday (July 8). "The potential for these projects to degrade the atmosphere with pollution and debris and harm wildlife needs to be carefully considered before licensing these projects."

Space is big, but a million new satellites added to LEO to support space-based data centers would be a massive increase. Currently, just Earth orbit harbors just 15,000 active satellites and 46,000 tracked objects overall. This number was already on track to grow to 58,000 active satellites, thanks in large part to SpaceX's ever-growing Starlink broadband megoconstellation, but the data-center plans could make it absolutely explode.

Experts suggest that this significant addition to the technological ecosystem in orbit could have disastrous consequences for life on Earth.

"Drastically expanding satellites in space has a direct impact on people’s everyday lives as well as the future of our planet," Jan Hasselman, senior attorney at Earthjustice, said in the statement. "Agencies that authorize companies looking to space as the next frontier still must operate within the law, and the law requires the FCC to consider all the risks and impacts of these proposals. If we have to sue so that they comply, we will."

The FCC has not yet required any environmental review for satellite companies seeking authorization to deploy in LEO. With its new petition, this coalition aims to change that, asking the FCC to stop granting licenses for orbiting data centers without an environmental review.

What possible environmental harms are they worried about? First of all, as more and more satellites are added to the orbital population, the greater chance there is of collisions, which could produce debris that not only clutters Earth orbit but also increases the risk of additional collisions.

Further the rocket launches that propel the satellites to orbit contribute greenhouse gas emissions to our atmosphere. And the spacecraft cause further pollution when they deorbit, releasing heavy metals and other materials when they burn up in Earth's air.

In addition, a massive increase in satellites will fundamentally change the night sky. Light pollution is known to impact wildlife and ecosystems, disrupting natural rhythms and influencing everything from migration patterns to daily feeding schedules. These disruptions can push animals like bats to miss windows in which insect prey are available, causing them to starve. They can also prevent mountain lions — apex predators that uphold their local ecosystems — from roaming normally at night, fragmenting populations over time, according to the National Wildlife Federation.

The effects of light pollution on wildlife would doubtless grow if suddenly a million new, blinking satellites were added to our night skies. And issues with light pollution extend to our species as well, as life would look quite different if our night skies were much more crowded by bright lights.

"These projects could permanently alter the night sky as we know it," Ruskin Hartley, executive director of DarkSky International, said in the statement. "The FCC needs to take seriously its obligation to ensure these projects do not cause unnecessary harm to naturally dark skies, or to our overall environment."

If you look at this picture for too long, you might start to hear the waves lapping up against the shore or feel a salty breeze in the air.

You might not have a trip to the Bahamas planned, but you can always enjoy its beauty in this spectacular summertime snapshot captured by NASA astronaut Chris Williams from aboard the International Space Station.

What is it?

In a snapshot that looks straight out of a travel commercial, we can see the crests of rippling waves of sand peeking out from beneath turquoise waters off the coast of the island Eleuthera in the Bahamas.

The moment was captured 263 miles (423 kilometers) above Earth's Atlantic Ocean from aboard the space station orbiting our planet.

This isn't the first fun snapshot captured by Williams who also recently flexed his muscles for a photo mid-spacewalk.

Why is it incredible?

This photo is incredibly beautiful. That much is immediately obvious. And if you've ever swam in picturesque waters like this, then you know how calming and magical such places on Earth can be.

But this photo is more than just pretty, as it shows that we can see Earth's beauty from 263 miles away. It is a reminder that our planet is truly special. Imagine if a future mission saw beauty like this from space on a far off exoplanet, or even a planet outside of our solar system. Currently, our planet is the only one we know of with views like this, but it's possible that in the future we might find tropical shorelines and vacation vistas aren't exclusive to our home planet.

For decades, astronomers have debated whether Earth's fate was tied to the sun's. When the star exhausts the hydrogen fuel that powers it about 5 billion years, it will swell into a red giant large enough to engulf Mercury and Venus — and, several studies have suggested, Earth as well.

New research, however, suggests our planet has a better chance of escaping that fiery end than previously thought. Using updated models of how aging stars interact with their planets, researchers found that the gravitational forces drawing Earth toward the expanding sun are weaker than older models predicted. That would give the planet more time to drift outward as the dying sun sheds its outer layers into space, potentially avoiding engulfment altogether.

The finding does not guarantee Earth's survival. Instead, researchers say it shifts the biggest uncertainty from how strongly the expanding sun tugs on planets to the poorly understood variable of how much mass the star will lose during its final stages of evolution.

"The largest uncertainty no longer comes from the tidal calculations, but from how much mass the future sun will lose," study lead author Mats Esseldeurs of the KU Leuven's Institute of Astronomy in Belgium said in a statement. "Observations of sun-like giant stars currently point towards Earth's survival, but we need better observations before we can be certain."

When stars like the sun exhaust their core hydrogen and balloon into massive red giants, they trigger a cosmic tug-of-war between expanding tidal forces pulling planets inward and shedding stellar weight pushing them outward, which ultimately decides whether nearby worlds are engulfed or saved.

This planetary push-and-pull unfolds in two stages. As the sun expands, gravitational tides act like a subtle brake, slowly draining Earth's orbital energy and pulling the planet inward. At the same time, the dying star sheds vast amounts of gas through powerful stellar winds, eventually losing about half its mass. As the sun grows lighter, its gravitational grip weakens, pushing the surviving planets outward into a wider orbit that could double their distance from the star, according to NASA.

"The fate of Earth depends on a delicate balance between these two effects," Esseldeurs said in the statement. "If tidal interactions dominate, Earth is engulfed. If mass loss dominates, Earth escapes to a wider orbit."

Previous studies reached different conclusions mostly because they treated those competing processes differently, Esseldeurs and his team argue. A few of those studies neglected tidal interactions altogether, while others relied on simplified prescriptions developed decades ago that predicted a much stronger inward pull, according to the study.

Instead of relying on those older formulas, the new study uses updated calculations of tidal forces based on the shifting internal structure and dynamics of aging stars — which the team says allowed it to precisely account for both tidal friction and shifting stellar winds — before testing the results against a range of possible mass-loss rates for the sun's final giant phase.

The results suggest that even with the weaker inward gravitational pull, Mercury and Venus are unable to outpace the expanding sun and are inevitably engulfed, while Earth and Mars migrate safely through both giant phases, leaving our planet to eventually settle into a broader orbit around the white dwarf remnant the sun will leave behind, the study found.

The picture is far from settled, however. Because astronomers still cannot precisely observe how rapidly sun-like stars lose mass late in life, "the ultimate fate of the Earth remains uncertain," the researchers write in the new paper.

By factoring in real-world mass-loss rates from L2 Pup — a red giant star roughly 183 light-years away that was used as a proxy for our future sun due to its similar mass — the researchers confirmed that Earth will drift outward just quickly enough to avoid being swallowed, tipping the scales toward survival over destruction, the study notes.

For us humans, the finding offers academic comfort rather than practical salvation. Most scientists agree that as the sun ages, it will steadily grow hotter, boiling Earth's oceans and rendering the planet completely uninhabitable in about 1 billion years, long before the sun begins to expand.

Yet even if humans aren't around to witness it, tracking Earth's ultimate survival provides important context for how planetary systems evolve as their stars age, a framework that researchers say will be further refined by future observations of dying, sun-like stars.

"This will enable us to conduct population studies of the planetary orbital evolution around evolved stars," the researchers wrote in the paper, "and help us to constrain the future evolution of the Earth-sun system."

The study was published in June in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Three years before the skyscraper-size asteroid Apophis makes its very close (but safe) flyby of Earth, scientists have already begun charting exactly when and where billions of people can watch it sweep across the sky.

Speaking at an "Apophis T-3 Years" workshop held earlier this month at the University of Padua in Italy, retired cartographer Michael Zeiler and astronomer Rick Fienberg shared detailed visibility maps charting the asteroid's passage across Earth's skies.

According to their calculations, roughly 90% of the world's population — about 7.6 billion people — lives in regions where Apophis could, in principle, be seen with the naked eye on April 13, 2029. The actual viewing success will depend more on earthly considerations, however, including cloud cover and the extent of light pollution.

Known formally as 99942 Apophis, the space rock will not resemble a blazing meteor tearing through the sky. Instead, scientists say it will appear as a point-like speck of light gliding steadily across, which, at its closest approach, will appear to move by about the apparent width of the full moon every minute.

"It will definitely be noticeable," Fienberg told Space.com. "It's going to be moving more slowly than a satellite — it will cross the sky in hours, rather than minutes, and it will just be a point."

According to the new maps, the asteroid should remain visible to the naked eye for about seven hours, beginning over Australia at 11:00 a.m. EDT (15:00 UTC) and concluding over the North Atlantic at 6:00 p.m. EDT (22:00 UTC).

At 4:35 p.m. EDT (20:35 UTC), Apophis is expected to reach its greatest apparent brightness as it passes over Cameroon, offering prime viewing to an estimated 3.9 billion people across Africa, Asia, eastern South America and parts of Europe.

About an hour later, at 5:45 p.m. EDT (21:45 UTC), the asteroid will make its closest approach to Earth, passing about 19,700 miles (31,600 kilometers) above the North Atlantic — well inside the orbit of Earth's geostationary satellites. The event would be visible across much of South America, the United States, Africa and parts of Europe, reaching roughly 2 billion people.

"This is the first time we've been able to predict in human history an asteroid visibly passing by the Earth," Richard Binzel, a professor of planetary sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), said during the workshop. "That's part of a shared experience."

As excitement ramps up for the once-in-a-millennium spectacle, Binzel opened the workshop with three messages: "Apophis will safely pass the Earth. Apophis will safely pass the Earth. Apophis will safely pass the Earth."

That absolute certainty is the hard-won fruit of more than two decades of increasingly precise observations. When Apophis was discovered in 2004, early calculations suggested a 1-in-37 chance of an impact in 2029, making it the most potentially hazardous asteroid known at the time. Additional observations steadily refined the asteroid's orbit, eliminating any possibility of a collision in 2029 and also ruling out any impact threat for at least the next century, according to NASA.

With the impact threat removed, scientists now view the flyby as a rare opportunity to observe how Earth's gravity affects an asteroid during an exceptionally close encounter.

Our planet's gravity is expected to tug the asteroid into a new orbit around the sun without posing any future danger. During the flyby, however, those same gravitational forces may stretch and squeeze the asteroid enough to trigger landslides or expose pristine material hidden beneath its weathered surface. Or they may do almost nothing.

"We simply don't know what's going to happen," Binzel said during the workshop. "Apophis may go by and not care too much, or maybe we'll see something significant."

"That's why we have to look," he added. "We're gonna learn a lot either way."

At the workshop, scientists said they hope to monitor the flyby from observatories in Spain's Canary Islands, among other places, as its location in the Atlantic Ocean offers an ideal view of the asteroid's closest approach as well as favorable prospects for clear skies.

Wildfires across the globe can be seen all the way from space. And one unexpected tool has come in handy to spot plumes of wildfire smoke: a satellite designed to study Earth's oceans.

What is it?

In this photo, we can see swirls of wildfire smoke over the Great Lakes in Canada. Fluffy white clouds float over the land and lakes, in contrast to the wisps of gray smoke, which float out from massive wildfires that ripped through North America.

The photo was snapped in May of last year by NASA's PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, and ocean Ecosystem) satellite. This seems logical, as it is an Earth-monitoring satellite, but what's surprising is that the orbiting spacecraft was actually designed to study and monitor Earth's oceans and atmosphere. In fact, the image itself was captured by PACE's Ocean Color Instrument, which does "hyperspectral" imaging, meaning that it observes the planet in hundreds of different wavelengths of light (in visible, near-infrared and ultraviolet).

Why is it incredible?

This image, among others, shows the incredible versatility of space technologies like PACE. While wildfire monitoring isn't its explicit purpose, images and data from this mission could be incredibly helpful in deepening our understanding of wildfires and how they spread.

"The PACE satellite observes land too, and does it really well," Skye Caplan, terrestrial lead for the PACE mission at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said in a statement. "There is so much to explore with a new hyperspectral data set."

In fact, in addition to capturing wildfire smoke, as we can see in this image, PACE's Ocean Color Instrument can also spot changes in vegetation, burn scars and the charred aftermath of a wildfire. Images in the instrument's hundreds of wavelengths can reveal a variety of detailed information, such as how stressed, dry or even pigmented plants are on Earth's surface. This type of information could also be beneficial in identifying dry areas that could be at a higher risk of wildfires sparking.

Every year, millions of people travel to remote, protected "dark-sky parks" in search of experiences that depend on true darkness — photographing the Milky Way's heart arcing overhead, observing nocturnal wildlife in its natural rhythm, or simply standing beneath an ink-black sea of stars unblurred by artificial light.

Scientists have long warned that rising levels of artificial light — increasingly amplified by satellite megaconstellations orbiting our planet — are steadily eroding these nightscapes, disrupting ecosystems, affecting human health and dimming views of stars and distant celestial objects. Darkness itself carries no price tag, however, meaning its loss has largely been absent from the economic calculations that guide development and outdoor lighting decisions. Now, new research attempts to translate that loss visible in monetary terms.

A study combining satellite data with on-the-ground surveys of visitors at several "gold-tier" dark-sky sites found that people were less likely to choose parks with greater artificial skyglow or poorer night-sky conditions, and showed a clear willingness to pay more for darker skies.

On average, visitors would pay about $18 more per trip for marginally darker skies, and roughly $45 more per night for a one-step improvement on the Bortle Dark Sky Scale, a widely used measure of night-sky quality.

"This may seem really small at the per-visitor and per-trip unit estimate," said Jordan Smith, the study's lead author and director of the Institute of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism at Utah State University, "but when we scale through park-wide visitation, it becomes very, very significant."

Over a four-month period, the researchers estimated that light pollution reduced the recreational value of flagship dark-sky destinations in the U.S. by between $25 million and nearly $66 million.

The figures, presented at the 248th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in California, do not represent lost park revenue, but what economists call "welfare losses" — the decline in visitor satisfaction when environmental quality deteriorates. The concept is akin to paying for a concert expecting excellent sound and instead finding the speakers distorted; the performance still occurs, but it feels worth less than anticipated.

By assigning a dollar value to changes in night-sky quality, the researchers argue, policymakers gain a way to weigh the hidden costs of artificial lighting against the benefits of development and outdoor illumination.

"It's a foundational building block that allows that cost-benefit analysis to subsequently occur," Smith said.

Speaking at a press briefing during the conference, Smith said a central challenge is the gap between measuring light pollution and measuring what it costs in lived experience. Satellites and ground instruments can track where artificial light is spreading and how quickly it is increasing, he said, "but they can't tell us much about what that value is — what is actually lost due to anthropogenic light at night?"

To bridge that gap, Smith and his colleagues focused on the Colorado Plateau, a rugged region spanning Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico that contains one of the world's highest concentrations of "gold-tier" dark-sky sites, a designation that signifies the darkest and clearest night skies on Earth.

Over 82 nights in April, May, September and October, researchers interviewed visitors after dusk at campgrounds, scenic overlooks and parking areas. In total, they surveyed 634 travelers across nine destinations, including Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands and Natural Bridges National Monument, focusing on visitors whose trips depended specifically on high-quality night skies, the study notes.

By pairing survey responses with satellite measurements of nighttime brightness and local atmospheric conditions — including humidity, moonlight and airborne particles, all of which affect sky visibility — the team found a consistent preference for darker skies and a willingness to pay more for them.

The highest projected welfare losses, the researchers found, were heavily concentrated at premier destinations, led by the Grand Canyon and Zion national parks. Smaller or more remote parks showed comparatively modest total losses, a result driven by fewer visitors rather than an absence of dark-sky value, the study notes.

The researchers suggest that extending this kind of monitoring across a full year and over multiple years could help treat the night sky not only as a scientific and cultural asset, but as a measurable economic asset whose value changes with lighting policy, development and conservation.

As cities expand and artificial light continues to spread, studies like this are reframing a question once largely confined to science as an economic one: what is a star-filled sky worth?

If you've ever seen auroras in the night sky, then you are one of the lucky few who has enjoyed a view of one of nature's most colorful and spectacular phenomena. But for the very lucky, very few who've seen auroras from space, the view is on a whole other level!

What is it?

When charged particles streaming constantly from the sun, also known as the solar wind, reach Earth and interact with our atmosphere, it creates what we call auroras. Seeing these spectacular, colorful displays in the sky is on many people's bucket list, as auroras can light up the sky in a rainbow of colors. But this beautiful phenomenon happening in our atmosphere can also be seen from space.

European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, who is currently aboard the International Space Station as part of the εpsilon mission, spotted the aurora australis, or auroras over the Southern Hemisphere. (Lights in the Northern Hemisphere are known as the aurora borealis.)

And the image she captured of the moment really speaks for itself. Neon green swirls look truly otherworldly against a haze of bright purple blanketing Earth, which also seems enveloped in a ruby red glow. The reddish glow of the auroras can even be seen against the outside of the space station in this photograph.

Why is it incredible?

While her photograph speaks for itself, Adenot actually shared her own thoughts on the view via social media. One incredible thing about human spaceflight in the modern world is that, even from an orbiting laboratory, astronauts can share their experiences with the world in real time.

"Day 127, orbit 1968 — That aurora was absolutely spectacular… shimmering and dancing beneath us, stretching as far as the eye could see, and so intense it lit up the Station in shades of green," Adenot said. "We’ve seen several since the beginning of the mission, but this one was on a completely different level — far too bright for my usual aurora camera settings. Moments like these never get old up here; the whole crew suddenly find themselves vying for a good spot at a window!"

Twice each year, we celebrate what we call a solstice when Earth is at its maximum tilt toward or away from the sun. And during this June's summer solstice, a European weather satellite managed to capture a striking image of the celestial moment from space.

What is it?

This image of the solstice was captured on June 21 by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) mission. This is a fleet of Earth-monitoring satellites that capture images of our home planet to support weather monitoring over Europe, Africa and regions of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The first Meteosat satellite launched in 1977 as ESA's first Earth-observing mission, and to date, there have been 11 satellites launched as part of this series.

In this image, the first of the third generation of Meteosat satellites, MTG-I1, captured an image of Earth just six minutes after we passed the moment of summer solstice, according to ESA. This image shows clearly Earth's "terminator line," or the fuzzy "line" that divides nighttime and daytime on a planet.

Why is it incredible?

On the day of a solstice when Earth is at its maximum tilt, there is almost exactly the same amount of daytime as there is nighttime. In the northern hemisphere, the June solstice marks the longest day of the year, or the day with the most sunlight. And, in the southern hemisphere, the June solstice marks the shortest day of the year.

In June, those in the northern hemisphere celebrate their extra hours of sunlight before the days start getting shorter again. Historically, solstices have been celebrated around the world, folded into cultural traditions and practices. As humans invented agriculture, and our food systems rely on things like available sunlight, it makes sense that throughout time, the changing duration of sunlight would be tightly intertwined with all aspects of our day-to-day lives.

The oldest known asteroid impact site on Earth was created 3.02 billion years ago in what's now Western Australia — not far from where we've seen the oldest traces of life on our planet.

A rock formation in Western Australia's Pilbara region seems to offer evidence of an asteroid slamming into Earth's newly-formed rocky crust around 3.02 billion years ago. That makes the formation, called the North Pole Dome, the oldest evidence of an asteroid impact on Earth, according to a recent study, which dated crystals in the rocks shocked and reshaped by the impact's tremendous heat and pressure.

It's the latest salvo in an ongoing debate about the age of the crater (or what's left of it after billions of years of erosion), and there's more at stake than bragging rights: a crater dating back this deep in Earth's distant past could shed light on the rise of the continents and the origin of life.

A rare glimpse

Inside most rocks in Earth's crust, tiny grains of mineral called zircon quietly record the passage of eons. Zircon contains tiny amounts of uranium, which slowly but steadily breaks down into lead; that steadiness is key, because the ratios of those two elements reveal how long it's been since a grain of zircon crystallized from hot, molten rock. In this case, zircon grains told Kirkland and his colleagues that it had been about 3.02 billion years since the tremendous heat and pressure of an asteroid impact melted zircon crystals in the rocks around North Pole Dome.

"Some zircons at the North Pole Dome have unusual branching, skeletal shapes," Kirkland said in an emailed press release. "We interpret these as impact-modified crystals, formed when older zircon was disrupted, partly recrystallized, and in places, regrown during the intense heating caused by the impact."

If Kirkland and his colleagues are right, the area, also called the Miralga Impact Structure, is the oldest trace of an asteroid colliding with our planet. The newly published date makes Miralga a relic of a tumultuous period in our solar system's history, called the Late Heavy Bombardment, when the giant planets were still jockeying for position in their orbits around the sun, flinging asteroids and comets toward the inner solar system in the process (or so cosmologists theorize). Amid this rain of space rocks, Earth was midway through the Archaean Eon, with the planet's surface finally cooling to form a thin crust of solid rock. Earth's surface lay beneath an orangish haze of methane, a little like a warmer version of Saturn's moon Titan.

And somewhere in there, the first life took shape.

The oldest traces of that early life are just a few kilometers from North Pole Dome: limestone stromatolites, made of layers of tiny sediment grains trapped in, and eventually left behind by, sheets of early bacteria. The ones in Pilbara are about 3.5 billion years old, another date courtesy of zircon grains. If the Miralga impact happened 3.02 billion years ago, it struck a world already teeming with overlapping mats of bacteria.

The oldest known Earth rock, a 4.35-billion-year-old sandstone formation (also dated using zircon), lies just a few hundred kilometers south of Pilbara, in the Jack Hills. Why is all of this — the oldest rocks, the oldest asteroid crater, and the oldest traces of life — in Western Australia? It's reasonably likely that crust formed, life emerged, and meteors smashed into the ground millions of years earlier, in places all over the world, but the evidence just happened to be preserved in this area of Australia. Most of Earth's very oldest rocks have long since been reworked by plate tectonics or erosion, basically erasing the first chapters of our geological record.

A heated debate about heated rock

"While the site had previously been identified as an ancient impact crater, its exact age remained uncertain," said Kirkland.

Last year, Kirkland and his colleagues proposed that the impact dated back to 3.47 billion years ago, almost the same age as the nearby stromatolites. In that same paper, the team suggested that the original crater – whose outline has long since eroded away, leaving behind only impact-shocked rocks and tantalizing hints – might have been up to 62 miles (100 km) wide. The 22-mile-wide (35-kilometer-wide) North Pole Dome itself seemed to mark the crater's center; rock in the middle of large craters often rebounds upward after the impact, leaving a peak or dome behind (picture the way the middle of a trampoline flexes upward, captured in a freeze frame).

But another group of geoscientists published a paper a few months later, arguing that Miralga (a name they gave the crater, based on the local Aboriginal peoples' name for the area) couldn't be any more than 2.7 billion years old, and only 10 miles (16 km) wide. That's still substantial, and old enough to be interesting, but too young and too small to have played much of a role in shaping the region's life, or its continental crust.

"By the time of the impact, the Pilbara was already quite old," wrote the study’s authors in an essay at the time (of the paper, not the impact).

The teams agreed on, basically, one thing: the area around North Pole Dome was definitely an impact site, and dating very old rocks is not easy. Both 2025 papers looked at the placement of rocks called shatter cones, which form when the shockwaves of an impact (or, sometimes, an underground nuclear bomb test) pass through rock, leaving behind ripples, striations, or cracks. But based on where the shatter cones appeared in relation to other rock layers, the two teams of scientists drew very different conclusions.

"Ancient craters are incredibly difficult to date, because over billions of years, rocks are altered by heat, pressure, and fluids, which can obscure or reset the original impact signatures," said Kirkland, whose team now argues that the zircon crystal dates are much more precise than either team's previous efforts. "What we've been able to do here is separate the moment of impact from its long geological history."

Curtin University geoscientist Chris Kirkland and his colleagues published their work in the journal Geology.

A new planetary habitability model could make the search for aliens more efficient by quickly identifying rocky worlds unlikely to sustain the atmospheres needed for life as we know it.

The software, called the Smaller Than Earth Habitability Model (STEHM), allows astronomers to screen exoplanets before committing valuable telescope time to detailed observations. Developed by researchers at Stanford University, the model assesses whether a rocky planet can build and retain an atmosphere over billions of years — a prerequisite for life as we know it, according to a statement from the university.

Astronomers searching for life beyond Earth face a daunting challenge: thousands of exoplanets have already been discovered, and billions more are thought to exist throughout the Milky Way — roughly one for every star in the galaxy. As powerful new telescopes come online, researchers increasingly need ways to identify which worlds are worth closer study.

"The only way that we're going to ever find out if there are signatures of life out there is by observing the atmosphere of these planets," Michelle Hill, lead author of the study who developed STEHM, said in the statement.

Traditionally, scientists have focused on whether a planet lies within its star's habitable zone, the region where temperatures may allow liquid water to exist on the surface. But location alone does not guarantee habitability. A planet without a substantial atmosphere may be unable to maintain stable temperatures, shield itself from radiation or support surface water, the researchers said.

STEHM adds a second layer to this assessment by estimating whether small rocky planets can generate and retain atmospheres over geologic timescales. The model links a planet's size to its ability to hold onto atmospheric gases, helping identify a lower size threshold for potentially habitable worlds.

To build STEHM, Hill used the ExoPlex planetary simulation code to model six rocky worlds ranging from half Earth's size to Earth-size, testing how planetary structure, volcanic activity, internal heat and stellar radiation affect atmospheric survival. The model was validated using Venus and Mars, correctly reproducing Venus's thick carbon dioxide atmosphere and Mars's long-term atmospheric loss.

The results suggest that rocky planets at least 80% the size of Earth can retain atmospheres for 10 billion years or more when orbiting within habitable zones around sun-like stars. Smaller planets generally lose their atmospheres more quickly, though worlds around 70% of Earth's size may still be habitable under favorable conditions. Atmospheric longevity also depends strongly on initial carbon content and heat-producing elements that drive volcanic activity, allowing STEHM to serve as a size-based filter for identifying the most promising habitable worlds.

"Maybe there's life on other planets under the ground, but we are never going to be able to see it because we can't send something to those exoplanets," Hill said in the statement. "The best chance we've got is looking for signs of life by analyzing atmospheres from afar."

By narrowing the field of candidates, STEHM could help astronomers focus on the most promising planets for life while avoiding wasting resources on unlikely targets. The approach may be especially useful as next-generation missions, such as the European Space Agency's PLATO space telescope, expand the catalog of rocky exoplanets around nearby stars. Researchers hope the model will help prioritize which of these planets merit follow-up observations.

STEHM not only addresses where life beyond Earth could occur, but when it might, by modeling whether exoplanets can actually hold onto atmospheres over geologic timescales — a key prerequisite for life to take hold in the first place.

"Maybe the answer to why we haven't found any life yet is that we're so early in the grand scheme of what has been created through the lives and deaths of stars," Hill said in the statement. "Maybe we're one of the first."

Their findings were published June 4 in the Planetary Science Journal.

It's always a treat to be reminded that we have spacecraft orbiting Mars right now, and a new image from one of these Red Planet probes does just that.

The European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express has beamed to Earth a beautiful view of a region on Mars known as Mamers Valles. This is a sweeping valley system that stretches across nearly 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) of land. And if your day is feeling a little dry, there's a little game you can play while looking at the image.

I spy 30 dust devils hidden in the crevices of these Martian valleys.

What are we looking at?

Dust devils are basically small tornadoes that pick up dust as they whirl around. They're common on Earth and on Mars: Rovers and orbiters have imaged these phenomena many times on the Red Planet. One time, for instance, a mission team tracked about 1,000 of them speeding across the Red Planet. Another time, NASA's Perseverance rover watched two of these devils merge into one large devil. We've even heard them "crackle" before, thanks to another Perseverance video.

Mars' dust devils are far larger than those of Earth, reaching heights of almost 5 miles (8 km) and sometimes racing at speeds of about 148 feet (45 meters) per second.

In the image below, you can see the full picture of the valleys; the devils, ESA says, are small yellow dots with pinkish trailing shadows. You can try to spot the devils on your own, but if you need some help, ESA has outlined precisely where each one is just here.

Why is it noteworthy?

Scientists are so interested in Martian dust devils because they help map the planet's otherwise invisible wind. That can aid in future Mars mission planning as well as helping researchers decode the general Red Planet environment— information that could lead to discoveries about Mars' watery past or its evolution through time.

But besides dust devils, the region depicted in the image, Mamers Valles, is worth admiring, too.

Thanks to its vastness, Mamers Valles actually connects Mars' ancient southern highlands with its northern lowlands, according to an ESA statement. Plus, all around the valleys of this 3.8-billion-year-old area lie many other land features — including what used to be full-on glaciers. Now covered in debris, these glaciers should hold water ice underneath, which would be a great target for a future Mars mission to explore.

As for when that future mission could take off, only time (and probably the success of NASA's Artemis program) will tell.

Astronomers have discovered chemical differences between binary stars that indicate one is a cosmic cannibal that has devoured at least one planet.

Binary stars should have the same chemical composition because each star is formed from the same vast cloud of gas and dust; however earlier this year the team behind this new research discovered that the two stars of HD 81809, located around 101 light-years away, are chemically different. One of the stars, HD 81809B, has a much greater concentration of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, which astronomers call "metals," at its surface than its binary partner HD 81809A.

This new research suggests that the reason for the metal enrichment of HD 81809B is that this star has consumed an exoplanet which was between 50 and 75 times the size of Earth.

"This is the first binary system to be found with this chemical difference, which is very unusual," team leader Nuno Moedas of the Technical University of Denmark told Space.com. "Binary systems are 'like siblings' in that they are born from the same molecular cloud, meaning they have the same chemical composition. As with siblings, some differences in element abundances can appear due to physical processes. However, these differences will be much smaller than those of HD 81809."

Moedas added that there are only two possible explanations for the differences between HD 81809B and HD 81809A.

"One is that the stars are not 'real siblings' and were born from different molecular clouds containing different elements," Moedas said. "The other explanation is that star HD 81809B suffered a more drastic event during its evolution, such as ingesting a planet, which could have changed its chemical composition."

There is a "smoking gun" piece of evidence that planetary engulfment is the correct explanation for the metal enrichment of HD 81809B, however.

"It could be very hard to distinguish the two scenarios, but the main evidence for a planet's engulfment is the high abundance of lithium in HD 81809B that is not normal," Moedas said. "Lithium is a very volatile element, and it is easily destroyed in stars, so we expect very low abundances of this element when observing stars. For the case of HD 81809B, the most viable explanation for the large presence of lithium is an ingestion of a planet."

The team isn't quite sure how HD 81809B came to feast on one of its planets, but Moedas suggests it could be the result of gravitational interactions between the binary stars disrupting the orbit of the unfortunate planet, resulting in it falling into one of its stars. The question also remains of how many planets HD 81809B has devoured.

"We can only estimate the amount of planetary material required, which we find to be 75 times the mass of Earth. It is possible that the star ingested three planets, each 25 times more massive than Earth," Moedas said. "The event happened a few million years ago, and there are physical processes in the star that will 'clean up' the evidence and try to make the star's chemical abundance similar to that before the event."

Because of the physical processes within HD 81809B, the team can't tell much more about the planet, or planets that were devoured. However, there is a possibility that this information may be recovered from a dusty disk of debris detected in this system.

"We still do not know the exact location, but if it is around the secondary star, it could be the remains of a planet falling into the star," Moedas said. "We could use this to understand the composition of the planet. However, we are far from being able to study this debris disk with the current instruments we have. We probably still need to revisit this system, as there is still a lot we don't know.

"There is a lot to discover."A pre-peer-reviewed version of the team's research appears on the paper repository site arXiv.

On Sunday (June 14), the Hawaiian volcano Kīlauea erupted for the 49th time that we know of — marking its 49th "episode," as scientists say.

And during the show, the GOES-18 weather satellite caught the action: the volcano blasting lava about 700 feet (210 meters) into the air. A gif of the footage can be seen just below.

What are we looking at?

Specifically, in this GOES-18 satellite imagery of the Kīlauea eruption, take note of the bright red spot toward the bottom right of the island. That color indicates warm to hot fire, per the scale visible at the bottom of the gif.

The gif itself is also sped up, showcasing a timespan from 3:01 p.m. EDT (1901 UTC) on Sunday to 10:31 p.m. EDT the same day (0331 UTC the following day).

Why is it noteworthy?

It's a treat to witness Hawaii's Kīlauea volcano erupting for many reasons, one being its grandeur. It's considered the most active volcano on Earth, having consistently erupted for the last 200 years or so.

It's also huge, with a 4,090-foot (1,250-meter) summit that has a depression about 3 miles (5 kilometers) long and 2 miles (3.2 km) wide. This very large depression is what's known as a "caldera." You can think of it as a huge crater on the volcano's summit.

That crater is called Halema'uma'u, and is in fact where the eruptions of this volcano originate. This particular eruption lasted about seven and a half hours, according to the U.S. Geological Survey's Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, but no lava was reported exiting the caldera territory. In conjunction with the eruption, however, the USGS reported three earthquakes within Kīlauea caldera.

Another reason this GOES-18 satellite is pretty amazing is it illustrates once again how a weather satellite's data can be very versatile. Satellite imagery of natural disasters in particular can help scientists monitor the status of hazardous areas in order to aid relief efforts, if needed.

That's going to be especially important as human-driven climate change, caused by practices like burning coal for cheap power, continues to grow in severity. Global warming is directly correlated with increases in serious disasters like hurricanes, cyclones and wildfires. The more satellite eyes we have on these events, the better.

There are other benefits to satellite images as well — things like penguin safety and solar eclipse views, for example. And some satellites are even able to watch over humanmade disasters, such as this one that caught Blue Origin's rocket explosion from space.

As for this erupting volcano, now that it's quieted down, scientists have been trying to predict when the next outflow could occur. According to the USGS, the 50th episode is forecast to occur "between June 24 and June 29 with June 25-26 most likely."

Fragments of ice splintered from a glacier float down an Antarctic lake in a photo captured from aboard the International Space Station.

What is it?

In a new photograph snapped by astronauts on the International Space Station, you can see pieces of the Tyndall Glacier splintering off and floating out into the lake Lago Geikie. Even from space, the chunks of ice falling from the glacier can be seen floating away.

The Tyndall Glacier in southern Chile is part of the Southern Patagonian Icefield. Located between Chile and Argentina, this is the second-largest continuous ice field like it in the world. It measures at over 5,000 square miles of ice (13,000 square kilometers).

It is the larger half of two remaining pieces of the Patagonian Ice Sheet, an almost unbelievably massive sheet of ice that covered southern Chile during the last glacial period over 20,000 years ago.

Why is it incredible?

As of 2025, the worlds glaciers have lost over 300 tons (273 tonnes) of ice in just the last 20 years alone. With the progression of climate change, this ice continues to melt, fragment and contribute to rising sea levels around the globe. And in this image, we can see the process with our own eyes.

The Tyndall Glacier has been shrinking for about 150 years; as more and more pieces of this glacier break off or melt, Lago Geikie continues to grow and expand. In the past four years alone, Tyndall has lost 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers) in length, according to glaciologist Mauri Pelto of Nicholas College. Interestingly, while glacier shrinking is concerning as it contributes to sea level rise which puts coastal communities in serious danger, this glacial retreat revealed some unexpected findings beyond that. As this glacier has fallen away, it has exposed bedrock where scientists have found ichthyosaur fossils.

When severe solar storms hurtle toward Earth, the planet's first line of defense is its magnetosphere, a vast magnetic bubble that deflects the brunt of the sun's dangerous charged particles. Historically, humanity has only attempted to forecast the storms and brace for impact.

Now, however, a team led by Brian Walsh of Boston University has proposed a bold method to actively strengthen that natural defense using a fleet of spacecraft designed to blunt the impact of space weather before it hits.

The concept, dubbed StormWall, uses computer simulations to show that reinforcing the magnetosphere could reduce the intensity of a major geomagnetic storm by more than half. If realized, the researchers say the system could protect vulnerable satellites, global communications networks, GPS systems and electrical grids from potentially catastrophic disruptions.

"People have always thought, 'space is huge, the sun is massive, we just have to sit here and take whatever it gives us,'" Walsh said in a statement. "But what we found is that we can impact it."

During particularly powerful solar eruptions, Earth's natural shield can be breached through a process called magnetic reconnection. When magnetic fields carried by the solar wind align perfectly with Earth's magnetic field, they temporarily link together. This opens a celestial pathway, allowing massive amounts of solar energy to pour into near-Earth space and trigger geomagnetic storms.

The StormWall concept is designed to interrupt this process. The system would deploy six spacecraft into geosynchronous orbit. Each satellite would carry stores of a "mass-loading material"— substances like barium, lithium, sodium, or calcium — that can be stored safely as a solid or liquid and vaporized on command.

If a dangerous solar storm is detected heading toward Earth, mission controllers would command the fleet to release the material. Sunlight would quickly ionize the vaporized particles, transforming them into a cloud of electrically charged plasma, the study notes.

This artificial plasma would drift toward the sun-facing edge of the magnetosphere, effectively thickening the boundary between Earth and the incoming solar wind. By adding mass to this critical frontier, the team found it could stall the efficiency of magnetic reconnection, forcing the harsh space weather to bounce around and past our planet.

"It's like people in a village who see a river flooding — maybe they can predict when that will happen, but probably what's even better is if they could build a storm wall," Walsh said in the statement. "That's what we're proposing here."

To test the viability of the concept, the researchers simulated the historic May 2024 geomagnetic storm, often called the Mother's Day storm. One model recreated the event under normal conditions, while a second simulated the storm with the StormWall plasma shield active.

The results showed that while StormWall would not eliminate a geomagnetic storm entirely, it could reduce its intensity by more than 50%, according to the study. By disrupting the flow of energy at the boundary of the magnetosphere, the artificial plasma would essentially force the space weather to bounce around and past our planet, the paper notes.

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

To provide enough coverage, the fleet would collectively need to carry a payload equivalent to about a dozen oil trucks' worth of material, according to the statement. That would not be inexpensive, and costs would be further compounded by the fact that once the payload is fired out and photoionizes, the system would be dead and unable to be replenished — making it a "one-and-done" solution.

However, as private companies pour billions into orbital infrastructure and contemplate launching space-based data centers, Walsh and his team argues that the financial math could soon tip in favor of such a proactive defense.

The study also acknowledges that modifying an interconnected system requires careful evaluation of unintended consequences. The risk of long-term contamination using the StormWall approach is low, it adds, because the artificial plasma would leave the system "relatively quickly," getting swept away by the solar wind within roughly six hours rather than re-entering Earth's atmosphere.

And because the magnetosphere blankets the entire globe, StormWall would serve as a collective shield for the entire planet, the researchers say.

"If you built it, if it was deployed, it would help all people on the planet," Walsh said in the statement. "You couldn't make it in a way that helped only one country, one group of satellites."

Further details about the concept were published on June 2 in the in the journal Space Weather.

French astronaut Sophie Adenot captured the view of a lifetime in a new image of Mount Vesuvius, as seen from aboard the International Space Station.

What is it?

Adenot, an astronaut with the European Space Agency, is currently part of SpaceX's Crew-12 mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS) alongside NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway and cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. The crew arrived in February and is slated to complete a six-month stay in space. The crew did take a brief detour from their regular duties, however, on June 5 — temporarily taking shelter in the Dragon capsule during a spacewalk meant to fix a concerning leak on the station.

And before this temporary sheltering, on Day 103 (orbit 1598) of their mission, Adenot captured a striking photograph of Mount Vesuvius from the space station and shared it on social media.

Why is it incredible?

"From orbit, volcanoes are some of the most beautiful natural sights… End of April, Etna caught me by surprise one morning as I opened the shutters. The whiteness of its slopes… and that elegant plume of smoke which is a gentle reminder that it’s only lightly, very lightly, asleep. I just had time to take a quick photo, but I kept an eye out for it the next day to capture a few more! A special thought for my fellow ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano, who is from Catania, at the foot of Etna," Adenot's post read, according to ESA.

"Less than a minute later, and we're flying over Vesuvius, instantly recognisable by the vast crater, the path winding up to the summit, and, most of all, Naples spread out all around it," she continued.

A rainbow blanket of patchwork colors sprawls across South Africa in this new composite image created using data from NASA's latest Earth-observing mission.

This image incorporates information from NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar), a satellite developed jointly by NASA and ISRO (the Indian Space Research Organisation), to show details of land use down here on Earth.

What is it?

NISAR launched on July 28, 2025 on an Earth-observing mission. It tracks natural disasters and studies ecosystems, agriculture, glaciers and other facets of our planet's surface.

In this image, you can see the region along the Vetrivier (Vet River, or "fat river") in South Africa. This area includes a wide-reaching agricultural region north of Bloemfontein. The data captured by NISAR in this image was used to create color-coded blocks that point to details like crop type.

The Vetrivier flows through the Free State and North West provinces. This river feeds local agriculture, supporting crops across the wider Maize Triangle region, a major agricultural area in the country.

Why is it incredible?

This image is equal parts beauty and science. NISAR and other Earth-studying satellites are key players in our constantly evolving understanding of our planet.

In the pretty abstract color blocks overlaid on this image, green points to an area with vegetation, red means an unvegetated area, and shades of blue depict how quickly a vegetated area changed within the recent season.

"It’s a pretty picture, but there are also important things that it communicates to us," Paul Siqueira, a scientist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the ecosystems lead of the NISAR science team, said in a statement. "With NISAR, crops like maize and sunflower appear differently than forests because of their size differences and period of growth."

There might have only been thirteen named storms for the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season, but it only takes one storm to devastate communities in its path.

Mother Nature conjured up five hurricanes last year, with four reaching major hurricane status on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. One of them, Hurricane Melissa, made landfall over Jamaica in October 2025 as one of the strongest hurricanes ever. It led to 95 deaths and over $12 billion in damages in Jamaica alone. In total, the 2025 hurricane season led to 125 total fatalities and $12.7 billion worth of damage.

Thankfully, forecasters at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)'s National Weather Service (NWS) predict a below-normal number of named storms in the upcoming Atlantic hurricane season. The Atlantic basin hurricane season kicks off on June 1 and runs all the way through Nov. 30, and within that time frame, NOAA's outlook includes a forecast that would include a 55% chance of the season coming in below-normal.

With a confidence range that sits at 70% by the agency, the prediction would be for 8-14 storms that become named, with 3-6 of those reaching hurricane status (where winds reach 74 miles per hour, or 119 kilometers per hour) and anywhere from 1-3 strengthening into a major hurricane (a minimum Category 3).

To put that into perspective, an average season would typically have 14 named storms including seven hurricanes, with three of those being major. So, there is still the potential for an average hurricane season if it's on the higher end. And, no matter how many storms develop, NOAA says it's ready for whatever comes our way.

"NOAA's rapid integration of advanced technology, including AI-based weather models, drones, and next-generation satellite data will deliver actionable science to safeguard the lives and livelihoods of the American people," NOAA Administrator Neil Jacobs, Ph.D. said in a release. "These new capabilities, combined with the unmatched expertise of our National Weather Service forecasters, will produce the most accurate forecasts possible to protect communities in harm's way."

There are many factors that scientists look into that help guide predictions ahead of hurricane season. One of the major factors is the climate pattern found in the tropical Pacific Ocean  — whether it's an El Niño or a La Niña. This year, scientists are expecting El Niño conditions to develop and strengthen throughout the season, which in the past has typically led to a decreased number of tropical storms and hurricanes. However, that doesn't predict anything with certainty, as there still remain many unknowns in terms of what could develop.

"Although El Niño's impact in the Atlantic Basin can often suppress hurricane development, there is still uncertainty in how each season will unfold," NOAA's National Weather Service Director, Ken Graham, said in a NOAA statement. "That is why it's essential to review your hurricane preparedness plan now. It only takes one storm to make for a very bad season. Visit Weather.gov/safety and Ready.gov for important preparedness information."

One of the key things to remember about this forecast is that it's driven by studying big-picture climate patterns as opposed to more variable short-term activity and weather patterns. The forecast focuses more on the overall activity we can expect throughout the season, not a forecast that determines when and where any storms that develop could make landfall.

Europe is experiencing a serious heat wave at the moment, and we have the satellite data to prove it.

In new data from Europe's Sentinel-3 mission, we can see the scorching temperatures spreading across the continent.

What is it?

Severe weather alerts are in effect across Western Europe as millions cope with extreme temperatures. This new image uses data from the Sentinel-3 mission to show in vibrant color just how extreme and far-reaching this heat has been.

The Northern Hemisphere hasn't yet made it to summer, but temperatures in Southern Europe are already reaching up to 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius), and temperatures as far north as London are soaring above 95 degrees F (35 degrees C). Scorching heat has been recorded across the continent, in Hungary, Spain, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and a range of other countries.

To clarify just how unusual these temperatures are, temperatures in London for the month of May typically average between 50 and 66 degrees F (10 to 19 degrees C). And these middling temperatures are often coupled with rain.

Sentinel-3, which launched in 2018, is a European satellite that was developed as part of the Copernicus Earth-observation program, a project run by the European Commission with support from the European Space Agency. It's part of a series of Earth-observing satellites that look down at our planet to study changes across the seas and land.

Why is it incredible?

This latest heat wave is yet another reminder that climate change is having impacts around the planet.

“We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that heat wave events such as this have been made more likely and more severe due to climate change,” Peter Thorne, director of the ICARUS Climate Research Centre at Maynooth University in Ireland, told CNN. “But nevertheless many of the records being set, particularly in the U.K. and France, are mind-bogglingly crazy."

And while the term "space mission" usually conjures up images of astronauts on the moon or telescopes looking at far-off worlds, it also applies to a variety of projects like Sentinel-3, which look back at us here on Earth. Space is an incredible vantage point from which we can better understand how our planet is changing, and how it will continue to change.

In early May, NASA satellites imaged an underwater volcanic eruption in the Bismarck Sea off the coast of Papua New Guinea. But when volcanologists looked to study the event, they reached a frustrating wall. There are no high-resolution maps of the seafloor here.

That lack of baseline data made it more difficult for scientists to determine exactly how the eruption reshaped the seafloor or how large the volcanic structure may be. In fact, they aren't even sure which geological feature even erupted. Current theories suggest the eruption likely occurred along the Titan Ridge, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) southeast of a 1972 submarine eruption site.

"The good news is that there are huge opportunities to explore and learn using both government and commercial satellite platforms already in orbit," Jim Garvin, the chief scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a statement.

Existing satellite imagery allows scientists to analyze the miles-high ash plume, discoloration in the ocean water, rafts of the volcanic rock pumice emanating from the event, and even thermal events captured by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on NASA's Suomi NPP satellite.

"There must be a lot of hot material near the surface to generate so many thermal anomalies," Simon Carn, a volcanologist at Michigan Tech, said in the statement. "This suggests a fairly shallow eruption vent — much shallower than what's implied by the existing bathymetry, which shows water depths of several hundred meters or more."

Now, researchers are waiting to see if a new island will be born out of the eruption, which Garvin points out is something we've rarely observed via satellite in real-time. It would likely take some time for one to form, and it's unclear how long this eruption might last. The nearby 1972 eruption, for instance, lasted four days, whereas another nearby eruption in 1957 lasted just short of four years.

If one does form, it might provide a chance for boots-on-the-ground research. "This new eruption could present an even better opportunity for 'island-naut' exploration as we prepare to return to the moon with women and men via Artemis IV," said Garvin. With this, Garvin is referring to how researchers could study the budding island and test out how it responds to different weather events and introduction of some animal species — and even the humans themselves. Could the results from such studies inform how future astronauts attempt to create settlements on the moon and Mars someday?

Maybe so. But either way, we can be certain the discussion prompted by this satellite footage proves one common truism in oceanography: We know far more about the surface of the moon than the deep-ocean floor.

There are few sights as unanimously adored as a sunset. From the beach to the driver's seat of a car, a sunset looks beautiful from anywhere. And, as we can see in this photograph, sunsets might be even more spectacular from space.

What is it?

NASA astronaut Chris Williams captured this image of a sunset from aboard the International Space Station, as it orbited 266 miles (428 kilometers) above Earth on May 4, 2026. The photograph reveals bands of color in the clouds in Earth's atmosphere, just seen from above.

Against the stark black backdrop of space, a bright red and orange stripe of color streaks across this sunset view as a deep well of blue lies below.

While it's not visible in the image, this sunset was captured from above the Patagonia region in South America.

Why is it incredible?

Perspective is everything. While a sunset might be a beautiful sight from just about anywhere on (or off) Earth, this view is really something spectacular.

Being able to see Earth from space is an incredible privilege. The first color view of Earth from space was seen with the groundbreaking Earthrise image captured of our planet from lunar orbit during Apollo 8 in 1968. This view was incredibly influential, showing our planet as it is, with just a thin atmosphere between us and the vast vacuum of space. This view is credited with inspiring many to participate in the environmentalist movement.

It has been almost 30 years since the first module of the ISS launched in 1998. The ISS has been a cutting-edge laboratory ever since, a site of international cooperation, and a place where humans have consistently lived in space for over 25 years. This consistent habitation, in addition to facilitating ongoing science, has essentially given humanity a lens to see Earth from afar.

A lot of time and effort goes into planning routes for space missions. Researchers look for the most efficient path between planets and moons because spaceflight is expensive. Even small gains in efficiency can save millions.

An international team of researchers say they've found a method of calculating a more efficient route between Earth and the moon using advanced computer modeling.

The new method is based on the theory of functional connections, which helps to reduce the compute that's needed to run complex models. The researchers used this method to simulate 30 million different routes to the moon, and 280,000 simulations are referenced in their newly published study.

The cheaper route to the moon that the team found was actually hidden. Spacecraft that journey through our solar system only use fuel only part of the time. Gravity is often the preferred method of propulsion, because it's free. There are gravity-determined routes throughout our solar system, which are often referred to as the Interplanetary Transportation Network.

So finding a cheap route to the moon has a lot to do with gravity, specifically the gravitational pulls of both Earth and the moon. In spaceflight, "variate" refers to a natural trajectory leading to a certain orbit. The researchers found that, instead of using the branch of the lunar-orbit variate closest to Earth, it's better to enter that variate from the opposite side.

"Instead of assuming it's easier to choose the part of the variate closest to Earth, we can use systematic analysis with faster methods to try to find nontrivial solutions," study co-author Vitor Martins de Oliveira, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of São Paulo in Brazil, said in a statement.

Essentially, the team found that free gravity-based propulsion is more plentiful when taking the hidden path. This newly reported route uses 58.80 meters per second (m/s) less fuel consumption than the previous cheapest known route. Again, even this little efficiency gain would help reduce the cost of traveling to the moon.

Another benefit for the route the researchers found is that it won't cause interruptions in communication with Earth. "The Artemis 2 mission, for example, lost communication with Earth for a while because it was directly behind the moon," Oliveira said. "The orbit we propose is a solution that maintains uninterrupted communication."

But the newfound route is not the last word in cheap Earth-moon travel, the researchers noted. Their modeling work factored in gravity from just Earth and the moon; future research could include additional variables, like gravity from the sun, potentially leading to even more cost-effective trajectories..

"The systematic analysis we applied in our work is something that could be adopted more widely going forward," study lead author Allan Kardec de Almeida Júnior, a researcher at the University of Coimbra in Portugal, said in the same statement.

The study was published April 10 in the journal Astrodynamics.

A NASA study reveals that Earth is glowing brighter at night overall — but not everywhere, and not in the way scientists expected.

A new analysis of nearly a decade of satellite observations from NASA's Black Marble project has revealed a surprisingly complex picture of how humanity's activities are reshaping how our planet looks after dark. Some regions have dramatically brightened due to urbanization and electrification, while others have dimmed because of energy-efficient lighting, economic decline, the effects of war or policy changes.

Using observations collected between 2014 and 2022 by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instruments aboard the Suomi-NPP, NOAA-20 and NOAA-21 satellites, researchers found that global nighttime radiance increased by 34% even as many populated areas grew dimmer. Instead of showing a steady worldwide brightening trend, the maps revealed what scientists described as "bidirectional changes," with neighboring regions often moving in opposite directions at the same time, according to a statement from NASA.

"In the U.S., for example, West Coast cities grew brighter as their populations increased, while much of the East Coast showed dimming, which the team attributed to the increased use of energy-efficient LEDs and broader economic restructuring," NASA officials said in the statement.

Europe also showed notable declines in nighttime brightness, driven in part by conservation policies, energy-saving measures and efforts to reduce light pollution. France, in particular, stood out for aggressive dark-sky initiatives.

Elsewhere, the maps captured the fingerprints of conflict and economic instability. Areas of Ukraine, Lebanon, Yemen, Afghanistan and Venezuela experienced sharp dimming associated with war, infrastructure damage or economic collapse. At the same time, emerging economies across sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia grew substantially brighter as electrification and infrastructure projects expanded into previously dark regions. Asia overall recorded some of the strongest increases, particularly in China and northern India, according to the statement.

NASA's Black Marble product is designed to strip away interference from moonlight, clouds, snow and atmospheric effects to isolate human-generated nighttime illumination. The VIIRS day-night band detects light across wavelengths ranging from green to near-infrared, allowing scientists to monitor city lights, industrial activity and even fishing fleets from orbit.

The technology has evolved into one of the world's most detailed long-term records of artificial light at night. Earlier nighttime-light maps were often composites produced years apart, but Black Marble processes daily observations, giving researchers a much more dynamic view of Earth's changing nightscape, according to the project overview page.

Scientists say the data is valuable for much more than producing beautiful maps. Nighttime-light measurements can help researchers track urban growth, disaster recovery, power outages, industrial activity and migration patterns. The information also offers insight into the spread of light pollution, which has become an increasing concern for astronomers, ecologists and public health experts.

Artificial light at night has been linked to disruptions in ecosystems and animal behavior, including impacts on migrating birds, insects and sea turtles. Researchers have also warned that excessive nighttime lighting can affect human circadian rhythms and obscure views of the night sky for much of the global population.

The new maps underscore that Earth's nights are no longer changing in one direction. Instead, the planet's illuminated footprint now flickers in response to economics, technology, policy decisions and global crises — a constantly shifting portrait of human activity visible from space.

Their findings were published April 8 in the journal Nature.

Argentina's towering, snow-capped Andes Mountains and turquoise lake waters are stunning from above in this new image captured from space.

NASA astronaut Jessica Meir snapped this photograph, which depicts the Andes alongside Lake Argentino.

What is it?

This image captured by Meir from aboard the International Space Station shows the natural wonder of Argentina.

The Andes Mountains and the surrounding Lake Argentino are located in Los Glaciares National Park, in Argentina's Santa Cruz Province. This photograph, captured on May 6, 2026, shows the mountains covered in snow as clouds loom above the chilly landscape. This is no surprise, as the Andes are a high-altitude range and Argentina is located in the Southern Hemisphere, which is heading toward winter as those of us in the Northern Hemisphere prepare for summer sun.

The space station was orbiting 269 miles (433 kilometers) above Earth, specifically above South America's Patagonia region, when this photograph was taken.

Why is it incredible?

This is a shot you might expect to get from a lifelong professional photographer. But it was actually taken by an astronaut. And while astronauts are generally incredibly capable and talented, NASA's astronauts aren't amazing photographers by accident.

Recently, it came to light that NASA's Artemis 2 astronauts received serious photography training from the Rochester Institute of Technology's photographic sciences program so they could better chronicle their historic moon mission. But this isn't the first time that astronauts have received photography training. In fact, photography training is a part of NASA astronaut training program for all current astronauts.

While this skill allows the astronauts to capture beautiful moments like this still of Argentina, it can also be a powerful tool for science. Everything from Earth images to snapshots inside the space station can be incredibly helpful in scientific investigations.

A newly discovered asteroid the size of an adult blue whale is set to fly past Earth today (May 18) at 24% of the average Earth-moon distance, and you can watch the event unfold in real time from the comfort of your home with this Virtual Telescope Project livestream.

The near-Earth asteroid 2026 JH2 was discovered on May 10 by the Mount Lemmon Survey in Arizona. Follow-up observations estimate the asteroid measures between 52 and 114 feet (16-35 meters) based on its apparent brightness, according to ESA.

2026 JH2 will make its closest approach to Earth at 5:23 p.m. (2123 GMT) on May 18, when it passes within 56,628 miles (91,135 kilometers), while traveling at 19,417 mph (31,248 km/h) relative to Earth.

How to watch the flyby live online

The free Virtual Telescope Project YouTube livestream will begin at 3:45 p.m. EDT (19:45 GMT) on May 18, weather permitting.

"At the time of the observation, the object will be moving pretty fast against the stars, but our advanced telescopes will precisely track 2026 JH2 while it will be almost at its minimum distance from us, peaking in brightness, around magnitude 11.5, before it will set below our horizon," Virtual Telescope Project founder Gianluca Masi told Space.com in an email.

2026 JH2 poses no threat to the moon or Earth during its close approach, but should shine bright enough to be spotted by the organization's telescopes in Manciano, Italy.

"We will see it like a sharp dot of light, moving against the starry background, with stars leaving long streaks, as we will be tracking the asteroid," Masi explained.

Having shot past Earth, 2026 JH2 will embark on a 3.8-year round trip that will see it venture out close to the orbit of Jupiter before tracking an elliptical path back towards the sun, according to the European Space Agency. Its next close pass of our planet won't come until the year 2060, when it will pass 17 times the Earth-moon distance.

Earth watched on as a communications satellite deployed its big reflector more than 22,000 miles (35,400 kilometers) away.

The satellite, ViaSat-3 F2, just deployed its large reflector after launching last November. In an image shared by the company Viasat on social media, you can see the striking results of this maneuver in space.

What is it?

ViaSat-3 F2 launched to space on Nov. 13, 2025 atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. In the first few months after that, the telecommunications satellite made its way to geostationary orbit, which lies exactly 22,236 miles (35,786 km) above Earth. This is much farther away than low Earth orbit where the International Space Station lives, which extends to 1,200 miles (2,000 km) above Earth.

As seen in this new image, the satellite has now not only reached geosynchronous orbit, but it has fully deployed its large reflector. This step is critical to the satellite's success, as the reflector will improve its overall broadband capacity, according to recent reports.

"Exciting progress for our ViaSat-3 program, as we focus on advancing in-orbit testing of our ultra-high capacity satellite," the company wrotein its post.

Why is it incredible?

The ViaSat-3 F2 satellite is a 13,000-pound (5,900-kilogram) communications satellite designed to provide high-speed satellite internet across the Americas from space.

According to Viasat, each of the ViaSat-3 satellites (three of which have launched to date) is made "to be capable of rapidly shifting capacity throughout its coverage area to deliver bandwidth where and when it’s needed most."

We might sometimes take our connectivity here on Earth for granted. From almost anywhere, we can be instantly connected to our friends and family all around the world. This image is a captivating visual of the technology behind that connection coming to life.

The winds across Antarctica's frozen landscape have carved incredible, swirling vortexes in the clouds above the icy terrain.

These vortexes were spotted all the way from space, by NASA's Landsat 8 satellite.

What is it?

A pattern of swirling vortexes, called von Kármán vortex streets, can be seen from space spiraling through the clouds hanging over the artic tundra. These vortexes form when fast winds (up to 34 mph, or 21 kph) encounter obstacles in their way like islands, mountains, or volcanoes.

In this case, the brutal arctic winds met Peter I Island, which spun them into these striking shapes.

Peter I Island is an uninhabited volcano off the coast of Antarctica, surrounded by the frigid waters of the Bellingshausen Sea in the Southern Ocean. The island's icy volcano, which has erupted in recent history, stretches up to over 5,300 feet (1,615 meters) from sea level to summit.

Why is it incredible?

NASA's Landsat 8 satellite captured this image of these swirling vortexes, according to a statement. The satellite used the Operational Land Imager (OLI) to do so.

Landsat 8, which launched in 2013, is the second-most recent Landsat satellite, with the most recent, Landsat 9, launching in 2021. NASA's Landsat missions have been launching since 1972 to look at Earth from space.

When we think of space missions, we might imagine far-off galaxies and stars. But "the final frontier" can actually be a powerful asset in understanding our own world as space is our best vantage point to see Earth.

These types of images, and the vast array of data collected by Earth-observing missions like Landsat, help to support agriculture and farmers, scientists combatting climate change, and more. This image is a beautiful, swirling reminder of how space can bring us closer to Earth.

Fresh satellite images have captured one of Russia's most active volcanoes melting snow from the inside out as volcanic heat continues to seep through the frozen landscape of the Kamchatka Peninsula.

Images captured by the Landsat 9 satellite on April 23 show dark channels of ash and volcanic debris cutting through the snowy slopes of Shivelyuch volcano in far eastern Russia.

Shivelyuch (also spelled Shiveluch) is the northernmost active volcano on Kamchatka and one of the most active volcanoes on Earth, according to NASA Earth Observatory. The volcano is known for near-constant activity, with satellites frequently detecting ash deposits, heat signatures and avalanches of hot rock flowing down its slopes.

At the center of the volcano sits a growing lava dome — a mound of thick, slow-moving lava that has been expanding in recent months inside Shivelyuch's horseshoe-shape crater, according to reports from the Kamchatka Volcanic Eruption Response Team (KVERT) cited by NASA Earth Observatory.

As parts of the unstable dome collapse, they can trigger fast-moving pyroclastic flows made of hot ash, gas and volcanic rock. These flows leave behind thick deposits that can hold heat for months or even years after an eruption.

That lingering heat is visible from space.

In the new satellite images, snow has melted away along several flow channels where fresh volcanic deposits have spread across the volcano's slopes in recent months. Some of the dark scars highlighted in the imagery may still contain heat from Shivelyuch's massive 2023 eruption, which sent huge pyroclastic flows surging across the volcano.

"Shivelyuch is an incredible volcano that has collapsed over and over again," said volcanologist Janine Krippner in a statement released alongside the images by NASA Earth Observatory. "It goes through cycles of collapse but then builds itself up again and again through constant volcanic activity."

"It should really be on a motivational poster," Krippner added.

Mexico City is sinking, and a powerful new orbiting satellite that's monitoring changes in land levels all across the globe has discovered how quickly this is happening. It's all thanks to the mission's innovative dual-frequency band radar.

NISAR, the NASA–ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite, launched on July 30, 2025 as a joint partnership between NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). Its mission is to track in real-time surface changes on Earth, from ground subsidence and the retreat of glaciers to and the movement of tectonic plates and the spread of wildfires — all to a precision of within a centimeter.

"Mexico City is a well-known hot spot when it comes to subsidence, and images like this are just the beginning for NISAR," said David Bekaert, of the Flemish Institute for Technological Research in Belgium and the NISAR science team, in a statement.

It has been known since 1925 that much of the city, home to 20 million people, is sinking at a rate of up to 14 inches (35 centimeters) per year. This is the result of the city being built above an aquifer, or an underground layer of permeable rock and sand, left behind by an ancient lakebed — and the resulting groundwater pumping and the weight of its urban sprawl is compressing those sedimentary layers. The result is damage to buildings and infrastructure, such as the Mexico City Metro system.

"NISAR's long-wavelength L-band radar will make it possible to detect and track land subsidence in more challenging and densely vegetated regions such as coastal communities where they may have the compounding effect of both land subsidence and sea level rise," said Craig Ferguson, who is NISAR's deputy manager at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

NISAR is one of the most powerful radars ever launched into space. L-band refers to the microwave frequency of 1–2 gigahertz (GHz), but the satellite also carries an S-band radar that operates at longer frequencies of 2–4 GHz. NASA built the L-band radar that is sensitive to changes in bedrock and ice, and which was utilized in this study of Mexico City, while ISRO built the S-band radar that is sensitive to changes in vegetation.

Both L- and S-band radars are synthetic aperture radars. As the spacecraft moves in orbit around Earth, covering the entire surface every 12 days, its motion results in it scanning a much larger area on the ground than the size of its true aperture. Hence it has a "synthetic" aperture and blurring of the resulting radar image is avoided by firing thousands of radar pulses per second. NISAR is the first mission to carry both an L-band and an S-band synthetic aperture. The radar reflections are captured by NISAR's 39-foot (12-meter) drum-shaped collector, the largest radar antenna reflector NASA has ever built.

"We're going to see an influx of new discoveries from all over the world, given the unique sensing capabilities of NISAR and its consistent global coverage," said Bekaert.

The radar image of Mexico City looks like a contradictory splash of blue and yellow paint. These colors are false, designed to highlight shifts in the ground. Dark blue represents parts of the city that have subsided by more than 0.5 inches (2 cm) during the period between October 2025 and January 2026, which is Mexico's dry season. Yellow and green areas are residual noise. This would be expected to decrease as NISAR makes more passes over Mexico and the signal-to-noise ratio improves.

"Images like this confirm that NISAR's measurements align with expectations," said Ferguson.

As one of the quickest subsiding capitals in the world, Mexico City is therefore the perfect opportunity for NISAR to test its skills. To place its rate of subsidence into context, the towering Angel of Independence — a 118-foot-tall (36-meter-tall) spire with a golden statue of an angel perched atop that commemorates Mexico earning its independence — on the Paseo de la Reforma in the heart of Mexico City has required 14 new steps to be added to it since its construction in 1910.

A video captured by a newly launched SpaceX Starlink satellite shows us what it's like to zoom above our beautiful blue planet.

The 3.5-minute-long video was posted on X on Monday (May 4) by Michael Nicolls, vice president of Starlink engineering at SpaceX. It features footage from one of the 29 satellites that launched to orbit on May 1 atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Florida's Space Coast.

"Watch as the Starlink sats cruise over an entire orbit, through sunrise and sunset, and slowly separate from each [other] as they complete their post-launch deployment sequence before beginning orbit raise," Nicolls wrote in the post.

"The satellites are stacked like a deck of cards in the rocket, which slowly spins when dispensing to impart a small velocity difference, ensuring deconfliction. May the @Starlink be with you," he added.

That last sentence was likely a nod to the fact that he posted the video on Star Wars Day (May 4, from "May the Force be with you").

SpaceX has shown us Starlink satellites in orbit before, but those views have generally been pre-deployment, focused on spacecraft still stacked on their Falcon 9 rocket's upper stage.

This video is something new, especially because it shows multiple members of the 29-satellite train and tracks a substantial part of their initial journey around Earth.

That said, lots of Starlink satellites have gotten this view to date. The Starlink megaconstellation — by far the biggest spacecraft network ever assembled — currently consists of more than 10,300 satellites.

And it's growing all the time. SpaceX has launched 53 Falcon 9 missions so far in 2026, and 43 of them have been Starlink flights.

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have, for the first time, directly analyzed the surface of a planet beyond our solar system,

The James Webb Space Telescope's (JWST) exoplanet subject, LHS 3844 b, is a so-called "super-Earth" about 30% larger than our planet and located nearly 50 light-years away. Unlike most exoplanet studies, which focus on atmospheres, astronomers analyzed heat emitted from this planet's surface.

The findings reveal a dark, airless world that may resemble Mercury. Scientists say this kind of direct interpretation of a distant planet's geology marks "the next step in unveiling their nature."

"Thanks to the amazing sensitivity of JWST, we can detect light coming directly from the surface of this distant rocky planet," Laura Kreidberg of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany, who served as the principal investigator of the JWST observations, said in a statement. "We see a dark, hot, barren rock, devoid of any atmosphere."

Discovered in 2019, LHS 3844 b orbits a cool red dwarf star in just 11 hours and is tidally locked, meaning one side constantly faces the star while the other remains in darkness. The dayside reaches temperatures of about 1,340 degrees Fahrenheit (725 degrees Celsius), the scientists say.

In 2023 and 2024, Kreidberg and her team observed three secondary eclipses, when the planet moved behind its star. Using the JWST's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), they measured the infrared light emitted from the planet's intensely hot dayside and used it to study its surface.

By comparing the signal with known rocks and minerals from Earth, the moon and Mars, the team ruled out an Earth-like crust rich in silica and granite. Such crusts typically form through water-driven geological processes and plate tectonics, which recycle rock and allow lighter minerals to rise to the surface, the study notes.

Instead, the data point to a surface dominated by basalt, a dark volcanic rock rich in iron and magnesium commonly found on the moon and Mercury, the researchers say.

"This planet likely only contains little water," study lead author Sebastian Zieba of the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian in Massachusetts said in the statement.

One possible explanation, the researchers say, is that LHS 3844 b has a relatively young surface shaped by recent volcanic activity, where fresh lava has not yet been broken down by micrometeorite impacts. However, such activity is known to release gases such as carbon dioxide or sulfur dioxide, which were not detected by MIRI, the study notes.

"If present on LHS 3844 b in reasonable amounts, MIRI should have detected it," the statement read. "Still, it found nothing."

Alternatively, the planet may be covered in a thick layer of dark, fine-grained material formed over long periods by radiation and meteorite impacts, similar to the moon or Mercury. Without an atmosphere, the surface would be especially vulnerable to this process, known as space weathering, which gradually breaks down and darkens rock.

"This alternative relies on longer periods of geological inactivity, thereby requiring conditions opposite to the first scenario," the statement read.

Follow-up JWST observations are planned to further refine the planet’s surface properties and determine whether it is solid rock or loose, weathered material, the study notes.

"We are confident the same technique will allow us to clarify the nature of LHS 3844 b's crust and, in the future, other rocky exoplanets," Kreidberg said in the same statement.

A study about these results was published Monday (May 4) in the journal Nature Astronomy,

NASA astronaut Jessica Meir snapped a striking photo of a river snaking through the Amazon rainforest from space.

What is it?

The Ucayali River in central Peru was captured in a new image by Meir while aboard the International Space Station.

The Ucayali, a lower extension of the Apurímac River, is thought to be one of the main sources of the Amazon River. More than 1,600 miles (2,700 kilometers) long, the Ucayali is home to a diverse indigenous population and an amazing variety of plants and animals.

Pink dolphins swim through this river which is home to wildlife ranging from manatees to taricaya turtles, jaguars, giant river otters, catfish and a variety of monkeys, reptiles and birds.

Meir snapped this photo from the space station, which she reached via Crew-12, a SpaceX mission that launched this past February. The four Crew-12 astronauts were welcomed to the station by the Expedition 74 crew and will continue to conduct research throughout the duration of their roughly eight-month stay.

Why is it incredible?

For all of its natural splendor and incredible biodiversity, this river, the surrounding region, and the people living there continue to be impacted by illegal logging and commercial fishing. And this area is no stranger to exploitation; it was a hot spot during the rubber boom in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The photo by Meir is visually stunning. It shows the river like a swirling ribbon across Earth's face. But it also reminds us of the incredible power of being able to see Earth from space.

This vantage point is more than aesthetics, and photographs like this as well as satellite imagery of Earth help us to better understand the progress of things like deforestation and climate change.

Looking for inspiration or deep research for the total solar eclipse on Aug. 12, 2026? Stretching across eastern Greenland, western Iceland and northern Spain, the moon's shadow will carve out a roughly 190-mile (305 kilometers) wide path of totality — a fleeting corridor where the sun will be completely blocked by the moon, revealing its ghostly corona for a minute or two and plunging the landscape into twilight.

What follows is a curated mix of 15 locations — from remote Arctic fjords to city center viewpoints and high, dry plains — each offering a different way to experience one of nature's most extraordinary spectacles.

However, this is not a simple one-size-fits-all eclipse — the experience will dramatically differ depending on where you stand. In Greenland and Iceland, the eclipsed sun will hang relatively high in the sky. In Spain, it will be about 12 degrees above the horizon in Galicia, but dropping to just a few degrees above the horizon in the Balearic Islands. In some areas of Spain, even a low ridge, a distant hill or a line of buildings could block your view at the crucial moment, so choosing the right location is everything.

These locations have all been checked using resources including Xavier Jubier's Interactive Google Map, which has timings and built-in sightlines from Peak Finder, as well as The Eclipse App, Eclipse Horizon Checker and the Instituto Geográfico Nacional.

However, the best advice is always to scout out the location the day before, at the time of the eclipse, to check sightlines. Cloud cover information comes from Time and Date, though check the weather forecast before traveling, and again on the day itself.

1. Segovia, Spain

An epic vista for the eclipse will be possible from this mirador, which also has views of the majestic Alcázar de Segovia, the inspiration for the castle in Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty. It faces the open plains of Castile to the west and is accessed via a path from Arco de la Fuencisla. However, it's a short totality from Segovia.

2. Saxhóll Crater, Iceland

The western end of the Snæfellsnes Peninsula is where totality lasts longest in Iceland. About 5.5 miles (9 km) south of Hellissandur on the peninsula's westernmost tip, Saxhóll Crater is an easy climb. It's inside Snæfellsjökull National Park.

3. Becerril de Campos, Spain

Becerril de Campos is one of many small towns within the flat plains of Palencia that will offer open views across the surrounding landscape. The town's San Pedro Cultural Becerril de Campos is a converted Romanesque church now used as an astronomy center. Inside is a Foucault pendulum, which demonstrates the Earth's rotation.

4. Reykjavík Domestic Airport, Iceland

Both airports in Iceland — Reykjavík Domestic Airport (RKV) and Keflavík International Airport — are in the path of totality. The former, just a short walk from the city center, has a fabulous southwest-facing coastline where food stalls will be set up, with plans to accommodate around 10,000 people all along the seafront.

5. Nordvestfjord, Greenland

Getting close to the centerline of the path of totality anywhere but Spain is a challenge, but it comes with a reward. Realistically, the only option in Greenland is Nordvestfjord (Northwest Fjord) in Scoresby Sund, a region known for icebergs and Arctic wildlife, including muskox with occasional sightings of polar bears and walruses. Here, a 2-minute, 16-second totality is possible, but you'll need to be on an expedition cruise ship to access it.

6. Castillo de Osma, Spain

This strategically placed citadel, dating from the 11th century, perched above the Ucero River, Osma Castle offers sweeping views of the Castilian landscape and a sense of Spain's medieval frontier history. Its weathered stone walls and commanding hilltop position on the edge of Ciudad de Osma make it a striking stop for eclipse chasers.

7. Mount Helgafell, Iceland

For sweeping, uninterrupted views across Reykjavík, Faxaflói Bay, and the Reykjanes Peninsula, take a 45-minute hike from Kaldársel through a lava field to the top of this 338-meter volcanic hill. It's just south of Hafnarfjörður in Greater Reykjavík.

8. Mirador del Sablón, Spain

You may have to get here early to get a place on the most beautiful bench in the world, but if the sky is clear on the wild Asturian coast, you'll get a view of the eclipse above the Cantabrian Sea.

9. Hallgrímskirkja, Iceland

The chances of getting a vantage point in the tower of Iceland's tallest and most dramatic church are probably slim, but whoever does get a ticket is sure to get a spectacular 360-degree view of the city, surrounding mountains and the Atlantic Ocean beyond.

10. Muriel Viejo, Spain

Mirador La Peñota is an observation deck on high ground at the western end of the Sierra de Cabrejas, a 33,000-hectare area of juniper forests. Although completely isolated and with a clear view to the northwest, it's close to the small town of Muriel Viejo, a Starlight Tourist Destination in the Pinares de Soria region west of Soria. Muriel Viejo is home to the Starlight Foundation-certified El Cielo de Muriel, which is fully booked but intends to hold an observation event open to non-guests.

11. Ella Island, Greenland

The only way to visit this remote island in East Greenland is via a polar expedition cruise ship. At the confluence of five iceberg-filled fjords, it hosts a summer station used by the Sirius Dog Sled Patrol, an elite Danish naval unit enforcing Danish sovereignty in the Arctic.

12. Santillana del Mar, Cantabria

Home to medieval towers, Renaissance palaces and churches, Santillana del Mar is one of Spain's most beautiful villages. Just 5 miles (8km) north is Torre de San Telmo, a 14th-century medieval watchtower on a cliff with expansive views over the ocean to the north and the Picos de Europa mountains to the south. It's part of a beautiful coastal walk.

13. Santander Bay, Spain

About 3 miles (5 km) from Santander, the 19th-century Faro de Cabo Mayor lighthouse watches the entrance to Santander Bay and offers dramatic cliff-top views — and spectacular coastal walks — perfect for the eclipse if skies are clear.

14. Geirfuglinn (The Great Auk), Iceland

The geirfuglinn (great auk) was a flightless bird that lived on Iceland and became extinct in the mid-19th century. Stand close to this sculpture, and you'll be among the last in Iceland to experience totality. Reykjanes lighthouse is nearby.

15. S'Arenal, Spain

For a clean, sea-level view of totality, S'Arenal is one of the most practical locations on Mallorca's south coast. Sitting at the southeastern end of Playa de Palma, it offers an uninterrupted west-northwest horizon — exactly where the eclipsed sun will hang just a couple of degrees above the sea.

This Earth Day, we reflect on our home planet and look at Earth from space through history.

It's "like watching sunset at the beach from the most foreign seat in the cosmos," Artemis 2 commander NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman wrote recently about seeing Earth slip behind the moon.

Fifty-eight years ago, Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders captured "Earthrise," which has become one of the most famous photographs in history. More than just the first high-resolution, color image of Earth from space, this photograph revealed the inherent fragility of our home.

It was a beautiful, stark reminder that our planet is a big rock, floating through space, protected from the harsh environment of space by a thin atmosphere. This photograph is said to have helped spark the environmental movement, and today it remains a powerful view.

Decades after Earthrise, NASA's robotic Voyager 1 spacecraft captured another iconic image of our home world: the famous "pale blue dot" photo. The Voyager program launched two probes, Voyager 1 and 2, out into the solar system in 1977, and in the decades since, they have flown past every major planet and are now traveling through interstellar space, farther awauy than any other craft in history.

But on Feb. 14, 1991, Voyager snapped this image of Earth from a staggering 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) from the sun.

In a scattered beam of sunlight, captured from billions of miles away, sat our home planet — the "pale blue dot," as astronomer Carl Sagan famously dubbed it.

An Artemis moonshot

With NASA's Artemis 2 mission, which returned astronauts to the moon for the first time since the end of the Apollo program over 50 years ago, we got amazing new images of Earth snapped by moon-bound astronauts — new views of our home planet from a vantage point just a handful of people have ever reached.

The Artemis 2 astronauts traveled around the moon's far side before returning to Earth, so they had the unique opportunity to actually watch Earth set behind the moon.

"Only one chance in this lifetime," Wiseman wrote in an April 19 post on X sharing a cellphone video he took of Earth setting behind the moon. "Like watching sunset at the beach from the most foreign seat in the cosmos."

"The four of us took a moment," Wiseman said about the stretch whenEarth passed behind the moon from the Orion capsule's perspective, during a news conference after Artemis 2's April 10 splashdown. While traveling beyond the far side of the moon, the crew lost contact with Earth. For that time — about 40 minutes — they traveled around the moon with no view of Earth.

"It is amazing to watch your home planet disappear behind the moon," Wiseman added. "You can see the atmosphere. You can see the terrain on the moon projected across the Earth … it was just an unbelievable sight … and then it was gone. It was out of sight."

Before reaching the moon, the crew was able to look through the Orion capsule's window and look back at our planet as they made their way. This image, named "Hello, World," was captured after the spacecraft completed its translunar injection burn, a maneuver that pushed them out of Earth orbit and toward the moon.

The image shows Earth eclipsing the sun, and you can see a sliver of light peeking through, reflecting off interplanetary dust, creating a glow known as the zodiacal light. This image of Earth also hides two auroras, at the top right and bottom left of the planet.

The Artemis 2 crew didn't just capture images of Earth but of themselves as well. In the image above, you can see NASA astronaut and Artemis 2 mission specialist Christina Koch with her hair floating in the cabin, looking out the window at Earth. And while we can't read her mind, her words upon landing back on her home planet reflect this profound moment.

"I know I haven't learned everything that this journey has yet to teach me," Koch said in the post-splashdown news conference. "But there's one new thing I know, and that is, Planet Earth: You are a crew."

"A crew is a group that is in it all the time, no matter what, that is stroking together every minute with the same purpose, that is willing to sacrifice silently for each other, that gives grace, that holds accountable," Koch added. "A crew has the same cares and the same needs, and a crew is inescapably, beautifully, dutifully linked."

Happy Earth Day!

This year, we're celebrating with brand-new photos captured by the astronauts who journeyed around the moon and back on NASA's Artemis 2 mission.

What is it?

On April 1, 2026, four astronauts launched on Artemis 2, the first crewed mission to the moon since NASA's final Apollo mission took place over 50 years ago, in December 1972.

In this photograph snapped by the Artemis 2 crew, affectionately titled "Hello, World," we can see our home planet out in space from the window of the Orion capsule "Integrity."

Why is it incredible?

In sending astronauts on a trip around the moon, Artemis 2 also delivered some incredible new photographs of our home planet.

This particular image is especially interesting, as it was captured just after the crew completed their translunar injection burn, which sent Integrity on course toward the moon. So as the astronauts made their way into the great beyond, they took a moment to look back at their home as it got smaller and smaller in the distance.

A rare naked-eye asteroid will light up the night sky on April 13, 2029, when the near-Earth asteroid 99942 Apophis makes an extraordinarily close flyby of Earth. For skywatchers, it's a once-in-a-lifetime event — and one worth traveling for.

The Sahara Desert cools fast after sunset, and April's stars come out quickly. One by one, the stars appear — Leo, the Lion, stretching across the southern sky towards Gemini, the twins standing side by side. Between them, I find a swarm of starlight — the Beehive Cluster (M44) — hundreds of suns suspended in the perfect desert sky. Then I see what I came to Africa for. Just below the swarm, there's a new point of light. It's no ordinary object. Older than Earth's continents, older than life itself, wandering through space for billions of years — an agent of chaos here for a fleeting visit. Here today, gone tomorrow.

On Friday, April 13, 2029, this imagined moment becomes real when asteroid Apophis will make one of the closest approaches ever recorded for an object of its size. The night sky will tell a story billions of years in the making. Here's how to prepare for that story — and see something extremely rare on human timescales.

What's happening and when to look

At its nearest point — 5:45 p.m. EDT (2145 GMT) on April 13, 2029 — it will pass closer than Earth's geosynchronous satellites, at a distance of roughly 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers). Just over an hour earlier, at 4:30 p.m. EDT (2035 GMT), it will reach peak brightness, with a magnitude of around 3.1. That's bright enough to be seen with the naked eye from dark locations — but only some locations.

For observers in Europe, Africa and western Asia, Apophis will appear for one night only. An asteroid this big, getting this close to Earth, happens only once every few thousand years, making it truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a celestial encounter both dramatic and deeply humbling.

Why all the fuss about Apophis?

Friday, April 13, 2029, was once predicted to become Earth's unluckiest day ever. Discovered in 2004, Apophis initially sparked global concern when early calculations suggested a possible impact with Earth — hence its name, Apophis, the Ancient Egyptian deity of chaos. Subsequent observations and radar tracking ruled out any collision risk for at least the next century. Today, it is classified as a "potentially hazardous asteroid," not because it poses a current danger, but because of its size and proximity.

Roughly 1,230 feet across (375 meters), Apophis is thought to be an elongated, rocky asteroid. It's close pass in 2029 offers scientists an extraordinary opportunity to study how Earth's gravity may alter its rotation, surface, and internal structure.

"The Apophis flyby will be an extraordinary event," Nick Moskovitz, a planetary scientist at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, told Space.com. "Apophis will come so close that it will be visible to the naked eye and will feel a strong tidal pull from the Earth. The effects of these tides will include changing the spin rate of Apophis, seismic shaking of its interior, and maybe even landslides on the surface." It's the first time that scientists will witness an event of this kind, and space agencies are ready.

From an observer's point of view, it will be an extremely rare chance to detect an asteroid's motion relative to a background star over 5-10 minutes — most asteroids require hours or nights to show motion.

Missions to Apophis

The European Space Agency's proposed Ramses mission aims to launch in 2028 to observe the asteroid up close before and during its flyby, while NASA's OSIRIS-APEX is scheduled to orbit Apophis in June 2029 to see how the close encounter with Earth affected it. The latter is the same spacecraft that, as OSIRIS-REx, dropped off a sample from asteroid Bennu in 2023 before positioning itself for the visit of Apophis. ExLabs also intends to launch a commercial mission, called Apophis EX, to rendezvous with the asteroid.

"The best way to study this event will be with in situ spacecraft watching closely as the effects of the encounter unfold," Moskovitz said. "Data from these observations will ultimately provide new insights into the internal structure and surface properties of asteroids, and how they evolve during close planetary encounters."

How and when I'll watch Apophis

For me, this isn't just an event to note on a calendar — it's something to travel for and to see. I'm not the only frequent astrotourist with the Apophis bug; solar eclipse cartographer Michael Zeiler has already prepared incredible maps of the Apophis flyby on his website, EclipseAtlas.com.

The plan is to head somewhere where Apophis will be at its brightest, with low humidity and minimal cloud cover. Tenerife in the Canary Islands is firmly on the shortlist —a truly world-class astronomy destination, where high-altitude sites often sit above the clouds — as well as Mauritania and Morocco. Coastal regions such as southern Spain remain viable, though slightly less reliable due to higher cloud cover.

Clear skies are everything. Over the coming months and years, I'll be poring over visibility maps and long-term cloud data, trying to stack the odds in favor of a perfect view. But even then, there are no guarantees. This is part of the appeal — and the tension — of astronomy and astrotourism. You can plan everything perfectly and see nothing. What I do know is that the Apophis flyby coincides with a new moon and the bright opposition of Jupiter, so maybe the gods (of chaos) will be smiling on us asteroid pilgrims below.

Stargazer's corner: April 13-19, 2026

You don't need to wait until 2029 to look up, and this week brings some great opportunities to get used to getting up incredibly early for the sake of stargazing. This week will see Comet C/2025 R3 (Pan-STARRS) reach its brightest, with the best time to look to the east about 90 minutes before sunrise, where you are. Find an unobstructed eastern horizon, best done from a second or third (or higher) story. Look between the stars Markab and Algenib in the Great Square of Pegasus — and the sooner, the better, before it gets closer to the horizon during the rising dawn. While you're out, it will be worth staying outside a little longer on Monday, April 13, Tuesday, April 14 and Wednesday, April 15 to see a waning crescent moon move through the twilight, with a chance to see Mercury, too. On Saturday, April 18, comet Pan-STARRS will get to within a couple of degrees of galaxy NGC 7814, a distant edge-on spiral.

Constellation of the week: Corona Borealis

A small constellation now becoming visible in the Northern Hemisphere's night sky, Corona Borealis — meaning Northern Crown — is a curve of seven stars between bright stars Vega and Arcturus (though slightly closer to the latter). It's worth finding because it's beautiful, but also because its very faint star T Coronae Borealis, also called T CrB and the "Blaze Star," may explode this year and become visible in the night sky for a few weeks. It's low in the east-northeast around midnight.

The Artemis 2 crew captured a spellbinding photo of the crescent Earth shining above the moon's horizon on Flight Day 6 of their mission, shortly before our planet was lost behind the lunar horizon.

What is it?

White clouds can be seen swirling on Earth's sunlit arc above the line separating night from day while the cratered expanse of the lunar disk stretches out below. The 590-mile-wide (950-kilometer-wide) Orientale basin can be seen darkening the upper right of the lunar crescent, while prominent features such as the Chebyshev, Vavilov and Hertzsprung impact sites dominate the shadowed lunar far side in the lower half of the image.

The photo was captured on Monday (April 6), as Artemis 2's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen executed their successful flyby of the lunar far side. The mission marked the first time astronauts had visited lunar space since Apollo 17 departed in 1972. Artemis 2 also set a new record for the most distant crewed mission in the history of spaceflight, surpassing the previous record set by the crew of Apollo 13 in April 1970.

Why is it incredible?

Every human being that has ever lived is contained within the scope of this single image, with the exception of the four crewmembers of the Artemis 2 Orion capsule "Integrity".

Prior to Artemis 2, only 24 people — the astronauts of Apollo 8 through Apollo 17 — have had the privilege of seeing the far side of the moon with their own eyes. That number has now risen to 28, with NASA's Christina Koch making history by becoming the first woman to join the ranks, while Victor Glover became the first Black man to perform the feat.

Artemis 2's Orion spacecraft is now racing towards Earth on a return journey that will see the four-person crew splash down off the coast of San Diego at 8:07 p.m. EDT on April 10 (0007 GMT on April 11), and you can watch it unfold live right here at Space.com.

Be sure to stay up to date with all the latest news with our Artemis 2 liveblog and discover the answers to all your Artemis program questions with our in-depth explainer article!

The Earth-observation company Planet Labs is withholding its satellite imagery of Iran indefinitely.

In response to a request from the U.S. government, Planet Labs made a decision not to share photos of Iran as well as the larger conflict region in the Middle East indefinitely, the California company shared in an April 5 statement emailed to customers. The decision follows a 14-day delay in imagery of the Middle East that the company initiated last month in an effort to prevent attacks on the U.S. and its allies, according to Reuters.

Not everyone is a fan of the decision.

"It seems that it's a way to impact the American public's ability to understand what's happening as opposed to having an impact on the battlefield," Victoria Samson, chief director of space security and stability for the nonprofit Secure World Foundation, told Space.com.

Planet Labs operates a large fleet of satellites in low Earth orbit that capture images of our planet, which are then sold to government agencies, or companiesWhile the U.S. government is one of the company's largest customers, it is not the only one, and Planet Labs has a history of working internationally. The company even describes itself as being a "mission-led public benefit corporation whose founding purpose is to use space to help life on Earth."

Indeed, satellite imagery like that captured by Planet Labs is used for a variety of purposes, not just defense planning.

"It's unfortunate given the extent that their work is used, not just by militaries but by other actors trying to follow refugee flow and seeing where there's damage, and for agricultural reasons," Samson said, adding that withholding images sparks concerns from a public safety perspective.

In addition to the many non-military purposes that satellite imagery serves, it also allows the public to see with their own eyes what is happening in a given region and the true extent of damages inflicted during wartime, as well as the consequences of other actions.

Samson cited one specific instance from earlier in the war in which satellite imagery — specifically, photos from Planet Labs — played an important role. In early March, there was initial confusion about the extent of the strikes that took place on an Iranian school. Satellite imagery from Planet Labs revealed the extent of the damage and shed light on how many lives were lost in the attack.

In its history, Planet Labs has previously freely shared important imagery. For instance, the company has released photos that have helped first responders deal with natural disasters, as well as imagery revealing details about Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

This is not the first time that satellite imagery has been restricted from public view. For example, photos of sensitive military locations or government facilities are often blurred on applications like Google Maps. However, Samson said, Planet Labs' decision appears to be the first time that such a large region has been restricted from satellite view.

"It probably will start a precedent that I don't think will be good for overall transparency," she said.

Planet Labs also shared in the April 5 statement that it will be holding back all imagery dating back to March 9, and that this withholding will continue until the conflict has ended. There is one small exception to this ban, however. Planet Labs will release images on a case-by-case basis if an urgent need presents itself, the company shared in the statement. These decisions follow the official start of the war, which began on Feb. 28 when the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran.

Planet Labs is among a variety of companies that provide satellite imaging services, and some of the others may be making similar decisions. For example, the companyVantor, formerly known as Maxar Intelligence, told Space.com that it has put "controls in place over parts of the Middle East," though the company added that these controls "were not put in place in response to a specific U.S. government request." At this time, it is unclear what other companies are also restricting access to satellite imagery.

Space.com reached out to Planet Labs for comment, but the company did not respond before the publication deadline.

Artificial lights at night brightened up planet Earth by 16% between 2014 and 2022, a new study using satellite images has revealed.

But some areas, including those struck by war and natural disasters, or those in countries with effective light pollution and energy-saving policies in place, are bucking the trend.

From space, Earth at night is a magnificent sight — a darkened sphere lined and dotted by blueish and golden lights revealing outlines of countries and continents. It has not always looked like that. For our ancestors, that twinkling ball would have been completely dark. Artificial lights at night reveal the progress of civilization as new settlements spring up and electric grids expand, bringing the comforts of modern life. But constant artificial light has also become a problem, affecting sleep quality, disrupting plant and animal biorhythms and obstructing our views of the cosmos.

The new study, by an international team of researchers. found that Earth is getting brighter overall. But there are caveats: In many areas, lights have actually been extinguished by war and natural disasters, or dimmed by effective energy-saving policies. In fact, Zhe Zhu, the study's lead author, said that, despite the overall brightening visible in the satellite images, the world's dimming areas are actually increasing in size at an accelerating pace.

"We found that the Earth is not gradually brightening, it is flickering," said Zhu, an associate professor of remote sensing at the University of Connecticut. "The brightening is mostly driven by developing countries like India, China and parts of Africa. But we also see the areas of dimming increasing every year. Some of that is due to sudden events like wars and natural disasters, but we also see a huge area of dimming in Europe, where they put policies in place. The U.S. is still mostly increasing."

A dramatic decline in night-time artificial light was observed, for example, in Ukraine following the Russian invasion, which began in February 2022. France, a developed western European country, dimmed by a staggering 33% thanks to new policies.

Zhe said the study is the first to reveal the trends in artificial light use with a level of temporal detail that distinguishes individual events and regional trends. The researchers could thus see in the data the rollouts of the COVID pandemic lockdowns across the world and monitor phases of armed conflicts.

"You can see almost in real time when there is a war happening," said Zhe. "In Palestine, you could see many dips — ups and downs — every time the war flares up. You can also see disasters, such as major hurricane impacts in Puerto Rico, which basically wipe out electricity for a long time."

The researchers used data from NASA's Black Marble tool, which uses special algorithms to process measurements from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS). The VIIRS instrument flies on both the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite, a joint effort of NASA and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and its predecessor, NOAA-20. VIIRS captures a wide range of light signatures, from ultraviolet to infrared light, revealing the nighttime glow of the planet.

The algorithms, Zhu explained, filter out unwanted noise such as moonlight reflections, auroral light, the shadowing by clouds and vegetation, and even differences caused by the viewing angle of the satellite during different passes.

The brightness increases reported in this study, however, may be somewhat skewed, as the satellite sensors feeding the NASA Black Marble tool are not sensitive to the blue-tinged light emitted by most traditional LED lights, which dominate the lighting technology of today, Zhe said.

A 2023 study, based on more than 50,000 observer reports from all over the world, concluded that the perceived night sky brightness in inhabited locations worldwide had been increasing at a mind-boggling rate of nearly 10% per year in the past decade. This brightness increase is effectively erasing stars from the night sky, forcing skywatchers and professional astronomers to retreat into ever more remote locations. The incessant glow, which prevents true darkness from setting in even in the dead of night, also has profound effects on human, plant and animal health, disrupting sleep and natural growth cycles.

"Human vision at night is most sensitive towards shorter wavelength (blue) light and has little sensitivity to near infrared light, but the VIIRS has no sensitivity to light below 500 nm (i.e. blue light), and can easily see infrared light from high-pressure sodium lamps," Christopher Kyba, a professor of night-time light remote sensing at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany and one of the co-authors of the paper, told Space.com in an email. "So, when a city converts a street from high-pressure sodium to white LED, then a person would say it got brighter, but the satellite would say it got darker."

Kyba also led the 2023 observer study.

Zhe says the brightening isn't just a doom-and-gloom signal for skywatchers. In many areas, especially underdeveloped regions of Africa and Asia, the lights mean improved economic prosperity.

"From the economic perspective, brightening can be a good thing," he said. "It means more activity, people having access to power where they previously didn't have it."

The study was published in the journal Nature on Wednesday (April 8).

The Artemis 2 astronauts have shared a view that the billions of us stuck on Earth will never get firsthand: a gorgeous shot of our home planet shining like a sapphire in the blackness of space.

What is it?

This photo shows Earth as seen from Artemis 2's Orion spacecraft, which on Thursday evening (April 2) aced a crucial engine burn that took it out of Earth orbit and toward the moon.

The Artemis 2 astronauts — NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen — have since been watching Earth recede into the distance, and NASA shared one of their photos today (April 3) on the social media site X.

"We see our home planet as a whole, lit up in spectacular blues and browns. A green aurora even lights up the atmosphere. That's us, together, watching as our astronauts make their journey to the moon," NASA officials wrote in the X post.

Why is it amazing?

The photo by itself is amazing enough, showing our planet as it truly is — a shimmering, fragile outpost of life in a vast and dark cosmos. But the connection to Artemis 2 makes it even more special.

Artemis 2 is the first crewed moon mission since Apollo 17 back in 1972. If all goes to plan, Wiseman, Glover, Koch and Hansen will loop around the moon on Day 6 of the mission, which lifted off on April 1. They'll come back to Earth for a splashdown on Day 10.

Artemis 2 won't land on the moon or even enter lunar orbit. It's designed to pave the way for those milestones, and in fact even more ambitious ones: NASA's Artemis program aims to build a base near the lunar south pole in the early 2030s.

Keep tabs on the mission's latest developments with our Artemis 2 live updates page.

A car-sized asteroid will buzz Earth at a little over half the Earth-moon distance late tonight (March 24), just three days after its discovery by the Zwicky Transient Facility at the Palomar Observatory in California.

The close encounter between Earth and the asteroid designated 2026 FM3 will occur at 10:07 p.m. EDT on March 24 (0207 GMT on March 25). The flyby will see the solar system object pass 147,836 miles (237,918 kilometers) from our planet's southern hemisphere — only 61.9% of the distance to the moon — while travelling at 11,461 miles per hour (18,444 kilometers per hour), according to NASA.

2026 FM3, which has an estimated diameter of between 4-8 meters (13-26 feet), will shoot past the moon a little over three hours later at a distance of 370,022 miles (595,492 km), posing zero risk to either body.

Early observations have revealed that the asteroid travels a near circular path around the sun that intersects Earth's orbit twice over the course of its 354-day period. The asteroid's closest known brush with our planet occurred in September 1965, when it missed Earth by just 30,559 miles (49,181 km) — a hair's breadth in astronomical distances.

However, current observations show that 2026 FM3 will make no such close approaches to Earth over the next 100 years, and it is far too small to be considered a potentially hazardous asteroid by NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies regardless.

The dense gaseous shell of Earth's atmosphere forms a protective barrier against smaller asteroids, which can on occasion be seen forming brief, fiery trails in the sky in the form of meteors, or "shooting stars". Larger pieces of debris create dramatic fireballs, as was seen in recent events that occured over Ohio and Texas, which can fragment to scatter chunks of debris over the land below.

2026 FM3 is just one of over 41,000 near-Earth asteroids discovered to date — a number that is likely to swell dramatically as powerful new observatories come online, such as the Vera Rubin Observatory, which pinpointed the locations of 2,000 previously unknown asteroids in its initial dataset.

Editor's note: This article was updated to reflect the reflect the correct percentage of the lunar distance that the asteroid will pass from Earth.

Incredible satellite imagery shows a wall of dust being blown through Texas as a cold front pushed its way across the United States on Monday (March 16).

What is it?

The footage was captured by the GOES-19 weather satellite operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It shows a line of dust being driven southward, far below clouds much higher in the atmosphere blowing from west to east.

The wall of dust was blown across West Texas by a cold front that brought extreme winter weather to much of the United States from March 14 to 16. The storm, known as Winter Storm Iona, brought record snowfall totals to the Midwest and damaging winds and tornadoes throughout the southern U.S.

The dust storm created travel complications and other issues for Texans. At least one multi-vehicle pileup was reported due to the blinding dust sweeping across the state.

Why is it amazing?

It's rare to see such a pronounced line of dust visible from space. Colorado State University's Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) described the imagery as "spectacular" in a post on X.

Views of Earth like this one are are only made possible by NOAA's fleet of next-generation satellites. GOES 19 launched in June 2024 carrying what NOAA describes as "the most sophisticated technology ever flown in space to help forecast weather on Earth." The satellite has even captured images of solar eclipses, thanks to special sun-watching instruments aboard the spacecraft.

A new satellite image has captured a rare view of an erupting volcano, revealing its bright red lava flow as seen from space.

What is it?

This image taken by NASA's Landsat 8 satellite captures lava, ash, and gases flowing from Mayon, the most active volcano in the Philippines, on Feb. 26, 2026. Mayon is found on Luzon, the nation's largest island, and rises over 8,000 feet (2,400 meters) above sea level.

Mayon began erupting in January 2026 when clouds of hot ash and flows of lava began pouring from the volcano's crater. The eruption has displaced hundreds of families in surrounding areas, according to NASA.

Previous eruptions have caused massive damage and fatalities. An eruption in 1993 killed at least 77 people, according to the Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program.

Why is it amazing?

This image is a rare natural color glimpse into the eye of a volcano mid-eruption.

Bright red lava flows stand out starkly against the vivid green vegetation of the surrounding landscape, made more vibrant by combining visible light observations with infrared imagery.

The Operational Land Imager (OLI) instrument on Landsat 8 can capture light in both visible and near-infrared bands, enabling it to reveal features and events on Earth's surface that would otherwise be difficult to see from ground level.

A newly discovered bus-sized asteroid is set to buzz Earth late on March 12, passing closer than the moon as it zips silently beneath Antarctica, posing no risk to our planet or its natural satellite.

The solar system asteroid will make its closest approach to Earth at 11:27 p.m. EDT on March 12 (0327 GMT on March 13), when it will pass 197,466 miles (317,791 kilometers) from the southern hemisphere.

At the point of closest approach NASA estimates that the 32-72 foot-wide (10-22 meters) asteroid — designated 2026 EG1 — will be travelling at a blistering 21,513 miles per hour (34,621 kilometers per hour) relative to Earth and will swiftly pass us by, after performing a distant flyby of the moon.

Initial observations following its discovery on March 8 reveal that 2026 EG1 follows a 655-day elliptical orbit around the sun, during which it ranges from an innermost point within Earth's orbit to well beyond the path of Mars.

2026 EG1's next closest planetary approach won't take place until Sept. 13, 2186, when it will pass approximately 7.5 million miles (12.1 million km) from the surface of Mars. The wandering asteroid is just one of over 41,000 near-Earth asteroids currently being tracked by NASA and its partners — a figure that will likely rise significantly thanks to the efforts of the Vera Rubin Observatory, which has already discovered 2,000 hitherto unknown solar system bodies with its initial dataset.

Despite this staggering number, NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies has predicted that no major asteroid strikes capable of causing serious damage will occur on our planet in the next 100 years

Regardless, NASA and its partners are working on ways to protect Earth in the event of a potential asteroid strike by holding mock scenarios to improve worldwide messaging and response, while also executing ground-breaking asteroid redirect missions.