A cutting-edge hypersonic vehicle just hit a big flight milestone.

Stratolaunch's reusable, autonomous Talon-A craft now has more than 10 successful flights under its belt, the California-based company announced late last month.

"Reaching more than 10 successful hypersonic flights with Talon-A is a testament to our team's dedication and the robustness of our technology," Stratolaunch President and CEO Zachary Krevor said in a July 22 statement. "We are transforming hypersonic testing from a rare event into a routine service, empowering our customers to innovate at unprecedented speed."

Stratolaunch has two Talon-A vehicles, each of which is about 28 feet (8.5 meters) long with a wingspan of 11.3 feet (3.4 m). The craft can travel through Earth's atmosphere at more than five times the speed of sound (Mach 5) — the definition of hypersonic flight.

Talon-A missions start beneath the belly of a carrier plane, which hauls the robotic vehicle into the sky and drops it down. Stratolaunch has two such carriers — a modified Boeing 747 called Spirit of Mojave and Roc, a custom-built vehicle that measures a whopping 385 feet (117 m) from wingtip to wingtip, the biggest wingspan in aviation history.

Roc and Spirit of Mojave lift off from Mojave Air and Space Port in southeastern California and tend to drop Talon-A over the Pacific Ocean. After completing its hypersonic flight, the vehicle comes back for a runway landing in California, generally at Vandenberg Space Force Base, on the state's scenic central coast.

These jaunts test sensors and advanced new materials in the hypersonic flight environment, among other tasks. Details about Talon-A's payloads tend to be sparse, likely because many Stratolaunch customers — the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, for example — are tight-lipped by nature.

Indeed, military agencies around the world are increasingly interested in hypersonic tech. Superfast, maneuverable vehicles like Talon-A are tougher to track and intercept than ballistic missiles, which follow predictable trajectories despite moving fast. (To be clear: Talon-A itself is not a weapon or weapon-delivery system; it's a technology testbed.)

Stratolaunch isn't the only company that gives customer payloads hypersonic rides. Rocket Lab provides this service with HASTE, a suborbital version of its workhorse Electron rocket.

HASTE debuted in June 2023 and now has nine flights under its belt. But the vehicle's cadence will likely increase soon; in March, Rocket Lab signed a $190 million contract to conduct 20 HASTE missions for the U.S. military.

The sub-250 g drone market shows no signs of reducing competition, with manufacturers racing to offer advanced features at increasingly affordable prices. While DJI maintains its dominance as the market leader, brands such as Holy Stone have been steadily improving their offerings to compete in this popular segment of the drone market.

The Holy Stone HS900 Pro is being sold as the company's most capable consumer drone to date, and is aimed at beginners and enthusiasts looking for premium features without the premium price tag.

In reality, this is much more difficult than it sounds because the beginner market is so competitive that even DJI beginner models are impressively affordable. We’ll have to wait and see if the HS900 Pro is good enough to be one of the best beginner drones.

The HS900 Pro includes a range of intelligent flight modes designed to simplify aerial photography and videography. Features such as Follow Me, Point of Interest, Waypoint Flight and various automated shooting modes make it easy to capture dynamic footage with minimal experience.

At the heart of the drone is a 48MP camera capable of capturing 4K video. While it lacks obstacle avoidance technology found on some competitor models, the HS900 Pro delivers a reasonable blend of performance, image quality and flight features, but it undoubtedly has a handful of shortcomings that will hopefully be ironed out with firmware updates.

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Holy Stone HS900 Pro: Design

• Folding design
• Sub-250 g drone
• Folding controller

The Holy Stone HS900 Pro looks like most other sub-250 g drones with its compact folding design and light gray finish. This type of design is great for beginners and more experienced pilots because the folding element makes these drones easy to carry all day on trips out or in a camera bag with other kit.

The drone is just 5.63x3.26x2.44 in / 143x82.8x62 mm when folded, and 6.59x8.57x2.44 in / 167.4x217.8x62 mm unfolded. Most sub-250 g drones are around these dimensions, so there’s nothing out of the ordinary here, and build quality is fantastic - no complaints either. The airframe is made of a lightweight yet strong plastic, which is, once again, in keeping with similar drones.

The controller that comes with the HS900 Pro is the same as that which came with the HS900, but is light rather than dark gray to match the drone.

This is a folding controller where the phone attaches to handles that fold out at the bottom of the controller in a similar way to the old DJI Mavic 2 controller and accommodate smartphones of all sizes. This is nice and compact at 6.0x1.85 x3.23 in / 152.5x47x82 mm when folded. Detachable control sticks that can be stowed away at the bottom of the controller.

The HS900 Pro controller provides all of the controls you need and more for operating the drone and the camera; you have the control sticks, a power button, a Return to Home button (RTH), a speed control button, a gimbal dial, a customisable Fn button with dual functionality, a small joystick for adjusting camera settings and photo and video capture buttons.

The 2250 mAh batteries are claimed to provide up to 30 minutes of flight time, and during testing, flight times were typically coming in around 23 minutes in what you might call normal wind conditions. Return to Home is initiated at 20% battery charge, so at this point the drone will either automatically Return to Home or you can take over and fly it back manually.

Holy Stone HS900 Pro: Functionality

• Stable flight
• Decent subject tracking
• Level 5 wind resistance

Flight performance is impressive, with smooth, responsive controls that make it easy to capture stable video and execute precise manoeuvres. Despite its lightweight design, the HS900 Pro offers Level 5 wind resistance, allowing it to cope with winds of up to 24 mph.

Stable, Normal and Sport modes provide maximum speeds of 11 mph, 22 mph and 31 mph respectively, while safety features include Smart Return-to-Home, Low Battery Return-to-Home and Signal Loss Return-to-Home.

Automated flight patterns include Follow Me, Point of Interest (Orbit), Waypoint Flight, Gesture Control, Spiral Flight and Cruise Control. These features work reasonably well, and subject tracking is more effective than with the older HS900.

The HS900 Pro's AI Subject Tracking keeps the subject centred in the frame. Whether you're capturing a person walking, cycling or taking part in outdoor activities, the drone can follow their movement smoothly without constant manual input. This is a feature that’s becoming much more popular and often makes subject tracking more effective.

There are two tracking modes available: AI Following keeps the drone behind the subject at a set distance and height, making it ideal for recording movement naturally and steadily, while AI Parallel flies alongside the subject, providing a more cinematic side-on perspective. Following works well, but when Parallel was tested, the HS900 Pro vibrated heavily during flight. This is a glitch that will need to be ironed out with a firmware update.

The time-lapse feature is easy to use and automatically creates finished videos based on your chosen interval and duration. Unlike DJI drones, however, flight control remains separate from the feature, making it harder to judge the speed and distance needed for hyperlapse shots. Wind can also affect results because the drone may drift in gusty conditions.

As a result, time-lapses are generally smooth but can appear slightly uneven in gusty conditions. Cruise Control, another feature, allows the drone to continue flying after you release the control sticks, making it useful for maintaining a constant speed and direction during long video sequences.

Compared to the original HS900, the HS900 Pro is an extremely similar drone, and the camera quality and functionality appear to be similar, potentially identical. The main differences are in the improvements to subject tracking and the automated flight patterns. This makes the drone feel like more of an incremental update rather than a more significant upgrade.

This isn’t a drone that offers obstacle avoidance either, so there are no sensors for this purpose, although it does have TOF ranging which can help to achieve more stable flight, including improved position holding when GPS is weak.

There is also optical flow positioning that aids positioning indoors. These are useful, but when other beginner drones are beginning to offer obstacle avoidance, the bar has been raised somewhat.

Holy Stone HS900 Pro: Performance

• 1/2.3-inch 48MP CMOS sensor
• Up to 4K 30 FPS video
• Poor RAW photo quality

The Holy Stone HS900 Pro produces reasonable image quality in both photos and videos that will more than meet the needs of beginners and enthusiasts. At launch, this does come with a caveat we’ll discuss in a moment, but first let’s take a look at the camera specs.

The HS900 Pro camera features a 48MP 1/2.3-inch Sony CMOS sensor with an 83-degree field of view, which roughly equates to the equivalent of 24mm in full-frame/35mm terms, with a fixed f/2.6 aperture. Video can be captured in 4K at 30 FPS and FHD up to 60 FPS, which is adequate but not outstanding.

Video quality is good and comparable to the original HS900 with a maximum bitrate of up to 100 Mbps. Photo shooting modes include Single Shot, Burst Shot, Timer Shot, Time-Lapse, Slow Motion, Camera Filter and Panorama. Then there’s Dolly Zoom for video, which works well despite using the camera’s digital zoom.

Photo quality is inconsistent and something of a paradox, but not in the way you might normally expect. The HS900 Pro can capture up to 48MP photos and RAW and JPEG formats, and the JPEGs look good – no major criticisms here. Where things quickly go downhill, however, is when capturing RAW photos in DNG format.

RAW photos have terrible color casts that are so bad that you can’t color correct them using white balance controls in software such as Adobe Lightroom. It’s basically impossible to neutralize the color cast, which makes the RAW files unusable. This is one area where Holy Stone seriously needs to issue a firmware update to resolve the issue.

Please note the footage below was shot in 4K, but our video player only plays in HD.

The camera controls available allow you to take as much control as you need, alongside auto shooting if you prefer. Two features that are still, unfortunately, missing after the HS900 are a histogram to assist with setting exposure correctly and Automatic Exposure Bracketing. These are essential for the drone to compete more effectively in a highly competitive market.

Holy Stone HS900 Pro: Price

In the past, Holy Stone was initially released in the US, with availability expanding to other regions afterwards. The kit includes the drone, a controller, two batteries, cables, spare propellers and a carry bag. This is everything you need to get started in terms of the drone itself.

The kit costs around $389.99 / £369.99, which would have once been attractive for a drone with the features of the HS900 Pro, but you can get a lot more in terms of features and image quality around this price point. This is illustrative of just how the competitiveness of the sub-250 g drone market shows no signs of slowing. In fact, it’s still heating up.

Should you buy the Holy Stone HS900 Pro?

If you're looking for an affordable camera drone that offers more than the basics, the Holy Stone HS900 Pro is a reasonable option, but certainly not the best available. It combines a lightweight sub-250 g design with features often found on more expensive models, while flight performance is impressive, with accurate GPS positioning, stable hovering and dependable Return to Home functionality.

There is no obstacle avoidance, which is a feature we’re now seeing in beginner models and puts the HS900 Pro at a distinct disadvantage in terms of both price and functionality. But the main issue with the drone is that some of the features and functionality feel incomplete. Not in terms of the hardware, but rather that they’re in need of refinement from a firmware update. Whether this will happen is impossible to say, but Holy Stone will probably improve these weaker areas.

If this drone isn't for you

The DJI Mini 5 Pro is the most advanced sub-250 g drone available, offering unrivalled features, functionality and professional image quality in a small and lightweight form factor.

The DJI Lito 1 is DJI’s least expensive drone to feature obstacle avoidance. It offers subject tracking functionality and up to 4K at up to 100 FPS, all in a beginner model. This model is currently unavailable in the USA

The Potensic Atom 2 is one of the best value sub-250 g propositions available. Image quality is great for photos and videos, while flight performance is solid alongside reasonably quiet flight.

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The drone market is hotter than ever, with newbie and slightly more experienced drone pilots now able to enjoy some seriously impressive features on low-cost drones. The new DJI Lito series replaces the older Mini series, with the exception of the DJI Mini 5 Pro, which is DJI’s flagship sub-250 g drone. There are two models available and in this review, we are going to take a look at the DJI Lito 1.

The Lito 1 may be the entry-level Lito model, but it still comes with a feature we’ve been waiting to see on a beginner drone for ages - 5-lux omnidirectional obstacle sensing, otherwise known as collision avoidance. This is a feature that, up until now, has only been available on more advanced and expensive drones, despite being a feature that beginners can truly benefit from.

There are also intelligent flight modes, including ActiveTrack, QuickShots, MasterShots, Hyperlapse, and Panorama, that help you to capture professional-looking photos and videos at the touch of a button. The subject tracking modes are particularly impressive, especially for an entry-level drone, thanks to the omnidirectional obstacle sensing.

The Lito 1 features a 48MP 1/2-inch CMOS sensor with video capture available up to 4K at 100 FPS and photos in JPEG and Raw format. Video can only be captured in the normal profile, which is perfect for beginners because it can be used straight out of camera with no need for color grading.

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DJI Lito 1: Design

• Sub-250 g drone
• Compact folding design
• Respectable battery life

The Lito 1 is a small, lightweight camera drone that looks much like other DJI ‘mini’ drones, with a folding design that makes it even more compact for travel and storage. At 8.78 oz / 249 g, this regulator-friendly drone is just 5.67 x 3.70 x 2.44 in / 144 x 94 x 62 mm when folded, and 7.20 x 9.88 x 3.11 in / 183 x 251 x 79 mm unfolded.

In terms of overall design, it won’t win any innovation awards with its typically DJI light gray build, but it’s undoubtedly a functional drone with great build quality. One of the main visual differences between the Lito 1 and the DJI Mini 4K, for example, is that the Lito 1 has one 5-Lux omnidirectional obstacle sensor on the top of the drone, and another on the bottom.

These two sensors provide highly effective 360-degree obstacle avoidance that will give beginner drone pilots confidence, but you can never fully rely on them to avoid obstacles. Omnidirectional obstacle sensing is fantastic, but it’s no substitute for flying with care and attention. You can also change the way it behaves to suit different situations.

The Lito 1 comes with the DJI RC-N3 controller in the Fly More Combo. This is the most basic DJI controller, where you attach your phone to a telescopic phone holder at the top to give you a camera view and access to settings.

It’s not as convenient as a smart controller but it does its job well and helps to keep costs down. The DJI RC-N3 has a decent battery life and is comfortable to hold, with detachable control sticks that stow away at the bottom of the controller when not in use.

Battery life of the drone itself is great but the claimed 36 minutes of flight time doesn’t quite translate to reality. Flight times came in at around 24 minutes before the battery reached around 16% and 'Return to Home' was initiated. This is still great for small 2590 mAh batteries and plenty of time if you have three batteries from the 'Fly More Bundle' to offer over an hour of flight time.

DJI Lito 1: Functionality

• Quick takeoff
• No internal storage
• Non-GPS RTH

The Lito 1 is a nimble drone capable of some respectable flight speeds, with a maximum speed of 40.27 mph in sport mode and 26.84 mph in normal mode and when tracking subjects. Cine mode is also available with reduced speed and less sensitive controls to assist pilots when capturing cinematic footage. Wind resistance is also great at 23.94 mph, so it will only be on the most windy days when you can’t fly.

Controls are responsive, and you undoubtedly enjoy a robust DJI flight experience with the drone. Plus, video transmission is faultless, and there were no issues whatsoever during testing. Then there are the intelligent flight modes, which include ActiveTrack, QuickShots, MasterShots, Hyperlapse, and Panorama; these all help beginners and experienced pilots alike to capture professional-looking photos and videos at the touch of a button.

The jewel in the crown feature has to be the Omnidirectional Obstacle Sensing because this is the first time it’s been available on a beginner drone model, not to mention one that is so competitively priced. There are several modes available, including Brake and Bypass, so you can select the option that suits the flying situation, and despite having only two sensors – one on the top and one on the bottom of the drone – it does a fantastic job. The subject-tracking modes are impressive, thanks to omnidirectional obstacle sensing and selecting a subject to track is incredibly easy.

Other useful features include Quick Takeoff and Return to Home (RTH). The former allows you to take off before satellite signals have been fixed for GPS, which is useful in more built-up locations.

RTH is the feature pilots know and appreciate, but where it differs slightly from the Lito 1 is that during the latter stages of the RTH process, the drone tracks its take-off route, so a strong GPS connection isn’t essential. This wasn't tested because there were always strong signals, but on paper, it sounds great.

One missing feature is internal storage, so you’ll have to rely on using a microSD card to save your photos and videos. It’s certainly not a dealbreaker and is typical of beginner models. It does, however, offer Wi‑Fi 6 QuickTransfer at up to 50 MB/s, so you can transfer imagery to your smartphone using the DJI Fly app quickly.

DJI Lito 1: Performance

• 1/2-inch 48MP CMOS sensor
• Up to 4K 100 FPS video
• Raw & JPEG photos

The Lito 1 is the absolute beginner model in the new Lito line-up, and as such it has the smaller sensor of the two available models. The camera features a 1/2-inch 48MP CMOS sensor and the lens offers an equivalent focal length of 26.2mm. The aperture is fixed at f/1.8 while focus is available from 4m to infinity.

Image quality is impressive overall, despite the small sensor, and much better than many drones at a similar price point with a small sensor. So, despite this being a beginner model, there’s no doubt that the Lito 1 will keep most beginner pilots happy for years to come before the desire to upgrade to a more advanced model takes hold.

Photos are typically sharpest in the central area of the frame with some fall-off towards the edges of the frame. Video quality is better, as is usually the case, but this is due to using fewer sensor pixels and the centre of the lens. Not to mention, video is much more forgiving than photos because the image is moving.

Photos can be captured in Raw and/or JPEG using shooting modes including Single Shot, Burst Shooting, Automatic Exposure Bracketing (AEB) and Timed shots with delays between two and 60 seconds. This is exactly what you need for shooting photos with a drone.

Please note the footage below was shot in 4K, but our video player only plays in HD.

Video can be captured at up to 4K 100 FPS, 2.7K vertical up to 60 FPS and FHD up to 100 FPS. Video can only be captured in the Normal color profile for straight out of camera footage, so there’s no need for color grading.

The main downside for more advanced users is that the Lito 1 doesn’t capture video in the 10-bit D-Log M color profile, but if you need this, the slightly higher-spec Lito X1 is the model for you.

DJI Lito 1: Price

The DJI Lito 1 is competitively priced at just £429 for the Fly More Combo, or £299 for the drone and a battery if you already own a DJI RC-N3 controller. The Fly More Combo includes three batteries, a charging hub, a carry case, and accessories, along with the drone and the controller. At the time of writing, the drone is unfortunately unavailable in the United States.

This is a great price for an entry-level drone in a Fly More Combo with all those useful accessories. It’s slightly more expensive than some other entry-level drones, but the main advantage of the Lito 1 is that it has Obstacle Sensing.

Should you buy the DJI Lito 1?

If you’re an absolute beginner looking for a solid drone that will meet your needs for some time to come, the DJI Lito 1 is one of the most attractive drones available. If you’d like the same drone but with some additional features, the DJI Lito X1 is a more advanced version.

Flight performance is excellent, and the omnidirectional obstacle sensing is incredibly useful for beginners because it can seriously reduce the risk of crashing. Image quality is also impressive considering the size of the camera sensor, although it’s not a drone that you’d choose to use professionally.

Alongside the omnidirectional obstacle sensing, another impressive and indeed useful feature is subject tracking, which performs incredibly well. This is a feature you don’t often see in entry-level drones, and when you do, it doesn’t work well, but with the Lito 1, the performance can’t be faulted.

If this drone isn't for you

The DJI Lito X1 is the higher spec model of the two new Lito models and features a larger sensor alongside forward-facing LiDAR for improved obstacle sensing. It can also capture video in the flat D-Log M color profile.

If you’d like the most advanced sub-250 g drone available, the DJI Mini 5 Pro offers the best image quality, features and functionality of any compact and lightweight drone.

If you’d like a sub-250 g drone at a competitive price but don’t need obstacle avoidance, the Potensic Atom 2 is a fantastic sub-250 g drone capable of capturing 4K video and photos in Raw and JPEG.

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Drones are more accessible than ever before, and DJI shows no signs of slowing down in its aggressive drive to take over the beginner drone market. The DJI Neo 2 is both affordable and impressive as a selfie, camera and FPV drone, but with the new DJI Lito X1, high-end features and functionality have finally made it to a beginner model.

The Lito X1 features a 48MP 1/1.3-inch CMOS sensor with video capture available up to 4K at 100 FPS and photos in JPEG and Raw format. The drone features a 5-lux omnidirectional obstacle sensing and forward-facing LiDAR for safer flights in complex environments. Obstacle sensing is a no-brainer for beginner drones, and it’s finally here.

Then there are intelligent flight modes, including ActiveTrack, QuickShots, MasterShots, Hyperlapse, and Panorama, which make it incredibly easy to capture professional-looking imagery. The subject tracking modes are great performers thanks to the omnidirectional obstacle sensing, where you can be confident that the chances of the drone crashing are greatly reduced.

The Lito X1 is priced competitively and is arguably excellent value for money, with the DJI Lito X1 Fly More Combo (DJI RC 2) costing just £599; this is the bundle that features a smart controller with a built-in screen. It’s safe to say that this could be both one of the best beginner drones and possibly even one of the best camera drones available.

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DJI Lito X1: Design

• Compact folding design
• Sub-250 g model
• Two controller options

With its standard DJI folding design, build quality and light gray color, the DJI Lito X1 is a solid yet unremarkable drone from a design point of view.

That said, there’s nothing wrong with this at all, and the Lito X1 is undoubtedly an impressive performer. The drone is just 5.67 x 3.70 x 2.44 in / 144 x 94 x 62 mm folded and 7.20 x 9.88 x 3.11 in / 183 x 251 x 79 mm unfolded, with a regulator-friendly weight of 8.78 oz / 249 g.

The Lito X1 looks like most other drones in the sub-250 g class, but one standout feature is the 5-Lux Omnidirectional obstacle sensors – one on the top of the drone and the second one on the bottom.

These provide up, down, left, right, forward and backward obstacle avoidance, and despite there being just two sensors, the system performs incredibly well. There’s also forward-facing LiDAR for increased precision. The inclusion of these features is a first for a beginner drone.

With the Fly More Combos, you can opt for either the DJI RC-N3 controller, which requires a phone to be used with the DJI Fly app, or the DJI RC 2 smart controller with a built-in 5.5 in FHD touchscreen. This more advanced controller isn’t much more expensive and is significantly more convenient than the standard controller, so it’s well worth consideration.

In terms of battery life, the standard batteries are claimed to last up to 36 minutes, but during testing, flights were coming in at around 24 minutes before Return to Home was initiated when the battery reached around 16%. This is still pretty good, although the higher capacity Prlus batteries will extend flight times further to a claimed 52 minutes.

One point to make is that the Plus batteries take the weight of the drone over 250 g, so you have to be aware of this and its regulatory implications. For most people, the standard batteries offering flight times around 24 minutes will be more than sufficient and keep things simple by maintaining the X1’s sub-250 g weight.

DJI Lito X1: Functionality

• Quick takeoff
• 42GB of internal storage
• Non-GPS RTH

Despite its small size and light weight, the Lito X1 is still a fairly fast and powerful drone with a maximum speed of 40.27 mph in Sport Mode and 26.84 mph in Normal Mode and when tracking. Wind resistance comes in at a respectable 23.94 mph. There’s also Cine Mode, which reduces speed further and reduces the sensitivity of controls to help you to capture more cinematic footage.

Video transmission is solid, and there was no image breakup or stuttering during testing. The maximum range goes far beyond the legal flight distance limits, so they’re impossible to test, but with such robust transmission, you’re pretty much guaranteed a great connection within the legal range.

The X1 flies as well as you’d expect for a DJI drone, so no complaints here. Plus, ActiveTrack, QuickShots and MasterShots all perform particularly well. Subject tracking is excellent thanks to the collision avoidance system, which provides confidence with the drone flying autonomously. Other useful shooting modes include Hyperlapse and Panorama, which make capturing these types of photos and videos incredibly easy.

Another standout set of features is Quick Takeoff and Smart RTH. The former allows you to take off before stallites have been fixed, instead using vision positioning until satellites are connected.

For the latter, the Lito X1 memorizes flight routes in well-lit environments, which helps to provide a safe Return to Home without satellite connection for GPS. This is unlikely, but still useful, and the system aids RTH in all situations.

While the Lito X1 has a microSD slot for removable storage, there’s also 42GB of internal storage that can be used independently or as a backup when using a memory card.

Then there’s QuickTransfer, where files can be transferred to your smart device at up to 50 MB/s via Wi-Fi 6. You can also plug the drone into a computer when it’s switched off and connect to its storage to download photos and videos without switching the drone on.

DJI Lito X1: Performance

• 1/1.3-inch CMOS sensor
• Raw & JPEG photos
• 10-Bit D-Log M

The Lito X1 is an advanced beginner drone, and despite the small sensor size, image quality is surprisingly good. It’s not on par with more expensive drones such as the DJI Mini 5 Pro, DJI Air 3S or DJI Mavic 4 Pro, unsurprisingly, but you could produce both photos and videos to a professional level with the drone.

The camera features a 48MP 1/1.3-inch CMOS sensor that can be set to shoot 12MP and 48MP photos. The lens has a full-frame equivalent focal length of 24mm, while the fixed aperture is f/1.7.

Photos can be captured in Raw and/or JPEG using Single Shot, Burst Shooting, Automatic Exposure Bracketing (AEB) or Timed shots with delays ranging from two to 60 seconds.

Like most drones, photos are sharpest in the central area of the frame with a small amount of fall-off towards the edges. Plus, as usual, results are typically better in brighter conditions.

Video quality is sharper across the frame because shooting at up to 4K uses a crop of the full sensor, and the moving image is much more forgiving.

Please note the footage below was shot in 4K, but our video player only plays in HD.

Video can be captured at up to 4K 100 FPS, 2.7K vertical up to 60 FPS and FHD up to 200 FPS. Video can be captured in the Normal color profile at 8-bit or 10-bit for straight out-of-camera footage.

if you’d like to capture more professional video that needs to be color graded, you can shoot in the 10-bit D-Log M color profile with a maximum bitrate of 130 Mbps. Log footage is generally not available with beginner drone models, so this is impressive.

DJI Lito X1: Price

The DJI Lito X1 comes in at a beginner-friendly price considering the impressive features and functionality on offer. At the time of writing, the drone is unavailable in the United States.

For UK residents, the X1 costs £369 for just the drone and a battery, which is ideal if you already own a compatible DJI controller. The DJI Lito X1 Fly More Combo (DJI RC-N3) costs £509, while the DJI Lito X1 Fly More Combo (DJI RC 2) costs £599. A DJI Lito X1 Fly More Combo Plus (DJI RC 2), which includes higher capacity batteries for longer flight times, costs £669.

The Fly More combos include three batteries, a charging hub, a carry case, and accessories, along with the drone and the relevant controller. For just an extra £90, the DJI RC 2 smart controller Fly More Combo is extremely attractive and offers a much more convenient experience than the DJI RC-N3 controller.

Should you buy the DJI Lito X1?

If you’re looking for a highly capable sub-250 g drone, but one that’s less expensive than the DJI mini 5 Pro, the DJI Lito X1 is one of the most impressive beginner drones we’ve ever tested.

Flight performance is excellent, while image quality for photo and video capture certainly won’t disappoint; capture photos in Raw and JPEG, while you can capture up to 4K 100 FPS video in Standard and D-Log M color profiles.

What makes this drone stand out from the competition, besides this, is the omnidirectional obstacle sensing and forward-facing LiDAR that make flights even safer.

This is a first for beginner drones and a most welcome pair of features that set a new bar for beginner drones. If you’re on a budget but would still like a drone with professional features and functionality, the Lito X1 is a fantastic option.

If this drone isn't for you

The DJI Neo 2 is a highly affordable selfie drone featuring autonomous flight modes and subject tracking. It can also be flown as a camera drone or an FPV drone when paired with different controllers.

The DJI Mini 5 Pro is the most advanced sub-250 g drone available with excellent features, functionality and image quality, making it ideal for professionals and enthusiasts alike.

If you’re on a tight budget and don’t need obstacle sensing, the Potensic Atom 2 is one of the best budget sub-250 g drones available. It shoots Raw and JPEG photos, alongside video up to 4K.

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A miniature X-ray machine is set to transform astronauts' health prospects following a successful test in orbit. As a bonus, as well as checking for broken bones on the moon, the technology could also be distributed to small towns and villages in rural areas to provide enhanced medical care far from major hospitals.

For much of the Space Age, astronauts have only had access to ultrasound machines as tools to diagnose injuries. Unlike ultrasound, which requires a medium through which sound waves can pass, X-rays can be used in a vacuum. The problem with X-ray machines is that traditionally they have been big and bulky, they use a lot of power, they have difficulty imaging something that isn't perfectly stationary (resulting in blurred images), and they tend to get damaged when jostled about during launch and atmospheric re-entry. Yet, as human spaceflight and voyages beyond Earth-orbit come to prominence once more, with proposals for an outpost on the moon, there is a greater chance of an astronaut being injured and therefore a greater need for medical X-rays in space.

Technology has now reached the stage where small-scale, portable X-ray devices are commonplace on Earth.

"Portable X-ray machines are in use everywhere — at the Kentucky Derby, on the sidelines of the Super Bowl and around the globe in low-resource areas — because they can run on solar power and can be operated by individuals with no medical expertise," Sheyna Gifford, who is a medical doctor and assistant professor of aerospace medicine at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, said in a statement.

Gifford wanted to put one of these portable X-ray devices to the test in space. The first chance her team got to simulate taking an X-ray in space conditions was during a parabolic flight in 2022 (when an aircraft simulates microgravity by climbing high on a parabolic trajectory, as in the famous "Vomit Comet") when members of the flight crew used a portable X-ray machine to produce an X-ray image of someone's hand.

The real test, though, came on March 31, 2025, with the launch of the private Fram2 mission, which took four first-time astronauts on a 3.5-day mission around Earth on board a SpaceX Crew Dragon. The astronauts, none of whom were medical experts, received four hours training on the portable X-ray device before launch, and then while in orbit they were tasked with taking X-rays of a smartwatch, a hand, an abdomen, a pelvis and a chest. These X-ray images were recorded digitally, enabling the astronauts to review them straight away without having to develop film.

Back on Earth, three independent medical experts compared the Fram2 X-rays with similar X-rays taken prior to launch. They found that while the ground-based X-rays were better quality, the space-based ones were good enough to be used to diagnose injuries such as broken bones.

Furthermore, the X-ray device made it back to Earth on board the Crew Dragon with only minimal damage to its exterior after being buffeted around. The Fram2 crew members all reported that the X-ray machine was easy to use, and they recommended that in future it be designed to be easier to clamp securely into place inside the crew cabin.

"We believed an off-the-shelf portable system would stand a very good chance of surviving pre-launch testing and be operational in space by crew members with minimal training," said Gifford. "By acquiring the first human and equipment X-rays in space, our study demonstrates the feasibility of in-orbit radiography and expanded diagnostic capabilities for crew health and hardware evaluation."

The usefulness of X-ray machines in space extends beyond just applying them to human health. X-rays can be used to inspect potential damage to electronics and spacesuits, to diagnose problems with malfunctioning satellites, and even be strapped to lunar rovers for analyzing the surface of the moon.

The next step, says Gifford, is to make the portable systems even smaller.

"It is my hope that we can further reduce the size of portable imaging systems and improve their ruggedness and usability so they can be included in future missions," she said.

The technology can also prove its value here on Earth. Easy to use and highly portable X-ray devices that can produce digital images that can be scrutinized on a tablet or even a smartphone would be invaluable to rescue teams in remote areas or tight spaces. It would also transform medical care in rural towns and villages that are far from large hospitals — reducing the burden on those large hospitals in the process.

"Disseminating autonomous miniature X-ray systems around the globe could also change the game in public health," said Gifford. "The sky is not the limit when it comes to X-rays in space and here on Earth."

The findings from the X-ray tests were reported on July 14 in the journal Radiology.

A company just produced kidney and liver tissue in space for the first time, using a method called bioprinting, which 3D-prints living tissue.

The announcement comes from California-based Auxilium Biotechnologies, whose AMP-1 orbital bioprinter made the breakthrough. The bioprinter used cell and tissue designs from the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in North Carolina.

"The ability to manufacture multiple tissue types alongside clinically relevant medical products highlights both the versatility and scalability of our technology," Auxilium CEO Jacob Koffler said in a statement today (July 9).

The experiments took place aboard the International Space Station in June. In addition to bioprinting kidney, liver, and cartilage tissues, the AMP-1 machine also created 28 nerve repair implants. The bioprinted materials returned to Earth on a SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule that splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on June 17.

"Successfully bioprinting living liver and kidney tissue aboard the International Space Station marks an important step forward for regenerative medicine," WFIRM director Anthony Atala said in a statement today (July 9). "The uniform cell distribution achieved aboard the space station points to real possibilities for manufacturing medical devices and tissues in space."

This wasn't the first bioprinting experiment to be conducted on the ISS. For example, in 2018, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko tested a machine called the "Bioprinter Organ.Aut," which successfully assembled cartilage cells using a magnetic field.

However, Auxilium’s AMP-1 bioprinter is the first tool that has produced multiple types of tissue in space, as well as the first to make kidney and liver tissue in the final frontier. Auxilium says this flexibility will be important as commercial interests expand manufacturing hubs in space for biotech, healthcare and advanced materials development.

"This mission marks an exciting step forward for in-space biomanufacturing and demonstrates what can be achieved when innovative technology is paired with strong collaboration," Isac Lazarovits, Auxilium's engineering vice president, said in the same statement.

"Demonstrating multiple product classes and meaningful production volume within a single mission is an important milestone as we continue advancing toward routine manufacturing operations in orbit," Lazarovits continued.

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Danger: Spoiler Alert Ahead!

Fans are eagerly anticipating the third season of The Ark following season 2’s thrilling cliffhanger finale, where the crew of Ark One discovered a habitable, human-friendly planet. However, evidence of an ancient alien civilization and a frantic distress call from deep space instantly cut those celebrations short.

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

Houston-based company Venus Aerospace announced today (June 8) the closing of its "Series B" financing round, which raised $91 million to evolve its rotating detonation rocket engine (RDRE) from functioning prototype to a scalable propulsion system with multiple applications.

Venus completed a demonstration launch with its test vehicle in May 2025, accomplishing the first such flight from U.S. soil powered by an RDRE. At scale, the company envisions a wide variety of uses for the design, including powering aircraft up to Mach 6 straight off the runway, orbital transfer vehicles for satellites in space, and as the engine for future spacecraft capable of landing on extraterrestrial worlds like the moon.

The newest financing round was anchored by Houston-based venture capital firm Mercury Fund, with contributions from a handful of other investors, including Lockheed Martin Ventures. Venus co-founder and CEO Sassie Duggleby called the funding "an important step" toward maturing the RDRE for production.

"Our customers need propulsion systems that go farther, can be produced reliably and are built on supply chains they can trust," she said in a statement. "We are advancing that capability with American engineering and manufacturing talent to strengthen U.S. defense, expand space access and support the future of high-speed flight."

RDREs differ from conventional rocket engines in the way they ignite and expel their propellants. Typical engines burn fuel as part of a controlled process inside a combustion chamber, which is directed through the engine nozzle and bell. RDREs use a ring-shaped combustion chamber and feature a continuously circulating detonation wave, which produces higher pressure and increased thrust while burning less fuel, in theory.

RDREs aren't a new concept, but designing a functional model had more or less evaded all attempts outside science fiction — until Venus' demonstration launch last year. That flight also caught the attention of former NASA deputy administrator and space shuttle astronaut Pam Melroy, who joined the company's board of directors four months later.

"What differentiates our RDRE is not just that it works, but that it has flown at high thrust and was designed with scale, manufacturability and mission integration in mind," Venus co-founder and CTO Andrew Duggleby said in the same statement. "Our propulsion architecture combines efficiency, throttling, reusability and manufacturability in a way that customers need for real defense and space missions. We are focused on translating technical progress into reliable systems for operational use."

New Zealand company Zenno Astronautics has tested a first-of-its-kind torquer based on superconducting magnets to maintain the position of a satellite in space.

Superconducting magnets can convert solar energy directly into momentum in space and provide a source of acceleration that needs no fuel, but until recently, the technology was too large and complex to fit on a satellite. That's no longer the case.

Zenno Astronautics, a spin-off from the University of Auckland, has flown its new "Supertorquer" system on the Mira satellite built by California-based start-up Impulse Space. The tests began shortly after Mira's launch in November last year aboard the SpaceX Transporter 12 mission and saw the shoebox-size device perform with flying colors, Zenno Astronautics CEO and founder Max Arshavsky, told Space.com.

"It's a technology that allows a spacecraft to not tumble violently in space and point in the right direction," Arshavsky said. "The unit has multiple super-conducting magnets that are positioned in different axes. When we power up the magnets, they generate a magnetic field, which interacts with Earth's magnetic field, and because we can control the magnetic field on the satellite, we can control the way in which it turns with respect to Earth."

Superconducting magnets are made of coils of superconducting wire that have zero electrical resistance and can therefore conduct much larger currents than normal wires. That larger current translates into a greater magnetic force. There is, however, a catch: Superconducting materials need to be cooled to extremely low temperatures to gain their wonder properties.

In labs on Earth, the cooling requires tanks of cryogenic liquids like liquid helium or liquid nitrogen. Those cannot be used aboard a satellite. Instead the system must expel all heat from its surroundings into outer space.

"The magnets need to operate at minus 200 degrees Celsius [minus 328 degrees Fahrenheit]," Arshavsky said. "But even though space is cold, the satellite is actually not. It's about 20 degrees C, pretty warm, because we are pointing at the sun."

The unit housing the superconducting magnets is wrapped in layers of insulation and fitted with a heat pump that removes all the excess heat from the system. Every time the satellite needs a push, the superconducting coils power up, drawing energy from a battery charged by the satellite's solar panels.

"It's converting solar energy straight into useful work," Arshavsky said. "Energy is the one thing that is abundant in space, and you can use it to energize the magnet to create a magnetic acceleration device. It gives you acceleration without fuel."

In the future, Zenno Astronautics plans to launch larger systems that could enable spacecraft to dock in space or conduct close proximity operations using just the power of their solar-powered superconducting magnets. Arshavsky envisions powerful magnets that could someday propel spacecraft on missions to the moon and Mars using only solar power.

"Once you have super-conducting technology available in space, you can then create very strong magnetic fields, and you can use them for various use cases," he said. "You can accelerate things in space very fast or change the trajectory of a satellite completely without fuel."

"We are essentially looking to remove all reliance on Earth's resources so that we can build a sustainable industry in space," Arshavsky said.

Powerful superconducting magnets could also provide a solution to the problem of cancer-causing cosmic radiation that explorers will encounter during stays on the moon or trips deeper into space.

"When we go to space, we get hurt by radiation, and these superconducting magnets can create umbrellas of magnetic fields around the spacecraft to protect the interior," said Arshavsky. "So we can shield people in space from that radiation."

Zenno Astronautics company plans to fly a larger demonstrator on an undisclosed mission later this year.

Editor's note: The original version of this story referred to the newly tested device as a thruster. That wording is not technically correct and, at 11 a.m. ET on July 10, was therefore changed to "torquer."

The past 250 years of optical telescopes have seen revolutionary discoveries and technology that the telescope's inventor, a seventeenth century spectacle-maker by the name of Hans Lippershey, maybe wouldn't have believed possible.

When we look back through the annals of telescope history, we find that a significant turning point came, coincidentally, just five years after the United States' Declaration of Independence was christened.

It was back in England, in 1781. William Herschel had just made what was possibly the greatest astronomical discovery the world had seen up to that point: a new planet, Uranus. The fact that Herschel had found a seventh planet from the sun was revolutionary in itself. All the other planets, from Mercury to Saturn, had been known since antiquity, obvious in the night sky to the naked eye.

Uranus, on the other hand, isn't really visible without optical aid, and its discovery illustrated the power of the telescope to dramatically widen our vistas. Moreover, Herschel found the new planet using a 6.2-inch (157-millimeter) reflecting telescope that he had constructed himself. He was looking through it from the back garden of his home in the Somerset city of Bath.

Herschel was a prolific builder of telescopes, polishing and shaping their speculum mirrors. The 6.2-inch telescope was a midget compared to some of his other beasts, including the famous discovery machine that was the 20-foot, or -meter, in focal length telescope with its 18-inch (457-mm) aperture, and the less successful 40-foot (12-meter) telescope.

Herschel proved that telescopes could do serious science. "As a self-taught astronomer, William Herschel transformed the reflecting telescope from what had generally been thought of as a scientific toy into a serious scientific tool," British science historian Robert Smith of the University of Alberta in Canada told Space.com. "At the root of all Herschel's efforts is his telescope building, because he had to build these big telescopes himself."

Refractors and reflectors

Telescopes come in two main forms: the reflector and the refractor.

Reflectors use mirrors to reflect light to a focal point where the eyepiece is located; refractors use lenses to focus light. In the 18th and 19th centuries, British reflectors like Herschel's were the dominant telescope category, as exemplified by those constructed by the likes of Liverpool's William Lassell and Ireland's Third Earl of Rosse, William Parsons. However, across the English Channel in mainland Europe, refractors, which at the time were optically higher quality, were dominant instead.

"You have to distinguish what's going on in Britain with what's going on elsewhere," said Smith.

Lassell built reflectors with apertures of 24 and 48 inches (61 and 122 centimeters). And the great Leviathan of Parsonstown in Ireland is Lord Rosse's own behemoth, still standing today as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. While the likes of Lassell and Lord Rosse were wealthy, self-taught "grand amateur" scientists, in Europe refracting telescopes were used by academics at universities to make precise measurements of the cosmos, from the orbits of double stars to the distance to stars using parallax.

"On the European continent, refractors were used by professional astronomers whose focus was on precision, whereas for Lassell and Rosse the focus was on collecting more light to see fainter objects," said Smith.

In comes the U.S.

Building large refracting telescopes had its challenges and led to a period referred to as the "Telescope Race," where prestige was equally a motivation alongside science. The "race" was won by the 40-inch (one-meter) refractor at Yerkes Observatory in Chicago in 1897, which cost $500,000 at the time (about $20 million in today's money) and was provided by financier Charles Yerkes who made his money developing Chicago's public transport system, often resorting to bribery in order to win franchises.

Businessmen building telescopes was nothing new, of course: William Lassell made fortunes from brewing, but he also used his own telescopes. What was different now was that men wealthy beyond anyone's dreams saw observatories as vanity projects rather than as scientific instruments to use themselves. The introduction of substantial sums of American money provided by wealthy businessmen was a sea change in both the building of telescopes and the fortunes of astronomy in the U.S.

"I have argued that in the 1880s, America was a bit of an astronomical backwater compared to Europe, but by the 1920s the United States had become the leading nation, certainly in terms of observational astronomy," said Smith.

It wasn't just Yerkes. In California, wealthy landowner James Lick founded the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton after being dissuaded from his original plan to build a giant pyramid as a monument to himself in downtown San Francisco. Percival Lowell, obsessed with his delusions about canals on Mars, founded the Lowell Observatory in Arizona in 1894. And on Mount Wilson in California, something big was stirring in part thanks to benefactor John Hooker.

Reflectors come of age

Size has always been a driving force, a challenge and a problem for telescope builders. Even today, the Yerkes refractor is still the champion refractor, only rivaled by the one-meter Swedish Solar Telescope on La Palma, but even this is stepped down from 42 inches to 39 inches (107 cm to 99 cm). The issue is twofold: the thicker the lens, the more the incoming light is attenuated and hence the greater the light loss, so you lose any benefits a large lens might provide. Plus, the heavier a lens is, the more it will sag and deform, destroying its ability to focus properly.

This glass ceiling, if you'll pardon the pun, was circumvented by reflecting telescopes following a vital development in the mid-1800s. Herschel and his peers had been using mirrors made from speculum, which is a reflective and slightly toxic (thanks to the small quantities of arsenic added to the copper and tin mix) metal that is prone to tarnishing easily. Herschel had to polish his telescope mirrors frequently to keep them spick and span.

Then in the 1850s scientists Léon Foucault and Carl August von Steinheil figured out a way to add a thin layer of silver to glass, creating mirrors that were much more reflective than speculum, that weighed less and which didn't tarnish. This paved the way for building bigger and better reflectors, fulfilling the promise of the work started by William Herschel.

One key figure in the resurgence of the reflecting telescope around the turn of the 20th century was the astronomical optician George Ritchey, most famous today for being one half of the duo who invented the Ritchey–Chrétien telescope design that is popular with amateur astronomers, particularly planetary imagers, and which is also employed on dozens of professional telescopes including the largest ground-based telescopes currently in operation.

Ritchey had built a 0.6-meter (24-inch) reflector at Yerkes before he was hired by George Ellery Hale, who was the director of Mount Wilson Observatory. On Mount Wilson Ritchey designed a 1.5-meter (60-inch) reflector in 1908 and then what would be the largest telescope in the world at that time, the 2.5-meter (100-inch) Hooker Telescope, made possible thanks to a generous financial gift from John Hooker. The Hooker Telescope saw its first light in 1917.

"If I had to pick one key optician around about 1900, I would pick George Ritchey," said Smith. "Though Ritchey's innovative approach sometimes became too innovative for Hale. Maybe 'firing' is too strong a term, but Ritchey left Mount Wilson because he just didn't get on with Hale."

A revolution in cosmology

Despite the parting of ways, Ritchey's legacy was secure because the Hooker Telescope transformed astronomy and cosmology, thanks to the work of Mount Wilson staff astronomer Edwin Hubble and his colleague and assistant, Milton Humason. Thanks to the sheer resolving power of the Hooker Telescope, Hubble was able to resolve the mysterious spiral nebulae as galaxies in their own right, proving that galaxies other than our Milky Way exist.

He was able to confirm their distance by using the Hooker Telescope to identify individual stars in those galaxies, stars we call Cepheid variables, which have a particular relationship between their period of variation and their peak brightness. The work of Henrietta Swan Leavitt tells us that the longer a Cepheid's period of variability, the brighter they become, and knowing how luminous they should be, Hubble could compare that to how bright they appeared in the night sky through the Hooker Telescope and then deduce how far away they and their galaxies must be. Hubble and Humason later measured the redshifts of these galaxies, finding they are almost all moving away from us and that the cosmos is expanding.

The Hooker Telescope was superseded by the Hale Telescope, named after the Mount Wilson director and which has a 5.1-meter (200-inch) mirror and came into operation on Mount Palomar in 1949. The Hale Telescope remained the largest optical telescope in the world until 1975 and the Soviet Union's six-meter BTA-6 telescope, and this wasn't beaten until 1993 and the construction of the first of the twin 10-meter telescopes of the Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. At this size, mirrors have to be composed of multiple individual segments rather than being cast as one solid mirror because gravity would otherwise cause the mirror to deform.

During the second half of the twentieth century, astronomers began to identify the best locations for giant optical telescopes, away from the smog and light pollution of cities whose urban sprawl was growing so great that not even Californian mountaintops could escape them. Today, the best telescopes in the world cluster atop Mauna Kea, on numerous peaks in Chile's Atacama Desert, and in the Canary Islands.

How the Hubble Space Telescope democratized astronomy

For the most exceptional views, you can't beat space itself. In orbit above our obscuring atmosphere, or stationed 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) away at the L2 Lagrange point, space telescopes enjoy unprecedentedly clear views of the cosmos. The most recent space telescopes include the James Webb Space Telescope and, launching in September, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, but the most famous of all is of course the Hubble Space Telescope.

Launched in 1990, Hubble continues against all the odds to push the frontiers of science.

"Its output is staggering," said Smith. It has made over 1.7 million individual observations in the past 36 years, and 23,000 research papers based on those observations have been published by a total of nearly 29,000 astronomers.

"This is the democratization of astronomy," said Smith, and it completes a transformation in astronomy over 250 years in the making. Back when the United States was being founded, astronomers were generally lone wolves, self-taught and self-motivated like William Herschel. Then, throughout the nineteenth century astronomy increasingly became the purview of wealthy men, and even moving into the twentieth century, astronomical discovery was confined to a small group.

"For example, in the early 20th century, the only people who had access to the Mount Wilson telescopes were the staff at the Mount Wilson Observatory, and if you were not on staff then you just couldn't use the largest telescopes in the world, so as an observational astronomer you would be at a disadvantage," said Smith.

While this began to change in the latter half of the twentieth century, with organizations such as the European Southern Observatory and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (now NOIRLab) giving access to telescopes to a wider swathe of people, the Hubble Space Telescope has really spearheaded this democratization.

"People all over the world can use Hubble," said Smith. "It opens up so many possibilities for astronomical research, with thousands of people using it."

From well-heeled enthusiasts to businessmen looking for a legacy, astronomical research has now truly become accessible to people worldwide thanks to the largest telescopes in space and on Earth. Perhaps that is the ultimate achievement of the past 250 years of telescopes.

Engineers looking for safe water and recycled air for astronauts should look no further than nature, according to one team of researchers.

Oysters and other forms of "biogenerative" life support systems, which use living beings for food, water recycling and air regeneration, are under study at Pennsylvania's Harrisburg University with Monolith Space, a small company featured on the This Week in Space weekly podcast with Space.com's Tariq Malik and author Rod Pyle in March.

The shelled creatures aren't the only ones Harrisburg researchers are looking at: students and researchers are also examining algae, mollusks and even finfish. Hydroponics, or growing plants in water, is another approach. Monolith founder Jacob Scoccimerra, who is based in D.C., said the research is not only crucial for future astronaut living, but also unique among food projects in space. To the best of his knowledge, oysters have not yet flown in space, he told Space.com in an e-mail.

"There are no dedicated facilities on the ISS capable of studying this, currently, that being a dedicated aquarium-like facility with environmental control," he noted. The ISS previously did have an aquatic habitat until 2012, he said, but he described it as small (less than 3 liters or 0.8 gallons) and studying "primarily small finfish."

"Other aquatic organisms have been studied in a variety of non-specialized hardware," he said of space research more generally, but noted there is "no facility that is large enough to host organisms like oysters."

That's where a new prototype is coming in; Harrisburg and Monolith are together creating a closed-loop aquaculture system for marine organisms, which Scoccimerra said is roughly one-third of the way through NASA's technology readiness levels describing readiness for spaceflight.

Specific applications of the research for astronaut missions are still being determined, but the university described the system as an "automated, closed-loop aquaculture system to grow and study marine organisms that may be beneficial candidates for space nutrition and research." That said, the university also notes that oysters "provide natural water filtration", suggesting a possible use during long-duration missions.

Harrisburg's Rachel Fogle (an associate professor) and Glenn Williams (an instructor), provided guidance on the prototype, which uses oyster spat (baby oysters) and then helps the oysters grow into adulthood. The prototype was demonstrated publicly April 8.

"The project has essentially closed since we presented the results on campus," Scoccimerra said. "Since closure, the oyster habitat has been set up at Monolith's office in D.C., where the oysters are continuing to be fed and monitored."

NASA subject matter experts also gave insight on the system design, which will continue to be refined for the agency's payload interface requirements that govern ISS launch requirements, as well as those for newer commercial space stations when they are ready. (This does not guarantee a future space-station launch, but gives the oyster project more potential for that in the future.)

"Our pathway is to launch a smaller experiment first to ISS or similar platform, and then build from there," Scoccimerra said. "It is less a technical feasibility, and more of a need to study them. Historically aquatic biology has not been studied significantly in space compared to microbial, human, and plant biology."

The research is taking place as NASA pushes hard to return astronauts to the surface of the moon as a part of the agency's Artemis program, for a more permanent presence around the end of the decade. In January, the agency also identified "food and nutrition for Mars and sustained lunar" as one of the priority items in its civil space shortfall ranking, which targets areas for tech development.

While oysters in space appear to be a newer research opportunity, Harrisburg states that humans have been eating these creatures for 100,000 years, based on archaeology findings. An example from this era, using shellfish, has been found in South Africa, according to Archaeology Magazine.

NASA is hoping to use drones to speed up organ delivery for transplant patients.

A flight test earlier this month at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia saw a drone pick up a kidney and fly it for the first time beyond "line of sight", or the distance from which a drone is visible by an operator. Keeping a line of sight on a drone is a typical requirement for flight safety, but NASA is developing tools that may allow these machines to fly further away from operators in populated environments more regularly.

The kidney on the June 5 flight test was not viable for organ transplantation, which is why the agency and partner United Network for Organ Sharing were able to use it, according to WTKR. If all goes to plan with future tests conducted with NASA Langley, however, UNOS aims to fly organ-bearing drones as far as 15 miles (24 km), in between hospitals for example, to allow for swift and safe delivery to waiting patients. The drone collaboration was created to "explore faster, more reliable ways to transport donor organs using advanced aviation technologies", according to space agency materials published in April.

Drones may have a better ability than larger aircraft to navigate ground logistics or maneuver in dense or hard-to-reach delivery areas. What's more, drones might be able to do so faster than aircraft, which is crucial: organs can only last so long during transportation.

The test used additional radios on the drones intended to allow pilots to keep an eye on the drones even while out of sight. "What that means, more or less, is we're going to have the pilot in command be about a mile away inside of a control room," Kyle Smalling, an aerospace engineer at NASA Langley, told WAVY.com.

Smalling added that this test met Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requirements and took place on a NASA Langley flight range known as the City Environment Range Testing for Autonomous Integrated Navigation or CERTAIN, presumably for additional safety.

The flown kidney will eventually be assessed for "factors such as temperature stability and potential tissue damage caused by a lack of blood flow," NASA officials wrote in April about the June 5 flight test.

Beyond that, agency officials said they are hoping to explore "operational feasibility and scalability" for flying drones to patients as a "last-mile service" from a long-distance delivery, sort of in a similar way to how Amazon may be bringing packages to doors after initial shipment by truck.

"This is a chance to apply NASA Langley technology to a real-world problem that can save people's lives who are waiting for transplants," John Koelling, director of Langley's aeronautics research directorate, said in the statement.

"There's nothing more rewarding than seeing your technical work have a positive impact on people's lives."

If you've been looking for a good time to take the leap into the drone world, the 30% discount on this sub-250 g beginner drone might be enough to tempt you.

Before the release of the DJI Neo 2, we ranked the DJI Neo as the best DJI drone for simplicity. Our drone expert, James Abbott, gave it four out of five stars in his hands-on DJI Neo review, noting that not only is it a lot of fun to operate, but it also makes drone flight as simple or as complicated as you would like, thanks to the multiple control options.

Get the DJI Neo drone on sale for one more day at Amazon for $139.

Because the DJI Neo is sub-250g, you don't have to worry about registering it under the current drone regulations. At this price, you can't go wrong, even if you're a seasoned drone pilot looking for a backup or just something that tracks you and your adventures autonomously.

• Check out our Amazon Prime Day hub, where we bring you the best deals of Prime Day 2026, including early Prime Day deals.
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For $140, you get nearly everything you need to get flying: a charger, a screwdriver and spare propellers.

You fly the drone using the DJI Fly app on your mobile phone, but, luckily for beginners (or anxious pilots), you don't worry about losing it. On top of its return-to-home capability, you can instruct it to fly in pre-programmed patterns or even track you autonomously as you go about your business for a fairly generous 18-minute flight time.

You can capture 4K video in 30FPS of your adventures, and a 12MP 1/2-inch sensor will capture snaps of whatever you see from above.

You will see from our best drone guide that DJI is one of the leading names in the drone industry. $139 from Amazon is a really good price considering its capabilities and overall ease of use.

This deal is still live for Amazon Prime Day 2026. Prime Day ends June 26, and we're not sure if this discount will last beyond that. We expect it to increase back to $170, if not to full price.

We have all the best deals on drones, technology, and skywatching gear in our Prime Day hub, which will be regularly updated by our deal-hunting experts through this evening.

Key features: Up to 18 minutes flight time, 4.76 oz / 135 g weight, video capture up to 4K 30FPS / FHD 60FPS, 117.6-degree FOV

Product launched: September 2024

Price history: $139 is the cheapest we have seen this drone for. before deopping to $139, it was on offer. Given that the Neo 2 is out now, when the DJI Neo is gone, it's gone.

Price comparison: Amazon: $139

Reviews consensus: In our DJI Neo review, our expert awarded it four stars, singling out its simplicity as a highlight. Its 4000+ Amazon reviews are even more positive, with purchasers praising its sheer ease of use, value for money and video quality.

TechRadar: ★★★★ | Space: ★★★★ | Toms Guide: ★★★★½

Featured in guides: Best DJI drones

✅ Buy it if: You're new to flying drones and want something that is quick to get to grips with.

❌ Don't buy it if: You want to record hours of video, since it doesn't have a MicroSD slot. For that, consider the DJI Mini 4K.

DJI and Amazon really are knocking it out of the park with their Prime Day Deals. The DJI Neo is superb value right now, but for just $256 you can net the superior DJI Mini 4K, which our expert said "Offers everything you could possibly need in a drone while providing ease of use and reliability."

Get the DJI Mini 4K on sale right now at Amazon for $256.

DJI is one of the most trusted and acclaimed, drone manufacturers, and the DJI Mini 4K is another gem, appearing in our best drones, best beginner drones, and best camera drones guides. It's so beginner friendly, handling well in high winds, and captures 12MP photos in RAW and JPEG formats and 4K video in 30FPS. This bundle includes an additional battery and case, adding extra value to already great deal. There's also a Fly More Combo bundle which includes a three batteries and a battery charger.

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

This DJI Mini 4K is an amazing deal if you're new to drone flying or are just looking for a hobby drone to complement a top-tier model. In his review of the DJI Mini 4K, expert James Abbott awarded it a fantastic five stars, praising virtually every aspect of this drone.

With a 1/2.3-inch 12MP CMOS sensor and support for 4K/30fps (or 60fps at 1080p) video capture, you'll get brilliant birds-eye views of the world, and you can even use pre-programmed flight patterns for hands-free video capture.

Of course, you can also assume direct control and, by clipping your phone to the included remote, you'll see exactly what the drone sees. While there is no collision avoidance or follow-me subject tracking, it handles wind well and its return to home feature means it won't just plummet to earth when its battery gets low.

With two batteries included, you can fly for up to an hour and you also get a case for extra portability. This drone punches above its price tag at full price, but at $256, this is an unmissable deal.

Key features: 8.7 oz / 249 g weight, 7 x 5.55 x 5.47 inches / 178 x 141 x 139 mm size unfolded, 62 min flight time total (2 batteries), video up to 4K at 30FPS, photos up to 48MP

Product launched: April 2024

Price history: This is the absolute lowest we've seen this drone at, and with an extra battery included, it's a complete steal.

Price comparison: Amazon: $256 | Best Buy: $445 | Walmart: $499

Reviews consensus: Reviewing the DJI Mini 4K, our expert gave it an amazing five stars, praising its performance, ease of use and value for money. He remarked that, for beginners, it "offers everything you could possibly need in a drone while providing ease of use and reliability." Its Amazon reviews are similarly effusive.

TechRadar: ★★★★½ | Space: ★★★★★ | Digital Camera World: ★★★★★

Featured in guides: Best drones, best beginner drones, best camera drones, best DJI drones

✅ Buy it if: You're a beginner (or buying for one) and want to make the most of your money.

❌ Don't buy it if: You need a drone with follow-me subject tracking. Instead, consider the DJI Neo, which is also on sale for Prime Day.

Looking for a superb Prime Day Deal?
This DJI Neo drone was a good deal at $30 off, but now you can now save $60 on this beginner-friendly drone. That's double the discount!

Get the DJI Neo drone on sale right now at Amazon for $139.

It's easy to transport and, thanks to its sub-250g, you don't have to worry about registering it under the current drone regulations.

In our DJI Neo review, our expert James Abbott awarded it four stars, calling it "incredibly easy to use and fun." And, prior to the release of the DJI Neo 2, we ranked it as the best DJI drone for simplicity. At this price, you can't go wrong!

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

If you're a beginner, you'll be in high-flying heaven with the DJI Neo. For $170, you get nearly everything you need to get flying: a charger, a screwdriver and spare propellers.

You fly it via the DJI Fly app on your mobile phone, though you don't have to be super-attentive for fear of losing it; aside from its return to home facility, you can instruct it to fly in patterns or even track you (not as sinister as it sounds, I promise).

With an 18-minute flight time, it can capture 4K video in 30PS and a 12MP 1/2-inch sensor will capture snaps of whatever you see from above.

DJI is one of the leading names in the drone industry, and its products appear regularly in our best drone guide. At $169 from Amazon, this drone is a steal considering its capabilities and overall ease of use. This deal is already live ahead of Amazon Prime Day 2026, which starts tomorrow and runs until June 26. We have all the best deals across drones, technology and skywatching gear on our Prime Day hub, so stay tuned there for low prices.

Key features: Up to 18 minutes flight time, 4.76 oz / 135 g weight, video capture up to 4K 30FPS / FHD 60FPS, 117.6-degree FOV

Product launched: Sept 2024

Price history: We saw the DJI Neo drop to $159, but this is still an excellent deal. And, given the Neo 2 is out, when it's gone, it's gone.

Price comparison: Amazon: $169

Reviews consensus: In our DJI Neo review, our expert awarded it four stars, singling out its ease of use as a major plus. Its Amazon reviews are even more positive, with purchasers praising its sheer value.

TechRadar: ★★★★ | Space: ★★★★ | Toms Guide: ★★★★½

Featured in guides: Best DJI drones

✅ Buy it if: You're a beginner after a budget-friendly drone that's easy to fly.

❌ Don't buy it if: You're going to record hour upon hour of video, since it doesn't have a MicroSD slot. Consider the DJI Mini 4K instead.

Going online can be a hazardous activity; like the inhabitants of Silo's bunkers, you're never quite sure what's out there. That's where ProtonVPN comes in and, thanks to this deal, you can save over £130 on a VPN we rank as the best for privacy.

Save up to 70% on two years of ProtonVPN Plus and stream anywhere with this hacker-busting deal.

On top of fending off hackers, blocking adverts, and generally protecting your privacy, ProtonVPN's service allows you to access your paid streaming service, Apple TV, for example, from anywhere.

Let's say that you're called away on business this July 3, the precise day Silo Season 3's first episode is dropping. You're itching to find out the fates of Juliette and Bernard but you're far from home. Just fire up ProtonVPN and you'll find out who, if anyone, ended up extra crispy.

Read on and find out why else you should take advantage of this ProtonVPN deal.

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

If you've spent any amount of time online, whether browsing or part of your job, you'll know that the internet is full of hazards, from phishing to bots and beyond.

A VPN essentially puts you behind a wall, hiding your actual location from hackers and identity thieves. It also allows you to 'spoof' your location, accessing the best streaming services even if you're on the go.

This deal is for ProtonVPN Plus, which allows you to browse securely, protecting up to ten devices at once. It crushes malware, offers super-fast streaming, and boasts 20,000+ servers across 140+ countries.

On top of that, you get encrypted cloud storage, a password manager and more. If you want to stream and surf safely, you really can't go wrong.

Key features: ProtonVPN Plus includes ad-blocking, anti-malware measures, fast streaming and up to ten devices supported.

Price history: We've seen ProtonVPN drop to this price during Black Friday but that's a long time to wait if you miss out this deal. .

Featured in guides: Best VPN services

✅ Buy it if: You want to stay safe online and stream your favorite shows wherever you are.

❌ Don't buy it if: You already have a VPN because, great as ProtonVPN is, you don't need two.

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

Ahead of Prime Day 2026, which runs from 23-26 June, Amazon has dropped the Nikon Z fc mirrorless camera to its lowest price of the year. It's available for $856.95, reduced by $100 from its usual $956.95 MSRP.

Get the Nikon Z fc camera on sale right now for $856.95 at Amazon.

In our Nikon Z fc camera review, our expert tester Jacob Little awarded it 4.5/ star rating. Although it wouldn't be the first choice among the best cameras for astrophotography, the Nikon, with its APS-C sensor rather than a full-frame sensor, is still a highly capable camera for capturing the night sky, star trails, and the Milky Way when paired with the best astrophotography lenses.

The Nikon Z fc holds the title as the top choice as a budget camera in our best cameras 2026 buying guide, and is best overall in our beginner cameras buying advice, and with stiff competition from the likes of Canon and Fuji, it makes the Z fc a very attractive buy with this discounted Nikon deal on Amazon.

This camera deal is marked as a limited-time offer on Amazon, and is likely to be popular, considering it's the lowest price of the year. There's no indication of when it actually ends, and going by previous deals, it could be anytime, so we'd say grab it while you can.

Amazon also has the Nikon Z fc with a 16-50mm lens, discounted to $996.95, from $1,999.95. That's a 17% saving, and is ideal for beginners wishing to hit the ground running with an included all-rounder lens.

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

We highly rated the Nikon Z fc, and for me, as a fan of retro-looking cameras, it's safe to say Nikon has delivered here. From the 'Nikon' branding on the front to the shutter setting and exposure control dials on top, the Z fc just oozes that vintage look, and it adds to the appeal of the camera.

However, the look is the only yesteryear feature here; the Z fc is packed with mirrorless camera technology, and its APS-C sensor delivered an impressive dynamic range and performed well in various lighting scenarios.

We reckoned the Z fc hits the sweet spot between high-quality image output and a budget-friendly body size. It's compact and lightweight, and although it might not be the first choice for astrophotography, it's capable enough, and its overall versatility means it's suitable for just about everything from travel photography to capturing the latest SpaceX launch.

Our tester Jacob Little summed up the camera by saying: "The Nikon Z fc is an impressive bit of design and a gorgeous camera to look at and use. On the inside, it's capable and easy to get to grips with for most casual users."

Key features: Mirrorless, APS-C CMOS, 20.9MP, up to 11FPS burst shooting, 4K Ultra HD video at 30p, 25p or 24p, Nikon Z and F Mount lenses, 1 xSD/SDHC/SDXC (UHS-I), 100-51,200 (expanded 50-204,800) ISO range, 0.85 lb (390g) weight, 3-inch fully-articulating, 3.04M touchscreen.

Launched: July 2021

Price history: Before today's Amazon camera deal, the best price this year on Amazon has been $956.95. The launch price of the Nikon Z fc was $960, and that price has held fairly steady ever since. It makes this price a significant $100 off on a rarely discounted Nikon camera

Price comparison: Amazon: $856.95 | Adorama: $856.95 | Walmart: $996.95

Reviews consensus: There is no doubt that the Nikon Z fc is a powerhouse of a mirrorless camera that can deliver when it comes to astrophotography, but will also have you covered as a versatile all-rounder. We scored it a 4.5-star rating, and Amazon reviews are on par with ours, with an average 4.4 out of 5, and over 75% of global ratings are 5-star.

Space: ★★★★½ | Techradar: ★★★★½

Featured in guides: Best cameras, best beginner cameras, best Nikon cameras

✅ Buy it if: You want a camera with a gorgeous retro aesthetic, paired with functionality, design, and modern technology, at its best price this year.

❌ Don't buy it if: You're a more experienced photographer looking to upgrade. The big brother of the Z fc, the Nikon Z f has the same retro look, with a full-frame sensor upgrade. The Nikon Z f is discounted on Amazon by 7% to $2,046.95.

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

Want stunning views of the night sky, without the awkward bulk of the best telescopes? That’s where these powerful all-weather Canon 18x50 IS binoculars come in. We think they’re the best image stabilized binoculars for magnification and thanks to this pre-Prime Day deal, they’re $100 off.

Get these Canon 18x50 IS binoculars for $1549 from B&H Photo

Canon’s gear features in our guides to the best cameras, best lenses and best binoculars, and the Canon 18x50 IS binos are well up to Canon's high standards.

In their Canon 18x50 IS binoculars review, our expert Jason Parnell-Brookes awarded them four stars, lavishing praise on their optics, image stabilization, ease of use and more. With their excellent low-light performance, they proved superb for stargazing.

Now's a great time to take advantage of this summer deal, too. June 16 sees Mercury shining alongside a sliver of the moon and at $100 off, these Canon 18x50 IS binoculars are perfect for bringing this conjunction into beautiful focus. The good news is this deal is from B&H, so if you want to avoid spending with Amazon on Prime Day, this is a great option.

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

Earning four stars in our Canon 18x50 IS binoculars review, these image-stabilizing binoculars boast superb image quality. The 50mm object lenses admit plenty of light and the 18x magnification brings the cosmos closer than some telescopes.

Their image quality is further enhanced by the inclusion of Canon’s proprietary UD (ultra-low dispersion) lens elements and Super Spectra coating.

A little over 1 kg, these porro prism binoculars are heavier than some and, correspondingly, harder to hold for long periods of time. However, the image stabilization eliminates the wobble that would otherwise creep in and ensures rock-solid viewing; our expert Jase found it preferable to attaching them to a tripod.

Their only real complaint was that, despite being advertised as all-weather, the Canon 18x50 IS binoculars are not strictly waterproof or fogproof (though they had zero issues with fogging during the test). Now, at $100 off, these are a superb investment for stargazers or nature-watchers.

Key features: 18x magnification, 50mm objective lens diameter, 3.7 degrees angular field of view, 15mm eye relief, 41.6 oz (1.18 kg) weight

Price history: These binos dropped to $1155 last Cyber Monday but $100 off is still a respectable saving. They're currently also the same price at Adorama and Best Buy.

Price comparison: BHPhotoVideo: $1549 | Adorama: $1549 | Best Buy: $1549

Reviews consensus: We praised virtually every aspect of these binoculars in our Canon 18x50 IS binoculars review, from magnification to image stabilization to ease of use. The reviews from purchasers are just as positive.

Space: ★★★★ | Live Science: ★★★★½

✅ Buy it if: You’re a stargazer after a pair of powerful image-stabilized binoculars that offer superb image quality coupled with excellent magnification.

❌ Don't buy it if: You’re on a tight budget and don’t need IS. Instead, consider these Celestron SkyMaster Pro 20x80 binoculars, which offer excellent image quality for much less money

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

Norton is renowned for providing industry-leading antivirus and security software. The US brand's VPN service is recommended as one of the best VPN services and also one of the most improved VPN providers of 2026 by our tech expert colleagues at TechRadar.

Norton VPN scored an impressive 4 out of 5-star rating, with its speeds, ease of use, and straightforward app being some of its review features. Norton has just dropped discounts across its three VPN plans, and you can save up to 70% or $192 when you sign up for a two-year plan.

Get up to 70% off when you sign up for a Norton VPN two-year plan at Norton.

As well as providing a host of online security features, a VPN allows you to view all your space and sci-fi streaming shows and movies from anywhere in the world.

There is a load of exciting sci-fi series coming in the next few months, including Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4, which is scheduled to premiere globally on Paramount+ on Thursday, July 23, 2026.

The crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise — led by Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) — is set to embark on another season of thrilling and emotional adventures across the stars. Rebecca Romijn, who plays Commander Una Chin-Riley in the acclaimed sci-fi series, recently told fans, "We're so proud of this Strange New Worlds, and we're really proud of season 4; we think it's our best season yet."

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

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

Norton not only unlocks streaming geo-restrictions but also comes with added security benefits, which are particularly useful when overseas and connecting to unknown Wi-Fi connections. It offers ad blockers, anti-malware protection, a password manager and breach scanner, fast connections, and identity theft insurance. It means you can view and download content, work, and generally be online anywhere in the world with confidence.

These Norton deals are live now, running from June 11-24 inclusive, with prices and offers varying depending on the plan chosen and your location.

Key features: Up to 70% discount, high-speed VPN, ad and tracker blocker, anti-malware protection, password manager, data-breach scanner and cloud backup.

Price history: Before today's deal, the price of the popular "Plus" plan was $199.98. It's now 70% off and takes it down to just $59.76, or $2.49 for a two-year plan.

✅ Buy it if: You're looking for maximum online security, and you want to stream all your favorite shows anywhere in the world.

❌ Don't buy it if: Either you already have a VPN, or you're not in the market for one. Those are the only reasons you wouldn't make the most of this excellent value offer.

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

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

It's hard to fit everything on a small satellite, especially the fuel, but a new propulsion system could make it easier.

Instead of having separate fuel for chemical thrusters and electrical thrusters, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) study suggests that a single propellant can power both kinds of systems. And this idea will get an in-space test soon, if all goes according to plan.

"If you can have chemical and electrical propulsion in one small package, it's the best of both worlds," Amelia Bruno, a former postdoctoral student at MIT who led the new study, said in a university statement on Monday (June 1). "This opens the door for small satellites to do even more science, more observations, and more interesting missions, all on a smaller and cheaper platform."

The study borrows from fuel research by the U.S. Air Force, and it was partially funded by NASA. The space agency's Green Propulsion Dual Mode cubesat spacecraft will launch no earlier than November to see if the propulsion system and monopropellant, already tested on the ground, also works well in space.

The mission to low Earth-orbit will serve as a valuable demo, the agency stated, for missions that go much farther from our planet — to places such as Mars, the eventual destination for human missions under NASA policy.

"NASA is looking to expand deeper into space to support future agency objectives. Major drivers for these activities include researching and developing new and advanced propulsion systems and capabilities," agency officials wrote of the cubesat mission, which last year was expected to launch in October 2025, according to a SpaceNews report.

The green monopropellant the mission is using, tested in a new MIT study in the Journal of Propulsion and Power, builds upon previous Air Force research. The propellant is called ASCENT, or Advanced Spacecraft Energetic Non-Toxic Propellant. The fuel is marketed as greener, or less toxic, than the usual high-efficiency hydrazine that is perfect for making big maneuvers in space but is dangerous to handle. It's also been tested in space before, during NASA's Green Propellant Infusion Mission in 2019-20 (when the fuel was called AF-M315E; it has since been renamed, according to the Air Force Research Laboratory, which developed it).

What's more, ASCENT — despite being originally envisioned for chemical thrusters that use fuel quickly, during big space moves like orbital insertions — may also be suitable for electrospray thrusters. These thrusters are designed to make smaller, long-term adjustments to a spacecraft's trajectory. The tiny (thumbnail- to dime-sized) thrusters use an electric field to accelerate particles of liquid propellant. The acceleration fires the propellant into space as a spray (hence the name).

The new MIT study appears to show that one fuel could serve different spacecraft needs. Engineers tested how well electrospray thrusters on the ground performed with ASCENT, using a model cubesat set on a testbed that magnetically suspended a device in a vacuum chamber, simulating the free-floating environment of space. The team tried out different voltage levels on the thrusters and examined the spray's ability to maneuver and spin the cubesat.

"Compared to our normal electrospray propellants, ASCENT can provide similar performance in terms of thrust," Bruno said. "Now that we know our thrusters work with ASCENT, we can start thinking of all the ways we can make them even better."

While NASA's focus is on distant destinations, ASCENT could also be repurposed for missions closer to home. Small satellites, for example, could make use of the propellant to save fuel during Earth-observing missions, especially when they're tasked to pivot for a fast-moving weather event.

"Say there's a storm coming, and you'd want to deploy your constellation of small satellites to observe over one location," study co-author Paulo Lozano, director of MIT's space propulsion laboratory, said in the same statement. "You could choose to send them quickly, or slowly, depending on the nature of the observation. And the only way to do that is if you have two propulsion systems, which is now possible."

NASA's X-59 jet has finally gone supersonic.

The X-59, a long-nosed demonstrator designed to help develop the tech required for "quiet" supersonic flight, notched the milestone on Friday (June 5), more than six months after getting off the ground for the first time.

"The X-59’s first supersonic flight is a testament to America's enduring leadership in science, engineering and aerospace innovation," Michael Kratsios, assistant to the president for science and technology and director of the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy, said in a statement on Friday.

Friday's flight began and ended at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The X-59, with NASA test pilot Jim "Clue" Less at the yoke, took off at 2:08 p.m. EDT (1808 GMT; 11:08 a.m. local California time) and touched down 81 minutes later.

Less took the jet to a maximum altitude of 43,400 feet (13,228 meters) and a top speed of 713 mph (1,147 kph). That works out to about Mach 1.1, or 1.1 times faster than the speed of sound, NASA officials said in the statement. (The speed of sound varies with temperature, as sound waves move faster in warmer air. At sea level, where the air is relatively warm, Mach 1 is about 761 mph, or 1,225 kph.)

X-59 team members won't rest on their laurels, however. In just a few days, they plan to send the plane on its first "mission conditions" flight — one that reaches a top speed of Mach 1.4 and an altitude of about 55,000 feet (16,764 m).

"This speed and altitude are the base conditions for the X-59 when it will eventually fly over several U.S. communities, enabling NASA to gather data about how people may perceive its quiet thump," NASA officials wrote in the same statement.

"NASA will share this data with U.S. and international regulators to help establish new data-driven noise standards to enable a future viable market for supersonic commercial flight over land," they added.

That market dried up in 1973, when the Federal Aviation Administration banned such flights to protect people and property from loud sonic booms.

The X-59, the centerpiece of NASA's Quesst ("Quiet Supersonic Technology") program, is designed to generate mild thumps rather than clapping booms. If all goes to plan, the work it's doing now could help bring widespread supersonic flight back to the U.S.

The X-59, which was built by Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, has been quite active in the past few months, building up more and more flight hours.

"Since the aircraft’s first flight on Oct. 28, 2025, the team has made tremendous progress, flying 16 times in the last 90 days and getting into a steady test rhythm," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in the same statement. "I'm grateful to the NASA team and Lockheed Martin Skunk Works for their help getting us to this point, and I hope this is the first of many collaborations as we rebuild NASA’s X-plane portfolio."

The Celestron NexStar 8SE is the largest in the range of the best-selling NexStar telescopes. It's hailed by Celestron as the 'world's most beloved telescope', and it tops many of our buying advice on the best telescopes, including the top-overall choice as the best telescopes for deep space and the best telescopes for seeing planets guides.

The unmistakable orange-colored Celestron NexStar 8SE is without doubt a brilliantly performing telescope, and such performance is rarely discounted. It makes this Amazon telescope deal one to highlight. The Celestron NexStar 8SE has $200 off and is down to $1,499, its lowest price of the year. Even with Amazon Prime Day coming in June, we think it's unlikely to go any lower.

Save $200 on the Celestron NexStar 8SE, its best price of the year at Amazon.

In our review, our expert tester Jase Parnell-Brookes awarded it an impressive 4.5 out of 5-star score. Although they noted it comes in with an MSRP that might put new stargazers off, Jase reckoned it was a worthy investment and a fantastic scope. It's not only suitable for a beginner but has plenty to offer the intermediate or advanced sky watcher.

Amazon has the NexStar 8SE marked as limited stock and at this price it could sell out fast. However, Walmart is price-matching the Amazon deal along with Adorama, should you wish to purchase your it elsewhere.

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

Considering Parnell-Brookes reviewed the NexStar 8SE telescope at full MSRP, this Amazon deal is well worth consideration because you not only get one of the best-looking telescopes but with its high-quality Schmidt-Cassegrain optics, you get beautifully clear views of the night sky. It's ideal for viewing both planets and distant objects like galaxies, nebulas and star clusters. Plus, it lets in 78% more light than its NexStar 6SE sibling thanks to its large 8-inch aperture.

Although for a beginner it is a considerable investment, it suits all abilities. Features like the motorized single fork arm and handheld remote control functionality mean it's easy to set up and start stargazing even for those unfamiliar with the night sky.

Parnell-Brookes also noted the smoothness of the motor, and with the help of the Celestron SkyAlign app, you can align the scope using three bright stars and enjoy automated viewing almost instantly in your stargazing journey.

Smaller aperture versions are available at 4, 5 and 6 inches with graduating costs. Of course, the smaller you go, the less light captured, thus making your views less awe-inspiring with each drop in aperture.

Key features: 8-inch (203.2mm) aperture, 80-inch (2032mm) focal length, f/10 focal ratio, 180x highest useful magnification, 32 lbs (14.48 kg) weight, two-year warranty.

Launched: June 2005

Price history: Before today's telescope deal, the best price we've seen on the Celestron NexStar 8 SE telescope was $1,299 during the Black Friday sales of 2024. The MSRP is $1,699, which makes the current on-sale price of $1,499 a significant saving on what is a seldom-discounted model.

Price comparison: Amazon: $1,499 | Adorama: $1,499 | Walmart: $1,499

Reviews consensus: There is no doubt that the Celestron NexStar 8 SE is a fantastic telescope; it pairs Celestron’s legendary orange tube with a fully computerized GoTo system—ideal for those ready to step up from manual scopes and explore more of the night sky with precision and ease.

Space: ★★★★½ | Live Science: ★★★★½

Featured in guides: Best telescopes, Best telescopes for deep space, Best telescopes for seeing planets

✅ Buy it if: You want to view deep space objects and planets, whether you're a beginner or advanced sky watcher. The automated motorized function means this telescope can be used by anyone with any level of experience and knowledge.

❌ Don't buy it if: You are seeking a more budget-friendly option. One of our recommended best budget telescopes might be more suitable, or even one of the best telescopes for beginners.

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

NASA's X-59 jet is on the verge of finally breaking the sound barrier.

The X-59 is a supersonic aircraft designed with a radical elongated geometry that aims to reduce the volume of the sonic booms it can create when breaking the sound barrier. NASA's goal with the X-59 is to help develop "quiet" supersonic technologies that could lead to aircraft designs that minimize the impact of sonic booms on the ground below, which could potentially enable current restrictions on supersonic flight to be lifted.

After making its first test flight in October 2025 and going on 14 test flights since March 2026, the X-59 is finally ready to take on its first supersonic flight sometime this month, NASA says. According to the agency, the aircraft will reach Mach 1.4 (925 miles per hour or 1,489 kilometers per hour) at approximately 55,000 feet (16.7 kilometers). "What comes next is the first time this one-of-a-kind aircraft will fly supersonic," said Cathy Bahm, project manager for NASA's Low Boom Flight Demonstrator. "Completing the first mission-conditions flight is especially meaningful — it's the moment where we begin validating the aircraft in the environment it was designed for," Bahm said in a statement.

NASA recently completed several key milestones in the X-59 testing program ahead of this first supersonic flight attempt. Just last month, the jet retracted its landing gear for the first time, revealing how the aircraft will look when in full flight.

The X-59 has also recently pushed its speed as high as Mach 0.95, or around 627 mph (1,009 km/h) and made its first pair of test flights in a single day. Engineers and technicians working on the program now have a much better understanding of the aircraft and its unique systems.

One of the most unique features of the X-59 is what's known as its eXternal Vision System, or XVS. Because the nose of the X-59 is so elongated, pilots wouldn't be able to see what's in front of the aircraft out of a forward windscreen  — if it even had one.

The X-59 was designed without a forward windscreen at all, and instead uses a series of cameras that feed into an augmented reality display. Through the XVS, X-59 pilots get a view of what's in front of the aircraft with its nose completely removed from the picture.

The X-59 has so far been flying under what NASA refers to as "Phase 1" of its test program, which was designed to gauge the initial performance of the aircraft at low speeds and make sure it's airworthy. NASA has also been validating test instruments to help measure shockwaves the X-59 produces.

After making its first supersonic flight in upcoming tests, NASA will begin Phase 2 of the X-59 test campaign some time later in 2026.

That phase will be key for NASA's overall goal for the mission: reducing the impact of the sonic boom that is perceived on the ground below the aircraft as it flies over at above the speed of sound.

Supersonic flight has been prohibited above land within a certain distance of the U.S. since 1973 due to how disruptive the thunderous sonic booms are to people on the ground. NASA hopes the technologies developed for the X-59 can enable supersonic flight restrictions to be lifted over the continental U.S., paving the way for commercial supersonic flight once again.

"As we look ahead to the upcoming flights, we're poised to open the envelope even further — moving boldly toward the mission test point this aircraft was built to achieve," Bahm said in NASA's statement. "Flying supersonic and reaching these milestones isn't just progress; it's the realization of years of perseverance, innovation, and teamwork. Each step brings us closer to Phase 2, and to the future of commercial supersonic flight."

Aside from NASA, several private companies including Colorado's Boom Supersonic are developing aircraft capable of quieter supersonic flight. Boom Supersonic made its first successful supersonic flight last year, becoming the first civil aircraft to go supersonic over the continental United States.

Commercial supersonic flight would enable much faster travel times and could be a major boon to disaster relief, medical transport and more.

A novel approach to scouting the sand dunes of Mars is the Valles Marineris Explorer - or VaMEx. VaMEx is a project of the German Space Agency at the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The goal of the initiative is to blueprint an autonomous, heterogeneous robot swarm for exploring Valles Marineris on Mars — heralded as the "Grand Canyon" on the Red Planet.

Valles Marineris is an enormous rift valley system on Mars that scientists want to scour for traces of liquid water, which may exist in sheltered niches and serve as an habitat for possible life. But the region is difficult to investigate due to its topography, which poses challenges for robotic surveying.

But the VaMEx team is exploring combinations of driving, walking, and flying systems to leverage what each concept brings to the table in terms of jointly investigating a large area with varied environmental characteristics. One unique approach the team is exploring is a Mars rover that is outfitted with inventive curved wheels, which, like the feet of a desert lizard, can "swim" through sand.

A University of Würzburg research group has picked up on the sandfish's way of locomotion, adopting and adapting that movement into a Mars rover that reportedly outperforms other ways of navigating across sand.

Collaborating with DLR researchers in Bremen, Germany, University of Würzburg specialists have designed rover wheels that imitate the sandfish mobility characteristics and interaction with the ground, generating both longitudinal and lateral forces. That movement leaves sinusoidal, or S-shaped tracks in the sand.

Bio-inspired

Mars machinery must cope with sand, gravel, slopes, and generally uneven terrain while maintaining their mobility, stability, and efficiency.

Marco Schmidt, a university computer scientist and head of the Chair of Embedded Systems and Sensors for Earth Observation (ESSEO), is leading the bio-inspired mobility research.

Schmidt's team tested the rover on sand and in open terrain, working with the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence in Bremen and the University of Bremen.

The results showed that the vehicle moves stably on sand, however, the experiments also spotlighted clear indications for improvements, Schmidt says.

The sandfish locomotion idea has been adopted from Scincus scincus, a lizard found in the Sahara desert that is able to burrow and then literally "swim" through the desert sand to hunt or escape predators.

Mobility solutions

Work on the mobility technique is ongoing at the university, with further refinements predicted to improve performance on mixed terrain. The ESSEO team aims to expand its contribution to VaMEx towards software-driven mobility.

Research plans also call for development of control strategies that explicitly take into account slippage, sinking and the interaction between terrain and wheel. An outcome would be more stable and adaptable behavior of the rover in granular environments.

"Creating mobility solutions that can reliably and efficiently drive across vast dune fields on Mars, not just in Valles Marineris, but across the planet, is key for future Mars exploration, both robotic and crewed," adds Pascal Lee of the SETI Institute, Mars Institute, Ceres Robotics, and NASA Ames Research Center, who is not associated with this study.

"This bio-inspired technology development is both innovative and intriguing," Lee told Space.com.

For details on the DLR's work on rovers, crawlers & drones on Mars — the Valles Marineris Explorer project, visit the project's website.

Surfshark is recommended by our tech expert colleagues over at TechRadar as the best value-for-money VPN service on the market, and we've got an exclusive deal to share with our readers.

As well as providing a host of online security features, a VPN allows you to view all your space and sci-fi streaming shows and movies from anywhere in the world.

Get an exclusive Surfshark VPN deal and a FREE Amazon voucher up to $30 at Surfshark.

There is a load of exciting sci-fi series coming in the next few months, including the finale of Series 5 of space race thriller "For All Mankind", which screens on Apple TV this Friday, May 29, 2026.

For fans of this long-running space race alternative history show, you won't have to wait long for more, as spinoff series "Star City" premieres its first two episodes on the same day. Fans can expect a new Soviet-perspective spinoff with eight episodes to enjoy. It follows the same timeline as "For All Mankind" and promises to be an exciting addition to the popular space drama.

The sixth season of "For All Mankind" is also in production and will serve as the definitive final chapter of the Apple TV series, which debuted in 2019, and current details point to a 2027 release window.

Our exclusive Surfshark VPN deals mean you can save up to 87%, get three months FREE, and grab an Amazon Gift Card up to $30 when you sign up for a two-year plan, perfect for the Amazon Prime Day sales, landing in June.

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

Surfshark not only unlocks streaming geo-restrictions but also comes with added security benefits, which are particularly useful when overseas and connecting to unknown Wi-Fi connections. It offers ad blockers, anti-malware protection, a password manager and breach scanner, fast connections, and identity theft insurance. It means you can view and download content, work, and generally be online anywhere in the world with confidence. It unlike some other services allows for unlimited devices, so perfect for travelling with family and adds to the value.

These Surfshark deals are not only exclusive but some of the best we've seen so far this year. By getting the One Plus plan (other plans are available and prices vary, but so does what you get and the value of the Amazon voucher), you get a fast connection, anti-malware and browsing protection, an ad and tracker blocker, a password manager and breach scanner, and identity theft coverage up to $1M. It's a win-win for online streaming and cybersecurity. Surfshark also offers a 30-day money-back guarantee for extra peace of mind.

Our exclusive Surfshark deals are a limited-time offer, running from May 25 to June 2, and prices and offers vary depending on the plan chosen and your location.

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Price history: Before today's deal, the price of the popular "One Plus" plan was $562.95 for 24 months, or $24.69 a month. It's now up to 80% off and comes with the Amazon voucher worth up to $30, and three months free.

✅ Buy it if: You're looking for maximum online security, you want to stream all your favorite shows anywhere in the world, and you want a FREE Amazon voucher.

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

In our Nikon Stabilized 12x25 S Binocular review, our expert tester Jase Parnell-Brookes awarded them a perfect 5 out of 5-star score. The image stabilization provided stable views for stargazing and they are at a decent price point for IS binoculars, even before this deal.

Get the Nikon 12x25 S Binoculars, on sale right now for $626.95 at Amazon.

They hold a much-coveted spot in our best binoculars guide as the best compact image-stabilized (IS) binoculars. As you'd expect, these also feature in our best IS binoculars guide and right now, Amazon has dropped the Nikon 12x25 S binoculars by $70, which is the lowest price we've seen this year. It takes them down to just $626.95 from the usual $696.95 retail price.

This binocular deal at Amazon is a rarely seen discount and is likely to be popular with budding stargazers and anyone upgrading from the best budget binoculars. There's no indication of when it actually ends, and going by previous deals, it could be anytime. However, Adorama is price-matching the Amazon deal and also has free shipping.

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Jase ranked these Nikon binoculars as an incredible compact binocular and loved the image stabilization (IS), which was one addition to the previous model that transformed them into one of the best binoculars they have ever tested.

Jase felt the image stabilization was so significant that it made the performance of these compact Nikon binoculars comparable with regular binoculars many times their size. Additionally, they noted that these are not without their limitations and the 25mm objective lenses (25mm) made views quite dark when compared to binoculars with larger objective lenses. However, these direct comparisons shouldn't be made as the appeal of the Nikon stabilized 12x25 binoculars are in their ultra-portability and their weight, giving stargazers on the go a small and lightweight tool for observing constellations adn asterisms. Jase even managed to observe the Andromeda galaxy (M31) and the Orion nebula (M42) but anything fainter than these couldn't be seen in a light-polluted area.

Although the IS gives them a hefty price tag, Jase felt it was a worthy investment and still awarded them that perfect score, so at $70 off, they offer even more value for the beginner stargazer.

Key features: 12x magnification, 25mm objective lens diameter, 4.5-degree angular field-of-view, 12.3mm eye of relief, 13.9 oz (395 g) weight.

Launched: November 2024

Price history: Before today's binocular deal, the best price we've seen on the Nikon Stabilized 12x25 binoculars was $635 during the Black Friday sales last year. The MSRP is $696.95, which makes the current on-sale price of $626.95 a significant saving on a seldom-discounted model.

Price comparison: Amazon: $626.95 | Adorama: $626.95 | Nikon: $629

Reviews consensus: There is no doubt that the Nikon Stabilised 12x25 S Binoculars are an impressive compact binocular, and they tick all the boxes for sky watching and more. Lightweight, pocketable, and they provide a reasonably affordable price point for IS binos. We scored them with a 5-star rating, and there wasnt much our expert tester didn't love in these.

Space: ★★★★★ | Digital Camera World: ★★★★

Featured in guides: Best binoculars, Best compact binoculars, Best IS binoculars

✅ Buy it if: You want what is arguably the best compact binocular on the market that offers an affordable way into image-stabilized binoculars, that is lightweight and can easily slip into your pocket.

❌ Don't buy it if: You need really high magnification or bigger objective lenses. For more powerful image-stabilized binoculars, we recommend the Canon IS 15x50 binoculars.

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

Walmart has dropped the Canon EOS R5 Mark II camera to its lowest-ever price in this incredible Canon camera deal for astrophotographers. It's available for $3,398, reduced by $501 from its usual $3,899 MSRP.

In our Canon EOS R5 Mark II review, our expert tester James Abbott awarded it 4.5 stars out of 5-star score. James rated the R5 Mark II as a high-tech camera capable of capturing any subject (though the night sky is our favorite), thanks to its incredible 45MP sensor and excellent high ISO handling.

You can get the Canon EOS R5 Mark II camera, on sale right now for $3,398 at Walmart.

We rank it as the best resolution Canon camera, but it doesn't skimp on features and functionality, with a wealth of customization options. Its OLED viewfinder is sharp and the fully articulated touchscreen provides clear live view and playback of photos and videos.

This is the best price this full-frame mirrorless camera has ever been, beating the previous best of $3,449 from Black Friday last year. It's an attractive purchase to anyone, a pro photographer or a top-tier amateur, perhaps looking for an upgrade on the original R5.

This camera deal at Walmart is likely to be popular, considering the Amazon price is $500 more. However, there's no indication of when it actually ends and going by previous deals, it could be anytime, so we'd say grab it while you can.

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

We highly rate the Canon EOS R5 Mark II and it's also my own camera of choice. It comes highly recommended for incredible all-around performance. Although I don't shoot astrophotography, I do shoot a lot of concerts and its low-light performance delivers crisp and sharp details with very little quality loss at higher ISO levels. During our testing, we found that the noise handling worked well for shooting astrophotography.

So if you're looking for one of the best cameras for astrophotography, that will also have you covered for any style of photography from fast action sport and wildlife shooting to stunning portraits, you won't go wrong with the R5 Mark II.

Highlights for me include the incredibly fast autofocus, which is accurate and intelligent. I've been shooting fast-paced soccer with the Mark II and I'm impressed with the subject detection, which can identify subjects even when they're partially obscured by obstacles.

The 30FPS shooting on the Mark II is also fantastic, increased over the 20FPS on the original R5. I actually filled a 128 GB CFexpress card in 45 minutes of a soccer match, and had to slow the camera down, which highlights the incredible speed of this camera. This is no bad thing, but something to be aware of if you're shooting wildlife or sport.

Another useful feature is the pre-continuous shooting mode that, when enabled, allows the camera to start shooting 15 frames while the shutter button is only halfway depressed, meaning the camera is already shooting the action before you've even started thinking about it.

Our tester James Abbott summed up the camera by saying: "The Canon EOS R5 Mark II is a fantastic camera with some of the latest camera technology available. The build quality and design can’t be faulted, while the features available, including fast and precise autofocus, make it a pleasure to use."

For me, this price really represents terrific value for money on a camera that I absolutely love.

Key features: Full frame, 45MP, up to 30FPS burst shooting, 8K up to 60 FPS, 4K up to 120 FPS, 2K up to 240 FPS, FHD up to 240 FPS video, 100-51,200 (expanded 50-204,800) ISO range, RF/RF-S lenses, 1x SD/SDHC/SDXC (UHS-II), 1x CFexpress Type B memory card slots, 1.45 lb (656g) weight, 5.45 x 3.87 x 3.48 inches (138 x 98 x 89 mm) dimensions, 3.2-inch fully-articulating, 5.76M screen.

Launched: July 2024

Price history: Before today's Walmart camera deal, the best price this year on Amazon has been $3,899. The launch price of the R5 Mark II was back $4,299, which makes this price a significant saving on a very rarely discounted mirrorless camera

Price comparison: Walmart: $3,398 | Adorama: $3,899 | Amazon: $3,898

Reviews consensus: There is no doubt that the Canon EOS R5 Mark II is a powerhouse of a camera that is not only incredible for astrophotography, but for all styles of shooting. We scored it a 4.5-star rating, and it only missed out on the rarely seen perfect score for its price.

Space: ★★★★½ | Techradar: ★★★★★| Tom's Guide: ★★★★½

Featured in guides: Best Canon cameras

✅ Buy it if: You want what is arguably the most versatile and easy-to-use pro-level mirrorless camera, with a brilliant spec including new near-perfect AF and subject tracking features, at its best price.

❌ Don't buy it if: You're a beginner or looking at a first mirrorless camera purchase. There is a lot going on with the R5 Mark II, including video functionality that could be overwhelming for new shooters. The Sony A7C II is our best beginner-friendly mirrorless camera and has a far more palatable price.

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

Cowboy Space Corp. has raised $275 million for a satellite "stampede" ahead of its first planned launch later this year.

The company itself isn't new, but its name is; Cowboy Space was previously known as Aetherflux. The newly rebranded outfit will use the $275 million — a round of "Series B" funding led by Index Ventures — to launch solar-powered AI data centers to orbit.

Cowboy Space plans to do this with a homegrown rocket whose upper stage also serves as a data center — meaning the rocket stage and the data center will be a one-piece deal, acting as a 1-megawatt hub once in orbit.

That engineering is needed, Cowboy officials said in a May 11 statement, to get the company's planned constellation of satellites, called Stampede, swiftly into orbit to meet worldwide demand for AI computing. (The number of satellites in the planned constellation was not disclosed.) The company also plans to own its manufacturing chain and to have "dedicated launch sites" to speed up launches as much as possible.

"Earth's energy grid can't run at the pace of AI. We can," Cowboy officials said via X on May 11. "AI is driving the largest infrastructure build-out in recent history, and the power grid on planet Earth can't keep pace. In major US markets, average grid connection lead times for new data centers can run five to seven years, or more. Meanwhile, AI demand is flat-out outgrowing Earth's pastures."

The company was established in 2024 by Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt as Aetherflux and originally focused on space-based solar power. Aetherflux raised its first round of external funding, a $50 million Series A, about a year ago.

Engineers on the team have come from a variety of space-facing entities, such as SpaceX, Astranis, Kuiper and NVIDIA (which is providing an AI-focused chip platform for Cowboy). Bhatt, who also serves as Cowboy's CEO, stated in the release that the company's proposal is "a first-principles departure from the traditional [satellite] constellation model."

But before getting there, Cowboy, which is based in San Carlos, California, needs to launch its first satellite. That should happen later this year, if all goes to plan, to demonstrate the company's ability to beam power from space to Earth. A second mission, scheduled for 2027, would include a cluster of satellites to do high-speed (optical, or laser) communications. Then, Cowboy's first rocket would launch in 2028.

Star Catcher Industries now has a big war chest to help bankroll its big dream — building a power grid in space.

The Florida-based space company announced today (May 12) that it has raised $65 million in an oversubscribed "Series A" funding round, bringing its total investment haul to date to $88 million.

Star Catcher will put the money toward the development of the world's first in-space power grid, which it thinks will supercharge the burgeoning off-Earth economy.

"Fundamentally, the vision of Star Catcher is to make it as easy to operate in space as it is to operate terrestrially," company co-founder and CEO Andrew Rush told Space.com.

The way to do that, he said, is to build out the same kind of infrastructure in space that we have on Earth — chiefly, reliable methods of transport, communication and power generation. The first two of those are already pretty well established in the final frontier, but the power element is lacking.

"We all just go on these camping trips to space, and basically every satellite at some point in its life cycle is power limited," Rush said.

"That's why, at Star Catcher, we're focused on building the world's first power grid in space — to eliminate that bottleneck and take us from a world of power budgets into a world of power abundance," he added. "That's really the core vision of the company."

'Power nodes' in space

Star Catcher plans to operate a network of "power node" spacecraft in Earth orbit, which will harvest energy from the sun and transmit it, via laser, to other satellites. Those client spacecraft will not need any modifications or special equipment — just solar panels to catch the laser light.

That beamed energy will make the recipients much more efficient and capable, Rush said.

"We can enable people to operate at full rate in eclipse," he said, referring to the times when orbiting satellites are in Earth's shadow.

"We can give them anywhere from two to 10X the uptime that they would normally have for certain national security missions," Rush added. "We can able enable folks to maneuver while they sense, or to maneuver more aggressively than what they could do with just the one naked sun."

In addition, Star Catcher power nodes could "trickle-charge" older satellites whose solar arrays and batteries have degraded, allowing them to remain operational further into the future.

"Energy and infrastructure resilience are core national and economic priorities on Earth, as in orbit," Space Force Gen. Jay Raymond (Ret.), senior managing director at Cerberus Ventures, one of the firms that contributed to the newly announced funding round, said in a statement today.

"Persistent surveillance, resilient communications and unhindered maneuverability are all constrained today by power," added Raymond, who was the first chief of space operations for the U.S. Space Force. "An on-demand power grid can change that, expanding critical capabilities across commercial and national security missions."

Some of these commercial use cases have come into sharper focus recently. For example, Rush cited direct-to-cell telecommunications and on-orbit AI data centers as perhaps the two most promising customer bases for Star Catcher. Both are very new fields. Indeed, orbiting data centers remain purely theoretical at the moment, though a number of deep-pocketed companies, including Google and SpaceX, plan to build out such constellations soon.

Over the longer haul, a decade or so from now, Star Catcher could provide power-beaming services beyond Earth orbit — to equipment on the surface of the moon, for example.

That capability could be of great interest to NASA, which aims to build one or more bases near the lunar south pole via its Artemis program. The south polar region is so attractive because it's thought to harbor lots of water ice, a key resource for a crewed moon base. But that ice is likely concentrated on the permanently shadowed floors of polar craters, making it tough for solar-powered lunar terrain vehicles (LTVs) to access.

"We can enable LTVs to not just have to ridge run, but actually go down into Shackleton Crater, into places where we're really, really interested and we think there's fascinating stuff going on, with the confidence that you have a power line connected to that vehicle," Rush said. "That, to me, just gets me really excited."

NASA has already identified nuclear power as a key enabler of such activities on the moon. Star Catcher envisions its power-node system as complementing nuclear generators rather than supplanting them, according to Rush.

"It can be a forerunner," he said. "Or we can put assets on lunar orbit and provide power while we're building out the base. And it's also a technology that can distribute the energy that is generated from a nuclear reactor."

The road ahead

Star Catcher was founded just two years ago, but it has already made a considerable amount of progress toward its ambitious long-term goals.

In March 2025, for example, the company demonstrated its power-beaming tech at EverBank Stadium, home of the NFL's Jacksonville Jaguars, in a test that successfully transmitted energy over the full 300-foot (90-meter) length of the football field.

Then, in November, Star Catcher announced that it had beamed 1.1 kilowatts of power to commercial off-the-shelf solar panels during tests at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This broke the previous beaming record of 800 watts, which had been set by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in May 2025.

Star Catcher is now gearing up for its first-ever off-Earth test, which is slated to launch later this year. The company is currently delivering flight hardware for that mission, which will aim to beam power to a free-flying satellite, Rush said.

Star Catcher plans to follow up that test with a series of missions that will beam larger amounts of power over greater and greater distances, he added.

"If all goes well, we'll fly [that] series of missions over the next couple of years," Rush said. "We expect to to be scaling commercial services by the end of the decade."

There's already a demand for those services. Star Catcher has signed seven power purchase agreements with seven companies to date, including Starcloud, Loft Orbital and Astro Digital. It has also secured "multiple government customers," according to Rush.

The newly announced investment round was led by B Capital and also featured Shield Capital and Cerberus Ventures, the venture arm of Cerberus Capital Management. As part of the deal, Raymond will join Star Catcher's board, as will B Capital General Partner and Global Head of Energy Jeff Johnson and Shield Principal David Rothzeid.

A new ion engine has been tested in a lab, proving itself to be 25 times more powerful than NASA's current state-of-the-art one. This advanced technology could one day assist humans in reaching Mars.

Ion engines are very different to the usual sort of thrusters that burn chemical propellant. Using electromagnetic fields, they accelerate ions — charged atoms — out through a nozzle to provide thrust, hence they are often described as using "electric propulsion." Though they are slow at first, these engines' thrust can build up incrementally to achieve high velocities, and because they use 90% less propellant than chemical rockets, ion engines also reduce the mass of a spacecraft and make launch less expensive. Currently, the most powerful ion engine on a spacecraft belongs to NASA's Psyche mission to the asteroid of the same name. Its engine has been able to ramp up to a velocity of 124,000 miles (200,000 kilometers) per hour.

"This marks the first time in the United States that an electric propulsion system has operated at power levels this high, reaching up to 120 kilowatts," NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said in a statement. "We will continue to make strategic investments that will propel that next giant leap."

In many cases, the ion propellant of these engines is xenon gas, but researchers have been experimenting with ion engines that operate using metallic plasmas. And now, a new prototype ion engine, called a lithium-fed magnetoplasmadynamic (MPD) thruster, has passed its first test with flying colors. The lithium-fed MPD generates powerful electrical currents that interact with a magnetic field to accelerate lithium ions. Operating inside a dedicated 26-foot-long (8-meter-long) vacuum chamber, called the Condensable Metal propellant (Comet) vacuum facility at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the prototype engine performed five test firings on Feb. 24, reaching up to 120 kilowatts of power, which is 25 times the power of Psyche's ion engine.

"Designing and building these thrusters over the past couple of years has been a long lead-up to this first test," said James Polk, who is a senior research scientist at JPL, in the statement. "It’s a huge moment for us because we not only showed that the thruster works, but we also hit the power levels that we were targeting. And we know we have a good testbed to begin addressing the challenges to scaling up."

Polk has worked on ion engines since the 1990s, with the launch of Deep Space 1. Now, he's eying a new target. The aim is to reach between 500 kilowatts and one megawatt in the next few years, and beyond that to produce ion engines that accelerate ions with an electrical power of up to four megawatts. A spacecraft carrying astronauts could then use multiple such ion engines to reach the Red Planet, Mars.

Missions utilizing ion engines have so far obtained their power from the sun by unfurling solar arrays. However, this comes with two disadvantages. One is that these engines cannot be used far from the sun in the outer solar system, and the other is that without a truly enormous solar array, the power that can be generated is limited.

That's why NASA are currently working on a space nuclear propulsion project called Space Reactor-1 Freedom, which will carry a small nuclear fission reactor on a space mission to produce more energy for an ion engine. It is hoped that Space Reactor-1 Freedom will launch by the end of 2028 and take a small armada of miniature rotor-craft, collectively referred to as "Skyfall," to Mars. While Space Reactor-1 Freedom will utilize a regular xenon-fueled ion engine, the intention is that a convergence of nuclear power in space with the development of the Lithium-fed MPD thrusters will have what it takes to carry the first astronauts to Mars.

Ion engines have been in use on space missions since the 1960s, but it was only with the launch of NASA's Deep Space 1 mission in 1998 that the technology was used beyond Earth orbit for the first time. Since then, missions powered by ion engines include NASA's Dawn mission to Ceres and Vesta, Japan's Hayabusa2 asteroid sample-return mission, NASA's DART mission that collided with the asteroid Dimorphos and the European Space Agency's SMART-1 mission to the moon and BepiColombo mission currently en route to Mercury. Now, with the development of nuclear propulsion and the new lithium-fed MPD, ion-engine technology might be about to take the next giant leap.

Scientists have developed a new material that could shield humans and critical technology from harmful radiation, and it's thinner than a human hair and stretches like rubber.

Radiation is a major factor to consider when astronauts go to space – and it isn't just space radiation. There are a wide variety of technologies needed to get to space that involve radiation, including medical devices, semiconductors, power plants and even spacecraft themselves. Often, such radiation is integral to the function of these technologies, but the downside is that it can pose risks to damaging or interfering with other nearby tech as well as possible health risks to humans.

To get around this problem, researchers have developed a new, stretchy and lightweight material that could shield spacebound tech from electromagnetic and neutron radiation. The researchers aim for this material to be a lighter weight option for protecting equipment and humans involved in spaceflight.

"This material represents a completely new concept in shielding technology — it is as thin as tape and as flexible as rubber, yet simultaneously blocks both electromagnetic waves and radiation," lead author Joo yong-ho at the Extreme Environment Shielding Materials Research Center of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology said in a statement.

When you think about space and radiation dangers, you might think of space radiation, which permeates outer space and poses health risks to astronauts traveling to low-Earth orbit and beyond. But other types of radiation are used in the technologies needed to go to and explore space, which poses a variety of other issues. Different types of radiation being emitted between different technologies in the process of developing or using those technologies can cause a variety of issues. For example, electromagnetic waves and neutron radiation from one piece of tech can cause semiconductors in another part to malfunction.

To make matters more complicated, there are many humans involved in spaceflight beyond just astronauts. From engineers to technicians, there are a variety of people who might benefit from better radiation protection when dealing with technologies they create for the space sector.

The new material was made with two different types of nanotubes: carbon nanotubes and boron nitride nanotubes. Carbon nanotubes are conductive, meaning electricity and heat can move through them, and both types of nanotubes absorb and reflect electromagnetic waves. Boron nitride nanotubes, on the other hand, capture neutrons. Together, the two nanotube categories can work together to block 99.999% of electromagnetic waves and 72% of neutron radiation.

While its effectiveness at blocking radiation and extremely lightweight nature are the most compelling details of this material, its stretchiness could lend to even more benefits. The material can be stretched to double its length, and this flexibility actually allows it to be 3D-printed. The researchers explored different 3D-printed shapes with the material, and found that when printed into a honeycomb shape, the structure improved its ability to shield against radiation by 15%.

Above all, the team behind this new material suggests that it could be a game-changer in blocking radiation without adding too much extra weight — a major plus for space missions because every ounce matters when propelling payloads beyond our planet. And the technologies that could benefit are wide-ranging, from satellites to space stations — and even to protective gear for those working in space and the space sector.

The development of this new material was described in a study published March 4 in the journal Advanced Materials.

Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic has completed a successful series of hot-fire tests of its rotating detonation rocket engine prototype Chakram, marking a key milestone toward bringing the experimental propulsion technology to flight readiness.

Rotating detonation rocket engines (RDREs) work differently from conventional designs. Typical rocket engines rely on a steady, controlled process of chemical propellant ignition inside a combustion chamber. RDREs use a continuous, circular detonation wave that travels around a ring-shaped chamber, which produces higher pressure and efficiency and results in increased thrust with less fuel. In theory, that can improve efficiency by around 10–15%, while also reducing engine size and weight — advantages that are especially important for spacecraft, where every ounce of weight needs to be accounted for. But the benefits have been difficult to realize in practice.

Astrobotic, however, thinks the tests of its new RDRE prototype could help finally bring this type of propulsion into deep space, including around the moon. “Chakram more than exceeded our expectations,“ said Bryant Avalos, Astrobotic’s Principal Investigator for Chakram.

"Demonstrations like this show how RDRE technology could support a wide range of Astrobotic missions, from propulsion on future lunar landers to in-space orbital transfer vehicles, and other capabilities that will help expand operations throughout cislunar space.”

The campaign took place at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama, and used two rotating detonation rocket engine (RDRE) prototypes for long-duration burns that suggest the engine can operate continuously, not just in short, proof-of-concept bursts.

Together, the two Chakram engines accumulated more than 470 seconds of firing time across multiple ignitions, and, in one test, burned continuously for 300 seconds. Astrobotic says that duration is likely the longest sustained firing of a rotating detonation engine to date, and the hardware showed no visible signs of damage afterward.

That kind of performance begins to address one of the biggest open questions around RDREs, and whether the engine design can operate reliably enough for use on actual spacecraft.

During testing, each Chakram RDRE produced more than 4,000 pounds of thrust, and reached stable, "thermal steady state" conditions, according to an Astrobotic release — indicative of nominal, sustained engine operation. That combination of thrust, stability, and durability marks a meaningful step beyond earlier RDRE demonstrations, which have often been limited in duration.

“The 300-second burn was the cherry on top,“ Avalos said.

Chakram is a significant addition to Astrobotic's portfolio, and the company is developing Chakram with future missions in mind. Chakram could eventually be used on later versions of its Griffin lunar lander, as well as on planned reusable rockets and an orbital transfer vehicle designed for cislunar operations, according to Astrobotic's release.

Work on the Chakram RDRE has been supported through NASA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contracts and a Space Act Agreement with MSFC. Part of that effort has focused on injector design and advanced manufacturing, including "tunable porosity metal additive manufacturing" — a 3D printing technique that aims to improve thermal management and combustion stability.

The data from this campaign is expected to guide improvements in engine throttling, regenerative cooling, and reducing overall mass as Astrobotic works to transition the engine from testing to flight-ready hardware.

Controlling and maintaining a stable detonation wave over long periods has been a persistent challenge, with many early tests limited to short bursts or unstable operation, but Astrobotic isn't the first company to take on the challenge.

Venus Aerospace completed an RDRE test flight last year using their own design, and marked the first successful test of such an engine from the U.S.

AI image processing has sped up analysis of data from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope from years to mere days or less, ushering in an avalanche of ground-breaking discoveries that may otherwise never have been made.

And now, the technology will be used to enhance the quality of images taken by the Chile-based Vera C. Rubin Observatory, the newest astronomy power house, to make them appear as sharp as if they have been taken from space.

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, named after the American astronomer who discovered one of the key pieces of evidence for the existence of dark matter, sits atop the 8,770-feet (2,673 meters ) Cerro Pachón in the Chilean Andes. The telescope began operations last year. It scans the entire sky every three nights, aiming to create a 10-year timelapse of the motions of objects in the sky.

Its position in Chile's Atacama Desert, the most parched region on the planet, allows the observatory to benefit from a dry atmosphere and a year-round clear sky. Still, Rubin's observations suffer from significant distortions, as light from distant celestial objects must pass through Earth's atmosphere before it hits the telescope's detectors.

A new AI algorithm developed by researchers from the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) will now attempt to remove this distortion and increase the resolution of the images to make them look as if they have been taken from space.

"Ground-based telescopes suffer from blurring owing to atmospheric turbulence as the light comes through," Brant Robertson, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UCSC, whose team developed the new AI model, told Space.com. "We spend a lot of money on high-performance technology to remove that atmospheric distortion, but we can also train AI machine learning models to take out some of that blurring."

The researchers trained the generative model, called Neo, using images taken by the Subaru Telescope in Japan and snaps of the same sections of the sky captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. The task for the model was to learn how to fill the details missing in the images taken from Earth. The results were impressive. The researchers said in a paper that the Neo model "improves the accuracy of measured morphological parameters by factors of 2-10."

In practice, that means an increased resolution that reveals a vast quantity of individual stars and precise shapes of galaxies where before one would find only vague smudges.

"The model improves the spatial quality of that data and recovers, in a statistical sense, the properties of galaxies that you see in these images as if they were seen by a telescope in space," Robertson said.

The technology, he added, super-charges discovery and enables the scientific community to maximize the scientific return on money invested into cutting-edge astronomical telescopes. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, fitted with a 27.6-foot (8.4 m) mirror, cost $800 million to build. That, however, is still only a fraction of the cost of space-based telescopes such as Hubble and James Webb, both of which cost billions to build and operate.

"We spend a lot of money, huge amounts of resources, on astronomical observatories, and we would like to leverage that investment by the public and by the community to get everything that we can out of the data," said Robertson.

The Neo model is a Conditional Generative Adversarial Network, a collaboration of two neural networks, frequently used for AI image generation. In the case of Neo, the first network generates improved images from the captured photographs; the other evaluates their quality.

The model is based on an earlier technology Robertson's team developed to speed up processing of images from Webb. The $10 billion astronomical powerhouse produces such vast quantities of data that it's impossible to keep on top of it using just visual assessment by human astronomers. AI algorithms, like the one developed by Robertson and his colleagues, accomplish what would have taken humans years, in mere days.

"We're being inundated with such an amount of data that it's very difficult to keep up with," said Robertson. "Our standard approaches to analyzing these images are just really not sufficient."

The algorithm, running on NVIDIA's GPU-powered supercomputers, has made some of the most jaw-dropping discoveries in the Webb era, including spotting complex galaxies in the earliest universe, which astronomers did not expect.

"The model analyzes every pixel and distinguishes whether it's part of the sky or a part of an object," said Robertson. "And if it's an object, is it a part of a disk galaxy or a spheroid galaxy or a part of a star?"

Robertson added that the algorithm is not replacing astronomers. Rather, it helps them make discoveries faster, and also detect patterns that they might overlook.

"AI is not going to be pure or complete, but of course, neither are humans and traditional methodologies. They all have different strengths and benefits," he said.

The astronomers are making the processed images available to other teams and the public to explore.

The paper describing the Leo model, which will help improve the resolution of images from the Vera Rubin Observatory, has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal.

The 2026 Breakthrough Prize winners were announced Saturday (April 18) as the red carpet opened at the annual gala in Los Angeles, a globally broadcast ceremony often dubbed the "Oscars of Science," where celebrities and tech leaders mingle with researchers to celebrate major scientific advances.

Six mainstage prizes — each worth $3 million — were awarded across life sciences, fundamental physics and mathematics, along with a special prize for lifetime achievement. This year's honors recognize breakthroughs ranging from gene therapies and neurodegenerative disease to precision particle physics and the mathematics of complex systems, according to a statement from the non-profit organization.

"This year's laureates show what great science can do — deepen our understanding of the world and lead to discoveries that improve millions of lives," Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, founders of the nonprofit research organization called Biohub, said in the statement. "We're proud to recognize their work."

In life sciences, Jean Bennett, Katherine A. High and Albert Maguire were recognized for developing the first FDA-approved gene therapy for an inherited disease. Their work led to a treatment for retinal degeneration that restores functional vision, marking a turning point for genetic medicine and helping spark a wave of similar therapies now in development.

Another life sciences prize went to Stuart H. Orkin and Swee Lay Thein for uncovering how the body switches from fetal to adult hemoglobin. By identifying a key genetic regulator, their work enabled new gene-editing therapies for sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia — conditions affecting millions worldwide — demonstrating how fundamental biology can translate into transformative treatments.

A third Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences honors Rosa Rademakers and Bryan Traynor, who discovered that a mutation in the C9orf72 gene is a major cause of both amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, and frontotemporal dementia (FTD), the second leading cause of early-onset dementia. The finding unified two previously separate diseases and opened new avenues for diagnosis and targeted therapies.

In mathematics, Frank Merle is honored for breakthroughs in nonlinear evolution equations, which describe waves and complex systems such as turbulence and plasmas. His work sheds light on how these systems remain stable or develop singularities, advancing understanding of phenomena that span aeronautics, fluid dynamics and astrophysics.

The Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics recognizes the Muon g-2 collaborations at CERN, Brookhaven National Laboratory and Fermilab, along with hundreds of scientists including David Hertzog, Chris Polly, Lee Roberts and William Morse. Their work measures the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon — a heavy, unstable cousin of the electron — with extraordinary precision, probing for cracks in the Standard Model that could reveal new particles or forces.

The Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics goes to David J. Gross for a career of foundational contributions, including explaining how the strong nuclear force behaves at different energy scales and advancing string theory — key steps toward a unified description of nature.

Also announced was the inaugural Vera Rubin New Frontiers Prize, awarded to Carolina Figueiredo, an early-career theorist whose work uncovers deep geometric connections between seemingly unrelated particle physics theories. Her research suggests that the behavior of fundamental particles may be governed by underlying geometric structures rather than spacetime itself — a perspective that could help reshape how physicists model the universe at its most fundamental level.

Named after pioneering astronomer Vera Rubin, the $50,000 prize highlights emerging talent at a moment when new observatories — including the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, expected to begin full science operations this year — are poised to probe dark matter and the large-scale structure of the cosmos with unprecedented detail.

Other prizes were awarded to recognize emerging talent through the New Horizons and New Frontiers awards. In physics, these honors spotlighted advances in dark matter searches, quantum field theory and increasingly precise measurements of the universe's expansion and structure.

Together, the 2026 Breakthrough Prize recipients highlight the breadth of modern science — from rewriting the genetic basis of disease to testing the limits of particle physics and modeling extreme cosmic environments — underscoring how fundamental discoveries continue to shape both technology and our understanding of the universe.

A full list of award recipients can be found online with additional details on their breakthrough discoveries.

When it comes to the best mirrorless cameras, there is a huge choice from the world's leading photography brands. Our camera experts here at Space have tried and tested nearly all the best cameras for astrophotography from Canon, Nikon and of course Sony, who are renowned for their advanced mirrorless camera systems.

The Sony A1 II is the brand's top-of-the-line mirrorless camera with a professional-level spec and a price to match, but its sibling, the Sony Alpha 7C II, is currently available for just $2,098 at Best Buy.

The Sony A7C II performed well for astro and it can autofocus down to -4EV, but added it's not a dedicated astro camera. However, if you want the all-around performance and occasionally dabble in astro, the Sony will easily have you covered.

It's the best price this full-frame mirrorless camera has been since April last year, and with a huge $400 off, it's an attractive purchase to anyone looking for a first full-frame mirrorless camera that is capable of shooting astrophotography in a lightweight, travel-friendly ultra-compact body.

This camera deal on Amazon is marked as a limited-time deal, but there's no indication of when it actually ends, so we'd say grab it while you can. It's worth noting that Adorama and Walmart are matching the same price, but only on the Black and Silver version, and it's also showing as unavailable on Amazon.

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The Sony A7C II is our choice as the best entry-level full-frame camera, and our expert camera tester Kimberley Lane scored it with an impressive 4 out of 5-star rating in her Sony A7C II review.

Lane was happy to recommend the A7C II as a superbly performing all-rounder. If you're looking to invest in your first full-frame camera or you're a beginner, this is a fantastic camera that is more than capable of delivering impressive images and video.

The Sony A7C II bridges the gap between Sony's portable APS-C cameras and its professional-grade full-frame bodies. It is designed for hybrid creators, both photographers and videographers, who want high-end performance in a travel-friendly form, which makes it ideal if you're new to shooting astrophotography in dark sky areas and do not wish to carry heavyweight equipment.

Review highlights included the powerful AI autofocus processor, image stabilization, a detailed sensor and the fully-articulating screen that at full price was impressive, and of course makes it even more appealing at its discounted price.

Elsewhere, battery life on the A7C II is fine for casual shooting, and it's worth remembering that this camera isn't aimed at professionals. An additional battery is worth considering, especially if you're planning on long exposure astro shooting.

Lane summed up the A7 II by saying, "It's a capable all-rounder that will easily deliver on most photographic styles, from astro to landscapes, wildlife and portraits, and is ideal for vlogging too". At this price, for me, it really represents terrific value for money.

Key features: Full frame, 33MP, 4K/30P video, 100-51,200 (expanded 50-204,800) ISO range, Sony E-mount lenses, Single UHS-II SD memory card slot, up to 10FPS burst shooting, 1.13 lb (514g) weight, 4.88 x 2.8 x 2.48 inches (124 x 71 x 63 mm) dimensions, 3-inch fully-articulating, 1.036M screen.

Launched: September 2023

Price history: Before today's Sony camera deal, the best price was back in April 2025 at $2,098 on Amazon, which matches the current price of $2,098. However, as far as this year goes, the best price so far has been $2,298.

Price comparison: Best Buy: $2,098 | Adorama: $2,098 | Walmart: $2,098

Reviews consensus: There is no doubt that the Sony A7C II is a fantastic mirrorless camera that performs well above its beginner-friendly tag. We scored it a 4-star rating, and it was only marked down for a few minor niggles, like only having one memory card slot, and that, as it's a brilliant all-rounder, it didn't particularly shine in any particular photographic style.

Space: ★★★★ | Techradar: ★★★★| Tom's Guide: ★★★★

Featured in guides: Best Sony cameras

✅ Buy it if: You don't have a huge budget, but want a capable mirrorless full-frame camera with a brilliant spec, at a very reasonable price.

❌ Don't buy it if: You're a professional, this is more suitable for a beginner or as a first mirrorless camera purchase. There are bigger and better options for professionals, including the outstanding Sony A1 II, currently priced at $7,000 on Amazon.

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

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado — Next-generation space habitats for low Earth orbit, the moon and beyond are on display here at the Space Foundation's 41st annual Space Symposium.

Max Space has unveiled a large sub-scale version of their expandable habitat, giving viewers a real look at how best to offer far greater habitable volume for future space endeavors. "This is more than a model," said Saleem Miyan, co-founder and CEO of Max Space, based in Florida. "It is a physical demonstration of a new approach to space infrastructure, far greater habitable volume, lower launch mass and logistics burden, scalable architecture for commercial low Earth orbit stations, lunar surface systems, and future deep space missions."

If we are serious about permanent human presence on the moon and in space, Miyan told Space.com, "we need real estate that is scalable and built for how humans will actually live and operate off Earth."

Practical readiness of materials

Many refer to what's called Technical Readiness Levels (TRL's) of their products being readied for use in space.

Max Space relies heavily on its over three decades of material science expertise, referring to and also refers to that knowhow as PRM's - the Practical Readiness of Materials, said Miyan. "And they are truly ready for long duration space flights and lunar habitation," he said.

The next era of space habitation will not be built with small thinking, Miyan said.

Strategic partnership

In February a new strategic partnership was announced between Voyager Technologies and Max Space.

"This technology reflects a fundamental shift in how humanity will live and work in space," said Dylan Taylor, chairman and CEO of Voyager — a defense and space technology company. Sustained operations on the moon "require infrastructure designed for endurance, scalability and industrial execution," he said in a press statement.

"The moon is no longer a single destination or a flags-and-footprints exercise," Taylor added. It is the next operational domain in a growing space economy, he said.

Phased development path

Max Space has been an early pioneer in expandable structure development.

The company's lightweight expandable habitat launches compactly and expands 20 times larger once deployed in orbit or other destination, allowing a large, fully equipped habitat to launch on a single SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The strategic partnership blueprints a phased development path, including ground validation and in-space demonstrations later this decade. That development path's goal is to enable operational moon and Mars capabilities aligned with NASA's exploration timelines.

For more on Max Space, visit the company's website.

360-degree drones are a relatively new product category, and although DJI was pipped to the post by the Antigravity A1, the market leader has come back swinging with the launch of the DJI Avata 360. This is a drone that looks remarkably like the DJI Neo 2, but it’s a lot bigger and heavier, and its propeller guards enclose the propellers less.

With dual controller options available, including FPV, this could be one of both the best camera drones and the best FPV drones available. The ability to pair the Avata 360 with DJI FPV accessories means that you can capture even more immersive 360-degree video, where you’re flying through a building or weaving through and around trees in a forest. The DJI Avata 360 is currently waiting to be in stock at B+H, Amazon and other retailers.

It’s the ability to shoot first and reframe later that makes 360-degree drones an interesting and attractive option for pilots. What’s more, there’s a single lens shooting mode where you can take advantage of DJI’s impressive subject tracking.

The camera itself rotates at the front of the Avata 360 and features two 64MP 1/1.1-inch CMOS sensors with replaceable lenses. These can capture photos and video up to 8K 60FPS. Image quality is great for 360-degree capture, but it’s not as good as a standard camera drone — as is the case, to be fair, with most 360-degree cameras and drones.

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DJI Avata 360: Design

• Non-folding design
• Propeller guards
• Rotating gimbal

As previously mentioned, the Avata 360 looks a lot like the DJI Neo 2, except for the size and the fact that its propeller guards don’t fully enclose the propellers. It’s this cinewhoop FPV design that makes it ideal for flying through complex environments when using the DJI Motion Controller 3 and DJI Goggles N3 for FPV flight. It can also be flown like a camera drone when paired with a standard controller.

At 9.69 x 7.83 x 2.19 inches (246 x 199 x 55.5 mm), the Avata 360 is quite large for a drone with a cinewhoop-style design, and weighs in at 16.05 oz (455 g), putting it well above the 250 g threshold, so it's more restricted than smaller, lighter drones. Build quality is fantastic, as you’d expect for a DJI drone, while the set-up and operation of the drone are incredibly easy.

The camera sits at the front of the drone and cleverly rotates when the drone lands and takes off, keeping the lenses off the ground to avoid damage. The lens guards can be replaced if they do get damaged.

This is such a simple yet clever feature, and an improvement on the Antigravity A1’s mechanical legs that extend to keep the bottom camera off the ground. Image stabilization is software-based rather than relying on a mechanical gimbal.

The Avata 360 is compatible with multiple controllers, including the RC 2, RC-N2 and RC-N3. This means that if you already own a compatible controller, you could use that instead of buying a kit that includes either the DJI RC 2 smart controller or the DJI Motion Controller 3 and DJI Goggles N3.

Both of these were provided with the review kit, so it was possible to test the Avata 360 as both a camera drone and an FPV drone. The latter was both a lot of fun and provided the ability to capture more dynamic and immersive video footage. DJI's Motion controllers are incredibly intuitive and make FPV flight accessible to everyone.

DJI Avata 360: Functionality

• Subject tracking
• Collision avoidance
• 42GB of internal storage

The Avata 360 flies well using either standard controls or FPV goggles and a motion controller. Using a standard controller is much simpler and doesn’t require a spotter to keep an eye on the drone during flights, but pairing it up with FPV accessories is about as simple as it gets — compared to traditional FPV drones, anyway.

The drone features collision avoidance, which can be switched off but provides confidence when flying in complex environments. During testing, this was switched off when flying FPV in a forest to ensure smoother flight, although this naturally carries more risk.

Alongside collision avoidance, there’s also ActiveTrack, which has multiple modes that are selected automatically. Standard mode maintains a steady distance and altitude relative to the subject, while Cycling mode provides greater speed and faster turns to keep the subject in frame. Then there’s Intelligent Tracking, where you can lock onto and track subjects in the DJI Fly and DJI Studio apps.

The main difference between 360-degree drones and traditional camera drones is that you have to edit and reframe photos and videos before sharing them. You take the 360-degree image and essentially flatten it to a single, traditional view. Where things get interesting is that you can add camera movements using keyframes and make the drone appear to flip and roll.

DJI Studio is fairly easy to use, but it is also clunky, and there is a small learning curve. In all honesty, you will spend much more time using the DJI Fly and DJI Studio apps to reframe photos and videos than you’ll spend flying the drone; this is the main downside to using any 360-degree camera or drone, compared to standard cameras and drones.

Photos and videos can be saved to a microSD card or to the drone’s 42GB of internal storage. The internal storage is certainly useful because 8K 360-degree video requires a lot of storage, and this internal storage can supplement your microSD when necessary. However, with this in mind, somewhere in the region of 100GB of internal storage would have been preferable.

DJI Avata 360: Performance

• Dual cameras
• Up to 8K 60FPS video
• Photos and videos require editing

The Avata 360 creates its 360-degree image using two 64MP 1/1.1-inch CMOS sensors with ultra-wide-angle lenses. These have an f/1.9 aperture with focus from 1.5m to infinity.

You can set exposure manually, but leaving the camera set to Auto works extremely well when capturing 120MP photos and videos up to 8K at 60FPS. Shooting in Auto isn’t usually a good idea when capturing video, but with 360-degree drones, where you’re essentially capturing everything, it makes life so much easier. What’s more, you can’t use ND filters to control shutter speed anyway.

Image quality is what you’d expect from a 360-degree camera or drone, so no surprises here. It’s not as good as a standard camera drone, although the Avata 360 does have a single lens mode where you can capture 4K 60FPS video that doesn’t need to be reframed — just like a standard camera drone.

Once your 360-degree footage and photos have been transferred wirelessly from the drone, they need to be edited and reframed, either in DJI Studio on a computer or in the DJI Fly app. This is the main downside to 360-degree capture, but also its greatest advantage: Being able to add movement to videos, changing camera angle and adding effects while reframing photos, is both useful and creative.

Please note: Footage to come soon. It was shot in 8K, but our video player only plays in HD.

Video can be captured at up to 8K 60FPS in either the Normal color profile for straight out of camera footage, after reframing, or in the 10-bit D-Log M flat color profile. This color profile requires color grading and provides much greater image quality and flexibility within an advanced and/or professional workflow.

DJI Avata 360: Price

The DJI Avata 360 comes in at a highly aggressive price point when compared to the competition. So, while DJI may not be the first drone manufacturer to produce a 360-degree drone, consumers in all regions — except the United States, where there’s currently a DJI ban — can now choose between two models, and the Avata 360 is less expensive than the competition and has different controller options.

Drone-only, the Avata 360 costs £409 / €459 / AU$799, while the option with the DJI RC 2 smart controller costs £639 / €719 / AU$1159. There are also two Fly More Combos that include a couple of additional batteries, a carry bag, a battery charging hub and other accessories. The DJI Avata 360 Fly More Combo (DJI RC 2) and the DJI Avata 360 Motion Fly More Combo both cost £829 / €939 / AU$1619. The latter includes the DJI Motion Controller 3 and DJI Goggles N3.

Should you buy the DJI Avata 360?

As 360-degree drones go, the DJI Avata 2 is incredibly well-priced compared to the Antigravity A1 and is so much more agile, thanks to its FPV credentials. Image quality is similar in many respects, but the ability to shoot in the flat D-Log M profile does give the Avata 360 the edge here.

The ability to fly the Avata 2 either as a standard camera drone with a smart controller, or as an FPV drone with the Motion Combo, is also fantastic. Having the ability to choose one controller option, or even both, will undoubtedly make it attractive. The only downside to flying a drone when wearing FPV goggles is that you must have a spotter/observer with you when flying outdoors.

If this drone isn't for you

The Antigravity A1 follows a camera drone design but is controlled using a motion controller and FPV goggles. It has a great FPV flight mode for capturing smooth, sweeping videos, and the automated flight modes are also impressive.

The DJI Neo 2 is an inexpensive selfie drone with impressive autonomous flight modes and subject tracking. Like the Avata 360, it can also be flown as a camera drone and an FPV drone when paired with the right DJI accessories.

If you’re looking for a fully fledged FPV drone, but one that can be incredibly easy to fly, the DJI Avata 2 is a great choice. Unlike traditional FPV drones, this one can hover and be paired with DJI’s Motion Controller 3.

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The BBC has a rich history of producing some of the best sci-fi TV series of all time, and BBC iPlayer is also the home of the OG of all sci-fi series — Dr Who, which has been running since 1963.

However, for anyone travelling out of the UK, or for US-based sci-fi fans, the only way you can watch your usual streaming services, or access geo-restricted services including the BBC iPlayer, just as you would at home, is by using a VPN.

We have secured an exclusive VPN deal with NordVPN, and you can get up to 77% off and receive an incredible bonus of a free Amazon voucher worth up to $50 when you sign up for a two-year plan, plus a bonus of four extra months on top.

This limited-time NordVPN offer is one of the best VPN deals we've seen so far this year, and we recommend NordVPN as a perfect addition to your streaming services, allowing uninterrupted viewing of all your favorite sci-fi series when overseas, whether that's for work or pleasure.

The BBC iPlayer also has almost every episode of Doctor Who, from the classic era, which first aired in 1963, right up to the modern era, and the best Dr Who spin-off shows like "Torchwood", "The Sarah Jane Adventures", "Class", and the brand new spin-off, "The War Between the Land and the Sea".

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

The latest Doctor Who spin-off, 'The War Between the Land and the Sea', is confirmed for release on Disney+ sometime in 2026. As Disney+ has its schedule set through April, the earliest possibility for US Dr Who fans is May 2026.

The 5-episode miniseries premiered on BBC One and the BBC iPlayer in December 2025, and the series follows the UNIT, a military organization defending humanity against the Sea Devils (Homo Aqua), an ancient species emerging from the ocean.

The show focuses on a "no Doctor" scenario to elevate the stakes, allowing humanity to handle the crisis themselves without the Doctor's help, with Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (Jemma Redgrave), the commander in chief of UNIT and Barclay (Russell Tovey) at the forefront of the series.

If you can't wait until 'The War Between the Land and the Sea' lands on US shores on Disney+, set to be released later this year, then NordVPN is the solution to geo-blocking when it comes to viewing the BBC iPlayer in the US.

Assuming it complies with your broadcaster’s T&Cs, you can use a VPN to unblock the services you're subscribed to from anywhere, and allow for uninterrupted viewing of your binge-worthy sci-fi shows and movies. You will have to create and sign in to a BBC account to view BBC iPlayer.

NordVPN not only unlocks geo-restrictions but also offers ad blockers, anti-malware protection, a password manager and breach scanner, fast connections, and identity theft insurance. It means you can view and download content, work, and generally be online anywhere in the world with confidence.

By getting the Prime plan (other plans are available and prices vary, but so does what you get and the value of the Amazon voucher), you get a fast connection, anti-malware and browsing protection, an ad and tracker blocker, a password manager and breach scanner, 1TB of encrypted cloud storage, dark web monitoring, $1M in identity theft insurance cover and $100K in cyber extortion cover. It's a win-win for online streaming and cybersecurity.

Key features: Up to 77% discount, up to $50 Amazon voucher, four months free, high-speed VPN, ad and tracker blocker, anti-malware protection, up to $1m in identity theft insurance and $100K in cyber extortion insurance, password manager and data-breach scanner, 1TB encrypted cloud storage and monitoring alerts and services.

Price history: Before today's deal, the price of the "Prime" plan was $592.56 for 24 months, or $24.69 a month. It's now up to 74% off and comes with the Amazon voucher worth up to $50, and four free months.

✅ Buy it if: You're looking for maximum online security, you want to stream all your favorite shows anywhere in the world, you want a FREE Amazon voucher, and four free months.

❌ Don't buy it if: Either you already have a VPN, or you're not in the market for one. Those are the only reasons you wouldn't make the most of this excellent value offer.

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

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

The Amazon's Big Spring Day Sale is on its last day so don't miss out on your opportunity to get the best telescopes, binoculars, cameras and even night vision optics a lot cheaper than usual.

There are so many items on sale, so it can be hard to see what is genuinely worth getting. Our guide goes through the best skywatching products we think are available on a discount right now, including from other retailers besides Amazon. We only recommend the best optics, with many of them reviewed by our experts on our site.

However, you may have to move fast if you want to save big. Why? Unlike Black Friday and Prime Day, where deals drop and stick around till sold, Amazon's Big Spring Day Sale has different deals arriving each day, across different products. Amazon's Big Spring sale ends tomorrow, so products with the red spring deal tag may end tonight.

We will be updating this guide with the very latest deals, but if you see something you want, we advise you to move fast. That bargain you were on the fence about might be gone tomorrow.

Best Amazon Spring Sale deals

• Up to $50 Amazon gift card and up to 77% off + four months free NordVPN deal: Exclusive NordVPN deal
• Best telescope deals on Amazon: Save over 20%
• Best binoculars deals on Amazon: Up to 28% off
• Best camera deals on Amazon: $300 off Canon EOS R6 II and more
• Best streaming deals this Big Spring Sale
• Check out Walmart's own Big Spring Sale offers
• Best Buy also has deals worth considering
• Hot photography deals at Adorama
• Savings from B&H Photo

Telescope deals

Binocular deals

Camera deals

Night vision deals

Right now, you can get up to 77% off a two-year plan and receive an incredible bonus of a free Amazon voucher worth up to $50 when you sign up for a two-year plan, plus a bonus of four extra months on top in this exclusive NordVPN deal.

This limited-time NordVPN offer is one of the best VPN deals we've seen so far this year, and with lots of exciting sci-fi series incoming in the next few months, now is the time to sign up. We consider NordVPN a perfect addition to your streaming services, allowing uninterrupted viewing of all your favorite sci-fi series when overseas, whether that's for work or pleasure.

Apple TV drops Season 5 of "For All Mankind" on March 27, 2026, and on May 29, the "For All Mankind" spinoff series "Star City" also touches down on Apple TV. "Star City" follows the same timeline as "For All Mankind", but from a Soviet perspective. As an expansion of the "For All Mankind" universe, there are exciting plot and character crossovers to enjoy, with the Soviet side of the space race front and center.

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

We are already huge fans of "For All Mankind", and its spinoff series "Star City" looks likely to be an exciting addition to the popular space drama. The eight-episode series is set to premiere alongside the final episode of "For All Mankind" Season 5 on May 29.

Starring Rhys Ifans, who plays the role of Chief Soviet Designer, the driving force behind the Soviet Space program. The alternative history series dives into the high-stakes, dangerous world of the Soviet space program. At the height of the space race between the USA and the USSR, it explores the personal lives and secrets of those operating from the secret city, Star City.

NordVPN provides a solution to geo-blocking when it comes to viewing the all-new "Star City", and all the best streaming services. Assuming it complies with your broadcaster’s T&Cs, you can use a VPN to unblock the services you're subscribed to from anywhere, and allow for uninterrupted viewing of your binge-worthy sci-fi shows and movies.

NordVPN not only unlocks geo-restrictions but also offers ad blockers, anti-malware protection, a password manager and breach scanner, fast connections, and identity theft insurance. It means you can view and download content, work, and generally be online anywhere in the world with confidence.

By getting the Prime plan (other plans are available and prices vary, but so does what you get and the value of the Amazon voucher), you get a fast connection, anti-malware and browsing protection, an ad and tracker blocker, a password manager and breach scanner, 1TB of encrypted cloud storage, dark web monitoring, $1M in identity theft insurance cover and $100K in cyber extortion cover. It's a win-win for online streaming and cybersecurity.

Key features: Up to 77% discount, up to $50 Amazon voucher, four months free, high-speed VPN, ad and tracker blocker, anti-malware protection, up to $1m in identity theft insurance and $100K in cyber extortion insurance, password manager and data-breach scanner, 1TB encrypted cloud storage and monitoring alerts and services.

Price history: Before today's deal, the price of the "Prime" plan was $592.56 for 24 months, or $24.69 a month. It's now up to 74% off and comes with the Amazon voucher worth up to $50, and four free months.

✅ Buy it if: You're looking for maximum online security, you want to stream all your favorite shows anywhere in the world, you want a FREE Amazon voucher, and four free months.

❌ Don't buy it if: Either you already have a VPN, or you're not in the market for one. Those are the only reasons you wouldn't make the most of this excellent value offer.

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

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

Amazon's Big Spring Sale is here, with a host of deals including money off the best star projectors, Lego sets, drones, streaming services and more! This daily sales event runs until Tuesday, March 31, with new deals popping up every day.

But with so much on offer, you might feel spoilt for choice! That's where our guide to the best Amazon Big Spring Sale deals comes in. We've pored over every offer to bring you the latest in genuine deals, and we'll be keeping this page updated with the latest savings.

But, be warned, you will have to move fast. Unlike Black Friday and Prime Day, where deals tend to stick around till they're sold, Amazon's Big Spring Sale has different deals every single day, across a host of categories. So what's available one day could be gone the next. Some lightning deals could disappear the same day, too, so grab these offers while you can!

Best Amazon Spring Sale deals

• Up to $50 Amazon gift card and up to 77% off + four months free NordVPN deal: Exclusive NordVPN deal
• Best Lego deals on Amazon: Save up to 20%
• Best star projector deals on Amazon: Up to 28% off
• Best drone deals on Amazon: $140 off DJI and more
• Best streaming deals this Big Spring Sale
• Check out Walmart's own Big Spring Sale offers
• Best Buy also has deals worth considering
• $100+ off drones at Adorama
• Drones are now $100 off at B&H Photo

Lego deals

Star Projector deals

Drone deals

Streaming deals

NASA's new supersonic X-59 jet took to the skies for the second time ever on Friday (March 20), but it didn't stay up for long.

The potentially revolutionary X-59 landed just nine minutes after takeoff on Friday, its sophomore effort cut short by a warning light in the cockpit.

"Despite the early landing, this is a good day for the team. We collected more data, and the pilot landed safely," Cathy Bahm, project manager for NASA's Low-Boom Flight Demonstrator at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, said in a statement on Friday. "We're looking forward to getting back to flight as soon as possible."

Civilian supersonic flights — those that go faster than the speed of sound — have been prohibited over the United States since 1973 due to the disruptive effects of sonic booms. (The speed of sound at sea level is about 761 mph, or 1,225 kph).

NASA hopes to help change that with the X-59, the centerpiece of its Quesst ("Quiet Supersonic Technology") mission. The long-nosed plane is designed to generate mere thumps rather than booms when it goes supersonic.

Using Quesst information, "new data-driven acceptable noise thresholds related to supersonic flight over land can be established, which would open the doors to new commercial cargo and passenger markets to provide faster-than-sound air travel," NASA officials wrote in a description of the program.

The 100-foot-long (30.5 meters) X-59 flew for the first time on Oct. 29, 2025, taking off from Lockheed Martin Skunk Works in Palmdale, California. (The X-59 is a joint effort of NASA and Lockheed Martin.) That 67-minute debut went well, according to NASA: Pilot Nils Larson took it to a maximum altitude of 12,000 feet (3,660 m) and a top speed of 230 mph (370 kph), "precisely as planned."

NASA wanted to "expand the envelope" on the X-59's second flight, which was also expected to last about an hour. Pilot Jim "Clue" Less was supposed to hit those previous altitude and speed marks, then get the jet to 260 mph (418 kph) at 20,000 feet (6,100 m). But that didn't happen.

The X-59 took off from Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California on Friday at 1:54 p.m. EDT (1754 GMT; 10:54 a.m. local time) and landed safely just nine minutes later.

"The takeoff roll and liftoff was uneventful, and we were climbing out, getting ready to set up the first test point, when we got the warning, which required an immediate return to base," Less said during a press briefing on Friday afternoon.

"Although I had not intended to have to land quite as urgently for my first landing, the plane performed beautifully," he added.

It's too soon to say what caused the warning, Quesst team members said during the briefing. A caution — a level lower than a warning — also cropped up about an hour before liftoff involving a separate vehicle system, they added, but that didn't derail the flight attempt.

Both issues are under review, and there's no reason to be too concerned about either one, according to Less.

"This was just the beginning of a long flight-test campaign," he said. "We got data we didn't have before, and there's a lot of flights to come to gather a lot more data."

Two "missing" episodes of Doctor Who from the 1960s will be made available to watch on BBC iPlayer this Easter. So, if you have an account, you can stream them, save up to 73%, claim a free $50 Amazon voucher and improve your online security with two years of NordVPN.

Sign up for two years of NordVPN to save up to 73% and claim a free $50 Amazon voucher.

We rate NordVPN as the best VPN service on the market, thanks to its reliability, the safety features it comes with and its price. If you sign up for two years of their "Plus" tier or above, you can save up to 73% and claim a free Amazon voucher. A VPN can also allow you to access your accounts on the best streaming services while traveling. The increased safety NordVPN offers includes: ad and tracker blocker, anti-malware protection, up to $1m in identity theft insurance, password manager and data-breach scanner and more, which we'll get into below.

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

Naturally, you'll be able to stream more than just these two "missing" episodes of Doctor Who, which have recently been rediscovered. You can also stream iPlayer's entire Doctor Who collection, providing you have an account, and for other streaming services, VPNs are particularly useful if you're traveling and need to access the content you would stream at home.

On top of the ability to access streaming content that might be geoblocked while traveling, with NordVPN, you can also get increased online security features like an ad and tracker blocker, anti-malware protection, up to $1m in identity theft insurance and $100K in cyber extortion insurance, password manager and data-breach scanner, 1TB encrypted cloud storage and monitoring alerts and services.

By opting for two years of their "Plus" tier or above, you can claim a $50 free Amazon voucher. It's important to note that although NordVPN does offer greatly increased online security, nothing is ever 100% safe.

Key features: Up to 73% discount, up to $50 Amazon voucher, high-speed VPN, ad and tracker blocker, anti-malware protection, up to $1m in identity theft insurance and $100K in cyber extortion insurance, password manager and data-breach scanner, 1TB encrypted cloud storage and monitoring alerts and services.

Price history: NordVPN is often on sale, but with the "before" price of their "Prime" plan at nearly $600 for two years, or just under $25 a month, saving up to 73% represents huge value, especially as you can claim a free $50 as well.

Reviews consensus: We rate NordVPN as the best overall VPN service out there. It offers speedy connections and plenty of online safety features worth having, at a price that's very competitive compared to the other options on the market.

Featured in guides: Best VPN services

✅ Buy it if: You want to stream the "missing" Doctor Who episodes (and more) while traveling and you want greatly increased online security.

❌ Don't buy it if: You already have a VPN, or you don't want one. Genuinely, these are the only reasons we can think of not to opt for this deal.

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

NASA's X-59 jet looks ready to fly into the sunset in this new image taken before its second test flight.

What is it?

The X-59 is an X-plane (experimental plane) built by NASA and Lockheed Martin to break the sound barrier without producing the typical thunderous sonic booms that accompany supersonic flight.

The "quiet' supersonic jet already made one test flight in October 2025, and is now readying for its second test flight. In this photo, technicians monitor the aircraft as it undergoes engine runs ahead of flight number two at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center near the historic Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California.

On its second flight, the X-59 will take off from Armstrong and land at Edwards after around an hour, during which it will reach a maximum altitude of 20,000 feet (6 kilometers) and a max speed of 260 mph (418 km/h). Future flight tests will "gradually take the X-59 faster and higher to ensure the aircraft’s safety and assess its performance," according to NASA.

Why is it amazing?

As seen in this photo, the X-59 features a radical elongated geometry and altered engine placement that shape the way air flows over the aircraft in an attempt to spread out the shockwaves it produces at supersonic speeds.

By spreading these shockwaves out over a larger area, the X-59's sonic booms are perceived as quieter by people on the ground below the X-59; NASA likens the booms it produces to a "thump," similar in volume to a car door slamming as heard from indoors.

Sonic booms can be quite loud and disturb people on the ground below. Because of how disruptive these booms can be, supersonic flight has been prohibited over the U.S. since 1973. But programs like the X-59 hope to change that by making supersonic flight less of a nuisance to people on the ground.

There are also new next-generation supersonic commercial aircraft in development, such as the Boom X-1. If supersonic flight is once again approved over the U.S., the shorter flight times it would enable would revolutionize travel and give a boost to industries that depend on rapid response times.

ExpressVPN is offering some of the best VPN deals we've ever seen, and is now, in this limited-time deal ending on 19th March, at its lowest ever price.

As well as massive savings, ExpressVPN is the best way to secure all your favorite streaming services and allows you to view all the best sci-fi and space-related content. With lots of exciting sci-fi series coming in the next few months, including season five of space race thriller "For All Mankind", which blasts off on March 27.

ExpressVPN ranks as one of the top choices when it comes to the best VPN services. Recommended by our tech expert colleagues over at TechRadar, who have rigorously tested and independently verified all the top VPN services around.

Get ExpressVPN at its best-ever price and save an incredible $300 on a two-year plan.

Right now at ExpressVPN, you can get up to 82% off a two-year plan and receive a bonus four months free for just $2.27 a month, which equates to just $63.52 instead of the MSRP of $363.72, and a huge $300 saving.

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

ExpressVPN provides a solution to geo-blocking when it comes to viewing your streaming services. Assuming it complies with your broadcaster’s T&Cs, you can use a VPN to unblock the streaming services you're subscribed to and allow for uninterrupted viewing of your favorite shows.

Following "For All Mankind" season five is a spinoff series, "Star City", which lands on May 29, and follows the same timeline as "For All Mankind", but from a Soviet perspective. It's set during the height of the space race between the US and the Soviet Union, and the eight-episode debut season promises to be an exciting addition to the already popular space series.

ExpressVPN not only unlocks streaming geo-restrictions but also comes with added security benefits, which are particularly useful when overseas and connecting to unknown Wi-Fi connections. It offers ad blockers, anti-malware protection, a password manager and breach scanner, and fast connections. It means you can view and download content, work, and generally be online anywhere in the world with confidence.

These ExpressVPN deals are the best we've ever seen from ExpressVPN, and a win-win for online streaming, gaming and cybersecurity. However, they end on March 19, so like ExpressVPN, you'll have to act fast.

Key features: Up to 82% discount, four months free, high-speed VPN, ad and tracker blocker, anti-malware protection, protect up to 10 devices, 30-day money-back guarantee.

Price history: Before today's VPN deal, the price of the "Basic" plan was $363.72 for 24 months. It's now 82% off, taking it down to just $63, and comes with four free months, adding to the outstanding value.

✅ Buy it if: You're looking for maximum online security, you want to stream all your favorite shows anywhere in the world, and you want a four-month free bonus.

❌ Don't buy it if: Either you already have a VPN, or you're not in the market for one. Those are the only reasons you wouldn't make the most of this excellent value offer.

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

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

If you're looking for a scientific star projector, look elsewhere now. The Yachance Night Light star projector isn't for adults, and its cartoonish stars and moon projections are about as far from scientific as you can get. But if you are looking for a projector that can act as a sleep aid for babies and young children, we don't think you can get much better than this.

Reasonably priced and with an excellent build quality, the Yachance Night Light star projector looks fantastic, and thanks to rubberized feet, it stays put wherever it's placed. Buttons on the front of the unit make it easy to control, though a remote control (included) offers easier access to the star projector's full functionality.

In fact, marketing the Yachance Night Light Star Projector as just a star projector does it a bit of a disservice. This is a full sleep aid, including a white noise machine with a range of soothing sounds built in, the ability to play music of your choice, and a night light. The bright and bold projections are merely the cherry on top of what is surely one of the best star projectors and specifically, one of the best star projectors for kids.

Design

• Looks fantastic
• Very well made
• Easy to control

A dome shape on three feet, we love how the Yachance Night Light star projector looks. It's sturdy and stylish, and looks more high-end than its $39.99 price tag would suggest. It can be controlled entirely via the touch buttons on the front of the unit, but it also comes with a small remote control, which makes operating the projector from across the room much easier.

Unlike some other projectors, there are no interchangeable parts of the YACHANCE Night Light Star Projector. The dome here acts as the projector, with the lights and bulb hidden inside. The dome cannot be swapped out for any other domes, as it can in the One Fire Night Light projector. As long as you're happy with the cartoonish star images offered by this projector, they're not an issue. It’s fewer parts for little hands to fiddle with and lose.

There's an LCD display on the front of the projector, which shows how much time is left on the sleep timer if you've opted to use the functionality. It has the potential to be a little distracting, but it's subtle and not bright enough to outshine the projections themselves.

Performance

• Fantastic reach
• Good choice of colors
• 360-degree rotation

As we've already mentioned, the Yachance Night Light star projector doesn't offer up scientific projections or even aurora-like projections. Instead, it projects bold, cartoonish stars and moons on the wall and ceiling. It's bright and vivid, but there's no doubt these projections are better suited to children than to adults.

The projections do have a wide reach, however, and are likely to cover the entire ceiling of an average-sized bedroom. The projector is very quiet in operation, too; only if you turn on the rotation function (which moves the projections around 360 degrees) will you hear a slight whirring, but it's never distracting.

There are multiple colors to cycle through on the projector; you can opt for single colors or a duo. You can't choose a color with the touch of a button, which may be a problem for some; you can only cycle through every option available, either by pressing a button on the projector itself or using your remote control.

It's a small issue, though, as every color available looks great. The projections from the Yachance Night Light star projector are bright, clear and vivid, even in a room that isn't completely dark, and with three levels of brightness, you can opt for a mode that best suits your environment: the lowest setting might be ideal for creating a relaxing ambience before bedtime, while the brightest is a great option for a space-themed party.

Functionality

• Speaker with built-in relaxing sounds
• Comes with a memory card so you can preload your own music or sounds
• Sleep timer and night light

One of the best things about the Yachance Night Light star projector is all the extra bells and whistles it packs in. There's a handy night light, which can be set to three different brightnesses on the projector base itself, a built-in speaker, and a sleep timer, which can be set in five-minute increments all the way up to 995 minutes.

While we're not entirely sure why you'd want to set something on a sleep timer for 16 and a half hours, having full control of the timer beyond the usual 30 or 60 minutes is certainly handy.

There's a sound machine built right into the projector, too, which features 29 soothing sounds, from white noise, a running stream, birdcalls and a heartbeat. Perfect if you're planning to use the Yachance Night Light star projector as a sleep aid, either for yourself or a baby. While you can't connect to the projector via Bluetooth, it is equipped with a card slot and ships with a 128MB memory card so you can add your own sounds and music.

While Bluetooth would make it easier to play your own music, we do appreciate the extra safety that is offered by having no connectivity. It's a safety measure that shouldn't be overlooked, particularly if you're planning to use the Yachance Night Light star projector with young children,

Should I buy the Yachance Night Light star projector ?

If you're looking for a star projector that's suitable for children, well-made, offers a variety of functions and makes a great sleep aid, we really think the Yachance Night Light star projector is one of the best on the market. At $39.99, there are cheaper options available, but it's still reasonably priced considering everything this projector packs in.

If the Yachance Night Light star projector isn't for you

If you're looking for a projector that's more suited to adults, however, you'll want to look elsewhere. If a night light is important, we recommend the Jiawen Galaxy Projector Light, which is stylish, reasonably priced and offers soothing aurora-like projections. And if you're looking for something a little more scientific, we think the Sega Toys Homestar Flux is one of the best scientific star projectors currently on the market.

The DJI Mini 5 Fly More Combo bundle is now $500 on Amazon and it features in our best drones guide as we think it's the best sub-250g ever made.

Save $500 on the DJI Mini 5 Pro Fly More Combo bundle at Amazon.

DJI's Mini 5 Pro is well up to the manufacturer's usual standards. In our review of the DJI Mini 5 Pro we awarded it 4.5/5 stars, praising its raft of features, including a 50MP 1-inch sensor camera, advanced obstacle avoidance and more.

Now, it's at its lowest-ever price and $500 off from Amazon. This Fly More Combo bundle includes a remote with an LCD screen, three batteries for nearly two hours of flight time, and more. It's not super beginner-friendly, so if you're a newcomer to drone flying, take a look at the best beginner drones. But if you're a seasoned flyer looking to trade up, it's a real steal.

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

In short, this is a powerful, versatile drone, and the extras included in this bundle (3 batteries, extra propellers, a charging hub, a remote with a screen and more) make it a real steal at $500 off.

In our review of the DJI Mini 5 Pro, we remarked that it "redefines sub-250g drone possibilities thanks to its 1-inch sensor, rotating camera, Omnidirectional Vision Sensing System and some impressive video functionality", and that verdict still stands. In short, if you're looking to capture stunning aerial video or static shots, this is the drone for you.

Even factoring in that its starting price has been slightly spiked, you really can't go wrong with this DJI Mini 5 Pro Fly More Combo. You get nearly two hours of flight time, spread across three batteries, and it's easy to transfer the captured video to your phone. If you've never flown a drone before, you might be better off with one of the best beginner drones, but for everyone else, this is a significant saving on a powerhouse of a drone.

Key features: 50MP 1-inch rotating camera sensor, 4K video, up to 108 minutes flight with three batteries, omnidirectional obstacle avoidance, 6.18x3.74x2.68 in / 157×95×68 mm folded, 2.4 miles / 20km (FCC), 6.2 miles / 10km (CE/SRRC/MIC) transmission range, 8.81 oz / 249.9g weight.

Price history: Before today's deal, we've seen this drone as low as $1,200, but this is the cheapest it's ever been.

Price comparison: Amazon: $1099 | Best Buy: $1375

✅ Buy it if: You're looking for a powerful drone that'll offer excellent image and video quality, and will be with you for years to come.

❌ Don't buy it if: You're completely new to drone flying; instead, consider one of the best beginner drones.

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

Commercial space infrastructure firm Voyager Technologies is backing lunar habitat developer Max Space with a new multi-million-dollar investment aimed at accelerating development of expandable modules for future missions to the moon.

The companies say the partnership will help move expandable habitat technology toward operational missions by scaling up production, bolstering engineering efforts and integrating Voyager's technology systems with Max's habitat infrastructure.

"Expanding human presence beyond low Earth orbit (LEO) requires infrastructure that is scalable, resilient and purpose-built for permanence,” Dylan Taylor, chairman and CEO of Voyager, said in a March 9 statement. "By pairing Voyager’s integrated platform with Max Space’s expandable habitat architecture, we are accelerating the transition from demonstration missions to durable lunar capability.”

Max Space's expandable habitat technology is designed to fold into a tightly packed configuration capable of fitting inside the payload fairings of rockets like SpaceX's Falcon 9. Once delivered to orbit, the moon or another planet, the structure expands to drastically increase its interior living space, offering the dual benefits of lightweight launch mass and greater usable volume than traditional rigid spacecraft.

"Voyager’s investment is a powerful validation of our expandable habitat thesis and long heritage in orbit. Together we are building habitats designed not just to reach the moon but to stay there," said Saleem Miyan, co-founder and CEO of Max Space.

The companies did not reveal the exact value of the investment.

Denver-based Voyager markets itself as a commercial space infrastructure innovator focused on mission services and technologies for system operations beyond low Earth orbit. The company is also developing, along with Airbus, a commercial space station called Starlab, which NASA selected as one of several private LEO destinations intended to succeed the International Space Station (ISS) after its retirement in the 2030s.

Expandable habitats themselves are not a new idea. NASA tested the concept in an on-orbit demonstration with the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), a small inflatable test habitat that was attached to the ISS in 2016 to study the technology’s performance in space.

BEAM was built by Bigelow Aerospace, which had its own plans for large expandable space stations, but was forced to close its doors due to financial struggles at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Max hopes to scale the concept much further, creating bigger space modules that support astronauts for deep space missions and long-term stints on the lunar surface.

Max and Voyager say their combined initiative is in direct response to a recent NASA announcement outlining a new roadmap for its Artemis program and the agency's efforts to land astronauts on the moon in 2028. The Artemis program aims to establish a permanent human presence on the moon and will need a variety of surface modules to sustain crews.

The companies hope their partnership helps support future lunar missions, "including cislunar mission management, surface logistics, propulsion, power systems and future surface infrastructure, reinforcing a shared vision of the moon as an operational domain, not a temporary destination," according to the March 9 statement.

After NASA's successful launch of Artemis 2, its first astronaut mission to the moon since 1972, the Integrity crew is nearly ready to splash down back on Earth on Friday, April 10 after a 10-day mission.

Thousands gathered for the launch, but there are millions more across the US and the world who are as excited as we are about the mission. And you can get a keepsake of your own with any number of NASA Artemis-themed merchandise.

Our favorite items that we've chosen are below, available online and include Lego sets, hoodies, badges, caps and more.

You can follow our Artemis 2 launch live blog for the latest updates.

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

Please note that the products listed above are not necessarily linked directly to NASA itself. If you want to support them, head directly to the Shop NASA store.

Lux Aeterna just got some more money to take reusability in a new direction.

The Colorado-based company announced today (March 10) that it has raised $10 million, which it will use to accelerate the development of fully reusable satellites — technology that it believes will be as transformative as reusable rockets.

"The future of the space economy will be built on fleets that return to Earth reliably and relaunch almost instantly," Lux Aeterna Founder and CEO Brian Taylor said in a statement today. "Our approach moves space operations away from a 'launch-and-burn' cycle and toward a more capable, cost-effective paradigm that supports downstream mass, manufacturing and defense applications. As a result, we're unlocking use cases, economics and business models that were previously impossible or impractical to execute."

Reusable rocket technology is key to SpaceX's dominance of the launch market these days, allowing Elon Musk's company to fly frequently and relatively cheaply. Satellite reuse will be a big cost-saver as well, according to Taylor.

"It's not only the cost of building another satellite; it's also the supply chain and the capital expenditure of building another satellite," he told Space.com.

"In general, the idea of refurbishing something and optimizing that refurbishment really reduces not only the unit cost but also the supply chain burden — everything you have to create from scratch for every vehicle," added Taylor, who previously worked on the Starlink and Amazon Leo satellite projects at SpaceX and Amazon, respectively. "So it really compounds on just the cost."

Reusable satellites will also give customers much greater flexibility, he said, allowing them to fly payloads that aren't designed to (and constrained by) typical spacecraft operational lifetimes.

"You can design your missions around the payload, as opposed to designing the payload around a bus whose maximum life is, you know, five to seven years in low Earth orbit," Taylor said. "So it really, in our mind, opens up these new mission architectures, in addition to obviously covering the down-mass market, which is in-space manufacturing, cargo resupply, hypersonics — things like that."

Other companies are active in this broader market as well. For example, Varda Space has conducted multiple missions with its W-series return capsules, which it bills as orbital mini-factories. And Outpost aims to provide pinpoint cargo-delivery and in-space manufacturing services with its series of scalable vehicles. But Lux Aeterna distinguishes itself by focusing on satellite missions with full reusability, Taylor said.

The newly announced funding came via an oversubscribed "seed" round, which was led by Konvoy with participation from Decisive Point, Cubit Capital, Wave Function and other investment firms. Lux Aeterna raised $4 million in a "pre-seed" round last year, bringing its total investment haul to date to $14 million.

The new funds will go toward the development and production of Delphi, Lux Aeterna's prototype reusable satellite platform. The vehicle, which is about 3.6 feet (1.1 meters) wide and weighs 440 pounds (200 kilograms), is slated to fly for the first time in early 2027, on one of SpaceX's Transporter rideshare missions.

Though that mission is primarily a technology demonstrator, Delphi will carry a number of payloads up (and back down to Earth). Lux Aeterna isn't releasing details about the manifest, but "it does include a cross section of civil defense and commercial customers that are all taking part in this mission," Taylor said.

Delphi is a pathfinder, not a production vehicle; Lux Aeterna's fleet will consist of bigger and more capable satellite platforms. The next-generation spacecraft will fit atop currently available rockets, Taylor said, while the one after that will likely be sized to fly on SpaceX's Starship megarocket.

If all goes to plan, Lux Aeterna will have tens of satellites in operation by 2030 and "on the order of hundreds" by 2035, he added.

"Lux Aeterna is the first company building a returnable fleet that truly compresses mission timelines and costs," Josh Chapman, managing partner at Konvoy, said in the same statement.

"With a team that has launched thousands of satellites, they have the unique expertise required to build a fleet of reentry satellites that will create a new category in the space industry, yet one that feels familiar to airline fleets on Earth," Chapman added. "We believe they’re on the cusp of unlocking an entirely new market for space missions that simply hasn't existed until now."