NASA's SpaceX Crew-12 is cleared to leave the ISS on Oct. 7, as Crew-13 settles in aboard a station with 11 people on board.
Undock targeting 8:05 a.m. ET Oct. 7; splashdown about 11:34 a.m. ET Oct. 8 off California after 237 days.
After Oct. 4 opposition: closest and brightest for 2026, up all night, rings opening again.
Every 87 minutes, a strange triangle of light: a red dwarf feeding on a brown dwarf in an orbit that could fit inside the Sun. A first — and it could last billions of years.
Gold hot atomic hydrogen on one side, red protostar shocks on the other — Webb’s new NIRCam portrait of NGC 7129, 3,300 light-years away.
Decane, undecane, and dodecane in Cumberland mudstone may be fatty-acid fragments. Origin still unknown — not a life detection.
Hubble’s cold case on white dwarf HS 0209+0832 points to a suspected second-generation gas giant. Strong evidence — still a candidate.
NASA and DOE want fission power on the Moon by 2030. Russia and China are talking mid-2030s. Neither reactor is there yet.
A rare class of warm dusty disks around young stars carries silica clues to Mars-sized smashups — the kind that may have made our Moon — and quieter Moon-sized grazes.
On orbit 200,000, Hubble watched a galaxy cluster that can show the same star explosion more than once. Supernova Athena should reappear by early March 2027.
NGC 6334 is a giant cloud of glowing hydrogen where massive stars are being born — and where that birth will eventually shut itself down.
A huge NIRCam panorama of IC 348, 1,000 light-years away, frames brown dwarfs with mass estimates near two Jupiters — and jets from newborn stars.
MeerKAT localized auroral radio bursts to Beta Pictoris b — the first unambiguous radio detection from an exoplanet rather than its host star. Preprint awaiting peer review.
Hubble’s OPAL images reveal a strengthening decagon wave near Saturn’s south pole — the first large regular-sided jet pattern seen in the southern hemisphere.
Falcon Heavy lofted the classified NROL-97 mission at 11:54 p.m. ET Oct. 1 from LC-39A. Side boosters landed at LZ-1 and LZ-2; first NRO Falcon Heavy flight.
SpaceX’s Transporter-18 rideshare lifted off ~11:32 a.m. PT Oct. 1 from Vandenberg SLC-4E with ~130 payloads to SSO. Deployments finished ~3:41 p.m. ET; booster landed at LZ-4.
What’s happening beyond Earth today.
Crew-12 is cleared to undock from the ISS at 8:05 a.m. ET Oct. 7, with splashdown off California about 11:34 a.m. ET Oct. 8 after 237 days. Crew-13 is already aboard; the station briefly held 11 people.
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MIT-led team reports ZTF J0440+2325 in Nature Astronomy: a red dwarf steadily feeding on a brown dwarf in an 87-minute orbit — the first direct sighting of this kind of stable mass transfer.
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Decane, undecane, and dodecane in Cumberland mudstone may be fatty-acid fragments. Origin still unknown — not a life detection.
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Warwick reanalysis of Hubble’s HS 0209+0832 spectrum finds niobium and a TESS 4.4-day cycle — a suspected second-generation gas giant. Still a candidate.
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On orbit 200,000, Hubble watched a galaxy cluster that can show the same star explosion more than once. Supernova Athena should reappear by early March 2027.
READ MOREThe universe gets strange here.
A red star feeding on a brown dwarf every 87 minutes — slowly enough to last billions of years.
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A white dwarf’s atmosphere looks like it is drinking a Jupiter-sized world built from the star’s own death debris.
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They sound like science fiction. Their gravity shaped the galaxies we call home — including ours.
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A white-dwarf remnant races through interstellar gas. The bow shock it leaves behind looks like a shrimp.
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A giant decagon wave is taking shape near Saturn’s south pole — similar to the famous northern hexagon, but newly forming and still evolving.
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Four astronauts undock from the ISS Oct. 7 after 237 days; splashdown off California Oct. 8.
After Oct. 4 opposition: closest and brightest for 2026, up all night, rings opening again.
Gold hot atomic hydrogen on one side, red protostar shocks on the other — Webb’s new NIRCam portrait of NGC 7129, 3,300 light-years away.
On orbit 200,000, Hubble watched a galaxy cluster that can show the same star explosion more than once. Supernova Athena should reappear by early March 2027.
NGC 6334 is a giant cloud of glowing hydrogen where massive stars are being born — and where that birth will eventually shut itself down.
A huge NIRCam panorama of IC 348, 1,000 light-years away, frames brown dwarfs with mass estimates near two Jupiters — and jets from newborn stars.
MeerKAT localized auroral radio bursts to Beta Pictoris b — the first unambiguous radio detection from an exoplanet rather than its host star. Preprint awaiting peer review.
Hubble’s OPAL images reveal a strengthening decagon wave near Saturn’s south pole — the first large regular-sided jet pattern seen in the southern hemisphere.
Falcon Heavy lofted the classified NROL-97 mission at 11:54 p.m. ET Oct. 1 from LC-39A. Side boosters landed at LZ-1 and LZ-2; first NRO Falcon Heavy flight.
SpaceX’s Transporter-18 rideshare lifted off ~11:32 a.m. PT Oct. 1 from Vandenberg SLC-4E with ~130 payloads to SSO. Deployments finished ~3:41 p.m. ET; booster landed at LZ-4.
Crew-13 docked at the ISS at 7:05 p.m. EDT Oct. 1 — 7h 55m after liftoff, the fastest U.S. launch-to-docking in station history. Hatch opening planned about 8:45 p.m. EDT.
Smile is approved for science ops. UVI captured the full northern aurora ring in UV — the first since 2008.
In Cassiopeia, a white-dwarf remnant races through gas and piles it into a glowing bow shock — the Shrimp Nebula.
From Starbase to orbit, then a fiery Pacific return. Flight 14 closed the loop Starship had never closed before.
One pale sphere. No borders. A thin blue shell holding every person you have ever known.
They sound like science fiction. Their gravity shaped the galaxies we call home — including ours.
On orbit 200,000, Hubble watched a galaxy cluster that can show the same star explosion more than once. Supernova Athena should reappear by early March 2027.
NGC 6334 is a giant cloud of glowing hydrogen where massive stars are being born — and where that birth will eventually shut itself down.
A huge NIRCam panorama of IC 348, 1,000 light-years away, frames brown dwarfs with mass estimates near two Jupiters — and jets from newborn stars.
MeerKAT localized auroral radio bursts to Beta Pictoris b — the first unambiguous radio detection from an exoplanet rather than its host star. Preprint awaiting peer review.
Hubble’s OPAL images reveal a strengthening decagon wave near Saturn’s south pole — the first large regular-sided jet pattern seen in the southern hemisphere.
Smile is approved for science ops. UVI captured the full northern aurora ring in UV — the first since 2008.
In Cassiopeia, a white-dwarf remnant races through gas and piles it into a glowing bow shock — the Shrimp Nebula.
One pale sphere. No borders. A thin blue shell holding every person you have ever known.
They sound like science fiction. Their gravity shaped the galaxies we call home — including ours.
Undock targeting 8:05 a.m. ET Oct. 7; splashdown about 11:34 a.m. ET Oct. 8 after 237 days.
After Oct. 4 opposition: closest and brightest for 2026, up all night, rings opening again.
Gold hot atomic hydrogen on one side, red protostar shocks on the other — Webb’s new NIRCam portrait of NGC 7129, 3,300 light-years away.
NASA and DOE want fission power on the Moon by 2030. Russia and China are talking mid-2030s. Neither reactor is there yet.
Falcon Heavy lofted the classified NROL-97 mission at 11:54 p.m. ET Oct. 1 from LC-39A. Side boosters landed at LZ-1 and LZ-2; first NRO Falcon Heavy flight.
SpaceX’s Transporter-18 rideshare lifted off ~11:32 a.m. PT Oct. 1 from Vandenberg SLC-4E with ~130 payloads to SSO. Deployments finished ~3:41 p.m. ET; booster landed at LZ-4.
Crew-13 docked at the ISS at 7:05 p.m. EDT Oct. 1 — 7h 55m after liftoff, the fastest U.S. launch-to-docking in station history. Hatch opening planned about 8:45 p.m. EDT.
Smile is approved for science ops. UVI captured the full northern aurora ring in UV — the first since 2008.
From Starbase to orbit, then a fiery Pacific return. Flight 14 closed the loop Starship had never closed before.
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