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Here's what to expect during each stage of the Aug. 27-28 partial lunar eclipse, as our planet's colossal shadow swallows 96% of the moon's surface for billions on the night side of Earth.

August's lunar eclipse is the closing act of a dramatic two-part show, the opening act of which began on Aug. 12 as the moon covered the face of the sun to trigger a spectacular total solar eclipse over parts of Greenland, Iceland and Spain.

Eclipses always come in pairs, but the stages to be expected during a lunar eclipse are staggeringly different from its solar equivalent. One major bonus of a lunar eclipse is that each stage unfolds simultaneously for everyone on the night side of Earth, where the lunar disk is above the horizon. However, the local time for each stage will differ based on your location.

Lunar eclipses are also completely safe to view with the naked eye, or even through a pair of binoculars of a telescope, which will offer a magnified view of the moon as Earth's shadow sweeps across its cratered landscape.

Earth's shadow is divided into two concentric cones that are only visible during the brief window of a lunar eclipse. The outer penumbral cone casts a soft, wide shadow, while the inner umbra reveals the distinct curve of Earth's silhouette.

The 5 stages of the partial lunar eclipse August 2026Stage 1: Earth's penumbral shadow sweeps across the moon

The penumbral stage of the May 2021 lunar eclipse, captured over Chile. (Image credit: Photo by MARTIN BERNETTI/AFP via Getty Images)

The eclipse officially begins at 9:23 p.m. EDT on Aug. 27 (0123GMT on Aug. 28), as Earth's outer penumbral shadow begins to cover the moon's surface, according to TimeandDate.com.

Darkening of the lunar disk during this stage is incredibly subtle, becoming most apparent in the moments before Earth's inner shadow appears to transform August's "Sturgeon Moon", which is named for the time of year when the large fish were easily caught in North America.

Stage 2: Partial lunar eclipse begins

Earth's shadow swallows the moon during the partial phase of a lunar eclipse. (Image credit: Photo by Aditya Irawan/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Earth's inner umbral shadow will take its first "bite" out of the moon at 10:33 EDT on Aug. 27 (0233 GMT on Aug. 28), announcing the start of the partial phase of today's deep lunar eclipse.

The umbral shadow will first appear as a small semicircle of shadow close to the dark expanses of Oceanus Procellarum (the Ocean of Storms) and Mare Humorum on the moon's southwestern edge, before swiftly spreading to swallow the nearby moonscape.

This partial phase of a lunar eclipse is the only opportunity most of us will get to see the grand sweep of Earth's silhouette with our own eyes, as our planet performs like a doll in a cosmic marionette, casting its shape in shadow against the backdrop of its natural satellite.

Stage 3: Maximum eclipse

The moon takes on a red hue as the majority of its surface passes within Earth's shadow during a lunar eclipse. (Image credit: Photo by Thilina Kaluthotage/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The eclipse will reach its peak at 12:12 a.m. EDT (0412 GMT) on Aug. 28, as 96% of the lunar disk is smothered in Earth's umbral shadow, leaving a dazzling crescent exposed to direct sunlight on the moon's northern limb.

Around this time, you may notice a subtle red hue infuse the moon, as sunlight filtered through Earth's atmosphere is refracted, or bent onto its surface. It may appear as if the light from every sunset and sunrise on Earth is simultaneously striking the lunar disk, revealing prominent craters and dark lunar seas in spite of the shadow covering it.

Stage 4: Earth's inner shadow slips from the moon

Earth's shadow retreats from the lunar disk in the skies over Nepal. (Image credit: Photo by Narayan Maharjan/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Earth's inner umbral shadow will steadily retreat from the moon in the hours. The crimson hue that may have been visible at the height of the eclipse will gradually fade as the crescent of the lunar disk exposed to direct sunlight grows, and normality reasserts itself over the natural satellite.

The last vestige of Earth's inner shadow will depart the lunar surface at 1:51 a.m. EDT (0551 GMT) on Aug. 28.

Stage 5: Earth's outer shadow exits the Sturgeon Moon

Dark lunar seas and bright craters mark the Surface of August's Sturgeon Moon. (Image credit: Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Our planet's outer penumbral shadow will disappear from the Sturgeon Moon shortly after at 3:01 a.m. EDT (0701 GMT), bringing the eclipse to an end. We won't see another like it until New Year's Eve 2028, when a total lunar eclipse will be visible across Asia, Australia and Europe

Eager to photograph August's partial lunar eclipse? Then be sure to read our expert's guide on how to photograph a lunar eclipse, along with a roundup of the best cameras and lenses for astrophotography. You should also check out our picks of the best binoculars and telescopes available in 2026, which will give you a closer look at the moon as Earth's shadow swallows its ancient surface.

Editor's Note: If you capture a photo of the August lunar eclipse and want to share it with Space.com's readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, name and location to spacephotos@space.com.

In August of 2006, astronomers at the International Astronomical Union (IAU) democratically voted to reclassify Pluto as a dwarf planet — but 20 years later, with our greater knowledge and understanding of planetary systems, is it time to revisit the controversial decision? Should Pluto be called a planet again?

For several years before the IAU vote, there had been agitators among the astronomical community lobbying for our solar system's nine worlds to become eight, and for Pluto's planetary status to be revoked. In 2000, Neil DeGrasse Tyson even went as far as to remove Pluto from the planets display at the Hayden Planetarium in New York. The questioning of Pluto's status began even earlier, in the 1990s, with the discovery of distant objects in the Kuiper belt beyond Neptune which had similar orbits to Pluto.

It all came to a head in July of 2005 with the discovery of Eris, which is a Pluto-size body even further from the sun than Pluto is. Was Eris the 10th planet? If it was not a planet, then how could we still call Pluto a planet? A year later, the issue was debated at a meeting of the IAU, where astronomers from all over the world convened to discuss various conundrums. Numerous proposals and counter-proposals were put forward, some of which even increased the number of recognized planets to as many as 14. But in the end, Pluto became a dwarf planet.

Though Pluto was officially "reclassified," to many in the public it seemed as though Pluto had experienced a demotion. This viewpoint was the one promoted by those scientists who were against the decision such as Alan Stern, who was the principal investigator on the New Horizons mission to Pluto. Stern's spacecraft would launch in 2005 on a journey to a planet, but arrive at a dwarf planet in 2015.

Some argued that Pluto was still a kind of planet, just a small one. This argument is undermined somewhat by the IAU giving Pluto a minor planet number — 134340 — which is typically reserved for asteroids. Nationalistic arguments from some in the United States said Pluto should remain a planet because it was discovered by an American astronomer, Clyde Tombaugh, at Arizona's Lowell Observatory in 1930. And when New Horizons reached Pluto, it revealed not a minor body, but rather a complex world in its own right.

What is Pluto?

Nevertheless, for 20 years, Pluto has remained a dwarf planet, but on the anniversary of that fateful IAU vote, is it time to revisit that decision? Paul Byrne, a planetary astronomer at the University of Washington in St Louis, certainly thinks so.

"Yes, Pluto is a planet," he told Space.com. And not just Pluto, but the other dwarf planets too: Ceres, Eris, Makemake and Haumea, not to mention the likes of Sedna and Quaoar that are dwarf planets in all but name.

"Ultimately I think they are all planets and I don't think there's any benefit to not including Pluto as a planet," Byrne said.

To a point this entire debate is semantics, and Byrne accepts this viewpoint, reminding us that: "Nature doesn't care what we call Pluto."

However, perception is another matter, which is where Byrne thinks that the IAU's 2006 decree ultimately failed us. Byrne describes how, when he gives public talks about the planets, members of the audience don't ask questions about Pluto's amazing active nitrogen glaciers or what formed its giant heart-shaped feature. Instead, they want to know why it was demoted. The entire issue has got in the way of presenting the science to the public.

"We've done a massive disservice to the public from a science communication perspective," Byrne said. "The messaging has got in the way of trying to understand what Pluto is."

Pluto's active nitrogen glaciers are typical of planetary processes. (Image credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI)

One of the arguments in 2006 was that models of the solar system's formation predict that there could be hundreds of objects like Pluto and Eris that remain undiscovered in the Scattered Disk and the Oort Cloud, which is a vast unexplored region that could extend up to a light-year from the sun.

"One of the issues people brought up was, how would kids remember the names of 200 planets?" said Byrne. "But just look at how many Pokémon there are that kids know the names of. If ultimately there are 200 planets in the solar system, then so what?"

The IAU definition of a planet

Semantics or not, how we categorize celestial objects has to be grounded in some kind of scientific thinking. In 2006, the IAU came up with a three-point plan on what makes a planet.

First, a planet had to be in hydrostatic equilibrium, meaning that its gravity has pulled it into a spherical shape. Furthermore, its interior will have become differentiated, with the heavier elements sinking to the core. Everyone seems to agree with this part of the planetary definition.

Pluto's gravity has shaped it into a spherical object. (Image credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI)

Second was that it must be in orbit around the sun, so a moon isn't a planet because a moon doesn't orbit the sun, it orbits a planet instead (though Byrne notes that if he had his way, he'd call the large moons planets too). Strictly speaking, this rules out exoplanets because they don't orbit our sun, but common sense dictates that they're fine because they orbit their own star instead. However, what about rogue planets that wander interstellar space alone? Astronomers are now beginning to discover very many of these free-floating worlds. It could be argued that most of these did indeed form in orbit around a star only to be ejected, so it's okay to still call them planets, but some rogue planets seem to have formed directly from the collapse of a gas cloud without having a parent star. Such planets fall through the gaps in the IAU's definition.

It's the third point that draws the critics' ire the most. It states that to be a planet, an object must have cleared its neighborhood. In other words, it must be dominant in the region around its orbit, its gravity having swept away any other bodies. Pluto fails at this because its orbit actually crosses Neptune's, and it's accompanied by other Kuiper belt objects in neighboring orbits. But then you could say Neptune mustn't be a planet because it has Pluto infringing on its orbital realm. And what about the existence of near-Earth asteroids? Does their existence mean that Earth isn't a planet because it hasn't cleared those away yet? There certainly does seem to be some sloppiness in this part of the definition of a planet, perhaps resulting from the somewhat rushed nature of the vote 20 years ago.

Planetary processes

But if the IAU decision were to be rejected, what should replace it? How should we classify planets? Byrne has some ideas.

"Being round and having some amount of differentiation makes a lot of sense to me," he said. "Geophysically, if they are big enough to pull themselves into balls, then they are big enough to have undergone some kind of internal chemical processing and are capable of having some kind of active geology, in terms of the outgassing of volatiles to form an atmosphere, volcanism, surface geomorphological processes, even a short-lived magnetic field. That's why I count the moon as a planet because it has had these planetary processes."

Byrne acknowledges that gas giants don't have these properties since they have no solid surface, but no one is doubting Jupiter's planetary credentials, and when it comes to Uranus and Neptune we don't actually know whether or not there is some sort of super-Earth itself lurking deep within them.

The moniker "dwarf" doesn't impress Byrne either. To him, it sounds like it implies there is a hierarchy of planets with the gas giants at the top and the dwarf planets at the bottom.

The New York Times article from when Pluto was discovered. (Image credit: The New York Times Archive)

"There is no natural hierarchy; they don't form according to one," he said. And although Pluto, Eris and the other dwarf planets are made from detritus left over from the construction of the solar system, they still coalesced in the same way as the other planets, in the sense that building blocks came together to form these larger objects.

A counterargument to Pluto being a planet, however, is that if it is just one of 200, then it is nothing special; it would become forgotten and ultimately treated almost incidentally. As a dwarf planet, it is the standard bearer of its kind, the guardian of an entire realm of similarly sized worlds. It's a choice between being a big fish in a little pond, or a little fish in a big pond.

The other 200 planets?

The real test will come when astronomers begin to discover some of these purported 200 or so planets far from the sun. As long as they are all roughly Pluto-size, there will be no debate — but what happens when astronomers discover one the size of Mars, or one even as large as Earth? We would surely think of an object so large as a planet. Perhaps this world would have formed closer to the sun but was kicked out through gravitational interactions with one of the giant planets, but on the other hand perhaps it formed out there in the outer solar system from the same detritus as Pluto did.

"By the IAU definition it would fail to be defined as a planet because it wouldn't have cleared its neighborhood," said Byrne. "If we did find such a planet it would be another nail in the coffin of trying to distinguish these things solely on the basis of where they are and not what they are."

Whatever the case, if Pluto is to be a planet again, it must deserve to be so scientifically. Nostalgia, or nationalistic pride, or giving kids names of planets to remember aren;t sufficient reasons to revoke the original IAU decision. Revisiting the name "dwarf planet" and finding a more appropriate category could be the way to go instead.

Or, perhaps we just don't have the words to describe the things that we are discovering. Concepts such as planets are rooted in history going back millennia when there was no understanding what these wandering "stars" really were, so perhaps it is not surprising that we are now running into difficulty when trying to apply the term "planet" to our modern understanding of the different types of worlds. If there is no way of categorizing these objects that is consistent and satisfactory to everyone, then perhaps we ought to stop worrying so much about it.

Whatever we decide to call it, Pluto will always be Pluto.

The "Star Trek" franchise's 60th anniversary is coming straight at us warp speed and will be arriving on Sept. 8, 2026. "Trek" faithful from around the globe are expected to pause and salute this space fantasy institution created by Gene Roddenberry in whichever way they deem appropriate.

The celebration has already begun earlier this year at the 2026 Rose Parade and will accelerate past September and into the fall, where there’ll no doubt be 40th anniversary screenings of "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" and 30th anniversary tributes to "Star Trek: First Contact" in November, amid a galaxy of other 'Trek'-centric events and retrospectives.

William Shatner's innumerable contributions to the "Star Trek" universe are as infinite as the heavens, and to add to the historic occasion’s festivities, he's co-executive produced a new documentary about the show's history and impact.

Titled "The Sixty-Year Mission: How Star Trek Changed Television And The World", the documentary will launch exclusively into Regal Cinemas beginning on Oct. 9, 2026.

Executive produced by William Shatner, "The Sixty-Year Mission" lands in theaters on October 9, 2026. (Image credit: Galaxie Pictures)

Written and directed by Mark A. Altman ("Star Trek: The Fifty-Year Mission") in association with Michael S. Broder of Galaxie Pictures, "The Sixty-Year Mission" will focus on the rare combination of creative genius, epic struggles, personal conflicts, and indefatigable spirit that caused the cosmic tumblers to align and birth "Star Trek: The Original Series" in 1966.

"This film is a love letter to 'Star Trek,'" Altman told Deadline. "I’m immensely grateful to Regal to offer this gift to fans for the show’s 60th birthday. I'm confident that the film will appeal both to longtime fans of the franchise as well as new viewers who might be wondering what the unique alchemy of this pop culture icon is really about."

"The Sixty-Year Mission" burrows into the genesis of the seminal TV series that, against all odds, forever altered the landscape of small screen science fiction and ushered in a true classic.

It's brimming with archival footage and fresh insights from "The Original Series" luminaries William Shatner, Walter Koenig, and George Takei, as well as visits with Gene “Rod” Roddenberry, Jr., Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, Gates McFadden, Ethan Peck, Robert Picardo, Christina Chong, and Denise Crosby.

William Shatner as James T. Kirk in "Star Trek: The Original Series" (Image credit: Paramount)

“"We could not be more excited to partner with Regal to ensure that fans have a chance to see this remarkable film honoring the incredible 60-year legacy of 'Star Trek,'" adds Broder. "I am delighted to join forces with William Shatner and many of the franchise’s greatest stars and creatives to bring this film to theaters. And since every birthday deserves a party, we’ll be bringing key 'Star Trek' talent to theaters for exclusive Q&A’s."

Except for the two-part pilot, "The Menagerie," Shatner appeared as the USS Enterprise's Captain James T. Kirk in every one of "Star Trek: The Original Series"' 79 episodes over three seasons and forged a palpable bond with viewers that helped forge "Star Trek's" legacy. His involvement with this documentary at the age of 95 gives the project a definite luster.

"The Sixty-Year Mission" will dock in Regal theaters starting Oct. 9, 2026.

On Aug. 23, 1961, NASA launched the Ranger 1 robotic spacecraft on a precursor mission to test new technologies for later moon missions.

NASA's Ranger program had the ultimate goal of photographing and mapping the lunar surface. Ranger 1 was launched with the primary mission of testing the performance of the spacecraft's functions and parts. It also studied particles and fields around the Earth in space.

While it was designed to enter a high orbit 37,000 by 684,000 miles (60,000 by 1,100,000 km), but it never made it beyond low-Earth orbit. A malfunction with the rocket caused the engine to shut down prematurely, which sent it tumbling around the Earth. On Aug. 30, it re-entered Earth's atmosphere and was incinerated.

On Aug. 23, 1961, NASA launched the Ranger 1 robotic spacecraft on a precursor mission to test new technologies for later moon missions. (Image credit: NASA Glenn Research Center)Why it mattered

This wasn't the first space failure and it certainly wasn't the last. Ranger 1 never made it beyond low-Earth orbit and all of the hard work, science and engineering that went into imagining, designing, developing, building and launching this mission ended up burning up in the atmosphere. Now, while this is obviously not the result the team wanted, with every space failure we learn an incredible amount.

It is because of the many failures of decades past that the incredible people behind these space missions have been pushed to solve problems that we didn't even know could happen. As the saying goes, "space is hard," and a failed mission like Ranger 1 is just one of countless examples of that. But through failure, we have learned to innovate and find creative solutions to cosmic problems.

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

A misbehaving coronal mass ejection (CME) that blew out a hidden cloud of charged particles aimed at Earth has been tracked by a record 17 spacecraft spread throughout the solar system, revealing the CME to be surprisingly lopsided.

CMEs are "burps" from the sun – huge clouds of magnetized plasma belched out from the sun's hot outer atmosphere, the corona, by the energy resulting from a solar flare. The magnetized CME cloud then expands out into the solar system, and the charged particles that the cloud contains are a significant radiation hazard to astronauts, spacecraft and even passengers on jet liners, but they also have a beautiful side as they can trigger the beautiful lights of the aurora when they intercept Earth.

CMEs occur on a regular basis, but one that erupted from the sun at 00:48 UT (7:48 p.m. ET) on Dec. 15, 2024 proved to be rather special.

"We used observations from 17 spacecraft to track and characterize this CME," Adrienn Luspay-Kuti of Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, who led the research that drew all the observations together, told Space.com. "This was a record number of spacecraft for tracking and characterizing a single CME, and gave us an exceptionally detailed view of how the CME evolved."

The previous record had been 10 spacecraft, but they had mostly been in a rough line from the sun through to the Earth and beyond, meaning that their measurements were somewhat one-dimensional. This time, for the December 2024 CME, the spacecraft were spread far and wide, not just at different distances from the sun, but also substantially wide of the Earth–sun line.

They revealed that the CME had two asymmetric lobes, one moving faster than the other. One of those lobes, which headed for Earth and Mars, would have gone unseen, obscured by the larger but slower lobe that left the sun at a tangent, were it not for the wide spread of the spacecraft.

"Our observations showed a fast lobe propagating through the Earth–Mars sector and a much slower lobe farther west toward STEREO-A," said Luspay-Kuti. STEREO-A is one half of NASA's two-spacecraft space weather monitoring system known as the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory.

The onset of the CME was seen by the joint NASA–ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observer (SOHO), which has been constantly monitoring the sun for more than 30 years. Yet it only saw the slower lobe that erupted at an angle to Earth; the faster lobe heading for our planet was missed, obscured by the slower, larger lobe.

A schematic of the CME has its two lobes progressing through the solar system and encountered various spacecraft and satellites. (Image credit: Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab)

The CME was next detected at a distance from the sun of 0.35 astronomical units (AU; 1 AU is the distance of Earth from the sun) on Dec. 16 moving through space near Mercury and the European Space Agency's BepiColombo mission (which finally arrives into orbit around the innermost planet in November 2026).

The next detection, on Dec. 17, was of the "hidden" component arriving at Earth, where a multitude of spacecraft picked it up. The CME was not strong enough to produce significant aurorae. Intriguingly Europe's Solar Orbiter mission, on an elongated orbit around the sun and at the time 0.94 AU from the sun and just 10 degrees off the Earth–sun line, did not detect the CME. This non-detection was actually vital since it helped to constrain the shape of the CME.

Then on Dec. 18, the slower moving lobe reached NASA's STEREO-A spacecraft, which orbits the sun at the same distance as Earth — 1 AU —- but substantially ahead of Earth in its orbit. The lobe that intersected the Earth had an average velocity of 522 miles (840 kilometers) per second, but the other lobe dragged its feet, moving at an average of 332 miles (534 km) per second from the sun and past BepiColombo and STEREO-A. In fact, by the time it reached STEREO-A, it had slowed to about 248.5 miles (400 km) per second. Both lobes decelerated as a result of friction with the regular solar wind that the CME was overtaking, and the range of velocities measured in the CME told researchers that the solar eruption was not traveling as a single, unified front.

Beyond Earth NASA's Europa Clipper mission, on which Luspay-Kuti is the Principal Investigator for the spacecraft's Plasma Instrument for Magnetic Sounding (PIMS) experiment, detected the faster moving lobe at 1.19 AU as the spacecraft was cruising to Mars for a gravity assist to help it on its journey to Jupiter. At the red planet, the now-defunct MAVEN mission also detected the CME on Dec. 19 to Dec. 20.

To have not only so many spacecraft follow the progress of a CME but also enough spacecraft off the Earth–sun line to measure the shape of the CME, at least in two dimensions, is a significant step forward in understanding and forecasting the propagation of CMEs.

The CME seen by the Solar Dynamics Observatory (top left), SOHO (top right) and STEREO-A (bottom left and right). The fast moving Earth-directed lobe was obscured by the southward-directed slower lobe. (Image credit: Luspay-Kuti et al.)

"This matters for future human exploration because a missed CME can mean losing valuable warning time," said Luspay-Kuti. "Fast CMEs can drive shocks that accelerate high-energy particles, which can pose a radiation hazard to astronauts outside Earth's protective magnetic field. This is why observations from multiple viewpoints, including spacecraft away from the sun–Earth line and planetary missions operating during their cruise phase, will become increasingly important for space-weather forecasting as human exploration moves further from Earth."

The asymmetrical double-lobed structure of this particular CME was certainly a surprise. The cause of the asymmetry remains unclear at present, though Luspay-Kuti told Space.com that researchers are investigating. The main question is, how frequent are asymmetric CMEs?

"In the context of previous observations, this event is at the most extreme end of observed CME variability," said Luspay-Kuti. "Are highly asymmetric CMEs actually fairly common but we fail to recognize them because we don't have enough observational coverage, or are they genuinely rare?"

The 17 spacecraft that detected or imaged the CME across some or all of its various stages – the bow shock and turbulent sheath ahead of the magnetic cloud, the CME itself and the turbulent wake left in the solar wind after its passing – were the following: SOHO (initial imaging), BepiColombo, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, STEREO-A, the four spacecraft of the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission, the two spacecraft of the ARTEMIS (Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence, and Electrodynamics of the Moon's Interaction with the sun) mission, NASA's Wind, ACE (Advanced Composition Explorer), GOES (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite) and DSCOVR (Deep Space Climate Observatory) missions, Europa Clipper, MAVEN and Solar Orbiter, the latter of which made measurements but did not detect the CME.

In the future, these missions will be joined by the European Space Agency's Vigil mission that will watch for space weather when it launches in 2031 for the sun–Earth L5 Lagrange point, 60 degrees behind Earth in its orbit and therefore providing additional off-axis monitoring.

The findings were published on Aug. 19 in the journal Science Advances.

Poor weather has delayed the launch of China's latest moon mission.

According to reports, the growth of Tropical Depression Narra in the Gulf of Tonkin has prompted China's space agency to delay the liftoff of Chang'e 7 significantly — possibly until 2027.

"China's Chang'e 7 lunar probe does not meet launch conditions, and its launch therefore cannot take place during the planned window this year," the state-run Xinhua news agency reported today (Aug. 23), citing the China Manned Space Agency.

Chang'e 7 had originally been scheduled to launch today from the Wenchang Space Launch Site on the island of Hainan. But then Narra started brewing in the Gulf of Tonkin, just to the island's west.

Launching a rocket into a howling gale is less than ideal. Chinese space officials initially pushed the launch back a day, to Monday (Aug. 24), before concluding that the new target was unattainable as well.

It's now unclear when Chang'e 7 might lift off; messaging on the topic has been characteristically murky. (China is fairly tight-lipped about its space activities, revealing far less publicly than, say, NASA or the European Space Agency does. For example, China announces who's flying on its crewed missions just one day before liftoff.)

The Chang'e 7 launch requires a certain lineup of Earth and the moon, so it cannot simply occur as soon as the skies around Wenchang clear. Some online reports suggest that Chang'e 7 could lift off as soon as September, while others — including today's Xinua story — have it launching sometime in 2027.

Artist's illustration of China's Chang'e 7 mission orbiting the moon. (Image credit: China Media Group)

Whenever it occurs, the liftoff will draw a lot of attention. Chang'e 7 is an ambitious and exciting mission, and it could have serious implications for lunar exploration down the road.

Chang'e 7 consists of an orbiter and a lander, which will likely touch down on the rim of Shackleton Crater, near the moon's south pole (though China has not announced an official landing site).

This region is thought to harbor lots of water ice, most of it on crater floors that have not seen the sun for billions of years. Chang'e 7's lander will deploy a rover and a hopping robot to hunt for this precious resource, which could help support human settlements in the area.

China aims to build such an outpost in the coming years, as does the United States, via NASA's Artemis program. U.S. officials have stressed the need for the nation to win this new space race so that it can establish the norms for living and working on Earth's nearest neighbor.

NASA is giving a financial boost to nearly 20 technology investigations to help fuel the incubation of tomorrow's spaceflight research capabilities.

The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program has selected 18 projects for this year's Phase I awards, which will each split a total of $3.2 million in development funding. NIAC is designed to bolster technology breakthroughs that NASA could use on future space missions.

This year's awards include an array of mission concepts and research proposals NASA views as having "transformative potential," according to a July 29 announcement of winners. Among them are ideas for hardening spacecraft to explore and withstand the harsh conditions of Venus, radioisotope-heated lunar spacesuits and using space dust to partially block out the sun to reduce solar radiation.

The selected projects aren't actual NASA missions, but serve as a sampling of technologies the agency sees as potentially contributing to projects like establishing a moon base as part of the Artemis program.

"Achieving that will require more than incremental technological advancement. It means we need great leaps," Greg Stover, director of the Advanced Research and Technology division in NASA's Research and Technology Mission Directorate, said in the awards announcement. "These awards are the kinds of innovation the world needs NASA to help foster."

Each of the 18 award winners will receive up to $175,000 to complete a nine-month investigation of their proposals to determine their feasibility and determine the next steps in maturing their technologies.

Graphic depiction of the LUX concept. (Image credit: Stone Aerospace, Inc.)

As NASA's plans for long-term lunar habitation evolve, underground dwellings that are naturally shielded from the harsh solar radiation are a serious consideration for habitation spaces. One of the NIAC winning ideas includes the Lunar Underground eXplorer (LUX), from Gilly Elor, at Texas-based Stone Aerospace, Inc. LUX would send hovering robots to map the potentially miles-long lava tubes beneath the moon's Mare Tranquilitatitis. These drones, obscured from sunlight in the depths of these lunar labyrinths, would each be tethered by an extra lightweight fiber-optic cable spooled out from a lander or rover on the moon's surface, which would shoot the line with a laser to supply the cave-diving probe's power and communications link.

Graphic depiction of the LUX concept. (Image credit: Stone Aerospace, Inc.)

Another NIAC winner aims to map the continents of Earth-like exoplanets orbiting nearby stars. Today, we can determine the size and makeup of exoplanets, but discerning their physical features isn't something that's been attempted on a large scale.

Paul Stankus, from Brookhaven Science Associates in New York, proposes designing a new type of "nulling interferometer," which uses data from different telescopes to cancel out a star's light, via a technique called "dynamic hierarchical nulling." His idea would merge data from a pair of "nuller" space telescopes positioned about 60 miles (100 kilometers) apart to achieve a resolution fine enough to detect the contrast of surface features on exoplanets 10 billion times dimmer than their star.

Another award-winning concept comes from Michael Rubenstein and Northwestern University. They propose exploring Saturn's rings by throwing thousands of "femtosats" (small satellite probes weighing less than 100 grams) into the gas giant's orbit.

According to the project's page on NASA's website, "Conducting in-situ surveys of Saturn's rings with a single flagship mission, such as Cassini, would carry an unacceptably high risk of mission failure due to particle collisions." Instead, the femtosat fleet proposal suggests flying 10,000 spacecraft into Saturn's rings, knowing a significant portion could be lost. "The distributed nature of the proposed mission means it can accept a risk that could destroy many of [the] femtosats in the constellation, making in-situ survey of the ring possible."

"Every innovation, every leap in technology, starts with a seed of an idea," Phillip Williams, NIAC's acting program executive, said in NASA's statement. "The NIAC program allows NASA to germinate those seeds and determine if there's something that could be grown to benefit future space missions and our nation's aerospace economy."

HOUSTON — What does NASA's astronaut training hub look like these days, as the agency aims to bring more commercial space stations into the fold?

It's an interesting mix of government and private companies, of space agency personnel and of contractors, all working together to keep U.S. and international astronauts flying through the end of the ISS — currently expected around 2030 — and the new breed of commercial space stations expected to take its place.

Canadian reporters like myself were invited on a tour of Johnson Space Center (JSC) on Aug. 4 ahead of the launch of SpaceX Crew-13, which launches no earlier than Sept. 12. Canadian Space Agency astronaut Josh Kutryk is a mission specialist on the Crew Dragon spacecraft, which also includes NASA commander Jessica Watkins, NASA pilot Luke Delaney and Roscosmos mission specialist Teteryatnikov.

The ISS remains an active program for at least a few years; NASA managers reiterated in a press conference here on Aug. 3 that they are still targeting an end-of-operations in about 2030 — but they are prepared to extend the lifetime of the station if directed by Congress (which wants to keep going at least another two years).

The space station has had a leak on the Russian side for several years, and astronauts recently and briefly sheltered in a Crew Dragon during discussions of a fix. At the press conference, NASA added the situation is under control as Roscosmos agreed to essentially seal off that area. Major station systems, they added, are otherwise in good health.

But as spaceflight takes planning, teams are already thinking about "lessons learned" when the ISS retires for a new generation of mission planners, which would include an even greater focus on companies. NASA's Commercial LEO (Low Earth Orbit) Destinations or CLD program aims to have private space stations for astronauts by the time the ISS retires, and handed out early-stage contracts valued at about $415 million in 2021 to three teams led by Nanoracks, Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman. After NASA briefly considered changing the program's scope, after input from industry a new request for proposals advancing CLD should be out soon.

Meanwhile, companies like Vast Space have their own self-funded modules almost ready to fly, while Bigelow Aerospace has an inflatable module on ISS that is being tested, long-duration wise, to make sure the concept holds up for a future free-flying destination. No matter who hosts astronauts, however, NASA officials on the tour said they are prepared to offer expertise and help — and there is no other visible demonstration of that expertise to the public than the ISS Mission Control, which is often shown live on NASA+ during a selection of space station operations.

Mission Control: 'We have all of those disciplines'

The mission control room at Johnson Space Center in Houston. (Image credit: Elizabeth Howell/Future)

The Mission Control building holds several dedicated control rooms for different mission purposes, including an historic Apollo control center and another room alternately used for Boeing Starliner and Artemis missions. I've been lucky enough to visit all of these in the past. Our only stop in the building Aug. 4, however, was the iconic ISS mission control.

On screen at the front of the room, the Expedition 75 astronauts were awake and active, occasionally zooming by a camera mounted inside the Destiny U.S. lab sandwiched between two station "nodes" leading to other modules. Flight director Diane Dailey told us the controllers are watching for things like if the astronauts are loaded down with equipment, which indicates that would not be a good time to call unless urgent. "We usually have that live camera view just up for awareness. It just helps us understand," she said.

Speaking of calls, an open laptop screen, deliberately positioned within view of the camera, showed all "green" on the comms channels—which helps ground controllers figure out if the crew can hear them, as the station flies in and out of satellite and ground station views all the time. (A flight map, also at the front of the room, also allows for tracking the station and its communications capabilities as it flies around the world.)

While it was hard not to keep gazing at these screens, what was almost as mesmerizing was watching the quiet group of ISS controllers positioned in front of their own laptops and occasionally holding side conversations about their systems. SpaceX now has its own Mission Control in California for its spacecraft, while Boeing chose to integrate theirs with NASA's. Whatever pathway companies choose, however, Mission Control will remain an important example of "division of labor" for future space stations.

"You're going to see different consoles that specialize in different aspects of spacecraft operations," Dailey said. "I like to kind of think of it in terms of, 'What are all the capabilities you'd need on any given spacecraft', right? You'd need propulsion. You'd need communications. You'd need computers. All of those things. So, we have all of those disciplines and all those areas in the spacecraft represented here."

Building 9: What to do 'when you no longer have gravity assisting you'

The Space Vehicle Mockup Facility — known to JSC workers as Building 9 — is constantly in flux, because modules constantly shift in and out of the facility for different missions. The facility's goal these days is not only to support NASA missions, but also private industry, by providing the physical space and hardware to simulate problems in space if they arise.

When it comes to astronaut training, one example is learning how to do CPR: "CPR is hard enough when you have gravity. When you no longer have gravity assisting you, they [astronauts] have to learn to 'strap in'," said Mathieu Caron, the CSA's director of astronauts, life sciences and space medicine, who accompanied reporters on the tour of Building 9.

That's only one example of an emergency, of course. Another one is fire alarms—in which the astronauts learn how to quickly gather their team in a "safe haven" with communications and computers available to talk with Earth, then to make sure everyone is there before assessing the situation and figuring out how to deal with it (which could mean fighting the fire, or heading to an escape vehicle.)

When astronauts are training for fire alarms in Building 9, Caron said, there's an extra step involved: letting nearby personnel know that the simulated fire alarm in the ISS area is not the actual fire alarm for the building. "Like, if you hear this specific bell, it's because they're just practicing that training," he explained.

The emphasis of our visit was on ISS operations, given that we were visiting in association with Crew-13, but the facility's website also mentions "commercial space flight companies and exploration programs" among the customers.

While walking the perimeter of the building alongside NASA and CSA, we could see some distant glimpses of other companies' hardware — from SpaceX and Blue Origin, for example, as well as the Starlab Space consortium's multi-floor space station mockup. As NASA very much intends to be the customer on future CLD destinations, surely more of these companies will be occupying the floor of Building 9 after the ISS retires.

A view inside Building 9 at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. (Image credit: Elizabeth Howell/Future)Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory: 'The better they get, the more we treat it like the real world'

Our last stop on the Gilligan-like three-hour tour was the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, which is part of JSC's Sonny Carter Training Facility and about a 15-minute drive from the heart of the NASA campus. Most space people would easily recognize this place as the spot where astronauts rehearse spacewalks, clad in adapted spacesuits simulating what they'll feel for real the moment they step out the hatch.

I spent much of my childhood in community center pools, learning how to swim, and when I walked beside the football-field-sized pool for the first time the humidity — and the echoes on the ceiling and walls from noises — felt somewhat like old times. The scale, however, was strange. The echoes were happening much further away from me, while the humidity was less intense given the expanse of the huge facility. It was hard for my mind to settle, as the setting felt both familiar and unfamiliar.

We only spent a few moments poolside, however, as getting up on the catwalks allowed a much better view of the scene. In one zone were the ISS module mockups inside the pool, through which a couple of astronauts were training while surrounded by divers. (You could track the team's progress by watching the bubbles and hoses on the surface.)

"When they [astronaut candidates] first start, we help them a lot," the NBL's Tim Hall told our media group. "The more mature they get in their training, and the better they get, the more we treat it like the real world — and let them execute on their own."

NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory at Johnson Space Center in Houston. (Image credit: Elizabeth Howell/Future)

In another was an area where the Orion spacecraft for the Artemis 2 moon mission was put through its paces during training: Could the arriving divers handle waves? What if the spacecraft landed upside-down? All of these things were simulated repeatedly to ease recovery operations.

"Have you ever watched 'Apollo 13'?" Hall asked us. (It's the movie that sparked my interest in space when I saw it on VHS in 1996, so yes.) "If you're a fan, at the end of the movie, you'll see them at 'Stable 1'," he continued — that means the spacecraft is upright in the water.

"We have Stable 1, 2, 3, 4. Those are all the positions of the vehicle when it's laying in the water. So, this thing is actually training for the crew. … we can rotate [the spacecraft], so they train the crew how to get in and out of it in the different stable conditions."

The deep-ocean capabilities are not only useful for spacecraft, but for applications like the oil industry: the pool has been used in past years to simulate offshore work and fire training for the engineers on distant rigs, for example. Private space companies also have had their own time in the pool for spacesuit applications, such as what Axiom Space advertised in 2025 to test the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) spacesuit that NASA astronauts are expected to use on the lunar surface.

Could more companies come in as the ISS program winds down? Hall says right now a lot of the spare capacity is taken up by the U.S. Navy, but the NBL does expect to offer more of these commercial services in future — as it's already advertised on their website.

"We're open to that for sure," Hall said. "We haven't had anybody out here yet for, like, a recovery or anything on training like that from a private space [company], but that's definitely something we'll address."

After all these years, we still want to believe.

Whether you're a bona fide believer or a staunch skeptic, we can all agree that UFO legends and lore is a fascinating subject that continues to fuel endless debate. And with pop culture feeding our lizard brains lurid tales of flying saucers and alien invasions, it’s no wonder humanity is always up for a good story of inexplicable aerial sightings or various uncanny encounters of the third kind.

In "We Want To Believe: How Aliens Went Mainstream And Why It Matters" (Aug. 25, Columbia Global Reports), acclaimed literary critic and Senior Editor at The Atlantic Adam Kirsch explores this insatiable drive to wonder at unidentified phenomena. For Kirsch, the topic asks many of the same questions that human religions do. "For me, humanity's way into the subject is that UFOs are a way of thinking about a lot of the same questions we might also think about in religious or philosophical terms," Kirsch told Space in an interview. "Questions like what is unique about humanity, are we alone in the universe, are there other minds, what's our destiny as a species?"

Kirsch says the recent wave of alleged whistleblowers helped push him towards studying UFOs, or UAP, as they're now known.

"The real start of my interest in the subject was in 2017 when there was this sudden reporting in the mainstream media about the Pentagon UFO videos and the so-called secret program to collect UFO reports. For the first time, it seemed like maybe there was some legitimate news or evidence."

"We Want To Believe" touches down in bookstores on Aug. 25, 2026. (Image credit: Columbia Global Reports)

Kirsch recognized that monumental occasion as a pivotal moment that truly altered the way that American culture and media talked about the titillating topic.

"I got more into the history and the lore of UFOs and partly out of just that basic idea that it would be really cool if there were other minds in the universe. It would be amazing if we could find proof of that. Over the years it's happened repeatedly in this history of UFOs. There's a lot of public excitement and then it peters out because there is no evidence and there isn't anything concrete to point to. And that's definitely what's happened over this last cycle."

Using grounded scientific logic and basic common sense, Kirsch brings a calm measured approach to the UAP hysteria that's been gripping the whole country.

"One of the interesting things about testimony that people like David Fravor and Ryan Graves gave about this is, 'When the camera sees something, the person doesn't see it. And when the person sees something, the camera doesn't see it.' It's always one or the other, it's never both at the same time. Even as long ago as the 1950s, people were saying that UFOs for some reason are not photogenic. No one ever seems to be able to get a real clear image of a UFO the way you’d think you'd be able to if they actually exist in the atmosphere."

Senior Editor for The Atlantic and literary critic Adam Kirsch. (Image credit: Columbia Global Reports)

"The obvious and logical explanation is that there's nothing to take a picture of. But it does get to this basic question of how do we go from, 'I had an experience' to 'This is what the experience tells me about the world.' I talk in the book about the difference between evidence and testimony. When they're talking about UFOs, people often blur that distinction. Testimony is an account and people are often wrong or misinterpret about what happened to them."

After all the smoke clears, the test that Kirsch declares must be applied to these reports is the same test that 18th-century philosopher David Hume said when talking about religious miracles.

"You don't have to prove that a miracle didn't happen, all you have to do is prove that it's more likely that someone was wrong, than that the laws of nature were suspended," Kirsch adds. "The same is true of UFOs. They're not supernatural or miraculous. If they really existed they'd exist in time and space and three dimensions like everything else. Based on the way we understand the universe and space travel, makes the odds very small that a UFO report would really be an actual extraterrestrial spacecraft. It's always going to be more likely that someone is wrong about what they saw.

"Modern science and scientific education is all about learning to not trust your instincts. It's about learning to say that the way that I spontaneously understand the world is wrong and there's a better way to understand it. UFOs are a perfect example of this because there's no evidence for them, but there's lots of people that see things in the sky they don't understand.

"With these released UAP videos, we might not be getting the whole truth, but that doesn't mean the whole truth is as interesting as I want it to be, and that there's some cosmic secret."

U.S. Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray explains a UAP video before a House Intelligence Committee subcommittee hearing on May 17, 2022. (Image credit: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

"We Want To Believe" is available at bookstores and online outlets Aug. 25, 2026.

We Want to Believe: How Aliens Went Mainstream and Why It Matters: was $18.00 now $14.00
In "We Want to Believe," Adam Kirsch traces the intellectual history behind UFOs. The book draws on declassified documents, military encounters, and a wide literature of belief and skepticism to examine why some questions endure and what it means for modern societies when certainty fails and curiosity persists.View Deal

On Episode 224 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and guest co-host Rick Jenet are joined by Dr. David Kring to discuss the where, whys, and hows of the Artemis Program's lunar exploration plans.

It has been said that the Moon is a harsh mistress, and nowhere is this more apparent than at the lunar south pole. That is, however, where the Artemis program is headed, and we need to figure out how to best explore the region.

Kring of the Universities Space Research Association's Lunar and Planetary Institute joins us to explore the answers — and risks — that await us.

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

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Space news of the week

• Dr. Scott Pace

Model Falcon 9!TOP TELESCOPE PICK:

(Image credit: Celestron)

Looking for a telescope to see planets and comets? We recommend the Celestron Astro Fi 102 as the top pick in our best beginner's telescope guide.

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

About This Week In Space

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

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

SpaceX launched another batch of its Starlink internet satellites this morning (Aug. 22) on a milestone mission for the company's Falcon rocket family.

A Falcon 9 carrying 27 Starlink spacecraft lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California today at 3:25 a.m. EDT (0725 GMT; 12:25 a.m. local California time).

It was the 99th Falcon 9 liftoff of the year, and the 100th Falcon mission of 2026 overall. The other flight was performed by a Falcon Heavy, which lofted the telecom satellite Viasat-3 F3 in April.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches 27 Starlink internet satellites from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base on Aug. 22, 2026. (Image credit: SpaceX)

Hitting the century mark at this point in the year is impressive. But SpaceX has a ways to go to equal its single-year Falcon launch record of 165, which was set in 2025. All of those were Falcon 9 missions.

The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth today as planned. It touched down about 8.5 minutes after launch in the Pacific Ocean, atop the SpaceX droneship "Of Course I Still Love You." It was the ninth flight for this particular booster, which carries the designation B1100.

The 27 Starlink satellites, meanwhile, kept traveling to low Earth orbit aboard the Falcon 9's upper stage, deploying on schedule just under 62 minutes after launch.

Today's launch makes the largest-ever satellite constellation even bigger: Starlink already consists of more than 11,000 operational spacecraft.

A stack of 27 SpaceX Starlink satellites are seen aboard the upper stage of their Falcon 9 rocket before deployment on Aug. 22, 2026. (Image credit: SpaceX)Previous Booster B1100 launches

NROL-105 | 7 Starlink missions

As you might expect, Starlink satellites are SpaceX's most common payload; 76 of this year's 99 Falcon 9 flights have been dedicated Starlink missions.

And the number of SpaceX satellites is expected to rise considerably in the coming years. The company has said it wants to launch 100,000 of its next-gen Starlink V3 satellites and operate a constellation of one million data centers in Earth orbit. These spacecraft will fly atop SpaceX's Starship megarocket, which remains in development.

On Aug. 22, 1963, U.S. Air Force Captain Joe Walker flew an X-15 rocket plane higher than any pilot had ever flown before.

Walker reached an altitude of over 67 miles (108 kilometers). That's about 5 miles (8 km) above the edge of space! Walker experienced about five minutes of weightlessness over the course of the 11-minute flight.

This was the second and final suborbital spaceflight of the X-15 program. Walker piloted both flights and became the first person to go to space twice. For both flights, he flew in the space plane X-15 #3, which also became the first reused spacecraft to return to space.

Photos: X-15 Rocket Plane Reaches Space in Test Flights

A rocket-powered X-15 flies over the western U.S. during a NASA/U.S. Air Force research mission in the 1960s. (Image credit: U.S. Air Force)Why it mattered

Walker's flight was part of an X-15 program that helped aerospace engineers learn how humans and vehicles operate at hypersonic speeds and transition between the atmosphere and the vacuum of space. The rocket planes tested reaction-control systems for maneuvering where the air was too thin for normal aerodynamic controls, while gathering data on heating, stability, structural loads, human performance and piloting techniques during reentry. Those lessons contributed to NASA's Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs and, later, the development of the Space Shuttle.

Walker's Aug. 22 flight also highlighted an idea that would become increasingly important decades later: reusability. The same X-15 #3 had already carried Walker beyond the Kármán line a month earlier, making it one of the earliest demonstrations that a spacecraft could fly to space, return safely and then fly again. NASA's space shuttle became the central example of spacecraft reuse when it was introduced in the 1980s. Today, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket is the leader in reusable space vehicles, with nearly 600 launches of boosters that have lifted off at least once before, and counting.

Earth's shadow will swallow 96% of the lunar surface overnight on Aug. 27-28, potentially turning the moon a gorgeous shade of crimson as it bathes in light filtered and refracted by our planet's atmosphere.

The partial lunar eclipse will occur as Earth passes between the sun and moon during the monthly full moon phase. Around this time, Earth's curved inner shadow will appear to creep across the lunar surface while leaving a thin crescent exposed to direct sunlight at the point of maximum eclipse.

But who will actually get to see it? As usual, it's all a matter of location.

Where is the August 2026 partial lunar eclipse visible?

The Aug. 27-28 partial lunar eclipse will be visible to roughly 3.3 billion people spread across North America, South America and parts of Europe and Africa. Each phase will occur simultaneously for everyone watching from Earth, through the local timings for each eclipse phase will vary depending on your location.

A map of the lunar eclipse on Aug. 27-28, 2026. Click the arrows in the bottom left corner to expand to full screen. (Image credit: F. Espenak, NASA's GSFC)

For stargazers on the West Coast of America in cities like Los Angeles, California and Portland, Oregon, the point of maximum eclipse will arrive just a few hours after sunset. While anyone watching from East Coast cities including New York and Jacksonville will see the lunar spectacle peak around midnight local time.

For the United Kingdom, Europe and Africa, the eclipse will be an early morning affair, occurring shortly before sunrise as the moon arcs low towards the western horizon. You can check the exact timings and altitude of the moon during key phases of the Aug. 27-28 eclipse on TimeandDate.com.

The full extent of a partial lunar eclipse can be enjoyed by anyone who happens to be on the night side of Earth at the time that it occurs. You also won't need safety glasses or specialized equipment to view a lunar eclipse. It'll look magnificent to the naked eye, though binoculars, or even a telescope can heighten the experience by granting a magnified view of the moon as Earth's shadow slowly marches across its cratered surface!

Sadly, the moon will be out of sight below the horizon for anyone on the day side of Earth as the eclipse unfolds, making it impossible to view with the naked eye from a host of countries including Australia, India, China and Japan to name but a few.

But we've got you covered.

Space.com will be sharing details on how to watch the partial lunar eclipse live online closer to the time, along with all the latest news via our live blog. Why not also read up our expert tips on how to photograph the moon using a DSLR or mirrorless camera to ensure that you're ready to immortalize the deepest lunar eclipse until New Years Eve 2028-2029?

Editor's Note: If you capture a photo of the partial lunar eclipse and want to share it with Space.com's readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, name and location to spacephotos@space.com.

Astronomers have discovered a hitherto unseen population of so-called "radio galaxies" with fading "radio lobes." The discovery reveals what happens when the supermassive black hole engines that power these vast, blooming outflows of plasma stall. This discovery increases our understanding of the life cycles of galaxies.

The team behind this research studied 14 candidates for faded or remnant radio galaxies found in a region of the sky over Earth, studied intensely by the XMM-Newton X-ray spacecraft, called the XMM–Newton Large-Scale Structure (XMM–LSS) field.

Radio galaxies are extremely bright in radio waves and feature vast lobes of gas that can stretch out for millions of light-years. Remnant radio galaxies represent the final stage in the evolution of radio galaxies, at which point the jets from the galaxies' central regions, or active galactic nuclei (AGNs) powered by feeding supermassive black holes, have switched off. Therefore, these jets can no longer replenish the vast radio lobes, causing them to gradually fade.

The researchers studied the XMM–LSS field using the MeerKAT radio telescope, an array of 64 antennas located in the desert-like region of the Northern Cape, South Africa, the Jansky Very Large Array, and the LOFAR (Low-Frequency Array) network.

This powerful combination of observations allowed them to study how radio emissions from the lobes of radio galaxies change as the particles within them "age" and lose energy.

This allowed the researchers to determine that 12 of the 14 candidates actually are remnant radio galaxies, while the other two remain active radio galaxies.

The team also discovered something striking about the 12 confirmed radio galaxy remnants.

Two examples of the newly discovered giant radio galaxies, each spanning millions of light-years. (Image credit: Pal, et al (2025))

One thing that really stood out in this study was the ages of these remnants, which appeared to have been fading for between 8 million and 42 million years, with the average "fade age" being 12 million years.

This age is younger than the ages measured for radio galaxy remnants, which could indicate that astronomers have been missing a population of short-lived remnants.

This wasn't the only extraordinary finding in this study. The scientists also found that the remnants they looked at exist in a wide range of evolutionary stages, with some having jets that have only just switched off, while others are more evolved, having "powered down" long ago.

The 'double boomerang' of an x-shaped radio galaxy. (Image credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF; SARAO; DES)

The new findings represent a major step forward in understanding the life cycles of radio galaxies, and also how supermassive black holes function as the engines powering jets that drive vast radio lobes.

The team's research was published on July 14 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The United States is updating its approach to managing spaceflights that lift off and land within its borders, and aims to expand the nation's capabilities to support more than 1,000 rocket launches per year by 2030.

President Donald Trump just signed a new National Space Transportation Policy that lays out priorities for commercial, civil and national security missions to orbit. The memorandum, published Thursday (Aug. 20), introduces the first update to the policy since 2013, and comes as commercial operators such as SpaceX have driven U.S. launch cadences up more than 800% since 2015.

The policy centers on expanding the infrastructure and procedures needed to support a much busier space industry. It directs federal agencies to identify and broaden commercial access to additional launch and reentry sites, and to incorporate spaceflight operations and critical launch corridors into air traffic control management and modernization efforts. The document gives agencies a deadline to get the work started.

Within 180 days of the memo's publication, NASA, the Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Department of Defense (DOD) are directed to begin identifying potential locations for future launch activities, as well as existing facilities that could be upgraded to further increase capacity. Agencies were also directed to establish leases and commercial investment opportunities to incentivize the co-development of new launch sites. The new properties can be funded, in part, by the same private entities that are lined up to use them.

Rocket landing sites are getting extra attention, with the president's policy designating agencies to identify federal lands available for development as independent launch vehicle reentry sites within the next 90 days. It also reinforces a framework to expedite environmental review processes first laid out in a commercial space executive order that Trump signed in August 2025, which sought to remove regulatory hurdles for commercial launches and spaceport construction.

SpaceX is already planning for launch rates far beyond the administration’s 2030 target. The company's Starship rocket, which remains in development, is poised to become the first fully reusable launch vehicle in history. In response to the new policy on Thursday, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said his company is aiming to launch 30 or more Starship flights a day by 2030, which equates to more than 10,000 flights per year.

For government missions, the strategy also emphasizes having more than one ride to orbit, with NASA and DOD tasked with maintaining multiple launch options and developing adaptable interfaces that would allow payloads to move between rockets from varying providers.

SpaceX's Starship launches on its second test flight on Nov. 18, 2023. (Image credit: Space.com / Josh Dinner)

Commercial launch services are already standard for most NASA and DOD missions, but the memorandum broadens that approach to transportation after reaching orbit, including spacecraft servicing and logistics. And the DOD is specifically being asked to investigate commercial options for in-space transportation and more diverse orbital delivery systems, like space planes.

Speed is particularly important for national security launches, and the new policy addresses one effort already ongoing by the Pentagon: achieving consistently dependable access to space within a 48-hour timeframe. The Space Force's Space Systems Command has been testing that capability through its Tactically Responsive Space program, launching the Victus Nox mission with Firefly Aerospace with 27 hours' notice in 2023 and the Victus Haze mission in June, which Rocket Lab launched within just 17 hours.

The White House highlighted some of the economic benefits beyond transportation that the policy is poised to impact in a fact sheet accompanying its publication. According to that fact sheet, the new policy will lead to advancements in things like in-space manufacturing and the development of pharmaceuticals and "high-value materials," while improvements to satellite positioning, navigation and timing services could support more precise agricultural operations and weather forecasts on Earth.

The transportation strategy also extends far beyond low Earth orbit. NASA is being asked to develop a commercial lunar logistics architecture capable of moving cargo and other payloads to and from the moon's surface. The agency is already engaged in these efforts through its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) and Artemis programs, which share a complementary focus of returning astronauts to the lunar surface and building out the infrastructure necessary to sustain a lunar base, and is now tasked with extending that reach much farther.

Trump's policy directs the space agency to develop partnerships to facilitate commercial robotic access to Mars and, down the road, architectures capable of carrying astronauts to the Martian surface and back to Earth.

Filming a high-profile episodic TV series like "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" is often a Herculean task for any professional cast and crew, but toss in massive spaceship sets, a colorful constellation of costume changes, tone and stylistic shifts, hand-to-hand combat, horseback riding, and puppets, and you’ve got a mad sci-fi circus.

We connected with Ethan Peck (Spock), Christina Chong (La’an Noonien-Singh) and Paul Wesley (James T. Kirk) for Paramount+’s "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds'" penultimate season to hear more about the rigors of shooting, genre-hopping, and character evolution.

"Every season feels kind of manic," Peck tells Space. "Grind has such a negative connotation, but it really is a marathon. We lose so much sleep, we have crazy hours, we say crazy things, we even look crazy.

"But I’d say we really found our groove in season four because we’ve had all this experience with these characters. And the writers have had all this experience writing for these actors playing these characters. So we grow over time and become more comfortable. I think that's what allows us to pull off these crazy swings in season four and five, perhaps."

Christina Chong plays La'an in "Strange New Worlds" season 4 (Image credit: Paramount+)

Chong echoes those thoughts and felt like leaping from one genre to the other was far more intense this time around than previous seasons.

"I was also taking horse riding lessons throughout, I was doing fight rehearsals, and then getting to see the digital mockups of our puppets," she shares. "Then we were thinking about how to approach the puppet episode and then obviously the horror of it all. It was a lot of jumping around because of the big genre swings.

"Every season has been incredible so far, and I think this was really upping the stakes. For horse riding, I’ve ridden once before for a show, but it was ten years ago, so it was like starting from scratch again. But we had plenty of time to rehearse. And I absolutely loved my puppet; I thought she was brilliant."

Puppet transformations for La'an and Una in "Five-Level Transporter Accident" (Image credit: Paramount+)

For Wesley, being able to stretch his performance skills by portraying the legendary spacefaring hero and exploring his transcendent connection to Spock has been an immensely rewarding challenge.

"The writers are very good at identifying our strengths and identifying what dialog would suit us, not as our characters but also as actors," he notes. "Having been on the show now for two seasons, I think the writers really were able to give me the ability to play a variety of things like comedy and horror.

"These big swings carry a lot of risk, and what’s so brilliant about this show is that they somehow pull it off," continues Wesley. "It all works. Kudos to the writers, and I'm just really excited for the audience to experience the evolution of Kirk becoming the man they know he’ll be eventually.

"You know these characters as having one of the most iconic friendships on television, but you don’t really know how they met and what brought them there. In the shore leave episode, you get to see Spock express his vulnerabilities inadvertently to Kirk, and they will, in turn, allow them to become closer. These little things are so important because they begin to establish why these characters are so connected in 'TOS.'"

Paul Wesley's Kirk and Ethan Peck's Spock in "Strange New Worlds." (Image credit: Paramount+)

Peck instinctively recognizes that these episodes do a fantastic job of slowly and naturally helping Kirk and Spock build trust with one another.

"It's a great joy and privilege to be able to convey this relationship because it is so iconic," Peck reveals. "And that’s so strange as an actor, to be filling in some of this missing history for these characters that have been around for so long and that were so beautifully performed by other actors before us."

"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" season 4 is currently streaming on Paramount+, with new episodes arriving each Thursday through the finale episode on Sept. 24, 2026.

NASA's Artemis II moon astronauts will join a very exclusive club next week.

President Donald Trump will award those spaceflyers the Congressional Space Medal of Honor next Friday (Aug. 28) at Johnson Space Center in Houston to recognize their historic journey around the moon this past April.

The ceremony will begin at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) and will feature NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, President Trump and the Artemis II astronauts. You'll be able to watch it live when the time comes.

Artemis II sent NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen, on a 10-day trip around Earth's nearest neighbor. It was the first crewed voyage beyond low Earth orbit since 1972, when the Apollo 17 astronauts returned home from the moon.

The mission's success was a huge step for NASA's Artemis program, which aims to establish a base near the lunar south pole in the coming years.

The Congressional Space Medal of Honor is the highest award that the U.S. government can bestow upon an astronaut. It's possible that only Wiseman, Glover and Koch will receive it next week; NASA's media advisory about the event states that Trump will give the medal to "each of NASA's Artemis II crew members," suggesting that Hansen might not be included. (The award is not limited to American citizens.)

Thirty people have received the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to date. They are:

• Neil A. Armstrong
• Frank Borman
• Charles "Pete" Conrad, Jr.
• John H. Glenn, Jr.
• Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom
• Alan B. Shepard
• John W. Young
• Thomas P. Stafford
• James A. Lovell
• Shannon W. Lucid
• Roger B. Chaffee
• Edward H. White, II
• William M. Shepherd
• Rick D. Husband
• William C. McCool
• Michael P. Anderson
• Kalpana Chawla
• David M. Brown
• Laurel B. Clark
• Ilan Ramon
• Francis R. (Dick) Scobee
• Michael J. Smith
• Judith A. Resnik
• Ronald E. McNair
• Ellison S. Onizuka
• Gregory B. Jarvis
• Sharon Christa McAuliffe
• Robert L. Crippen
• Douglas G. Hurley
• Robert L. Behnken

The world just got its first good looks at some hardware that will make spaceflight history.

Last Thursday (Aug. 13), Japan unveiled the spacecraft that make up its Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission, which aims to snag samples of the Mars moon Phobos and haul them to Earth — something that has never been done.

The big reveal came at Tanegashima Space Center, the site from which MMX will launch toward the Red Planet atop an H3 rocket. And we just got some clarity about when that liftoff will take place.

Another look at MMX's Propulsion Module (back) and Exploration and Return Modules (front) at Tanegashima on Aug. 13, 2026. (Image credit: Yuichi YamazakiI/AFP via Getty Images)

If all goes according to plan, MMX will launch on Oct. 19 at 3:41 p.m. EDT (1941 GMT; 4:41 a.m. on Oct. 20 Japan time), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced on Thursday (Aug. 20). That's the first day of the mission's launch window, which extends through Nov. 7.

JAXA originally intended to launch MMX in 2024 but had to stand down due to issues with the H3. Mars and Earth align properly for interplanetary launches just once every 26 months, so this was a significant delay.

MMX will spend about a year traveling to Mars. Once in orbit around the Red Planet, the mission will map and study its two small moons, Phobos and Deimos, which are just 14 miles (22 kilometers) and 7.5 miles (12 km) wide, respectively.

Part of this work will help the mission team pick a landing site on Phobos, where they'll drop a 55-pound (25 kilograms) French-German rover called Idefix. That little robot — which is named after the dog in the French comic "Asterix" — will study Phobos' surface in detail using a variety of instruments.

The MMX spacecraft itself will then spiral down toward Phobos, eventually making contact and collecting about 0.35 ounces (10 grams) of material. MMX will leave Mars orbit with these samples in 2030 and deliver them to Earth for analysis a year later.

The mission aims to shed light on the nature and origin of Phobos and Deimos.

"Understanding how Mars and the two moons formed is a heavily debated topic in solar system science," JAXA officials wrote in a mission description.

"Remote-sensing observations by the MMX spacecraft and the detailed analyses of the returned sample will determine whether Phobos and Deimos are remnants of early Mars created from debris produced by a giant impact with the young planet, or whether the moons are asteroids captured by Mars's gravity that brought material from outer solar system," they added.

To date, no spacecraft has returned material from the Mars system. Russia tried to do so with its Phobos-Grunt mission, which aimed to sample the eponymous Red Planet moon, but that effort failed shortly after its November 2011 launch. (The Soviet Union also launched two probes to Phobos in 1988, but neither one of them met its mission objectives.)

NASA plans to collect and haul home pristine samples that have already been collected on the Martian surface by its Perseverance rover, but it's unclear when or if that will happen. The agency has deemed its original sample-return architecture too expensive and is currently investigating other options.

There are good reasons to believe that Japan will succeed where others have failed, however. The country has a history of small-body sample-return success; its Hayabusa mission brought home pieces of the asteroid Itokawa in June 2010, and Hayabusa2 did the same with material from the space rock Ryugu in December 2020.

SpaceX is picking up the pace of preparations for the next launch of its giant Starship rocket.

On Wednesday night (Aug. 19), the company completed a single-engine static fire test with its Ship 41 vehicle, the upper stage that's in line to fly Starship's upcoming Flight 14 mission. As its name suggests, Flight 14 will be Starship's 14th test flight, but it will be the rocket's first launch into orbit, if all goes according to plan.

The recent engine burn was designed to prepare for that jaunt. "Starship completed a single engine static fire demonstrating a deorbit burn for upcoming orbital missions," SpaceX wrote in an X post on Thursday (Aug. 20).

SpaceX conducts a static fire test with Ship 41, the upper-stage spacecraft slated to fly Starship's 14th test flight. (Image credit: SpaceX)

Video included in the post shows Ship 41 standing at SpaceX's Massey's test site, near the company's Starbase facility in South Texas. The clip shows the moment of ignition of one of the spacecraft's six Raptor 3 engines, which burns for approximately 15 seconds.

SpaceX followed up Wednesday night's test with a full six-engine test on Thursday (Aug. 20). That burn lasted approximately 60 seconds, as seen in video posted by the company the next day.

With the completion of Ship 41's first static fires, SpaceX could be on track to launch Flight 14 sometime in early to mid-September. However, there are still a number of prelaunch activities for the ship and its Super Heavy first-stage booster to clear before SpaceX will declare them launch ready, and, with Flight 14 tasked with placing Starship in orbit for the first time, the company is likely to be extra cautious.

Flight 14 will be Starship's third launch of 2026, and the third to feature the upgraded "Version 3" (V3) of the vehicle, which SpaceX introduced in May. SpaceX is also modifying a Starship V3 to dock with NASA's Orion spacecraft as a part of the Artemis III mission to Earth orbit next year.

NASA contracted SpaceX as one of two commercial moon lander providers for the Artemis program. The agency plans to land astronauts on the surface of the moon aboard a Starship lunar landing vehicle on the Artemis IV mission in late 2028.

SpaceX had apparently originally intended to attempt a return-to-launch-site recovery for Ship 41, but company founder and CEO Elon Musk recently said that milestone will now likely happen "in a few months."

Ship 41 will instead likely attempt a soft ocean splashdown at the end of its flight, and its Super Heavy counterpart, Booster 21, is expected to do the same. SpaceX has returned three of its Super Heavy boosters to Starbase for successful catches using chopstick-like arms on the rocket's "Mechazilla" launch tower, and it has managed to refly two of those. But a V3 Super Heavy catch has not yet been attempted.

Returning and reflying both Starship stages is a key component in SpaceX's design for the giant rocket, which will be the largest, most powerful launch vehicle in history once the company works out all its kinks. If it can, Musk said on a recent earnings call that he expects the rocket to launch "at least one flight a day, possibly more." In an Aug. 20 X post, Musk said SpaceX aims to support 30 Starship launches per day, or more.

A mysterious hum of gravitational waves that fills the cosmos may be the echo of "dark stars" that served as the seeds of the first supermassive black holes.

These low-frequency gravitational waves were detected back in 2023 using an array of cosmic lighthouses, or pulsars, in a so-called "pulsar timing array." Pulsars are neutron stars that spin rapidly and regularly while blasting out collimated beams of radiation from their poles that can be used to detect tiny fluctuations in space and time. Such fluctuations are caused by the gravitational waves, or ripples in spacetime.

For a long time, the source of this particular low-frequency gravitational wave background has been somewhat shrouded in mystery, but scientists have hoped that they may be encoded with the secrets of the universe as it was around 13 billion years ago. Indeed, the team behind this research believes this hum of spacetime ripples could help explain how supermassive black holes grew so rapidly before the universe was even a billion years old. They link this solution to hypothetical supermassive "dark stars" that may have collapsed and died in the early universe to birth massive black hole seeds, giving supermassive black hole growth a head start.

"Dark stars were originally proposed as objects that might be seen directly at cosmic dawn," Ilie said. "This work points to a completely different way of testing their possible role in cosmic history," team member Cosmin Ilie of Colgate University said in a statement. "Their descendants could leave a gravitational-wave imprint that persists all the way to the present-day universe."

Cosmic clocks and collapsing Dark Stars

Pulsar timing arrays detect gravitational waves when their passage squashes and stretches space as the waves ripple past them, causing tiny delays in the pulsars' beams of radiation reaching Earth.

Detecting a gravitational wave background, however, required monitoring pulsar timing arrays for many years.

"Pulsar timing arrays are usually thought of as probes of supermassive black-hole binaries in the relatively recent universe," Ilie said. "What our work shows is that the signal may also contain information about how the ancestors of those black holes formed at cosmic dawn.

"In that sense, gravitational waves observed today could provide a new window onto the birth of the first supermassive black holes."

An illustration shows a neutron star at the heart of a pulsar and its strong magnetic field beaming radiation from its poles as it spins. (Image credit: Robert Lea (created with Canva))

The currently favored explanation for this background is a cosmic history of binary black holes spiraling together before merging, particularly pairings with combined masses of over 1 billion times the mass of the sun.

However, that doesn't explain where these supermassive black holes came from and how the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is routinely detecting them before the universe was even 1 billion years old — despite the fact that the feeding and merger chains proposed to create supermassive black holes should take over 1 billion years.

Ilie and his Colgate University colleague Sohan Ghodla questioned if supermassive balck hole growth began with heavy seeds, and if these heavy seeds were created by the collapse of dark stars.

Dark stars are hypothetical primordial stars that, rather than producing energy through nuclear fusion, are instead powered by self-annihilating dark matter within their cores. As dark matter fuels these primordial stars, they would remain cool compared to other stellar bodies, allowing them to continue to accrete matter throughout their lives.

This process would continue until Dark Stars reached masses millions of times that of the sun and collapsed under their own gravity, creating massive black holes; seeds that collide and merge to form supermassive black holes.

An artist's concept of two black holes circling each other before merging (Image credit: NASA )

Ilie and Ghodla modeled the environment in which the resultant black hole seeds would exist and merge, calculating merger rates and the influence on the gravitational wave background.

They found supermassive dark star remnants could indeed provide a major, perhaps dominant, contribution to the gravitational wave background detected in 2023. That means the measurements provided by pulsar timing arrays could help determine how abundant heavy black hole seeds were in the early universe.

"Produce too many of these massive seeds, and you end up over-producing the pulsar timing array-detected signal," Ghodla said. "Produce too few, and you need other sources to efficiently assemble these supermassive black holes later in the life of the universe to match pulsar timing array observations."

An illustration of dark stars in a halo of dark matter. (Image credit: Robert Lea (created with Canva))

The key determining factor here would be the masses of the dark matter haloes in which the dark stars live and in which the heavy black hole seeds form.

Determining if the researchers' theory is correct may have to wait for improvements in pulsar timing array measurements of the gravitational wave background, along with a better understanding of populations of black holes and their characteristics in the early universe.

The team's research was published on Monday (August 17) in the journal Physical Review D.