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First French Woman Spacewalker Leads ISS Antenna Repair Attempt
5 hours ago•Source: Space
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163.11 min•7 hours ago
Space mirrors could render night skies daylight, study warns
A study on Reflect Orbital’s proposed sun-reflecting space mirrors finds that observers in the beam would see a light intensity up to 40 times brighter than the full Moon, with the resulting sky glow potentially wiping out stars. If 40,000 mirrors were deployed, the combined brightness could reach 10,000 times the Moon’s, extending visibility and twilight-like brightness up to tens of kilometers away and threatening astronomical observations. The company has FCC permission to test an 18-by-18-meter mirror on the EARENDIL-1 satellite, a move that has drawn objections from astronomers and environmental groups who cite insufficient environmental review and data transparency; Reflect Orbital argues many mirrors would be inactive or placed in remote locations.
160.73 min•8 hours ago
Closest ocean world on a fatal orbit: exoplanet set to be swallowed by its star
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Aurora could light up the sky during the Aug. 27–28 lunar eclipse across North America
Live Science•14 hours ago
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Colossal 3200-megapixel camera kicks off a decade of cosmic surveying
BBC Science Focus Magazine•17 hours ago
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NASA’s Roman Space Telescope Launches to Map Dark Matter and Seek Exoplanets
NASA is launching the $4 billion Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, an infrared observatory that will orbit at L2 after liftoff from Kennedy Space Center aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy. Equipped with a 300-megapixel Wide Field Instrument and a coronagraph, Roman will survey about 12% of the sky with images far sharper than Hubble, enabling three main goals: map dark matter via weak gravitational lensing, measure the expansion of the universe with distant supernovae, and hunt for exoplanets—using microlensing and direct imaging—to study galaxy clustering, cosmic history, and dark energy. The mission will generate a massive data set as it looks for worlds and seeks clues to fundamental questions in astrophysics.
SpaceX’s Florida Starlink send-off lights up NYC with a dawn jellyfish plume
SpaceX’s final Falcon 9 Starlink mission launched from Cape Canaveral with 29 satellites, marking the 100th Falcon 9 flight of 2026 and the rocket’s 37th reuse; it also signals a shift to Starship-based Starlink launches from Vandenberg, with future Florida launches moving to Starship, as observers in New York City witnessed a dawn jellyfish plume across the skyline.
Mars Jellyfish: A Tiny Pixel Artifact in Curiosity’s Image
A Curiosity image from August 20, 2023 in Gale Crater shows a tiny jellyfish-shaped dark spot on a distant hill, which disappears in a later exposure. Because it’s only about 15 pixels and appears in a single frame, the most likely explanation is an imaging artifact—potentially a cosmic-ray hit or electronic/transmission glitch—rather than a real Martian object. The lack of corroborating data (wind sensors, additional images) means the true cause can’t be confirmed, though a glitch is the leading explanation.
Deep Partial Lunar Eclipse: 96% Umbra Coverage, Live Updates Aug 27–28
Space.com previews the Aug. 27–28 deep partial lunar eclipse, which will see about 96.2% of the Moon in Earth’s shadow at maximum and take on a reddened hue; it’s the deepest partial eclipse visible until 2028, with viewing tips, timing, and live livestream guides for audiences worldwide.
Pluto’s demotion spurs a broader view of solar-system diversity
Twenty years after Pluto was reclassified by the IAU, an op-ed argues this change broadened our view of the solar system by spotlighting a diverse population of dwarf planets and showing why keeping Pluto as a dwarf helps avoid an unwieldy proliferation of planets while preserving Pluto’s scientific significance.
ISS comms back online after 6.5-hour spacewalk antenna swap
Two astronauts, NASA’s Anil Menon and ESA’s Sophie Adenot, completed a 6.5-hour spacewalk on Aug. 25, 2026 to replace a faulty Space-to-Ground Antenna (SGANT) on the ISS; they retrieved a spare, installed it on the Z-1 truss, moved the broken dish to storage, and re-established redundancy for the station’s communications and data links.
One fleeting glimpse beyond Pluto hints at a hidden outer-solar-system population
Astronomers identified 2017 OF201, a ~700-km dwarf-planet candidate in a 24,000–25,000-year orbit, currently about 90 AU from the Sun with a perihelion near 45 AU and an aphelion near 1,600 AU. It was discovered by linking faint archival observations across two decades, meaning it is visible for only about 0.5% of its orbit. This narrow window implies there could be hundreds more similar bodies hidden in the outer solar system, highlighting census biases that only count objects bright near perihelion. While 2017 OF201 is not proof of Planet Nine, the work constrains models and shows how archival data can reveal distant worlds long after observations were made. The object's size is inferred from brightness assuming an albedo and may be rounded; its exact shape awaits future data.
SpaceX unveils $100B Starbase Louisiana megasite to accelerate Starship cadence
SpaceX and Louisiana officials announced a $100 billion plan to build Starbase Louisiana in Vermilion Parish, a sprawling manufacturing and launch complex featuring 10 launch pads across five two-tower complexes, onsite propellant production, and deep-water shipping capabilities. The project aims to dramatically increase Starship missions, potentially thousands of launches per year, with first launches targeted for 2029 after construction begins in 2027. Elon Musk has suggested Starship could fly more than 30 times per day by 2030, and the site is expected to create around 3,000 direct jobs and support coastal resilience efforts as SpaceX scales its interplanetary ambitions and Artemis lunar missions.
ALMA captures Betelgeuse’s bubbling surface in unprecedented detail
Using ALMA, scientists captured 2023 images of Betelgeuse, a ~20-solar-mass red supergiant about 600 light-years away, revealing a turbulent, bubbling surface with bright hotspots caused by giant convective flows in its atmosphere; the warmest region in the northeast persists for at least seven years, hinting at long-lived surface structures and possibly a companion star; with atmospheric temperatures around 2,030°C and pockets hotter by about 530°C, these observations help explain mass loss and atmospheric dynamics as Betelgeuse nears its eventual supernova; the study will continue monitoring and is published in Astronomy & Astrophysics (arXiv).
Cosmic Glitch Suggests Gravity Fades at the Universe’s Largest Scales
Researchers from the University of Waterloo and University of British Columbia propose a minimal modification to gravity—a 'cosmic glitch'—where gravity is about 1% weaker on cosmological scales (billions of light-years) than predicted by general relativity, captured by the parameter Ωg. Analyses of Planck 2018 data yield Ωg ≈ -0.0087 ± 0.0046 and a Hubble constant near 68.6 km/s/Mpc; in some data combinations this can lessen the Hubble tension, but the improvement isn't universal across all datasets. The model preserves GR on smaller scales and could be tested by future CMB and large-scale structure surveys (DESI, Euclid). If confirmed, it would hint at physics beyond general relativity at cosmic distances.