The Milky Way over the La Silla Observatory. (Image credit: J. Rodrigues/ESO)
Dark clouds swirl across a sky speckled with stars as the Milky Way stretches above the European Space Observatory's La Silla Observatory in Chile's Atacama Desert.
Between the two telescopes, the blue and red Trifid Nebula glows to the left of the larger and redder Lagoon Nebula, all within the Sagittarius constellation.
While the colorful glow of these two nebulae pull the eye toward the center of this photograph, they are surrounded by a majestic night sky landscape. The Milky Way paints the sky with dark, looming clouds lit by the galaxy's many stars.
While some of the dust in these clouds reflects starlight, causing some of the color that we see in the nebulae, most of this dust appears as dark , branching wisps.
Why is it incredible?
This image is obviously beautiful. It is a work of art; in framing the telescopes and the nebulae together, Rodrigues has created a striking visual.
But for Rodrigues, these telescopes are more than a pretty picture. The telescope seen on the left in this photo is ESO's New Technology Telescope (NTT), and the one on the right is ESO's 3.6-meter telescope. The latter scope which includes the instruments HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher) and NIRPS (Near Infra Red Planet Searcher), which astronomers use to find and study exoplanets — worlds outside of our solar system.
And Rodrigues now studies exoplanets, making these instruments an important part of his life and his work.
"It is very special, as I grew up with a poster of the 3.6 m in my room, dreaming of using it to find exoplanets," Rodrigues said in a statement.
Kellie Gerardi is preparing for her second spaceflight. And the secret tool up her sleeve? Motherhood.
Nearly three years ago, space researcher, online STEM creator and author Kellie Gerardi flew to suborbital space on a Virgin Galactictourist flight. With this flight, she not only became a private astronaut, but one of the first 100 women to fly to space. Today, she's preparing to leave Earth once again with her second flight. And as Gerardi prepares to fly and conduct new research in microgravity, she sat down with Space.com to discuss space, motherhood and how much we have left to learn.
"I think motherhood eventually has to become a bigger part of the conversation if we're serious when we talk about humanity having a sustained presence beyond Earth," Gerardi told Space.com. "If we're talking about people living and working in space for longer periods, then reproductive health, pregnancy, postpartum physiology, childcare, and family life aren't just peripheral issues anymore."
Space and motherhood
Gerardi has been a serious player and public figure in the space industry for a number of years. From overseeing mission operations at Palantir Technologies to working as a payload specialist and bioastronautics researcher for the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences (IIAS), she has been conducting experiments in microgravity and working across the industry for quite some time. And over the years, she has also developed an expansive online community with whom she shares STEM videos and content about her daily life.
But while Gerardi has posted a number of fun-loving videos with her two daughters, she doesn't just share the big wins and highlights. Across social media platforms, she has also been incredibly candid with the public about her struggles with motherhood, loss, infertility and IVF (in-vitro fertilization). Among her videos discussing her life as an astronaut and researcher, she has shared incredibly personal details, bringing the public along with her as she undergoes incredibly challenging moments.
"I just remember thinking about how so many of us navigate this entire fertility odyssey invisibly while handling their careers, their families, and everything else, and I just wanted to make that a little more visible and hopefully destigmatize the topic a little bit," Gerardi shared.
"Science teaches you that a disappointing result is information, not identity. You look at the data, change variables, adjust the protocol, and try again. That doesn't mean I was able to intellectualize my way out of grief, but I do feel like I was able to borrow a little bit of the same mindset when it came time to put one foot in front of the other again, and to try to look a bit more dispassionately at the odds and our options going forward," she added.
As Gerardi prepares to return to space with her second Virgin Galactic flight, she is part of the "Mom, and More" campaign from the brand Momcozy. The campaign, which also includes Olympian Allyson Felix and Reshma Saujani, founder of Girls Who Code, "celebrates the idea that motherhood can expand what's possible for us while still leaving room for all the other passions or ambitions that make us who we are," Gerardi said.
Preparing for the future of human spaceflight
Kellie Gerardi tries on her EVA suit as part of a Mars Desert Research Station expedition. (Image credit: Kellie Gerardi)
Gerardi's candid videos about her struggles have also sparked a larger conversation about motherhood as well as space exploration, especially as we look to the future. Longer-term space travel will require serious conversations about motherhood, family and health. Whether it's a long-term mission to the moon or a lifelong mission to Mars, future women astronauts will have to consider everything from menstrual cycles (which astronauts today already handle), pregnancy, motherhood, menopause and other aspects of their health.
But even in the near future, there is so much we have yet to learn about the intersection between motherhood and human spaceflight. In fact, one research team planning to study menstruation in space will be the first to ever conduct a dedicated study on the subject.
"If we're serious about building a future where more people can live and work in space, then we'll need data that reflects a much broader range of human bodies and experiences," Gerardi said. "My own experiences in motherhood have made me even more interested in questions around women's health and reproductive health in particular. There's still so much we simply don't know yet, and there's a lot of meaningful research ahead of us, and I find that really exciting!"
Pumping in zero-G
Gerardi is part of that movement to improve our understanding. From her first spaceflight to her continuing work with microgravity experiments through IIAS, she is pushing this science forward. In fact, in June of this year, she became the first person to pump breast milk in microgravity. While this was "quite the unique experience," as she put it, this was also an incredible learning moment that can help our growing understanding of the human body in microgravity.
At eight weeks postpartum, Gerardi flew on a microgravity research campaign and "given the timing of that research campaign in relation to my recent delivery, we were also curious about the postpartum body, lactation, and breastmilk expression in microgravity," she said.
"There really wasn't an evidence base for whether commercially available wearable pumps would function normally, whether milk could be safely contained, and whether altered gravity would affect comfort or milk expression, or even whether it could affect the composition of breast milk," Gerardi said.
"Scientifically, it made for interesting studies that we'll be submitting for publication, and personally, it was one of those moments where I just remember thinking that women's bodies are incredible, and there's still so much we have to learn about them in the context of altered gravity and spaceflight. And yes, I was able to bring the 'microgravity milk' home to my baby, which made it even more special," she added.
Learning from motherhood
There is still so much to be learned about the human body as it relates to human spaceflight, and we do not yet know how motherhood will be considered in longer-term space travel. But as mothers have been flying to space since Anna Lee Fisher became the first in 1984, there is much that we can learn from their experiences. Gerardi shared some of the important lessons that she's learned as a mother that have come in handy as an astronaut.
"I think there are probably more parallels between motherhood and operational environments than people realize. Honestly, adaptability is probably at the top of my list. Motherhood is a constant exercise in making plans, fighting reality, and then rapidly reprioritizing without losing your mind," she said.
"Motherhood has made me much better at constantly reassessing priorities," she added." I've moved mountains for work obligations that I later realized weren't that fragile after all. Motherhood gives me a lot of practice at making those assessments in real time. That translates pretty well to research operations. You prepare as best you can, you prioritize and adapt in real-time, and you get comfortable operating without perfect control of all the variables. Those are all pretty useful qualities in life generally."
And in addition to the many lessons that can be learned from being a mother and an astronaut, Gerardi has also found how powerful the representation of seeing a woman like herself achieve her dreams can be for the next generation.
"As a society, I feel like we tell little girls that they can grow up to be anything. We give them astronaut Barbies and American Girl dolls and tell them to dream big, but then when those same little girls grow up and become mothers themselves, suddenly there's often a different expectation around how much space their own ambitions should occupy," Gerardi said. "I don't feel guilty for pursuing my dreams. Becoming their mom made my dreams bolder and my sense of purpose deeper. I feel grateful that I can set an example for my daughters to probe the farthest boundaries of their own potential in this one precious life they get."
Are there secret underground caves on the moon? NASA has a new program that aims to find out.
Though we see it in the sky most nights, the moon still holds an incredible amount of mystery. One such mystery is a large underground cave, or a cavernous tube carved out by ancient lava, that scientists think extends past a particular pit on the moon's surface. And to get to the bottom of it, NASA has selected a project known as GIMLI (the Geophysical Instruments for Marius Lunar pit Investigation, not the character from Lord of the Rings). GIMLI was selected along with two other programs that are all intended to expand our understanding of the moon to better support a future moon base, which NASA aims to build near the south pole.
"NASA Science is building the ultimate interplanetary survival guide to ensure that science goes first to the lunar surface to provide our future astronaut crews with the vital information, resources, and safety precautions needed ahead of time to survive the night on the moon," Nicky Fox, NASA's associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, said in a statement.
Lunar mysteries
The site of this investigation will be the Marius Hill Pit, which was discovered in 2009 by Japan's Kaguya moon orbiter. You can see the pit clearly in the probe's images. But researchers think that there's more there than just a large hole in the lunar surface.
They think it's possible that the pit is connected to a vast, underground cave likely created by lava flowing in the ancient past. If true, this could shed light on the history of volcanic activity on the moon.
"Confirming a substantial lava tube would give us an insight into how volcanism operated on the moon," GIMLI deputy principal investigator Gareth Morgan said in a different statement. "Lava tubes are a common feature of basaltic volcanism on Earth, so identifying them on the moon means we could use knowledge of such terrestrial caves to better understand lunar history."
Even more, if researchers confirm the presence of this lava tube, astronauts could potentially use it as a natural shelter on the lunar surface. These lava-made caves would provide general shelter as well as protection from the extreme temperatures and radiation exposure experienced on the moon's surface. Lava tubes could also be a safe "bunker" of sorts where future astronauts could be shielded from micrometeorites. While a future moon base will probably have human-made shelters included, natural caves could be an incredible, existing resource that astronauts could tap into.
How to find a moon cave
GIMLI will work directly on the lunar surface, scanning beneath to look for signs of the lava tube. This investigation comes from a proposal led by the nonprofit Planetary Science Institute (PSI) and will be funded through NASA's Payloads and Research Investigations on the Surface of the Moon (PRISM) program.
The investigation is partnering with Honeybee Robotics to help build the equipment and instrumentation that will be necessary for the study. This gear will get to the moon aboard a lander and rover via NASA's Commercial Lunar Payloads Services program, and the data collected will be studied by a team led by PSI associate director and senior scientist Than Putzig. The work done by PSI will be in partnership with the Norwegian Space Agency.
From the lunar surface, GIMLI will gather data using ground-penetrating radar, seismic sensors and a gravimeter to better understand what's really happening underneath the surface. These measurements will allow GIMLI to determine if there is a subsurface lava tube and, if so, how big it is. Could it fit an entire astronaut crew? We will have to wait and see.
We have our first look at the science from Artemis II, and it's as amazing as we might have hoped.
This past April, four astronauts strapped in for a flyby around the moon and back to Earth. The first mission to the moon since the Apollo program ended in 1972, this success marked an incredible historic milestone. The Artemis II crew also conducted groundbreaking science, observing parts of the moon no human had ever laid eyes on before. And now, we have our first look at some of the science from the mission.
"It's the science community's job now to take these data and go do magical things with it," David Hollibaugh Baker, a member of the Artemis II Lunar Science Team, said during a Wednesday (10/7) press conference that announced the mission's initial science results.
This is just the first batch of data from the mission, but it includes a whopping 996 new images, 814 GB of observations and 521 minutes of audio from the crew that has never been heard before. Everything from that astronauts' handwritten notes and drawings to photographs and verbal observations have revealed exciting new information — about impact flashes on the moon, for example, as well as the terminator line between the lunar "day" and "night" sides and a whole range of lunar colors and observations from beyond the mysterious far side.
Let's take a quick look at some of the highlights.
Impact flashes
Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman looks out the window of the Orion capsule. (Image credit: NASA)
"Dude, no way!" Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman of NASA exclaimed in newly released mission audio.
"It's just like a 'bloop!'" mission specialist Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency added as the flashes appeared on the lunar surface. .
As Artemis II's Orion capsule flew by the moon, the four astronauts onboard — Wiseman, Hansen and NASA astronauts Victor Glover (mission pilot) and Christina Koch (mission specialist)— started seeing flashes of light on the lunar surface. These were impact flashes caused by small rocks hitting the lunar surface and vaporizing in the impact.
"We have seen three impact flashes so far," Wiseman said to Mission Control at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "It was not sun glint off a particulate from the thrusters or the purge tanks. It was definitely impact flashes on the moon."
"Amazing news," Mission Control responded. "I literally just looked over at the SER [Science Evaluation Room], and they were jumping up and down, literally."
In total, the crew saw five impact flashes on the moon's surface, which the mission's science team was able to confirm didn't come from other sources.
A screenshot of an annotated view of the moon showing where the Artemis II crew saw impact flashes. (Image credit: NASA/CSA)
While the Artemis II crew was equipped with cameras, they were also trained to make observations with the unaided eye. And impact flashes happen too quickly to photograph them, so — as you can see above — the crew used a tablet to make annotations and describe their observations.
"We wanted them to look visually, so there are not camera images of that, but we have their annotations of when they saw them," Jennifer Heldmen, science theme lead for the Artemis II mission, said during the briefing.
A rainbow moon
An annotated view of the moon and the colors that the Artemis II crew saw. (Image credit: NASA)
In addition to seeing impact flashes across the lunar surface, the Artemis II crew observed a wide range of colors on the moon.
Looking up in the night sky, it might seem that the moon is just shades of gray. But as the astronauts saw during their flyby, the moon is gray, black, brown, tan, white, green and even blue. This muted rainbow of colors was not only visually striking, as the astronauts' photos show, but it can also help scientists determine what types of rocks and minerals might be found in different regions across the moon's surface.
"The crew reported greens and yellowish hues on top of Aristarchus Plateau, signaling they were seeing remnants of different styles and epochs of volcanic activity, and the crew contrasted those colors to nearby browns and grays of adjacent volcanic plains," Ariel Deutsch, a member of the Artemis II Lunar Science Team, said during the briefing, givingone example of these colorful observations.
"To me, it's primarily like a brownish-green glass, and then if I went up into the mares [dark volcanic deposits] to the north of Aristarchus, I would give that a very muted brown," Wiseman said in mission recordings shared in this release.
NASA astronauts Victor Glover (left) and Christina Koch (right) take photos during Artemis II. (Image credit: NASA)
"It's like a jaundiced cheek of the moon," Koch remarked in mission audio, describing yellowish colors on the moon.
And while the crew took some amazing photographs of the moon, in this data release we can also see their handwritten notes annotating the colors they saw on the moon.
The far side of the moon
Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen takes photographs during Artemis II. (Image credit: NASA)
As the moon is tidally locked to Earth, it has one "day side" that always faces us and one far or "night side" that is always facing away. When the Artemis II astronauts flew by the moon, they flew around the entire object, even around the far side. During their flyby, they were able to see a part of the far sidethat has never been observed up close like this before.
"The Artemis II crew were the first people to see this section of the moon illuminated in all of human history," Alex Stoken, a member of the Crew Lunar Observations team, said during the briefing.
When they approached the moon's far side, the crew also came upon the terminator line, or the boundary between the day and night sides of the moon.
At the terminator, the team was able to view the incredible contrasting shadows and textures of the lunar surface, revealing sharp details about the moon's topography.
NASA astronaut Victor Glover takes in the view from the Orion spacecraft during Artemis II. (Image credit: NASA)
"The terminator is the most striking thing that I’ve seen so far," Glover said as the crew flew by.
As they rounded the moon's far side, the moon was backlit by the sun, essentially eclipsing it. This allowed for incredibly unique and sharp views of the moon.
"You’ve got to be kidding me," Koch said in the capsule. "You can actually see mountains."
These are just a few highlights from this incredibly thorough and detailed data release. As we dig deeper into this initial science, you can take a dive through the data yourself here and here.
A snapshot of Mars captured by NASA's Curiosity rover on Aug. 11, 2026. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
Imagine the sun has just risen as you wake to the soft sounds of Martian dust swirling outside. You look out and what do you see? A beautiful mountain range, bathed in golden light.
While this imaginary scenario might not be possible today, if future astronauts ever get to enjoy their morning coffee on the Red Planet, this is what they might see.
What is it?
A panorama of Mars created using six different shots captured by NASA's Curiosity rover on Aug. 11, 2026. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
NASA's Curiosity rover recently captured a stunning new panorama of dawn breaking over a Mars mountain range
The panorama, made using six different shots captured of the view, showcases Martian cliffs on the northwestern edge of Mount Sharp.
Curiosity has been exploring this 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) mountain for over a decade. Crawling up the mountain since 2014, the rover has explored all sorts of strange and unusual terrain. And now? It has captured a beautiful, peaceful Martian morning.
Why is it incredible?
Looking at this image, it seems almost Earth-like. Despite the complete lack of plant life (or any life that we're aware of), the view is reminiscent of mountains rising out of the deserts on our very own planet.
But what might feel like a familiar sight in a national park is an entirely different planet.
And by enjoying this view (and analyzing it scientifically), researchers can better understand how features like the cliffs on Mount Sharp formed.
Mars was once home to a variety of bodies of water like lakes and rivers. But what happened to the planet once it lost its atmosphere and, subsequently, its liquid surface water? How did the minerals left behind from these streams and lakes affect the Martian topography? These are just some of the many questions researchers aim to answer with observations like this.
The nebula NGC 7129, as seen in a brand new image from the James Webb Space Telescope. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI))
A colossal mashup of stars, protostars, gas and dust swirl brightly in this new photo captured by the James Webb Space Telescope.
What is it?
JWST captured the inner workings of the nebula NGC 7129 in this spectacular new image. The detail in this snapshot really highlights the chaos happening within the nebula, nicknamed the Flower Bud Nebula.
3,300 light-years away, the nebula is home to a variety of stars at different stages of development. But this stellar nursery is also thought to be home to over 100 stars under a million years old, which is quite young and early in their lives.
Stars begin to form from the gas and dust in molecular clouds in nebulas such as this, a region NASA refers to as a "cauldron of cosmic creation" in the statement accompanying the new image. Because their earliest years are spent shrouded in clouds of dust, these nascent stars can be hard to spot. But with JWST's ability to see into the near and mid-infrared, scientists were finally able to look through the dust to get a clear look at the stars forming inside.
Specifically, this image was captured by JWST's NIRCam (Near-InfraRed Camera) instrument, which peers into the near-infrared, a wavelength range that encompasses the light from faint stars and galaxies.
Why is it incredible?
An image comparing the now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope's image of NGC 7129 with JWST's new image. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, NASA-JPL; Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI))
This isn't the first time that we've looked at the Flower Bud Nebula. And by looking at the nebula in different wavelengths with different observatories, we've learned quite a bit about it.
However, with these new observations from JWST, scientists have unprecedented detailed views of the stars and protostars still forming amidst the gas and dust.
With sharper views in the near-infrared, scientists might be able to learn more about these still-forming stars, the incredible, powerful jets of superheated material they can expel and how these objects interact with their surroundings.
Astronomers have discovered the youngest exoplanet on record, and they spotted the "newborn" world hiding in old data archives.
About as massive as Jupiter, the newly-discovered exoplanet Elias 2-24 b is one big baby — despite its hefty size, Elias 2-24 b is by far the youngest planet ever found, thought to be less than a million years old. In fact, the exoplanet (or, planet outside of our solar system) was located 450 light-years away from Earth, still resting in the swirling gas and dust where it was born.
The previous record-holder for "youngest exoplanet" is a four-way tie between four worlds that are all over 5 million years old, according to Lucas Cieza, co-author of a study on Elias 2-24 b and a professor at the Instituto de Estudios Astrofísicos in Chile. "Our planet-formation models already struggled to explain the previous record holders for the youngest known planet," Cieza said in a statement. "Elias 2-24 b shows us that even our best planet-formation models are still missing some important processes."
To spot this massive baby, a team led by Andrea Bernardi, a doctoral candidate at the Universidad Diego Portales in Chile, dug through archival data captured by the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. The study focused on the star Elias 2-24 which is surrounded by a disk of material. Their findings confirmed earlier observations collected with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope which suggested something may lie in a gap within the debris disk around Elias 2-24.
The archival data that confirmed these suspicions and this planet came from observations using Keck's coronagraph. Coronagraphs work by blocking out the glare from far-off starlight, allowing light bouncing off the planets orbiting those stars to be captured for direct observations. The team looked through such coronagraph data for seven distant stars, each surrounded by debris disks where planet formation may be happening. The team thought that perhaps it'd be possible to find a planet hiding in a gap in one of these disks. And they were right.
"The planets should be found within the gaps, since they are carving them," Bernardi said. "And that’s exactly where we found Elias 2-24 b."
By finding a planet in one of these disks, and by finding a planet so early in its lifetime, this finding gives researchers an opportunity to study the earlier development stages of planet formation.
"The galaxy churns out new stars and planets continuously, so there are many in every stage of evolution," Cieza said. "That means we can see the entire process in theory, but there is a large gap in what most telescopes can detect. We are mostly blind to these baby planets right now."
In looking at the future of planet detection and study, researchers hope to be able to conduct more direct observations with the Coronagraph Instrument that just launched (Aug. 30) aboard NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. This is the most advanced coronagraph ever launched to space, and scientists hope it will allow for more in-depth study of exoplanets and their atmospheres.
"We usually hear about telescopes working separately, but this confirmation was possible only by using multiple telescopes together," Bernardi said. "Elias 2-24 b is at the limit of what current telescopes can detect, but with new instruments like NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, such detections should become easier."
This work was described in a new study published Sept. 16 in the journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The star-forming region IC 348, as imaged by the James Webb Space Telescope. (Image credit: ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, K. Luhman, C. Alves De Oliveira, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb))
An ethereal and magnificent display of gas and dust stretches across the cosmos in a spectacular new image captured by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.
What is it?
Glowing wisps of translucent gas and dust paint a striking image of the star-forming region IC 348 in this new JWST snapshot. In the image, you can see IC 348, a region found about 1,000 light-years away.
In this vast expanse of gas and dust, cold molecular hydrogen gas collapses to create new stars. And this image has no shortage of suns, with twinkling stars speckling the entire cosmic landscape, diffraction spikes and all.
But while this is a star-forming region, objects are found here as well. This image was captured as part of a scientific search for brown dwarfs, which are objects that form like stars but aren't massive enough to kickstart hydrogen fusion in their cores.
Why is it incredible?
Brown dwarfs are one of the great mysteries of our universe. Not as massive as the least massive stars, but more massive than the biggest planets, brown dwarfs are strange objects stuck in the middle.
Brown dwarfs do emit some light and heat, which helps scientists to find them, though doing so can be tricky, as they're much cooler than stars and not that bright (at least in visible light). However, despite being dim, they give off infrared radiation, allowing them to be spotted by infrared instruments aboard space telescopes like JWST.
This incredible new image is part of an observing program that aims to use JWST to find and study the smallest brown dwarfs. In 2022, researchers looking at IC 348 found brown dwarfs just a few times more massive than Jupiter, so they were on the very small end. Researchers hope to find even smaller brown dwarfs to help them better understand how these strange objects form and vary across space.
A broad pit that looks almost like a "footprint" on Mars is unlike anything researchers have ever seen on the Red Planet. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
Is that a footprint on Mars? Sorry to burst your bubble, but no. However, scientists have found a strange feature unlike anything they've seen before on the Red Planet's surface.
What is it?
While NASA's Perseverance rover is the newest addition to the agency's robotic Red Planet fleet, its cousin Curiosity is still going strong and finding strange and unusual things on Mars 14 years after landing.
In new observations captured on Mars' Mount Sharp, the Curiosity team has identified "features unlike quite anything we have seen in the past," Michelle Minitti, deputy principal investigator for Curiosity's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), said in a statement.
These mysterious features are a bunch of broad, shallow pits scattered across the Martian bedrock.
Why is it incredible?
While little pits and divots are common to find on the Martian surface, these wide, shallow pits that researchers saw with Curiosity are quite different from surface features that have been seen before.
"The pits of this week were much broader and shallower than past features and were not accompanied by obvious objects that were once in the pits," Minitti said.
The team collected as much data as they could on the strange pits using Curiosity's various instruments, including MAHLI, the Mastcam camera, ChemCam (the Chemistry and Camera complex) and APX (Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer).
They have so far found interesting layers in the pit material that seems chemically different from the main bedrock.
But we will have to wait and see what else researchers might be able to learn about these odd pits. How did they form? How long have they existed? What can they tell us about the history of Mars?
If this summer felt hotter than usual, you're not alone. As it turns out, this past summer was the hottest on record in the United States.
This is the hottest that summer in the U.S. has been in at least 132 years. Specifically, the temperatures rose to 3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.67 degrees Celsius) above average, beating out the most recent record set in 2021 of 0.4 degrees F (0.22 degrees C) above average, according to a new report from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). And looking month-to-month, this was also the hottest August we've ever seen.
The record-breaking season saw unmatched temperature highs across the contiguous U.S. (all of the adjoining states, excluding Alaska and Hawaii which just aren't a part of this record) from June through August. But scorching temperatures aren't all that this new record reveals, as this summer was also one of the driest on record for the contiguous U.S., with more than half of the country in a drought by September. The summer of 2026 saw both extreme precipitation highs and lows across the country, too. From droughts to heavy rain, there was nothing average about the precipitation seen across the U.S. this summer.
A closer look
Digging into some of the details, the full summer was 3 degrees F above the average for the season, 74.4 degrees F (23.5 degrees C). August was 3.5 degrees F (1.94 degrees C) above average for the month at 75.6 F (24.2 C). And while most of the contiguous U.S. experienced well above average temperatures this summer, some locations felt the heat the most. The Southwest, the southern Rockies, the southwestern Plains, southern Florida, California, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado hit particularly high temperatures this August.
Looking at the summer's unusual precipitation levels, the total precipitation across the contiguous U.S. was 0.32 inches (0.8 centimeters) below average, making this past summer the third driest on record, and the driest summer since 2000. By Sept. 1, 59.1% of the country was in drought. There was drought across the West, the upper Midwest, the Deep South and more. Over 75% of Puerto Rico lie in drought conditions as well, with 40% being in "extreme drought." And while summer might be ending, a lot of this drought is projected to continue, according to the report from NOAA. When it comes to drier lands, that also means an increased risk of wildfire.
Though these temperature differences might seem small or relatively mild at face value, they have massive consequences. As climate change progresses primarily due to greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities like transportation and manufacturing, we continue to see a whole host of its effects across the world. This ranges from rising average temperatures and glacial ice loss to sea level rise and worsening natural disasters. Those natural disasters include events like flooding, hurricanes, wildfires and cyclones.
While different areas of the world will experience different effects of global warming, one thing remains true for all: The consequences will only continue to worsen asour planet warms.
This infographic shows some of the weather and climate events that took place in the U.S. during August, 2026. (Image credit: NOAA)
If we just look at this past August 2026 in the U.S., not only did we see record-high temperatures, but also weather and climate disasters of all varieties. Fires broke out over 10,000 acres of eastern Washington, even spreading across the state and into Oregon. More fires, in fact, spread across Nevada and Alaska while wind gusts up to 111 miles per hour (178.6 kilometers per hour) tore across South Dakota. A heatwave brought sweltering temperatures to south Florida and Hurricane Lala brought intense winds, rain and flooding to Hawaii;. And these are just a few of the many examples — from just this last month.
