Astronomy – Page 17 – Esoteric news

August 5, 2026

A SpaceX rocket just crashed into the moon. Now, the race is on to get a look at the impact site

Early this morning, a SpaceX rocket slammed into the moon at seven times the speed of sound. Now, lunar orbiters are trying to get a look at the aftermath.

This morning (Aug. 5) at about 2:35 a.m. EDT (0635 GMT), the upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket crashed into the moon. To dissect what exactly happened, scientists are looking for imagery of the crash site, with the help of a couple of moon probes.

"NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and NASA’s ShadowCam instrument on the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter will look for opportunities to capture before‑and‑after imagery of the impact site," NASA spokesperson Rob Garner, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, told Space.com. "Image availability depends on several factors, including the impact location, lighting conditions, and when each spacecraft’s orbit next carries it over the area, which may take a few days to receive any imagery."

While you've likely seen the first stages of Falcon 9 rockets gracefully land back on Earth for reuse, the rocket's 9,000-pound (4,000 kilograms) upper stage is disposable. Typically, it's sent to burn up in our atmosphere after its missions are over.

However, that wasn't possible with this rocket, which launched two private lunar landers — Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost and Tokyo-based ispace's Resilience — to a high, moon-crossing Earth orbit in January 2025. The Falcon 9 upper stage used most of its fuel getting to this distant location and couldn't make it back to deorbit in Earth's atmosphere.

So the company performed a different maneuver to take care of this upper stage, Julianna Scheiman, director of NASA science and Dragon programs at SpaceX, said during a press conference on Aug. 3.

"For high-energy missions, we need to perform a different maneuver to ensure the second stage itself is safe per the appropriate rules and regulations, and so we did that here," she said.

But the rocket body was still subject to natural forces, which acted on it over time.

"What has happened is, essentially, a mixture of solar activity and gravity forces have put it on a path towards the moon," Scheiman said.

The Falcon 9 upper stage ended up slamming into the moon this morning at about 5,400 mph (8,690 kph). It likely blasted out a crater up to 89 feet (27 meters) wide, according to scientists' calculations.

This was certainly not the original intended outcome for this rocket. But it presents an opportunity for researchers, who plan to take advantage of it to learn more about the moon.

"NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office will attempt to image the impact around the predicted time using ground‑based telescopes at the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville [Alabama]," Garner added. "Because the impact flash and plume are expected to be faint, the chance of seeing anything from Earth remains low, and local weather can affect observations as well. Any data collected will help scientists better understand impacts from artificial objects and the potential effects on future lunar exploration."

Today's impact took place on the sunlit side of the moon, the brightness of which made observations difficult for skywatchers hoping to watch the crash from afar with telescopes. But the two lunar orbiters might be able to see not just the crash and impact crater but also the plume of dust kicked up by the rocket's death dive.

So far, observations from Earth have revealed some information. Scientists at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona reported detections of a lunar plume from the impact.

"We can safely say that we measured a response from the rocket stage impact as a sodium and lithium gas plume a few 10’s of kilometers in size lasting between 5 and 10 minutes after impact," Carl Schmidt told Inside Outer Space's Leonard David.

Sodium and Lithium observations of lunar plumes from lunar impact by SpaceX rocket. — Detections by the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, show evidence of a plume on the moon caused by the impact of a SpaceX rocket on Aug. 5, 2026. (Image credit: Carl Schmidt/Lowell Observatory)

Such images of the event would provide "an opportunity to test pipelines for measuring flash properties to locate impact events seismically, and to better understand the multi-modal hazards posed to future lunar infrastructure and astronauts from space debris impacting the moon," researchers led by Benjamin Fernando of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico wrote in a recent paper discussing the then-upcoming event.

So hold tight, as researchers are now eagerly collecting and analyzing the images captured by these orbiters, and we might get images of the rocket crash, the lunar plumes and remaining aftermath soon.

August 5, 2026

Astronomers witness the strange final moments of a massive star’s supernova death (video)

Astronomers have captured the death of a massive star from its first faint flash of X-rays, revealing an unusual explosion that may bridge the gap between ordinary supernovas and more extreme, gamma-ray-burst-producing stellar explosions

The event began in March 2026, when China's Einstein Probe spacecraft detected a brief X-ray flash from a galaxy about 500 million light-years away. Follow-up observations identified the source, initially designated EP260321a and later named supernova SN 2026gzf, as a broad-lined Type Ic supernova.

Such explosions occur when massive stars that have lost their outer layers of hydrogen and helium collapse. They are often associated with narrow, powerful jets traveling near the speed of light and, in some cases, brilliant gamma-ray bursts. But SN 2026gzf produced neither.

a cloud of white gas and light radiates out from around a star — An image of a galaxy 500 million light-years away captured by the Dark Energy Camera (DECam), mounted on the NSF Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope in Chile taken on March 9, 2026 (left); and an image of the galaxy now containing supernova SN 2026gzf taken by the same camera on April 3, 2026. (Image credit: CTIO/NOIRLab/DOE/NSF/AURA Image Processing: D. de Martin & M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab))

Instead, the initial X-ray signal appears to have been a "shock breakout" — the moment the blast wave generated by a collapsing star reaches its surface and releases its first burst of radiation. The flash was the faintest shock breakout yet linked to a broad-lined Type Ic supernova, according to the research team.

Because shock breakouts generally last only seconds to hours, astronomers rarely detect them. In this case, rapid observations by a network of space- and ground-based telescopes, including a number of NSF NOIRLab observatories, allowed researchers to follow the supernova across multiple wavelengths throughout its early life.

"Our observations allowed us to study the physics of three pieces of this explosion: the X-ray shock breakout, the accompanying supernova, and the interaction of the supernova with material previously cast out by the dying star," Jillian Rastinejad, who led one study on the event, said in a statement. "With this information we were able to map out the structure of the material surrounding the star and understand the star's violent lifestyle before it collapsed."

a dense field of stars and swirls of light on a black background — A close up of the area of space that contains the the galaxy home to supernova SN 2026gz, taken by the LSST Camera at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. (Image credit: CTIO/NOIRLab/DOE/NSF/AURA Image Processing: D. de Martin & M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab))

The observations suggest that the progenitor was a Wolf-Rayet star born with about 20 times the mass of the sun. Before exploding, it had shed its hydrogen and helium, leaving behind a core composed largely of carbon and oxygen.

Researchers also found evidence of multiple shells of material surrounding the star. Those shells were likely expelled during turbulent bouts of mass loss shortly before the explosion, giving astronomers an unusually detailed view of the star's final stages.

The discovery suggests that energetic, broad-lined Type Ic supernovas do not always produce gamma-ray bursts or relativistic jets. Instead, massive stars may reach similar-looking explosions through a wider variety of pathways than astronomers previously recognized.

"Going forward, I'm excited to observe more shock breakout events in similar detail to test if all stripped stars have a similar 'lifestyle' prior to collapse and what, if any, differences we see," said Gokul Srinivasaragavan, a member of Rastinejad's team.

August 5, 2026

Curiosity rover spots mysterious honeycombs on Mars | Space photo of the day for Aug. 5, 2026

a reddish-brown landscape of soil and rocks covered in slightly raised hexagonal lines of nearly equal size — A close-up of the polygon fractures discovered by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover highlights their honeycomb-like textures. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover spotted surprising shapes in the Red Planet soil while exploring a large valley.

What is it?

These images were captured on June 19 and 20, 2026, or the 4,930th and 4,931st Martian days of Curiosity's mission. They show honeycomb-like patterns referred to as "polygonal fractures" found in a valley on Mars known as Valle Grande. They measure about 1.5 to 3 inches (4 to 8 centimeters) across.

While Curiosity has seen other curious geometric patterns on Mars before, scientists were surprised by this most recent find.

"We've seen a lot of fascinating landscapes through Curiosity's eyes, but this sea of polygons took our breath away," project scientist Ashwin Vasavada of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement. "We measured their shapes and chemistry carefully and are hopeful there are clues in the data as to how these features formed."

Why is it incredible?

This field of polygons in Valle Grande extends as far as Curiosity's instruments could see, even around the base of a steep hill scientists named "Miraflores."

While mission scientists have theories about how these structures form, it ultimately remains a mystery how they formed.

It's thought that changes in temperatures on Mars could have caused water to squeeze through sediment layers, but scientists will need to collect more data before they can reach a conclusive answer.

August 5, 2026

Mars dust is toxic. How will future astronauts deal with it?

Planting boots on Mars is hard enough. But getting "breathing room" on the Red Planet without inhaling toxic dust is yet another issue.

Given NASA's plans to eventually put astronauts on the Red Planet, the agency assembled a Martian Dust Limit Working Group earlier this year to review what's known and unknown about the toxicological hazard to human crews from exposure to Mars dust. The ultimate goal was to establish a permissible exposure limit for humans on the Red Planet by compiling a comprehensive set of expert perspectives regarding Martian dust toxicology, exposure pathways and mitigation strategies.

The working group's conclusions reinforced the view that an initial Martian dust standard "must balance conservatism with operational feasibility while accommodating architectural and scientific uncertainty," the report states. Furthermore, the report explains, "as additional Martian data and toxicological research become available, this standard should be periodically revisited to ensure continued protection of crew health during human exploration of Mars."

Unique study

A panel member for that study was Brian Hynek professor in the Department of Earth Science and a research associate at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, both at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

"It was a unique study," Hynek told Space.com, conducted by NASA specialists, space medicine experts, habitat designers, including toxicologists, volcanologists and geologists. "The task was to help gauge health hazards to humans, both for short and long-term stays," he said.

Just highlighting the differences between the moon and Mars played a role, said Hynek. "The moon is worse in some ways and Mars is worse in other ways."

Disneyland of dust

To be sure, one outcome from Apollo moonwalkers – the "dusty dozen" – is that dealing with lunar dust proved to be troublesome, much more than expected. The aged moon is a Disneyland of dust and crews that went there attested to that fact.

Once out and about, moonwalkers coped with very fine, tiny particles composed of sharp, glassy material. Lunar dust stuck to everything it came in contact with; dust eroded their spacesuits, caused overheating on equipment and instrumentation, compromised seals on their spacesuits, even irritated the eyes and lungs of moonwalkers.

"On Mars, dust particles are a little more rounded, not as jagged and cutting into you. But then you have all the extra chemical components and minerals that you don't have on the moon, like really unhealthy perchlorates," Hynek said. "We can use the lunar knowledge, but Mars is a totally different place," he added.

helmets and white spacesuits covered in grey dust inside a cramped metallic cabin — At the conclusion of Apollo 17's mission in December 1972, moonwalking suits and space helmets are covered by lunar dust. (Image credit: NASA)

Heavy metals

Hynek noted that Martian dust is known to contain various carcinogens, such as silica and numerous heavy metals. He co-authored a recent paper on "Potential Health Impacts, Treatments, and Countermeasures of Martian Dust on Future Human Space Exploration."

"There's talk about growing crops on Mars," Hynek observed. "The martian soil is full of all these nasty chemicals. So the astronauts might get more exposure from what they are growing on Mars than the actual airborne dust," said Hynek.

Then there's the dust that will assuredly find its way into the habitat, Hynek said, so engineers are looking at filtering systems and just how much time will be required to clean the inside of the habitat.

"It's good to have the forethought and to start considering the Martian dust and its hazards. It poses a lot more health hazards than the lunar dust," Hynek concluded.

Learned our lesson

Joel Levine, a research professor in applied science at William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, is a leading expert on lunar dust, engineering and safety concerns. He was not a panel member of the NASA report.

Levine cited earlier thinking from a recent National Academy of Sciences report on human exploration of Mars. Two goals noted in that 2026 report are Mars dust-related:

Determine what controls the onset and evolution of major dust storms, which dominate present-day atmospheric variability.
Characterize the effects of Martian dust on human physiology and hardware lifetime.

"This indicates that Mars dust is on the minds of mission planners! This is good news based on our experience with lunar dust on the Apollo landings," said Levine. "It looks like we learned our lesson about dust at future human landing sites."

Levine stated that Mars sample returns would be very helpful to characterize Martian dust samples for chemical composition and other qualities. "Unfortunately, it does not look like the Mars samples already collected will ever be returned to the Earth for analysis," he said.

reddish-orange soil and rocks — Martian dust seen on NASA's Perseverance rover on July 27, 2026 (Sol 1932) by the rover's Right Mastcam-Z camera. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU)

Major takeaways

Shaunna Morrison, an associate professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Rutgers University in New Jersey, served as a panel member on the Martian Dust Limit Working Group.

"One of the major takeaways from the Mars dust working group is that martian dust is a real crew-health and engineering issue, but it is also a tractable one if it is treated as a design requirement from the beginning," Morrison emphasized.

The worry is not that Mars dust is uniquely or catastrophically toxic based on what we know now, Morrison told Space.com.

"The concern is that future crews will be living and working in a closed habitat, repeatedly going outside, bringing dust back in on suits and equipment, in a low-humidity environment," said Morrison. That's a condition in which small particles are more prone to becoming airborne and potentially inhaled, she said, and potentially crew members being exposed to fine respirable particles over many days.

Prevention first

Morrison said that a key point is that we do not have as yet returned samples of authentic airborne martian dust. So NASA has to build a conservative standard using the best available evidence: lunar dust toxicology, Mars simulant studies, and the very extensive chemical and mineralogical datasets from Mars rovers and landers, she pointed out.

"The best strategy is prevention first," Morrison said. "Keep as much dust as possible outside the habitat, remove it quickly when it gets in, monitor airborne particles, and design the system so crews are not relying on medical countermeasures after exposure," she advised.

August 4, 2026

A 9,000-pound SpaceX rocket will crash into the moon tonight. Will you be able to see it?

A discarded SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage is on a collision course with the moon, and skywatchers may be wondering whether they'll be able to witness the rare event firsthand when it slams into the lunar surface early Wednesday morning (Aug. 5).

The 45-foot-long (13.8-meter), 8,000-pound (4,000-kilogram) rocket stage, left over from the January 2025 launch of Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost and ispace's Hakuto-R lunar missions, is expected to strike the moon at about 2:35 a.m. EDT (0635 UTC) on Aug. 5. Traveling at roughly 5,400 mph (8,700 km/h), the impact will occur near the moon's western limb, close to Einstein Crater on the moon's Earth-facing side.

While the collision itself is unlikely to be visible from Earth, observers may have a chance to spot what's known as an ejecta plume rising above the lunar surface. Depending on the force of the impact, debris could be blasted high enough above the moon to stand out against the blackness of space, making it briefly visible to observers on Earth, according to Project Pluto. "Maybe we'll see the flash. Maybe we'll see rocks ejected from the crater. Maybe we'll even see both," astronomer Bill Gray, who first identified the rocket stage's eventual lunar collision, wrote on his Project Pluto website.

an impact on a grey, dusty surface kicks up a plume of dust and rocks into a black sky — A notional illustration of what a rocket stage impact on the moon might look like. Created by Tony Dunn (Orbitsimulator.com) using Seedance AI. (Image credit: Created by Tony Dunn (Orbitsimulator.com) using Seedance AI)

The rocket is expected to strike a sunlit portion of the moon near its edge as seen from Earth. Any flash from the impact itself is expected to be washed out by the bright lunar surface.

an animation showing a red plume expanding upward from a mottled grey surface — An animation predicting the evolution of the target ejecta column density, rendered on the lunar surface at the predicted impact site near Einstein crater by William Jo et al. (Image credit: William Jo/UT Austin)

However, material blasted high above the lunar horizon could briefly become visible against the darkness of space, creating a faint plume that advanced amateur astronomers may be able to capture with sufficiently large telescopes and cameras. Recent simulations suggest the central ejecta plume could climb as high as 60 miles (100 kilometers), though whether it will be detectable from Earth remains uncertain.

Even if conditions cooperate, viewing won't be ideal for much of North America. At the time of impact, the moon will sit only about 40 degrees above the southeastern horizon for observers along the U.S. East Coast, giving skywatchers a relatively low viewing angle before dawn. Observers in parts of South America may have more favorable viewing conditions, with the moon higher in the sky during the event, according to Project Pluto.

dozens of people smile for a portrait in front of a large white cylinder in a massive warehouse — A SpaceX photo of one of the company's Falcon 9 second stages, taken in 2022. A similar second stage is expected to impact the moon on Aug. 5, 2026. (Image credit: SpaceX)

Regardless of whether the impact can be seen from Earth, several spacecraft will be watching from much closer vantage points.

South Korea's Danuri lunar orbiter is expected to observe the impact in real time, offering a unique view from lunar orbit. Meanwhile, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) will photograph the impact site before and after the collision, allowing researchers to measure the newly formed crater and compare it with other human-made impacts on the moon.

Whether or not the ejecta plume is spotted from Earth, researchers say the accidental crash represents a valuable scientific opportunity. Unlike natural meteoroids, the hollow aluminum rocket stage will strike the moon with well-known size, mass and velocity, giving scientists a rare chance to test models of how impacts excavate lunar material and create craters.

The observations could also help researchers better understand the hazards posed by space debris as both crewed and robotic missions to the moon become increasingly common, if all goes according to plan.

August 4, 2026August 4, 2026

ISS astronaut spies a swirling super storm | Space photo of the day for Aug. 4, 2026

a white swirl of cloud above blue ocean waters as seen from space — A photograph of a swirling typhoon in the Pacific Ocean taken by NASA astronaut Anil Menon from the cupola of the International Space Station on Aug. 2, 2026. (Image credit: NASA/Anil Menon)

NASA astronaut Anil Menon captured an incredible photograph of a swirling typhoon in the Pacific Ocean from the International Space Station on Aug. 2, 2026.

What is it?

According to his post on X sharing the image, Menon used an iPhone to capture the photo from the space station's cupola, a domed structure built by the European Space Agency that features six circumferential windows and central nadir viewing window.

The photograph shows a massive swirling typhoon in the Pacific Ocean. While Menon doesn't mention the storm or its location by name, it appears to be Super Typhoon Dolphin, the fifth tropical cyclone to reach category 5 in 2026. It has since been downgraded to a category 3 storm, and is expected to weaken to a category 1 or 2 as it continues to move westward towards Japan's Okinawa island.

Why is it incredible?

Aside from being a reminder of how powerful some storms on Earth can be, Menon's photograph shows just how far astronaut photography has come.

Even equipped with only a phone camera, astronauts can capture breathtaking photos to share with the world. On NASA's recent Artemis II mission around the moon and back, the four crewmembers beamed back incredible images captured with iPhones. They even sometimes used them as "mirrors" while shaving.

A man holding a shaving apparatus in his hand and using his phone camera as a mirror. — Artemis 2 astronaut Jeremy Hansen using a phone as a mirror while shaving before his crew's historic lunar flyby. (Image credit: NASA)

Menon's photo, like other space station photography, also drives home just how mind-boggling of an engineering feat the International Space Station (ISS) truly is.

There are currently seven people aboard the football-field-sized orbital laboratory, circling Earth every 90 minutes at a speed of 17,500 miles per hour (28,000 kilometers/hour) at an average altitude of around 250 miles (400 km).

Since 2000, the ISS has hosted international crews and has been the site of countless groundbreaking scientific experiments made possible by its microgravity environment. But the station is reaching the end of its life; NASA plans to retire it and crash it in into the Pacific Ocean around 2030.

August 4, 2026August 4, 2026

‘Significant areas of Mars may have once been covered by water’: Scientists find hidden clue in Spirit rover data

More than 20 years after NASA's Spirit rover began exploring Mars, scientists have uncovered a hidden clue in its archival data that adds to mounting evidence that the Red Planet was once rich in liquid water.

Researchers reanalyzed measurements collected by Spirit between 2004 and 2010, revealing widespread traces of crystalline hematite and altered magnetite in ordinary Martian soil — iron-bearing minerals that point to ancient chemical changes consistent with interactions between water and rock. The findings suggest liquid water may have been more widespread across Mars than scientists previously thought, according to a statement from Edith Cowan University (ECU) in Australia.

The team combined hundreds of individual measurements from 32 undisturbed soil sites inside Gusev Crater, where Spirit landed in January 2004, creating the most detailed iron-mineral profile yet assembled for typical Martian soil, according to the statement.

"One of the most important discoveries was finding crystalline hematite in ordinary Martian soil," Paulo de Souza, lead author of the study and an ECU professor, said in the statement. "This mineral's widespread presence suggests not only that water was present, but that significant areas of Mars may have once been covered by water."

Crystalline hematite has long been considered one of the strongest mineral indicators of past water on Mars. While it can also form through volcanic or hydrothermal activity, it commonly develops when iron-bearing rocks interact with liquid water.

The discovery is particularly significant because previous analyses concluded that crystalline hematite was largely absent from Spirit's landing site. According to the researchers, the mineral's signature was simply too faint to stand out in individual rover measurements. By combining thousands of spectra collected over the mission, however, the team was able to tease the signal out of the background noise.

The researchers also identified altered magnetite, suggesting the original volcanic minerals in the Martian soil were chemically transformed over time. Together, the altered magnetite and crystalline hematite provide new evidence that water played an important role in reshaping the planet's surface. And, because similar dust and soil blanket much of Mars, the findings could have implications well beyond Gusev Crater, suggesting water-related chemical processes may have been more widespread across the planet than previously believed.

The results add to a growing body of evidence that Mars was once far more habitable than it is today. During its mission, Spirit discovered water-altered rocks and minerals in the Columbia Hills, while NASA's Curiosity rover later found evidence that Gale Crater once hosted long-lived lakes. More recently, Perseverance has been exploring the remnants of an ancient river delta inside Jezero Crater, where scientists hope to determine whether the environment could once have supported microbial life.

Beyond revealing another chapter of Mars' watery past, the research also highlights the lasting scientific value of spacecraft data long after a mission has ended.

"This work shows that important discoveries are not always made by collecting new data," de Souza said in the statement. "Sometimes they come from looking at existing data with fresh eyes and better analytical techniques."

Their findings were published June 26 in the journal Interactions.

August 3, 2026August 4, 2026

A SpaceX rocket will crash into the moon this week. Why is it on a collision course?

This rocket wasn't supposed to die so dramatically.

On Wednesday (Aug. 5) at about 2:35 a.m. EDT (0635 GMT), the upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will slam into the moon, blasting out a crater about 89 feet (27 meters) wide.

The rocket body has been loitering lazily high above Earth for more than 18 months. What jolted it out of its unremarkable senescence and put it on a kamikaze course for the moon?

Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost moon lander captured this view of a lunar sunset, with Earth and Venus also visible, on March 16, 2025. (Image credit: Firefly Aerospace)

It didn't take much, as the rocket regularly crossed into the moon's neck of the woods.

The Falcon 9 launched in January 2025, carrying aloft two private robotic lunar landers — Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost and Resilience, which was built by the Tokyo-based company ispace. (Blue Ghost landed successfully and carried out its historic mission, but Resilience crashed during its touchdown attempt.)

Falcon 9 first stages are famously reusable, but the vehicle's upper stages fly just once. SpaceX usually deorbits these rocket bodies shortly after launch, guiding them back for controlled destruction in Earth's atmosphere. That wasn't possible on the Blue Ghost-Resilience launch, however, as getting the lunar probes to their distant deployment point used up almost all of the upper stage's fuel.

As a result, the 8,800-pound (4,000 kilograms) rocket body "was abandoned in a moon-crossing high-Earth orbit," according to a recent study about the coming impact led by Benjamin Fernando of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

SpaceX performed "a different maneuver [than deorbiting] to ensure that the second stage itself is safe per the appropriate rules and regulations," Julianna Scheiman, director of NASA science and Dragon programs at SpaceX, said today (Aug. 3) during a press conference discussing the company's Crew-13 astronaut launch to the International Space Station, which is targeted for Sept. 12.

That maneuver did not lock the hunk of space junk into a stable location, however; natural forces still acted upon it and, it turns out, changed its trajectory.

"What has happened is, essentially, a mixture of solar activity and gravity forces have put it on a path towards the moon," Scheiman said.

Astronomers and lunar scientists are looking forward to the upcoming impact, even though it will occur on the sunlit side of the moon and therefore likely won't be visible to most observers here on Earth (though skywatchers with good telescopes might be able to catch a glimpse of the resulting ejecta plume).

The event "provides an opportunity to test pipelines for measuring flash properties to locate impact events seismically, and to better understand the multi-modal hazards posed to future lunar infrastructure and astronauts from space debris impacting the moon," Fernando and his colleagues wrote in their paper.

Those hazards won't be purely hypothetical for much longer, if all goes to plan: NASA aims to build a base near the moon's south pole over the coming decade via its Artemis program, and to keep that outpost staffed over the long haul. Scheiman said that SpaceX is looking into ways to minimize the chances that spent rocket bodies could rain down on an occupied moon in the future.

"It's one of the things that we're working in partnership with NASA and the other appropriate agencies," she said. "What is the best future disposal path for high-energy missions that are in the sun-Earth-moon system?"

closeup of a double crater on the moon, with a large white arrow pointing at it — The double crater created on the moon by the March 2022 crash of the upper stage of China's Long March 3C rocket. (Image credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University)

This Falcon 9 won't be blazing an entirely new trail to the moon. The third stage of NASA's Saturn V moon rocket struck the lunar surface on multiple Apollo missions, for example. And, on March 4, 2022, a mysterious rocket body slammed into the moon, blasting out a weird double crater.

That shape revealed the impactor's identity — the upper stage of the Long March 3C rocket that sent China's uncrewed Chang'e 5-T1 mission around the moon in October 2014.

August 3, 2026August 3, 2026

3 moons of Neptune may be remnants of ice worlds shattered in a catastrophic crash

Three of Neptune's moons might have been born from the remnants of ancient icy worlds shattered by Neptune's largest moon, Triton, a new study finds.

These findings suggest further research of these moons might give researchers an unprecedented look at the innards of icy worlds.

"The interiors of large icy moons are normally permanently hidden from us, buried beneath thick shells of water ice," study lead author Ryleigh Davis, a planetary scientist currently at the University of California, San Diego, told Space.com. "Neptune's inner moons may be the only place in the solar system where we can directly observe that material, because a catastrophic event essentially turned those ancient worlds inside out."

Triton is by far the largest of Neptune's 16 known moons. More than 99 percent of the mass of all of Neptune's moons is concentrated in Triton, which is roughly the size of Pluto, Davis said.

Whereas the largest moons of the solar system's other giant planets all orbit their worlds in the same direction as those planets spin, Neptune's largest moon, Triton, orbits in the opposite direction. This unusual configuration suggests the Neptunian system evolved in a dramatically different way than those of its siblings. Instead of Triton forming around Neptune, as the largest moons of the other giant planets likely did around their worlds, Triton's backward orbit has led researchers to suspect "it was captured from the outer solar system," Davis said.

When Neptune captured Triton with its gravity, Triton may have acted like a giant wrecking ball, smashing many of the moons Neptune may have originally had, Davis said. However, much remained uncertain about what happened in the aftermath of this destruction.

To shed light on the mysteries of Neptune's history, scientists investigated Neptune's rings and three of its moons — Larissa, Galatea, and Proteus. Discovered in 1989 with the Voyager 2 flyby of Neptune, these moons are small and close to Neptune, orbiting just outside the planet's main rings. Their locations and tiny sizes have made it difficult for astronomers to study them in detail from Earth.

In the new study, the researchers analyzed near-infrared light from those inner moons using the James Webb Space Telescope . This data helped reveal their chemical makeup for the first time.

The rings and two of the inner moons — Larissa and Galatea — possessed clay minerals previously unseen on the surfaces of bodies in the outer solar system beyond Jupiter. Specifically, they contain magnesium-rich phyllosilicates, commonly found in main belt asteroids and carbonaceous chondrite meteorites.

A view of a glowing orb surrounded by rings and against a section of space with some other glowing dots in the background. Several white dots close to the orb are labeled with the names of Neptune's moons. Toward the top left is a very bright point of light surrounded by blue spikes. — The JWST captured seven of Neptune's 14 known moons: Galatea, Naiad, Thalassa, Despina, Proteus, Larissa, and Triton. Neptune's large and unusual moon, Triton, dominates this portrait of Neptune as a very bright point of light sporting the signature diffraction spikes seen in many of the JWST's images. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Naomi Rowe-Gurney (NASA-GSFC))

"The most surprising thing is simply that we found clay minerals at all," said Davis, who conducted this research at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "That was genuinely not on our list of things we expected to find."

These minerals require major prolonged heating to form. One likely place they were created was the deep interior of a large icy body, where heat might come from radioactive material and other sources.

As such, the researchers suggest these minerals are evidence Triton may have demolished Neptune's original moons. The rubble could then come together, forming Neptune's inner moons, with the clay minerals exposed on their surfaces.

Another possibility is that these clay minerals came from a dwarf planet similar in size to Pluto that passed too close to Neptune. Neptune's gravity might then have shredded this dwarf planet apart, Davis said.

These clay minerals only form in the presence of liquid water. Mysteriously, no water ice was detected in any of the three moons studied or the rings.

"That's really surprising because everything out in this part of the solar system is really icy," Davis said in a statement. "So, we're fairly confident that they had to come from deep inside something that was big enough to generate enough heat that it melted its water ice. We think the most likely place would be an original system of icy moons, although it's a bit of a mystery where the ice may have gone."

The scientists noted they did not see these clay minerals on Proteus, the biggest of the three moons they investigated. They suggested it might have formed from a clay-mineral-poor part of the debris, or experienced subsequent heating that destroyed any such minerals.

Curiously, the scientists found all three moons and the rings had a hydrated mineral the researchers were not able to identify. "Identifying it will likely require new laboratory measurements under outer solar system conditions, which is technically challenging but doable," Davis said.

To learn more about Neptune, a spacecraft dedicated to visiting the planet "is the obvious next step," Davis said. "We've had only a single flyby — Voyager 2 in 1989 — and these results make clear there's much more to learn. The main obstacle is time and resources: an ice giant mission was identified as a high priority in the most recent Planetary Science Decadal Survey, but these missions take decades to develop."

The scientists detailed their findings July 29 in the journal Science Advances.

August 3, 2026August 3, 2026

The 1st ‘three-headed’ asteroid | Space photo of the day for Aug. 3, 2026

five square images of a lumpy grey rock on a black background — A collage of images of asteroid (44) Nysa, believed to be the first-known asteroid in our solar system to have a "trilobate" or three-headed shape. (Image credit: ESO/K. Minker et al.)

New images reveal what astronomers believe is the first-known "trilobate" or three-headed asteroid in our solar system.

What is it?

These new images capture the asteroid known as (44) Nysa, or just Nysa, as it spins through the main asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter. The images were captured with the Very Large Telescope in Chile and the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona.

Nysa was first observed in 1857, but it wasn't until the new images were captured when scientists were able to resolve its unique three-headed structure. The asteroid appears to be around 47 miles (75 kilometers) in circumference at its widest point, with two narrow "necks" that give it its odd "trilobate" shape.

Even more incredible, astronomers were also able to resolve that a 0.6-mile-wide (1-km-wide) moon seems to orbit Nysa. The tiny moon, currently known as S/2026 (44) 1, appears to orbit the asteroid at a distance of around 106 miles (170 km).

A white, blob-like object in the center of a circle that seems to have black and white dots. toward the top left within the circle, a pink arrow points to a white blob. — An image of the three-headed asteroid (44) Nysa and its small moon S/2026 (44) 1, identified here by a pink arrow. The image was produced by the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona. (Image credit: Kate Minker et al.)

Why is it incredible?

Astronomers say these images reveal (44) Nysa to be unlike any other asteroid we've seen in our neck of the cosmic woods.

"The images reveal a remarkably unusual object," said Kate Minker of Arizona's Lowell Observatory in a statement announcing the discovery. "The most likely explanation is that Nysa is either a contact trinary, consisting of three connected components, or an extremely irregular coherent body unlike anything we've previously observed."

Scientists can study asteroids like Nysa to learn about how the planets of our solar system formed. Nysa belongs to a class of asteroids believed to have formed closer to the inner solar system and therefore may have a similar composition to the building blocks that would go on to form the inner planets.