We all love Steven Spielberg and his innumerable contributions to the art of cinema over the decades. His latest entry into the genre, "Disclosure Day", wasn't quite as warmly received by audiences, but it's nevertheless an entertaining sci-fi flick that's worth checking out. And good news on that front, because "Disclosure Day" will be streaming on Peacock from Oct. 9, 2026.

Produced by Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment for a cost of roughly $200 million (including marketing), "Disclosure Day" first touched down in cinemas on June 12, 2026. It had some of that old Spielberg magic, but ultimately felt a decade late to the UAP party; a story linked to another era where folks got all their news from local television stations.

Critics were tepid toward the alien conspiracy movie, with our own "Disclosure Day" review calling it a "close encounter with Spielberg's brilliance that doesn't quite make contact". Despite it not living up to the highs of "Close Encounters" or "E.T.", it's still a compelling thriller.

Word of mouth wasn't exactly overly enthusiastic either, and it ended its theatrical run collecting $241 million worldwide. By Hollywood's math, a movie needs to return 2.5 times its initial budget to break even, which means that "Disclosure Day" wasn't really the lucrative summer firecracker that the studio had hoped for.

"Disclosure Day" stars Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson and Colman Domingo in an often engaging but sometimes confusing cover-up plot about a Kansas City meteorologist and a tech whistleblower chased by a sinister group trying to sequester evidence that alien beings have been living amongst us on Earth.

Directed by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by longtime collaborator David Koepp ("Jurassic Park," "The Lost World: Jurassic Park"), "Disclosure Day" will begin streaming exclusively on Peacock starting Oct. 9, 2026.

The hunt is on for a state to host the U.S. Space Academy.

NASA released a request for information on Sept. 9, following a meeting that NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman held in Washington for the occasion. The space agency has set a quick timeline for the project: States are encouraged to submit a proposal by Oct. 26, 2026.

"Now, with the RFI underway, states across the country have an opportunity to help us shape a legacy institution built for America's future in space," Isaacman said in a NASA statement on Sept. 10.

The U.S. Space Academy won't be a purely military institution in the mold of the Naval Academy or West Point. It will be led by NASA, and one of its core functions will be educating future scientists, engineers and astronauts, as well as warfighters.

If all goes to plan, the academy will welcome its first class of 300 students for instruction starting in 2028. Because that doesn't leave much time for planning and building, the RFI states that the academy may start before it has a permanent campus.

While the academy may rely on "one or more partner institutions" for facilities to start out, the RFI outlines plans for a big campus once everything is up and running.

A permanent campus will include buildings for teaching, research, administration, student residences, sports venues and gyms, dining halls and related facilities.

The purpose of the new space academy is to "encourage and guide the next generation of Americans to pursue cutting-edge, technical fields that currently do not have a sufficient amount of programs and graduates needed to ensure America maintains superiority in space," a White House fact sheet about the planned academy states.

The request calls for a groundbreaking by 2027, as well as a temporary campus for the first class of 300 students in 2028. The timeline in the RFI has the academy's permanent location in operation by 2031.

"The location of the U.S. Space Academy is foundational to its success," NASA Deputy Administrator Matt Anderson said in the Sept. 10 statement.

"We're asking states to bring their strongest vision — the infrastructure, the partnerships and the community that can compete with the elite options this caliber of student will have and match the boundless ambition of our future space leaders," he added.

Russia launched a cargo mission toward the International Space Station today (Sept. 16), delivering the freighter spacecraft to orbit for a three-day rendezvous journey.

The robotic Progress 96 spacecraft lifted off atop a Soyuz rocket from the Russian-run Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan today at 9:33 a.m. EDT (1333 GMT).

From engine ignition through solar array deployment on the spacecraft, the Progress 96 launch was completely nominal. It was "a flawless launch," said NASA's Rob Navias during the mission's livestream this morning, with "an excellent climb to orbit by the Soyuz booster."

Progress 96 is loaded with about 3 tons of food, propellant and other supplies for the astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The freighter will deliver this cargo three days after launch, if all goes according to plan. You'll be able to watch rendezvous and docking activities when the time comes.

The freighter will remain docked to the orbiting lab for about five months. It will then be loaded up with trash and sent down to a fiery death in Earth's atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean.

The Progress 94 spacecraft met this fate on Sept. 7, departing from ISS' Poisk module to make room for Progress 96.

Progress is one of four spacecraft that fly operational cargo missions to the ISS these days, along with Japan's HTV-X, SpaceX's Dragon capsule and Northrop Grumman's Cygnus. All but Dragon are expendable, burning up in our air when their time in orbit is up.

There are currently seven people living aboard the ISS — NASA astronauts Jack Hathaway, Jessica Meir and Anil Menon; the European Space Agency's Sophie Adenot, who last month became the first French woman ever to perform a spacewalk; and Pyotr Dubrov, Andrey Fedyaev and Anna Kikina of the Russian space agency Roscosmos.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 10 a.m. ET on Sept. 16 with news of successful launch.

NASA's newly launched Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is set to extend its lifespan and double its exciting potential for discovery thanks to an efficient use of fuel on its way to its final orbit.

"As a result of exquisite planning by our orbital dynamics team, brilliant execution by the operations team, and a precise launch from SpaceX, Roman has fuel for at least 22 years of potential science operations," said Jamie Dunn, the center director at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, in a statement.

The space telescope, which launched from Cape Canaveral on Aug. 30 on a mission to measure dark energy and search for exoplanets, is headed to the L2 Lagrange point. There, it will join the likes of the James Webb Space Telescope on the opposite side of Earth to the sun. Its primary mission will last five years, and scientists were hoping for an additional five years if funding allowed.. Now, however, that potential extended mission could go on for a lot longer — and it's all thanks to the spacecraft coming in less massive than the original design had projected.

At the beginning of Roman's design process, the fuel capacity was chosen to permit a maximum mass of 21,605 pounds (9,800 kilograms), yet the finished spacecraft came in lighter at 17,760 pounds (8,065 kilograms). And because it was lighter, there was a surplus of available mass that could be used for more fuel.

"A spacecraft's mass changes throughout the design and build process, so we base the propellant on a set maximum value so we won't come up short," Alison Rao, who leads Roman's propulsion systems at NASA Goddard, said in the statement. "We track the propellant needed based on actual mass throughout integration and testing as well, to make sure we have wiggle room. Since Roman's [mass] was lower than we budgeted for, we were able to fill the propellant tanks to their capacity rather than only filling them as much as we needed to for the 10-year requirement."

The extra fuel loaded onto the telescope before launch meant it had enough for at least a 14-year mission. Then, within a day of launching, the space telescope had to fire its engine for three minutes to push it onto a trajectory to take it to L2. This engine burn was more precise and hence more efficient than anyone could have hoped for, sending Roman on its way to L2 with 99% accuracy. In doing so, it used only 40 pounds (18 kilograms) of fuel, which is less than 10% of the 441 pounds (200 kilograms) of fuel that had been budgeted for the maneuver. This is thought to have bought Roman an additional four years of life, bringing the tally to 18 years.

Then there's the added bonus. The precision with which the Aug. 31 engine burn was conducted means that the second course correction, required to take Roman into its orbit at L2 in early December, will also now require much less fuel. This will add yet another four years to Roman's operational lifetime, so long as nothing goes wrong with the telescope. Once in orbit at L2, only minor burns once every 28 days are needed for station keeping — a negligible amount of fuel.

In total, this observatory could be probing the final frontier and making incredible discoveries for at least the next 22 years, taking it up to 2048 at minimum. For the next two or three decades, we're going to be hearing a lot about the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

BlizzCon 2026 delivered big gaming news over the weekend, including Diablo 5 and a new Warcraft 3 expansion announcement, but sci-fi lovers were the ones with the most cause to celebrate, as we learned that StarCraft will return in 2030. It's not coming back as a sci-fi strategy game this time, though.

16 years after StarCraft 2's initial launch and after months of rumors, Blizzard Entertainment has unveiled StarCraft, the next chapter in the franchise. Provisional title or not ('Dominion' is just the trailer's moniker), we know that it's set roughly 70 years after the events of the SC2 trilogy and that it's been envisioned as a "narrative-driven open world shooter" without seasonal or live-service elements, at least at the time of writing.

Creative director Dan Hay's (known for his work on the modern Far Cry games) teased a game that's quite different from what's shown in the first CG trailer above. Humans are still fighting against the Zerg, a ruthless hive-like species infesting the stars, and we get to see thousands (if not millions) of marines being thrown into the meat grinder... literally.

We've seen this story before, but the trailer's condensed tale of an eager young man getting turned into ground meat during his first encounter with the Zerg is chilling. It's all well and good when you're floating above the carnage, but the average StarCraft battle looks way more brutal from a boots-on-the-ground point of view.

From the cinematic, you'd think StarCraft is more of a Helldivers-like game, but it seems the focus will be on single-player gameplay with a strong story. I wouldn't rule out some form of co-op or multiplayer, though.

Other hot bits of info straight from BlizzCon confirm it's a third-person shooter, meaning players can customize and see the character and their equipment in action as battles rage on. A fantastic choice given how iconic the StarCraft marine armor is.

It's hard to imagine how the full thing will come together without any gameplay footage to look at — and a lot can change between now and the tentative 2030 release window — but we must admit it's a rather attractive pitch, especially after Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 did something similar (but with linear levels).

Let's just hope the powers that be haven't completely forgotten about making a third mainline StarCraft game too.

The U.S. Space Force is opening up about its operation of orbital weapons, but not much beyond admitting that they exist.

During a "State of the Space Force" address at the Air & Space Forces Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, on Tuesday (Sept. 15), Chief of Space Operations Gen. Douglas Schiess stated unequivocally that the Space Force uses active space-based weaponry to support United States national defense.

“Let me be crystal clear: Today, Guardians operate on-orbit weapons that can defend the joint force against space-enabled attacks,” Schiess said, referring to the official name for Space Force personnel.

Space is central to national security infrastructure and warfighting efforts, and serves a critical role in how the military communicates, navigates, conducts operations and tracks threats globally. It’s become an increasingly contested domain, with adversaries developing technologies designed to disrupt or destroy satellites in orbit as well as hypersonic weapons that challenge ground-based-only defenses.

Schiess didn’t specify what kind of weapons the U.S. operates in orbit, how many there are, or what exactly they do. But the revelation that the Space Force is operating those kinds of assets is by itself a pretty hefty admission. The news expands the known scope of U.S. military activity in the final frontier, which already included the use of satellites for GPS, communications, missile warnings and other targeting and intelligence operations.

“Space is both a battlefield and the backbone of our joint force,” Schiess said. “We face determined and credible adversaries who are building counter-space systems at incredible speeds to target directly the United States’ space advantage.”

The chief adversaries are China and Russia, experts have said. Both nations have developed a range of counterspace capabilities intended to threaten or interfere with other satellites, including through electronic warfare and anti-satellite (ASAT) systems. Russia demonstrated as much in 2021, when it destroyed one of its own spacecraft with an ASAT missile, which created a cloud of more than 1,500 pieces of orbital debris.

The U.S. has been rapidly expanding its own military presence in orbit over the past decade or so, and is ramping up those efforts even more with plans for the implementation of President Trump’s Golden Dome missile interception system. In the last year alone, the Space Force has awarded more than $12 billion in major contracts to companies like SpaceX, Rocket Lab, L3Harris and Boeing for a wide range of services, including national security launches, space-based tracking satellites and other defense technologies.

Schiess pointed to the Victus Haze mission as an example of how the Space Force is getting ready to react to orbital threats on short notice. Rocket Lab carried out Victus Haze in June, launching an Electron rocket and interceptor spacecraft within just 17 hours of receiving notice from the Space Force, setting a launch turnaround record.

Schiess also highlighted the Space Force’s critical role in Operation Epic Fury and the ongoing engagement of U.S. military forces in Iran. “Guardians are not supporting from the sidelines as a nice-to-have, but we are delivering space power directly into the fight as a need-to-have,” he said. Schiess even gave an anecdotal example of the actions of one Guardian, “Specialist Gray,” in the heat of battle.

“Even as alarm red sirens were blaring and incoming missiles targeted her site, she courageously held the line, protecting forces, denying adversary capability, and delivering space effects until her commander had to literally pull her from the console to safety,” Schiess said.

Schiess described her operations before she was pulled from that console, giving some clue as to what exactly is meant by “on-orbit weapons.”

He said the Guardian in question needed to “reconfigure her weapon system and execute critical non-kinetic fires,” and went on to add, “She locked onto the target, optimized her weapon system and waged electromagnetic warfare against a determined adversary.”

Those descriptions offer at least some clues about the technologies involved. Phrases like “electromagnetic warfare” and “non-kinetic” could point to signal jamming technology or other non-physical means of disrupting a target.

Schiess said the Space Force intends to continue expanding its combat power with more robust architectures and the ability to respond with increasing speed to evolving threats. That proliferation on behalf of Golden Dome and other national security programs stands to deliver substantially more military hardware into orbit in the coming years, but Schiess framed the buildup around the prevention of conflict, rather than its provocation.

“Our aim is deterrence,” he said.

We now have a launch date for Starship's most ambitious mission to date.

SpaceX announced today (Sept. 15) that it's targeting Sept. 22 for the first orbital flight of Starship, the fully reusable megarocket that the company is developing to help humanity settle the moon, Mars and more.

Liftoff, from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas, will occur during a 75-minute window that opens at 8:15 a.m. EDT (1215 GMT and 7:15 a.m. local Texas time). You can watch it live here at Space.com when the time comes.

The upcoming flight will be the 14th overall for Starship, which debuted in April 2023 and has flown twice so far in 2026. But the 408-foot-tall (124-meter-tall) vehicle's first 13 jaunts were all suborbital, so Flight 14 will be a landmark.

"By going to orbit, the next phase of developing Starship to be fully and rapidly reusable can begin," SpaceX wrote in a Flight 14 mission description.

"This will also mark the first time we plan to deploy Starlink V3 satellites into the constellation, delivering a payload that will dramatically expand connectivity speeds and reliability around the world," the company added.

Starlink, SpaceX's network of broadband satellites in low Earth orbit, currently consists of more than 11,000 active spacecraft. None of those are the larger, more capable V3 version, which are designed to launch on Starship.

Flight 14 will carry up 26 of these next-gen craft — the first of many, if all goes to plan. SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has said the company wants the Starlink megaconstellation to eventually consist of 100,000 V3 satellites.

Three of the Starlink craft launching on Flight 14 have been outfitted with cameras and will photograph the heat shield on Starship's upper stage, known as Ship, after deployment. SpaceX will use this imagery to study and potentially improve the heat shield, which protects Ship during its return trip through Earth's atmosphere.

If all goes according to plan on Sept. 22, the 171-foot-tall (52-m-tall) Ship will complete six orbits of Earth at an altitude of about 171 miles (275 kilometers). The vehicle will then maneuver its way to a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean west of Chile about 10 hours after launch, SpaceX wrote in the mission description.

That's a very different plan than previous Starship flights. On those suborbital missions, Ship stayed aloft for just 65 minutes or so, did not complete an orbit of Earth and came down in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Western Australia.

But Flight 14 will be more of the same for Starship's first-stage booster, known as Super Heavy. If all goes to plan, the giant rocket will splash down in the Gulf of Mexico about seven minutes after liftoff, as it has done on a number of previous flights.

So there will be no catch — of either Ship or Super Heavy — by the "chopstick" arms of Starbase's launch tower on Flight 14. SpaceX has pulled off tower catches of Super Heavy on three occasions to date but has never done so with Ship. This recovery method will eventually be the norm on Starship flights, leading to faster and more efficient reuse of the vehicle, Musk has said.

So, while Flight 14 aims to check a very big box — reaching orbit — other milestones will be reserved for future flights. A Ship tower catch will be among the most anticipated, along with refueling the vehicle in orbit, something that will be required for missions to the moon, Mars and beyond.

Could we find alien technology embedded in moon dust?

The bold idea, not yet peer-reviewed, suggests checking out the lunar surface for "microscopic technosignatures." The SETI Institute — or the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute — describes these technosignatures as "tiny engineered particles" that may have come from interstellar space before settling on the moon.

The institute recently highlighted a paper on the topic, published on arxiv in August, and added the research is undergoing peer review for consideration in the International Journal of Astrobiology. The study is led by SETI Institute Affiliate Scientist Lewis Pinault.

"The moon has been quietly accumulating material from space for billions of years, much of it likely billions of years older than the moon itself," said Pinault in a statement. "We're asking whether that ancient collection might contain microscopic traces of technologies that existed long before humans ever looked up at the sky."

Even if no aliens turn out to be there, the search could help advance models of how dust goes through interstellar space, as well as effects on lunar geology or impact science, the institute added.

"The study reports no evidence of extraterrestrial technology," the institute added in the statement. "Instead, it demonstrates that searching for these microscopic technosignatures is now scientifically testable."

That's in large part because the NASA-led Artemis program, which will ultimately bring astronauts to the moon, as well as China's Chang'e robotic series, would provide opportunities to return samples, the institute said. (China is also eyeing bringing its taikonauts to the moon by 2030.)

SETI is best known for looking for artificial radio signatures in space that may have come from extraterrestrials. This new study, the institute added, is focusing more on past alien communities that may have preserved their knowledge in "durable particles," even if the communities are no longer in existence.

The study examines how these particles could (in theory) move from star to star, stay viable over long distances and periods, embed themselves in the lunar surface and then — if humans could find them — use AI-assisted imaging, materials analysis and microscopy to take a closer look, among other techniques.

Helping in that search is the environment of the moon itself, which — compared with Earth, at least — has slow-moving geology. As the institute points out, the surface has no flowing water or substantial atmosphere like our planet does. What's more, the moon has picked up dust in its environment for about four billion years (from not long after the solar system was formed 4.5 billion years ago), presenting a potential archive of dust in the solar system and interstellar space.

"The researchers argue that if advanced civilizations produce durable microscopic debris — whether intentionally or as a byproduct of space exploration or large-scale engineering — a tiny fraction of those particles could eventually become embedded in the lunar regolith," the institute stated.

The goal is to start these studies with about 35 cubic feet (one cubic meter) of lunar regolith, which is maybe the equivalent size of a fridge. Researchers would try out a series of careful investigations using multiple tools to "begin placing meaningful limits on the amount of durable artificial material produced by technological civilizations over the history of the Milky Way."

And as mentioned, even if this small sample doesn't turn up technosignatures, the researchers say the work is still important. It's another way to search for "extraterrestrial artifacts," to look at various aspects of solar system science, and to try out newer tools for examining moon samples that weren't available in the Apollo years.

"This is a novel addition to the search methodologies applied to seeking evidence of technology as a proxy for life and intelligence beyond our solar system and we are excited at the prospect of bringing this to fruition," stated Bill Diamond, SETI Institute president and CEO.

40 years ago on Sept. 12, 1986, musical icon Michael Jackson debuted in "Captain EO," a 17-minute long 3D sci-fi fantasy film. The catch? You could only see it at Walt Disney World's EPCOT Center in Florida, or — six days later — at Disneyland’s Magic Eye Theater over in Tomorrowland.

Jackson had already been anointed the King of Pop in the ‘80s with the stellar multi-platinum album "Thriller" when the creative cosmic tumblers aligned, joining the immense talents of Jackson, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola and the wizards of Disney's Imagineering to create one of the most unique sci-fi entertainment offerings ever conceived.

With impressive special effects, catchy songs, dynamic dance numbers and co-starring Academy Award-winning actress Anjelica Huston as the witch queen known as the Supreme Leader, "Captain EO" was a huge attraction seen by millions of Disney guests.

It told the story of a rag-tag crew of space misfits led by Jackson's charismatic Captain EO (in a sweet white leather uniform) on a mission to a sinister industrial planet to deliver a mysterious gift to its despotic ruler. Plenty of hijinks ensue with EO's oddball companions: Major Domo, Hooter, Idy & Ody, and a winged kitten creature named Fuzzball.

After crash landing on the dark world directly onto the homing beacon, EO and his crazy crew are apprehended by a gang of warrior henchmen and hauled into the throne room to face the wicked alien ruler who is imprisoned in anger and hate.

Huston is electrifying in her Giger-esque makeup, supported by a tangle of banded black cables and sporting long fingernails that were deliciously thrust into audiences’ eyes using the magic of 3D and the special red-and-blue-lensed glasses handed out when arriving for each screening.

When EO's crew manifests into a musical band to offer a song to the Supreme Leader, Hooter trips over the power cord to ruin the performance. The commotion tries the queen’s patience and she dispatches her cruel Whip Warriors to capture EO and send him to her deepest, darkest dungeon.

But EO fights back with an illuminating t-shirt (hey, it was the '80s!), some fancy dance moves and a surge of musical energy to unlock her beauty. This transforms Huston into a colorful enchantress with her grim lair now becoming a lush Greek-like temple. Darkness turns to light and everyone leaves as peaceful galactic friends.

It's an honest plot with heart and humor filled with cool tunes and a sprinkling of in-your-face 3D moments for the whole family, and really, what else would you expect from a Jackson/Disney collaboration in the decade of excess?

The two prominent songs — the original "We Are Here to the Change the World," and "Another Part of Me" — are used to great effect throughout the simple narrative. I can fondly remember leaving the Magic Eye Theater the first time I saw it in the 1990s with an uplifted attitude and the renewed vigor needed to brave the epic summertime Disneyland crowds. Over the years I’d revisited the film a dozen times and it's remained a fun time capsule of unbridled spirit perfect for its age and even more relevant today.

Production began on "Captain EO" in the summer of 1985 with "Star Wars"' creator George Lucas serving as producer and legendary Francis Ford Coppola of The Godfather fame in the director's chair. James Horner, who’d later go on to compose the music for "Titanic," was enlisted to pen the original score. Essentially an expanded music video similar in format to 1983’s horror short, "Thriller," "Captain EO" was filmed entirely in Los Angeles with Lucas's ILM unit called in for a VFX polish.

Costing nearly $30 million to produce, "Captain EO" was, at the time, the most expensive short ever filmed on a per-minute basis. It was also a pioneering attraction that used in-theater 4D techniques that delivered floodlights, fog, smoke, starfields, meteors and LED laser effects out into the audience in conjunction with the added visual component of its 70MM 3D filming process.

"For all those who share Walt Disney's dream and delight in the promise of the future, we cut this ribbon signifying the opening of the 3-D musical motion picture space adventure, 'Captain EO!,'" proclaimed Coppola at its 1986 Disneyland premiere.

The attraction ran continuously at Disney World’s EPCOT Center until 1994 and lasted three years longer at Disneyland's Magic Kingdom before it was closed in 1997.

Upon Jackson’s untimely death in 2009 it returned for an encore tribute run between 2010 and 2015, including re-releases at Tokyo Disneyland and Disneyland Paris before vanishing completely to be locked up forever in the Disney Vault. It was also broadcast once though on MTV for a 1995 Michael Jackson tribute.

While an official Disney streaming option is nowhere to be found, there are YouTube channels that have uploaded enhanced and/or upscaled copies of "Captain EO" if you've got a hankering for some heart-warming sci-fi.

With so many dire warnings, dystopian fare and AI doomsdays prophesied everywhere you turn, maybe we all need a little bit of Captain EO's hopeful “The planets are linin' up, we're bringin' brighter days” message.

Astronauts could travel back to Earth from Mars using rocket fuel converted directly from the carbon dioxide in the Red Planet's atmosphere, using a technique known as electrochemical reduction, a recent study reports.

It's an old method involving electrolysis, which is the application of an electrical current to drive a chemical reaction, but the new trick produces methane pure enough to be used as liquid propellant. (A number of rocket engines these days burn liquid oxygen and liquid methane — including the Raptors that power Starship, the rocket SpaceX is developing to help humanity get to Mars.)

"The work we're doing is basically taking CO2 and using electricity to convert it into carbon-containing fuels and chemicals," said Carter Racine in a statement. Racine is a Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering at Texas A&M University and a member of the study team, which was led by University of Mississippi chemical engineer Ahmed Badreldin.

"You can't bring up everything you need [on Mars] from Earth, because every additional kilogram adds enormous cost and complexity to launch and escape Earth's gravity," added Badreldin. "So the question becomes, How do we make the fuels and chemicals needed for space exploration from the resources already available at the destination?"

One answer is electrochemical reduction, which takes place in an electrolyzer, with electrons flowing from the negatively charged anode to the positively charged cathode. Water at the anode is oxidized, meaning it loses an electron, which is transferred to the carbon dioxide at the cathode, where one of its atoms gains an electron and becomes what chemists refer to as "reduced" (meaning its oxidation state is lowered). It can then react with the hydrogen and oxygen atoms that have split from the oxidized water molecules.

The anode contains a catalyst, and the choice of material for the catalyst dictates what carbon-based compounds are produced when the reduced carbon reacts with the hydrogen and oxygen. For example, a gold catalyst leads to the production of carbon monoxide (CO), while copper produces more complex compounds including alcohols, ethanol and methane (CH4).

What makes the work of Badreldin's team stand apart from previous experiments is that they have developed a nanometer-scale copper catalyst doped in nitrogen that is able to produce nearly pure methane.

Electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide has been used to produce methane before, in applications on Earth. The problem is, those methods have produced a lot of byproducts alongside methane. On Earth we have complex equipment that separates the methane from the other unwanted compounds, but astronauts are not going to be able to take such unwieldy devices to Mars when every kilogram counts. That's a problem, because for methane to be used as a liquid propellant in rocket fuel it needs to be pure.

However, the specific copper catalyst used by Badreldin's team is able to preferentially produce methane over other compounds, thereby creating it pure without having to refine it. And there's plenty of carbon dioxide available on Mars to use: While Mars' atmosphere is thin, it is nonetheless composed of 96% carbon dioxide.

Even if astronauts never go to Mars, the usefulness of this technique on Earth is clear. Rather than drilling for this natural gas, we can create methane from the carbon dioxide already in our atmosphere.

"We want to do that because right now many of these carbon-based products ultimately come from virgin fossil resources," said Racine. "If we can make them using captured CO2 and renewable electricity, it could reduce reliance on virgin fossil carbon and help close the carbon cycle."

Consequently, electrochemical reduction has also been suggested for use on Earth as a carbon sequestration technique, drawing carbon dioxide out of our atmosphere where it acts as an unwanted greenhouse gas.

The problem with that is, converting carbon dioxide into methane to be burned as a fuel simply releases that carbon dioxide straight back into the atmosphere in a net-zero cycle. Ideally, we want to lock that carbon dioxide away from the atmosphere for a long period of time, but Badreldin doesn't think the technology is ready yet.

"What we are ultimately interested in is seeing whether we can move beyond simply recycling CO2 and toward pathways that are net-negative," he said. "That means using CO2 as a carbon source while converting it into products where the carbon is stored or used long enough that it is not immediately released back into the atmosphere."

It should be noted that the best way to alleviate climate change is to cease burning all fossil fuels, including methane. However, using methane created from electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction in a net-zero process rather than drilling for it could help during the transition from fossil fuels to renewable resources.

The study reporting this research was published in April in the journal ACS Catalysis.

For decades, researchers have been monitoring armed conflict around the world by analyzing news reports and collecting oral testimonies. This approach, while valuable, has its limitations. A new study suggests that a satellite's view from above might fill the gaps in our understanding of the grim realities of war.

In 2017, the Myanmar Army murdered several hundred Muslim Rohingya civilians in the village of Chut Pyin near the country's western coast. Reports of the massacre in the settlement of about 2,000 reached the world through the testimonies of survivors who fled to neighboring Bangladesh. The massacre was part of a years-long campaign of brutality against the Muslim minority conducted by the Buddhist-run state. Satellite data later showed that houses in the predominantly Rohingya neighborhood were burned down by the Myanmar military during the atrocity, providing undeniable proof that the ethnic minority was targeted.

The incident is one of many demonstrating the advantage of adding views from space into conflict research, study lead author Valerie Sticher, a political science researcher at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, told Space.com.

"We have huge data sets about wars around the world going back 40 years," Sticher said. "But those datasets are based mostly on media reports. And these reports are not always available and not always reliable. Media can have biases and often focus only on certain types of violence."

For example, human reporters are more likely to focus on the numbers of people killed rather than the number of houses destroyed, she said. Satellites, on the other hand, provide a broad sweep over vast areas of land and, crucially, revisit the same location repeatedly. They can reveal patterns in conflicts and trends that could otherwise go undetected, while providing an overview of areas controlled by authoritarian regimes.

The researchers are now developing a methodology to integrate satellite observations into conflict research and create automated image analysis pipelines that would generate early warnings and alert the world to what's happening on the ground.

"Automated satellite data analysis would allow us to respond faster," said Sticher. "For example, in Myanmar, the area affected by ethnic cleansing was closed to independent journalists and investigators. Satellite data was the earliest reliable information to reach the outside world."

Hannes Mueller, a conflict researcher at the Spanish National Research Council, said that totalitarian governments can be very good at preventing information about atrocities from reaching the world. However, they can hardly fool satellites.

"In Myanmar, for example, when the military clears villages, they frequently kill everybody in those villages," he said. "Then you don't have any eyewitnesses for you to find out what's going on. But they usually also destroy the entire village, and so the violence leaves a mark from space."

Mueller was not involved in the new study but has used satellites in his work since the conflict in Syria in the early 2010s. He lauds the new paper for trying to "plot the road" for a more systematic integration of satellite data into conflict-monitoring data sets.

"Imagine we could generate a data stack of the entire world of all housing destruction since 2020 without any gaps in it," he said. "That would be a complete breakthrough!"

But satellites, too, have their limitations, he said. Currently, spacecraft must be tasked to take images and beam them to Earth. Because of the limited download availability, they can't image every spot they fly over, meaning they usually only reveal the aftermath of catastrophic incidents. For example, the Syrian city of Homs only became the focus of satellite imaging campaigns after the Syrian military attacked it with heavy artillery to suppress pro-democracy protests.

"There are no images of Homs before it got attacked," said Mueller. "There is no archival data of the city from before. Then, after the attack, you suddenly get lots."

In the future, onboard AI image processing — which some of the commercial satellite Earth-observation companies have already rolled out — might solve the problem. Machine learning algorithms running on computers on board the satellites will be able to detect incidents of potential interest and autonomously select significant images to send to the ground.

But there are other concerns. Just as authoritarian regimes can deny access to warzones to independent journalists, governments can order Earth-observation companies to restrict access to images of specific areas. In fact, the U.S. government did just that earlier this year when it ordered American commercial Earth-observation providers like Planet Labs to stop releasing high-resolution images of the Gulf of Oman and the Strait of Hormuz amid the escalating conflict in the region. The U.S also asked Europe to delay releasing images of that region captured by the European Sentinel satellites by 24 hours.

"With that, we are back to the same biases that we have with the news reporting," Mueller said. "We need to think about infrastructure that would provide us with transparency. That would really be a revolution in conflict research."

The new study was published in the journal Nature on Sept. 9.

On Sept. 15, 1968, the Soviet Union launched the Zond 5 spacecraft on a mission to loop around the moon and return to Earth. There were no cosmonauts aboard, but there were several smaller vertebrates — including the first two tortoises to ever go to space!

Other passengers included wine flies, mealworms, plants and seeds. These were the first animals in deep space and the first to travel around the moon.

• Photos: Pioneering Animals in Space

After looping around the moon, the Zond 5 spacecraft turned around and came back to Earth. It was supposed to land in Kazakhstan on Sept. 22, but the spacecraft's guidance system failed, and it splashed down in the Indian Ocean instead.

The Soviets did recover the capsule and found that the tortoises and other critters were still alive, although they had lost some weight since the start of the mission.

Why it mattered

In September of 1968, the Space Race to the moon was in full swing. NASA was just three months away from the historic Apollo 8 mission, which sent the first astronauts around the moon in daring first-of-its-kind mission.

But with Zond 5, the Soviet Union scored an early win for the first circumlunar flight that launched from the Earth to the moon, then returned for a landing (or splashdown, in this case). In fact, the flight may have spurred NASA to launch Apollo 8.

"The flight of Zond 5 caused concern in the U.S. that the Soviets would place cosmonauts aboard the next Zond and complete the first crewed circumlunar mission. At about this time, a U.S. Corona reconnaissance satellite photographed an N-1 rocket on its pad at Baikonur," NASA wrote in a report, adding that NASA's then-chief James Webb likely saw those intelligence reports.

"The apparently successful Zond 5 mission coupled with the photos of the Soviet lunar booster on the launch pad may have contributed to the decision to send Apollo 8 on its circumlunar mission in December 1968, bringing the moon landing one step closer."

Zond 5 launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome atop a Proton rocket and took three days to reach the moon. The two tortoises on board were, appropriately, Russian steppes tortoises, NASA has said. After looping around the moon, the critters spent a few more days in transit for the trip home.

It was a guidance system error that led the Zond 5 capsule to splash down in the Indian Ocean instead of landing on land as planned. But the landing on Sept. 21 wasn't the end of the road for the Zond 5 tortoises and other animals.

The Soviet recovery ship Vasily Golovnin plucked the Zond 5 capsule from the ocean and returned to port in what is now Mumbai, India on Oct. 3, weeks later! They wer ethen flown to Moscow on an Antonov-12 cargo plane before the capsule was finally opened to find the tortoises alive and in good health. You can still view the Zond 5 capsule at the RSC Energia museum in Korolev.

Cassini's Grand Finale death dive at Saturn in 2017

A bunch of space traveling tortoises and other animals aren't the only notable space event that happened today in history.

On Sept. 15, 2017, NASA's Cassini spacecraft died in a blaze of glory as it crashed into Saturn after 13 years orbiting the ringed planet. NASA ended the mission in a fiery plunge because Cassini was running out of fuel and the space agency wanted to ensure it wouldn't crash into one of Saturn's icy moons, like Enceladus, and contaminate them. They called it Cassini's Grand Finale.

Launched in 1997, the $3.26 billion Cassini mission entered orbit around Saturn in 2004 and dropped a European Huygens probe onto the cloudy moon Titan in early 2005. The mission was expected to last until 2008, but was extended twice, ultimately stretching through to September 2017.

During its mission life, Cassini discovered a trove if new Saturn moons, found a strange hexagon at the planet's north pole and tracked mesmerizing details of the planet's many rings.

"Congratulations to you all," Earl Maize, the Cassini program manager, said to the mission team after the spacecraft signal was lost."This has been an incredible mission, an incredible spacecraft, and you're all an incredible team. I'm going to call this the end of mission."

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.

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?

Moon lovers rejoice! International Observe the Moon Night returns on Sept. 19. Here's everything you need to know about how to participate in the annual celebration of Earth's natural satellite both in-person and from the comfort of your home.

International Observe the Moon Night takes place around the first quarter moon in September or October, when the moon is conveniently visible in the late afternoon and evening. It's also an excellent phase for exploring features along the terminator — the boundary between lunar day and night — where long shadows help craters, mountains and other features stand out according to NASA.

The global celebration aims to raise awareness of lunar observation, science and exploration, which has intensified in recent years as NASA and its partners work to return humans to the surface of the moon as part of its Artemis program.

How can I participate?

You can join in with the International Observe the Moon Night celebrations either as part of a group or solo from the comfort of your own home!

Looking for an event near you? Search NASA's interactive global map of hundreds moongazing events from star parties organized by local astronomy groups to virtual events hosted by observatories and passionate amateurs.

Or host your own celebration. NASA has advice on how to host your own private or public event to celebrate the occasion, and you can register on the agency's map so other moon enthusiasts can join you.

You can also participate from the comfort of your home simply by stepping out to observe the moon with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope. Or you can peruse hundreds of images of the moon captured by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the astronauts of Artemis II as they journeyed to the far side of Earth's moon.

Anyone with a 3D printer can also create models of the lunar surface made from LRO data, including the landing site of the historic Apollo 11 mission, which touched down in the Sea of Tranquility in July 1969.

Space.com also has a range of fantastic lunar resources to help you get to know Earth's moon! Be sure to check out our explainer article detailing everything you need to know about the moon, along with the latest news on NASA's Artemis program to return astronauts to the lunar surface and our September full moon guide.

Read more: Apollo landing sites: An observer's guide on how to spot them on the moon.

New to stargazing? No problem! Simply check out our guide to observing the lunar disk, along with our picks of the best binoculars and telescopes that'll have you exploring the wealth of craters and lunar seas scarring the near side of the moon's surface in no time.

Editor's Note: If you would like to share your astrophotography with Space.com's readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.

SpaceX launched its second classified mission for the U.S. Space Force in less than a week tonight (Sept. 16).

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base today at 9:07 p.m. EDT (6:07 p.m. local California time; 0107 GMT on Sept. 17).

We don't know much about tonight's mission, which was called USSF-259. SpaceX's webcast didn't shed any light of note; it ended shortly after the Falcon 9's first stage returned to Earth for a landing in the Pacific Ocean atop a drone ship about 8.5 minutes after launch.

That touchdown was the 13th for this particular booster, which is designated 1097. One of the booster's previous landings was a big milestone for SpaceX. This past April, B1097 pulled off SpaceX's 600th touchdown of an orbital-class rocket, during a launch that sent 25 of the company's Starlink internet satellites to low Earth orbit.

Tonight's mission was the second that SpaceX has flown for the U.S. Space Force in a six-day span: A Falcon 9 launched the similarly classified USSF-153 from Vandenberg on Sept. 10.

Tonight's launch was SpaceX's 110th of 2026. The vast majority of the company's flights so far this year — 106 of them, in fact — have been performed by the workhorse Falcon 9.

The powerful Falcon Heavy has launched twice in 2026, as has SpaceX's next-gen megarocket, Starship. Both Starship liftoffs this year have been suborbital test flights. The next Starship launch, which is expected to occur in the next two weeks, will apparently take the vehicle orbital for the first time.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 11:50 p.m. ET on Sept. 15 with the new launch date of Sept. 16. It was updated agai at 9:28 p.m. ET on Sept. 16 with news of successful launch and rocket landing.

NASA astronaut Victor Glover is now "astronaut emeritus." He's hanging up his spacesuit for a position he hopes can guide the future engineering and science leaders of tomorrow.

Glover, who served as pilot on NASA's Artemis II mission that flew around the moon in April, officially began his new role as executive advisor to Jeff Armstrong, president of the California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly),on Sept. 1, and is stepping away from the majority of his duties at the space agency.

NASA announced on Sept. 9 that Glover, as well as Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman, are transitioning to emeritus status beginning this month, but are not retiring from the agency outright. Even astronauts who do fully retire from NASA are still retained "in the system," Glover told Space.com, "but I actually get to have a badge that is a little bit different. I can come back. I have a NASA email address. I still work closely with the agency. I'm considered a special government employee."

"It allows me to have just a slightly more robust and meaningful relationship with NASA," Glover said — but "more robust" won't necessarily equate to the same daily commitment. His role at Cal Poly will be full-time, according to the university, but he's not exactly going to be putting in typical work hours there either.

"We're still figuring it out," he said. "It's not going to be nine to five. I'm not a faculty member. I don't have a class I have to teach or a board that I oversee. It'll be where the school needs me the most and where I can highlight what great work they're already doing."

Glover's connection to Cal Poly runs deep. He's a Cal Poly alum who graduated with an engineering degree in 1999. A two-sport athlete, he wrestled for the university and played on its football team. And it's where he met his wife, Dionna, who also graduated from Cal Poly. The two have since raised four daughters, all of whom have either graduated or are currently attending their parents' alma mater. With Glover's multifaceted connection to the university, Cal Poly sees his potential contributions as equally diverse.

The university says that Glover, in his position as executive advisor, will work with the gamut of university leadership, including the president, provost and college deans. He will help "identify, develop and accelerate strategic initiatives, partnerships and philanthropy aimed at expanding the university's leadership in engineering, applied computing, aerospace, aviation, maritime, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, autonomous systems and national defense," according to Cal Poly's statement.

How that will manifest into Glover's actual contributions is still being figured out. "There's just so much potential," he said, adding that he wants to serve in an additive role for Cal Poly where he can "get in and help, and do the most good."

Cal Poly has been undergoing a period of significant change and expansion over the past several years. This fall, for the first time ever, the university transitioned from a quarter system to a semester-based one. It also recently completed its integration with the former California State University Maritime Academy, whose Vallejo campus is now Cal Poly's Solano Campus and home to the Cal Poly Maritime Academy.

"They're hitting on all cylinders in so many areas," Glover said. "There's so many areas where Cal Poly is doing amazing things, and each of those things by themselves have been a big deal."

The university operates on a "Learn by Doing" philosophy, which emphasizes hands-on, real-world experience alongside classroom instruction. Glover credits his professional successes to this system, and his experiences over a decade at NASA have reinforced his belief in that kind of educational approach.

"Putting energy and time into building trust is just as important, or more important, as building technology, and so I think there's a lot of areas where my NASA experience will also feed back into Learn by Doing," Glover said. "I think everything I did at NASA has a place here."

"At NASA we do some pretty challenging things, pretty risky things, but we have a really strong scientific and technical understanding of what we're doing," Glover said. "That kind of risk-informed decision making is an important part of what we do here [at Cal Poly], whether it's professional development or helping these students to become the next generation of leaders."

Glover cited Charles Lindbergh's book "We," and its perspective on learning to fly a plane, as an example for Learn by Doing's effectiveness. "You teach yourself to fly," Glover said. "An instructor is really there to keep you from having ultimate mistakes. But you teach yourself to fly. It's something that you have to work out yourself. And I think that this school really understands that … We want to make sure that these students can critically think and analyze, but we also want to make sure that they can do the work with their hands."

Flying is something with which Glover has an extensive familiarity. Before he joined NASA in 2013, he was a U.S. Navy aviator and test pilot with 4,000 flight hours in more than 40 aircraft who flew 24 combat missions, though he is now best known for piloting NASA's Orion spacecraft around the moon on Artemis II.

Glover launched aboard Orion on NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on April 1 with three crewmates — Wiseman, NASA astronaut Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. The quartet spent approximately 10 days aboard the Orion capsule and flew a course around the moon's far side. Their mission was the first to fly a crew to lunar space since Apollo 17 in 1972, and it captured the attention of millions across the world as the astronauts sent back views of the moon unlike any humanity had ever seen.

Artemis II was the first crewed mission in NASA's Artemis program, which has the ultimate goal of establishing a permanent base on the lunar surface. The next time Orion launches, on Artemis III, the spacecraft's crew will be tasked with testing out docking hardware with the program's lunar lander vehicles in Earth orbit. NASA is targeting mid-2027 for that mission. If it's successful, Artemis IV will follow in 2028 as the program's first lunar landing attempt, with subsequent missions with more crew and cargo to incrementally assemble an outpost on the surface of the moon in the 2030s.

As the only people to fly aboard Orion in space so far, the Artemis II crew's experience and insight into the spacecraft, and how future Artremis astronauts can best train to fly it, are invaluable to NASA — hence Glover and Wiseman's emeritus status.

Hansen, who trained at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) and lived in Houston since his induction as a CSA astronaut in 2009, announced in July that he's stepping back from active astronaut duty beginning this month and moving back to Canada. On Sept. 8, the day before NASA made the announcement about Glover and Wiseman, Hansen posted a video on X stating that his Artemis II duties officially concluded on Sept. 2.

That leaves Koch as the only Artemis II crew member on an active astronaut roster, but Glover and Wiseman, as emeritus flyers, aren't out of the agency entirely. "With our experience flying Orion in space, the agency knows that we can still make a meaningful contribution to Artemis and human spaceflight in general, without having to be there full time," Glover said. "We can still support our colleagues and their families and the mission while we go off and pursue other other opportunities."

Supporting other astronauts on NASA's roster, and the teams that run the missions, are the parts of the job that Glover enjoyed the most. "[The emeritus status] allows us to still support our colleagues, which is the best part of being an astronaut. It's not flying in space," Glover said.

"I told [NASA leadership], ‘Nothing has really changed,'" Glover said. "If they call me and say, ‘Hey, we need this,' they can count on me to be there because they are so fantastic. I will always be there to carry the water for them when they need it."

Though he'll still be helping astronauts prepare for future missions every now and then, Glover said his own spaceflight days are behind him. Glover had flown to space once before, prior to Artemis II, as pilot of SpaceX's Crew-1 mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Glover spent 168 days in orbit on that stint, serving as flight engineer for Expeditions 64 and 65, and completed four spacewalks.

"I didn't make this move planning to go back to space," Glover said. "I was pretty satisfied after my first space mission, so I don't have this hole in my heart that needs to be filled by going to space again."

A few NASA astronauts who've left and moved on to the private sector have ended up going back to space, like Peggy Whitson, who retired from NASA in 2018 before joining Axiom Space and later commanding the company's Ax-2 and Ax-4 private astronaut missions to the ISS. But Glover doesn't see a move like that in his future.

"If I wanted to go to space, I would have stayed at NASA. It's the gold standard," Glover said. "I love our corporate partners and what they're doing. There's some really amazing things, including what Jared Isaacman himself has done … But I would have stayed at NASA full time as an active astronaut if I was trying to go back to space."

Isaacman was sworn in as NASA administrator in December 2025. His spaceflight experience came before that: In September 2021, he commanded SpaceX's Inspiration4 mission, the first all-civilian orbital spaceflight, and later performed the first commercial spacewalk during the private Polaris Dawn mission in September 2024.

In fact, Glover said it was harder walking away from his career flying fighter jets than it was to walk away from the opportunity to maybe one day fly in space again. Harder still might be leaving behind the place he's called home for more than a decade, but ultimately he said it was an easy choice. He's lived in Houston and worked at JSC since his selection into NASA's astronaut class in 2013, but expects he and his family will make the permanent move to the West Coast, to be closer to Cal Poly.

"One of the reasons why this was just such an easy decision to make is that both NASA and Cal Poly … and everybody understands that we need time to get used to this new reality, and they're all giving us a lot of grace and space as we just kind of figure out what the right rhythm, what the right ops tempo is," Glover said. He thinks he and the family will make the move sometime after the New Year.

In the meantime, though you may not see him quite as much on NASA's social media channels, he has made a few appearances in posts on his daughter Maya's TikTok profile. In posts celebrating his return from the moon and recent career shift, Glover can be seen performing dance routines with his family — but don't bother refreshing your feed to load more any time soon.

"Don't expect to see a whole lot more of that, because I would do anything for my kids, but you know, well, I guess almost anything for my kids," Glover said jokingly. When asked which was harder to train for, between piloting Orion and the dance moves, he said, "Oh, clearly the dance moves."

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 as our planet warms.

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.

It has now been just over a year since the comet 3I/ATLAS first captured the world's attention as the third known object to fly through our solar system from beyond. Astronomers are still learning new things about where exactly it came from.

For the first time ever, they've been able to study charged particles in the tail of the interstellar comet. This has told them that 3I/ATLAS contains more nitrogen than the typical comet from our own solar system — revealing a tantalizing clue about how the strange comet formed.

"Finding that it's so rich in nitrogen tells us it likely formed in extremely cold conditions, far from its home star," Lea Ferellec, a research fellow at Northumbria University, said in a statement.

Ferellec's group used the William Herschel Telescope in Spain's Canary Islands. One of this telescope's instruments is a fiber-optic weave named, well, WEAVE. WEAVE lets astronomers do spectroscopy — which splits incoming light into its spectrum. Different chemical elements absorb and emit different wavelengths of light, marking that spectrum with different characteristic fingerprints. With spectroscopy, astronomers can look at a celestial object's light, pick out the fingerprints, and reconstruct the stuff inside.

Other astronomers have measured 3I/ATLAS with spectroscopy, but they've mostly examined the comet's coma, a shell of gas that forms when the sun’s heat sublimates the comet’s ice into vapor.

Of course, a coma is not the only feature that forms as a comet approaches the sun. Close in, a comet is battered by the torrent of the sun's solar wind, which pushes the comet's material away into a distinctive tail. In the process, the solar wind's high-energy particles strike the comet's molecules and electrify them into charged ions.

If astronomers can identify a tail's ions, they can find chemicals and learn information they can't from the coma alone. This is a tricky task. When fellow interstellar comet 2I/Borisov visited our solar system in 2019, astronomers identified traces of its ions, but they couldn't make out what those ions actually were.

WEAVE, which switched on in 2023, is powerful and sensitive enough to change that. When Ferellec and colleagues turned WEAVE on 3I/ATLAS in late 2025, they could count ions like nitrogen, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide in the strange comet's tail.

Comparing these figures can hint at where a comet formed. For example, a comet with a higher ratio of nitrogen to carbon monoxide tends to have formed in a colder birthplace. Ferellic's group found that 3I/ATLAS has a much higher ratio than most of the comets that we observe in our solar system.

In particular, Ferellec and colleagues estimate that 3I/ATLAS formed somewhere colder than -240°C. If this comet was born in a distant star system, then, it formed in that system's outer reaches. In other words, 3I/ATLAS likely formed in a place where little of its star's light could touch it.

"This object gives us a rare chance to study material that formed somewhere completely different to our own solar system," Ferellec said in the statement. "Every one of these objects we study helps us understand a little more about how planets form around other stars."

Ferellec and colleagues published their work in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on Sept. 7.

Two European Earth-observing spacecraft lifted off from South America tonight (Sept. 14).

A Vega C rocket carrying the FLEX and Copernicus-3C satellites launched from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana at 9:21 p.m. EDT (10:21 p.m. local time in Kourou and 0121 GMT on Sept. 15).

Both FLEX and Sentinel-3C were deployed as planned. They were released at an altitude of about 509 miles (820 kilometers), and both were flying freely by 116 minutes after launch.

The 875-pound (397-kilogram) FLEX will detect and monitor vegetation fluorescence, which explains its name (a shortening of "Fluorescence Explorer"). By doing so, it will map plant photosynthetic activity — something no satellite can do at the moment, according to ESA.

FLEX's data will be important not only "for a better understanding of the global carbon cycle, but also for agricultural management and food security," ESA wrote in a FLEX mission desription. "This is of particular relevance due to demand the growing world population is placing on the production of food."

Sentinel-3C is part of the European Union's Copernicus Earth-observation program. The 2,520-pound (1,1143-kg) satellite will continue the Sentinel-3 line, which is aging but still going strong in low Earth orbit; Sentinel-3A and Sentinel-3B, which launched in 2016 and 2018, respectively, remain active.

"Like its two older siblings in orbit, Sentinel-3C carries a suite of cutting-edge instruments that measure systematically Earth’s oceans, land, ice and atmosphere to monitor and understand large-scale global dynamics," ESA wrote in a Sentinel-3C description. "It provides essential information in near-real time for ocean and weather forecasting."

The 115-foot-tall (35-meter-tall) Vega C debuted in July 2022 and had seven flights under its belt before today, six of them successful.

The rocket was developed by the European Space Agency and originally operated by the France-based company Arianespace. The Italian outfit Avio now runs the vehicle's liftoffs, however; today's launch was the second Avio has managed.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 9:35 p.m. ET with news of successful liftoff, then again at 1:10 a.m. ET with news of successful satellite deployment.

Whatever they are and from where, UFOs, now known as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena or UAP, are the subject of serious scrutiny at the highest levels of the U.S. government.

In June 2026, the White House established a new UAP Science Advisory Council in coordination with the Pentagon's All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the FBI Deep diving into the UAP landscape is Avi Loeb, noted Harvard astrophysicist. He is also director of the Galileo Project at Harvard, which aims to search for signs of extraterrestrial activity here on Earth. As the council chair, Loeb said the goal of this group is to advise the U.S. government on how to resolve the nature of UAP.

Members of the UAP Science Advisory Council recently gathered at a private meeting, held on Aug. 31 at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Loeb told Space.com. "I cannot disclose the contents but I will say that the U.S. government is sincere in its efforts to understand UAP based on the scientific method of data collection," Loeb said.

Council membership

One of the council's members is Ben Lamm, co-founder and CEO of Colossal Biosciences. As a serial technology entrepreneur, he's no stranger to diving into complex challenges. Colossal is advancing the use of genome editing technology to "de-extinct" previously lost species such as the Wooly Mammoth.

Working along with the council's group of scientists and experts, Lamm is bullish about bringing clarity to a long-standing investigation and wonder of UAP.

"I've been fascinated by this topic for a long time, so having the opportunity to help examine the evidence firsthand and contribute to a serious scientific effort is incredibly exciting," Lamm told Space.com.

"Our mission is straightforward," Lamm added. "This is not about belief, it is about evidence. We want to apply rigorous scientific methods to both historical UAP records and new observations, collecting and analyzing data that meets today's scientific standards," he said.

Lamm said that the expectation is to bring transparency and accountability to the field by objectively evaluating credible evidence and sharing findings openly with the scientific community and the public.

"It's time to search for answers around the science because they could reshape our understanding of the world and, potentially, become one of the most significant discoveries in human history," said Lamm.

New polling data

Meanwhile, and serving as a backdrop to studying UAP, is a new Gallup poll, conducted in July. That poll found that about half of Americans, 49 percent, think all Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) sightings can be explained by human activity on Earth or natural phenomena.

The poll also found 37 percent believe at least some UFOs have been alien spacecraft visiting Earth from other planets or galaxies while another 13 percent do not have an opinion.

Interestingly, rather than becoming increasingly convinced that some sightings have been alien spacecraft, the percentage of Americans who are unsure has grown, from 7% in 2019 to 13% in 2026 the Gallup poll found.

The new poll also notes that a majority say the U.S. government is withholding UFO information. Seventy-eight percent of Americans say the U.S. government knows more about UFOs than it is telling the public, higher than the 68 percent and 71 percent who said so in 2019 and 1996, respectively.

These findings come as the Department of War continues to release a mix of UFO files under a President Donald Trump executive order.

In August 2026, the UAP Science Advisory Council announced their support for the Trump administration to provide legal assurances, including immunity where necessary, for current or former government employees and military personnel to share information with the council "regarding alleged technology from a non-human origin and help guide the council's scientific evaluation."