On Aug. 2, 1971, a lunar liftoff was televised for the first time. Apollo 15 astronauts David Scott and James Irwin spent three days on the moon before departing in the lunar module, named "Falcon."

An RCA TV camera was mounted onto their lunar rover, which Scott parked about 300 feet away with the camera pointed at Falcon. Flight controllers in Mission Control Houston had the option to move the camera, but because of some technical difficulties, they opted to leave the camera pointed in the same direction during liftoff. from the moon. Following a quick pop and a bunch of sparks, Falcon quickly disappeared from sight. Shortly afterward, Falcon joined the command module "Endeavour," and Apollo 15 began its journey back to Earth.

• Apollo 15 in Photos: A Moon Landing and the 1st Lunar Car for Astronauts

The Apollo 15 mission launched to the moon on July 26, 1971. The mission was commanded by David Scott, with James Irwin as lunar module pilot. Astronaut Al Worden served as command module pilot and remained aboard Endeavour as Scott and Irwin explored the moon's surface. The Apollo 15's Falcon lunar lander touched down on the moon on July 30. Orwin and Scott performed three moonwalks and test drove NASA's new lunar rover before lifting off on Aug. 2.

The Apollo 15 crew remained in lunar orbit until Aug. 4, when they departed for Earth. The mission ended with a splashdown landing in the Pacific Ocean on Aug. 7.

Why it mattered

When Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first walked on the moon, their first lunar steps were broadcast to the world live. But their liftoff, not so much.

But capturing a liftoff live from the moon was the next logical step to chronicle NASA's lunar exploration in real-time. The TV camera mounted on Apollo 15 Lunar Roving Vehicle, which also made a moon debut on this mission, and was remote controlled by flight controllers on Earth, pioneering a process that is commonplace today on the International Space Station. It also allowed engineers to see how a lunar module actually behaved during liftoff in the moon's one-sixth gravity.

That legacy of live video from the moon took center stage in April 2026 during NASA's Artemis II mission, which sent the first astronaut to visit the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. The Artemis II Orion spacecraft was covered in cameras, both inside and out, allowing NASA to livestream the entire voyage to the moon and back, nonstop.

German startup Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) just put the brakes on its first launch.

While testing its RFA One rocket on the launch pad at the U.K.'s SaxaVord Spaceport on the Shetland Islands in Scotland, the company found "an issue with the vehicle that requires further investigation," RFA wrote on X on Wednesday (July 28). Previously, the launch had been expected to happen in August or September, but RFA did not disclose a new launch date.

RFA did not disclose the nature of the issue, but said it would de-stack the staged rocket and that it would provide more details as the investigation continues. The situation means that the U.K. will need to wait at least a few more weeks to attempt its first-ever vertical launch from the region, amid global constraints in launch capacity and calls for increased European spaceflight autonomy.

RFA One, a smaller rocket designed to launch smaller satellites, is a three-stage rocket that will eventually include a reusable first stage in an effort to push down cost and to increase launch cadence. It will target a range of orbits, with examples including geosynchronous (where a satellite can constantly look at one area of the Earth), polar (allowing satellites to scan the whole Earth, as the planet orbits underneath) or sun-synchronous (which gives consistent lighting conditions.)

It's common for new rockets to encounter issues during development, including in later stages such as integrated pad testing or even during the first launch, because spaceflight is inherently hard. That said, there is more pressure on startup launching companies than ever to achieve their goals quickly, for commercial and defense reasons.

Rockets are in high global demand in large part due to constantly launching satellite batches for large satellite constellations, most especially SpaceX Starlink, and planned orbital data centers. Simultaneously, the U.S. Department of Defense is asking companies to launch more often for security missions, such as the quick-turnaround VICTUS HAZE mission that Rocket Lab launched in June only 16 hours and 42 minutes after receiving the military's request.

Conflicts in Ukraine and Iran and other defense activities, meanwhile, have pushed other countries into more sovereign launch work that is accelerating already ongoing spaceport construction, in jurisdictions such as the U.K., Europe and Canada.

RFA has been trying to position itself as one of the leading new companies in Europe, on the back of receiving a spaceflight operator license in January, from the UK Civil Aviation Authority, for the SaxaVord spaceport launch. Meanwhile, SaxaVord is working to become an alternative to older, busier launch ports (especially Kourou's Guiana Space Centre, a popular location for high-profile launches such as the James Webb Space Telescope.)

"This is a groundbreaking moment for RFA and for Europe's space industry," Jörn Spurmann, RFA chief commercial officer, said in a statement released shortly after his company obtained the license. "Securing the first-ever launch license outside the European Space Agency's established site in Kourou is not just a regulatory milestone—it's a powerful endorsement of our technical excellence and a turning point for European space innovation."

Rumors are also abounding in the industry that the popular SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which companies worldwide use for rideshare missions, might not be accepting slots for its popular Transporter series beyond 2028 or 2029. If this happens, the demand in launch capacity transferring from SpaceX might lead to more opportunities for companies such as Rocket Lab and RFA One, assuming more rockets are ready in time.

On Aug. 1, 1968, NASA canceled the production of its Saturn V moon rocket. At the time, the giant rocket was the only launch vehicle to have ever carried astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit, and it was then the largest, most powerful rocket ever.

NASA built 15 of these rockets but only flew 13 of them. When NASA made the decision to stop building the Saturn V, it was almost a year before Apollo 11 astronauts would walk on the moon for the first time.

• 10 Surprising Facts About NASA's Mighty Saturn V Moon Rocket

A federal budget deficit and the rising costs of the Vietnam War led Congress to slash nearly three-quarters of the funding that President Lyndon Johnson had allotted for the Apollo program.

The last Saturn V launched in 1973, and it was originally supposed to send Apollo 18 to the moon. However, that mission was canceled, and that Saturn V launched the Skylab space station instead.

Why it mattered

From start to finish, NASA spent a reported $9.4 billion on the Saturn family of rockets (which would be an estimated $118 billion in today's dollars) to develop the Saturn V. That includes the Saturn I and Saturn IB blocks. But the decision to shut production down in 1968 over those costs spelled the end of NASA's Apollo program to send astronauts to the moon a year before the Apollo 11 astronauts even walked on the moon in 1969.

Without a steady supply of heavy-lift rockets (the Saturn V was the most powerful of its day), NASA only had a limited number of moonshots left. The final Saturn V rocket to carry astronauts sent the Apollo 17 astronauts to the moon in 1972. The Skylab mission flew a year later, with the final Saturn IB rocket launching an Apollo command module on the Apollo-Soyuz flight in 1975.

It would not be until 2022, when NASA launched the first Space Launch System on the Artemis I mission, that the space agency had another megarocket to rival the Saturn V. In April 2026, that new rocket launched NASA's Artemis II astronauts around the moon.

SpaceX has developed a new megarocket that is even more powerful than the Saturn V, with its Starship and Super Heavy booster.

SpaceX has sent yet another batch of its Starlink internet satellites into orbit.

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 24 of the broadband spacecraft lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base on Friday (July 31) at 11:08 p.m. EDT (8:08 p.m. local time; 0308 GMT on Aug. 1).

The rocket's first stage came back to Earth as planned 8.5 minutes later, touching down in the Pacific Ocean atop the SpaceX droneship "Of Course I Still Love You." It was the 26th mission for this particular booster, which is designated B1081.

The 24 Starlink satellites were deployed into low Earth orbit (LEO) 61.5 minutes after liftoff as planned, SpaceX confirmed via X.

They're joining more than 10,800 other spacecraft in the Starlink megaconstellation, by far the largest satellite network ever assembled.

SpaceX has now launched 89 Falcon 9 missions in 2026, 69 of which have been dedicated Starlink flights.

The company also has three other liftoffs under its belt this year — one launch of its powerful Falcon Heavy vehicle and two test flights of Starship, the fully reusable megarocket SpaceX is developing to help humanity settle the moon and Mars, among other tasks.

We just got an amazing new view of SpaceX's Starship vehicle, thanks to one of the company's next-gen Starlink satellites.

Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, launched on its 13th test flight from South Texas last Friday (July 24). The suborbital jaunt was similar in many respects to past Starship test missions, with one big exception: This time, the vehicle deployed a batch of functional, next-gen Starlink internet satellites into space.

Six of those "Starlink V3" spacecraft carried cameras, so that SpaceX could get good views of the heat shield on Starship's upper stage, which is known as Starship, or simply Ship. The satellites did that job and more, capturing amazing views of Ship as it cruised away from them high above Earth.

SpaceX shared one such view on X Friday evening (July 31) — a 65-second video that stitches together imagery taken by four different cameras on a single Starlink V3 satellite.

The video starts with an up-close view of the shiny, 171-foot-tall (52 meters) Ship. We see more of the vehicle as the footage rolls and the two spacecraft get farther and farther apart. Toward the end, we see Ship in its entirety, and we get a sense of its activity; three of its six Raptor engines are firing, and small puffs of white vapor indicate that the vehicle is engaging its fine-tuning reaction control thrusters.

Like all Starship test missions to date, Flight 13 targeted a suborbital trajectory. So the 20 Starlink V3 satellites, the first ever to reach space, did not stay up for long; they came back down to Earth about 20 minutes after deploying into the final frontier.

Their successors will get higher — and there will be many of them. According to a filing with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, SpaceX wants to operate a megaconstellation of 100,000 Starlink V3 satellites.

Starship will be key to building and maintaining this constellation, which will require many launches of the brawny, fully reusable rocket. (SpaceX currently operates a constellation of nearly 11,000 Starlink satellites, but those V2 craft are considerably smaller than the 4,400-pound V3 iteration.)

Ship seems to have checked all of its boxes on Flight 13. After deploying the satellites and successfully reigniting one of its Raptors in space, it splashed down on target in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Western Australia about 65 minutes after liftoff.

The vehicle survived its harrowing return trip through Earth's atmosphere in one piece and remains intact today, as far as we know; SpaceX recently shared a photo of the vehicle bobbing in the Indian Ocean five days after splashdown.

But Starship's giant first-stage booster, known as Super Heavy, had a few issues on Flight 13. Its landing burn employed only five of a planned 13 Raptor engines, for example, and the booster hit the waters of the Gulf of Mexico at a higher velocity than intended. (Super Heavy has a total of 33 Raptors, all of which fire at liftoff.)

Starship remains in the development phase, but SpaceX wants to get the megarocket operational soon. It's slated to fly on NASA's Artemis III astronaut mission to low Earth orbit in mid-2027 and to land a crew near the moon's south pole on Artemis IV in late 2028.

A private mission to rescue an ailing NASA space telescope may now need a rescue of its own. The LINK spacecraft — designed by private company Katalyst Space to boost the orbit of NASA’s ageing Swift Observatory — is reportedly spinning unexpectedly in the weeks after its launch, so much so that stabilizing the spacecraft will likely delay the telescope rescue.

Katalyst’s LINK spacecraft launched July 3 from a mid-air Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket mounted aboard a modified Lockheed Martin L-1011 airliner. The spacecraft lifted off after less than a year of development, on a mission to catch NASA's nearly 22-year-old Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory before the telescope falls back to Earth.

While teams at NASA and Katalyst are working hard to stabilize the new LINK spacecraft, the next few weeks will be a delicate balance of getting LINK ready before Swift falls back to Earth (which is expected to occur this autumn), while not putting Swift at undue risk.

NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said there’s still time. "We are not giving up yet," he wrote late Thursday (July 30) on X. "This remains a very cool, very low-cost, high-potential, high-reward mission, and another step toward a more autonomous future where missions like this routinely upgrade, repair, service, and boost satellites."

LINK was supposed to rendezvous with Swift about a month after its early-July launch, but now it looks like late August is the earliest possible date, according to the latest update. That’s because the $30-million LINK began spinning in recent days after electrical power issues affected two of the devices that control the spacecraft’s orientation, known as reaction control system (RCS) wheels. Only one of the three RCS is working properly.

As of Thursday (July 30), Katalyst’s mission blog said engineers reduced the rotation with engine fires from the spacecraft, and that work is ongoing to stabilize the spacecraft. LINK is now spinning at four degrees a second, instead of the previous nine.

"Over the last 48 hours, the Katalyst team has worked to reduce LINK’s rotation while assessing current spacecraft functionality and its control system," Katalyst representatives wrote.

All the troubleshooting has delayed LINK’s expected arrival near NASA's Swift Observatory — a legacy telescope designed to detect gamma-ray outbursts — into late August. Time is of the essence, as Swift is expected to fall too far for help by autumn. The observatory has already reduced its science work to stay as streamlined as possible, so that drag doesn’t pull it into the atmosphere this summer.

Swift must stay above a minimum rescue altitude of 185 miles (298 kilometers) for the mission to succeed, agency models suggest. For comparison, the International Space Station typically operates at about 250 miles (400 kilometers) in altitude.

NASA has noted that other systems on LINK are working well. "The spacecraft remains power positive and in communication with the Katalyst team," NASA officials wrote in a Tuesday (July 28) update. Assuming LINK’s attitude stabilizes and the spacecraft is healthy enough, teams "will then evaluate revised plans to approach and capture Swift," NASA stated.

Katalyst’s ultimate goal is to refuel and reboost Swift so that the observatory, worth roughly $450 million today when accounting for inflation, will be able to continue its mission. (The mission cost $250 million in 2004, which is much cheaper than the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope that launched almost five years ago.)

Swift was initially mainly tasked with looking at gamma-ray bursts, which are huge explosions that happen after a dying and massive star collapses into a black hole. Swift has gathered many observations of these bursts, but it also looks at other stellar changes (like supernovas or X-ray flares) as well as moving objects like comets and asteroids.

Its science remains valuable, a recent NASA statement noted. "Swift is NASA's multitool when it comes to studying the cosmos," S. Bradley Cenko, Swift's principal investigator and an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said in the statement. "It observes the sky using a wide range of light, and rapidly points at short-lived outbursts, alerting other facilities in space and on the ground to help coordinate follow-up observations."

If successful, the rescue mission could give Swift many more years — potentially decades — to continue surveying the cosmos, as long as its science instruments continue to function.

NASA is planning to send two maneuverable probes to lunar orbit in order to learn how spacecraft are affected by the complex gravitational environment near the moon.

The mission, known as CAPSTONE 02, is currently aiming to launch in 2027. It will see the two probes maneuver in close proximity to one another and fly in "formation" so mission operators can better understand the gravitational effects spacecraft experience in cislunar space. This area of space is under the influence of both Earth's gravity and the moon's, meaning spacecraft operating there will have to navigate what are known as "three-body orbits."

While testing spacecraft maneuverability in these complex orbits, CAPSTONE 02 will also study communication and navigation systems that will be used in NASA's planned Artemis missions of lunar exploration and moon base construction. "This mission represents an important step in the maturation of cislunar capabilities," said NASA's Sean Fuller, Moon Base CAPSTONE manager, in an agency statement. "CAPSTONE 02 lays the foundation for lunar infrastructure and commercial services that support Artemis, Moon Base, and future missions to deep space."

The two CAPSTONE 02 probes are being built by Terran Orbital Systems, Inc. Once in space, they will alternate jobs while flying in formation, switching between what NASA calls "chaser" and "target" roles.

The spacecraft pair will use celestial navigation, optical sensors and data collected by telescopes on the ground during these maneuvers. This is similar to how NASA will use a variety of data to help its Orion spacecraft meet up with a lunar lander en route to the moon.

On the upcoming Artemis III mission, currently scheduled for 2027, NASA will test some of these techniques as Orion will rendezvous with both Blue Origin's Blue Moon lander and SpaceX's Starship, if all goes according to plan.

"Transporting crew to the lunar surface from cislunar orbit depends on knowing how well navigation systems will perform during these operations. Since these conditions can't be fully recreated on Earth, they must be tested in space," NASA wrote in its statement outlining the CAPSTONE 02 mission.

As its name implies, this will be the second mission under NASA's CAPSTONE program, or Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment. The first CAPSTONE probe launched in 2022 and operated for four years before NASA officially concluded its mission in June 2026.

That microwave-oven-sized CAPSTONE spacecraft tested communications tech and became the first spacecraft to test three-body orbits around the moon, according to a NASA statement.

CAPSTONE was tested in what is known as a near rectilinear halo orbit. This is a fairly gravitationally stable orbit, thanks to the nearly equal pulls of both Earth's gravity and the moon's.

It was Lucky 13 for SpaceX, as new videos show just how much work came into getting the latest flight of Starship’s upper stage softly down into the ocean.

After Starship made its 13th launch on Friday (July 24) from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas, the upper stage achieved all major milestones: putting 20 next-gen Starlink satellites aloft to watch it go, reigniting a Raptor engine in space, and then the soft splashdown off the coast of Western Australia.

While the lower stage of Starship faced engine issues, fresh video shows some incredible views of the successful upper stage. Starlink satellites, ferrying signal from a buoy in the Indian Ocean, helped create a video on X showing the 171-foot (52-meter) upper stage roaring above the water, then generating steam as the engines swiveled to make a gentle splashdown.

Getting down that way was no easy feat, as SpaceX posted another video on Tuesday (July 28) showing Starship swaying dramatically in midair to achieve a near-vertical orientation above the water. If you don’t mind a bit of vertigo, SpaceX also provided an on-ship view of the splashdown, complete with dramatic swings and ocean steam.

The upper stage's ocean arrival was so soft, in fact, that days after launch on July 28 the 171-foot (52-meter) stage was reported as still afloat in the Indian Ocean, SpaceX said on X, adding that its Starship recovery team is continuing to gather imagery of the vehicle at sea.

Starship's Version 3 (which flew on Friday) is a 408-foot-tall stacked system including the Super Heavy booster and the upper stage, also known as Starship (or Ship). SpaceX aims to make this system rapidly reusable for applications ranging from astronaut moon missions to launching even more powerful and larger Starlinks.

That said, SpaceX still needs to notch some goals ahead of its expected participation for docking during the Artemis III astronaut mission scheduled for next year, and to possibly bring astronauts to the moon's surface during Artemis IV.

And Ars Technica (quoting experts) recently raised concerns about the Starship heatshield, noting more changes will be required for reusability.

On July 31, 1971, Apollo 15 astronauts drove on the moon for the first time.

David Scott, the commander of Apollo 15, and James Irwin, the lunar module pilot explored the moon for three days by driving around in the Lunar Roving Vehicle. Apollo 15 command module pilot Al Worden remained in orbit around the moon. This moon buggy was folded up and stowed inside the lunar module and deployed after landing. Unpacked, it measured about 10 feet long, 7 feet wide and 45 inches high.

The lunar rover could travel up to 8.6 miles per hour and allowed the astronauts to venture farther from their landing site than previous Apollo astronauts could. For their first drive, Scott and Irwin went to Elbow Crater to gather samples and take photos. Throughout their stay on the moon, they drove more than 17 miles.

• Apollo 15 in Photos: A Moon Landing and the 1st Lunar Car for Astronauts

The Apollo 15 mission launched to the moon on July 26, 1971. The mission landed on July 30, with Scott and Irwin ultimately performing three moonwalks in addition to their lunar rover test drive. The Apollo 15 crew left the moon's surface on Aug. 2 and left lunar orbit on Aug. 4. They returned to Earth on Aug. 7, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.

Why it mattered

Apollo 15's moon rover made space history as the first human-driven rover on the moon, let alone another world entirely.

While developing the rover, NASA had to wrangle many issues at once. How do you build a rover light enough to land on the moon with the Apollo 15 lunar lander? How do you make it compact as well?

• Driving on the Moon: Photos of NASA's Lunar Cars

The result was an aluminum, foldable moon car built by Boeing and powered by batteries that could carry up to 1,080 pounds (490 kg) of cargo — about twice its own weight — while carrying two astronauts. The rover design flew on Apollo 15, Apollo 16 and Apollo 17. Those three rovers are still on the lunar surface awaiting fresh batteries.

Today, NASA is looking to new companies to build unpressurized rovers like the Lunar Roving Vehicle, as well as pressurized vehicles that would allow crews to drive without a spacesuit on. Those rovers will be a critical asset for Artemis astronauts as they build a permanent moon base, NASA has said.

Sometimes to go to the moon, you first have to go underwater.

NASA is currently developing the training program for NASA's Artemis astronauts, some of whom could set foot on the moon during the agency's planned Artemis IV mission. As part of that development, two agency scientists recently donned Artemis moonsuits and took to NASA's underwater training facility.

What is it?

These photos show two NASA exploration geologists and Artemis science officers practicing using the same types of geology tools that astronauts might use when they explore the moon.

The scientists also "deployed a mock lunar payload under low-angle lighting conditions," according to a NASA statement accompanying the photo. NASA is currently aiming to place astronauts at the lunar south pole, where many areas remain in permanent shadow. As such, future lunar explorers may have to operate in near-total darkness and learn how to carry out their missions with very little light.

Why is it incredible?

The fact that NASA is preparing to send humans back to the moon is incredible in itself. Humanity hasn't set foot on our natural satellite since 1972. While NASA still has many technical hurdles to cross when it comes to developing and selecting a moon lander, the agency is pushing ahead with developing the training it will use to prepare its astronauts to explore the lunar surface.

For this particular part of Artemis training development, NASA placed two scientists in its Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL), a 40-foot-deep (12-meter) pool at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. The particular test in these photos was "the first time that two geologists were suited up simultaneously for lunar geology training in the NBL," according to NASA's statement.

For these tests, a portion of the underwater laboratory was outfitted with soil and rocks that simulate the surface of the moon. The buoyancy of the pool can be manipulated in order to simulate different levels of gravity, helping astronauts train for spacewalks or for exploring other worlds like the moon.

A new Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) proposal says the agency wants to speed up commercial space licensing for rocket launches and spacecraft re-entries by removing "unnecessary" environmental regulations.

The proposed FAA rule, released yesterday (July 29), has a 30-day period for comment and if approved, would apply to rocket launches, re-entering spacecraft, and the sites at which launches and re-entries take place. The FAA proposes to "waive requirements of laws of the U.S. for a license or permit, after consultation with the head of the appropriate executive agency, when the requirement is not necessary to protect the public health and safety, safety of property, and national security and foreign policy interests of the United States," the text of the proposal reads, in part.

The Department of Transportation stated that the proposal, if implemented, would allow the agency to waive what it calls "unnecessary environmental laws and regulations" that it claims are "slowing American innovation." However, the proposal will still require the FAA to ensure that launches do not impede on public health and safety, or U.S. national security or foreign policy.

To do so, the FAA plans to remove 13 federal laws from applying to "certain commercial space licenses and permits", with examples including the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, parts of the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act.

The proposal takes place as the United States is seeing unprecedented demand on its limited spaceports for commercial launches, fueled by broadband satellite constellations like SpaceX Starlink, as well as emergent orbital data centers. Earlier this month, the U.S. government proposed moving some launch operations offshore to ease the demand backlog. More rocket launches, according to peer-reviewed research, could cause environmental issues.

The proposal also appears to build on two recent Trump administration executive orders. The first, from December 2025, saw the administration aim to redirect a wide swath of space policy — including boosting the number of rocket launches and landings. (These already were at unprecedented levels last year, mostly on the back of SpaceX.) The second one, in August, focused on streamlining launch licensing and accelerating spaceport construction.

Meanwhile, SpaceX is trying to procure a federal land swap in south Texas, mostly for Starship operations, but its proposal prompted an emergency injunction last week filed by a coalition of conservation and tribal groups.

The groups allege this proposal would degrade the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge — from which the land is coming from — with legal implications as well, but the court has not yet ruled on a lawsuit the coalition raised in June.

On July 30, 1610, the famous astronomer Galileo Galilei became the first to observe rings around the planet Saturn.

Shortly after the telescope was invented in 1608, Galileo peered out into the solar system and saw the amazing ring system. At first he didn't actually think they were rings.

Instead, Galileo thought Saturn might have planetary "love handles" that gave it a weird shape. He also wondered if perhaps he was looking at two very large moons on either side of the planet. It wasn't until 1659 that another astronomer named Christiaan Huygens figured out that these weird features were actually Saturn's rings.

Why it mattered

Today, we may take Saturn's rings for granted. After all, it IS known as the "ringed planet" and the jewel of our solar system. But there was a time when we didn't know planets had rings at all, and that's where Galileo's discovery came in.

The telescope was a brand new technology, just two years old, when Galileo took it from a seafaring and distance tool and turned it into an essential item for astronomy. It helped him discover the major moons of Jupiter (we call them the Galilean moons for a reason) and also Saturn's rings. In time, astronomers discovered rings around other large planets in our solar system (Jupiter has them, and Uranus, too), revealing them to be made up of tiny pieces of what may have been torn apart moons.

The study of Saturn's rings has allowed astronomers to see the raw materials of the early solar system. They're made mostly of water ice and shaped by so-called shepherd moons, tiny satellites that orbit Saturn in between ring bands. Saturn's rings even have "kittens," distinct formations scientists are only now starting to understand.

NASA's Pioneer 11 passed through Saturn's ring plane in 1979, with the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes visiting in the 1980s. The Cassini spacecraft was the first to orbit Saturn, ultimately passing through the rings several times in 2017 before ending its mission in a "grand finale" with a crash into Saturn itself.

Hundreds of spectators who attended the recent launch of a Chinese rocket witnessed a truly shocking sight when a bolt of lightning struck the ascending vehicle in midair.

Stunning photos show the exact moment the zigzagging beam of electricity surged around the rocket's fuselage and through its exhaust plume before shooting down toward Earth's surface.

Despite being hit with at least 100 million volts of electricity, the uncrewed rocket safely reached space and successfully deployed its payload in orbit.

The stricken spacecraft, a Long March 3B rocket, lifted off from Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China on July 23 at around 8 p.m. local time, Live Science's sister site Space.com reported. But around 30 seconds after leaving the ground, the rocket was suddenly hit by lightning, which illuminated the sky in the blink of an eye.

Video footage from the launch (see below) shows a large crowd of people with raincoats and umbrellas collectively gasping as lightning hits the rocket and then loudly cheering as the spacecraft continues its climb, unimpeded by the electrical discharge.

A translated statement from the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. released later the same day said the mission was a "complete success" and that the Long March 3B correctly deployed its payload, the Tianlian-2 (06) satellite, a geostationary relay satellite that will help support China's Tiangong space station.

However, the statement did not mention the lightning strike.

Modern spacecraft are designed to have highly conductive shells that divert massive electrical charges around their exteriors without impacting critical interior infrastructure or any crew they might be carrying. This works similarly to a Faraday cage, a protective enclosure that prevents certain types of electromagnetic radiation from entering or exiting. Similar designs are also used in commercial planes, which are struck by lightning at least once per year, on average, according to the National Weather Service.

Despite this, rockets normally launch only in good weather to minimize the risk.

Previous incidents

It is unclear exactly how many rockets have been struck by lightning throughout the history of spaceflight, but there have been several notable examples.

Perhaps the most famous incident was during NASA's Apollo 12 mission, which successfully landed a trio of astronauts — Charles Conrad, Alan Bean and Richard Gordon — on the lunar surface in November 1969. Shortly after liftoff, the Saturn V rocket carrying the astronauts was struck by lightning twice as it climbed into the atmosphere. Some nonessential instruments and sensors experienced "permanent effects" from the strikes, according to one recently released report. However, these issues did not stop the spacecraft from safely ferrying the astronauts to the moon and back.

Most recently, in 2019, a Russian Soyuz rocket was struck by lightning while carrying a communications satellite into low Earth orbit, Ars Technica reported.

Lightning can also hit rockets on the launchpad, which is what happened in the lead-up to the Artemis I mission in 2022. The uncrewed Space Launch System rocket, which launched NASA's first moon mission in 50 years, was struck by lightning during a "wet dress rehearsal" around seven months before launch. However, strikes like these are exceedingly rare nowadays, as most launchpads are surrounded by towers designed to attract lightning away from standing rockets, according to The Institution of Engineering and Technology.

Although these spacecraft remained relatively unscathed, the same cannot be said for an Atlas-Centaur rocket (dubbed AC-67) that was destroyed in 1987 after being struck by lightning 48 seconds after lifting off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. A NASA report later revealed that the electrical discharge had triggered a "single-word memory alteration" in the rocket's navigational computer, which caused it to veer sideways and completely break apart.

Things aren't going so well for NASA's latest satellite rescue mission.

NASA launched the Swift Boost mission on July 3, sending a specialized spacecraft to low Earth orbit on a Northrop Grumman air-launched Pegasus XL rocket. The spacecraft is called LINK and was built by Arizona-based Katalyst Space Technologies. LINK was sent to orbit to try and link up with NASA's Swift observatory, a highly successful scientific satellite designed to search for gamma-ray bursts, some of the most energetic events in the universe.

But it looks like just a few weeks after launch, LINK is experiencing some issues. "Katalyst's LINK servicing spacecraft experienced issues with attitude control, causing the spacecraft to spin and resulting in sporadic communications," NASA wrote in an update on Tuesday (July 28). Despite the malfunction, however, the space agency says the rest of the spacecraft is functioning normally and remains in otherwise good health.

According to preliminary analysis of the issue, two of the LINK spacecraft's three reaction wheels are not operating. In addition, there is "some loss of functionality" in LINK's cold gas thruster system.

The failure with the LINK spacecraft's reaction wheel is slightly ironic, given that the Swift observatory itself once had issues with its own reaction wheels. In 2022, NASA placed the observatory in safe mode when one of its reaction wheels caused minor issues with the spacecraft's movements.

Mission teams will now try to use the spacecraft's electric propulsion system to stop the spinning and regain control. If that can be done, NASA and Katalyst will then have to evaluate if the mission can proceed as planned.

Swift's orbit has been decaying for years, and the observatory is unable to boost its orbit on its own. Thus, LINK was designed to meet up with Swift in low Earth orbit and spend some time studying the observatory to determine how best to grab onto it with three robotic arms. Once it has linked up with Swift, LINK should be able to use its own thrusters to boost the observatory to a higher orbit and extend Swift's life.

The Swift observatory, officially known as the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, was launched in 2004 at a cost of $250 million. The Swift Boost mission only cost NASA $30 million.

Over the last 22 years, Swift has been searching the sky for gamma-ray bursts and other high-energy astrophysics phenomena in the cosmos. In 2022, the observatory spotted a gamma-ray burst nicknamed the "BOAT," short for Brightest of All Time. At the time of discovery, it was the most powerful space explosion ever seen.

SpaceX launched a secret reconnaissance mission for the U.S. government early on Thursday morning (July 30).

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Thursday, kicking off the mission for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) called NROL-95.

The launch occurred at 3:10 a.m. EDT (0710 GMT).

We know very little about NROL-95; the NRO, which operates the country's fleet of spy satellites, has provided no details about the payload or its activities.

The agency has revealed the NROL-95 mission patch. It depicts a snarling ferret with a nighttime sky in the background and the words "We are the Champions" on the emblem's lower border.

"The ferret, a clever creature, embodies agility and resilience — key traits for exploration. Its confident grin and bright eyes reflect a spirit of victory in a realm where determination meets adventure," NRO officials said in an NROL-95 mission description.

"The bold phrase 'We are the Champions' encapsulates the camaraderie and pride shared among those on this purposeful mission," they added.

NROL-95 was the fourth NRO launch of 2026. The other three — NROL-105 in January, NROL-172 in May and NROL-179 in June — also flew aboard Falcon 9s, but from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

Those three other missions were devoted to building out the NRO's "proliferated architecture" constellation, which will consist of hundreds of relatively small, cost-efficient reconnaissance satellites in Earth orbit.

On Thursday, the Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth for a landing at Cape Canaveral about 8.5 minutes after liftoff. It was the seventh mission for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description.

SpaceX cut off its livestream shortly thereafter, at the request of the agency.

SpaceX's Starship V3 looks absolutely seaworthy in this new photo taken days after its most recent flight test.

What is it?

SpaceX launched its Starship vehicle on July 24, sending the 408-foot-tall (124-meter) Starship Version 3 (V3) rocket on a suborbital trajectory that saw the rocket's upper stage make its softest splashdown yet.

In fact, the landing was so smooth that Starship is still floating off the coast of Western Australia. SpaceX shared the photo of Starship on Tuesday (July 28), posting on X that the vehicle is "still afloat in the Indian Ocean."

The scorch-streaked 171-foot (52-meter) Starship upper stage resembles an orca or a submarine in the photo, resting mostly out of the water.

Why is it incredible?

It wasn't just the splashdown that was so stunning. Video taken from aboard Starship and from the Starlink satellites that were deployed alongside the upper stage during Flight Test 13 truly looks like the stuff of sci-fi.

Starship, which consists of SpaceX's Super Heavy booster and the somewhat-confusingly-named upper stage known as Starship (or Ship), is designed to be rapidly reusable. That means, if all goes according to plan, SpaceX will eventually be able to land both stages and have them refueled, inspected and ready for flight again in a matter of days.

But there are still major hurdles to cross before that goal is ever reached. SpaceX will have to figure out how to make Starship's heatshield more durable and reusable, a feat some experts call a "dead-end for all missions that require full and rapid reusability," according to Ars Technica.

Nevertheless, having a fully intact second stage rocket floating on the ocean four days after a flight test is quite a feat.

On July 29, 1982, the Salyut 6 space station fell out of space and safely burned up in Earth's atmosphere along the way.

Salyut 6 was the eighth space station the Soviet Union had built for its Salyut program. It spent almost five years in orbit and supported five different crewed cosmonaut missions. While aboard Salyut 6, those cosmonauts made astronomical observations and studied the effects of spaceflight on the human body.

Though the aging space station was still considered fully functional in 1982, a mold problem in the crew quarters led the Soviets to abandon the orbiting lab. They intentionally sent it plunging toward Earth, where it would burn up in the atmosphere before hitting the ground.

Why it mattered

Launched in 1977, Salyut 6 marked an evolution of space station design for the then-Soviet Union. It was the USSR's first to have two docking ports, which allowed longer missions by Salyut cosmonauts since an uncrewed Progress cargo ship could periodically resupply a crew.

That second docking port could also be used by a visiting crew, flying on a short trip to Salyut 6 on a new Soyuz and returning home on the host crew's original capsule. (The U.S. Skylab station also had two docking ports.)

• Top 10 Soviet and Russian Space Missions

Salyut 6 also had an airlock for spacewalks and has been hailed as the first "second generation" space station. The longest mission to Salyut 6 lasted 185 days, a record at the time in 1981.

The advancements demonstrated on Salyut 6 can be seen in routine use on the International Space Station today. The ISS has multiple docking ports for visiting crews, crew handovers and automated cargo ships. It has multiple airlocks for spacewalks (depending on if they are U.S. or Russian-led) and regularly hosted missions of at least 6 months in duration. The longest mission to the ISS by an American was 371 days, a record set in 2023 by NASA astronaut Frank Rubio.

Want more space history? Check out our full On This Day In Space video archive on YouTube.

SpaceX launched 24 more satellites for its Starlink network on Saturday (July 25), a day after demonstrating it could do the same on its next-gen rocket.

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying Starlink group 17-51 lifted off at 11:51 a.m. EDT (1521 GMT or 8:51 a.m. PDT local time) on Saturday from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

About an hour later, the 24 broadband internet satellites were deployed into low Earth orbit (LEO), as planned.

The launch marked the eighth flight of the Falcon's 9 first stage (Booster 1100), which touched down on the "Of Course I Still Love You" droneship, stationed in the Pacific Ocean.

The successful launch raised the total number of active Starlink satellites to 10,865, according to satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell. That number had been 20 units higher for about 20 minutes on Friday, when SpaceX conducted a deployment and operations trial during the 13th test flight of its Starship launch vehicle.

The Starship test was planned to be short-lived but was successful in providing data to support NASA's decision to fly Starlink systems on its Artemis III crewed mission to LEO, which is scheduled to fly next year.

Saturday's launch was SpaceX's 87th Falcon 9 mission of the year.