Voyager 1’s power test came back at the end of July, and by Kareem Badaruddin’s own account it went about as well as an engineer could hope. Badaruddin is the Voyager project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and what he’s describing is the early stage of an attempt to do for Voyager 1 what a nearly identical procedure just did for its twin, Voyager 2: buy a dying power supply another year of science, on a spacecraft nobody can reach, touch, or send a spare part to.
I wrote a while back about the sliver of plutonium that’s kept both Voyagers running for close to half a century, and this is really that same story arriving at its next decision point. Voyager 1 needs the fix worse than Voyager 2 did. It has less power in reserve, it’s already lost more of its original instruments, and in February this year it came close to tripping its own emergency shutdown during a routine manoeuvre. Whether the fix behaves the same way on Voyager 1 as it did on Voyager 2 is, as of this week, still an open question, and NASA’s own engineers have said they’re not entirely sure of the answer.
Voyager 1 currently has two working science instruments left: a magnetometer and a plasma wave subsystem. Voyager 2 has three. Both spacecraft launched in 1977 with ten identical instrument sets, mostly built for flybys of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune that wrapped up decades ago, and both have been shedding instruments ever since, in an order the mission’s engineers settled on years in advance.
Voyager 1’s most recent loss came in April, when NASA switched off its Low-energy Charged Particles experiment, the instrument that had measured ions, electrons and cosmic rays almost continuously since launch. The shutdown wasn’t part of the planned sequence running ahead of schedule. It was prompted by an unexpected power dip during a roll manoeuvre on 27 February, one that brought Voyager 1 close enough to its automatic undervoltage fault protection that engineers chose to retire the instrument rather than risk a shutdown they hadn’t chosen themselves. A small motor inside the instrument, using half a watt, was deliberately left running, specifically so the whole thing could be switched back on if the power situation ever improved.
The fix both probes are attempting is nicknamed the Big Bang inside the mission, and the name refers to how it’s done rather than what it does. Rather than switching off one low-priority load at a time, engineers turn off several ageing devices at once, tape recorders and heaters that had been drawing power for decades, and replace them in the same moment with lower-power alternatives, all while keeping the spacecraft’s electronics above the temperature at which they’d fail for good. On Voyager 2, the swap went ahead in July and freed up close to ten watts a year, enough to keep its three remaining instruments running for at least another year.
Voyager 1 is next, and this is the part I find genuinely interesting rather than just procedurally interesting. Badaruddin has said plainly that although the two spacecraft were built to the same design, the team has observed real differences between them after forty-nine years of separate flight. That’s not a small caveat. It means a fix that worked cleanly on one twin isn’t guaranteed to work the same way on the other, even though the hardware started out identical. Voyager 1 is also farther out, more than 25 billion kilometres from Earth compared with Voyager 2’s roughly 21 billion, which means a command takes close to a day to arrive and just as long for confirmation to come back.
The power test Voyager 1 passed at the end of July checked whether the swap would draw more electricity than expected. The next hurdle is a thermal test, provisionally scheduled for the end of August, which checks whether the spacecraft’s temperature holds inside safe limits once the swap is made, since a heater or an electronic component that drops too cold in interstellar space doesn’t recover. If that goes well, the actual implementation on Voyager 1 follows, on the same cautious timeline that governs everything the mission does now, where a single command takes close to a day just to arrive.
There’s a genuinely hopeful detail sitting at the end of all this. If the fix frees up enough power on Voyager 1, NASA has said there’s a real chance the Low-energy Charged Particles experiment could be switched back on, not replaced, the same physical instrument, resuming measurements it’s been taking since 1977. I don’t want to overstate that. It depends on results NASA hasn’t published yet, and the agency has been careful not to promise it. But it’s the kind of small reversal that doesn’t happen often in a mission that has otherwise been a long, one-way process of turning things off.
Two dates sit ahead of each other on the calendar. The thermal test is due by the end of this month, and Voyager 1 is separately expected to cross one light-day from Earth in mid-November, a distance at which a signal travelling at the speed of light takes a full day to arrive. Neither date guarantees anything about the other. But together they’re a reasonable way to think about where this mission actually is: still capable of a genuine engineering surprise, still adding distance every second, and still, forty-nine years on, being managed one careful decision at a time by people who can’t see it, can’t touch it, and have learned to work within that.
The post Voyager 1 is down to two working science instruments, and the fix that just bought its twin, Voyager 2, another year of power is now being tested on a probe NASA says no longer behaves quite like its sibling appeared first on Space Daily.
Astronomers have discovered an enormous stream of gas flowing toward a young system of three stars, potentially explaining why its planet-forming disks are strangely tilted. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), researchers observed a gas streamer stretching about one trillion miles, or 0.2 light-years, toward the young triple-star system GW Orionis. The findings, published […]
The post Trillion-Mile Gas Stream May Explain a Bizarre Triple-Star System appeared first on Knowridge Science Report.
Few institutions have shaped humanity’s understanding of space quite like NASA. Since its founding in 1958, the agency has launched hundreds of missions, but only a handful fundamentally changed science, engineering, or human history.
Some placed humans on the Moon. Others transformed astronomy, revealed hidden worlds across the Solar System, or even ventured beyond the Sun’s influence. Here are 15 NASA missions whose legacy continues to shape science and exploration today.
NASA’s first human spaceflight program proved that Americans could survive and operate in space. Alan Shepard became the first American in space in 1961, while John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth a year later, laying the groundwork for every crewed mission that followed.
Before astronauts could reach the Moon, NASA had to master orbital rendezvous, docking, long-duration spaceflight, and spacewalks. Gemini accomplished all of those objectives, becoming the technological bridge between Mercury and Apollo.
Perhaps no mission changed history more profoundly. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the Moon while Michael Collins orbited overhead. Apollo 11 demonstrated that humanity could travel to another celestial body and safely return home, inspiring generations of scientists and engineers.
America’s first space station proved humans could live and work in space for months at a time. Crews conducted hundreds of experiments in medicine, solar physics, and Earth observation, paving the way for the International Space Station decades later.
When Viking 1 landed safely on Mars in 1976, it became the first successful mission to operate on the Martian surface. It returned the first images from the ground, analyzed Martian soil, and conducted pioneering experiments searching for signs of life.
Originally designed to explore the outer planets, the twin Voyager spacecraft delivered humanity’s first close-up views of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Both continue operating today, with Voyager 1 becoming the first human-made object to enter interstellar space.
The Space Shuttle transformed access to low Earth orbit by introducing partially reusable spacecraft. Shuttle missions deployed and serviced satellites, launched the Hubble Space Telescope, assembled much of the International Space Station, and flew 135 missions over three decades.
Hubble revolutionized modern astronomy. Its observations helped refine the age of the Universe, study black holes, discover thousands of galaxies, and capture some of the most iconic images ever taken from space. More than three decades later, it continues producing groundbreaking science.
Pathfinder introduced the world to Sojourner, the first rover to operate on another planet. The mission demonstrated that relatively low-cost robotic exploration could deliver enormous scientific returns and paved the way for the sophisticated Mars rovers that followed.
Cassini transformed our understanding of Saturn and its moons. It revealed water-rich plumes erupting from Enceladus, explored Titan’s methane lakes, and showed that icy moons may possess environments capable of supporting life.
Expected to survive only 90 Martian days, the twin rovers rewrote expectations. Opportunity operated for nearly 15 years, discovering overwhelming evidence that liquid water once flowed across Mars, dramatically reshaping scientific understanding of the planet’s history.
Curiosity’s mobile laboratory confirmed that ancient Mars once possessed lakes, rivers, and the chemical ingredients necessary for microbial life. It continues investigating how the planet evolved from a wetter world into today’s cold desert.
Built to succeed Hubble, the James Webb Space Telescope has observed some of the earliest known galaxies, analyzed exoplanet atmospheres, and provided unprecedented infrared views of the cosmos. Its discoveries are already reshaping astronomy and cosmology.
Perseverance is searching for signs of ancient microbial life in Jezero Crater while collecting samples for future return to Earth. Its companion, Ingenuity, became the first aircraft to achieve powered, controlled flight on another planet, opening an entirely new chapter in planetary exploration.
More than 50 years after Apollo, Artemis I successfully tested NASA’s Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System during an uncrewed mission around the Moon. It marked the beginning of NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the lunar surface and eventually support human missions to Mars.
NASA’s greatest missions have done far more than achieve technical milestones. They have expanded humanity’s understanding of the Universe, transformed engineering, and inspired generations to pursue science and exploration. With programs such as Artemis, Europa Clipper, and future Mars missions on the horizon, the next history-making NASA mission may already be on its way.
Check out 7 upcoming NASA missions here.
After nearly two decades of observations, astronomers have discovered that a distant blazar behaves in ways that leading theories struggle to explain. Instead of solving the mystery of these powerful cosmic objects, the unusually long study has raised new questions about what is happening around their supermassive black holes. Blazars are active galaxies with enormous […]
The post 20 Years of Watching a Blazar Reveals Something Stranger Than Expected appeared first on Knowridge Science Report.
What it is: Saguaro, a lower-redshift spiral galaxy
Where it is: About 10 billion light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major
When it was shared: July 29, 2026.
Ever since NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) began science operations in 2022, something has been bothering astronomers. Scattered across JWST's deepest images of the early cosmos are tiny, crimson-colored smudges that glow brightly in infrared light but appear surprisingly compact, making them difficult to classify. These mysterious objects appear in huge numbers around 600 million years after the Big Bang before seemingly vanishing less than a billion years later.
These odd-looking "little red dots" (LRDs) left astronomers wondering whether they were witnessing an entirely new type of galaxy or something even stranger. But now, fresh observations from JWST, combined with data from the Hubble Space Telescope and NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, suggest that LRDs may not have disappeared at all. Instead, they may have simply changed their appearance as the universe grew older.
Researchers trained JWST on a relatively close galaxy near the Big Dipper known as WISEA J123635.56+621424.2, nicknamed the Saguaro because its sweeping spiral arms resemble the iconic cactus of the Sonoran Desert, which bears red fruit.
The Saguaro galaxy existed around 3.3 billion years after the Big Bang, long after LRDs were thought to have faded from view. However, at its heart sits a compact, reddish core that ticks nearly every box for an LRD, including unusually weak X-ray emissions. The researchers chose the Saguaro because, unlike the incredibly distant LRDs, it's close enough for the space telescope to spot the galaxy's spiral arms and brilliant central core.
The aim wasn't to study the Saguaro as it is now but to try to calculate what it would look like if it were much farther away. Using computer models, the researchers shifted the galaxy to the enormous distances seen in the early universe. As they did, its elegant spiral arms gradually melted into the darkness until only a tiny glowing red point remained. It looked almost identical to the LRDs littering JWST's farthest deep-field images.
The findings suggest that many LRDs may in fact be ordinary galaxies, but at such vast distances that only their bright, active centers remain visible, while the surrounding galaxies fade beyond even JWST's incredible vision.
Instead of representing a completely new class of cosmic object, then, LRDs may actually be a short-lived phase in the growth of supermassive black holes during the universe's youth.
The hunt is now on for more nearby galaxies like the Saguaro to see whether they follow the same pattern. This will enable scientists to build a catalog of LRDs to understand better how galaxies and their central black holes evolved together across cosmic history.
A new study is challenging one of the most persistent assumptions in space manufacturing: that building advanced composite structures beyond Earth is simply a matter of moving terrestrial production methods into orbit. Research published in npj Advanced Manufacturing examines how two defining features of the space environment—reduced gravity and reduced atmospheric pressure—can alter the manufacture of carbon-fiber-reinforced structures, materials widely regarded as essential for future spacecraft, habitats and large orbital infrastructure.
Carbon-fiber-reinforced polymers, commonly known as CFRPs, combine strong, lightweight carbon fibers with a polymer resin that binds the fibers into a rigid composite. Their exceptional strength-to-weight ratio makes them attractive for launch vehicles and spacecraft, where every kilogram matters. Yet manufacturing these materials is a delicate process. Fibers must be positioned accurately, resin must penetrate the reinforcement evenly, and gases or trapped voids must be removed before the material cures. On Earth, gravity and atmospheric pressure quietly assist—or complicate—each of these steps.
In space, those familiar forces change dramatically. Reduced gravity can alter how liquid resin flows through a carbon-fiber structure, while low pressure can encourage dissolved gases and volatile compounds to expand or escape. Together, these effects may influence impregnation, consolidation, curing and the final mechanical performance of a composite part. The new work by R. Strecker, T. Rieger, A. Tabelander and colleagues focuses on understanding these interactions before manufacturers attempt to produce increasingly complex structures in orbit.
The central issue is void formation. A composite that appears solid can contain microscopic pockets of air or vapor between its fibers. These voids interrupt the transfer of stress through the material and can reduce strength, stiffness and fatigue resistance. During conventional manufacturing on Earth, pressure is often applied to compress the layers and drive out unwanted gases while resin fills the spaces between fibers. In a reduced-gravity environment, however, buoyancy-driven movement is weakened, and the pathways through which bubbles travel may change. A bubble that would rise and escape during terrestrial processing could remain trapped inside the structure.
Pressure reduction introduces another layer of complexity. Lower ambient pressure can help remove volatile substances and trapped gases, but it can also cause dissolved gases in the resin to expand. If the resin is not sufficiently mobile, expanding bubbles may become locked in place as the material cures. The balance between degassing and bubble growth therefore becomes a critical manufacturing parameter. The study’s importance lies in treating pressure and gravity not as isolated variables, but as environmental conditions that can interact throughout the production cycle.
Resin flow is equally important. Carbon-fiber reinforcements are made from tightly packed filaments, creating narrow channels through which resin must travel. On Earth, gravity can influence resin distribution, especially in vertically oriented or large components. In reduced gravity, capillary forces and surface tension become relatively more significant. These forces can help draw resin into small spaces, but they may also create uneven wetting patterns depending on the fiber architecture, resin viscosity and processing orientation. Such changes could affect whether a component cures uniformly from its surface to its interior.
The findings carry implications far beyond laboratory samples. Future space manufacturers may seek to fabricate beams, pressure-vessel elements, antenna supports, solar-array components and repair patches directly in orbit. Producing these parts where they are needed could reduce the need to launch bulky finished structures from Earth. It could also enable designs too large to fit inside a rocket fairing, including trusses and habitation modules assembled gradually in space. But the economic and engineering promise of this approach depends on reliable quality control. A component that looks flawless may still fail if its internal fiber alignment, resin distribution or void content is inconsistent.
The research also highlights why manufacturing hardware designed for Earth cannot automatically be considered space-ready. Pumps, heaters, vacuum systems, molds and curing chambers must all operate under conditions in which heat transfer, fluid movement and gas removal behave differently. Temperature control is particularly important because resin viscosity changes strongly with temperature. A resin that flows readily during terrestrial processing might move more slowly or unevenly in orbit, while excessive heating could accelerate curing before impregnation is complete. Space-based production systems will therefore need carefully coordinated control of pressure, temperature, resin chemistry and processing time.
For engineers, the study provides a foundation for developing manufacturing protocols tailored to reduced-gravity environments. Instead of copying Earth-based workflows, future systems may need staged pressure changes, specialized fiber preforms, modified resin formulations or active bubble-management techniques. Sensors could monitor pressure, temperature and resin flow in real time, allowing automated systems to detect defects before a part is finished. Non-destructive inspection, including imaging and ultrasonic testing, will also be essential for verifying the integrity of components that cannot easily be returned to Earth for analysis.
The broader message is that space manufacturing is not merely an extension of industrial production—it is a new manufacturing regime governed by different physics. Understanding how gravity and pressure reshape the behavior of fluids, gases and composite materials could determine whether orbital fabrication remains a promising experiment or becomes a practical industrial capability. By examining the production of carbon-fiber-reinforced structures under space-relevant conditions, Strecker, Rieger, Tabelander and their colleagues are helping identify the hidden variables that will decide how safely and efficiently humanity can build beyond Earth.
Subject of Research: Effects of reduced gravity and reduced atmospheric pressure on the in-space manufacturing of carbon-fiber-reinforced structures
Article Title: Effects of reduced gravity and reduced atmospheric pressure on in-space manufacturing of carbon-fiber-reinforced structures
Article References: Strecker, R., Rieger, T., Tabelander, A. et al. Effects of reduced gravity and reduced atmospheric pressure on in-space manufacturing of carbon-fiber-reinforced structures. npj Adv. Manuf. 3, 26 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44334-026-00104-w
Image Credits: AI Generated
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44334-026-00104-w
Keywords: in-space manufacturing, carbon-fiber-reinforced polymers, reduced gravity, reduced atmospheric pressure, composite materials, resin flow, void formation, space technology
Northrop Grumman and the Canadian Space Agency will adapt what they had been working on for NASA’s lunar Gateway into applications for a planned lunar base, albeit with few specifics.
The post Northrop Grumman, Canadian Space Agency repurpose their Gateway projects appeared first on SpaceNews.
In something like five billion years from now, our Sun is expected to run out of hydrogen fuel, expanding into a red giant that will eventually either engulf the Earth or send it spiraling outwards, an all but guaranteed end of all life on our pale blue dot.
But there may be a way for humanity to survive past the Sun’s demise even without having to leave our planet, as independent researcher Gabriel Harry outlines in a paper accepted for publication in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society.
It’s admittedly extremely far-fetched, but it’s a fun thought experiment that he argues could result in Earth staying habitable for another “9.1 million billion years.” Who could possibly argue against that?
In an accompanying piece for Phys.org, Harry lays out his daring plan. First, he proposes blocking out the Sun to keep the Earth from burning to a crisp by placing a “large sunshade at the Lagrange point 1, which is a “gravitational balancing spot between the Sun and Earth.”
“We’d need to cover a huge 70-degree area of the sky to ensure the red giant would be eclipsed,” he wrote. It would indeed be immense: it’d need to be roughly 434,000 miles in radius, tied to a carbon tether 1.2 million miles in length.
To provide the warming radiation that was now being blocked, Harry suggests sending fusion reactors some 4,000 miles deep into Jupiter’s atmosphere to produce energy, which would then have to be transmitted via laser back to the Earth.
And to move the Earth away from the self-destructing Sun, Harry thinks we could “redirect an asteroid to fly close to Earth’s surface a million times, with the gravitational slingshot effect gradually transferring energy to increase Earth’s orbital distance.”
Moving it that far away would stop the Earth’s tectonics and nutrient cycles, something Henry images could be solved by “sinking [4 pounds] of antimatter” into the Earth’s core per day.
Fast forwarding some four to five billion years, and any surviving humans would need to move the entire solar system out of the way of an incoming Andromeda galaxy, which is currently on a collision course with the Milky Way, Harry argues. To do so, he suggested firing a “beam of hydrogen just above or below the Sun’s north or south pole” to generate a “gravitational slingshot effect.”
In all, Harry’s galaxy-brain proposal would allow humans to stay alive without having to cover interstellar distances — something that would require a “million times” more energy — or terraforming a new planet. Because, after all, what’s better than staying right here, a comfortable place organic life has called home for around four billion years already?
“By building and maintaining the safeguards, for 9.1 million billion years, life on Earth would enjoy comfortable geology, security, seasons, days and starry nights — until, in a hundred trillion years, the last star fades out and the night sky turns dark,” Harry on Phys.org.
More on the Sun’s death: Earth Will One Day Die, But We Could Survive By Moving Here
The post Scientist Reveals Plan to Save Earth From Destruction by the Sun appeared first on Futurism.
International equipment manufacturer Vermeer has unveiled a full-scale prototype of its Interlune excavator, a machine designed to ingest 100 metric tons of rocks and dirt per hour, extracting valuable helium as it makes its way across the surface … of the Moon.
UPDATE 08AUG26: Interlune and Vermeer have expand their partnership.
An Intel patent application published on August 6, spotted by Patentlyze, describes an orbital data center architecture that moves some of the computing used to operate massive satellite constellations off the ground and into space. The architecture proposes a two-tier satellite network in which a small number of more powerful satellites in higher orbits manage large constellations of relatively simple satellites in low-Earth orbit, handling much of the computing and constellation coordination normally performed by data centers and network operations centers on the ground.
The application, US 2026/0230175 A1, is a continuation of an earlier Intel filing that was granted as US 12,542,604 B2 in February.
Intel’s proposed architecture is a different proposition from the orbital AI data centers now being pursued by companies such as SpaceX and Google, which aim to move AI compute itself into low-Earth orbit. SpaceX’s planned AI1 satellite and Google’s Project Suncatcher both envision running large-scale computing workloads in space, with the resulting data beamed back to Earth over high-bandwidth optical links. Intel’s orbital data centers, on the other hand, are designed primarily to serve the satellite network itself, acting as higher-orbit compute and control hubs for the much larger constellations operating below them.
In large LEO constellations such as Starlink, Telesat Lightspeed, and Amazon’s Project Kuiper, thousands of satellites are constantly moving relative to one another and the Earth. While the satellites perform their individual tasks, the network itself still has to determine how traffic is routed, which satellites and links should communicate, how spectrum is allocated, and how the constellation responds to failures, interference, weather, and other changing conditions. Much of that network planning and control processing is traditionally handled by computers on the ground, with routing and operational instructions calculated at terrestrial network operations centers and then transmitted back up to the satellites.
Intel says that this constant dependency on terrestrial infrastructure delays time-sensitive decisions, increases reliance on ground stations, and makes management harder as constellations grow into the thousands of satellites. Intel’s solution is to move part of that control and compute layer into orbit. Its architecture places more powerful satellites — which contain much more compute and storage capability than the individual LEO satellites — in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO), or highly elliptical orbits, where they can maintain a broader and more persistent view of the LEO constellation below and take over tasks such as routing, mission planning, scheduling and network coordination without continually sending those workloads back to Earth.
The proposed setup does not eliminate the need for ground stations. It just keeps satellite network control processing in space. Intel specifically describes moving mission planning and scheduling operations into orbit. The company also argues that offloading heavier network-management tasks to a smaller number of powerful satellites could allow operators to build simpler, cheaper LEO spacecraft. Under current architectures, individual satellites still have to actively participate in network-control functions, requiring additional onboard compute and communications hardware. There’s currently no indication that Intel is actively building the satellites.
A rare tidal disruption event exposed a massive wandering black hole about 30,000 light-years from its galaxy’s center. A star was torn apart nearly 30,000 light-years from the center of a massive nearby galaxy, exposing a black hole where astronomers rarely see one. The unusually distant flare revealed an extremely rare “wandering” black hole and [...]Sometime next week, NASA's newest rover on Mars, Perseverance, will set a record for the most distance driven by any vehicle on another world.
The automobile-sized rover, which landed on Mars in February 2021, will traverse beyond 45.16 km (28.06 miles) across the Martian surface. In doing so it will break the previous distance record held by the long-lived Opportunity rover, which ceased communications with NASA in 2018.
So how did Perseverance reach this record-setting distance in just a third of the time?
© NASA
Sometime next week, NASA's newest rover on Mars, Perseverance, will set a record for the most distance driven by any vehicle on another world.
The automobile-sized rover, which landed on Mars in February 2021, will traverse beyond 45.16 km (28.06 miles) across the Martian surface. In doing so it will break the previous distance record held by the long-lived Opportunity rover, which ceased communications with NASA in 2018.
So how did Perseverance reach this record-setting distance in just a third of the time?
© NASA
Millions of people across Europe and North America will witness a solar eclipse on Wednesday, Aug. 12, but the event will vary greatly depending on the location. A narrow corridor stretching from Greenland to northeastern Spain will experience a total solar eclipse, much of Europe will enjoy a deep partial eclipse, and parts of North America will see a smaller partial eclipse.
Want to know what you can expect to see from where you are? Here's an overview of the event from various locations, along with the exact viewing times for the Aug. 12 solar eclipse.
Remember, it's important to wear certified solar eclipse glasses during all partial phases of the eclipse. Totality — when the sun's face is completely blocked by the moon — is the only time it's safe to remove your eclipse glasses. (It’s not too late to order last-minute eclipse glasses if you don’t have a pair on hand.)
If you're fortunate enough to be inside the 180-mile-wide (290 kilometers) path of totality — the path of the dark shadow of the moon — in eastern Greenland, western Iceland or northeastern Spain, you'll experience the moon completely covering the sun for up to 2 minutes, 18 seconds. The sky will darken to twilight, bright stars and planets may appear in the daytime sky, and the sun's spectacular corona (its wispy outer atmosphere) will become visible. Here’s a handy guide to all the gear you’ll need to get the most out of totality.
The closer you are to the centerline of the path, the longer totality will last. But the most important consideration is to stay within the boundaries of the path, because it has a hard edge. Madrid, for example, is barely outside the path and will see a 99.99% partial eclipse — and no totality whatsoever. The partial phases last an hour on each side of totality.
Here's when totality will occur in various locations for the Aug. 12 total solar eclipse:
Viewers in North America will see a modest partial eclipse, with the biggest eclipse seen from northern and eastern Canada, Alaska and the northeastern U.S. The farther northeast you are, the deeper the eclipse will appear. Eclipse glasses are essential at every stage of the two-hour event, because there will be no totality. Here are the times of maximum eclipse in various locations:
If you want to watch totality from outside the path, there are many live stream options available, including planned streams from NASA and the European Space Agency.
Most of Europe and far northwestern Africa will see a spectacular deep partial eclipse, with more than 90% of the sun covered in many western cities. Although the eclipse will never become total, it will still be an impressive sight, though solar eclipse glasses will be required throughout the event. Here are the times of maximum eclipse in some major cities:
To check exactly what you'll see and when, enter your location on an interactive map of the eclipse, which will give you a schedule for when the eclipse begins, peaks and ends where you are.
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