NASA
Every Cosmic Herald story on NASA — missions, launches, discoveries, and the business of space, newest first.
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Stargazing
This Week's Sky: Venus Closes In on Spica as Jupiter Climbs the Dawn
From August 22-26, 2026, watch the waxing gibbous Moon slide past the Teapot and into Capricornus while Venus edges toward Spica and Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn stack up in the morning sky.
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Astronomy
Webb's Infrared Eye Opens a 'Treasure Chest' of 70 Hidden Newborn Stars in Carina
NASA's newest Webb image pierces the dust of a Carina Nebula cometary globule called the "Treasure Chest," revealing roughly 70 young stars, including a rare 19-solar-mass O-type star, many still wrapped in planet-forming discs.
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Stargazing
APOD Solves the Case of the 'Mystery Meteor' Crossing the Eclipsed Sun
A bright streak filmed crossing the partially eclipsed Sun from Spain on August 12 looked like a made-for-astronomy Perseid meteor — until NASA's APOD team checked the numbers and found an airplane contrail instead.
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NASA & Agencies
Astronauts Pull a Dead Antenna Off the ISS — But the Spare Will Have to Wait
NASA's Anil Menon and ESA's Sophie Adenot, the first French woman to spacewalk, spent over six hours removing a failed ISS antenna on August 18 but ran out of time to bolt in its replacement.
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Missions
NASA Scraps LINK's Boost of Swift Observatory After Thruster Trouble
A servicing spacecraft launched to save the Swift Observatory from a decaying orbit now needs saving itself, after two of its three reaction wheels failed and NASA called off the planned altitude boost.
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Astronomy
A Golden Corona: NASA's APOD Captures an Unusually Amber Total Solar Eclipse Over Spain
NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day reveals why the August 12 total solar eclipse's corona over Benavente, Spain glowed gold instead of white — a rare mix of low-sun geometry and wildfire smoke.
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Commercial
NASA Adds Blue Origin, Firefly, and L3Harris to $100M Spacecraft Processing Contract
NASA on-ramped four companies — All Points Logistics, Blue Origin, Firefly Aerospace, and L3Harris — to a $100 million payload processing contract that expands where commercial providers can prep spacecraft for launch.
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Missions
NASA's Starling Swarm Just Learned to Navigate Without GPS
NASA and Stanford spinoff EraDrive flight-tested FALCON on the Starling CubeSats, letting small satellites fix their position by matching nearby objects to a catalog instead of relying on GPS.
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Stargazing
Venus Reaches Greatest Eastern Elongation, Dazzling the August Evening Sky
Venus hit its widest separation from the Sun on August 14-15, 2026, blazing at magnitude -4.3/-4.4 low in the west near the crescent Moon and Spica, with a half-lit telescopic disk visible into late September.
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NASA & Agencies
ISS Crew Preps for Aug. 18 Spacewalk to Replace Station's High-Speed Antenna
NASA's Anil Menon and ESA's Sophie Adenot are set for Aug. 18's U.S. Spacewalk 97 to swap a Z1 truss antenna that carries the station's high-speed link to Mission Control — Adenot's first EVA and a first for a French woman.
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Missions
Six Balloons, Twenty Student Teams: NASA's 2026 Fort Sumner Campaign Marks HASP's 20th Flight
NASA's Balloon Program Office opens its 2026 Fort Sumner campaign with six flights, headlined by the 20th launch of the student-built High-Altitude Student Platform after a record-setting integration round.
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Stargazing
Venus Hits Its Widest Evening Separation From the Sun This Weekend — Here's How to Spot It
Venus reaches greatest eastern elongation on August 15, sitting 46 degrees from the Sun at magnitude -4.4 for its best evening show of 2026, with a crescent Moon and Spica as guideposts.
