All articles
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Astronomy
Webb Telescope Reveals the Lion Nebula's Infrared Mane in Stunning New Detail
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has imaged the "Lion Nebula" in infrared, exposing dust clumps and ionized gas invisible to Hubble and revealing the white dwarf that will finish dismantling the structure in about 10,000 years.
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Missions
NASA Breaks Down the Physics of X-59's Quiet Sonic 'Thump' Ahead of Community Flights
NASA's August 10 Quesst blog explainer details how the X-59 turns a sonic boom into a delayed, car-door-like thump — data the agency will hand to regulators writing new supersonic-over-land noise rules.
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Stargazing
A G2 Storm Just Hit — and NOAA Says Another CME Arrives on Eclipse Day
After a Kp 6 storm lit up Scotland-latitude skies on August 8, NOAA's new forecast calls G1 storming likely on August 12 — the same day as the Greenland-Iceland-Spain total eclipse and the Perseids' ramp-up — raising the improbable prospect of auroras during totality.
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Military Space
Golden Dome Gets Real Deadlines: Interceptor Ground Tests by Year-End, Orbital Flight Demos in 2027
The Pentagon has put firm dates on Golden Dome's hardest problem: space-based interceptor ground tests by end of 2026, two orbital flight tests in 2027, and an intercept demo in 2029 — with up to $3.2 billion spread across 12 companies and Gen. Michael Guetlein holding the program to a falsifiable clock.
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Commercial
The First Air-Breathing Satellite Gets a Bus: Kreios Space Taps NanoAvionics to Fly an Engine That Eats the Atmosphere
Spanish startup Kreios Space will fly the first orbital demo of air-breathing electric propulsion on a Kongsberg NanoAvionics MP42 bus in 2028 — a ~200 kg satellite that scoops atmospheric oxygen and nitrogen for propellant, aiming to make 150-300 km orbits sustainable without carrying fuel.
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Missions
Lucy Turns Its Sharpest Camera on Four Trojan Targets in a Dress Rehearsal for the 2027 Flybys
NASA's Lucy spent spring 2026 photographing Eurybates, Polymele, Leucus and Orus from hundreds of millions of miles away — calibration shots under flyby-like lighting that Earth's telescopes can't reproduce, ahead of close passes at 300-600 miles starting August 2027.
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NASA & Agencies
Typhoon-Delayed Michibiki-7 Set to Complete Japan's GPS Backup Constellation — and It's Carrying a U.S. Space-Surveillance Payload
After Typhoon Dolphin scrubbed one date and weather killed another, JAXA's H3 Flight 9 is now set to loft QZS-7 from Tanegashima on August 11 — completing Japan's seven-satellite GPS-augmentation system while hosting a second MIT Lincoln Laboratory surveillance payload for the U.S. Space Force.
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Astronomy
Rubin Observatory Finds Its First Ultra-Faint Milky Way Satellite: Meet Aquarius IV
Rubin Observatory's early-preview data has already turned up Aquarius IV, a 13-billion-year-old dwarf galaxy so faint it barely outshines a single bright star — an early hint of the dozens more the LSST survey is expected to uncover.
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Science & Discovery
Sharpest-Ever Sun Images Reveal Swirling Instabilities Hiding in Plain Sight
The Inouye Solar Telescope's highest-resolution images yet show Kelvin-Helmholtz vortices are everywhere on the Sun's surface, not rare events — a discovery that may help crack the decades-old mystery of why the corona is millions of degrees hotter than the surface below it.
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Missions
SkyFall's Ice-Hunting Radar Antenna Survives 200 Simulated Mars Landings
JPL put a featherweight fabric radar antenna for NASA's nuclear-delivered SkyFall Mars helicopters through 200 simulated landings without measurable performance loss, clearing a key hurdle ahead of a late-2028 launch.
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Stargazing
August 12 Total Solar Eclipse Will Cross Greenland, Iceland and Spain — Then Hand Off to the Perseids
A total solar eclipse sweeps from the Denmark Strait through Iceland into northern Spain on August 12, 2026, then gives way to a moonless, "optimum" Perseid peak the same night.
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Commercial
Blue Origin Pins New Glenn Pad Explosion on a BE-4 Oxygen Valve
Blue Origin says a single malfunctioning main oxygen valve on a BE-4 engine destroyed New Glenn and 48 Amazon Leo satellites in May, with fixed hardware due late August and flights targeted before year's end.
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