APOD: 2026 August 8 – A Messier Moment for Tempel 2

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APOD Science APOD APOD: 2026 August 8 – A… Today’s APOD Archive Submissions Index Search Calendar RSS Education About Discuss   APOD Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. A Messier Moment for Tempel 2 Explanation: Which of these is not a comet? You guessed it – the one on the right is a globular star cluster. The diffuse greenish coma of periodic comet 10P/Tempel 2…

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SpaceX serious about building factories on the moon: ‘It’s going to happen,’ Elon Musk says

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As usual, SpaceX is dreaming big. The company plans to build factories on the moon, using robots to do much of the heavy lifting, Elon Musk said on Tuesday (Aug. 4) during SpaceX‘s first-ever quarterly earnings call. “We are going to land a lot of tonnage on the moon,” he said. “We’re going to build the factories on the moon. The robots will be helpful with that.” This is not a newly revealed vision; Musk first laid it out in February, in a blog post that announced SpaceX’s purchase of…

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‘Not looking good right now’: Starship likely to be lost at sea 2 weeks after epic 13th test flight, Elon Musk says

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It looks like Starship’s two-week-long ocean adventure won’t have a happy ending. The SpaceX megarocket conducted its 13th test flight on July 24, lifting off from the company’s Starbase site in South Texas. Things went pretty well on Flight 13, especially for Starship‘s 171-foot-tall (52 meters) upper stage, known as Ship, which splashed down as planned in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Western Australia. In an unexpected first, Ship survived that homecoming, staying in one piece even after toppling over and hitting the waves. It remains intact still,…

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NASA figured out how to keep its 48-year-old Voyager 2 probe running for yet another year

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NASA just made an interstellar tweak to the Voyager 2 spacecraft, known as the “Big Bang”, to keep its remaining 50-year-old science instruments running a little longer. Voyager 2 and its twin launched in 1977, called Voyager 1, rely on a form of nuclear battery known as a radioisotope thermoelectric generator that uses the heat produced by the decay of plutonium. But the supply of plutonium on each probe drops at about four watts a year on each spacecraft. To keep the probe running on this dwindling power supply, engineers…

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2026 IGARSS Hyperwall Schedule

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Explore This Section Earth Earth Observer Editor’s Corner Feature Articles Meeting Summaries News Science in the News In Memoriam Announcements Archives IGARSS 2026 Join NASA in the Exhibit Hall (Booth #100) for Hyperwall Storytelling by NASA experts. Full Hyperwall Agenda below. MONDAY, AUGUST 10 3:00 PM  Technology Enabling the Future of Earth Science Mike Seablom 3:15 PM  Discovery Earth: New Missions & Technical Innovation Advancing Earth System Insights Karen St. Germain TUESDAY, AUGUST 11 10:00 AM STELLA: Open-Source Multisenor Platforms For Real-Time Environmental Monitoring Mike Taylor 10:15 AM NOAA Geostationary…

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NASA’s IXPE Studies Magnetar

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NASA/Pablo Garcia Scientists using NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) conducted more than 140 hours of observations of the magnetar 1E 1547-5408, shown in this Aug. 5, 2026, artist’s concept, between March and April 2025. In doing so, they may have captured empty space behaving in a way physicists have predicted for 90 years, but never directly observed. Magnetars are a special class of neutron stars with ultra-strong magnetic fields, the strongest of any object in the observable universe, around a trillion times stronger than the strongest permanent magnets ever…

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Why you don’t need a perfectly clear sky to enjoy the total solar eclipse on Aug. 12

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Are you ready for the eclipse? Whether you’re bound for the path of totality or set to see a partial eclipse from Europe, Canada or the northeast U.S. on Wednesday, Aug. 12, there’s a dirty word eclipse chasers hate to utter during an eclipse season, and yet become completely obsessed with — clouds. Related: Total solar eclipse 2026 — Everything you need to know We all start behaving as though Earth’s atmosphere owes us something. After spending years studying the climate and where it is most likely along a path…

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