APOD: 2026 August 16 – Milky Way over Yellowstone

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APOD Science APOD APOD: 2026 August 16 – Milky… 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. Milky Way over Yellowstone Explanation: The Milky Way was not created by an evaporating lake. The colorful pool of water, about 10 meters across, is known as Silex Spring and is located in Yellowstone National Park in…

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New record! SpaceX launches 2 Falcon 9 rockets just 38 minutes apart

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SpaceX keeps setting spaceflight records. Elon Musk‘s company launches far more frequently than any other outfit, and it operates the largest satellite constellation ever assembled — the Starlink broadband network, which consists of nearly 11,000 satellites (and counting). On Saturday evening (Aug. 15), SpaceX set another mark, for the shortest time between orbital flights: It launched two Falcon 9 rockets just 38 minutes apart, besting its old mark — set on Aug. 31, 2024 with two Starlink missions — by 27 minutes. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches eight satellites…

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On this day in space! Aug. 15, 1977: Mysterious ‘Wow!’ Signal boosts search for E.T.

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On Aug. 15, 1977, astronomers using Ohio State University’s Big Ear radio telescope detected the famous “Wow!” signal, which to this day is one of the strongest pieces of evidence that we are not alone in the universe. Astronomer Jerry Ehman was using the telescope to scan a region in the constellation Sagittarius when it detected a weird, 72-second-long radio burst. The signal was too strong to be explained by background noise, and researchers determined that it was very unlikely that this signal came from anything on Earth. Despite their…

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‘Lanterns’: Who’s who in HBO’s Green Lantern show?

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The DC Universe expands further into the cosmos this month with the addition of “Lanterns”. Created by Chris Mundy, Tom King and Damon Lindelof, the superhero show sees the veteran Green Lantern Hal Jordan (played by Kyle Chandler) take rookie John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) under his wing. Wider parts of the Green Lantern Corps lore are incorporated in the story too, as the series unpacks what the famous space cops are all about. At the same time, let’s be real here for a second: for anybody who hasn’t kept track…

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APOD: 2026 August 15 – Bright Perseids from Sweden

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APOD Science APOD APOD: 2026 August 15 –… 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. Bright Perseids from Sweden Explanation: Known for its bright and fast meteors, the annual Perseid Meteor Shower comes to planet Earth’s skies from a radiant in the heroic constellation Perseus. The popular northern summer celestial spectacle is created…

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‘Strap yourself in and feel the Gs’: NASA announces ‘Max Power’ aerospace expo

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NASA will hold a two-day aerospace exposition this November, and it may draw a surprising number of “Simpsons” fans. The event, which NASA announced today (Aug. 14), will be held Nov. 7 and Nov. 8 at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) on Florida’s Space Coast. It’s called “Max Power,” which is also a famous Homer Simpson pseudonym. In the 13th episode of the show’s 10th season, which first aired in February 1999, Homer legally changed his name to Max Power. He wanted to disassociate himself from a bumbling character on the…

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NASA Competition Invites Students to Help Imagine a Future Enabled by Lunar Technologies 

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3 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Artist’s rendering depicting lunar surface operations at a future base in the lunar South Pole. NASA NASA is asking U.S.-based collegiate teams to submit bold, original concepts to the 2027 edition of a student challenge focused on aerospace innovation that could help the agency envision a future on the Moon shaped by new technology.  The latest NASA Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts – Academic Linkage (RASC-AL) competition invites student teams to explore new operations paradigms and advance the technologies needed to support sustained operations in the lunar South Pole region.  “This competition…

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NASA Announces MAX POWER: America’s Newest Aerospace Expo, Airshow

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Credit: NASA In honor of America’s historic 250th anniversary, NASA announced on Friday MAX POWER, a public exposition of American air and space innovation, Nov. 7 and Nov. 8, on and near the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The multi-day, family-friendly event will showcase the next-generation aircraft, spacecraft, autonomous vehicles, and technologies that will help define the future of transportation in air and space, bringing together the public, innovators, investors, pilots, astronauts, engineers, and companies helping open this new frontier. “This November, we are opening Kennedy Space Center’s historic…

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Volunteer Develops Machine-Learning Tool to Identify Rare Clouds

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Explore This Section Science Citizen Science Volunteer Develops… Overview Resources Opportunities Citizen Science Highlights About Science Activation   Certain kinds of clouds are misbehaving – appearing more often and lower in the sky than they used to. To help identify the factors influencing these changes (e.g. shifts in Earth’s long-term weather patterns), scientists have asked people around the world with cameras to submit fresh images of these clouds as a part of the NASA-supported Space Cloud Watch project. Now, one volunteer has developed a new tool to help other Space…

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NASA’s COFFIES Uses AI to Predict Storm-Causing Active Regions on Sun 

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5 min read NASA’s COFFIES Uses AI to Predict Storm-Causing Active Regions on Sun  As humanity looks to the Moon and stars for future exploration, predicting space weather — conditions in space primarily driven by the Sun — is more important than ever.  Now, a team of astrophysicists and data scientists with NASA’s COFFIES (Consequence Of Fields and Flows in the Interior and Exterior of the Sun) has developed a novel machine-learning model capable of predicting the emergence of active regions on the Sun up to 12 hours before they appear.  The Sun…

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