APOD: 2026 August 22 – Mostly Perseids

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APOD Science APOD APOD: 2026 August 22… 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. Mostly Perseids Explanation: Recorded the night of August 12-13, images from four dedicated meteor-monitoring cameras at an astronomical observatory in Czechia were aligned and combined to create this all-night, all-sky view. On that night, the total count came to…

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What happens when a galaxy’s supermassive black hole turns off? These dying radio galaxies could show us

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Astronomers have discovered a hitherto unseen population of so-called “radio galaxies” with fading “radio lobes.” The discovery reveals what happens when the supermassive black hole engines that power these vast, blooming outflows of plasma stall. This discovery increases our understanding of the life cycles of galaxies. The team behind this research studied 14 candidates for faded or remnant radio galaxies found in a region of the sky over Earth, studied intensely by the XMM-Newton X-ray spacecraft, called the XMM–Newton Large-Scale Structure (XMM–LSS) field. Radio galaxies are extremely bright in radio…

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Trump signs new national space policy to enable 1,000 US rocket launches per year

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The United States is updating its approach to managing spaceflights that lift off and land within its borders, and aims to expand the nation’s capabilities to support more than 1,000 rocket launches per year by 2030. President Donald Trump just signed a new National Space Transportation Policy that lays out priorities for commercial, civil and national security missions to orbit. The memorandum, published Thursday (Aug. 20), introduces the first update to the policy since 2013, and comes as commercial operators such as SpaceX have driven U.S. launch cadences up more…

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‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ cast talks losing sleep, living up to their character’s legacy, and learning to ride a horse for season 4 (interview)

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Filming a high-profile episodic TV series like “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” is often a Herculean task for any professional cast and crew, but toss in massive spaceship sets, a colorful constellation of costume changes, tone and stylistic shifts, hand-to-hand combat, horseback riding, and puppets, and you’ve got a mad sci-fi circus. We connected with Ethan Peck (Spock), Christina Chong (La’an Noonien-Singh) and Paul Wesley (James T. Kirk) for Paramount+’s “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’” penultimate season to hear more about the rigors of shooting, genre-hopping, and character evolution. “Every…

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NASA Shares Views of August Solar Eclipse from Ground, Air, Space

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3 Min Read NASA Shares Views of August Solar Eclipse from Ground, Air, Space This composite image shows the progression of a total solar eclipse as the Sun sets over San Millán de los Caballeros, Spain, on Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2026. Credits: NASA/Bill Ingalls On Aug. 12, a total solar eclipse darkened skies over Greenland, Iceland, and Spain. As the Moon covered the Sun, it briefly revealed the Sun’s wispy outer atmosphere — the corona — to those in the path of totality who were lucky enough to have clear…

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Webb Opens Treasure Chest

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This NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month takes us to a fantastical realm within our home galaxy, where piercing starlight and billowing winds sculpt dust clouds into inventive shapes. This scene is from the Carina Nebula, which lies just 7500 light-years away in the constellation Carina (the Keel).

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TB 26-04 Updates and Modernization of NASA’s Chemical Equilibrium with Applications (CEA) Code

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For more information, contact Mark K. Leader, Glenn Research Center, mark.leader@nasa.gov Download the PDF version NASA’s Chemical Equilibrium with Applications (CEA) code is a foundational tool for propulsion system analysis. It provides equilibrium chemistry, rocket performance, shock, and detonation calculations used across NASA and the broader aerospace community. NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) Activity TI-22-01730 modernized the legacy CEA2 Fortran code into CEA v3, a Fortran 2008, object-oriented software package with expanded interface support, updated thermochemical data, improved maintainability, and substantially improved workflow integration. The modernized code preserves backward…

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Europe’s Scorching Summer

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Earth Observatory Science Earth Europe’s Scorching Summer Earth Earth Observatory Image of the Day EO Explorer Topics All Topics Atmosphere Land Heat & Radiation Life on Earth Human Dimensions Natural Events Oceans Remote Sensing Technology Snow & Ice Water More Content Collections Global Maps World of Change Articles Earth Matters Blog Blue Marble: Next Generation EO Kids Mission: Biomes About About Us Subscribe 🛜 RSS Contact Us Search   To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Output from NASA’s…

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China’s Chang’e 7 moon probe will launch this weekend on the most ambitious lunar mission in history

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China’s moon exploration program is readying an ambitious robotic mission, one composed of an orbiter, a lander, a rover, a hopper, and a wide range of international experiments including a U.S.-supported payload. In April of this year, Chang’e-7 hardware was transported to the Wenchang launch site, targeting an Aug. 24 (Beijing time) launch atop a Long March 5 Y14 rocket. The lander’s destination is the edge of Shackleton Crater in the lunar south pole region. After launch, the Chang’e-7 orbiter will spend several months orbiting the moon before releasing its…

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