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Thursday, July 16, 2026

Close-up: The Corona Australis Molecular Cloud | Victor Blanco Telescope

Close-up: The Corona Australis Molecular Cloud | Victor Blanco Telescope

The 570-megapixel Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera (DECam) has captured a vibrant scene, filled with swirls and stars reminiscent of Van Gogh’s The Starry Night. "The Starry Night" is an iconic 1889 oil-on-canvas painting by Vincent van Gogh, depicting a swirling night sky over an imagined village, created during his stay at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. This new cosmic masterpiece features glowing nebula NGC 6729 on the left and globular star cluster NGC 6723 on the right. DECam is mounted on the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, a Program of NSF NOIRLab. With a total of 74 detectors and a lens nearly a meter (3.3 feet) across, DECam is capable of taking high-resolution images that capture the details in every cosmic brushstroke.

Deep inside the constellation of Corona Australis, Latin for “Southern Crown,” lies a treasure trove of star formation known as the Corona Australis Molecular Cloud. This molecular cloud, spanning the left half of the image, is one of the closest star-forming regions to the Solar System, sitting about 430 light-years from Earth.

The primary member is a pre-main-sequence star, meaning it has accumulated almost all of its mass but has not started fusing hydrogen in its core yet—akin to being in the pre-teen stage of life. In 2019, the companion was discovered to be a red dwarf, the least massive and most common type of all hydrogen-fusing stars. Red dwarfs have relatively cool temperatures and live very long lives compared to hotter and more massive stars like our Sun.

Young stars, like the primary member of R Coronae Australis, are incredibly bright and hot. This star’s light reflects off of the nearby clouds of stellar material, forming illuminated regions known as reflection nebulae. The ultraviolet radiation from the young star is sufficient to ionize the gas surrounding it, creating a glowing region known as an emission nebula. Together, these regions form the dual nebula known as NGC 6729, which shows variations in its brightness and shape due to the orbit of the binary star system within it.

The star-forming regions of this image continue on as the eye travels up and to the right, tracing the clouds of bright blue gas that glow from the newborn stars within. This swirling beige and blue region, punctuated by embedded stars, is composed of the reflection nebulae NGC 6726 and NGC 6727. These nebulae extend to the lower right region, connecting with another reflection nebula known as IC 4812.

Bedazzling the top right portion of this image is the globular star cluster NGC 6723, nicknamed the Chandelier Cluster. NGC 6723 is a gravitationally bound collection of tens of thousands to millions of stars in a spherical shape with a notably large fraction of younger stars. Even though the glittering cluster appears to neighbor the stellar nursery of the Corona Australis Molecular Cloud, it actually sits far beyond it, at about 29,000 light-years away from Earth.

The Corona Australis Molecular Cloud and the Chandelier Cluster make this region popular among astrophotographers. The constellation Corona Australis in which these objects can be seen, or which they border in the case of the Chandelier Cluster, skirts the southern horizon in summer months for observers at mid-northern latitudes, and is better viewed from farther south. As summer approaches, these objects will be well placed for astrophotographers to capture the scene.

More information
The Dark Energy Camera (DECam) was designed specifically for the Dark Energy Survey (DES). It was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and was built and tested at DOE's Fermilab.

NSF NOIRLab, the U.S. National Science Foundation center for ground-based optical-infrared astronomy, operates the International Gemini Observatory (a facility of NSF, NRC–Canada, ANID–Chile, MCTIC–Brazil, MINCyT–Argentina, and KASI–Republic of Korea), NSF Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO), NSF Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), the Community Science and Data Center (CSDC), and NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory (in cooperation with DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory). It is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with NSF and is headquartered in Tucson, Arizona.

The scientific community is honored to have the opportunity to conduct astronomical research on I’oligam Du’ag (Kitt Peak) in Arizona, on Maunakea in Hawai‘i, and on Cerro Tololo and Cerro Pachón in Chile. We recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence of I’oligam Du’ag to the Tohono O’odham Nation, and Maunakea to the Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) community.

Dark Energy Camera (DECam)

https://noirlab.edu/public/programs/ctio/victor-blanco-4m-telescope/decam/

Learn about the Víctor M. Blanco Telescope:
https://noirlab.edu/science/programs/ctio/telescopes/victor-blanco-4m-telescope

Credits:
Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA
Image Processing: R. Colombari & M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab)

Duration: 30 seconds
Release Date: July 16, 2026

#NASA #Astronomy #Space #Science #Stars #Nebulae #CoronaAustralisMolecularCloud #NGC6726 #NGC6727 #NGC6729 #NGC6723 #StellarNurseries #CoronaAustralisConstellation #Cosmos #Universe #VictorBlancoTelescope #DECam #CTIO #CerroTololo #Chile #NOIRLab #NSF #DOE #AURA #UnitedStates #STEM #Education #HD #Video

The Corona Australis Molecular Cloud | Victor Blanco Telescope

The Corona Australis Molecular Cloud | Victor Blanco Telescope

A vibrant view of the Corona Australis Molecular Cloud, one of the closest star-forming regions to Earth, reveals glowing nebulae, dark dust lanes, and newborn stars in a scene reminiscent of Van Gogh’s The Starry Night. At left, the young binary system R Coronae Australis illuminates surrounding gas and dust, while the glittering globular cluster NGC 6723 shines at upper right, far beyond the nearby stellar nursery.

Dark Energy Camera (DECam)

https://noirlab.edu/public/programs/ctio/victor-blanco-4m-telescope/decam/

Learn about the Víctor M. Blanco Telescope:
https://noirlab.edu/science/programs/ctio/telescopes/victor-blanco-4m-telescope

Credits:
Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA
Image Processing: R. Colombari & M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab)
Release Date: July 16, 2026

#NASA #Astronomy #Space #Science #Stars #Nebulae #CoronaAustralisMolecularCloud #NGC6726 #NGC 6727 #NGC6729 #NGC6723 #StellarNurseries #CoronaAustralisConstellation #Cosmos #Universe #VictorBlancoTelescope #DECam #CTIO #CerroTololo #Chile #NOIRLab #NSF #DOE #AURA #UnitedStates #STEM #Education

SpaceX Stacking Starship for Flight 13 | Starbase Texas

SpaceX Stacking Starship for Flight 13 | Starbase Texas

The 12th flight test of SpaceX's Starship lifted off May 22, 2026, from Pad 2 at Starbase, Texas. Learn about the flight test results and watch a replay of the launch webcast here:
https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-12

This was the first flight of the "next generation Starship and Super Heavy vehicles, powered by the next evolution of the Raptor engine."

Read more about the key upgrades designed to enhance performance and unlock Starship's full capabilities here: https://www.spacex.com/updates/starship-v3

NASA plans to use a lunar lander version of Starship to deliver astronauts and cargo to the Moon during the Artemis IV mission and beyond through the Human Landing System (HLS) Program.

Learn more about Starship:
https://www.spacex.com/vehicles/starship/

Download the Free Starship User Guide (PDF):
https://www.spacex.com/media/starship_users_guide_v1.pdf

Credit: Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX)
Duration: 42 seconds
Date: July 16, 2026

#NASA #SpaceX #Space #Earth #Mars #Moon #MoonToMars #ArtemisProgram #ArtemisIII #ArtemisIV #Starship #StarshipV3 #ReusableSpacecraft #SuperHeavy #SuperHeavyV3 #ElonMusk #Engineering #SpaceTechnology #HumanSpaceflight #CommercialSpace #SpaceExploration #StarbaseTexas #UnitedStates #STEM #Education #HD #Video

The 'Ghostly' Arms of Galaxy NGC 4848 in Coma Berenices | Hubble

The 'Ghostly' Arms of Galaxy NGC 4848 in Coma Berenices | Hubble

A notable feature of most spiral galaxies is the multitude of arching spiral arms that seemingly spin out from the galaxy’s center. In this image, taken with the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope, the stunning silvery-blue spiral arms of the galaxy NGC 4848 are observed in immense detail. Not only do we see the inner section of the spiral arms containing hundreds of thousands of young, bright, blue stars, but Hubble has also captured the extremely faint wispy tails of the outer spiral arms.

NGC 4848 is about 340 million light-years from Earth and around 170,000 light years across.

This wispy barred spiral galaxy was first discovered in 1865 by the German astronomer Heinrich Louis d’Arrest. In his career, Heinrich also notably discovered the asteroid 76 Freia and many other galaxies and he also contributed to the discovery of Neptune.

If you are situated in the Northern Hemisphere with a large telescope, you might just be able to observe the ghost-like appearance of this faint galaxy within faint constellation of Coma Berenices (Berenice’s Hair).

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Gregg
Release Date: July 20, 2020

#NASA #ESA #Astronomy #Space #Hubble #Galaxies #NGC4848 #BarredSpiralGalaxies #ComaBerenicesConstellation #Cosmos #Universe #HubbleSpaceTelescope #HST #GSFC #STScI #UnitedStates #Europe #STEM #Education

Wednesday, July 15, 2026

Russian Soyuz MS-29 Crew Spacecraft Docking | International Space Station

Russian Soyuz MS-29 Crew Spacecraft Docking | International Space Station

Expedition 74 flight engineer and NASA astronaut Jessica Meir: "Welcome to the International Space Station Pyotr, Anna and Anil! Here’s a view of their Soyuz docking yesterday, as seen from a Russian Segment window. Let the games begin!"

The spacecraft arrived at the station’s Prichal module at 1:52 p.m. after launching at 10:47 a.m. (7:47 p.m. local time) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Tuesday, July 14, 2026. At 4:30 p.m. EDT, the hatch opened between the International Space Station and the Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft. NASA astronaut Anil Menon and Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina then entered the station, where they will spend the next eight months living and working before returning to Earth in April 2027.

Follow Expedition 74:

https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/

Expedition 74 Crew
Station Commander: Sergey-Kud Sverchkov (Russia)
Roscosmos (Russia) Flight Engineers: Andrey Fedyaev, Sergei Mikaev

European Space Agency Flight Engineer: Sophie Adenot

NASA Flight Engineers: Jessica Meir, Jack Hathaway, Chris Williams

An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada.

Video Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center/J. Meir
Duration: 15 seconds
Release Date: July 10, 2026

#NASA #Space #Science #Astronomy #ISS #Planets #Earth #Astronauts #JessicaMeir #AstronautVideography #Europe #France #ESA #Cosmonauts #Russia #Россия #Roscosmos #Роскосмос #HumanSpaceflight #InternationalCooperation #UnitedStates #STEM #Education #HD #Video

Russian Soyuz 2.1a Rocket Liftoff of Kikina, Menon & Dubrov in Kazakhstan

Russian Soyuz 2.1a Rocket Liftoff of Kikina, Menon & Dubrov in Kazakhstan

A Russian Soyuz rocket launched to the International Space Station with Expedition 75 crewmembers: NASA astronaut Anil Menon, Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov, and Anna Kikina onboard, Tuesday, July 14, 2026, at 10:47 a.m. EST (7:47 p.m. local time) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The trio will spend about eight months aboard the orbiting laboratory before returning to Earth in spring 2027.

At 1:52 p.m. EDT the same day, their Russian Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft docked with the International Space Station’s Prichal module. NASA astronaut Anil Menon and Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina launched earlier from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The trio are joining NASA astronauts Jessica Meir, Jack Hathaway, and Chris Williams, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, Sergei Mikaev, and Andrey Fedyaev of Russia.

During his expedition, Menon will conduct scientific investigations and technology demonstrations intended to help humans prepare for future exploration missions to the Moon and Mars, and to provide benefits on Earth. Among the hundreds of experiments planned during his mission, he will participate in studies to better understand astronaut vein structure, blood flow, and blood composition in microgravity. He also will test producing intravenous fluids using the space station’s potable water.

The Soyuz MS-29 mission will be his first spaceflight after he was selected as part of NASA’s 2021 astronaut class. A native of Minneapolis, Menon is an emergency medicine physician, mechanical engineer, and colonel in the United States Space Force. He also has served as an expedition flight surgeon supporting the agency’s crew members aboard the space station.

NASA astronaut Anil Menon's Official Biography:

https://www.nasa.gov/people/nasa-astronaut-anil-menon/

https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/menon-anil.pdf

For more than 25 years, people have lived and worked continuously aboard the International Space Station, advancing scientific knowledge and making research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. The space station helps NASA understand and overcome the challenges of human spaceflight, expand commercial opportunities in low Earth orbit, and build on the foundation for long-duration missions to the Moon, as part of the Artemis program, and to Mars.

To learn more about International Space Station research, operations, and its crews, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/station

Image Credit: Roscosmos

Date: July 14, 2026

#NASA #Space #Science #Astronomy #ISS #Earth #SoyuzRocket #SoyuzMS29 #Astronauts #AnilMenon #Cosmonauts #AnnaKikina #PyotrDubrov #Russia #Россия #Roscosmos #Роскосмос #HumanSpaceflight #InternationalCooperation #UnitedStates #MicrogravityLaboratory #Expedition74 #Expedition75 #Baikonur #Kazakhstan #Қазақстан #STEM #Education

Hidden Planet Found around Star Beta Pictoris | NASA Webb

Hidden Planet Found around Star Beta Pictoris | NASA Webb

Beta Pictoris System (NIRSpec IFU Image Annotated): The newly discovered third planet orbiting Beta Pictoris, Beta Pictoris d, is seen in reconstructed imagery from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec).

Beta Pictoris System (artist's concept): This artist’s concept shows the Beta Pictoris system with the discovered giant exoplanet Beta Pictoris d at the right. It has the widest orbit of the known three exoplanets within the system.

Beta Pictoris System (NIRSpec IFU Image and Spectrum): Researchers used the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) Integral Field Unit on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to map chemical contents of the Beta Pictoris system. As a result, they discovered a third planet, Beta Pictoris d, orbiting the young star.

Astronomers using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have discovered a giant planet outside our solar system, called an exoplanet, hiding within one of the most intensely studied planetary systems in our Milky Way galaxy.

The young, nearby star Beta Pictoris was already known to host two giant planets: Beta Pictoris b, one of the first exoplanets ever directly imaged, and Beta Pictoris c. The newly identified Beta Pictoris d makes it only the second planetary system known to contain at least three imaged planets. Unlike Beta Pictoris b and c, however, Beta Pictoris d was discovered not by identifying a bright point of light, but by detecting the unique chemical fingerprint of its atmosphere, a technique that could transform the search for worlds around other stars.

"This discovery adds another piece to an already fascinating planetary system," said Aidan Gibbs, lead author of a new study published Wednesday in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, San Diego. "Beta Pictoris has long served as a laboratory for understanding how planetary systems form and evolve, and now we have another planet helping us tell that story."

Familiar system, new surprise
Located 63 light-years from Earth and about 23 million years old, Beta Pictoris is a nearby system in the Milky Way offering a rare glimpse of the interactions between newborn planets and the disk of dust and debris left behind from their formation.

The team estimates that the newfound Beta Pictoris d is likely at least two times the mass of Jupiter, making it the smallest of the three known giant planets in the system. Modeling suggests it likely circles around its star at about 30 astronomical units, comparable to the region occupied by Neptune in our own solar system. It’s the widest orbit of the known three planets, but still located inside the inner edge of the debris disk.

Although astronomers were not searching for another planet with Webb, Beta Pictoris d emerged while the team was using the telescope’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) to study the atmosphere of Beta Pictoris b. Specifically, they used NIRSpec’s Integral Field Unit, which obtains both an image and a spectrum from each pixel in an image.

"We weren't looking for a new planet," said Gibbs. "We were trying to understand one we already knew existed. Then, this telltale signal appeared in the data where we didn’t expect it."

This signal was a series of peaks and troughs within the spectroscopic data where the team expected to see a smooth spectrum from light bouncing off dust. It was a distinctive pattern of carbon monoxide absorption lines, spread out like a barcode, an expected feature in giant planet atmospheres.

Because spectroscopy not only reveals chemical composition, but the motion of an object, the team was able to also extract radial velocity from the data. The team determined the planet’s speed, position, and alignment with the debris disk were all consistent with something orbiting Beta Pictoris rather than a background star or brown dwarf with carbon monoxide in its atmosphere.

"There was an unexpected bright source of light within the Integral Field Unit imaging, but we've learned not to trust bright blobs in images," said Jean-Baptiste Ruffio, a research scientist at University of California, San Diego and principal investigator of the first Webb observations where the discovery was made. "They can be instrumental artifacts or other structures in the debris disk. By obtaining a spectrum at the same time as the image, we were able to quickly confirm our suspicions.”

Follow-up observations with Webb's MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) through a Director’s Discretionary Time request detected water vapor and methane, further confirming the planet's identity while providing a richer look at the atmosphere of the planet.

Unlike traditional imaging, the spectroscopic approach allowed researchers to identify the planet and begin studying its atmosphere from the very first observation.

"A spectrum contains an incredible amount of information," Ruffio said. "You don't just learn that something is a planet; you immediately begin learning about its temperature, chemistry, and motion."

A separate imaging study led by Ben Sutlieff of the University of Edinburgh and Markus Bonse of the European Southern Observatory complements the team’s findings with data from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope and Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and independently confirmed the existence of Beta Pictoris d.

Seeing through cosmic fog
Beta Pictoris d remained hidden for years because it lies within one of the brightest debris disks known.

The dusty disk acts like fog, scattering light from the star, making it difficult for conventional imaging techniques to distinguish planets from surrounding structures. The team's spectroscopic method with Webb effectively ignored that dust, isolating only the narrow molecular signatures unique to a planetary atmosphere.

Scientists say the planet’s presence may help explain why the famous debris disk has such a sharply defined inner edge and other puzzling structures. In fact, astronomers had already predicted the existence of a planet like Beta Pictoris d to account for the disk’s unusual structure.

Beyond expanding our understanding of Beta Pictoris, the discovery demonstrates a powerful new way to find exoplanets.

This is the first directly imaged planet discovered primarily through moderate-resolution spectroscopy, showing that astronomers can identify worlds in complex environments through their atmospheric fingerprints rather than relying solely on traditional coronagraphic imaging.

The researchers plan to continue analyzing Webb's observations to better determine the planet's temperature, atmospheric composition, and orbit, providing an even more detailed view of one of astronomy's most iconic planetary systems.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, European Space Agency (ESA) and Canadian Space Agency (CSA).

To learn more about Webb, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/webb

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Science: Aidan Gibbs (UC San Diego), Jean-Baptiste Ruffio (UC San Diego), Ralf Crawford (STScI), Leah Hustak (STScI)

Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

Release Date: July 25, 2026

#NASA #ESA #Astronomy #Space #Science #Planets #Exoplanets #BetaPictorisd #Stars #BetaPictoris #PictorConstellation #MilkyWayGalaxy #Cosmos #Universe #JWST #NIRSpec #InfraredAstronomy #SpaceTelescopes #Europe #GSFC #STScI #UnitedStates #CSA #Canada #STEM #Education

Ancient Mars Impacts Explored | NASA’s Perseverance Rover | JPL

Ancient Mars Impacts Explored | NASA’s Perseverance Rover | JPL

NASA’s Perseverance rover captured its own tracks descending from the rim of Jezero Crater. The bright-colored rocks running from middle left to middle right of the image, a formation dubbed the “Broom Point member,” are likely more than 3.9 billion years old, making them among the oldest terrain ever examined by a Mars rover.

This orbital map shows the path NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took from its 2021 landing site in Jezero Crater to the “Broom Point” location in mid-2025.

NASA’s Perseverance took this selfie at “Witch Hazel Hill” on Jezero Crater’s rim on May 10, 2025. The small dark hole in the rock in front of the rover is the borehole made when the rover collected the “Bell Island” sample. The small puff of dust left of center and below the horizon line is a dust devil.

Old rocks exposed on the rim of Jezero Crater preserve a roughly 4-billion-year-old cosmic “weather report” from the solar system’s most dynamic era. NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has uncovered evidence that a 245-foot-thick (75-meter-thick) stack of ancient rock on the rim of Jezero Crater was built by repeated asteroid impacts. Referred to as the “Broom Point member” by the rover’s science team, this sequence of layered bedrock is likely more than 3.9 billion years old, making it among the oldest terrain ever examined by a Mars rover.

Released Wednesday in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, the findings offer a window into one of the most tumultuous chapters in the history of the solar system.

“Since leaving Jezero, Perseverance has been exploring a brand-new frontier, both geographically and geologically—a chapter of Martian time that predates the crater itself,” said Ken Farley, Perseverance deputy project scientist at Caltech in Pasadena, California. “On Earth, our earliest geologic history has been fundamentally broken up, deformed, and erased by plate tectonics. Because Mars lacks plate tectonics to recycle its crust, this ancient record remains intact, giving us a rare glimpse into a geological time period that doesn’t exist on our own planet.”

Reading between layers
After ascending the western rim of Jezero Crater in late 2024, Perseverance began examining surrounding locations with its science instruments. Their data at Broom Point revealed six distinct rock types, including breccias—rocks composed of angular fragments—alternating with layers of fine-grained, pulverized rock dust. Rock fragments within the breccias are pocked with gas-bubble cavities, indicating they were once molten.

The presence of tiny, dark, glassy beads within the layers offered an important clue about how these rocks formed. While volcanoes can produce similar glassy droplets, they rarely occur in such high abundance, pointing to asteroid impacts, instead, as the primary architect. In fact, the largest beads rival those flung out by the dinosaur-killing Chicxulub asteroid’s impact on Earth.

The repetition of these distinct rock types multiple times throughout this thick sequence of rock indicates that high-energy impact events happened again and again across this region of early Mars.

A reddish rocky Martian landscape superimposed with a white line zig-zagging from top right to bottom left of the image. Annotations indicate the landing site, the crater floor, delta, Neretva Vallis, the crater rim, and “Broom Point.”

“The different rock layers are a record of variable-sized impacts occurring at different distances from where this rock sequence was accumulating,” said Alex Jones, a Ph.D. student in planetary geology at Imperial College London and lead author of the paper. “Some large impacts took place very far away, some small impacts nearby. Their debris all ended up landing here, constructing this thick section of rock.”

How these layers formed may suggest an interaction with water or ice. Several of the layers look like they may have been formed by fast, ground-hugging debris flows. On Earth, these powerful, fluidlike surges can occur when molten rock hits water or ice that instantly flashes into steam.

Cosmic one-two punch
A portion of Broom Point’s layers tilt at angles exceeding 80 degrees—nearly vertical—far too steep to be caused by the impact that created Jezero Crater.

Instead, scientists suspect a cosmic “one-two punch” shaped this landscape long ago. First, a colossal asteroid impact created the 1,200-mile-wide (1,900-kilometer-wide) Isidis Basin, one of the largest impact basins on Mars, upending and tilting the once-flat rock layers. Later, a second asteroid likely struck, forming Jezero Crater, which measures 28 miles (45 kilometers) across. This second impact fractured and uplifted the already-tilted rocks into the dramatic formations the rover sees today.

To pin down exactly when these events took place, the Perseverance team collected two core samples, dubbed “Bell Island” and “Main River.” If a future mission were to return them to Earth, laboratory dating could determine when and how often impacts were occurring on early Mars—and, by extension, the infant Earth, whose own early impact record has been erased by billions of years of plate tectonics.

“During this violent era, it wasn’t rain or snow falling from the sky, but an almost constant barrage of molten rock droplets and pulverized dust kicked up by asteroid impacts,” said Jones. “If we can pin down the ages of these layers, it would be like reading a cosmic weather report from 4 billion years ago.”

More about Perseverance
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which is managed for the agency by Caltech, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover on behalf of the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, as part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio. Arizona State University leads the operations of the rover’s Mastcam-Z instrument, working in collaboration with Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, on the design, fabrication, testing, and operation of the cameras. SuperCam is led by Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where the instrument’s Body Unit was developed. The rover’s SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals) instrument was built at NASA JPL, and its WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) camera was built at Malin Space Science Systems.

For more information on NASA’s Perseverance, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance

Celebrating 5+ Years on Mars

Mission Name: Mars 2020

Rover Name: Perseverance

Main Job: Seek signs of ancient life and collect samples of rock and regolith (broken rock and soil) for return to Earth.

Launch: July 30, 2020

Landing: Feb. 18, 2021, Jezero Crater, Mars

For more information on NASA's Mars missions, visit: mars.nasa.gov

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech ASU/MSSSA/MRO/HIRISE/UA/ICL
Release Date: July 15, 2026

#NASA #Space #Astronomy #Science #Planets #Mars #Asteroids #AsteroidImpacts #AsteroidCraters #Astrobiology #Geology #PerseveranceRover #Mars2020 #JezeroCrater #Robotics #SpaceTechnology #SpaceEngineering #MSSS #JPL #Caltech #UnitedStates #SpaceExploration #SolarSystem #STEM #Education

Faintest Planet ever Imaged from Earth Found around Star Beta Pictoris | ESO

Faintest Planet ever Imaged from Earth Found around Star Beta Pictoris | ESO

Beta Pictoris is located about 60 light-years away towards the constellation of Pictor (the Painter's Easel) and is one of the best-known examples of a star surrounded by a dusty debris disc.

This image, based on data from the Digitized Sky Survey 2, shows a region of approximately 1.7 x 2.3 degrees around Beta Pictoris.

This image, taken with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) shows Beta Pictoris d, a new planet found orbiting the star Beta Pictoris. The star is at the center of the frame, and was subtracted when processing the data, revealing the environment around it. The new planet, indicated with an arrow, is the third one found around this star. The other two are Beta Pictoris b––the bright source to the left, and Beta Pictoris c, orbiting much closer to the star and not seen here.

The image was taken with the ERIS instrument at the VLT. Based on its infrared brightness and color, the new planet appears to be a gas giant, about 2.4 times more massive than Jupiter.

The diffuse horizontal band in this image is a debris disc around the star, seen here edge-on, the leftover material of planetary formation.

This series of images shows observations of the exoplanet Beta Pictoris d over more than a decade. This planet was first discovered using the ERIS instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). Astronomers were then able to find it in archival data taken with the SPHERE instrument, also at the VLT, and the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope.

The new planet, marked with an arrow, is the third planet discovered around the star Beta Pictoris. The other two planets are Beta Pictoris b––the brighter spot seen in the top three images–– and Beta Pictoris c, not seen here as it orbits much closer to the star.

The star itself is not visible here: in the ERIS image it was subtracted when processing the data, whereas in the JWST and SPHERE images it was blocked with a special mask.

As time goes by the planets orbit around the star, and their position on these images changes. In the 2014 observations, planets d and b appeared almost exactly aligned as seen from Earth. It was only after removing the light of planet b that the much fainter planet d could be seen.

The diffuse diagonal band in these images is a debris disc around the star, seen here edge-on, the leftover material of planetary formation.

The position of the star Beta Pictoris is marked with a circle on this chart of the constellation Pictor (The Painter’s Easel). As indicated by its name, this is the second brightest star in its constellation. Together with most of the stars marked on this chart, it can be seen in a dark sky with the unaided eye.

A team of astronomers have discovered a third planet orbiting the star Beta Pictoris. The new planet, Beta Pictoris d, is 100 times fainter than Beta Pictoris b—the first planet discovered in the same system—and is among the lightest exoplanets ever to be imaged from the ground. After spotting the planet using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), the team found it had been hiding in archive observations spanning more than a decade.

“This was a serendipitous discovery,” says Ben Sutlieff, co-lead of the study published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters and astronomer at the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom. “We initially wanted to look more at a known planet in the system, Beta Pictoris b, to see how it changed over time,” he adds. However, when the team went to analyse their images of the system, they noticed something else, separated from Beta Pictoris b, that led them down an entirely new path.

“‘There’s something else there, did you see it?’” Markus Bonse, ESO astronomer in Germany and the other co-lead of the study, recalls saying when looking at the data. To confirm the nature of their detection, the team looked through the ESO archive, a catalog of past observations made with ESO facilities. They found a new planet, Beta Pictoris d, in multiple images dating back as far as 11 years ago, including one where it was only just visible against the glare of its larger neighbor Beta Pictoris b. “Planet d, it seems, has been playing a game of hide-and-seek with us for over a decade and only now can we say ‘found you!’” says Jayne Birkby, co-author of the study and astronomer at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom.

The newly discovered planet, like the two others in the system, is a gas giant like Jupiter or Saturn. However, Beta Pictoris d has a much wider orbit than the planets Beta Pictoris b and Beta Pictoris c. Moreover, while the first two planets are each around ten times the mass of Jupiter, the new planet is only 2.4 times more massive than Jupiter, making it one of the lightest ever imaged from the ground. The planet is also relatively cold and, hence, extremely faint relative to its host star.

Direct imaging, where the light from an object is captured as in a photograph, only works for planets bright enough to show up next to their much brighter host stars. Taking a direct image of a planet as faint as Beta Pictoris d, therefore, represents a significant achievement. “The new planet is 100 times fainter than Beta Pictoris b, the famous planet in the same system, making it the faintest exoplanet ever imaged directly from Earth,” explains Bonse [1].

This first clear detection of Beta Pictoris d, which is 63 light-years away from us, was made with the ERIS instrument on the VLT by Sutlieff, Bonse and their team. An independent team led by Aidan Gibbs at the University of California, US, also discovered the same planet using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a facility of the US, European and Canadian space agencies. Their results are also published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

To confirm a planet’s discovery from a detection, astronomers usually have to make follow-up observations. However, this system had been extensively studied, with several images stored in the ESO and JWST science archives. “To our joy, out it popped in previous SPHERE observations,” says Birkby, referring to another VLT instrument previously used to observe the Beta Pictoris system. The planet was also spotted in archival observations from NIRCam, a JWST instrument. Now that the team knew where to look for the potential new planet, “it turns out it was hiding in the data all along!” says Birkby. Co-author Valentin Christiaens, researcher at CEA Paris-Saclay, France, adds: “The detections in the archival SPHERE data are not only very exciting on their own, but also because they suggest a number of treasures are still hidden in the archives of VLT instruments!”

Beta Pictoris is now the second system, after HR 8799, where more than two planets have been directly imaged. “Systems with multiple directly imaged exoplanets are the ‘holy grails’ of discoveries, because they can teach us a lot about what different exoplanets are like in the same formation environment,” says Sutlieff [2]. Beta Pictoris d also clears up a mystery in its planetary system, as it has exactly the right mass and position to explain the particular shape of the surrounding debris disc, made of the leftovers of planet formation.

The discovery of Beta Pictoris d in this way encourages further direct imaging of planetary systems where faint planets may have been hiding in plain sight, including with ESO’s upcoming Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). “Planets seem to have friends,” says Beth Biller, also a co-author of the paper and astronomer at the University of Edinburgh, “many of the famous directly imaged exoplanet systems seem to have multiple giant planets in the same system, and likely there are even more lower mass planets hiding in these systems that might be revealed with instruments on the ELT.”

Notes

[1] Beta Pictoris d is the faintest exoplanet ever imaged from Earth when corrected for the distance to the system—faintest in absolute magnitude (owing to its size and temperature only) not in apparent magnitude (where distance also contributes to faintness).

[2] Beta Pic is part of a group of stars all with the same age, and some of them have planets too. Beta Pic d seems to be almost a twin of one of these planets, 51 Eri b, meaning astronomers can use them both to anchor their models of how planets evolve and grow over time.

Credits: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2/B. Sutlieff, M. Bonse et al./IAU and Sky & Telescope

Date: July 15, 2026

#NASA #Astronomy #Space #Science #Planets #Exoplanets #BetaPictorisd #Stars #BetaPictoris #PictorConstellation #MilkyWayGalaxy #Cosmos #Universe #VLT #ERIS #InfraredAstronomy #ParanalObservatory #Chile #Europe #STScI #DSS2 #UnitedStates #Infographics #STEM #Education

Faintest Planet ever Imaged from Earth Found around Star Beta Pictoris | ESO

Faintest Planet ever Imaged from Earth Found around Star Beta Pictoris | ESO

Notes

Credit: ESO

Duration: 1 minute, 31 seconds
Date: July 15, 2026

Earth Views: Camera Video from Crew Porthole | China Space Station

Earth Views: Camera Video from Crew Porthole | China Space Station

China’s Tiangong Space Station has released footage showing Earth from a crew porthole. Released by the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA), the video clip offers bird's-eye views of the planet's diverse landscapes.

The Tiangong space station is now crewed by the Shenzhou-23 mission with three astronauts sent into space on May 24. The mission is notable for including a one-year in-orbit stay experiment. This will provide crucial data for future long-duration space exploration.

Shenzhou-23 Crew
Zhu Yangzhu 朱杨柱, Commander & Flight Engineer (second spaceflight)
Zhang Zhiyuan 张志远, Pilot (first spaceflight)

Lai Ka-ying/Li Jiaying 黎家盈, Payload Specialist (first spaceflight) [Hong Kong SAR]

Video Credit: CCTV

Duration: 1 minute, 24 seconds

Release Date: July 15, 2026

#NASA #Space #Science #Earth #China #中国 #Shenzhou23Mission #神舟二十三号 #Shenzhou23 #Taikonauts #Astronauts #ZhuYangzhu #ZhangZhiyuan #LiJiaying #LaiKaying #ChinaSpaceStation #中国空间站 #TiangongSpaceStation #MicrogravityExperiments #SpaceLaboratory #CMSA #中国载人航天工程办公室 #HumanSpaceflight #STEM #Education #HD #Video

Tuesday, July 14, 2026

Russian Soyuz MS-29 Expedition 75 Crew Docking | International Space Station

Russian Soyuz MS-29 Expedition 75 Crew Docking | International Space Station

At 1:52 p.m. EDT, their Russian Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft docked with the International Space Station’s Prichal module. At 4:30 p.m. EDT, the hatch opened between the International Space Station and the Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft.

NASA astronaut Anil Menon's Official Biography:

https://www.nasa.gov/people/nasa-astronaut-anil-menon/

https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/menon-anil.pdf

To learn more about International Space Station research, operations, and its crews, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/station

Video Credit: Roscosmos

Duration: 28 seconds

Date: July 14, 2026

Soyuz Rocket Launch of Kikina, Menon & Dubrov | International Space Station

Soyuz Rocket Launch of Kikina, Menon & Dubrov | International Space Station

Expedition 74 crewmembers crowd into the International Space Station's cupola module to observe the Soyuz rocket launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Tuesday, July 14, 2026.

Orbital view of Soyuz rocket plume trail on Tuesday, July 14, 2026.

Expedition 75 emblem

Expedition 74 flight engineer and NASA astronaut Jessica Meir: "How many people can you fit in the International Space Station's cupola? At least 5! Eyes peeled over Baikonur as we watch our friends make their way toward their new home with us! Go Pyotr, Anna, and Anil, go 75S! Here’s a glimpse of the launch plume trail they left behind."

A Russian Soyuz 2.1a rocket launched to the International Space Station with Expedition 75 crewmembers: NASA astronaut Anil Menon, Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov, and Anna Kikina onboard, Tuesday, July 14, 2026, at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The trio will spend about eight months aboard the orbiting laboratory before returning to Earth in spring 2027.

The trio will join NASA astronauts Jessica Meir, Jack Hathaway, and Chris Williams, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, Sergei Mikaev, and Andrey Fedyaev of Russia.

NASA astronaut Anil Menon's Official Biography:

https://www.nasa.gov/people/nasa-astronaut-anil-menon/

https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/menon-anil.pdf

To learn more about International Space Station research, operations, and its crews, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/station

Image Credit: NASA/JSC/J. Meir

Date: July 14, 2026

#NASA #Space #Science #ISS #Earth #SoyuzRocket #SoyuzMS29 #Astronauts #AnilMenon #Cosmonauts #AnnaKikina #PyotrDubrov #Russia #Россия #Roscosmos #Роскосмос #HumanSpaceflight #InternationalCooperation #UnitedStates #MicrogravityLaboratory #Expedition74 #Expedition75 #Baikonur #Kazakhstan #Қазақстан #STEM #Education

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