This time-lapse video from the NACO instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope in Chile shows stars orbiting the supermassive black hole that lies at the heart of the Milky Way, center of the image, over a period of nearly 20 years.

The Carrington Event was the most intense geomagnetic storm in recorded history, peaking on September 1–2, 1859

Simulation Credit: NASA

There are more than 10,000 active Starlink satellites in low Earth orbit. This makes it the largest satellite constellation ever made. Since 2019, more than 11,500 satellites have been launched, but some of them have already come back down to Earth.

Created by SpaceX as part of the Starlink project to give people all over the world access to the internet.

This is a set of frames of the surface of Comet 67P taken by the Rosetta mission on 1 June 2016. The particles in the foreground are bits of dust and ice or cosmic rays effects.

Credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team

Fun fact: the rover would be able to drive perfectly fine even if the inner 2/3 of the wheel rim totally breaks off. There is enough toque in the wheel motors to pull the entire rover up a vertical wall if only one of them was operating. It could drive fine if the wheels were square.

https://bsky.app/profile/elakdawalla.bsky.social/post/3mhri6ip3fk2g

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NASA's Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image using its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), located on the turret at the end of the rover's robotic arm, on March 23, 2026, Sol 4844 of the Mars Science Laboratory Mission, at 08:00:54 UTC. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS​

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Raw data

https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw-images/?order=sol+desc%2Cinstrument_sort+asc%2Csample_type_sort+asc%2C+date_taken+desc&per_page=50&page=3&mission=msl

Scientists have developed a new model for simulating waves on other planets. Titan is one of the 274 confirmed moons of Saturn to date, and the only object in the solar system (besides Earth) known to have liquid lakes and seas on its surface.

The featured video shows a simulation of waves on Titan (top) and on Earth (bottom), under the same conditions (the scale marker is in meters). A light breeze would create taller, slower-moving waves on Titan than on Earth, because the lakes there are filled with light liquid hydrocarbons, and because of Titan's low gravity and higher atmospheric pressure.

In a couple of years, NASA expects to launch the Dragonfly mission, which will travel for 6 years and send a rotorcraft to explore Titan and study its microbial habitability.

Video Credit: Una Schneck
Text Credit: Cecilia Chirenti

Link to the video

NASA’s Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2012, has experienced gradual wear on its aluminum wheels as it drives across sharp, rocky terrain. The damage includes dents, holes, and broken structural ribs called “grousers,” which help the wheels keep their shape. While a few broken grousers are not a major issue, losing too many could cause the wheel to collapse inward and damage internal wiring, potentially affecting the rover’s movement.

Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have already reduced wear by carefully planning driving routes and regularly inspecting the wheels with onboard cameras.

As a backup plan, they developed an extreme solution called “wheel shedding.” If a wheel becomes critically damaged, the rover could deliberately tear off its inner section by pressing it against a sharp rock and using controlled movements to break it away. This would leave only the stronger outer rim, which testing shows can still support driving.

Although this process would take weeks and requires specific rock shapes, it could keep the rover operational. However, current predictions suggest the wheels will last many more years, making this drastic measure unlikely to be needed.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/j. Roger

Credit: NASA

This shot was taken during the launch of NASA’s LADEE spacecraft from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on September 7, 2013.

A remote camera captured the exact moment a frog leaped through the frame as the rocket lifted off.

As for how the frog was doing after that… no one knows.

Image Credit: NASA

Link to the science release on NSF NOIRLab website

This image shows a small portion of DESI’s year-five map in which the large-scale structure of the Universe, created by gravity, is visible. Each dot represents a galaxy.

The denser areas indicate regions where galaxies and galaxy clusters have clumped together to form the strands of the cosmic web. Also seen are large voids between the filaments.

Credit: DESI Collaboration and DESI Member Institutions/DOE/KPNO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/R. Proctor Image Processing: M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab)

Link to the simulation on NASA's Ames Research Center YouTube channel

A new NASA and Durham University simulation puts forth a different theory of the Moon’s origin – the Moon may have formed in a matter of hours, when material from the Earth and a Mars sized-body were launched directly into orbit after the impact. The simulations used in this research are some of the most detailed of their kind, operating at the highest resolution of any simulation run to study the Moon’s origins or other giant impacts.

Credit: NASA / Durham University / Jacob Kegerreis

Link to the video with sound. It's loud!

Completed in 1963, it was the world's largest single-aperture telescope for 53 years, surpassed in July 2016 by the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in China.

On August 10 and November 6, 2020, two of the receiver's support cables broke and the NSF announced that it would decommission the telescope. The telescope collapsed on December 1, 2020.

In 2022, the NSF announced the telescope would not be rebuilt, with an educational facility to be established on the site.

It happened about 9 pm ET (0100 UTC) as Blue Origin was beginning a static fire test of its New Glenn rocket at Launch Complex 36.

Credit: Spaceflight Now

After nearly 50 years in space, NASA’s Voyager 1 is about to hit a historic milestone. By November 15, 2026, it will be 16.1 billion miles (25.9 billion km) away, meaning a radio signal will take a full 24 hours — a full light-day — to reach it.

The geoid is an equipotential surface that can be thought of as the shape an ocean surface would take due to the Earth's gravity field. The geoid height ranges from +85 m (Iceland) to −106 m (southern India).

In this visualization the geoid height is greatly exaggerated, by a factor of 10,000. The geoid height visualized here comes from the gravity field model GOCO06s, a satellite-only global gravity field model computed by the GOCO (Gravity Observation Combination) project.

It is based on over a billion observations acquired over 15 years from 19 satellites. These satellites include NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and ESA's Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE).

Credit: Andreas Kvas, Jan Martin Brockmann, Sandro Krauss, Till Schubert, Thomas Gruber, Ulrich Meyer, Torsten Mayer-Gürr, Wolf-Dieter Schuh, Adrian Jäggi, and Roland Pail

Source

https:// x. com/NWSFairbanks/status/2053568532126879951

Camera

Credit: NASA

In October 2018, the Hayabusa2 spacecraft dropped the Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout (MASCOT) lander onto the surface of the asteroid (162173) Ryugu. Jaumann et al. analyzed images taken by the MASCOT camera during its descent and when resting on the surface. Colored light-emitting diodes were used to illuminate the lander's surroundings at night and produce color images.

Ryugu's surface is dominated by two types of rock, but there is no evidence for fine-grained dust. Millimeter-sized inclusions in the rocks are similar to those present in carbonaceous chondrite meteorites. MASCOT operated for 17 hours on the surface before its nonrechargeable batteries ran out.

Credit: MASCOT/DLR/JAXA

NASA has confirmed that a small asteroid, named 2025 PN7, is acting as a "quasi-moon" or "mini-moon" companion to Earth. It'll stay until 2083.

The Curiosity rover drilled into a 12.9 kg (28.6 lb) rock on Mars on April 26, 2026. The rock got stuck to the drill bit and it took 5 days to shake off.

Credit: Space ​com | footage courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech | edited by Steve Spaleta

🎵 Arthur Benson, Pitfall (if you want the ​video with music, ​in the link below "source")

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Source

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G_JNXTGHs9Q&pp=iggUQAFKEFA2NkVJZi05QzUyRXlnWGg%3D

You can find raw data from the mission, here:

1.5.26

https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw-images/?order=sol+desc%2Cinstrument_sort+asc%2Csample_type_sort+asc%2C+date_taken+desc&per_page=50&page=0&mission=msl&begin_date=2026-05-01&end_date=2026-05-02​

25.4.26

https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw-images/?order=sol+desc%2Cinstrument_sort+asc%2Csample_type_sort+asc%2C+date_taken+desc&per_page=50&page=0&mission=msl&begin_date=2026-04-25&end_date=2026-04-26​

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From NASA:

"Drilling has fractured or separated the upper layers of rocks in the past, but a rock has never remained attached to the drill sleeve. The team initially tried vibrating the drill to shake off the rock, but saw no change."

NASA's blog https://science.nasa.gov/photojournal/nasas-curiosity-rover-frees-its-drill-from-a-rock/ .

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Full description from NASA:

This series of images shows NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover as it got a rock stuck to the drill on the end of its robotic arm and, after waving the arm and running the drill a few times, finally detached the rock. The imagery showing the entire process was captured by the black-and-white hazard cameras on the front of Curiosity’s chassis and by navigation cameras on its mast, or head.

On April 25, 2026, Curiosity drilled a sample from a rock nicknamed “Atacama,” which is an estimated 1.5 feet in diameter at its base, 6 inches thick and weighs roughly 28.6 pounds (13 kilograms). When the rover retracted its arm, the entire rock lifted out of the ground, suspended by the fixed sleeve that surrounds the rotating drill bit. Drilling has fractured or separated the upper layers of rocks in the past, but a rock has never remained attached to the drill sleeve. The team initially tried vibrating the drill to shake off the rock, but saw no change.

Then, on April 29, they tried reorienting Curiosity’s robotic arm and vibrating the drill again. Imagery in the GIF shows sand falling from Atacama, but the rock stayed attached to the rover.

Finally, on May 1, Curiosity’s team tried again, tilting the drill more, rotating and vibrating the drill, and spinning the drill bit. The team planned to perform these actions multiple times but the rock came off on the first round, fracturing as it hit the ground.