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Link to the science release on NASA website

Due to an ongoing commercial spacecraft attitude control issue, NASA and Katalyst Space announced Wednesday the LINK spacecraft will not capture or boost an agency satellite to a higher altitude to extend its science mission as planned.

Swift was launched in 2004 to study gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the universe, and other cosmic objects and events. It was designed for a two-year prime mission. After 21 years of science operations, Swift’s low Earth orbit began to rapidly decay because of increased solar activity. NASA used this opportunity to advance U.S. spacecraft servicing technology, awarding a contract to Katalyst in September 2025 to mount a robotic servicing mission for Swift in less than a year.

This timelapse shows GRB 221009A, the brightest and most energetic gamma-ray burst ever recorded, jointly discovered by the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope on October 9, 2022.

Credit: Scott Wiessinger, Francis Reddy, Brad Cenko, Eric Burns

Credit: Christophe Brun

Link to the science release on ESA website

A new study – guided by flyby images from ESA’s Hera asteroid mission – suggests that Mars’s small outer moon Deimos has been dramatically reshaped by a single violent asteroid impact.

This would account for its mysteriously smooth and youthful face: a thick layer of dust from the impact may have served as the planetary equivalent of cosmetic fillers.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Credit: JAXA / NHK Kaguya Orbiter archive / Seán Doran

Credit: kruzd

Apollo 16's Charlie Duke and John Young were in the LM when Charlie captured this wonderful shot. Ken Mattingly is in the other spacecraft orbiting the Moon.

Credit: NASA / JSC / ASU / Andy Saunders

Link to the science release on NASA website

About 12 billion years ago, a dwarf galaxy known as LKH collided with a young Milky Way and merged with it. This artist’s concept portrays that collision. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope uncovered definitive evidence of this collision by studying globular star clusters.

Illustration: NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)

The Richat Structure appears as a giant "bull's eye" on a plateau in Mauritania in this mosaic, composed of images captured by the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9 and Landsat 8 on March 5 and March 6, 2026, respectively.

The 40-kilometer-wide (25-mile-wide) structure was initially thought to be an impact crater because large meteors can produce circular features on Earth’s surface.

However, researchers later showed that it is actually a deeply eroded geologic dome formed by the uplift of rock above an underground intrusion of igneous material. Over time, differing erosion rates among rock types in the exposed upper dome led to the development of circular ridges known as cuestas.

The orange and gray colors reflect differences in sedimentary and igneous rock types across the structure and the surrounding landscape.

Credit: Lauren Dauphin / Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey / Adam Voiland

Credit: 永太郎

In October 2012, the space shuttle Endeavour made its final journey. It traveled 19km alongside buildings, homes, and trees before reaching the California Science Center.

Credit: Los Angeles Time

These are a wide-angle views from northern Spain of the total eclipse of the Sun of August 12, 2026.

The location was the Bodegas Nabal winery near the town of Gumiel de Izan in the region of Castile Y Leon.

Credit: Alan Dyer

An Artemis II astronaut took this picture of Earth from the Orion spacecraft’s window after completing the translunar injection burn. There are two auroras (top right and bottom left) and zodiacal light (bottom right) is visible as the Earth eclipses the Sun.

Credit: SST, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

NASA uses satellites, ground measurements, and powerful computer models to track tiny particles floating in our air called aerosols. These small solid or liquid particles can travel thousands of miles, affecting the air we breathe and how far we can see, even far from where they originated.

This visualization still, shows how these particles travel through Earth's atmosphere on August 19, 2025 (20:00 UTC) . Different colors represent different types of aerosols: sea salt (blue), dust (pink/magenta), smoke from fires (orange/red), and sulfates from pollution and volcanoes (green).

Credit: B. MARTIN

NASA’s Artemis II mission will conclude its 10-day journey around the Moon on April 10, 2026, when the crew splashes down off the California coast. While additional imagery will continue to be processed after their return, the astronauts have already delivered a remarkable collection of photos. Among them is a shot of Earthset, echoing the iconic Earthrise photos taken by Apollo 8 astronauts in 1968.

During an Earthset, the planet appears to sink below the lunar horizon. In this scene, a partially lit crescent Earth drops behind the Moon as seen by crew on the Orion spacecraft. The Earth’s sunlit side shows white clouds and blue water over the Oceania region, while the dark areas are experiencing nighttime. The image also shows incredible detail of the Moon’s surface and its overlapping craters and basins.

Credit: NASA

Cyanobacteria blooms return to the Baltic Sea every summer, when warm water, light winds, and nutrients carried in from land cause this type of algae to multiply. On 11 August, health authorities in Rostock, Germany, issued an alert for the presence of the algae along the coast and advised against bathing.

This image, acquired by one of the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellites on 8 August 2026, shows the bloom developing in the Arkona Basin, between southern Sweden, the Danish island of Møn, and the German island of Rügen. Bright green filaments trace eddies tens of kilometres wide, drawn out by currents and wind, while darker blue water marks where the algae have not reached the surface.

Credit: European Union, Copernicus Sentinel-2 imagery

Spanish Olympic skateboarder Danny Leon performed a jump as a solar eclipse occurred, timing the trick with the moon passing in front of the Sun.

Credit: Danny Leon

Link to the science paper in Nature magazine

Astronomers say they've found something the universe has never shown them before: an object that behaves like a star on the outside and a black hole on the inside.

Writing in Nature, a team led by Rohan Naidu of the University of Hawaii describes a bright red speck from the early universe, roughly the width of our solar system. It looks like an enormous star, but it puts out about 100 billion times more energy than any star astronomers know of. The explanation, they argue, is a black hole buried in gas so thick that it glows like a star's surface. They're calling it a black hole star, and they've named this one MoM-BH*-1.

The find could crack a long-standing puzzle. The early universe held black holes millions to billions of times the sun's mass — far bigger than standard models predict. Black hole stars may be their birth stage. The object may also explain the "little red dots" the James Webb Space Telescope keeps finding: the team's data points to hot ionized gas, not dust, as the source of the red color. Naidu calls it a one-in-a-billion find, with no match in existing archives. Follow-up Webb observations begin in December.

Credit: Tom Glenn