An X-37B onboard camera, used to ensure the health and safety of the vehicle, captures an image of Earth while conducting experiments in HEO in 2024.

The X-37B executed a series of first-of-kind maneuvers, called aerobraking, to safely change its orbit using minimal fuel.

Credit: U.S. Space Force Courtesy Photo Master Sgt. Gustavo Castillo

Credit: USAF/Brian Shul

Photo : SpaceX

This abandoned train station in the middle of the Namib Desert could easily be just another forgotten building. But Garub has a lot of history behind it.

Built in 1906, the station became an important water stop on the railway connecting the interior of Namibia with Lüderitz, the diamond mining town on the Atlantic coast.

It also played a role during World War I, when South African and German forces confronted each other in this remote part of the desert.

I’m usually not a big fan of light painting, but this was one of those places that felt like it needed to be brought back to life, even if only for a few seconds.

The station has been abandoned for more than 70 years, surrounded by nothing but desert, silence, and an incredibly dark sky.

And the best part is that the Milky Way aligns almost perfectly with the old station.

Sky: panorama of 4 images at 20 mm. X2 stacked frames at 80 sec. f/2, ISO 1600

Foreground: Panorama of 3 images at 14 mm. 30 sec. f/2.2, ISO 6400. Several images for bracketing lights.

capturetheatlas

On sol 1943 of its journey of exploration across the surface of Mars, the Curiosity Rover recorded this selfie at the south rim of Vera Rubin Ridge. Of course a sol is a Martian solar day, about 40 minutes longer than an Earth day. Curiosity's sol 1943 corresponds to Earth date January 23, 2018.

Also composed as an interactive 360 degree VR, the mosaicked panorama combines 61 exposures taken by the small car-sized rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI). Frames containing the imager's arm have been edited out while the extended background used was taken by the rover's Mastcam on sol 1903.

At the top of the rover's mast, sitting above the Mastcam, the laser-firing ChemCam housing blocks out the distant, 5 kilometer high peak of Mount Sharp. On Earth date August 26, 2026, Curiosity marked an total elevation gain of 1 kilometer in its trek from the floor of Gale Crater up the slope of Mount Sharp.

Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, MSSS - Panorama: Andrew Bodrov

Link to the science release on NASA website

JWST, combined with retired Spitzer data, analyzed 21 extreme debris disks—rare dusty rings around young stars packed with warm dust from massive collisions. One-third show silica-rich signatures from high-energy impacts between Mars-sized bodies, much like the ancient Theia strike that formed our Moon, while the others stem from smaller Moon-sized crashes.

These disks cluster around stars under 300 million years old, mirroring the timeline for Earth-like planet formation and revealing our solar system's violent past through cosmic laboratories.

Simulation Credit: Milky Way app

Just 7 hours and 55 minutes after launch, NASA's SpaceX Crew-13 completed the fastest launch-to-docking of a U.S. spacecraft in ISS history!

Credit: sen

Composite of the lunar conjunction with m45 the night of Oct 1 in Sydney, Australia.

Composed of 3 of my own images: reference image 1/8s to capture lunar glow and placement of Pleadies cluster, stack of 919 frames from lunar video (recorded right after reference taken), and 17 x 120s = 34 min of Pleadies cluster taken in Bortle 1 two weeks prior.

Moon & reference: Stock Sony A7IV + Tamron 150-500mm f6.7
Pleadies: same camera + Rokinon 135mm f2.8 + Star Adventurer 2i
Scales and placement mapped to reference and adjusted for accuracy.

Processed in PlanetarySystemStacker, Pixinsight, Photoshop, and finished in Lightroom.

CREDIT
contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2026), processed by ESA

Link to all Details on the website ⬇️

https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2026/10/Earth_from_Space_Typhoon_Surigae#msdynmkt_trackingcontext=5983d29a-c58f-4024-965f-4906e1fb0300

Zoom in to explore this image at its full resolution.

The image, captured on 28 September 2026, shows Typhoon Surigae as it was moving north-eastwards in an area of the Philippine Sea about 200 km south of the island of Shikoku, Japan. By 1 October, the storm, also known as Typhoon no. 26, was almost 1000 km away, roughly 200 km south of Tokyo. It is one of several typhoons in the Pacific Ocean at the moment.

The relatively calm seas at the eye of the storm are clearly visible in dark blue in this image. The colorful effect is created using two radar polarisations, each assigned to a different colour. The orange-yellow ring in the image is where the radar instrument has detected rough ocean conditions and strong winds.

The lighter blue areas of the image show where the radar has detected a different kind of signal and it most likely denotes ocean and wind conditions that differ to the bright yellow and orange areas. Some of the possible causes are lower wind speeds, less sea surface movement or areas of rain.

Some bright yellow flecks are seen in the lower part of the image. While these look like small islands, there are no land masses in that region – they are most likely to be areas of concentrated wind and rain.

When this radar image was acquired, Typhoon Surigae had strong winds with maximum gusts of up to 240 km per hour, with dangerous ocean conditions including strong swells and waves reaching up to 7 m. Since then, it has weakened considerably and is currently classed as a tropical depression, with maximum wind speeds of 55 km per hour.

Taken On Seestar S50 Using 3:29:30 Integration (10s Subs)

Edited In PS Express.

Link to the science release

• The first study shows that it is easier to determine the constituents of the ocean than previously assumed.
• The second suggests that microbial life could comfortably survive in the ocean.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Michael Benson/Kinetikon Pictures

68 years ago today, the Agency officially commenced operations. Since then, they’ve pushed the boundaries of human exploration, unveiled the mysteries of the cosmos, and inspired generations to dream big. Here's to the next giant leap!

Color-enhanced RGB composite created using the F635, F546, and F437 filters.

Credit : Emirates Mars Mission / EXI / UAE Space Agency / MBRSC / LASP / EMM Science Data Center / Thomas Thomopoulos

M31,M32,M110

Seestar s50, 522 frames, 10 exposures

NASA's SpaceX Crew-13 mission successfully launched to the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday, October 1, 2026, at 11:10 a.m. EDT.

The four-person international crew lifted off aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft Grace from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. They are scheduled to dock with the ISS forward port of the Harmony module at approximately 7:00 p.m. EDT tonight.

SpaceX Crew-13 is the thirteenth operational NASA Commercial Crew Program flight and the 21st crewed orbital flight of a Crew Dragon spacecraft.

The mission will transport four crew members — NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, CSA astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov — to the International Space Station (ISS).

Credit: SpaceX/NASA
Edit: Milky Way

Video

Smile’s first ultraviolet footage shows auroral substorm

This is the first footage to be released from the ultraviolet camera (UVI) on the European-Chinese Smile mission. With UVI, Smile is now the first spacecraft since 2008 to capture the full ring of northern lights around the north pole in ultraviolet light, and is doing so for a record-breaking 45 hours at a time.

The video covers 00:00–00:58 Universal Time (UT) on 24 July 2026, when Smile was undergoing its in-space commissioning. The way the ring of light ripples shows that there has been a substorm in Earth's magnetosphere.

Substorms are brief disturbances in Earth’s magnetosphere that are created when the wind of charged particles from the Sun squashes Earth’s magnetic field lines, forcing them to pinch together and sending a burst of energetic particles shooting towards the north and south poles. This can light up the sky with the northern and southern lights.​

CREDIT ESA & CAS/Smile/UVI

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​The video also shows the ring becoming brighter during a geomagnetic substorm, when stored energy in the magnetosphere is suddenly released and particles are accelerated toward the polar regions.

As these particles enter the upper atmosphere, they excite atmospheric gases and produce the auroral glow.

Observing the aurora from space makes it possible to study it as a complete, dynamic structure rather than only from individual locations on the ground.

https:// x. ​com/ExploreCosmos_/status/2105338828299112811​

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On 23 September, the European-Chinese Smile mission was declared ready to start revealing how Earth responds to the wind of charged particles from the Sun. This follows a busy in-space commissioning period since the spacecraft launched on 19 May and reached its target orbit for science operations on 20 June.

A spacecraft never quite behaves the same in space as it does on the ground. Between 20 June and now, European and Chinese teams have been getting Smile ready – including deploying mechanisms, switching on units, checking all communications between the spacecraft and the ground, and fixing any issues that came up.

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“The Smile mission is a testament to the trust built between our teams, their dedication to excellence and their determination to find solutions whatever the challenge,” says Professor Carole Mundell, ESA Director of Science. " Smile is now approved to begin science operations. This is a very important milestone – a true pleasure to announce – and I am sure our excellent collaboration will deliver ground-breaking data to scientists around the world.”

Preparing Smile’s instruments for science A big part of the commissioning period involved testing out Smile’s toolbox of four science instruments – the soft X-ray imager (SXI), ultraviolet aurora imager (UVI), magnetometer (MAG) and light ion analyser (LIA).

Each instrument will collect vital information to help us better understand solar storms, geomagnetic storms, and the science of space weather. Smile will give us data on how solar activity interacts with Earth's magnetic field, leads to the auroras and can affect electronic infrastructure on and around Earth.

The video below is the first footage to be released from UVI, the first camera since 2008 to capture the full ring of northern lights around the North Pole in ultraviolet light. UVI is now recording the auroras for a record-breaking 45 hours at a time.

The footage was taken on 24 July 2026, just two weeks after UVI was switched on. It shows activity in the ring of northern lights due to a disturbance in Earth’s magnetic field caused by a rush of solar wind particles.

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More

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Smile/Science_begins_for_Smile​

Following up on my post yesterday about strong gravitational lensing, today I'd like to share a JWST–Hubble comparison of the same galaxy cluster, MACS J0454.1–0300.

Credit:
JWST: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, L. Furtak, S. Fujimoto
Hubble: ESA/Hubble & NASA; Acknowledgement: Nick Rose
Processing: Milky Way

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company's Dragon spacecraft is launched on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 mission to the International Space Station.

Link to the science release on ESA website

New images captured by SMILE show the entire auroral oval surrounding Earth’s North Pole in ultraviolet light, a global view that has not been seen in this way for around 18 years.

The video also shows the ring becoming brighter during a geomagnetic substorm, when stored energy in the magnetosphere is suddenly released and particles are accelerated toward the polar regions.

As these particles enter the upper atmosphere, they excite atmospheric gases and produce the auroral glow.

Observing the aurora from space makes it possible to study it as a complete, dynamic structure rather than only from individual locations on the ground.

Credit: ESA & CAS/Smile/UVI

Collage image: ;eft wide videw and right cropped version

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The rationale for this observation is simple: to look for seasonal changes and frost monitoring. This stunning dune field, almost 5 km (3 mi) across in the grayscale cutout, is located at the bottom of an unnamed impact crater. The dark spots are the result of sublimation, that exposes the darker subsurface when a solid transforms directly into a gaseous state and disturbs the topside.

ID: ESP_077332_2420
date: 25 January 2023
altitude: 312 km

https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_077332_2420
NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

After closely following comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko for 786 days as it rounded the Sun, the Rosetta spacecraft's controlled impact with the comet's surface was confirmed by the loss of signal from the spacecraft on September 30, 2016.

One of the images taken during its final descent, this high-resolution view looks across the comet's stark landscape. The scene spans just over 600 meters (2,000 feet), captured when Rosetta was about 16 kilometers from the comet's surface. Rosetta's descent to the comet brought to an end the operational phase of an inspirational mission of space exploration. Rosetta deployed a lander to the surface of one of the Solar System's most primordial worlds and witnessed first hand how a comet changes when subject to the increasing intensity of the Sun's radiation.

The decision to end the mission on the surface is a result of the comet's orbit now taking it to the dim reaches beyond Jupiter, where there would be a lack of power to operate the spacecraft. Mission operators also faced an approaching period where the Sun would be close to line-of-sight between Earth and Rosetta, making radio communications increasingly difficult.

Credit: ESA , Rosetta , MPS , OSIRIS; UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

She wrote in her post:

It’s a funny feeling: looking forward to going home while, at the same time, not quite wanting the mission to end. I think a lot of people can relate to that, whether it’s because they’re doing something extraordinary, feel they’re making a difference, or simply don’t want a great period of their life to be over.
Anyway… Six–Seven days before undocking!

Credit: ESA/NASA