Category Archives: Space

Space

Scientists find 3 supermassive black holes on the verge of collision inside a distant galaxy

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By Keith Cooper

Published yesterday (Space.com)

A greedy galaxy that existed less than 1.3 billion years after the Big Bang is hoarding supermassive black holes.

A pixelated reddish image. There are three black circles showing where the three black holes are located.
The distant galaxy J0148-4214, seen in the light of ionized hydrogen. The image appears pixelated because of the great distance to the galaxy. The black circles denote the relative locations of the three black holes. (Image credit: Hannah Übler)

A trio of heavyweight black holes are entangled in a dance of death that will quite possibly see them gradually all merge to form an even greater behemoth.

Scientists have discovered the black holes in a galaxy that is so far away its light has taken 12.5 billion years to reach us, meaning we see it as it was less than 1.3 billion years after the Big Bang. And it’s offering strong supporting evidence that one of the ways black holes grew so massive so quickly in the early universe was through mergers.

“This is the first evidence of three active black holes in a single galaxy in the distant universe,” Hannah Übler, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany who led the study, said in a statement. “It suggests that processes in the early universe were efficient at bringing massive black holes together, setting the stage for the massive black-hole mergers we expect to detect with future gravitational-wave observatories.”

The galaxy that plays host to the black holes is catalogued as J0148-4214 and is so far away (their redshift is 5.0167) that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which made the discovery, could not see the black holes directly. Instead, the Integrated Field Spectroscopy unit on the JWST’s Near Infrared Spectrometer (NIRSpec) measured the motion of hydrogen gas swirling around at high velocity in the accretion disks encircling each black hole.

“The JWST data allowed us not only to identify the three black holes, but also to estimate their masses, accretion rates and the stellar mass of the galaxy,” Giovanni Mazzolari of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics said in the statement. “We find a total stellar mass of about 1.3 billion suns, and the black holes represent a significant fraction of that.”You may like

Two of the black holes reside at the center of J0148-4214, separated by 620 light-years. One of these black holes has a huge mass of 80 million times the mass of our sun, while its companion is a relative pipsqueak at 600,000 solar masses. Yet despite its diminutive stature, the smaller black hole is growing at a tremendous rate by accreting gas faster than the Eddington limit. This is the theoretical maximum rate at which material can fall towards a black hole; if the rate is any higher then the accretion disk around the black hole becomes so dense and hot that radiation from the disk blows material back out again, stifling the black hole’s feeding frenzy. This means the smaller black hole will only be able to keep growing at this rate for a short time before negative feedback calls a halt.

The third black hole is 5,500 light-years out from the center of J0148-4214 and has a mass two million times greater than the mass of our sun. This is about half the mass of the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, called Sagittarius A*. It’s thought that this third black hole, and quite possibly the second one too, found their way into J0148-4214 via mergers between galaxies.Space

“These results are extremely exciting,” said Roberto Maiolini of the University of Cambridge, who was a participant in the findings. “They suggest that black-hole merging may be an additional, fast route for their rapid growth in the early universe.”

A blobby orange, fuzzy sphere against a dark background.
An image of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way. (Image credit: EHT Collaboration)

Mergers between black holes produce bursts of gravitational waves. Current gravitational-wave detectors — including The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in the United States, Virgo in Italy and KAGRA in Japan — are able to detect the high frequency, short wavelength gravitational waves from the mergers of stellar-mass black holes, the kind formed in certain supernova explosions. To detect the much longer wavelength, shorter frequency gravitational waves produced by the merger of supermassive black holes such as those in J0148-4214 requires a space-based detector with a baseline many millions of miles long.

To that end, the European Space Agency plans to launch LISA, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna. If all goes to plan, by the mid-2030s. LISA will feature three spacecraft in triangular formation, each side of the triangle being 1.55 million miles (2.5 million kilometers) long. The three spacecraft will beam lasers at each other, looking for deviations in the travel time of those laser beams as evidence for the passing of a long-wavelength gravitational wave.What to read next

With regards to J0148-4214, however, there is a caveat: The third black hole might not be on a collision course with the other two. Instead, it could be heading out of the galaxy.

It’s the classic three-body problem: How do three objects orbiting one another interact?

The two smaller black holes may have entered J0148-4214 as a binary pair. Then, as they were drawn closer to the 80-million-solar-mass black hole, the more massive black hole could have snatched the 600,000-solar-mass black hole while exchanging angular momentum with the two-million-solar-mass black hole to fling it away at high velocity. We see a similar effect in our galaxy with hypervelocity stars that are racing out of the Milky Way. These speedy stars used to be part of a binary pair of stars that got too close to Sagittarius A*, which is the black hole at the center of our galaxy. One half of the binary was captured by the black hole and the other was flung away.

Currently, there is no way to measure the direction of motion of the third black hole in J0148-4214 and confirm whether it will merge with the other two black holes or escape. If it did escape, it could still be wandering alone and dark in intergalactic space even now, 12.5 billion years later.

The findings are presented in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Space

James Webb Just Saw Pluto for The First Time — And This Shouldn’t Be Possible

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Today in the Space World Jul 1, 2026 Explore the icy Pluto surface and its moon Charon through artistic renderings. See how the James Webb telescope observes space. In this video: 0:00 – The World We Got Wrong 1:02 – A Farm Boy, a Blinking Star, and a Demotion 2:35 – Ten Minutes That Changed a Dead World Into a Living One 4:29 – A Telescope That Doesn’t Photograph. It Interrogates 5:24 – The Sky That Refrigerates Itself 6:44 – A Sky That Rains Down the Chemistry of Life 8:41 – A Planet That Is Slowly Bleeding Onto Its Moon 10:54 – If You Stood There 12:15 – A Belt of Frozen Blades and a Continent-Sized Stain 13:29 – Mountains That Shouldn’t Be There 14:48 – The Ocean Nobody Can Reach 16:26 – A Single Data Point From a Trillion Silent Worlds

Space

Researchers, Berkeley Lab physicist unveil largest-ever 2D color map of universe

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universe_DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys_courtesy.jpg
The recent map released by DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys combines more than 260,000 telescope exposures and was collected by more than 160 scientists.DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys | Courtesy

DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys, assisted by researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, produced the world’s largest 2D color map of the universe. The map contains almost 4 billion celestial objects.

The project has been in development for 13 years, during which the team at Legacy Surveys released 10 datasets before the map reached its current and largest form. The latest and 11th data release expands the map to 5.6 trillion pixels.

The map combines more than 260,000 telescope exposures from three different sky surveys: the Beijing-Arizona Sky Survey, the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey and the Mayall z-band Legacy Survey. The data was collected by more than 160 scientists.

According to project co-lead David Schlegel, a senior physicist at Berkeley Lab, the project began in 2013 in the interest of studying dark energy.

In studying dark energy, researchers were required to know where the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument should be directed. The team set out to create a 3D map of the universe and its observable objects. The 3D model — of which the team has published smaller iterations since — needed a 2D map to serve as a foundation.

“We had just started collecting data. Our analysis was just being developed,” Schlegel said. “So while we’ve been accumulating data over all these years, we’ve also been accumulating knowledge and our sophistication of those images as well.”

Schlegel said the newest version of the map encompasses the entire extragalactic sky, which is the expanse of sky not blocked by the Milky Way.

Dustin Lang, a DESI Imaging Survey scientist, helped build code used in the project that reconciles information across images of different qualities. The computer is then able to predict the appearance of stars and galaxies above the atmosphere by compositing and comparing the blurriness across multiple images of each portion of the sky.

Different iterations of the data from DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys have been referenced in more than 1,800 published scientific papers. Schlegel said undergraduates at UC Berkeley have not only participated in the project but used the map in their own research — including using it as a reference to discover rare gravitational lensing systems.

Schlegel met his project co-lead Arjun Dey when they were both graduate students at UC Berkeley. Dey was the first person to take Schlegel to see a telescope, which pulled Schlegel into the world of observational astronomy.

Schlegel said seeing all of the research initiatives that use DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys’ data has given him a “warm fuzzy feeling.”

“We’ve gotten what we need out of the data,” Schlegel said. “But then every day I see in the literature other researchers making use of the data, and it’s a validation every day.”

Space

13 amazing things to see during the total solar eclipse on Aug. 12

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Countdowns

By Jamie Carter

Published yesterday (Space.com)

The solar corona is the ultimate sight during a total solar eclipse, but there’ll be a chance to see much more on Aug. 12, 2026.

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a bright light shines from behind the moon creating a diamond ring effect. there are bright pink prominences lifting off from the edge of the sun.
Mainland Europe will see its first total solar eclipse for 27 years on Aug. 12, 2026. (Image credit: Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)

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Mention that a total solar eclipse is coming, and almost nobody will say, “Wow, we get to see the solar corona!” That’s despite the sun’s tenuous outer atmosphere being the number one sight during totality — a genuine jaw-dropper.

Instead, the focus on social media is always on the darkness during the day, arguably the least interesting — but easiest to grasp — aspect of a total solar eclipse. It’s no wonder that many people misunderstand and underestimate them, and think of eclipse chasers as a little odd.

But that’s not the half of it. There are dozens of things to see and experience during a total solar eclipse, so many that we’ve put together a checklist of things to see as you’re swallowed by the moon’s shadow. Here’s what you may experience during the solar eclipse on Aug. 12, 2026, roughly in the order they occur from first contact — when the moon begins to eclipse the sun — to fourth contact, when it departs.

1. Sunspots

close up view of sun during the partial phase of solar eclipse there are several dark regions on the sun, these are sunspots.
Look for sunspots during the partial phases. (Image credit: Stan Honda / AFP) (Photo by STAN HONDA/AFP via Getty Images)

Here’s one everyone in both the partial and total eclipse zones can see on Aug. 12, 2026. As the moon‘s silhouette moves across the sun, look through your ISO-certified safe solar eclipse glasses/solar filters. With luck, you’ll see the edge of the moon move across dark spots on the solar surface. These are sunspots, cool patches where the sun’s magnetic field is concentrated and complex. They’re where solar flares come from.

2. Planets

total solar eclipse over a large body of water and a orange sky near the horizon.
Venus is below the eclipse in this image from April 8, 2024. (Image credit: Photo by: Alan Dyer/VWPics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images))

You’ll often hear someone shout, “There’s Venus!” during the totality phase of a total solar eclipse, to which your response should rightly be: “Who cares?” as you focus on the much rarer sight of the solar corona. The correct time to look for planets is about 15 minutes before totality, when — on Aug. 12, 2026 — Jupiter will appear about 11 degrees west-northwest, with tiny Mercury about 4 degrees beyond. Venus will be much farther away, about 46° east-southeast of the sun, but easy to see. Mars will be low in the west, but much more difficult to see.You may like

3. Crescent-shaped shadows

a shadow of a hand holding a colander and crescent shapes appearing through the holes.
Use a colander to create projections of crescent suns. (Image credit: Andrew Holt via Getty Images)

Here’s another one everyone can look out for during a deep partial solar eclipse. When over 50% of the sun is eclipsed, crescent-shaped shadows begin to appear on the ground beneath trees. It’s sunlight passing through tiny gaps, which act like the aperture control on a camera. The best way to see them is to grab a colander or spaghetti spoon — or anything with small, defined holes. Failing that, cross your fingers in a waffle pattern and you’ll project diffuse crescents.

4. Shadow bands

Shadow bands seconds after totality, 2 July, 2019 019 total solar eclipse in Vicuna, Chile – YouTubeShadow bands seconds after totality, 2 July, 2019 019 total solar eclipse in Vicuna, Chile - YouTube

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Here’s one for eclipse chasers in Spain. About two minutes before and after totality, it’s sometimes possible to see wavy lines on white surfaces. It’s the reduced light from the crescent sun being refracted by atmospheric turbulence, and, for some reason, it’s much more noticeable when the eclipse is low in the sky — as it will be from Spain. They’re called shadow bands or “shadow snakes”. Pack as large a white sheet as you can (or borrow one from your bemused hotel).SpaceSignup to our newsletter

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5. Plunging light and heat

a group of people watch an ecilpse, there is an eerie light.
The light levels suddenly plummet just prior to totality. (Image credit: Photo by Dimitrios Manis/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

As the partial eclipse reaches about 80%, you’ll begin to notice it getting cooler. By the time it’s just seconds before totality, it will be chilly as the light levels around you crash like nothing else you have experienced. “Darkness in the day” does not do it justice — it’s as if the world is ending. Even experienced eclipse chasers get a knot in their stomach about now as a primordial fear kicks in. That feeling is not helped by looking at the others around you, who, in the eerie, silvery light, suddenly look almost ghoulish.

6. The moon’s shadow

TSE2026 Spain – YouTubeTSE2026 Spain - YouTube

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This is a tricky thing to see. The prelude to totality is the arrival of the moon’s umbral shadow, which will race across observers at about 2,200 mph (Greenland and Iceland) to about 12,000 mph (in eastern Spain, where the shadow is by then oblique and about to skip off the Earth). You’ll need an elevated position — perhaps the side of a valley — looking northwest for this sight, and preferably a relatively uniform landscape. It’s something you can attempt to capture using a GoPro or similar.

7. Diamond rings and Baily’s beads

sun with the moon covering all but a tiny portion where light shines through in bead like formation - known as baily's beads.
Baily’s beads appear just before and after totality. (Image credit: by Marc Guitard via Getty Images)

These are trademarks of totality, but require care to see. As the eclipse nears totality, a spectacular drop of sunlight (the diamond ring) breaks into tiny so-called Baily’s beads of light streaming through the moon’s valleys. When the final bead vanishes, totality begins. The opposite happens a few minutes later at the end of totality, when a Baily’s bead appears, then a few more, quickly coalescing into a second diamond ring. Do what experienced eclipse chasers do and ignore the first round — you’ll just end up with an after-image in your eyes, which will affect your vision just as the corona pops into view. Besides, it’s the second diamond ring that’s the real “wow” moment that ends totality. Its arrival means it’s time to put your solar eclipse glasses back on.What to read next

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8. Solar corona

total solar eclipse whereby the sun is full covered by the moon and we see the white streamers of the sun's outer atmosphere, the corona.
Seeing the sun’s corona is the main attraction during the totality phase of a total solar eclipse. (Image credit: Photo by: Alan Dyer/VW Pics/UIG via Getty Images)

This is what you came to see. The sun’s corona, its outer atmosphere, is where solar flares and coronal mass ejections come from. It’s the hottest part of the sun. It’s always there — but hidden from view by the much brighter surface of the sun, its photosphere. Only when the photosphere is blocked by the moon — totality — can the corona be seen. During this time, it’s essential that you remove your solar eclipse glasses to see the tenuous halo around the silhouette of the moon. It’s a surreal and remarkable sight. Should you bring binoculars just to look at the corona during totality, even if it’s only for a few seconds? Yes! This may be the most beautiful thing you will ever see.

9. Solar chromosphere

close up view of the sun completely blocked by the moon, there is a distinct pink outline especially around the top of the eclipse.
The chromosphere is fleetingly seen as a crimson line visible during totality. (Image credit: Photo by Chris Weeks/Getty Images)

Just after totality begins and just before it ends, a thin crimson line appears where the diamond ring just was and is about to be. This is the chromosphere, a layer of the sun’s atmosphere just above the photosphere. It’s a fleeting sight used by scientists to capture a “flash” spectrum that shows exactly what chemical elements are in the sun’s atmosphere.

10. Solar prominences

close up view of a total solar eclipse showing towering large pink features on the outskirts of the eclipse.
Prominences are towers of plasma in the sun’s chromosphere. (Image credit: Photo by STAN HONDA/AFP via Getty Images)

One of the most surprising aspects of witnessing a total solar eclipse is a view of prominences during totality, bright pink spikes or loops that appear around the moon’s silhouette. These are cool plasma structures extending from the chromosphere into the corona, usually lasting days or weeks. They’re particularly obvious when the sun is close to solar maximum — as it is right now.

11. Totality ‘sunset’

image of the phases of the total solar eclipse there is a tree in the foreground and a orange sky on the horizon.
A composite of the trail of a total solar eclipse over the totality sunset.  (Image credit: Mark Chivers via Getty Images)

Totality will be short for many eclipse chasers on Aug. 12, 2026, but if you can take your eyes off the solar corona, glance at the colors in the sky close to the horizon — it looks like a 360-degree sunset. If it’s cloudy and you miss the corona, the colors around you can be particularly memorable.

12. Meteors

a meteor streaks through the sky in the center of the image. the sky glows red closer to the horizon.
The Perseid meteor shower peaks on Aug. 12-13, 2026. (Image credit: zhengshun tang via Getty Images)

By remarkable coincidence, the total solar eclipse on Aug. 12, 2026, comes only a few hours before the peak of the annual Perseid meteor shower. Expect about 20-40 “shooting stars” to be visible every hour around midnight and into the early hours of Aug. 13, though among eclipse chasers, those in rural Spain will have a better chance since there are more hours of darkness than in Iceland and Greenland. Could there be a “shooting star” during totality? It’s possible — but to see it, you’d have to be looking away from the solar corona, which would be a mad thing to do.

13. Aurora borealis

green ribbons of light sweep across the sky above water and a distant ice-covered landmass
Aurora is unlikely, but possible during totality in Iceland and Greenland. (Image credit: WanRu Chen via Getty Images)

Is it a long shot? Yes. Is it possible? Also yes. The specter of the aurora borealis appearing during totality in the skies above Iceland and Greenland during totality is getting eclipse chasers excited. The reality is that totality is never as dark as people think — it’s a twilight — plus aurora on the day-side of Earth is not nearly as strong as on the night-side. It could happen — though more likely is a display of the northern lights late at night, particularly in Iceland, where the night sky does get sufficiently dark in mid-August, and auroras are commonly seen at that time of year.

Jamie Carter

Jamie Carter

Contributing Writer

Jamie is an experienced science and travel journalist, stargazer and eclipse chaser who writes about exploring the night sky, solar and lunar eclipses, the Northern Lights, moon-gazing, astro-travel, astronomy and space exploration. He is the editor of WhenIsTheNextEclipse.com, author of A Stargazing Program For Beginners, co-author of The Eclipse Effect, and a senior contributor at Forbes.

Space

Astronomers discover 1st atmosphere around a rocky Earth-like planet in the habitable zone

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By Chelsea Gohd

Published 2 days ago (Space.com)

“It’s in the habitable zone, which is super exciting for astrobiology and habitability and searching for life.”

An artist's concept showing the exoplanet LHS 1140 b in reddish brown in the foreground and a star with another transiting planet in the background.
An artist’s concept showing the exoplanet LHS 1140 b in the foreground, enveloped by an atmosphere with helium. In the background is its red dwarf star with another planet in its orbit. (Image credit: Melissa Weiss/Center for Astrophysics |Harvard & Smithsonian)

This might be the closest we’ve gotten to finding a planet that could support life: Astronomers have detected an atmosphere around an Earth-like, rocky planet orbiting in the habitable zone around its star, a monumental first.

The rocky planet, called LHS 1140 b, is 48-light-years away from Earth and according to this new research, it has an atmosphere that contains helium. It is also the first rocky planet to have an atmosphere be detected directly. This is the first rocky planet to be found with an atmosphere that is also in the habitable zone, meaning it’s at the right distance away from its star for liquid water to potentially exist on the planet. As we continue to search the cosmos for planets that can be considered “habitable,” this planet checks more boxes than almost anything we’ve ever seen.

“We have actually detected directly the helium present in the atmosphere itself, and that’s the first direct detection for any rocky exoplanet, which is really exciting … and then there’s this added bonus that it’s in the habitable zone, which is super exciting for astrobiology and habitability and searching for life,” lead author Collin Cherubim, who recently earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University, told Space.com. “It feels kind of surreal.”

Watch full video here: Comet A3 photobombs sun observatory during powerful x-flare

What’s this planet like?

Let’s explore this planet and the system where it “lives.”

This exoplanet, or planet outside of our solar system, was first discovered in 2017 by a team led by astronomer Jason Dittmann who is now a co-author on this new discovery.You may like

“This planet was found like 10 years ago, and we’re just now saying, okay, that’s an atmosphere,” Dittman told Space.com. “We’re slowly narrowing the gap and checking these boxes … we’re finding a planet that’s rocky, a planet that’s of the right temperature and now … it’s like okay, we finally found one that has an atmosphere.”

And being a rocky planet, “there’s definitely a surface … it’s made of rocks,” Dittman said. What does the planet’s surface look like? We can’t say yet, but the researchers who found this planet’s atmosphere think there’s a good chance it could have water.

While it orbits a red dwarf star, which is smaller and cooler than the sun, it orbits closer than we do to our star, maintaining a temperature that keeps the planet in the “Goldilocks zone” where liquid water could exist on its surface.

“It probably also has a lot of water,” Cherubim said. “If it has some amount of atmosphere that can provide a bit of a greenhouse effect, which we know that it does now … it will very likely be what we consider to be habitable conditions on Earth, and conditions that would likely support liquid water.”

So is it Earth-like? While it’s certainly not an Earth copy, this planet can be considered Earth-like in two main ways, Cherubim shared. One: its overall composition. The planet is rocky, likely with an iron core and (now we know) it has an atmosphere. And two: the planet’s temperature is just right for liquid water, which is necessary for life at least as far as we understand it on our planet.What to read next

Finding an atmosphere

The discovery of the first exoplanet was confirmed just over 30 years ago. Since then, scientists have found over 6,000 exoplanets and counting. And while a few rocky planets have been found in their star’s habitable zone, it wasn’t until now that an atmosphere has been confirmed around a rocky planet in the habitable zone.

One reason why scientists have had a hard time finding such planets with atmospheres is their stars. LHS 1140 b orbits the most common type of star, a red dwarf, which is about one-third the size of our sun. This type of star remains active for a lot longer than stars like our sun. This activity means it releases bursts of extreme radiation like solar flares and coronal mass ejections. And typically, the extreme radiation around these stars totally strips the atmospheres from the planets orbiting them, so astronomers have wondered if planets orbiting these stars can have an atmosphere at all.

“This discovery is a big deal because it’s showing that at least this rocky planet has retained an atmosphere over billions of years,” Cherubim said. It’s “a bona fide, robust way of saying yes, atmospheres can survive on rocky exoplanets.”

It’s possible that other gases beyond helium are in the planet’s atmosphere, and it’s possible that some of its atmosphere was previously stripped away by its star’s radiation. But the red dwarf that this planet orbits is roughly 6 billion years old, a few billion years older than the age at which their extreme radiation activity begins calming down. So while some helium is still slowly escaping the planet’s atmosphere over time, the team expects the planet to retain an atmosphere, Dittman shared. After all, even Earth’s helium is slowly escaping our own atmosphere.

The proof is in the atmosphere

To prove that this planet has an atmosphere, the team started with a prediction that Cherubim made during graduate school. It all started with a theoretical model and a sneaking suspicion that there must be rocky exoplanets with atmospheres other than Earth.

“This came out of a very specific prediction from a planetary evolution model that I actually developed myself, from scratch, from first principles, for my Ph.D. as a theorist, and I made a very specific prediction about this planet,” Cherubim said. “And then I went out and did a pretty unexpected, weird thing using this technique that’s typically reserved for observing giant planets, and I used it for a rocky planet, which nobody has done before.

“And lo and behold, I made this measurement that was actually consistent with my prediction. And it was really nice to kind of close the whole loop of the scientific method.”

The team took the theoretical model that Cherubim developed in graduate school and put it to the test using the Warm Infrared Echelle (WINERED) Spectrograph on the Magellan Observatory in Chile. And with their observations, they were able to see LHS 1140 b and another planet both transit, or pass in front of, their star in the same night. With this spectrographic data, they could identify the signatures of molecules in the atmospheres of these planets as they passed in front of the star. And while one planet yielded no results, this planet showed a direct, undeniable helium signature.

Are there aliens?

When looking at a planet that is rocky, has an atmosphere, and is in the habitable zone (meaning it could have liquid water), the question of life comes up quite quickly.

But the researchers don’t have enough data to make that conjecture. “I’m not claiming this planet has life,” Cherubim made clear. With further investigation, scientists could better understand what else might be in this planet’s atmosphere, and they could confirm if it has water. Further observations might not be able to confirm habitability or identify any life on the planet, but they could at least help us to better understand planets like this.

With this being the first planet of its kind discovered, further exploration will help us to put the pieces together. But it is certainly a major step forward in the eternal human quest to answer the question: are we alone?

This work was described in a study published in the journal Science.

Space

James Webb Just Saw Pluto for the First Time And It Shouldn’t Be Possible!

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Proof Jul 15, 2026 Did the James Webb Space Telescope really see Pluto for the first time—and why are some people saying it “shouldn’t be possible”? Although Pluto was famously explored up close by New Horizons in 2015, James Webb observes the dwarf planet in an entirely different way. Instead of taking close-up visible-light photographs, Webb uses its powerful infrared instruments to analyze Pluto’s atmosphere, surface ices, temperature, and chemical composition with unprecedented sensitivity. These observations are helping scientists investigate how Pluto’s thin nitrogen atmosphere changes over time, how methane and carbon monoxide ice behave in extreme cold, and how the distant dwarf planet continues to evolve billions of kilometers from the Sun. Despite sensational headlines, there is nothing impossible about James Webb observing Pluto. The telescope was designed to study faint infrared objects throughout the Solar System and far beyond. What makes these observations extraordinary is the level of detail Webb can detect—not the fact that it can see Pluto. In this documentary, you’ll discover: Why James Webb observed Pluto despite New Horizons already visiting it. How infrared astronomy reveals details invisible to ordinary telescopes. What scientists learned about Pluto’s atmosphere and frozen surface. How Pluto compares to other icy worlds in the Kuiper Belt. The latest discoveries from NASA’s most powerful space telescope. The difference between scientific breakthroughs and sensational internet headlines. Join us as we explore how James Webb is giving astronomers an entirely new perspective on one of the Solar System’s most mysterious worlds. ???? Do you think Pluto should still be considered the ninth planet? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Space

Russia launches NASA astronaut Anil Menon and 2 cosmonauts to the International Space Station

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News

By Mike Wall

Last updated yesterday (Space.com)

Liftoff occurred at 10:47 a.m. ET, and the spaceflyers reached the ISS three hours later.

The International Space Station has three new residents.

NASA’s Anil Menon and cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina lifted off atop a Russian Soyuz rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 10:47 a.m. EDT (1447 GMT; 7:47 p.m. local time in Baikonur), heading toward the orbiting lab.

Their Soyuz executed nominal side booster separation about two minutes after launch, followed by second stage separation about 2.5 minutes later, as the rocket flew at 105 miles (169 kilometers) in altitude. Third stage orbital insertion and separation was completed at about 8 minutes and 46 seconds, putting Russia’s Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft and crew on course to chase down the International Space Station (ISS).

A rocket launches against a chartreuse-colored sky
A Soyuz rocket launches NASA astronaut Anil Menon and cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina toward the International Space Station from Baikonur Cosmodrome on July 14, 2026. (Image credit: Roscosmos/NASA)

The trio caught up to the ISS after just two orbits, docking with the outpost at 1:52 p.m. EDT (1752 GMT). The two spacecraft were flying 260 miles (418 kilometers) above the Mediterranean Sea at the time, NASA officials said during the agency’s docking webcast.

That webcast will resume at 3:30 p.m. EDT (1930 GMT) ahead of the opening of the hatches between the Soyuz and the ISS, which is expected around 3:55 p.m. EDT (1955 GMT).You may like

The MS-29 trio will join the seven astronauts already living aboard the ISS — NASA’s Jessica Meir, Jack Hathaway, and Chris Williams, the European Space Agency‘s Sophie Adenot, and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, Sergei Mikaev, and Andrey Fedyaev of the Russian space agency Roscosmos.

two male astronauts and a female astronauts, all of them wearing white spacesuits, sit for an official portrait
NASA astronaut Anil Menon (left) and Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina, Soyuz MS-29 prime crew members, pose for a portrait at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Russia. (Image credit: GCTC)

This is the first spaceflight for Menon, who was selected as a NASA astronaut candidate in December 2021, in the agency’s Group 23. He’s married to Anna Menon, who was picked in the next astronaut candidate class, Group 24, in September 2025.

Anna Menon has already been to space, though not with NASA. In September 2024, while an employee of SpaceX, she flew on the company’s Polaris Dawn mission to Earth orbit. That five-day flight, which was funded and commanded by current NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, featured the first-ever commercial spacewalk and reached a maximum altitude of 870 miles (1,400.7 kilometers) — higher than any previous crewed Earth-orbiting mission had gotten.

Anil Menon is a former SpaceX-er as well; he was the company’s first-ever flight surgeon.

MS-29’s flight is the second-ever space mission for both Dubrov and Kikina. Dubrov lived aboard the ISS from April 2021 to March 2022, and Kikina spent five months on the outpost, from October 2022 to March 2023.What to read next

Kikina, the only female member of Russia’s active astronaut corps, flew to and from the ISS back then on SpaceX’s Crew-5 mission. That was a big deal: She was the first Russian ever to fly on a private U.S. spacecraft, and the first cosmonaut to fly on any American space vehicle since December 2002, when cosmonauts Valery Korzun and Sergey Treshchov came back to Earth from the ISS aboard the space shuttle Endeavour.

The MS-29 trio will spend about eight months living and working on the orbiting lab. Menon will help conduct a wide variety of scientific experiments during that stretch.

“He will continue research to refine in-space production of semiconductor crystals to enable the large-scale manufacturing of components needed for high-performance computers, artificial intelligence, and improved medical devices,” NASA officials wrote in a July 9 media advisory.

“Menon also will perform ultrasound using augmented reality and artificial intelligence methods that could eliminate the need for medical support from Earth on future space missions,” they added.

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 1:55 p.m. ET with news of successful docking.

Mike Wall

Mike Wall

Spaceflight and Tech Editor

Michael Wall is the Spaceflight and Tech Editor for Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers human and robotic spaceflight, military space, and exoplanets, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, “Out There,” was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor’s degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.