technical updates

SpaceX will make some history this month, if all goes according to plan. The company aims to launch the 14th test flight of its Starship megarocket before August is out, Elon Musk said today (Aug. 4) during SpaceX 's first-ever quarterly earnings call. Starship will deploy viable payloads into orbit on Flight 14, something it has never done before — and there will be other unprecedented action as well. "I'd say things look very good, and that's why we, assuming we receive regulatory approval to do so, will attempt to catch the Ship with the tower on the next flight, which is tentatively scheduled for the end of this month," Musk said during today's call. "Ship" is the 171-foot-tall (52 meters) upper stage of Starship, which also features a giant first-stage booster called Super Heavy. Both of these elements are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable — a br...

SpaceX will launch three big direct-to-cell satellites early on Wednesday morning (Aug. 5), and you can watch the action live. A Falcon 9 rocket carrying three of AST SpaceMobile's BlueBird spacecraft is scheduled to lift off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Wednesday during a 96-minute window that opens at 3:42 a.m. EDT (0742 GMT). You can watch the action live here at Space.com courtesy of AST SpaceMobile, or directly via the Texas-based company . Coverage will begin at 2:42 a.m. EDT (0642 GMT). A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches the BlueBird 8-10 mission for AST SpaceMobile from Florida on June 17, 2026. (Image credit: SpaceX) Wednesday's launch will continue building AST SpaceMobile's constellation in low Earth orbit (LEO), which will beam internet service directly to unmodified smartphones. Ten of the company's BlueBird spacecraft have lifted off to...

Meet the Dynamic Eclipse Broadcast Initiative — a passion-driven citizen science endeavour that shares breathtaking views of total solar eclipses while capturing valuable data on the sun's incandescent atmosphere. At the heart of our solar system is a burning ball of superheated gas 100 times the width of Earth , with a thermonuclear reaction raging at its core. Its radiation and gravity hold the planets in their orbit and allow for the existence of life on our Blue Marble. Yet despite centuries of scientific scrutiny, many mysteries remain as to the inner workings of our sun and the influence it extends out into the solar system. What is the DEB Initiative? One effort to unravel the mysteries and share the beauty of our parent star is being undertaken by the DEB. A network of volunteer solar observers coordinated and guided by professional astronomers from Southern Illinois University Carb...

The full moon of August 2026 will occur at 12:18 a.m. (0416 GMT) on Aug. 28, as the lunar disk shines directly opposite the sun in Earth's sky. Its arrival will trigger a breathtaking lunar eclipse late in the month, which will be visible across the Americas and parts of Africa and Europe as Earth passes between the sun and moon to bathe the lunar disk in shadow. August's full moon is often referred to as the Sturgeon moon — a Native American name that reflects the time of year that the giant fish are most easily pulled from the waters of the North American Great Lakes and Lake Champlain, according to the Old Farmer's Almanac . When to see the August full moon Stargazers in the U.S. will see the Sturgeon Moon rise over the eastern horizon at sunset on Aug. 27. You may notice the moon adopt a yellow-orange hue in the hour following moonrise, as the blue wavelengths of its light ar...

This rocket wasn't supposed to die so dramatically. On Wednesday (Aug. 5) at about 2:35 a.m. EDT (0635 GMT), the upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will slam into the moon , blasting out a crater about 89 feet (27 meters) wide. The rocket body has been loitering lazily high above Earth for more than 18 months. What jolted it out of its unremarkable senescence and put it on a kamikaze course for the moon ? It didn't take much, as the rocket regularly crossed into the moon's neck of the woods. The Falcon 9 launched in January 2025 , carrying aloft two private robotic lunar landers — Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost and Resilience, which was built by the Tokyo-based company ispace. (Blue Ghost landed successfully and carried out its historic mission, but Resilience crashed during its touchdown attempt.) Falcon 9 first stages are famously reusable , but the vehicle's upper ...

Cyberpunk is back in a big way, baby! This summer, we've gotten two big doses of dystopian sci-fi: first with the recent San Diego Comic-Con trailer launch for Prime Video's upcoming " Blade Runner 2099 " and now Apple TV's prestige series based on sci-fi guru William Gibson 's 1984 cult novel, " Neuromancer ." The futuristic plotline centers around a burned-out computer hacker living in the overcrowded dystopian underworld of Japan's Chiba City who takes on a dangerous cyberspace gig that just might leave him dead. Its 10-episode debut season will be delivered beginning with a double chapter premiere, with subsequent installments airing each Friday through March 19, 2027. Cyberpunk fans can plug into Apple TV's "Neuromancer" starting Jan. 22, 2027. (Image credit: Apple TV+) Created by executive producer and showrunner Graham Roland, the mast...