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Different pictures from space.

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Space can be a wondrous place, and we've got the pictures to prove it! Take a look at our favorite pictures from space here, and if you're wondering what happened today in space history don't miss our On This Day in Space video show (opens in new tab) here!

Stunning auroras brighten up view from space station

Thursday, August 18, 2022: With the increased activity of the sun over the past week, astronauts on the International Space Station get treated to spectacular views of polar light displays above the planet.

This image, shared on Twitter (opens in new tab) by NASA astronaut Bob Hines on Wednesday (Aug. 17), coincides with the arrival of a coronal mass ejection, a burst of plasma from the sun, which triggered a geomagnetic storm in Earth's atmosphere.

"Absolutely SPECTACULAR aurora today!!! Thankful for the recent solar activity resulting in these wonderful sights!," Hines said in his Tweet.

While Earthling's won't be able to enjoy such magnificent spectacles, auroras can currently be spotted from areas farther away from the poles than usual. In the U.S., these natural light displays might brighten up the sky as far south as New York, and the northern parts of Europe can get a glimpse too. - Tereza Pultarova

NASA's moon rocket heading to launch pad

Wednesday, August 17, 2022: NASA's Space Launch System moon rocket photographed on its journey to the launch pad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida ahead of its debut flight later this month.

The rocket, which will send the uncrewed Orion space capsule for an test trip around the moon as part of the Artemis I mission on Aug. 29, left the iconic Apollo-era Vehicle Assembly Building at about 10 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, Aug. 16 (0200 GMT Wednesday, Aug. 17).

The 365-foot-tall (111 meters) rocket travels in an upright position on a giant crawler vehicle that moves at a speed of only 1 to 2 miles an hour (1.6 to 3.2 km/h), making the whole roll-out process last about 11 hours. - Tereza Pultarova

NASA's moon rocket ready for roll-out ahead of debut flight

Tuesday, August 16, 2022: NASA's Space Launch System rocket captured inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center ahead of its roll out to the launch pad.

The rocket is scheduled to launch an uncrewed Orion space capsule for a round trip to the moon and back on August 29 to test technologies for future human exploration of Earth's natural satellite. - Tereza Pultarova

A different kind of crater lake

Monday, Aug. 15, 2022: ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti has one of the best views of our planet from her perch on the International Space Station, and in a tweet posted Thursday (Aug. 11), she shared the view with the people of Chad to celebrate the nation's independence day.

"We explore space, and sometimes space comes to us," she wrote (opens in new tab) introducing an image of the Gweni-Fada meteorite impact crater, which she noted is about 9 miles (14 kilometers) across and formed more than 300 million years ago. The view displays the crater's characteristic circular shape; this crater currently contains a crescent-shaped lake where a river flows into the impact scar. -Meghan Bartels

Betelgeuse recovering after mysterious dimming episode

Friday, Aug. 12, 2022: Betelgeuse underwent a strange dimming event in 2019. Now scientists looking at data from the Hubble Space Telescope and several other observatories believe the red giant star blew its top in 2019, and that Betelgeuse's behavior is still somewhat temperamental as a result.

Astronomers put together a timeline of the events showing that the star likely had a huge surface mass ejection. That event made a huge area of Betelgeuse blast off into space. The outburst was 400 billion times more massive than a typical coronal mass ejection that the sun experiences. - Elizabeth Howell

NASA 'moonikin' readies for Artemis 1 launch

Thursday, Aug. 11, 2022: The German space agency caught a glimpse of a NASA 'moonikin' during final preparations for a lunar mission. While DLR was loading some mannequins on board Artemis 1, engineers uploaded an image of the NASA human simulant, who is named after Apollo 13 engineer Arturo Campos.

"Our #LunaTwins have taken their places. This past week, Helga & Zohar have been assembled & installed in the capsule at . Waiting inside to greet them - Commander Moonikin Campos who is also one of the 'passengers' on board #Artemis I," DLR tweeted (opens in new tab).

Artemis 1 aims to launch no earlier than Aug. 29 for a round-the-moon mission that will last more than a month. The mission will use these mannequins to assess the space environment for radiation, shaking and other stresses of spaceflight to make sure the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft are ready to carry humans later in the 2020s. - Elizabeth Howell

SpaceX does a static fire test for Starship rocket

Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2022: SpaceX is getting ready for its first orbital flight of Starship. SpaceX conducted a "static fire" test of its Starship Super Heavy Booster 7 on Aug. 9, 2022 at its launching facility in south Texas.

"Team at Starbase completed a single Raptor engine static fire test of Super Heavy Booster 7 on the orbital launch pad," SpaceX wrote in a tweet describing the test.

SpaceX will need to secure full approval from the Federal Aviation Administration before making the launch, which will be Starship's first in orbit and the first mission of any sort since 2021. SpaceX hopes to make that journey later in 2022 to prepare Starship for NASA human Artemis program missions to the moon and eventually, human Mars exploration. - Elizabeth Howell

NASA astronauts train with xEMU lunar spacesuit

Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2022: NASA astronaut Don Pettit shared an image of he and fellow agency astronaut Doug Wheelock, each wearing an xEMU spacesuit prototype. The NASA spacesuit is being assessed at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Pettit wrote, for its ability to support astronaut activities on the moon.

"Learning how to clean our spacesuits before ingressing the lander," Pettit wrote on Twitter (opens in new tab). "Everyone wore full face respirators. Lunar regolith has health implications to crewed #artemis missions."

NASA initially planned to use xEMU in support of its Artemis program, which aims to put boots on the surface no earlier than 2025. Earlier this year, however, the agency asked commercial companies to manufacture Artemis spacesuits after the NASA Office of the Inspector General raised concerns about development delays with the xEMU. The companies making lunar spacesuits will have access to xEMU data during development of their own astronaut outfits. - Elizabeth Howell

'Celestial cloudscape' shines in Orion Nebula

Monday, Aug. 8, 2022: A new image from the Hubble Space Telescope appears to be peering into the depths of a watercolor cloud. The "celestial cloudscape", as European Space Agency officials termed it (opens in new tab), is in reality a swirl of gas surrounding a star nursery in the famed Orion Nebula.

Hubble was capturing activity around Herbig Haro (HH) object 505. HH objects are glowing areas around fresh stars, which occur as winds flowing off from these newborns slams swiftly. into regional gas and dust.

"In the case of HH 505, these outflows originate from the star IX Ori, which lies on the outskirts of the Orion Nebula around 1000 light-years from Earth," Hubble officials added. "The outflows themselves are visible as gracefully curving structures at the top and bottom of this image, and are distorted into sinuous curves by their interaction with the large-scale flow of gas and dust from the core of the Orion Nebula." - Elizabeth Howell

Water level so low in Europe's Rhine river that cargo ships may no longer be able to pass

Friday, August 5, 2022: The prolonged spell of hot and dry weather that affects Europe this summer has caused the water level in the river Rhine, one of western Europe's major waterways, to drop so low that cargo ships may no longer be able to pass.

A comparison of two images captured by the European Earth-observing satellite Sentinel-2 a year apart, on Aug.5 2021 and Aug. 3 2022, reveals the severity of the situation near the city of Gendt in the Netherlands.

Measurements taken in Lobith, near the Dutch border with Germany, revealed that the river is near record low levels. Earlier this week, the Dutch government declared the official water shortage situation in the country. - Tereza Pultarova

Thunderstorms seen from space

Thursday, August 4, 2022: Lightnings brightening up the night sky over eastern Africa on the backdrop of the star-studded blackness of the universe can be seen in this image taken from aboard the International Space Station.

NASA astronaut Bob Hines, who is a member of the current aboard the orbital outpost, shared the image on his account on Sunday, July 31.

"Thunderstorms over eastern Africa," Hines said in the tweet. "The @Space_Station is a wonderful post to observe the beautiful intricacy of our planet!" - Tereza Pultarova

NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins checking science experiments at International Space Station

Wednesday, August 3, 2022: There is no up and down in microgravity. It only depends on the viewpoint. So NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins is really not hanging from the ceiling of the International Space Station while checking science experiments.

, who arrived at the orbital outpost as part of Crew-4 on board SpaceX's Dragon capsule Freedom on April 27, shared the image on her account on Wednesday (Aug. 3).

"Just another day in the life on @Space_Station, doing microscopy on the ceiling," Watkins said in the tweet. Our Lab module is jam-packed with science, but access to three dimensions opens up a lot more space! Here, I'm checking out how immune cells age in microgravity in support of the Immunosenescence study."

Watkins is the first black woman on a long-duration mission to the International Space Station. She is also among the candidates for NASA's future moon mission. - Tereza Pultarova

Astronauts see wildfires raging from International Space Station

Tuesday, August 2, 2022: Astronauts aboard the International Space Station have an overview of our planet struggling amid the warming climate.

This image, shared by European astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti on her Twitter account on Tuesday (Aug. 2), reveals a massive cloud of smoke rising from a wildfire devouring a rye field in western Poland on the final July weekend.

" We spotted a huge wildfire near Nowa Wieś Zbąska, Poland, this weekend," Cristoforetti said in her tweet. "According to local news it destroyed over 50 hectares [0.2 square miles] of grain. Our thoughts are with the residents and the farmers."

The fire is only one of many that has ravaged Europe this summer as the continent broiled in a record-breaking heatwave. - Tereza Pultarova

Svalbard melts mid record-breaking temperatures

Monday, August 1, 2022: Ice caps in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard are melting fast this summer as temperatures reach 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) above the historical average.

This image, captured by the European Earth-observing satellite Sentinel-2 on July 31, shows a large amount of sediments flowing into the Arctic Sea from the islands, which are among the northernmost inhabited areas of the world.

The rapidly melting snow and ice in areas near the polar circle, contribute to the rising sea levels, a major consequence of progressing climate change. The summer of 2022 is exceptionally warm in Svalbard with temperatures up to 9 degrees F (5 degrees C) above the average levels for 1981 - 2010. -- Tereza Pultarova

Jupiter icy moon explorer coming together in NASA's clean room

Friday, July 28, 2022: NASA's Europa Clipper mission that will search for traces of life on Jupiter's ice-covered moon Europa is being assembled in NASA's clean room ahead of its planned launch in 2024.

Europa Clipper is expected to launch in October 2024 on SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. - Tereza Pultarova

Eyes in space are getting ever sharper

Wednesday, July 27, 2022: The Binhai Railway Station in northern China is revealed in astonishing detail in this image taken from space by a satellite of U.S.-based Earth observation company Maxar Technologies.

Maxar digitally enhances images taken by their satellites with the resolution of 12 inches (30 centimeters) per pixel to create stunningly detailed photographs in which each pixel covers a square of only 6 by 6 inches (15 by 15 cm).

Instead of blurry features in the original images, fine details emerge on the background, increasing the amount of information users, including governments, the military and city planners can derive from each image.

Even though they are hundreds of miles away, these eyes in space are watching us ever more closely. - Tereza Pultarova

Juno sees hurricane's on Jupiter's North Pole

Wednesday, July 27, 2022: NASA's Juno probe snapped these mesmerizing images of powerful storms around the North Pole of Jupiter during its close approach to the planet on July 5.

The storms are over 30 miles (50 kilometers) deep and hundreds of miles wide, NASA said in a . Scientists are still trying to understand what drives the formation of these storms in 's atmosphere and gives them their striking colors. Observations have revealed that these cyclones have different colors based on the direction of their spin and their location. NASA asks space enthusiasts and citizen scientists to help them categorize these storms and other atmospheric phenomena captured by as part of the Jovian Vortex Hunter project. - Tereza Pultarova

Wildfire near California's Yosemite National Park captured from space

Tuesday, July 26, 2022: NASA's Earth-observing satellite Landsat 9 captured this image of a wildfire that erupted in California's Yosemite National Park on Friday (July 22).

The image reveals the extent of the burnt area as well as the active fire line where hundreds of firefighters are battling to stop the flames. The blaze, dubbed the Oak Fire, has devoured over 25 square miles (65 square kilometers) of parched forest over the weekend.

The fire, experts believe, was helped by the progressing climate change, which exacerbates California's droughts, stripping vegetation of moisture in a way unseen before. - Tereza Pultarova

Sunrise brightens up Chinese space station in a video taken from new module

Monday, July 25, 2022: The rays of sun appearing through Earth's atmosphere on the backdrop of China's space station were filmed by cameras aboard the new Wentian module that arrived at the orbital outpost on Monday (July 25).

Wentian, launched on Sunday (July 24), joined the Tianhe core module of the Tiangong space station. The structure is still waiting for its third module, called Mengtian, which is expected to launch later this year. The three modules together will form a T-shaped structure that China hopes to operate for up to 15 years. - Tereza Pultarova

First European woman ever performs a spacewalk

Friday, July 22, 2022: Italian Samantha Cristoforetti has become the first European woman to perform a spacewalk.

Cristoforetti, who is a European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut, spent seven hours in the vacuum of space outside the International Space Station on Thursday, July 21, working with Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev to configure the European Robotic Arm installed on the Russian segment of the space station. The pair also hand deployed several small satellites.

The milestone spacewalk took place amid tensions between Russia and its western partners over Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Earlier this month, the Russian space agency Roscosmos released images of the current Russian space station crew posing with flags of the separatist regions in eastern Ukraine where Russian military forces killed thousands of civilians in the past months. - Tereza Pultarova

Details of intricate Martian canyon system revealed in a new image

Thursday, July 21, 2022: The European Mars Express spacecraft captured an image revealing massive ruptures in Martian crust that form part of the 2,500-mile-long (4,000 kilometers) Valles Marineris canyon system.

The image, captured on Apr. 21 but only released by the European Space Agency (ESA) on Jul. 20, shows the Ius and Tithonium Chasmata, or trenches, in the western part of the Valles Marineris. Ius Chasma, on the left, is 522 miles long (840 km), while the Tithonium Chasma, on the right, stretches over 500 miles (805 km). At 4.4 miles deep (7 km), the trenches could nearly swallow Earth's highest mountain Mount Everest.

Valles Marines is the largest canyon system in the solar system. If put on Earth, it would stretch from the north of Norway all the way to Sicily in the south of Italy. The canyon system is ten times longer, 20 times wider and five times deeper than the U.S. Grand Canyon. - Tereza Pultarova

Satellite captures cloudfree Europe amid sweltering heat wave

Wednesday, July 20, 2022: The European weather forecasting satellite Meteosat observed as the nearly cloud-free Europe broiled in a record-breaking July heatwave.

The video, capturing views of Europe from 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers) afar during the past two weeks, reveals a high pressure ridge over north-west Africa, funneling hot air into western Europe.

The heatwave broke temperature records in several countries including Portugal, which reached an all time high of 116 degrees Fahrenheit (47 degrees Celsius) and the usually cooler U.K., which for the first time in recorded history saw temperatures exceed 105 degrees F (40 degrees C). - Tereza Pultarova

Wildfire smoke drifting over the sea

Tuesday, July 19, 2022: Smoke from devastating wildfires in southwest France drifts over the Bay of Biscay in this image captured by the European Meteosat weather-forecasting satellite.

The wildfire is one of many blazing through Europe amid a record-breaking heatwave, which has seen temperatures attack 105 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) even in usually milder climates, such as in the U.K.

According to the European environmental agency Copernicus, over 150 square miles (390 square kilometers) of land have burnt in the past ten days in France, Spain and Portugal alone.

The highest alert for the risk of wildfire breakouts is in place today in Spain, France, Italy and the U.K. - Tereza Pultarova

Hubble captures illusory mirror galaxies through gravitational lens

Monday, July 18, 2022: The mirror galaxy at the center of this image is a mirage caused by a phenomenon called gravitational lensing, in which a super-massive object bends light, acting like a magnifying glass.

The image, obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope, captures a galaxy called SGAS J143845+145407, which sits behind a massive object that causes the lensing effect.

Gravitational lensing is nature's help for astronomers, enabling them to observe stars and galaxies that would otherwise be too distant and faint to see. The image was obtained during a campaign focused on the oldest galaxies in the universe, and scientists hope it will help them piece together how first galaxies emerged in the early universe. - Tereza Pultarova

Europe's Vega C rocket lifts off for its debut flight into the cloudy South American sky

Friday, July 15, 2022: The European Vega C rocket is captured in this image seconds after lifting off for its debut flight on Wednesday, July 13.

The European Space Agency, which oversaw the development of Vega C, shared the image on its Twitter account, saying: "We love this shot from one of ESA photographer Stephane Corvaja's remote cams! @vega_sts lit up the rainy gray skies of Kourou earlier this week."

The rocket, which shot off from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, after a two-hour delay, is an enhanced version of the earlier Vega and can lift larger and heavier payloads compared to its predecessor.

Vega C is expected to play an important role in helping Europe plug the gap in its access to launch services that it struggles with after having ceased cooperation with Russia in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine. The French company Arianespace, which manages the European launcher program, used to offer launches on Russia's Soyuz rockets in addition to the European homegrown Vega and the heavy lift Ariane 5. But Russia terminated the cooperation as a retaliation for sanctions imposed by western countries in response to the situation in Ukraine. - Tereza Pultarova

Astronauts observe the sun peeking through Earth's atmosphere

Thursday, July 14, 2022: The sun emerges above Earth's horizon, sending first morning rays through the planet's atmosphere, in an ethereal snapshot taken from the International Space Station.

NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren shared the image on his Twitter account on Wednesday, July 13.

"The sun is peeking through the atmosphere!" he said in the .

Lindgren arrived at the space station in April this year as a commander of the Crew-4 mission aboard SpaceX's Dragon Freedom. Lindgren and his crewmates, NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Robert Hines, and the European Space Agency's Samantha Cristoforetti will return to Earth later this year. - Tereza Pultarova

Europe's new Vega C rocket lifts off for maiden flight

Wednesday, July 13, 2022: Europe's new Vega C rocket lifted off for its debut flight from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, after a two-hour delay.

The rocket, sporting two new engines in its first and second stages and an upgraded reignatable upper stage, delivered into orbit an Italian scientific satellite called LARES-2, which will measure the distortion of space-time caused by the rotation of Earth. The rocket also gave a ride to six cubesats built by a range of European companies. - Tereza Pultarova

James Webb Space Telescope reveals a magnificent view of the Carina Nebula

Tuesday, July 12, 2022: This striking image of the Carina Nebula was captured by the James Webb Space Telescope and revealed during the mission's first release of scientific-level images to the general public on Tuesday, July 12.

The telescope, which observes the surrounding universe in infrared light, which is essentially heat, can peer through dust and see features that are obscured to optical telescopes, such Webb's predecessor Hubble.

The image, one of five unveiled during the long-awaited release, reveals a cosmic landscape of dusty mountains and valleys strewn with glittering stars. In this region, fittingly called the Cosmic Cliffs, new stars are just being born, a process that has previously been impossible to observe. - Tereza Pultarova

Satellite captures vicious wildfire raging in Utah

Monday, July 11, 2022: The European Earth-observing satellite Sentinel-2 captured this image of a disastrous wildfire near Fillmore, Utah.

The Halfway Hillfire broke out on Friday, July 8, reportedly after a group of young men failed to put out a campfire. The fire has since devoured about 12.5 square miles (32.4 square kilometers) of land.

This image was taken when Sentinel-2 flew over the site on Saturday, July 9. - Tereza Pultarova

Debris ejected as OSIRIS-REx probe touches down at asteroid Bennu

Friday, July 8, 2022: A video captured by NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission as it touched down on near-Earth asteroid Bennu in 2020 reveals an unexpected response of the space rock's surface.

The touchdown, during which the probe collected 9 ounces (250 grams) of dust from Bennu, stirred a large amount of dust and gravel and left behind a 26-foot-wide (8 m) crater. The mission team described the aftermath of the impact as "frightening" and completely unexpected as it revealed that the make-up of the asteroid, which has a small probability of hitting Earth in the next two hundred years, is quite different than expected.

The soft and "fluid" composition of the asteroid could make a possible deflection attempt in the future more complicated, scientists said. - Tereza Pultarova

SpaceX flies rocket stage for record-setting 13th time

Thursday, July 7, 2022: SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Thursday, July 7, with a first stage flown for the record-breaking 13th time.

The launch, SpaceX's 50th to date, lofted into low Earth orbit a batch of 53 Starlink internet satellites.

The first stage, which previously launched SpaceX's first-ever crewed flight, the Demo-2 mission to the International Space Station in 2020, successfully landed on a droneship off the Florida coast about 8 minutes after lift-off. - Tereza Pultarova

Heatwave in Paris captures from space

Wednesday, July 6, 2022: An instrument mounted on the International Space Station captured a record-breaking heatwave that struck France's capital Paris in June.

The ECOSTRESS instrument, operated by NASA, revealed soaring ground temperatures in the city on June 18 as Paris struggled through a scorching day on which air temperatures exceeded the average for this time of the year by up to 18 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius).

The image clearly shows the cooling effect of parks, vegetation and water bodies, which appear in green and blue hues amid the redness of the boiling developed areas. - Tereza Pultarova

Rocket Lab celebrates CAPSTONE send-off

Tuesday, July 5, 2022: Rocket Lab ground controllers celebrate the successful dispatch of NASA's CAPSTONE cubesat on its historical cruise to the moon.

The microwave-sized satellite separated from the Rocket Lab-built Photon spacecraft bus on Monday (July 4), after completing an engine burn that set it on a course toward Earth's natural satellite.

" That feeling when you send a satellite into deep space for @NASA, unlocking a new interplanetary exploration capability with the Photon spacecraft you helped to design and build," Rocket Lab said on .

Rocket Lab launched CAPSTONE on its Electron rocket from New Zealand on June 28. The mission is the first beyond Earth's orbit for the company, which is known for launching small satellites into low orbits around our planet. - Tereza Pultarova

Posing on Etna like on the moon

Monday, July 4, 2022: A pair of lunar robots designed by German engineers took this selfie to conclude a successful exercise of autonomous operations on the moon-like slopes of Italy's Mount Etna.

The robots practiced teamwork as they navigated the challenging terrain near the volcano's smoking crater on their own. The robots completed a set of tasks including the collection of samples and analysis of their chemical compositions. They even distributed radio antennas across the volcanic dunes to set up a radio astronomy observatory, pretending it was the far side of the moon.

The robots were built by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). - Tereza Pultarova

Training for the moon

Friday, July 1, 2022: An experimental moon exploration robot called Scout is being tested in the moon-like terrain of Italy's Etna volcano.

The robot, developed by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) was built to navigate in areas that are difficult to access. In this video, it can be seen moving with confidence on the volcanic soil, which is similar in texture to lunar regolith. - Tereza Pultarova

RocketLab's moonbound rocket leaves a stunning trail after launch

Thursday, June 30, 2022: RocketLab's Electron rocket lifted off from New Zealand's Māhia Peninsula on Tuesday (June 28) with a pioneering moon-bound satellite aboard, leaving a stunning trail in its wake.

The CAPSTONE mission, operated by NASA, is expected to reach the moon's orbit in November this year. The small satellite will test the stability of the orbit NASA plans to use for its Gateway lunar space station. The launch was RocketLab's first aiming for deep space. The company is known for launching small satellites into low Earth orbit. - Tereza Pultarova

The faintest ever asteroid observed by Very Large Telescope

Wednesday, June 29, 2022: The Very Large Telescope in Chile managed to track an extremely faint asteroid to help rule out its projected collision with Earth.

The asteroid, dubbed 2021 QM1, was discovered in August last year. Initial observations indicated it was bound to slam into our planet in 2052. The asteroid then disappeared for several months in the glare of the sun as it approached the star. When it reemerged in the darker sky again, it was too far away for most ground-based telescopes to see. But the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile, one of the most powerful optical telescopes in the world, rose to the challenge and detected the asteroid when it had a magnitude of 27 (the sun, by far the brightest object in the sky, has a magnitude of minus 27). On top of that, astronomers had to find the super-faint space rock on the backdrop of the star-studded band of the Milky Way. The observations enabled astronomers to finetune the calculation of the space rock's orbit and confirm it won't hit Earth in the end. - Tereza Pultarova

Goodbye to Cygnus

Tuesday, June 28, 2022: European astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti posing at the hatch between the International Space Station and the Cygnus cargo vehicle, which is expected to depart on Tuesday (June 28).

The image, taken just before the closing of the hatches, reveals the Cygnus interior packed with waste and unwanted items, which the capsule will take with it for a burn-up in Earth's atmosphere.

" Last night on ISS for Cygnus!" Cristoforetti wrote in a tweet. "Vehicle is fully loaded, hatch is closed, robotic arm has grappled it for unberthing early tomorrow morning. Thanks for bringing us supplies, for the orbit reboost and.... last but not least... for taking our trash!"

Cygnus, developed by American firm Orbital Sciences, which was since acquired by aerospace giant Northrop Grumman, is not designed to return to Earth, unlike SpaceX Cargo Dragon capsule.

During its mission, Cygnus performed its first reboost of the International Space Station's altitude. The maneuver, completed on Saturday (June 25), was only partially successful and raised the station's altitude by one tenth of a mile, NASA said in a . Cygnus previously tested the capability in 2018. - Tereza Pultarova

Europe's new Ariane 6 rocket assembled before tests

Monday, June 27, 2022: The core of Europe's new heavy-lift Ariane 6 rocket has been assembled at Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana ahead of crucial tests that will pave the way for the rocket's debut flight next year.

Over the past weeks, engineers have connected the rocket's core and upper stages, which will now be transported to the Ariane 6 Mobile Gantry and lifted into a vertical position ahead of their transfer to the launch pad.

The Ariane 6 rocket will fly in two configurations, with 2 or 4 strap-on boosters depending on the payload needs. The rocket's debut flight was originally expected to take place in 2020. - Tereza Pultarova

Pioneering mission sends selfie home

Friday, June 24, 2022: The solar-sailing spacecraft LightSail 2 has sent a selfie home as it completes its third year in orbit around Earth.

Mercury dazzles in a new snap by Europe's BepiColombo probe

Thursday, June 23, 2022: The BepiColombo space probe took its second look at Mercury on Thursday, June 23, during a gravity-assist flyby designed to adjust the spacecraft's trajectory so that it can enter orbit around the solar system's innermost planet in 2025.

BepiColombo, a joint mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), launched in 2018 for a seven-year cruise to the scorched little planet.

Mercury is notoriously difficult to reach as any spacecraft traveling in its direction needs to constantly brake against the gravitational pull of the sun. To do that, mission specialists designed a trajectory that takes the spacecraft on a long and winding road, which uses the gravity of other celestial bodies to slow down the spacecraft. BepiColombo has to perform nine flybys overall before it can enter the orbit of Mercury: one at Earth, two at Venus and six at Mercury itself. This image was taken during BepiColombo's second encounter with Mercury, when the probe passed only about 120 miles (200 km) above the planet's crater-riddled surface. - Tereza Pultarova

Traces of past flooding spotted on surface of Mars

Wednesday, June 22, 2022: This image captures the Hebrus Valles channels in the northern lowlands of Mars, which were likely created by a catastrophic flooding in the past.

The image, captured by the High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) on board of NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in late May, shows channels of uniform width suggesting persistent flows eroding the landscape around two impact craters. The features may be a result of volcanic processes that involved fluids flowing over the basalt sediment layers, NASA said in a (opens in new tab). - Tereza Pultarova

Satellites watch as NASA's lunar rocket readies for crucial test

Tuesday, June 21, 2022: Satellites of U.S. Earth observation company Maxar Technologies captured this image of NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) moon rocket as it prepared for a critical pre-launch test.

The image, taken on Saturday (June 18), shows the 350-foot (106 meters) rocket erected on the launch pad at Launch Complex 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The rocket, with the Orion crew capsule atop, went through the so-called wet dress rehearsal on Monday (June 20), which saw the technical team run through the complete pre-launch sequence including fuelling and countdown minus only the engine ignition and launch.

The test, which concluded at 7:37 p.m. EDT (2337 GMT), was plagued with technical glitches and the countdown was halted several times due to hydrogen fuel leaks.

SLS is expected to launch the Orion capsule for an uncrewed test flight to the moon and back later this year. - Tereza Pultarova

NASA's moon rocket ahead of crucial test

Monday, June 20, 2022: NASA's Space Launch System rocket sits prepared on a launch pad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida ahead of a major test that will clear the way for the rocket's first uncrewed test flight.

The space agency's meteorologists confirmed a favorable weather forecast for the rocket's fuelling on Monday, which is the first step of the so-called wet dress rehearsal test. During this test, the operation teams will conduct the entire pre-launch procedure including the countdown, minus only the actual lift-off.

For tanking to proceed, there must be less than a 20% chance of lightning within 5 nautical miles (5.8 miles or 9.3 km) of Launch Pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the rehearsal is taking place, NASA said in a statement.

Additionally, winds must be lower than 37.5 knots (43.1 mph or 69.5 km/h) and the temperature must be above 41 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius), the agency stated.

NASA has not yet set the date for the uncrewed launch, which will propel the Orion capsule for a lunar round trip to test technical systems ahead of the first flight with humans. - Tereza Pultarova

Mesmerizing auroras shimmer in a video taken from International Space Station

Friday, June 17, 2022: Glorious auroras shimmer in Earth's atmosphere in a video sequence taken from the International Space Station.

European Space Agency's astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, who is currently aboard the orbital outpost as part of the Crew 4 mission, posted the video on her Twitter channel on Sunday, June 12. - Tereza Pultarova

Satellite captures retreat of Patagonian glacier

Thursday, June 16, 2022: A comparison of satellite images from 2018 and 2022 shows the retreat of the Viedma Glacier in Patagonia.

The glacier is part of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, which is jointly controlled by Chile and Argentina. The visualization, based on data from the European satellite Sentinel 2, shows how much the glacier's 1.2-miles-wide (2 kilometers) terminus, its end, which meets the Pacific Ocean, retreated over the past four years. Both images capture the situation in June when winter nears its peak in the Southern Hemisphere. According to , Patagonia's ice fields are among the fastest melting glacier areas in the world. - Tereza Pultarova

Strawberry Supermoon rises above NASA's lunar rocket

Wednesday, June 15, 2022: The Strawberry Supermoon rises above Launch Complex 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on June 14, 2022 where the agency's moon rocket sits ready for tests.

The Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with the Orion crew capsule atop is currently being prepared for the so-called wet dress rehearsal test, during which engineers will go through the entire pre-launch procedure including the countdown.

The rocket is expected to launch Orion on its uncrewed test flight to the moon and back later this year ahead of the first mission with astronauts. - Tereza Pultarova

Milky Way from the International Space Station

Tuesday, June 14, 2022: The band of the Milky Way can be seen stretching across the star-studded blackness of the universe in an image taken from the International Space Station.

The long-exposure photograph, shared by NASA Johnson Space Center (opens in new tab) on Flickr on May 30, was captured while the space station flew over the Pacific island of Vanuatu, northeast of Australia. The glow of Earth's atmosphere can also be seen in the image. - Tereza Pultarova

How stars move in the Milky Way galaxy

Friday, June 10, 2022: A visualization of data from the galaxy-mapping telescope Gaia reveals the rotation of the Milky Way.

In this image, darker stars move toward Earth, while the brighter ones speed away from us. The visualization is based on measurements of the so-called radial velocities (the speeds of motions towards or away from the observer) of 30 million stars in the Milky Way.

The measurements were released as part of a large data dump on June 13. These measurements enable astronomers not only to map the galaxy as it is today, but also to model its evolution into the past and future. - Tereza Pultarova

A "colorful" crater on Mars reflects varied chemical composition of planet's surface

Friday, June 10, 2022: An usually colorful crater on the surface of Mars was captured by the European Mars Express probe.

The hues and colors in the image likely reflect a varied chemical composition of the surface. - Tereza Pultarova

Early June ice flows in Hudson strait

Thursday, June 9, 2022: This beautiful time lapse of ice flows in Hudson Strait off the coast of north-western Canada has been captured by the European Sentinel 3 satellite in early June.

The video captures dynamic ice flows in the strait, which connects Hudson Bay with the Labrador Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. Ice covering the bay every winter usually starts breaking up when warmer weather arrives in May. The dynamic flow is influenced by the southbound Labrador current and its interaction with outflow from Hudson strait. - Tereza Pultarova

Humanoid robot Justin being controlled by astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti from aboard International Space Station

Wednesday, June 08, 2022: A humanoid robot called Justin is being controlled by European astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti from aboard the International Space Station.

Cristoforetti shared the image on her Twitter account on Wednesday (June 8).

"This is Surface Avatar, testing teleoperation of the Justin robot with a slick haptic interface ("force feedback") and different degrees of robot autonomy," Cristoforetti said. "Was fun!"

The Justin robot is a project of the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The agency has been developing the humanoid robot since 2008. First experiments with remote control from the space station took place in 2018. - Tereza Pultarova

Astronauts watch Etna volcano eruption from space

Tuesday, June 07, 2022: Italy's volcano Mount Etna has been spewing out lava in the past weeks and astronauts have enjoyed the spectacle from the International Space Station.

Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti shared this image of the fuming Etna on her Twitter account on Sunday (June 5).

The current eruption is no different. No damage to property or evacuations have been reported. - Tereza Pultarova

NASA's moon rocket heading to launch pad for major test

Colors of the wind

Monday, June 06, 2022: NASA's Space Launch System rocket is being rolled out to the launch pad for another go at the wet dress rehearsal test after a scrapped attempt in April due to fuelling problems.

The rocket, with the Orion capsule on top, began its four-mile journey from the iconic, Apollo-era Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Complex 39B on Monday (June 6) at 12:01 a.m. EDT (0401 GMT).

The rocket, which is expected to launch the Orion capsule for an unmanned test flight to the moon and back later this year, is set for the next wet dress rehearsal attempt in late June. During the wet dress rehearsal, the engineering teams will simulate the entire pre-launch procedure including fuelling and countdown, minus only the launch itself. - Tereza Pultarova

June 3, 2022: Inspiration4 astronaut Haley Arceneaux showed off the Pride flag in a tweet (opens in new tab) Wednesday (June 1), taken during her three-day mission in September 2021. "Happy Pride Month to all who celebrate and all who support," Arceneaux wrote. "I took this photo in space as we were passing over a sunset. It's like the earth was celebrating by showing off these beautiful colors." The billionaire-backed Inspiration4 was an all-civilian mission aboard the SpaceX Resilience spacecraft that raised hundreds of millions of dollars for Arceneaux's workplace, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis. - Elizabeth Howell

Stacking the space shuttle

Thursday, June 2, 2022: A forthcoming museum launch exhibit will show off how the space shuttle used to look on the launch pad. The California Science Center broke ground Wednesday (June 1) for its Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, the new permanent home (opens in new tab) of NASA's retired space shuttle, Endeavour. After 10 years of horizontal display, the spacecraft will eventually be repositioned to stand vertically alongside an external tank and twin solid rocket boosters in its liftoff position. Standing underneath the exhibit will simulate what only a few individuals used to see up close, during pad preparations to send Endeavour into space. - Elizabeth Howell

Feeling blue: The difference between Uranus and Neptune's colors is hazy

Wednesday, June 1, 2022: Now we might know why Neptune is a deeper blue in the face than Uranus. It comes down to a deep atmospheric layer that is full of haze. Neptune tends to recycle methane particles more quickly than Uranus in that middle layer, so the haze builds up on Uranus and turns it whiter. We might get lucky enough to take a closer look in a few decades, since a new government document suggests a Uranus mission should be NASA's highest-priority large planetary science mission and launch in the 2030s. - Elizabeth Howell

A bright shooting star shines above Red Planet-like rock

Tuesday, May 31, 2022: This image of a tau Herculids meteor looks like it belongs on Mars, but it actually was taken from a ruddy area of Nevada. The shooting star was captured May 30 from the Valley of Fire State Park as Earth ran into numerous shards from comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann, or SW3. There was no storm of shooting stars as some had hoped, but many meteor watchers around the world caught bright streakers like this one. - Elizabeth Howell

Stunning South Pole lunar eclipse on the aurora backdrop

Friday, May 27, 2022: This stunning time-lapse photograph shows the May 15 total lunar eclipse above an astronomical observatory at the South Pole on the backdrop of magnificent auroras and the star-studded polar sky.

The picture was taken by Aman Chokshi, a PhD astronomy student at the University of Melbourne, Australia, who is currently spending a year working at the South Pole Telescope in Antarctica, which studies microwave radiation emitted by the cosmos as part of the black-hole watching Event Horizon Telescope network.

"Last Monday we were lucky to see a total lunar eclipse from the South Pole," Chokshi told Space.com in an email. "The moon gradually dimmed and turned orange. It was crazy to see how the sky dimmed and the millions of stars of our Milky Way galaxy emerged. At the peak of the eclipse, a band of glowing auroras surged across the sky. A truly spectacular evening!"

Chokshi (whom you can see in the picture together with a friend waving into the camera from the edge of the roof of the telescope building), took the images that make up this time lapse over a 5-hour period.

"The background image is a single 20-second exposure with a sigma 24-70 millimeter lens, at f/2.8, iso 3200 on a Sony A7RVI, captured at the peak of the eclipse," Chokshi said. "The array of moon images were captured with an old sigma 400mm film lens, on a Sony A7S, on a skywatcher star adventurer tracker. The final composite image contains images of the moon every four minutes."

It took some courage and resourcefulness for Chokshi to take the images. The South Pole, currently nearing the peak of the winter period, is submerged in permanent darkness, and the polar expeditioners have to put up with some of the most extreme weather conditions one can experience on Earth.

"We had a sustained wind of 15-20 knots, which brought the ambient temperature of minus 60 degrees Celsius [minus 76 degrees Fahrenheit] to minus 80 degrees C [minus 112 degrees F] with windchill," Chokshi said. "Both cameras had to be housed in special heated foam boxes which I made, to prevent them from freezing."

For more stunning South Pole and astronomy photography, follow Chokshi on Instagram @aman_chokshi

-- Tereza Pultarova

Starliner lands safely, concluding a successful delayed test flight

Thursday, May 26, 2022: Boeing's Starliner space capsule has safely touched down at a missile range in New Mexico, concluding a successful, although more than a year delayed, test flight.

Starliner, which is set to join SpaceX's Crew Dragon in ferrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station, spent five days docked at the orbital outpost running through a series of tests.

The capsule launched on May 19 atop United Launch Alliance's Atlas V Rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The test flight was Boeing's second uncrewed attempt to demonstrate the performance of the technology, after its first orbital test flight failed to reach the space station in December 2019 due to software glitches. The capsule may perform its first flight with astronauts by the end of this year. - Tereza Pultarova

The last rays of the setting sun seen from International Space Station

Wednesday, May 25, 2022: Astronauts aboard the International Space Station took this stunning image of the sun setting above south-African Botswana on May 7.

The image captures the very last rays illuminating Earth's horizon seen from the space station's vantage point at 263 miles (432 kilometers) above the planet.

InSight Mars lander's death by dust

Tuesday, May 24, 2022: NASA's InSight Mars lander is slowly losing its battle against the dust, which has accumulated on its solar panels, preventing the spacecraft from generating the energy it needs to continue science operations.

Because of the dust cover, it has been increasingly difficult to keep InSight going and it is likely that NASA will kill the mission completely in the very near future.

Boeing's Starliner spaceship docked at International Space Station

Monday, May 23, 2022: After years of delays and one failed attempt, Boeing's Starliner space taxi has finally reached the International Space Station during its second unmanned orbital test flight.

The capsule, which will share the task of ferrying astronauts to and from the orbital outpost with SpaceX's Crew Dragon, docked at the station on Friday night (May 20) after a 26-hour spaceflight.

This picture was taken by European astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti shortly after the docking. Later, NASA astronaut and Cristoforetti's crew mate Kjell Lindgren commented on the picture (opens in new tab)on Twitter: "It's been a busy and amazing 3 weeks. So excited to be back in orbit with Exp67 and to welcome Boeing #Starliner to the International Space Station."

Starliner is expected to remain at the International Space Station until the middle of this week. It will perform a series of orbital tests before returning to Earth when weather permits. - Tereza Pultarova

Boeing's Starliner on its way to International Space Station

Friday, May 20, 2022: Boeing's Starliner capsule finally lifted off for its second test flight to the International Space Station after many months of delays.

The capsule, designed to carry astronauts to the orbital outpost, launched atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 6:54 p.m. EDT (2254 GMT) on Thursday (May 19).

The flight, the Orbital Flight Test 2 (OFT-2), is Boeing's second uncrewed demonstration after Orbital Flight Test 1, which failed to reach the space station in December 2019.

The mission was originally scheduled for last summer but was postponed due to issues with the capsule's propulsion system. - Tereza Pultarova

Astronaut's spine after six months in space

Thursday, May 19, 2022: NASA astronaut Raja Chari shared this image of his spine as he is recovering after six months on the International Space Station.

Chari, who was a member of the Crew-3 mission, which returned to Earth on May 5 on board of SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule, shared the image on (opens in new tab) together with other images of him being subject to various tests in order to evaluate the state of this body after his orbital mission.

"Science continues after @NASA_Astronauts return from @Space_Station," he said. "For months #Crew3 will gather data for human research experiments to compare to in-flight. Our brain & vestibular system are nearly back to normal, but it'll take months to get muscles & bones back to normal."

In the absence of gravity, astronauts' muscles and bones weaken in spite of the rigorous exercise regime that the spacefarers follow. This physical deterioration is one of the biggest obstacles for long-term human presence in space. Studies by NASA (opens in new tab)suggest that it may take more than a year for the bones to regain their former strength. - Tereza Pultarova

Sun's poles photographed in greatest detail ever

Wednesday, May 18, 2022: The European Solar Orbiter spacecraft captured the closest ever images of the sun's south pole, an area responsible for the generation of the star's magnetic field.

The image was taken during Solar Orbiter's closest pass at the sun on March 26. At that point, the spacecraft, fitted with ten scientific instruments, approached the star at the center of our solar system as close as one third of the sun-Earth distance.

Studying the sun's poles is one of the main tasks of Solar Orbiter. Polar regions are believed to play a key role in the generation of the sun's magnetic field, which drives its 11-year-long cycle of activity, the periodic ebb and flow in the generation of sunspots, solar flares and eruptions. - Tereza Pultarova

Saharan dust storm heading to America

Tuesday, May 17, 2022: A massive cloud of dust swept up by winds over the Saharan desert has been photographed by European satellites as it moves over the Atlantic Ocean towards the Caribbean.

The image, taken on May 15 by the Sentinel-3 spacecraft, shows the dust cloud drifting westward from the coast of Senegal and Gambia. The European Copernicus environment monitoring service predicts the cloud will reach the Caribbean within a few days.

This is not the only dust event going on around Africa these days. Massive dust storms have been observed also on the Arabian Peninsula. - Tereza Pultarova

Eclipsed moon above a SpaceX Falcon Heavy monument in California

Monday, May 16, 2022: The fully eclipsed moon photographed above a monument of SpaceX' Falcon Heavy rocket in Hawthorne, California, during the Flower Moon eclipse on May 15.

The Flower Moon eclipse was the first of 2022 and was best observed from the Americas. Skywatchers in Western Africa and Europe also got to see parts of it. The eclipse, the longest total lunar eclipse in 33 years, started at 10:28 p.m. EDT on Sunday May 15 (0228 GMT on May 16) and reached its peak May 16 at 12:11 a.m. EDT (0411 GMT). The moon spent 85 minutes inside the Earth's full shadow, the umbra. - Tereza Pultarova

Years-long imaging campaign reveals Milky Way's central black hole

Friday, May 13, 2022: The supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, can be seen in this image taken by the Event Horizon Telescope as part of a ground-breaking campaign.

Scientists have known for decades that there is a strange source of radio waves, known as Sagittarius A*, at the center of our galaxy. Over the years, more and more evidence has been gathered that this source must be a supermassive black hole. Any residual doubt has now been removed when the worldwide Event Horizon Telescope partnership succeeded to take the first ever photograph of this strange source, revealing a characteristic shadowy center surrounded by a glowing disk of material falling into the black hole.

The image of Sagittarius A* is only the second image of a black hole ever taken, the first being that of the much larger black hole at the center of the galaxy M87, which was released in 2019. - Tereza Pultarova

Satellite spots panda-shaped power plant in China

Thursday, May 12, 2022: A radar Earth-observing satellite of European aerospace firm Airbus recently captured this image of the Datong Panda Power Plant in China.

The plant, in China's northern Shanxi province, covers 0.4 square miles (1 square kilometer) and generates 50 Megawatt of solar power, about the annual consumption of 3,600 four-person households. The plant was built in 2017 with support of the United Nations Development Program. - Tereza Pultarova

First made-in-Europe micro launcher unveiled

Wednesday, May 11, 2022: A British rocket company Orbex has unveiled a prototype of its reusable micro-rocket Prime as it prepares for its debut flight later this year.

Prime is the first of Europe's micro launcher developments to achieve this stage. Designed to take into orbit satellites of up to 440 lbs (200 kilograms), the rocket uses renewable fuel biopropane, which slashes the carbon footprint of each launch by over 90% compared to equivalent rockets relying on fossil fuels.

Orbex will launch its rockets from Space Hub Sutherland, a new spaceport in the north of Scotland. It plans to fly Prime for the first time by early 2023 in what it hopes will be the first vertical launch from U.K. soil. However, other companies are working on their rockets as well and have plans to launch soon. - Tereza Pultarova

Matthias Maurer getting into shape after return to Earth

Tuesday, May 10, 2022: European Space Agency's (ESA) astronaut Matthias Maurer is working out at a gym at Europe's astronaut center in Germany to regain muscle mass after his return to Earth from the International Space Station.

"Back in the gym - the weights all seem heavier than I remember 😆," Maurer said in a tweet (opens in new tab). "This rehabilitation helps restore my muscles & bones after 177 days in microgravity & engages muscles we need on Earth but don't use so much in space."

Maurer splashed down off the coast of Florida together with his Crew-3 team mates NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Thomas Marshburn and Kayla Barron on Friday, May 6. - Tereza Pultarova

Partial solar eclipse above Chile's Atacama Desert

Monday, May 9, 2022: A partial solar eclipse above the Atacama Desert in Chile provided a fascinating spectacle to sky-watchers at the popular astronomy destination.

This photograph was taken by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) photographer Pavel Horálek on April 30 near San Pedro de Atacama above the Moon Valley, a popular tourist spot featuring lunar-like landscapes.

The photo shows a sequence of images capturing the progress of a partial solar eclipse, caused by the moon obscuring a fraction of the sun's disk. The sequence was taken over a period of 54 minutes just as the sun was about to set, ESO said in a statement.

The dusty glow of the image is caused by volcanic ash from the Hunga Tonga volcano, which erupted in January this year in the Southern Pacific Ocean. The ash, ESO said in the statement, remains suspended in the atmosphere nearly four months after the eruption. - Tereza Pultarova

Crew-4 Dragon capsule splashes down off Florida coast

Friday, May 6, 2022: SpaceX Dragon Endurance capsule carrying Crew-4 astronauts from the International Space Station splashed down off the coast of Florida at 12:43 a.m. EDT (0443 GMT) on Friday, May 6.

NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Thomas Marshburn and Kayla Barron were on board of the capsule together with European astronaut Matthias Maurer. The quartet returned to Earth after almost six months in orbit. - Tereza Pultarova

Tornado lighting flashes seen from space

Thursday, May 4, 2022: Thunderstorms that produced devastating tornadoes across Oklahoma and Texas on Wednesday (May 4) provided a spectacular lighting display that was captured by weather satellites monitoring the planet.

This video sequence was taken by the GOES East satellite, operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), from its vantage points over 22,000 miles (36 kilometers) above Earth.

On the ground, severe hail storms with hail larger than golf balls were reported in some areas, together with wide-scale power outages and damage to infrastructure caused by strong winds. - Tereza Pultarova

Boeing's Starliner capsule meets rocket ahead of ISS test launch

Wednesday, May 4, 2022: Boeing's Starliner space capsule has been transported into the United Launch Alliance Vertical Integration Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, where it will be placed atop an Atlas V rocket ahead of a test flight to the International Space Station on May 19.

The heavily delayed test flight will be Boeing's second attempt to reach the space station. The capsule previously failed to reach the orbital outpost in December 2019.

If successful, the Orbital Flight Test-2 will clear the way for Boeing to join SpaceX in ferrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station for NASA. - Tereza Pultarova

Helicopter catches Rocket Lab's Electron booster in first step toward reusability

Tuesday, May 3, 2022: Rocket Lab has managed to retrieve the first stage of its Electron rocket using a helicopter in a milestone step toward reusability.

The rocket lifted off from Rocket Lab's New Zealand site with 34 satellites aboard at 6:49 p.m. EDT (2249 GMT) on on Monday (May 2). Its first stage returned to Earth some 15 minutes later, gliding down on a parachute, and was caught by a Sikorsky S-92 helicopter using a hook. The chopper later hauled the booster to a recovery ship, which will transport the hardware back to terra firma for inspection and analysis. - Tereza Pultarova

Shiny! Crew Dragon Endeavour readies for undocking

Monday, May 2, 2022: Crew-3's ride home is undergoing final checkouts ahead of an expected landing no earlier than Thursday (May 5), weather depending. Matthias Maurer, an astronaut from the European Space Agency, took this snapshot amid final checkouts for the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endurance. "Soon it's time to head back to Earth & I'm looking forward to home, but also getting a bit wistful that it'll soon be time to say goodbye," Maurer tweeted (opens in new tab) Sunday (May 1). - Elizabeth Howell

The universe through the eyes of the James Webb Space Telescope

Friday, April 29, 2022: NASA has released a batch of images acquired by the James Webb Space Telescope, which is in the final stages of its post-launch commissioning phase.

The images show that the telescope's instruments are aligned and nearly ready to start delivering the ground-breaking science the telescope was built for. - Tereza Pultarova

Crew-4 celebrates arrival at space station

Thursday, April 28, 2022: European astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti is receiving a warm welcome from the International Space Station crew as she arrives to begin her rotation together with her Crew-4 mates.

Crew-4 arrived at the orbital outpost on Wednesday (April 27) at around 7:37 p.m. EDT (2337 GMT) after what was described as the quickest ever trip to the space lab.

In addition to Cristoforetti, NASA astronauts NASA's Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines and Jessica Watkins were on board of the Dragon Freedom crew capsule, which launched atop SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket on Wednesday morning from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. - Tereza Pultarova

SpaceX Dragon Freedom capsule ready for Crew-4 launch

Tuesday, April 26, 2022: The SpaceX Dragon Freedom space capsule sits atop the Falcon 9 rocket at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida one day ahead of the launch of the Crew-4 mission to the International Space Station.

The capsule will take to the orbital outpost NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Robert Hines, Jessica Watkins, and the European Space Agency's Samantha Cristoforetti. The four will replace Crew-3 astronauts Raja Chari, Thomas Marshburn and Kayla Barron (of NASA), and ESA's Matthias Maurer.

The mission will lift off from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) on Wednesday (April 27) at 3:52 a.m. ET (7:52 GMT). - Tereza Pultarova

Axiom private space farers return home

Monday, April 25, 2022: Astronauts of the private Axiom-1 mission to the International Space Station are finally returning home after a delay caused by bad weather at the landing site.

The SpaceX Dragon Endeavor capsule with the four crew-members aboard undocked from the orbital outpost on Sunday (April 24) at 9:10 p.m. EDT (1310 GMT on April 25) after a 16-day stay. The mission, the first privately funded U.S. space tourism mission to the ISS, was originally expected to leave the station on Saturday (April 23).

The capsule is expected to splash down later today off the Florida coast. - Tereza Pultarova

Earth on Earth Day

Friday, April 22, 2022: The European Meteosat weather satellite has captured this image of Earth from its vantage point 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers) above the planet on March 23.

The European Space Agency (ESA), which co-develops the Meteosat satellites for the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), released the image on Friday (April 22) as part of the Earth Day celebrations.

Celebrated since 1970, the Earth Day is becoming an increasingly solemn event as reports of worsening symptoms of climate change keep coming from the global scientific community.

A report released today by the European environment program Copernicus, for example, stated that atmospheric concentrations of methane and carbon dioxide, the two most troubling greenhouse gasses, have reached new record levels in 2021. - Tereza Pultarova

Tonga islands recovering three months after volcanic eruption

Thursday, April 21, 2022: Islands in the Kingdom of Tonga in the southern Pacific Ocean are recovering after a devastating volcanic eruption that rippled through the region in January, satellite images reveal.

The image above compares the situation in Tonga on January 24, ten days after the Hunga Tonga Hunga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano blasted thousands of tonnes of dust and lava into the atmosphere, with the state of the islands on April 14, exactly three months after the eruption.

Both images were captured by the European Earth observation satellite Sentinel 2.

The April image (on the right), reveals that vegetation has regenerated after the eruption, which triggered a devastating tsunami but also deposited volcanic ash across the kingdom.

The volcanic explosion, observed by satellites in real time, was so powerful that the material it ejected was detected at record-breaking altitudes of more than 30 miles (55 kilometers). - Tereza Pultarova

Crew-4 practices for upcoming launch

Wednesday, April 20, 2022: Astronauts of the upcoming Crew-4 mission to the International Space Station practiced for their launch last night during a dress rehearsal test.

Crew-4, with NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Robert Hines, and Jessica Watkins, and European Space Agency's Samantha Cristoforetti, is expected to launch for the orbital outpost on Saturday, April 23.

They will fly aboard a brand new SpaceX Dragon crew capsule, which they named Freedom. Crew-4 will replace Crew-3 (NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn, and Kayla Barron, and ESA's Matthias Maurer), who have been on the ISS since November 2021. - Tereza Pultarova

Stuck ship freed after a month-long grounding

Tuesday, April 19, 2022: Satellites of U.S. Earth observation company Planet captured this image of the Ever Forward container ship finally freed after a month-long grounding in the Chesapeake Bay off the coast of Maryland.

The ship, operated by the same company as Ever Given, which infamously blocked the Suez Canal last year, hit the shallow sea floor while sailing from Baltimore to Norfolk, Virginia, on March 13.

This image, capturing the 1,100-feet (330 meters) long Ever Forward finally unstuck, was taken on April 14 by Planet's SkySat satellite. It shows crews offloading containers onto barges in an effort to lighten the ship. Fortunately, Ever Forward ran aground in a more open area and did not cause a traffic disruption unlike Ever Given last year. - Tereza Pultarova

Jovian moons shine in composite image

Monday, April 18, 2022 - The Jovian (or Galilean) moons Io, Europa and Ganymede show off their different surface features in a new citizen scientist photo based on data from the NASA Juno mission at Jupiter. Io is a volcanic moon and Europa and Ganymede are both icy moons. The moons will be imaged in more detail during the NASA Europa Clipper and European Space Agency JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) missions that will explore Jupiter's moons in the 2030s. - Elizabeth Howell

Percy spots its parachute

Friday, April 15, 2022 - A flash of white in the far distance shows the location of NASA Perseverance's parachute, which the rover caught while passing by on the way to the delta. It's a signal of just how far the rover has come since landing on Feb. 18, 2021. "I've also spotted a few interesting things along the way," the Perseverance Twitter account said (opens in new tab) Thursday (April 14) about the image. "Look closely and you'll see part of the parachute and capsule I rode in on. Definitely wouldn't be where I am without them!" - Elizabeth Howell

NASA's moon rocket in the moonlight

Thursday, April 14, 2022: NASA engineers powered up the lunar Space Launch System megarocket overnight as it awaits its final pre-launch test at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

NASA shared the image on Twitter on Thursday (April 14) in the morning, but later said in a blog post that fuelling of the rocket's core state had to be halted due to out-of-order temperature readings in the liquid oxygen tank.

The rocket is expected to launch for its debut moon-bound flight as part of the Artemis I mission later this year with an uncrewed Orion space capsule atop. The mission will serve as a technology test ahead of planned missions with astronauts. - Tereza Pultarova

Gloomy sunrise on Mars

Wednesday, April 13, 2022: NASA's InSight Mars lander has taken this image of Martian sunrise on April 10, the lander's 1,198 sol (Martian day) on Mars.

The rover captured the early morning snapshot using its robotic arm-mounted Instrument Deployment Camera (IDC) at about 5:30 am, just as the sun was climbing above the horizon, the lander team said on its website.

"I'll never tire of sunrise on Mars," the mission team said on Twitter. "Each morning, that distant dot climbs higher in the sky, giving me energy for another round of listening to the rumbles beneath my feet."

InSight investigates the geology of Mars including its seismology. The lander has made headlines by detecting Martian earthquakes.- Tereza Pultarova

Hubble spots largest comet ever

Tuesday, April 12, 2022: The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted the largest comet ever, a hundred thousand times greater than the average comet in the solar system.

Hubble photographed comet C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein) in January this year at a distance of 2 billion miles (3.2 billion kilometers). At such a distance, scientists couldn't directly see the comet's nucleus, but had to process the images to subtract the comet's bright tail.

They found that Bernardinelli-Bernstein was 85 miles (137 km) across, which is 50 times larger than nuclei found in the vast majority of all known comets. The comet's mass is around 500 trillion tons (454 million metric tonnes), a hundred thousand times greater than the mass of a typical comet orbiting the sun. - Tereza Pultarova

Hubble peers inside distant galaxy to see how stars form

Monday, April 11, 2022: The Hubble Space Telescope snapped this image of a distant galaxy to see stars arising from clouds of gas.

The galaxy, called Messier 91, or M91, is quite similar to our own Milky Way. Some 55 million light-years away from Earth, M91 is a spiral galaxy with a bar of thickly packed stars, dust and gas running across its center. Inside this bar lurks a supermassive blackhole that astronomers previously managed to weigh using earlier Hubble observations (that measurement, however, was rather rough, giving the black hole's mass as somewhere between 9.6 and 38 million masses of our sun).

This newly released image captures the galaxy, which is located in the constellation Coma Berenices, in ultraviolet and visible light. - Tereza Pultarova

First American civilian mission to space station launches

Friday, April 8, 2022: NASA administrator Bill Nelson watches as the first American civilian mission to the International Space Station launches atop SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The Axiom 1 mission's Crew Dragon capsule with four commercial spacefarers aboard will reach the orbital outpost on Saturday (April 9) at 7:45 a.m. EDT (1145 GMT). The four space travelers (former NASA astronaut Michael López-Alegría, real-estate magnate and acrobatic pilot Larry Connor, music and sustainability entrepreneur Mark Pathy, and investor and former Israel Air Force pilot Eytan Stibbe) will stay at the space station for ten days.

They will join the current crew of three NASA astronauts (Raja Chari, Kayla Barron and Thomas Marshburn), German astronaut Matthias Maurer and three Russian cosmonauts (Sergey Korsakov, Oleg Artemyev and Denis Matveev). - Tereza Pultarova

Milestone missions side by side at NASA's spaceport

Thursday, April 7, 2022: NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) moon rocket and SpaceX Falcon 9, which will launch the first U.S. civilian mission to the International Space Station later this week, stand ready on their launchpads at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

NASA shared the image on Twitter, saying this was the first time "two different types of rockets & spacecraft made to carry humans are on the sister pads at the same time."

While SpaceX's Falcon 9 is scheduled to launch the Axiom 1 mission to the International Space Station on Friday (April 8). The SLS rocket is currently waiting for its wet dress rehearsal on launchpad 39B. The wet dress rehearsal is the final pre-launch test designed to take the rocket through the entire pre-launch sequence including countdown. The test was halted earlier this week due to problems with the mobile launcher platform. SLS is expected to lift off for the unmanned Artemis I technology demonstration mission later this year. -Tereza Pultarova

Astronomer snaps newly discovered asteroid zooming past Earth

Wednesday, April 6, 2022: An Italian astronomer snapped this image of the 24 to 52 feet (7.2 to16 meters) wide asteroid 2022 GN1 as it zoomed past our planet at about one third of the Earth-moon distance on Wednesday (April 6).

The asteroid, discovered only on Friday (April 1), was never thought to pose any danger to Earth. As predicted, the space rock passed 86,370 miles (139.000 kilometers) from Earth's surface on Wednesday, enticing observers and astrophotographers.

This image, taken about 75 minutes before the asteroid's closest approach, is a result of a 30-second exposure taken remotely by a robotic telescope located in Ceccano, Italy, about 55 miles (90 km) from Rome.

Gianluca Masi, who operates the telescope, said in a statement (opens in new tab)that the telescope tracked the moving asteroid, which appears as a small dot at the center of the image, with the surrounding stars appearing like long trails. - Tereza Pultarova

Meteor camera reveals scope of satellite pollution

Tuesday, April 5, 2022: A camera looking for falling stars captured a jumble of satellite trails in one of its worst ever nights of satellite pollution.

The camera, located in North Oxfordshire, England, is operated by the UK Meteor Network. In the image, released on Twitter by the camera's owner, skywatcher and science communicator Mary McIntyre, star trails can be seen as curved lines and aircraft trails as dotted lines. The rest are streaks left behind by passing satellites. In the hodgepodge, one can find about 25 meteor streaks.

"Overnight on 2nd3rd April 2022 our southwest facing #RaspberryPi #meteorcamera UK0006 based in North Oxfordshire had one of the worst nights we've ever seen for #satellitetrails," McIntyre said in the tweet. "Just horrendous :("

Meteor cameras survey large portions of the sky in a relatively low resolution, looking for sudden bright streaks caused by space rocks passing through Earth's atmosphere. The long-exposure shots reveal the tracks of everything else that passes through the sky in the given night.

Satellite trails have become a major concern for astronomers especially since SpaceX started launching its Starlink satellite megaconstellation. The trails obscure the view of distant stars and brighten the night sky, making observations more difficult. The problem affects even some of the most pristine locations such as Chile's Atacama Desert. - Tereza Pultarova

Lightning strikes support tower as NASA's moon rocket prepares for test

Monday, April 4, 2022: Four lighting bolts struck the umbilical tower of NASA's Space Launch System rocket on Saturday (April 2) as the powerful booster was being prepared for tests on the launch pad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida ahead of its debut moon-bound flight later this year. The eerie images were captured on camera by a NASA TV crew.

The 322 feet (98 meters) mega rocket will blast off toward the moon later this year for the uncrewed Artemis I mission, which will serve as a technology demonstration before the first flight with astronauts. The first crewed mission is currently scheduled for 2024.

Three of the strikes, which zapped tower two, were low intensity, NASA said in a statement. The fourth, a higher intensity bolt, struck tower one.

The rocket was rolled out on the launch pad two weeks ago in preparation for its wet dress rehearsal, a final test, during which engineers will fuel the rocket and run it through the entire pre-launch sequence including the countdown.

The engineers, however, decided to halt the tests on Sunday due to problems with fans that maintain pressure in the mobile launcher platform. - Tereza Pultarova

Mesmerizing aurora glows over rural Saskatchewan

Friday, April 1, 2022: This breathtaking view of glowing auroras over the Canadian province of Saskatchewan was captured by nature photographer Jenny Hagan (opens in new tab) on Wednesday (March 30) after two coronal mass ejections triggered a geomagnetic storm that reinvigorated Earth's polar lights displays.

Jenny, from Eatonia in West Central Saskatchewan, used her Canon 80D camera on a tripod, shooting at 3 second intervals to capture the "lively night sky dancing above me".

"Sights like these are plentiful here in rural Saskatchewan," she told Space.com. "The land of the living sky, and the relics of the past offer up great foreground for the wide open views of our sky. Sitting millions of miles away from us, space modules, satellites, and stars contribute to the light that breaks through the dark."

The mysterious building in the picture is an abandoned 1950s farmhouse near the tiny village of LaPorte, Jenny added. - Tereza Pultarova

Satellite spots aurora in black and white from orbit

Thursday, March 31, 2022: An American weather satellite spotted swirling aurora displays above the North Pole after two coronal mass ejections hit Earth on Thursday early morning, triggering a strong geomagnetic storm.

The satellite that captured this image is the polar orbiting NOAA-20 operated by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which circles the Earth from pole to pole seven times a day.

It acquired the image on Thursday morning at 2:57am EDT (0657) GMT as it flew over the U.S. Atlantic coast.

Skywatchers on Earth could observe the auroras from most of Canada. In the U.S., sightings as far south as Colorado have been reported. Auroras are usually visible only above polar regions, but strong geomagnetic storms triggered by coronal mass ejections, which frequently accompany solar flares, temporarily intensify the phenomena, making them visible from farther afield. Good aurora viewing conditions are expected to continue until at least Friday (April 1). - Tereza Pultarova

Brain terrain in Mars' largest impact basin

Wednesday, March 30, 2022: Strange structures resembling the human brain have been spotted by the European Mars Express orbiter in the Red Planet's largest impact basin.

The image, captured by the 18-year-old spacecraft in July 2021, reveals two craters surrounded by darkened warped terrain that somewhat resembles the folded texture of a brain.

In the case of Mars, the folds around these craters were likely created by the interaction between the soil and melting water ice.

The craters are part of the 2,050-mile-wide ( 3,300 kilometers) Utopia Planitia, the largest known impact basin not only on Mars but in the entire solar system.

The true-color image was acquired by Mars Express' High Resolution Stereo Camera and shows the planet's surface with a resolution of about 62 feet per pixel (19 meters). - Tereza Pultarova

Satellites spot burping Krakatoa volcano

Tuesday, March 29, 2022: Satellites have spotted a minor eruption of the Krakatoa volcano in Indonesia, one of the world's most feared volcanoes.

A plume of smoke can be seen rising from Krakatoa's crater in this image, captured by the European Sentinel 2 satellite on Monday (March 28). The volcano is notorious for its 1883 eruption, the most devastating volcanic eruption in recorded history, which killed over 36,000 people. A collapse of the volcano's caldera in 2018 caused a tsunami that killed more than 400.

The volcano woke up again in February and has been monitored ever since. Krakatoa is known to produce large amounts of ash that could damage aircraft engines. - Tereza Pultarova

Satellites watch as Antarctic ice shelf collapses amid heatwave

Monday, March 28, 2022: European Earth observation satellites observed nearly in real time as a massive ice shelf in East Antarctica collapsed due to unusually high temperatures in mid-March.

The Conger ice shelf, 450 square miles (1,165 square kilometers) in size, was photographed by the Sentinel-2 satellite of the European Earth Observation program Copernicus on Jan 30 2022 (the image on the left), when it was still intact. When the satellite flew over the ice shelf again on March 21, all it saw was a sea full of floating ice rubble.

In the week prior to the collapse, record-breaking temperatures were measured in Antarctica.

East Antarctica's climate was previously thought to be stable and not heavily affected by climate change, Copernicus said in a statement. An ice shelf collapse had never been registered in that area, the agency added.

Scientists say that the Conger ice shelf collapse is the second most significant ice shelf collapse since that of the Larsen B ice shelf in 2002.

Ice shelves are extensions of ice sheets floating over the ocean that slow down the flow of inland ice into the ocean, which is the main process responsible for sea level rise, Copernicus explained. - Tereza Pultarova

Spacewalkers do maintenance work on the space station

Friday, March 25, 2022: European astronaut Matthias Maurer performed his first ever spacewalk on Thursday (March 24), working with his American colleague Raja Chari to fix equipment around the orbital outpost.

During the spacewalk, which lasted nearly seven hours, the two astronauts installed some radiator hoses on a system that regulates the temperature inside the space station, replaced an external camera on the station's truss and installed a power and data cable on the Bartolomeo science platform outside the European Columbus module. - Tereza Pultarova

Mariupol theatre destruction seen from space

Thursday, March 24, 2022: Satellites of U.S. Earth observation company Planet captured this image of a theatre in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol after it had been destroyed by a Russian missile.

Hundreds of residents had been sheltering in the theatre, which is believed to have been deliberately targeted by Russian forces. On the left hand side of the image, the sign дети, children, in Russian, is clearly visible, an attempt by the Ukrainians to signal to the Russians not to target the place.

The theatre's underground air raid shelter, however, is believed to have survived the attack. - Tereza Pultarova

Floating robots meet on space station

Wednesday, March 23, 2022: Two floating robots have met for the first time aboard the International Space Station this week, although both have lived on the orbital outpost for more than two years now.

The Crew Interactive MObile companioN (CIMON), developed by the German Aerospace Center in cooperation with Airbus and IBM is an artificially intelligent assistant designed to help astronauts go about their everyday tasks.

The AstroBee, developed by a team at NASA's Ames Research Center, was designed to autonomously perform various tasks, such as monitoring the environment aboard the station.

This picture was taken by NASA astronaut Kayla Barron during the first meeting between the two robots. - Tereza Pultarova

Record-breaking heatwave hits Antarctica

Tuesday, March 22, 2022: The European Sentinel-3 satellite captured this image of Antarctica on March 18 as temperatures on the icy continent reached record highs for this time of the year.

Temperatures in parts of Antarctica were 72 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) above long-term averages last week, reaching 10 degrees Fahrenheit (-12.2 degrees Celsius).

The Arctic, the icy cap around the North Pole, has also been experiencing exceptionally high temperatures. Scientists are unsure whether the two unusual heat waves can be related. - Tereza Pultarova

High-resolution satellite captures NASA's moon rocket on the pad

Monday, March 21, 2022: NASA's giant moon rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), sits on a launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida in a high-resolution image captured by a new European Earth observation satellite.

The image was captured by the Pléiades Neo satellite operated by aerospace company Airbus. Pléiades Neo provides images with 11-inch (30 centimeters) resolution, one of the highest commercially available.

Airbus didn't look for SLS by chance. The company developed the service module of the Orion crew capsule that sits atop the rocket in this image, ready for the upcoming wet dress rehearsal test that will pave the way for the uncrewed launch of the Artemis I mission later this year.

The rocket was rolled out from the iconic Apollo-era Vehicle Assembly Building last week and will be moved back after the wet dress rehearsal for final adjustments before the launch, which is currently planned for May.

The Artemis I. mission will test technologies for upcoming missions with astronauts that will eventually return humans to the surface of the moon. - Tereza Pultarova

Full moon watches over NASA's moon rocket launchpad roll-out

Friday, March 18, 2022: The arrival of NASA's new moon rocket at the launchpad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida coincided with the last winter full moon of 2022.

NASA's special hauler vehicle, the crawler transporter 2, delivered the 5.5 million-pound (2.5 million kilograms), 365-feet-tall (111 meters) Space Launch System (SLS) rocket from the Apollo-era Vehicle Assembly Building on Thursday (March 17).

The rocket will undergo a series of tests on the launch pad, including a wet dress rehearsal test, during which it will be fuelled and run through a simulated pre-launch countdown.

NASA will then move the rocket back to the Vehicle Assembly Building for final adjustments ahead of the unmanned launch of the Artemis 1 mission that will send an empty Orion capsule for a trip to the moon and back. The mission will test technologies ahead of a planned crewed mission in 2025. - Tereza Pultarova

Saharan dust covers Europe

Thursday, March 16, 2022: A massive plume of Saharan dust obscures the sky over western Europe as seen in this image captured by the European Earth-observation satellite Sentinel-3 on March 15.

The dust cloud, stirred up by storm Celia, which moved from north-western Africa to Europe earlier this week, was especially thick above Spain. The country's meteorologists described the event as "extraordinary" in its intensity and extent.

Air quality in western European countries including France, Portugal and Spain has suffered after the dust cloud, traveling on a wave of warm air from North Africa, spread in the atmosphere.

Authorities urged residents in the most affected communities to stay indoors to avoid breathing difficulties. In the Canary Islands, a Spain-controlled archipelago off the west coast of Morocco, several flights had to be canceled due to poor visibility. - Tereza Pultarova

James Webb Space Telescope's first image exceeds expectations

Wednesday, March 16, 2022: The James Webb Space Telescope teams have revealed the first image taken with the telescope's main mirror fully aligned.

The image captures a star called HD 84406, which, according to NASA, is rather uninteresting, having only been selected as Webb's first target because of its faintness and location in the sky.

The star is 100 times fainter than what humans can see with the naked eye, but Webb can see it bright and clear. And not only the star, but also dozens of galaxies in the distance that were out of reach of space observatories before. - Tereza Pultarova

Mini-asteroid discovered just before hitting Earth

Tuesday, March 15, 2022: A small asteroid on a collision course with Earth was discovered just a few hours before slamming into the planet off the coast of Iceland.

The asteroid, named 2022 EB5, was first spotted by Hungarian astronomer Krisztián Sárneczky on Friday (March 11) using a 24-inch (60 centimeters) telescope.

Subsequent observations confirmed the discovery and enabled astronomers to calculate the trajectory of the space rock, which, fortunately, was only a few meters in size.

Although no eye-witness accounts exist of the asteroid's ultimate encounter with the planet, data from an international network of infrasound sensors confirmed an impact between Iceland and Greenland, which produced mild local earth tremors comparable to a magnitude 4.0 earthquake. - Tereza Pultarova

Volcano erupts in Guatemala

Monday, March 14, 2022: The European Sentinel 2 satellite captured this image of the Fuego volcano in Guatemala on March 10.

Fuego is the most active of three volcanoes in the Central American country. Local authorities have recently reported increased activity including lava flows that may threaten nearby settlements. - Tereza Pultarova

Satellites watch Californian lake drying out

Friday, March 11, 2022: Images taken by the European Sentinel 2 Earth observing satellite over the past two years reveal receding water levels in California's drought-stricken Oroville reservoir.

The images were taken between March 31 2019 and March 10 2022, and show the shrinking water surface of the artificial lake on the Feather River in the Sierra Nevada foothills east of the Sacramento Valley in California.

According to media reports, water levels in lake Oroville reached an all time low in September 2021, forcing a local hydroelectric plant to shut down for the first time in history. - Tereza Pultarova

Moon rocket readies for launch-pad roll-out

Thursday, March 10, 2022: NASA engineers are retracting platforms that enabled them to assemble the space agency's 322-feet-tall (98 meters) moon rocket as they finalize preparations for the rocket's launch pad roll-out.

The Space Launch System (SLS) rocket has been put together at the iconic Apollo-era Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Later this year, the rocket will launch an uncrewed Orion astronaut capsule for a trip to the moon and back as part of the Artemis I mission, which will test the technology ahead of a crewed flight next year.

There are overall 10 work platforms, A to K, covering the full length of the rocket. In this image, shared by NASA on Twitter on Wednesday (March 9), only the middle platforms are still in place. - Tereza Pultarova

Satellite shows low levels of Arctic sea ice

Wednesday, March 9, 2022: The European Sentinel-2 Earth observing satellite captured this image of sea ice between Greenland and Iceland on March 7, 2022.

According to data from the European Union's Copernicus climate monitoring program, which runs the Sentinel satellites, the extent of Arctic sea ice in February 2022 was 2% below the average of the past 30 years, Copernicus said in a statement.

Ice covered 5.7 million square miles (14.7 million square kilometers) of sea in February 2022, 0.1 million square miles (0.3 million square kilometers) less than in average years. Moreover, the Arctic sea ice extent has been below average consistently since July 2021.

February 2022, Copernicus added, was the thirteenth consecutive February with a below average sea ice extent. - Tereza Pultarova

A 'deliberate' flood stops Russian troops in Ukraine

Tuesday, March 8, 2022: Earth-observation satellites of U.S. company Planet captured a flood near Ukraine's capital Kyiv, which is believed to have been caused deliberately to stop the invading Russian troops.

Planet's satellites captured the region north of Kyiv on Feb. 22 and Feb. 28. While the first image shows no flood, the second image reveals a wide area covered with water that was previously land. Analysts believe the water comes from a nearby dam.

Ukraine has been defending against an invasion by Russia since Feb. 24. Despite initial expectations that the country would be quickly taken over, the Ukrainian military, reinforced by civilian volunteers, has managed to cause significant losses to the more powerful Russian army.

The Ukrainians are defending their country alone as the international forces refuse to get involved out of fear of possible escalation that might lead to the deployment of nuclear weapons. -Tereza Pultarova

Telescope captures supernova explosion in distant galaxy

Monday, March 7, 2022: Astronomers have spotted a new supernova explosion in a distant galaxy.

The supernova explosion can be seen as the bright white dot in the lower left corner of the image on the right. The image was taken by the European Southern Observatory's New Technology Telescope (NTT) in December 2021. The image on the left is from August 2014.

The Cartwheel galaxy, in the constellation Sculptor, is some 490 million light years away from Earth. The newly discovered supernova, SN2021, is what astronomers call type II supernova, which occurs when massive stars burn up all the fuel in their core and collapse on themselves, triggering a massive explosion. Supernovae can cause a star to shine brighter than its entire host galaxy and can be visible to observers for months, or even years, ESO said in a statement. - Tereza Pultarova

NASA begins assembly of Jupiter icy moon explorer mission

Friday, March 4, 2022: NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft that will explore Jupiter's icy moon Europa has started coming together at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

Engineers began assembling the spacecraft, which will be as large as an SUV and featuring solar arrays as wide as a basketball court, after completing a series of project reviews in late 2021, NASA said in a statement.

Europa Clipper, expected to launch in 2021, will perform close flybys of the moon in search for conditions suitable for life. -Tereza Pultarova

The Earth still looking peaceful from space

Thursday, March 3, 2022: Nasa astronaut Mark Vande Hei is watching Earth roll underneath the space station as he nears the end of his mission.

Vande Hei is scheduled to return to Earth on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft on March 30 after a record-breaking 355 consecutive days in space.

His return home comes amid the worst geopolitical crisis since World War 2, which might terminate the decades-long cooperation in space between Russia and the western world. - Tereza Pultarova

Storms flush sediments into sea off U.K.'s coast

Wednesday, March 2, 2022: Europe's Earth-observing satellite Sentinel-3 captured this image of sediments discoloring the sea between the U.K. and the Netherlands in the wake of a series of devastating storms that swept through the countries last month

The image, taken on Feb. 26, reveals wide bands of sediment stretching along the coast of both countries.

Storm Eunice, the most severe of the storms, brought winds with speeds of more than 110 mph (180 km/h) to the U.K. in mid-February, killing 18 people and causing power outages that lasted for several days. -Tereza Pultarova

Final power-up for NASA's moon capsule before pre-flight test

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Pictures from space! Our image of the day

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Space can be a wondrous place, and we've got the pictures to prove it! Take a look at our favorite pictures from space here, and if you're wondering what happened today in space history don't miss our On This Day in Space video show (opens in new tab) here!

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Outside of school I like to play video games and play soccer.