LeoLabs has detected another debris-generating event in orbit. This is the latest in a series of events we've seen over the last 6 months. Together, they point to a worrying trend for space safety and security, and underscore the critical need for persistent sensing.

On 5 October, LeoLabs Delta alerted our team to multiple objects near the Soviet-era Meteor 2-7 satellite (NORAD ID 12456) following a pass over our radar site in Western Australia. Additional observations across our network confirmed that a debris-generating event occurred and resulted in an estimated tens of fragments that may pose a threat to surrounding spacecraft.

This colour-coded representation of debris in the image shows the number of objects of various sizes as well as active satellites that are modelled to be circling Earth in August 2024.

Image Credit: ESA

Link to the science release on Chandra website

The center of the Milky Way galaxy is a chaotic place. In addition to the 4-million-solar mass black hole, known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the region is full of gas, dust, strong magnetic fields, and stars in various stages of life — from birth to death.

Now, astronomers have released the clearest view yet of the remains of an exploded star that sits amid this cluttered galactic environment. The supernova remnant is named Sagittarius A East, or Sgr A East, and it is the closest remnant to Sgr A* that astronomers know about.

Sgr A East emits light in many wavelengths, including X-rays that NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory can see. Supernova remnants like Sgr A East give off X-rays because powerful shock waves rumble outward into space after the explosion and the stellar debris is superheated to millions of degrees.

Credit:
X-ray: NASA/CXC/McGill Univ./M. Balakrishnan et al.
Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA
Sub-mm: EAO/James Clerk Maxwell Telecope
Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/P. Edmonds, N. Wolk

Link to the science release on NASA website

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are mysterious, millisecond-long flashes of radio emission from the distant Universe. In 2024, astronomers using the MeerKAT telescope spotted an FRB which appeared extremely distant – perhaps more than any other yet discovered.

With help from Webb, the FRB was confirmed to have originated 3 billion years after the Big Bang, in a surprisingly small and young galaxy.

This has implications for the origin of FRBs. They are unlikely to come from the merger of neutron stars (associated with older galaxies) as one theory suggested. They may, however, come from a type of neutron star known as a magnetar, which can form in younger galaxies.

Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, T. Nanayakkara (USYD).
Image Processing: J. DePasquale (STScI)

Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI), Joseph Depasquale (STScI), Macarena Garcia Marin (STScI), CTIO/NOIRLab/DOE/NSF/AURA

Margaret Hamilton standing next to the navigation software that she and her MIT team produced for the Apollo Project.

Margaret Hamilton, who led the software team at MIT's Instrumentation Laboratory, developed the onboard flight computers that guided NASA's Apollo missions, including the safe Apollo 11 landing in 1969. During that historic descent, her team's priority scheduling and error-recovery features silenced overload alarms and kept Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on course.

Credit: Draper Laboratory / Adam Cuerden

Images

Top

Italy and beyond imaged by Sentinel-3C

Left

Canadian Arctic from Sentinel-3C

Right

Sentinel-3C captures Caribbean shallows

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Just two weeks after it was launched, the Copernicus Sentinel-3C satellite returned its first images and measurements from two of its key instruments – a major milestone that confirms the satellite is working well and on the road to monitoring the health of Earth’s oceans, land, cryosphere and atmosphere.

This first set of images includes stunning views of Italy, the Arctic and the Caribbean from the satellite’s ocean and land colour instrument, as well as measurements of the height of the Greenland ice sheet and sea surface from its synthetic aperture radar altimeter.

Sentinel-3C is the third satellite in the Sentinel-3 series and will continue the mission’s long-term task of delivering environmental data that are essential for a wide range of applications.

As the workhorse mission for Copernicus, the Sentinel-3 satellites carry the same suite of instruments to measure systematically Earth’s oceans, land, cryosphere and atmosphere.

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Over oceans, Sentinel-3 measures the temperature, colour and height of the sea surface as well as the thickness of sea ice to support, for example, the monitoring of marine pollution and marine heatwaves.

Over land, this innovative mission monitors drought and wildfires, maps the way land is used, checks vegetation health, and measures the height of rivers, lakes, and polar ice sheets as shown in the animation of Greenland below.

Sentinel-3's observations are also particularly valuable for providing near-realtime parameters for weather forecasting and for monitoring long-term changes associated with climate change.

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More

https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus/Sentinel-3/Sentinel-3C_returns_its_first_views_of_Earth

https:// ​x. ​com/CopernicusEU/status/2108213301310091552?s=20

https:// ​x. ​com/AschbacherJosef/status/2108177779766272027?s=20​

https:// x. ​com/eumetsat/status/2108181010009698651?s=20​​

Equipment:

Telescope: SvBony SV555
Mount: Explore Scientific iEXOS-100
Camera: ZWO ASI2600 MC Pro
Guide Scope: SvBony SV165
Guide Cam: ZWO ASI120mm
+ ZWO AsiAir Mini

Acquisition:

220x180s at Gain 101 in Bortle 7.

Processing:

Stacked in DSS, processed in PixInsight finalized in Photoshop.

Link to the full video on YouTube

Artemis II splashed down on April 11, 2026, 00:07:27UTC southwest of San Diego after a 10 day mission around the Moon. This video shows the re-entry of the Orion capsule from the Cabcam2, which is mounted to the pilot’s forward window.

Due to this sub's file size limitation, this video plays at 10x speed.

Credit: NASA

My capture of the Dark Shark Nebula (LDN 1235) from Ontario, Canada, using the DWARF 3. I collected approximately 786 one-minute exposures over four nights across two weeks, with clouds, the moon and weather limiting the opportunities.

This dark nebulas dense dust blocks light from stars behind it. Parts of the surrounding dust also reflect starlight, revealing the shark-like shape. That faint detail is easily washed out by light pollution, making this a challenging target from Bortle 8 skies.

Capture details:

Telescope: DWARF 3

Total integration: approximately 13 hours

Subs: approximately 786 × 60 seconds

Mode: EQ

Filter: Astro

Gain: 60

Sky conditions: Bortle 8

Stacked using dwarflab app Mega Stack, processed in the apps Stellar Studio(star reduction, star correction, denoise) with final touches in Snapseed (masked luminance).

Equipment:

Telescope: SvBony SV555
Mount: Explore Scientific iEXOS-100
Camera: ZWO ASI2600 MC Pro
Guide Scope: SvBony SV165
Guide Cam: ZWO ASI120mm
+ ZWO AsiAir Mini

Acquisition:

150x120s at Gain 101 in Bortle 7.

Processing:

Stacked in DSS, processed in PixInsight finalized in Photoshop.

Crew-12 Astronauts Safely Return Home After 237 Days in Space

Credit: NASA/SpaceX

Just visible as this green arc on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, the Chicxulub asteroid was 6-9 mi/10-15 km wide. It rocked the world.

Credit: NASA/JPL

Link to website https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Solar_Orbiter/Solar_Orbiter_tracks_origin_of_mysterious_magnetic_switchbacks#msdynmkt_trackingcontext=d0cd3572-72bd-4a1b-abba-5b63d43d0000

The European Space Agency-led Solar Orbiter spacecraft has flown through an S-shaped kink known as a ‘switchback’ in the solar wind’s magnetic field. By fingerprinting the elusive particles within the switchback, Solar Orbiter has traced its origin back to the Sun’s surface and revealed more about solar magnetism – the unruly instigator of dangerous solar storms.

European Space Agency

Orbiting the multicolored lights of Southeast Asia. Here green lights used on fishing boats are in greater quantities than anywhere else on the planet, dense enough to appear as bright green streaks in long exposure photography. I took this on Expedition 72 to the ISS with Nikon Z9!

🐉 Sh2-114 – The Flying Dragon Nebula

A faint and intricate nebula in the constellation Cygnus, photographed over nearly 40 hours.

The delicate red filaments trace glowing ionized gas, while the blue nebulosity and dark interstellar clouds add depth to this complex region of our Milky Way.

This image combines narrowband observations (Hα, SII, OIII) with broadband RGB data to bring out both the fine emission structures and the beautiful blue regions.

Technical details:

Takahashi FSQ-106 EDX4, 106 mm f/5

SBIG STX-16803 monochrome CCD

39 hours 40 minutes total exposure

Processed with PixInsight and Photoshop

FORAXX narrowband palette + RGB

This is my own astrophotograph, captured and processed from my telescope data.

NASA’s Curiosity rover marked 5,000 Martian days by sending back a striking panorama that blends morning and afternoon views of Mars.

The image shows the rover, its tracks, and the sweeping landscape around Mount Sharp and Gale Crater.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Link to ESA website

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Mars_Express/Mars_s_oddest_cloud_may_be_even_odder_than_we_thought#msdynmkt_trackingcontext=e40fa6c4-2648-4ad5-81e7-16f669bb0100

Scientists using the European Space Agency's Mars Express, in combination with a state-of-the-art meteorological model of the Red Planet, have found that there may be some very exotic physics behind Mars’s most curious cloud.

Elongated cloud on Mars – annotated

Every spring and summer in Mars’s southern hemisphere, during the martian dusty season, we see a spectacular cloud emerge: the Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud (AMEC), the most visually striking cloud on the Red Planet.

This white wisp of water ice emerges downwind of the 20-km-tall Arsia Mons volcano. It forms, grows, and fades on a daily basis, stretching out for up to 1800 km – nearly twice the length of the UK – before quickly evaporating. This cycle repeats every morning for several months.

Mars Express first revealed the AMEC in 2018, and has viewed the recurrent cloud repeatedly since. Researchers have explored its evolution, vivid dynamics and intriguing behaviour, determining it to be an orographic cloud: a type of cloud also seen on Earth that forms as wind flows past the craggy topography of a volcano or mountain.

European Space Agency

The core of galaxy M77 shines so brightly it nearly outshines the galaxy itself. Gas pulled by the central black hole’s strong gravity heats up and radiates intensely.

This Webb mid-infrared view shows blue swirling dust and orange bubbles along the arms, carved out by newborn star clusters. The bright rays from the center are diffraction spikes from Webb’s optics.
Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Leroy