Exploring Space

Space photos, articles and other space related things.

[spaceexp]

Great Red Spot Rotation

Winds around Jupiter's Great Red Spot are simulated in this JunoCam view that has been animated using a model of the winds there. The wind model, called a velocity field, was derived from data collected by Voyager spacecraft and Earth-based telescopes.

[apod]

2026 May 30

Supermoon Versus Micromoon Image Credit: Soumyadeep Mukherjee

Explanation: What is so micro about tonight’s blue micromoon? Just after sunset, a full moon will appear slightly smaller and dimmer than usual. The reason is that the Moon’s fully illuminated phase occurs within a short time of apogee - when the Moon is farthest from the Earth in its elliptical orbit. In fact, tonight’s micromoon will be the farthest, smallest, and dimmest Moon this year. But tonight’s micromoon is notable for yet another reason: it is also a blue moon, meaning that it is the second full moon in the same month (moon-th). Pictured here, a supermoon – when the full moon appears near its largest – is compared to a micromoon as photographed from Kolkata, India in May and December of 2021. Although the next micromoon occurs next month, and the next blue moon at the end of 2028, the next blue micromoon will not occur until 2053.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260530.html

[spaceexp]

Shock waves during Starship Flight 12 launch

Credit: Space Scout / Cameron Schwartz

[spaceexp]

Crescent Venus next to Crescent Moon

[fullyunsourced]

Product placement... in SPACE!

Who are the bravest people to go to space in history? Of course you might say Armstrong or other pioneers. But I want to put forward a couple of names you might not think of: Sergei Zalyotin and Aleksandr Kaleri. Who are they? They're the first people to trust a private company to pay to bring them back!

The Russian space program was in rough shape in the 90s. The Soviet Union had collapsed, and funding for space exploration went with it. After that, everything was run on an absolute shoestring, including the money for supplying and maintaining their space station Mir.

Mir was the first-ever modular space station, and something of a trial project for the International Space Station (though of course the ISS wouldn't come about until Mir was already being retired). Despite the budgetary issues, it still set new records. In its time, it was the heaviest space station ever, the longest occupied (12.5 years straight). And it's still where the longest single human spaceflight was, at 437 days.

So where can the money come from? You could get other countries to pay for it. And they did: Many of Mir's occupants were from other nations, paying for their stay. And the Shuttle-Mir program saw seven astronauts stop on the station, bringing with them much-needed resupplies.

And, last but not least, advertising, of course. Many times, private companies paid for their products to be sent up to Mir for the astronauts to do product placement in their TV broadcasts. In one particularly galling event, the cosmonaut was ordered by the commercial's director to redo the shoot, because he wasn't smiling enough. Look closely enough, and you'll even see ad banners hung up in the Russian mission control center.

The end of Mir was inevitable, and it came right at the turn of the millennium. Its orbit was too far for integration with the new ISS. Usually you'd deorbit the station safely, but why not squeeze the tiniest bit of extra cash out of it?

Thus MirCorp was born. The company's plan was to maintain the station itself, and refurbish it into the world's first orbital movie studio! Plans got further than I'd expect: A movie star, Vladimir Steklov, was even trained and assigned for a flight to start filming.

Before that, the station had to be prepared, so MirCorp hired on Zalyotin and Kaleri, the latter of whom already had done two missions to Mir. Their job would be to reactivate the station months after it was abandoned by the previous crew in 1999.

They spent over two months working on the station, inspecting the interior and exterior for damage.

Soyuz TM-30 was the first privately-funded space flight, but it was the end of the story for Mir. MirCorp went out of business shortly thereafter, and no more flights could be made. The station was intentionally deorbited and burned in the atmosphere in 2001.

[spaceexp]

Mare Orientale from Artemis II

Credit: NASA/Stuart Atkinson

[spaceexp]

Satellite breaking up recently seen from ISS

(Chris Williams, April 27th 2026)

[nasa]

What’s Hiding in the Emptiest Parts of Space?

This artist’s impression pinpoints many cosmic voids –– relatively empty bubbles of space.

The universe is home to trillions of galaxies, each chock full of smaller cosmic objects like stars and planets. Since galaxies gravitate together in a web-like pattern, there are also immense open spaces called cosmic voids in between. In those growing, gloomy places, dark energy dominates.

Galaxies in this animation are structured a bit like a Hoberman sphere (a lattice-like toy ball that expands and collapses), growing farther apart as the universe expands.

Zoomed out maps of the universe show that galaxies often cluster together in bright city-like regions. Each cosmic metropolis is connected to others by interstate highways – vast filaments of dark matter, gas, and dust, along which additional galaxies can be found. This large-scale structure is called the cosmic web.

Way out in the boondocks – far from the galaxies and filaments – are the cosmic voids. They’ve been growing larger for billions of years, emptying out as gravity pulls matter elsewhere.

This animation visualizes the early universe, when the cosmic was full of a hot plasma soup.

Cosmic voids were born when the universe looked extremely different than it does today. Instead of being speckled with stars and galaxies, the cosmos was filled with a sea of plasma (charged particles) that formed a dense, almost uniform fluid.

There were slightly denser kernels of matter, like a single ounce of cinnamon sprinkled into about 13,000 cups of cookie dough! Since the clumps had more mass, their gravity attracted additional material. Those areas grew and grew, drawing more matter together to form stars, galaxies, and galaxy clusters as the universe expanded over billions of years. Meanwhile, the spaces in between became ever emptier.

A simulation of large-scale structure forming under the influence of gravity.

Cosmic voids aren’t completely empty, though. They do have sparse galaxies, though they seem to have delayed development. Since there’s less matter, there’s weaker gravity pulling things together so stars and galaxies form more slowly. And those galaxies are isolated so they’re less likely to interact with others, which fuels growth in denser places like galaxy clusters.

But voids are mostly filled with things we can’t see. They contain a thin mist of dark matter along with a relatively larger amount of WIMPS (weakly interacting massive particles) like ghostly neutrinos than we find elsewhere in the universe. Since there’s not very much stuff in voids to create gravity, a different force reigns supreme: dark energy, the mysterious cosmic pressure that seems to be speeding up the universe’s expansion. Since cosmic voids are influenced primarily by dark energy, they offer clues about its behavior.

Astronomers haven’t thoroughly studied cosmic voids yet, but our upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will be wide-eyed enough to reveal those desert patches of space like we’ve never seen them before. Studying them will show how the universe is put together and how dark energy is pushing galaxies apart.

If you could fly through the cosmic web at hyperspeed, you might see a view like this simulated one!

So far, scientists have found around 1,000 cosmic voids. Roman’s 3D surveys should find tens of thousands more, both large and small, scattered throughout earlier cosmic eras than previous large sky surveys could see. That means we’ll be able to watch how the most vacant places get even emptier over billions of years. And astronomers can trace any changes in dark energy’s might by seeing how it stretches voids, where dark energy dominates, across cosmic time. 

Follow along with Roman’s journey to launch at nasa.gov/roman.

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[spaceexp]

Falcon 9 orbital launches by year, 2010-2025

Orbital launch stats from around the world.

[spaceexp]

Saturn’s rings, captured by Voyager 2 in 1981

[nasa]

Roman is Ready to Go!

After being assembled, our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has passed final tests, and is being prepared to move to our Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where teams will work to prepare it for a launch in early September 2026.

With a field of view at least 100 times larger than Hubble's, Roman can potentially measure light from a billion galaxies in its lifetime. It will also be able to block starlight to directly see exoplanets and planet-forming disks, complete a statistical census of planetary systems in our galaxy, and settle essential questions in the areas of dark energy, exoplanets, and infrared astrophysics.

The observatory is named after Dr. Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief astronomer who made cosmic vistas readily accessible to all by paving the way for telescopes based in space.

Want to learn more about Roman? Check out our #Roman Space Telescope tag and visit our mission page.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

[spaceexp]

Mars - Cloudy North Polar Cap - CNSA Tianwen-1 by Andrea Luck Via Flickr: Credit Image Processing: Andrea Luck Raw Images Copyright: CNSA/CLEP/PEC/MoRIC Image created using 2 images processed from: moon.bao.ac.cn/ Mission: Tianwen-1 Instrument: MoRIC - Moderate Resolution Imaging Camera Time: 2025-08-09T19:26:14.690000Z Lon -25.36987 Lat 84.522795 Altitude: 1990 km File ID: 1) HX1-Or_GRAS_MoRIC-F-0055_SCI_N_20250809192124_20250809192124_05173_A.2C 2) HX1-Or_GRAS_MoRIC-F-0056_GEO_N_20250809192614_20250809192614_05173_A.2C Credit Image Processing: Andrea Luck Raw Images Copyright: CNSA/CLEP/PEC/MoRIC

[spaceexp]

NASA’s Artemis II mission is nearing its final stage, with the Orion spacecraft set for a high-speed return to Earth and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

[spaceexp]

Peeking at the Earth by NASA Johnson Via Flickr: art002e009286 (April 6, 2026) – As the Artemis II crew came close to passing behind the Moon and experiencing a planned loss of signal, they captured this image of a crescent Earth setting on the Moon’s limb. The edge of the visible surface of the Moon is called the “lunar limb.” Seen from afar, it almost looks like a circular arc – except when backlit, as in other images captured by the Artemis II crew. In this photo, the dark portion of Earth is experiencing nighttime, while Australia and Oceania are in the daylight. In the foreground, the Ohm crater is visible, with terraced edges and a flat floor interrupted by central peaks—formed when the surface rebounded upward during the impact that created the crater. Credit: NASA

[nasa]

Earthset

The Artemis II crew captured this view of an Earthset on April 6, 2026, as they flew around the Moon. The image is reminiscent of the iconic Earthrise image taken by astronaut Bill Anders 58 years earlier as the Apollo 8 crew flew around the Moon. The Apollo 8 mission was the first crewed spacecraft to circumnavigate the Moon.

For more imagery from the mission, visit our Artemis II Multimedia Page.

[spaceexp]

Apollo vs Orion comparison

[mapsontheweb]

1970 vs 2026