Feed aggregator

2 Min Read Mapping Air Pollution With MAIA Sensors in Addis Ababa

PIA26694

Credits:
NASA/JPL-Caltech

Photojournal Navigation

1. Science
2. Photojournal
3. Mapping Air Pollution With…

• Photojournal Home
• Photojournal Search
• Latest Content
• Galleries
• Feedback
• RSS
• About

  Downloads

Mapping Air Pollution With MAIA Sensors in Addis Ababa

PNG (456.55 KB)

Description

This map of Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, shows the locations of 10 air sensors that NASA’s Multi-Angle Imager for Aerosols (MAIA) mission is using to provide one of the most detailed looks ever at the city’s air pollution. Over the course of three years, these sensors measured particulate matter that is 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter, also known as PM2.5. Black carbon, or soot, is an important component of particulate pollution in Addis Ababa, which studies have linked to impacts on low birth weight, brain development, respiratory conditions, and premature mortality.

The color bar at right indicates air quality variations from 20 to 40 micrograms per cubic meter across the monitoring stations, with the darkest red being the poorest air quality.

In Ethiopia, black carbon is commonly produced by diesel vehicles, fires, and other combustion sources. Detailed measurements from the MAIA sensors reveal how Addis Ababa’s air pollution changes by time of day and season, including spikes produced by rush-hour traffic and holiday celebrations. The findings are relevant to cities around the world, including in the United States.

MAIA’s air pollution research is focused on a dozen regions around the globe, including three in the U.S. centered on Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Boston. The mission consists of a ground-based sensor network already in operation as well as a space observatory, which uses a camera built at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, that will be launched by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) on an ASI satellite no earlier than late 2027. The camera is specially designed to help identify different types of PM2.5 aerosols based on how they reflect light, making it possible to map particle concentrations over each region that the mission studies.

Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From Photojournal

Photojournal

Search Photojournal

Photojournal’s Latest Content

Feedback

The world’s oceans hit 21.10 degrees Celsius last Saturday, breaking a record set in 2024

The search for frozen water is crucial to both China’s and NASA’s plans to establish permanent moon bases

On the 20th anniversary of Pluto’s infamous demotion, Mike “Pluto Killer” Brown explains why any reversal of that decision would be driven more by nostalgia than science

Here's what to expect during each stage of the Aug. 27-28 partial lunar eclipse, as our planet's colossal shadow swallows 96% of the moon's surface for billions on the night side of Earth.

August's lunar eclipse is the closing act of a dramatic two-part show, the opening act of which began on Aug. 12 as the moon covered the face of the sun to trigger a spectacular total solar eclipse over parts of Greenland, Iceland and Spain.

Eclipses always come in pairs, but the stages to be expected during a lunar eclipse are staggeringly different from its solar equivalent. One major bonus of a lunar eclipse is that each stage unfolds simultaneously for everyone on the night side of Earth, where the lunar disk is above the horizon. However, the local time for each stage will differ based on your location.

Lunar eclipses are also completely safe to view with the naked eye, or even through a pair of binoculars of a telescope, which will offer a magnified view of the moon as Earth's shadow sweeps across its cratered landscape.

Earth's shadow is divided into two concentric cones that are only visible during the brief window of a lunar eclipse. The outer penumbral cone casts a soft, wide shadow, while the inner umbra reveals the distinct curve of Earth's silhouette.

The 5 stages of the partial lunar eclipse August 2026Stage 1: Earth's penumbral shadow sweeps across the moon

The penumbral stage of the May 2021 lunar eclipse, captured over Chile. (Image credit: Photo by MARTIN BERNETTI/AFP via Getty Images)

The eclipse officially begins at 9:23 p.m. EDT on Aug. 27 (0123GMT on Aug. 28), as Earth's outer penumbral shadow begins to cover the moon's surface, according to TimeandDate.com.

Darkening of the lunar disk during this stage is incredibly subtle, becoming most apparent in the moments before Earth's inner shadow appears to transform August's "Sturgeon Moon", which is named for the time of year when the large fish were easily caught in North America.

Stage 2: Partial lunar eclipse begins

Earth's shadow swallows the moon during the partial phase of a lunar eclipse. (Image credit: Photo by Aditya Irawan/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Earth's inner umbral shadow will take its first "bite" out of the moon at 10:33 EDT on Aug. 27 (0233 GMT on Aug. 28), announcing the start of the partial phase of today's deep lunar eclipse.

The umbral shadow will first appear as a small semicircle of shadow close to the dark expanses of Oceanus Procellarum (the Ocean of Storms) and Mare Humorum on the moon's southwestern edge, before swiftly spreading to swallow the nearby moonscape.

This partial phase of a lunar eclipse is the only opportunity most of us will get to see the grand sweep of Earth's silhouette with our own eyes, as our planet performs like a doll in a cosmic marionette, casting its shape in shadow against the backdrop of its natural satellite.

Stage 3: Maximum eclipse

The moon takes on a red hue as the majority of its surface passes within Earth's shadow during a lunar eclipse. (Image credit: Photo by Thilina Kaluthotage/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The eclipse will reach its peak at 12:12 a.m. EDT (0412 GMT) on Aug. 28, as 96% of the lunar disk is smothered in Earth's umbral shadow, leaving a dazzling crescent exposed to direct sunlight on the moon's northern limb.

Around this time, you may notice a subtle red hue infuse the moon, as sunlight filtered through Earth's atmosphere is refracted, or bent onto its surface. It may appear as if the light from every sunset and sunrise on Earth is simultaneously striking the lunar disk, revealing prominent craters and dark lunar seas in spite of the shadow covering it.

Stage 4: Earth's inner shadow slips from the moon

Earth's shadow retreats from the lunar disk in the skies over Nepal. (Image credit: Photo by Narayan Maharjan/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Earth's inner umbral shadow will steadily retreat from the moon in the hours. The crimson hue that may have been visible at the height of the eclipse will gradually fade as the crescent of the lunar disk exposed to direct sunlight grows, and normality reasserts itself over the natural satellite.

The last vestige of Earth's inner shadow will depart the lunar surface at 1:51 a.m. EDT (0551 GMT) on Aug. 28.

Stage 5: Earth's outer shadow exits the Sturgeon Moon

Dark lunar seas and bright craters mark the Surface of August's Sturgeon Moon. (Image credit: Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Our planet's outer penumbral shadow will disappear from the Sturgeon Moon shortly after at 3:01 a.m. EDT (0701 GMT), bringing the eclipse to an end. We won't see another like it until New Year's Eve 2028, when a total lunar eclipse will be visible across Asia, Australia and Europe

Eager to photograph August's partial lunar eclipse? Then be sure to read our expert's guide on how to photograph a lunar eclipse, along with a roundup of the best cameras and lenses for astrophotography. You should also check out our picks of the best binoculars and telescopes available in 2026, which will give you a closer look at the moon as Earth's shadow swallows its ancient surface.

Editor's Note: If you capture a photo of the August lunar eclipse and want to share it with Space.com's readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, name and location to spacephotos@space.com.

Forests, extreme weather and the realities of a warming world

Even as cases of diseases such as measles rise, childhood vaccinations are declining, thanks to changes in public health policies and antivaccine sentiment, experts say

In August of 2006, astronomers at the International Astronomical Union (IAU) democratically voted to reclassify Pluto as a dwarf planet — but 20 years later, with our greater knowledge and understanding of planetary systems, is it time to revisit the controversial decision? Should Pluto be called a planet again?

For several years before the IAU vote, there had been agitators among the astronomical community lobbying for our solar system's nine worlds to become eight, and for Pluto's planetary status to be revoked. In 2000, Neil DeGrasse Tyson even went as far as to remove Pluto from the planets display at the Hayden Planetarium in New York. The questioning of Pluto's status began even earlier, in the 1990s, with the discovery of distant objects in the Kuiper belt beyond Neptune and which had similar orbits to Pluto.

It all came to a head in July of 2005 with the discovery of Eris, which is a Pluto-size body even further from the sun than Pluto is. Was Eris the 10th planet? If it was not a planet, then how could we still call Pluto a planet? A year later, the issue was debated at a meeting of the IAU, where astronomers from all over the world convened to discuss various conundrums. Numerous proposals and counter-proposals were put forward, some of which even increased the number of recognized planets to as many as 14. But in the end, Pluto became a dwarf planet.

Though Pluto was officially "reclassified," to many in the public it seemed as though Pluto had experienced a demotion. This viewpoint was the one promoted by those scientists who were against the decision such as Alan Stern, who was the principal investigator on the New Horizons mission to Pluto. Stern's spacecraft would launch in 2005 on a journey to a planet, but arrive at a dwarf planet in 2015.

Some argued that Pluto was still a kind of planet, just a small one. This argument is undermined somewhat by the IAU giving Pluto a minor planet number — 134340 — which is typically reserved for asteroids. Nationalistic arguments from some in the United States said Pluto should remain a planet because it was discovered by an American astronomer, Clyde Tombaugh, at Arizona's Lowell Observatory in 1930. And when New Horizons reached Pluto, it revealed not a minor body, but rather a complex world in its own right.

What is Pluto?

Nevertheless, for 20 years, Pluto has remained a dwarf planet, but on the anniversary of that fateful IAU vote, is it time to revisit that decision? Paul Byrne, a planetary astronomer at the University of Washington in St Louis, certainly thinks so.

"Yes, Pluto is a planet," he told Space.com. And not just Pluto, but the other dwarf planets too: Ceres, Eris, Makemake and Haumea, not to mention the likes of Sedna and Quaoar that are dwarf planets in all but name.

"Ultimately I think they are all planets and I don't think there's any benefit to not including Pluto as a planet," Byrne said.

To a point this entire debate is semantics, and Byrne accepts this viewpoint, reminding us that "Nature doesn't care what we call Pluto."

However, perception is another matter, which is where Byrne thinks that the IAU's 2006 decree ultimately failed us. Byrne describes how, when he gives public talks about the planets, members of the audience don't ask questions about Pluto's amazing active nitrogen glaciers or what formed its giant heart-shaped feature. Instead, they want to know why it was demoted. The entire issue has got in the way of presenting the science to the public.

"We've done a massive disservice to the public from a science communication perspective," Byrne said. "The messaging has got in the way of trying to understand what Pluto is."

Pluto's active nitrogen glaciers are typical of planetary processes. (Image credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI)

One of the arguments in 2006 was that models of the solar system's formation predict that there could be hundreds of objects like Pluto and Eris that remain undiscovered in the Scattered Disk and the Oort Cloud, which is a vast unexplored region that could extend up to a light-year from the sun.

"One of the issues people brought up was, how would kids remember the names of 200 planets?" said Byrne. "But just look at how many Pokémon there are that kids know the names of. If ultimately there are 200 planets in the solar system, then so what?"

The IAU definition of a planet

Semantics or not, how we categorize celestial objects has to be grounded in some kind of scientific thinking. In 2006 the IAU came up with a three-point plan on what makes a planet.

First, a planet had to be in hydrostatic equilibrium, meaning that its gravity has pulled it into a spherical shape. Furthermore, its interior will have become differentiated, with the heavier elements sinking to the core. Everyone seems to agree with this part of the planetary definition.

Pluto's gravity has shaped it into a spherical object. (Image credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI)

Second was that it must be in orbit around the sun, so a moon isn't a planet because a moon doesn't orbit the sun, it orbits a planet instead (though Byrne notes that if he had his way, he'd call the large moons planets too). Strictly speaking, this rules out exoplanets because they don't orbit our sun, but common sense dictates that they're fine because they orbit their own star instead. However, what about rogue planets that wander interstellar space alone? Astronomers are now beginning to discover very many of these free-floating worlds. It could be argued that most of these did indeed form in orbit around a star only to be ejected, so it's okay to still call them planets, but some rogue planets seem to have formed directly from the collapse of a gas cloud without having a parent star. Such planets fall through the gaps in the IAU's definition.

It's the third point that draws the critics' ire the most. It states that to be a planet, an object must have cleared its neighborhood. In other words, it must be dominant in the region around its orbit, its gravity having swept away any other bodies. Pluto fails at this because its orbit actually crosses Neptune's, and it's accompanied by other Kuiper belt objects in neighboring orbits. But then you could say Neptune mustn't be a planet because it has Pluto infringing on its orbital realm. And what about the existence of near-Earth asteroids? Does their existence mean that Earth isn't a planet because it hasn't cleared those away yet? There certainly does seem to be some sloppiness in this part of the definition of a planet, perhaps resulting from the somewhat rushed nature of the vote 20 years ago.

Planetary processes

But if the IAU decision were to be rejected, what should replace it? How should we classify planets? Byrne has some ideas.

"Being round and having some amount of differentiation makes a lot of sense to me," he said. "Geophysically, if they are big enough to pull themselves into balls, then they are big enough to have undergone some kind of internal chemical processing and are capable of having some kind of active geology, in terms of the outgassing of volatiles to form an atmosphere, volcanism, surface geomorphological processes, even a short-lived magnetic field. That's why I count the moon as a planet because it has had these planetary processes."

Byrne acknowledges that gas giants don't have these properties since they have no solid surface, but no one is doubting Jupiter's planetary credentials, and when it comes to Uranus and Neptune we don't actually know whether or not there is some sort of super-Earth itself lurking deep within them.

The moniker "dwarf" doesn't impress Byrne either. To him, it sounds like it implies there is a hierarchy of planets with the gas giants at the top and the dwarf planets at the bottom.

The New York Times article from when Pluto was discovered. (Image credit: The New York Times Archive)

"There is no natural hierarchy; they don't form according to one," he said. And although Pluto, Eris and the other dwarf planets are made from detritus left over from the construction of the solar system, they still coalesced in the same way as the other planets, in the sense that building blocks came together to form these larger objects.

A counterargument to Pluto being a planet, however, is that if it is just one of 200, then it is nothing special; it would become forgotten and ultimately treated almost incidentally. As a dwarf planet, it is the standard bearer of its kind, the guardian of an entire realm of similarly sized worlds. It's a choice between being a big fish in a little pond, or a little fish in a big pond.

The other 200 planets?

The real test will come when astronomers begin to discover some of these purported 200 or so planets far from the sun. As long as they are all roughly Pluto-size, there will be no debate — but what happens when astronomers discover one the size of Mars, or one even as large as Earth? We would surely think of an object so large as a planet. Perhaps this world would have formed closer to the sun but was kicked out through gravitational interactions with one of the giant planets, but on the other hand perhaps it formed out there in the outer solar system from the same detritus as Pluto did.

"By the IAU definition it would fail to be defined as a planet because it wouldn't have cleared its neighborhood," said Byrne. "If we did find such a planet it would be another nail in the coffin of trying to distinguish these things solely on the basis of where they are and not what they are."

Whatever the case, if Pluto is to be a planet again, it must deserve to be so scientifically. Nostalgia, or nationalistic pride, or giving kids names of planets to remember aren;t sufficient reasons to revoke the original IAU decision. Revisiting the name "dwarf planet" and finding a more appropriate category could be the way to go instead.

Or, perhaps we just don't have the words to describe the things that we are discovering. Concepts such as planets are rooted in history going back millennia when there was no understanding what these wandering "stars" really were, so perhaps it is not surprising that we are now running into difficulty when trying to apply the term "planet" to our modern understanding of the different types of worlds. If there is no way of categorizing these objects that is consistent and satisfactory to everyone, then perhaps we ought to stop worrying so much about it.

Whatever we decide to call it, Pluto will always be Pluto.

The next Meteosat Third Generation Imager satellite (MTG-I2) is set for liftoff on flight VA270 on an Ariane 6, from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. It will complete the first family of MTG satellites, which will deliver data for weather forecasting over Europe and northern Africa in unprecedented detail. The launch will be broadcast on Thursday, 27 August, on ESA WebTV.

Innovative NASA-funded orbital starshade could help capture first direct images from extrasolar earths.

APOD

1. Science
2. APOD
3. APOD: 2026 August 24 – Comet…

• Today’s APOD
• Archive
• Submissions
• Index
• Search
• Calendar
• RSS
• Education
• About
• Discuss

 

APOD

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

Comet 220P in Outburst

Explanation: Comet 220P is unexpectedly bright. Normally, periodic Comet 220P/McNaught is so dim that to see it requires a telescope. Two surprising outbursts this year, however, have made it about 20,000 times brighter than usual, so that it is now visible with binoculars and long-duration camera exposures. As expected, Comet 220P continues to orbit the Sun between Mars and Jupiter with a period of over 5 years. The featured long duration exposure, taken 10 days ago from South Africa, shows the comet‘s bright green head and short dust tail. Reasons for Comet 220P’s impressive outbursts are unknown but could be caused by the release of built-up subsurface gas or comet quakes. Comet 220P will pass about one Earth-Sun distance from the Earth in October, after which it is expected to fade quickly as it begins its return to the far part of its orbit.

Tomorrow’s picture: Moon dark

Date August 24, 2026 Credit & Copyright: Spilios Asimakopoulos Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff, Jerry Bonnell, Cecilia Chirenti, Keighley Rockcliffe A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC,
NASA Science Activation & Michigan Tech. U.

Random APOD Generator

Yesterday’s Image APOD: 2026 August 23 – Cassini Approaches Saturn

Tomorrow’s Image

Earth Observatory

1. Science
2. Earth Observatory
3. What Lake Bonneville Left Behind

• Earth
• Earth Observatory
• Image of the Day
• EO Explorer
• Topics
• More Content
• About

Earth Observatory

1. Science
2. Earth Observatory
3. What Lake Bonneville Left Behind

• Earth
• Earth Observatory
• Image of the Day
• EO Explorer
• Topics
• More Content
• About

This total solar eclipse appeared not only poetically beautiful but scientifically interesting.

An international team observed a magnetar known as 1E 1547.0–5408 using NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), leading to what could be the first detection of vacuum birefringence taking place in the magnetar’s ultra-strong magnetic field. These findings could potentially resolve a long-standing mystery quantum mechanics.

The "Star Trek" franchise's 60th anniversary is coming straight at us warp speed and will be arriving on Sept. 8, 2026. "Trek" faithful from around the globe are expected to pause and salute this space fantasy institution created by Gene Roddenberry in whichever way they deem appropriate.

The celebration has already begun earlier this year at the 2026 Rose Parade and will accelerate past September and into the fall, where there’ll no doubt be 40th anniversary screenings of "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" and 30th anniversary tributes to "Star Trek: First Contact" in November, amid a galaxy of other 'Trek'-centric events and retrospectives.

William Shatner's innumerable contributions to the "Star Trek" universe are as infinite as the heavens, and to add to the historic occasion’s festivities, he's co-executive produced a new documentary about the show's history and impact.

Titled "The Sixty-Year Mission: How Star Trek Changed Television And The World", the documentary will launch exclusively into Regal Cinemas beginning on Oct. 9, 2026.

Executive produced by William Shatner, "The Sixty-Year Mission" lands in theaters on October 9, 2026. (Image credit: Galaxie Pictures)

Written and directed by Mark A. Altman ("Star Trek: The Fifty-Year Mission") in association with Michael S. Broder of Galaxie Pictures, "The Sixty-Year Mission" will focus on the rare combination of creative genius, epic struggles, personal conflicts, and indefatigable spirit that caused the cosmic tumblers to align and birth "Star Trek: The Original Series" in 1966.

"This film is a love letter to 'Star Trek,'" Altman told Deadline. "I’m immensely grateful to Regal to offer this gift to fans for the show’s 60th birthday. I'm confident that the film will appeal both to longtime fans of the franchise as well as new viewers who might be wondering what the unique alchemy of this pop culture icon is really about."

"The Sixty-Year Mission" burrows into the genesis of the seminal TV series that, against all odds, forever altered the landscape of small screen science fiction and ushered in a true classic.

It's brimming with archival footage and fresh insights from "The Original Series" luminaries William Shatner, Walter Koenig, and George Takei, as well as visits with Gene “Rod” Roddenberry, Jr., Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, Gates McFadden, Ethan Peck, Robert Picardo, Christina Chong, and Denise Crosby.

William Shatner as James T. Kirk in "Star Trek: The Original Series" (Image credit: Paramount)

“"We could not be more excited to partner with Regal to ensure that fans have a chance to see this remarkable film honoring the incredible 60-year legacy of 'Star Trek,'" adds Broder. "I am delighted to join forces with William Shatner and many of the franchise’s greatest stars and creatives to bring this film to theaters. And since every birthday deserves a party, we’ll be bringing key 'Star Trek' talent to theaters for exclusive Q&A’s."

Except for the two-part pilot, "The Menagerie," Shatner appeared as the USS Enterprise's Captain James T. Kirk in every one of "Star Trek: The Original Series"' 79 episodes over three seasons and forged a palpable bond with viewers that helped forge "Star Trek's" legacy. His involvement with this documentary at the age of 95 gives the project a definite luster.

"The Sixty-Year Mission" will dock in Regal theaters starting Oct. 9, 2026.

A misbehaving coronal mass ejection (CME) that blew out a hidden cloud of charged particles aimed at Earth has been tracked by a record 17 spacecraft spread throughout the solar system, revealing the CME to be surprisingly lopsided.

CMEs are "burps" from the sun – huge clouds of magnetized plasma belched out from the sun's hot outer atmosphere, the corona, by the energy resulting from a solar flare. The magnetized CME cloud then expands out into the solar system, and the charged particles that the cloud contains are a significant radiation hazard to astronauts, spacecraft and even passengers on jet liners, but they also have a beautiful side as they can trigger the beautiful lights of the aurora when they intercept Earth.

CMEs occur on a regular basis, but one that erupted from the sun at 00:48 UT (7:48 p.m. ET) on Dec. 15, 2024 proved to be rather special.

"We used observations from 17 spacecraft to track and characterize this CME," Adrienn Luspay-Kuti of Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, who led the research that drew all the observations together, told Space.com. "This was a record number of spacecraft for tracking and characterizing a single CME, and gave us an exceptionally detailed view of how the CME evolved."

The previous record had been 10 spacecraft, but they had mostly been in a rough line from the sun through to the Earth and beyond, meaning that their measurements were somewhat one-dimensional. This time, for the December 2024 CME, the spacecraft were spread far and wide, not just at different distances from the sun, but also substantially wide of the Earth–sun line.

They revealed that the CME had two asymmetric lobes, one moving faster than the other. One of those lobes, which headed for Earth and Mars, would have gone unseen, obscured by the larger but slower lobe that left the sun at a tangent, were it not for the wide spread of the spacecraft.

"Our observations showed a fast lobe propagating through the Earth–Mars sector and a much slower lobe farther west toward STEREO-A," said Luspay-Kuti. STEREO-A is one half of NASA's two-spacecraft space weather monitoring system known as the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory.

The onset of the CME was seen by the joint NASA–ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observer (SOHO), which has been constantly monitoring the sun for more than 30 years. Yet it only saw the slower lobe that erupted at an angle to Earth; the faster lobe heading for our planet was missed, obscured by the slower, larger lobe.

A schematic of the CME has its two lobes progressing through the solar system and encountered various spacecraft and satellites. (Image credit: Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab)

The CME was next detected at a distance from the sun of 0.35 astronomical units (AU; 1 AU is the distance of Earth from the sun) on Dec. 16 moving through space near Mercury and the European Space Agency's BepiColombo mission (which finally arrives into orbit around the innermost planet in November 2026).

The next detection, on Dec. 17, was of the "hidden" component arriving at Earth, where a multitude of spacecraft picked it up. The CME was not strong enough to produce significant aurorae. Intriguingly Europe's Solar Orbiter mission, on an elongated orbit around the sun and at the time 0.94 AU from the sun and just 10 degrees off the Earth–sun line, did not detect the CME. This non-detection was actually vital since it helped to constrain the shape of the CME.

Then on Dec. 18, the slower moving lobe reached NASA's STEREO-A spacecraft, which orbits the sun at the same distance as Earth — 1 AU —- but substantially ahead of Earth in its orbit. The lobe that intersected the Earth had an average velocity of 522 miles (840 kilometers) per second, but the other lobe dragged its feet, moving at an average of 332 miles (534 km) per second from the sun and past BepiColombo and STEREO-A. In fact, by the time it reached STEREO-A, it had slowed to about 248.5 miles (400 km) per second. Both lobes decelerated as a result of friction with the regular solar wind that the CME was overtaking, and the range of velocities measured in the CME told researchers that the solar eruption was not traveling as a single, unified front.

Beyond Earth NASA's Europa Clipper mission, on which Luspay-Kuti is the Principal Investigator for the spacecraft's Plasma Instrument for Magnetic Sounding (PIMS) experiment, detected the faster moving lobe at 1.19 AU as the spacecraft was cruising to Mars for a gravity assist to help it on its journey to Jupiter. At the red planet, the now-defunct MAVEN mission also detected the CME on Dec. 19 to Dec. 20.

To have not only so many spacecraft follow the progress of a CME but also enough spacecraft off the Earth–sun line to measure the shape of the CME, at least in two dimensions, is a significant step forward in understanding and forecasting the propagation of CMEs.

The CME seen by the Solar Dynamics Observatory (top left), SOHO (top right) and STEREO-A (bottom left and right). The fast moving Earth-directed lobe was obscured by the southward-directed slower lobe. (Image credit: Luspay-Kuti et al.)

"This matters for future human exploration because a missed CME can mean losing valuable warning time," said Luspay-Kuti. "Fast CMEs can drive shocks that accelerate high-energy particles, which can pose a radiation hazard to astronauts outside Earth's protective magnetic field. This is why observations from multiple viewpoints, including spacecraft away from the sun–Earth line and planetary missions operating during their cruise phase, will become increasingly important for space-weather forecasting as human exploration moves further from Earth."

The asymmetrical double-lobed structure of this particular CME was certainly a surprise. The cause of the asymmetry remains unclear at present, though Luspay-Kuti told Space.com that researchers are investigating. The main question is, how frequent are asymmetric CMEs?

"In the context of previous observations, this event is at the most extreme end of observed CME variability," said Luspay-Kuti. "Are highly asymmetric CMEs actually fairly common but we fail to recognize them because we don't have enough observational coverage, or are they genuinely rare?"

The 17 spacecraft that detected or imaged the CME across some or all of its various stages – the bow shock and turbulent sheath ahead of the magnetic cloud, the CME itself and the turbulent wake left in the solar wind after its passing – were the following: SOHO (initial imaging), BepiColombo, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, STEREO-A, the four spacecraft of the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission, the two spacecraft of the ARTEMIS (Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence, and Electrodynamics of the Moon's Interaction with the sun) mission, NASA's Wind, ACE (Advanced Composition Explorer), GOES (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite) and DSCOVR (Deep Space Climate Observatory) missions, Europa Clipper, MAVEN and Solar Orbiter, the latter of which made measurements but did not detect the CME.

In the future, these missions will be joined by the European Space Agency's Vigil mission that will watch for space weather when it launches in 2031 for the sun–Earth L5 Lagrange point, 60 degrees behind Earth in its orbit and therefore providing additional off-axis monitoring.

The findings were published on Aug. 19 in the journal Science Advances.

Poor weather has delayed the launch of China's latest moon mission.

According to reports, the growth of Tropical Depression Narra in the Gulf of Tonkin has prompted China's space agency to delay the liftoff of Chang'e 7 significantly — possibly until 2027.

"China's Chang'e 7 lunar probe does not meet launch conditions, and its launch therefore cannot take place during the planned window this year," the state-run Xinhua news agency reported today (Aug. 23), citing the China Manned Space Agency.

Chang'e 7 had originally been scheduled to launch today from the Wenchang Space Launch Site on the island of Hainan. But then Narra started brewing in the Gulf of Tonkin, just to the island's west.

Launching a rocket into a howling gale is less than ideal. Chinese space officials initially pushed the launch back a day, to Monday (Aug. 24), before concluding that the new target was unattainable as well.

It's now unclear when Chang'e 7 might lift off; messaging on the topic has been characteristically murky. (China is fairly tight-lipped about its space activities, revealing far less publicly than, say, NASA or the European Space Agency does. For example, China announces who's flying on its crewed missions just one day before liftoff.)

The Chang'e 7 launch requires a certain lineup of Earth and the moon, so it cannot simply occur as soon as the skies around Wenchang clear. Some online reports suggest that Chang'e 7 could lift off as soon as September, while others — including today's Xinua story — have it launching sometime in 2027.

Artist's illustration of China's Chang'e 7 mission orbiting the moon. (Image credit: China Media Group)

Whenever it occurs, the liftoff will draw a lot of attention. Chang'e 7 is an ambitious and exciting mission, and it could have serious implications for lunar exploration down the road.

Chang'e 7 consists of an orbiter and a lander, which will likely touch down on the rim of Shackleton Crater, near the moon's south pole (though China has not announced an official landing site).

This region is thought to harbor lots of water ice, most of it on crater floors that have not seen the sun for billions of years. Chang'e 7's lander will deploy a rover and a hopping robot to hunt for this precious resource, which could help support human settlements in the area.

China aims to build such an outpost in the coming years, as does the United States, via NASA's Artemis program. U.S. officials have stressed the need for the nation to win this new space race so that it can establish the norms for living and working on Earth's nearest neighbor.

NASA and its commercial partners are making progress on their way to a permanent human presence on the Moon. As part of that, a recent press release and accompanying YouTube video hints they may be looking to provide regular updates to the progress of those efforts - and, at least for this first one, that progress looks pretty good.

NASA is giving a financial boost to nearly 20 technology investigations to help fuel the incubation of tomorrow's spaceflight research capabilities.

The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program has selected 18 projects for this year's Phase I awards, which will each split a total of $3.2 million in development funding. NIAC is designed to bolster technology breakthroughs that NASA could use on future space missions.

This year's awards include an array of mission concepts and research proposals NASA views as having "transformative potential," according to a July 29 announcement of winners. Among them are ideas for hardening spacecraft to explore and withstand the harsh conditions of Venus, radioisotope-heated lunar spacesuits and using space dust to partially block out the sun to reduce solar radiation.

The selected projects aren't actual NASA missions, but serve as a sampling of technologies the agency sees as potentially contributing to projects like establishing a moon base as part of the Artemis program.

"Achieving that will require more than incremental technological advancement. It means we need great leaps," Greg Stover, director of the Advanced Research and Technology division in NASA's Research and Technology Mission Directorate, said in the awards announcement. "These awards are the kinds of innovation the world needs NASA to help foster."

Each of the 18 award winners will receive up to $175,000 to complete a nine-month investigation of their proposals to determine their feasibility and determine the next steps in maturing their technologies.

Graphic depiction of the LUX concept. (Image credit: Stone Aerospace, Inc.)

As NASA's plans for long-term lunar habitation evolve, underground dwellings that are naturally shielded from the harsh solar radiation are a serious consideration for habitation spaces. One of the NIAC winning ideas includes the Lunar Underground eXplorer (LUX), from Gilly Elor, at Texas-based Stone Aerospace, Inc. LUX would send hovering robots to map the potentially miles-long lava tubes beneath the moon's Mare Tranquilitatitis. These drones, obscured from sunlight in the depths of these lunar labyrinths, would each be tethered by an extra lightweight fiber-optic cable spooled out from a lander or rover on the moon's surface, which would shoot the line with a laser to supply the cave-diving probe's power and communications link.

Graphic depiction of the LUX concept. (Image credit: Stone Aerospace, Inc.)

Another NIAC winner aims to map the continents of Earth-like exoplanets orbiting nearby stars. Today, we can determine the size and makeup of exoplanets, but discerning their physical features isn't something that's been attempted on a large scale.

Paul Stankus, from Brookhaven Science Associates in New York, proposes designing a new type of "nulling interferometer," which uses data from different telescopes to cancel out a star's light, via a technique called "dynamic hierarchical nulling." His idea would merge data from a pair of "nuller" space telescopes positioned about 60 miles (100 kilometers) apart to achieve a resolution fine enough to detect the contrast of surface features on exoplanets 10 billion times dimmer than their star.

Another award-winning concept comes from Michael Rubenstein and Northwestern University. They propose exploring Saturn's rings by throwing thousands of "femtosats" (small satellite probes weighing less than 100 grams) into the gas giant's orbit.

According to the project's page on NASA's website, "Conducting in-situ surveys of Saturn's rings with a single flagship mission, such as Cassini, would carry an unacceptably high risk of mission failure due to particle collisions." Instead, the femtosat fleet proposal suggests flying 10,000 spacecraft into Saturn's rings, knowing a significant portion could be lost. "The distributed nature of the proposed mission means it can accept a risk that could destroy many of [the] femtosats in the constellation, making in-situ survey of the ring possible."

"Every innovation, every leap in technology, starts with a seed of an idea," Phillip Williams, NIAC's acting program executive, said in NASA's statement. "The NIAC program allows NASA to germinate those seeds and determine if there's something that could be grown to benefit future space missions and our nation's aerospace economy."