NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 has finally returned to Earth. Commander Zena Cardman and pilot Mike Fincke from NASA, along with mission expert Kimiya Yui from JAXA and Oleg Platonov from Roscosmos, splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego in the early hours of January 15, 2026. Their Dragon capsule, Endeavour, landed in the water at 3:41 a.m. EST, bringing an unexpected end to a mission that began in August.
Astronomers have captured a spectacular image of a dead star moving across space, trailing a luminous bow shock that defies mathematical predictions. A white dwarf known as RXJ0528+2838 is located 730 light years away from us. It is a compact remnant that is what remains of a sun-type star after it has run out of fuel and lost its outer layers.
Swapping a camera battery is a fairly routine task for any photographer, but up on the International Space Station, it’s about the most low-key physics lesson you could ever hope for. NASA astronaut Don Pettit, the man behind some of the most incredible orbital photography, took a few minutes to demonstrate how it’s done from above.
The latest Hubble image released by NASA depicts an incredibly beautiful spectacle taking place in the constellation Sagittarius, just 5,500 light-years away. The Herbig-Haro objects HH 80 & HH 81 are vivid pink and green patches illuminated by jets of ionized plasma streaking diagonally across a dark cosmic background. Stretching a massive 32 light-years across, these vibrant structures are part of the greatest known outflow from a star that is still developing.
The Vera C Rubin Observatory has finally achieved a significant scientific breakthrough, due to the massive digital camera known as the LSST at its heart. Astronomers have discovered an asteroid called 2025 MN45 that stands out in a significant way: its rotation is simply incredible. To give you an idea of how big this object is, it measures approximately 710 meters across. That’s approximately the length of eight full-size American football fields stacked end to end, and it spins once every 1.88 minutes.
Photo credit: Nichole Ayers
The International Space Station (ISS) flies around our planet at an incredible speed of 17,000 miles per hour. On the first of July 2025, NASA Astronaut Nichole Ayers captured this stunning photograph of a massive lightning storm from an ISS window while moving through the northern part of Italy.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope got 2026 off to a fantastic start by capturing another breathtaking glimpse of the Westerlund 2 star cluster, a wild and wacky collection of stars buried inside the Gum 29 nebula in the constellation Carina, 20,000 light years away. The image of this starry panorama, released on December 19 as ESA’s final Picture of the Month for 2025, displays what JWST’s NIRCam and MIRI cameras were able to capture in infrared, providing a good look at an area around 6 to 13 light-years across and filled with thousands of stars.
Deep in space, two massive spiral galaxies are slowly but inevitably pushed together by gravity. IC 2163 and NGC 2207 must have had a close call millions of years ago as they flew by each other at hundreds of kilometers per second. From Earth, they appear to be bound together, with their long, sweeping arms stretching out across the expanse in between, like giants reaching out to each other.
NASA’s Curiosity rover continues to beam back views from Mars that stop people in their tracks cold. Just before the new year, the NASA team released a new panoramic image taken by the rover. It’s essentially a holiday postcard, or a composite of photos taken by the rover itself, blending scenes from morning and late afternoon on the same spot.
