S301 passes close to Sagittarius A*—so close that its orbit could reveal how the black hole’s rotation warps the spacetime around it.

Plans to rescue NASA's Swift Observatory satellite from falling into Earth's atmosphere are seemingly dead in the water. The agency and Katalyst Space announced yesterday that the Link spacecraft will no longer capture or boost the Swift telescope to a higher altitude due to an ongoing "attitude control issue," but will instead conduct rendezvous and proximity operations to collect data for future space exploration.

"We knew this was a high-risk, high-reward mission - a first-of-its kind attempt, developed on an unprecedented timeline driven by the Sun's activity," said NASA astrophysics director Shawn Domagal-Goldman. "We were all hoping f …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Russia unleashed a barrage of missiles and drones across Ukraine early Thursday, killing at least 13 people and wounding dozens more.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the hours-long attack struck Kyiv and the surrounding region as well as Odesa and Chernihiv, damaging apartment buildings, a children’s hospital and a school in the capital. Twelve people were killed in Kyiv and another in the surrounding region, he said, with around 40 injured.

“Unfortunately, while Moscow is investing in ballistic missiles and escalation, such strikes do not always receive the response they should from the world,” Zelenskyy wrote on X. “As long as Ukraine does not have enough anti-ballistic defense, Russia will not consider peace seriously.” U.S.-made Patriot interceptors “cannot yet be replaced,” he added.

Russia’s defense ministry said it used air-, land- and sea-launched weapons to strike military facilities and warehouses. Moscow also claimed its forces had shot down 726 Ukrainian drones.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko declared Aug. 21 a day of mourning “in memory of the victims of the enemy’s massive attack on the capital.” Flags will be lowered and entertainment events banned as emergency crews continue working across three districts of Kyiv.

The barrage also put neighboring NATO countries on alert.

Romania’s defense ministry announced that a drone “entered Romanian national airspace” at 3:21 a.m. before crashing minutes later near Grindu “in an uninhabited area.” No casualties or damage were reported.

Poland meanwhile scrambled military aircraft as Russian strikes continued in neighboring Ukraine. The Polish military said it had activated available forces and assets, while ground-based air-defense and radar systems were put “in a state of readiness.”

BRUSSELS — In Europe’s fight against wildfires, eyes are turning toward the sky: not just looking for rain or water-dropping Canadair planes, but also for ways to exploit new satellite capabilities to help contain or even prevent new blazes.

Satellites and the images and data they gather from space are increasingly seen as a means of providing European governments and firefighters on the ground with more accurate information: to map damage and detect fires at an early stage. 

Such help is more than welcome during another scorching European summer with wildfires in France, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Approximately 600,000 hectares have burned across EU countries since the start of the year. Just last weekend, Belgium was hit by one of the largest wildfires in its history, in the High Fens nature reserve.

Still, this latest use of satellites is another reminder that Europe needs to step up its game in yet another strategic arena. After Elon Musk’s Starlink showed how satellite-based services could revolutionize everything from mobile communication to waging war, space technology for disaster management offers a potential avenue for Europe to compete.

Greece, a country that seems to be battling bigger wildfires every summer, was the first to act. 

In early May, a rocket of Musk’s SpaceX carried four small satellites into space with the specific task of helping the country detect and track wildfires in near real time.  It was a crucial step in the build-out of the “Hellenic Fire System,” which the Greek government boasted was the first national satellite system of its kind. 

The system was set up through European-wide collaboration, with the help of the European Space Agency, its Greek counterpart, German wildfire intelligence platform Ororatech and Finnish radar-based satellite provider ICEYE.

“By integrating space-based capabilities into our emergency response systems, we are equipping our fire services with the tools they need to respond faster,” Dimitrios Papastergiou, Greece’s minister of digital governance and artificial intelligence, said at the launch in May. 

The satellites that were launched before the summer were equipped with two infrared imagers. Those pick up the heat energy radiated by fires, allowing satellites to detect hotspots and gauge their intensity. 

The system is designed to “support early detection of emerging hotspots and continuous monitoring of fire behavior,” the European Space Agency said. 

Satellites’ role in gathering vast, real-time data and images can also help with other extreme weather events. The Finnish company ICEYE offers monitoring services for governments and businesses to manage both natural catastrophes, such as floods and wildfires, and man-made ones, such as illegal deforestation.

ICEYE raised €1 billion in new financing this year, and became the first company to get backing from the Scaleup Europe Fund, a new fund backed by the European Commission to help companies expand rapidly.

“If we want to be effective in managing the environment around us, both in terms of growth and development, as well as preventing or managing natural catastrophes, these sorts of space-based systems are extremely effective,” ICEYE CEO Rafal Modrzewski told POLITICO.

He said the company has been mostly focused on “managing” wildfires, but is now “trying to push towards predicting wildfires or at least detecting them in an earlier stage.” Modrzewski says a similar offering is available for floods, and for wind damage stemming from hurricanes and typhoons.

The impact can be maximized if Brussels becomes a coordinating “buyer” of those services. “Using space-based capabilities is much more effectively done on an EU scale through [the European] Commission than on a national scale in 27 separate nations,” Modrzewski said. 

The Commission is already prominent in helping governments and emergency services map and detect wildfires. The European Forest Fire Information System, which sits within the Commission’s research desk, maps both active fires and burned areas based on data from NASA’s MODIS and the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-3, an Earth observation satellite. 

Currently, data and images arrive every 10 minutes, but the launch of a new satellite from the Meteosat third generation next Thursday should speed that up — with images arriving every 2.5 minutes, improving detection and even forecasting of possible wildfires.

NASA posted before-and-after images showing a crater dug by a Falcon 9 rocket hitting the Moon's surface on August 5, 2026. The Luna Reconnaissance Orbiter took the shots after the spectacular coda to the Firefly Blue Ghost mission.

To capture imagery of the impact, engineers tilted the spacecraft so its cameras would point toward the crater each time LRO passed about 60 miles above the Moon, traveling 1 mile per second.

— Read the rest

The post NASA image shows crater on moon created by SpaceX rocket crash appeared first on Boing Boing.

LONDON — The personal mobile phone numbers of three U.K. Cabinet ministers — including Defense Secretary Wes Streeting — have been found published online alongside their names.

The discovery comes after POLITICO reported that Prime Minister Andy Burnham fell victim to a texting scam — engaging with messages from someone impersonating Susie Wiles, Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff, before becoming suspicious the contact was illegitimate and ending the conversation.

After checking through a list of Cabinet members, POLITICO found three published on the web, for Streeting, Justice Secretary Alex Norris and Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Bryant. POLITICO is not pointing to where the numbers can be found to avoid further risking security.

All three ministers declined to comment on the record. The reference to Streeting’s number online has since been deleted, and officials are working to remove the other two.

Ministers are given secure government devices to conduct business for their briefs, in particular for high-risk roles like defense, and are expected to use those for non-personal comms.

A government spokesperson said: “The government has robust procedures in place to ensure the security of sensitive information.”

But Prerana Joshi, research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank, said that having direct numbers for Cabinet ministers in the public domain is a risk, warning that numbers could be spoofed and used to call others at a time when the U.K. is “in a high threat situation” globally.

“In any civil space, if your number is exposed, a whole host of malign, nefarious or even opportunistic cyber criminals or cyber actors could get hold of it, and they have tactics,” Joshi said.

‘No significance’

Downing Street would not comment on the revelation that Burnham exchanged messages with the impersonator, citing “national security.”

One person briefed on the communications said a “few messages” were exchanged after the PM entered No. 10 but insisted they were “of no significance.”

It is unclear how the fraudster obtained Burnham’s number. POLITICO could not find it published online.

British officials initially feared Wiles’ phone had been hacked again. But a White House official said: “This incident had nothing to do with the Chief of Staff’s devices being hacked.”

It is not clear whether Burnham will change his phone number, as Boris Johnson did after the Popbitch newsletter revealed in 2021 that the then-prime minister’s details had been sitting online for years.

‘Full of traps’

The episode has sharpened questions over whether Burnham — who built his political brand on his informal style and being more approachable than other prime ministers — can carry on that way in No. 10.

A former national security adviser, granted anonymity to speak frankly, said the prime minister needs to “get into the habit” of having his security staff verify that messages reaching him are authentic.

National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell “could have phoned the White House in five minutes and checked whether Susie Wiles genuinely was texting the prime minister,” they said.

“Being a domestic politician and going on listening tours around the U.K. is one thing, but when you engage in the international world, it’s full of traps and full of risks,” the former adviser added.

“What starts off as a very informal chat can quickly get into some kind of business, and you could give away key details of an upcoming trip or the movements of Donald Trump,” they said.

Former Defense Secretary Ben Wallace — himself targeted by imposters posing as Ukraine’s prime minister in 2022 — said the incident “demonstrates our adversaries are always looking for weak points in our communications.”

While Downing Street has said nothing significant was discussed in the exchanges between Burnham and the imposter, Wallace said “there is always a risk of kompromat” being obtained by hostile actors.

As technology, such as AI voice cloning, improves, these sort of incidents are going to “happen more and more,” Wallace added.

Others have urged Burnham not to change tack.

Guto Harri, Johnson’s former director of communications, said: “It’s only a threat and it’s only an embarrassment if they give something away — and it doesn’t seem that he’s done anything like that.”

Harri said it was “good to have someone big enough not to have his calls screened from everyone” as prime minister.

“I don’t think it’s healthy that the civil service wants to control all access to the principal. If they had their way, nobody would be able to talk to a prime minister without going through them,” he said.

“We can’t say that politicians are not living in the same world as us … and then moan about them speaking to people like a normal human being.”

Harri conceded a new number might be a “good idea,” giving the prime minister a “clean slate.”

Dan Bloom contributed to this report.

A Spanish F-18 fighter jet on a NATO air-policing mission Sunday shot down a drone that had illegally entered Romanian airspace.

The drone was detected by radar about 24 kilometers north of the eastern city of Galați after entering Romania from Moldova. Having established radar contact, the fighter jet was authorized to shoot it down at 5:01 a.m. Authorities said debris from the destroyed aircraft had fallen in an uninhabited area between two villages.

Martin O’Donnell, spokesperson for NATO operation headquarters, said additional details regarding Sunday’s incident remained under investigation but that the drone “appears to be Russian.”

“The Ministry of National Defence is constantly monitoring the situation and informs in real time the allied structures about such events,” the ministry added in a statement.

It is the fourth drone shot down by NATO over Romania since the beginning of 2026. In July, Romanian F-16s downed three Russian drones that breached the country’s airspace — the first such interceptions after dozens of incursions since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In May, a Russian drone crashed into an apartment building in Galați, injuring two people.

Meanwhile, Russia and Ukraine traded strikes over the weekend. Russian forces launched missile and drone attacks on Kyiv early Sunday, sparking fires in at least two districts and injuring three people, according to the city’s military administration.

Ukrainian drones also struck the Moscow region overnight in what the regional governor Andrei Vorobyov described as one of the largest attacks to target the area, killing an 83-year-old man.

An object observed by the James Webb Space Telescope lends credence to a strange explanation for the mysterious red spots in the early universe.

In 2027 and 2028, there will be two spectacular, long-duration solar eclipses. Here’s what you need to know about them.

Observatories have been built in mines, deep under the Antarctic ice sheet, and elsewhere in an effort to detect the fleeting particles.

The Mission Robotic Vehicle is making the first attempt to attach a new thruster to an aging satellite.

The scene kid era was more about setting ourselves apart from previous decades. Each decade had its respective fashion trends that coincided with pop culture. Scene kids had their own era in the 2000s, often referred to as the Myspace era. This era was defined by skinny jeans, teased and/or straightened colorful hair, tight colorful band tees, and the Vans Warped Tour. It was a beautiful time. Scene kids everywhere, myself included, were peak “scene” in the late 2000s. These four albums were loved by every scene kid.

‘bone palace ballet’ by chiodos

Craig Owens’ flexible vocals mixed with Jason Hale’s virtuosic guitar were very distinct in a vast sea of post-hardcore bands in the 2000s. Their 2007 sophomore release, Bone Palace Ballet, was bigger and bolder than their 2005 debut. The album is the band’s masterpiece, finely curated and perfected with astounding production.

Chiodos offered their best work on this album. They carry over Bradley Bell’s beautiful piano work from the debut record. Drummer Derrick Frost graciously carried elements of Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham into a new era. The sophomore album is heavier than the first, and at times, much softer as well. It became a massive commercial success for a post-hardcore band, peaking at No. 1 on the Independent Albums Chart. Additionally, the album hit No. 1 on the Billboard Top Rock Albums and No. 5 on the Billboard 200.

‘suicide season’ by bring me the horizon

For their sophomore release, Bring Me The Horizon transitioned from deathcore into metalcore. This was a great move, as metalcore was at the forefront of the scene-kid era. Suicide Season was a Myspace staple in 2008, and songs such as “Chelsea Smile” and “Diamonds Aren’t Forever” were common profile songs on Myspace. Scene kids often had images of Oli Sykes on their Myspace page too. In real life, his image was the centerpiece of countless scene-kid bedrooms as Oli Sykes became a poster boy for scene kids in this era.

‘witness’ by blessthefall

This metalcore band created an easily accessible album for non-metalcore fans to tap into. In 2009, Blessthefall perfectly balanced clean vocals with screams on Witness. It was a successful effort for the band, selling 11,000 copies in its first week. It peaked at No. 6 on the Independent Albums chart and No. 9 on the Top Hard Rock Albums chart. The album features a block of notable tracks in the first half, which includes “To Hell And Back”, “God Wears Gucci”, “Hey Baby, Here’s That Song You Wanted”, and “Witness”.

Photo by Gary Wolstenholme/Redferns

The post 3 Albums Every Late 2000s Scene Kid Loved appeared first on VICE.

💾

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week publicly rejected President Donald Trump’s latest Gaza peace plan.

The Trump administration can live with it — for now.

The administration says it’s less concerned with what Netanyahu says than what the Israeli Defense Forces do. A U.S. official, who, like others in the story, was granted anonymity to discuss internal thinking, said that the administration was initially “disappointed” that Israel responded to the 15-point peace proposal by ramping up attacks in Gaza — but is pleased that it has since eased its assault.

Now, the administration is willing to give the Israeli prime minister some leeway to message the peace plan in the way he needs to, the official said. There is broad understanding that he is two months from a tough reelection — and needs to please his own hard-right allies to win. Few expected the president’s roadmap to be wholesale embraced, even as Trump on Truth Social trumpeted it as a “major milestone” in the conflict.

“We recognize the complexities that come from the Israeli elections, and we’re obviously going to give Bibi a space to try and navigate that,” the official said. But in turn, “they need to give us a little bit of space in terms of no targeted killings in order to allow us to try to get to the next phase, so there’s a lot more challenges to go to get there.”

U.S. officials and Hamas negotiated the latest peace framework separately, with help from Middle East allies. The proposal, announced last month, called for Hamas to disarm and relinquish governance in Gaza and Israel to withdraw its military from the territory. The plan stalled when Hamas said it would not disarm until Israel withdrew, and Israel said it would not withdraw until Hamas disarmed.

Even as skeptics of the Trump plan criticized the president for overhyping its achievement, U.S. officials believed that they needed to go public once Hamas was on board to lock in its pledge to disarm. Despite the president’s public confidence, administration officials privately expected that the proposal would likely face pushback from Netanyahu but that talks could continue with Israel.

Still, they considered the roadmap a significant win.

“Nobody’s ever gotten to this point where they got Hamas to agree to this, so that’s a necessary step before actually disarming it,” the U.S. official said.

And there are signs that Israel is preparing for the possibility of withdrawal anyway, with Israeli media reporting Israel’s defense establishment began weighing contingencies to do so in the days after Netanyahu’s public rejection.

Another administration official said the Board of Peace, a 27-country initiative formed as part of Trump’s deal last year to end the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, has been “getting good cooperation on the ground of late.”

“That’s what’s important,” the administration official said.

And it’s not just Trump administration officials hailing the framework as a step in the right direction. Former ambassadors and administration officials, including some who served in the Biden and Obama administrations, see the recent commitment the U.S. secured from Hamas to disarm — a monthslong sticking point in the peace process — as a small, but meaningful step, even as doubts remain whether Hamas will follow through. A member of the Hamas political bureau, according to the Associated Press, said this week that Hamas remains “committed to the roadmap.”

“For Netanyahu, his primary objective, of course, is getting through his election so he’s going to at least voice rejection even while he may allow some aspects of it to move forward,” said Dan Shapiro, a U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Obama administration. “It looks like Trump is tolerating the Netanyahu two-step. These two have done a dance like this before and as long as certain elements of it are moving forward … Trump seems to be willing to tolerate Netanyahu’s stated rejection.”

Even Trump appeared in little hurry Monday to escalate the dispute with Netanyahu, insisting to reporters in the Oval Office that he had a “good relationship” with the Israeli prime minister despite the very public rejection of his peace proposal.

The White House referred requests for comment to the Board of Peace.

A Board of Peace official added that “separate discussions with Israel are continuing.”

“The objective remains the full decommissioning of weapons and ensuring Gaza can never again pose the kind of threat Israel faced on October 7,” the official said. “Plans are moving forward in this regard. We have seen important elements of cooperation in recent days and we are intensifying our efforts to accelerate progress.”

The U.S. official added that Israel remains skeptical that Hamas will follow through on their commitments, while noting the country was similarly skeptical that Hamas would release the Israeli hostages.

“We basically have built a lot of credit with them. And I think that they’re willing to give us more of a shot to see if we can get to the next phase,” the official said. “We’re in an uncomfortable position for everyone, but I think that there’s a pathway to get through it.”

The idea that Israeli troops are at least planning to withdraw — especially if that withdrawal goes to the yellow line in Gaza, a key point of the plan the Board of Peace proposed — is giving Trump allies hope that Netanyahu’s words are meant for a domestic audience, while his actions are meant to demonstrate he might consider a deal in the future.

“Netanyahu’s playing a fairly tricky tightrope, where on the one hand he flexes his muscle for domestic audiences, given his situation at election eve, and on the other hand, he’s doing some baby steps in the direction of the 15-point plan — testing the tolerance of the American or Board of Peace team,” said Nimrod Novik, who served as senior diplomatic adviser to former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres.

James Jeffrey, a former ambassador who served in the Middle East during three presidential administrations, including Trump’s first term, said that “of course it’s a win” to get Hamas to agree to disarm. And, behind the scenes, he said there continues to be movement between the U.S and Israel.

“Slowly we and Israel are moving forward on both Lebanon and Gaza even in the face of Israeli elections,” Jeffrey said.

Still, the incremental movement leaves fundamental questions, which have repeatedly stymied efforts to create a lasting peace between Israel and Gaza. U.S. allies are also concerned that Netanyahu’s public rejection of the latest peace plan is undermining confidence in the Board of Peace and the broader Middle East peace efforts.

Hamas’ willingness to disarm is conditioned on Israel withdrawing from Gaza, leaving unresolved how — and in what order — either side would carry out its commitments.

Hamas is supposed to turn over its weapons to a United Nations-created body responsible for governing the day-to-day operation in Gaza, and that governing authority is supposed to eventually run the territory, supervised by the Board of Peace, though the timeline for leadership handover remains uncertain. And Israel, meanwhile, has not agreed to the withdrawal in the plan, even as its military is preparing for the possibility.

But administration allies don’t really expect some big peace ceremony at Camp David or in Geneva. They’ll settle for dialogue, however tenuous.

“You have to judge these things incrementally in the Middle East,” a person familiar with the White House’s discussions around the peace process said.

Jerry Wu and Daniella Cheslow contributed to this report.

The Perseids will peak between August 12 and 13. Here’s what time—and where—you can get the best view, and why 2026 will be an exceptional year.

In 1976, NASA's Viking 1 lander found strong "life affirmation" results in a Martian soil sample. Robert Jastrow, then director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said, "Short of seeing something wiggling on the end of a pin, the case for life on Mars is now as complete as the Viking experiments could make it." — Read the rest

The post Viking lander's 1976 Mars soil test may have found life after all appeared first on Boing Boing.

Moldovan President Maia Sandu has blamed Russia’s war in Ukraine for a recent drone crash in the southeast of her country.

A drone crashed and exploded in the village of Crocmaz on Sunday, causing a fire that damaged several properties but caused no casualties. After conducting preliminary analysis on the fragments, local police said it could be a “missile-like drone.”

“I strongly condemn the latest violation of our airspace,” Sandu wrote on X, adding: “This is a direct consequence of Russia’s war, and it endangers us all.”

Sandu said that the “risk to human life in our region is real and growing. It must stop.”

The affected village is close to southwestern Ukraine, particularly the Odesa region, which came under a heavy missile and drone attack by Russia on the same day.

Moldovan police said that to date, no other aircraft of this type have been found on Moldovan territory and research is continuing to establish “the exact type and origin of the aircraft as well as the circumstances of the incident.”

Last week, local police discovered wreckage from a Russian Geran-2-type drone near the village of Văleni in southern Moldova.

After the incidents, Moldova’s foreign ministry recalled its ambassador from Russia for consultations.

Solar energy, at any time of day or night - that's the dream of space mirror projects. Futurists have been imagining satellite mirrors that could reflect the sun's light onto the Earth's surface for over a century. Russian scientists experimented with the concept in the '90s with the Znamya project. The idea is to put a large mirror in orbit and angle it such that sunlight can be reflected onto a specific geographical area for illumination or the generation of solar power.

Now, the California-based company Reflect Orbital wants to try this idea again, launching a test satellite named Eärendil-1 as a precursor to a fleet of up to 50,000 spa …

Read the full story at The Verge.

A device currently being used to help octogenarians do self-administered eye exams could be part of future space missions to monitor astronauts’ ocular health.

The surface of the Sun has been photographed in more detail than ever before, and it turns out to be covered in whirlpools. Victoria Gill reports for BBC News on the most detailed images of the Sun yet, taken by the Inouye Solar Telescope on a high peak in Hawaii and published in the journal Nature. — Read the rest

The post The sharpest pictures ever taken of the Sun show it swirling appeared first on Boing Boing.

NASA created a Martian Dust Limit Working Group this year to figure out how much Mars dust a person can safely breathe, and Leonard David reports for Space.com on the dust hazard and how future astronauts might deal with it. — Read the rest

The post Mars dust is full of perchlorates, silica, and heavy metals appeared first on Boing Boing.