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Happy Tuesday, space fans!
This morning, a Russian Soyuz rocket launched NASA astronaut Anil Menon and cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina to the International Space Station atop a Russian rocket. The trio already docked at the ISS just two hours after their launch, which took place at 10:47 a.m. EDT (1447 GMT; 7:47 p.m. local time in Baikonur). Imagine one minute you're on Earth and just two hours later, less time than most flights, you're docking to a space station in orbit around your home planet that you are no longer standing on. The trio will join seven astronauts already living onboard the space station. A combined crew with NASA, ESA and Russian space explorers, we are excited to see how their international collaboration goes in orbit.
In addition to this launch, a company has gotten permission from the FCC to launch a space mirror into orbit that would reflect sunlight back at us, allowing for faux (but real?) sunlight at night. It's surprising to see this wild concept getting permission and moving forward, and I wonder what unexpected effects we could see from hacking Earth's natural sunlight patterns in such a major way. In positive science news, we saw liver and kidney tissue bioprinted in space for the first time, a major milestone in advanced medicine that could benefit us back on Earth. We are also counting down to a total solar eclipse and another Starship launch.
Check out what's big in space below!
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Reflect Orbital just got approval to launch its first light-directing space mirror, which it plans to do later this year. Tens of thousands more such craft could follow over the next 10 years.
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SpaceX is progressing toward Starship's next big test launch.
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Whether you're in Spain, Iceland, the U.K. or North America, here's exactly what you'll see in the sky on Aug. 12 — and when to look.
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California-based company Auxilium Biotechnologies just produced kidney and liver tissue in space for the first time, using a method called bioprinting,
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For the first time, astronomers have directly mapped the magnetic field surrounding one of the Milky Way's most unusual pulsars, confirming a decades-old prediction about how particles stream away from the rapidly spinning stellar corpse.
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Master Chief is returning in 2026 with a ground-up remake of the original Halo that's promising new content on top of a totally remade presentation.
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That's it for our space update today!
The rest of the summer is gearing up to be very exciting and busy in space, so buckle up. This week, on Thursday July 16, we are expecting SpaceX's Starship Flight 13 mission to lift off on an uncrewed test flight. This will be the second flight with Starship's V3 configuration, a bigger and more powerful version than previous Starships. But there's a lot riding on this test flight, as the Starship V3's first flight didn't go perfectly and the vehicle needs to be ready to launch astronauts to the moon as part of NASA's Artemis program. So while we can learn a lot from a test flight even if it doesn't go to plan, at some point it has to be ready and safe for humans to ride inside. We are certainly keeping our fingers crossed.
We are also looking forward to the upcoming 50th anniversary of NASA's Viking 1 lander on Monday. This was the first successful spacecraft to land on, survive and explore Mars (if you don't count a Soviet spacecraft that lasted mere seconds before losing communications with Earth). And don't forget to look up! We have the Perseids meteor shower coming up. This is an annual delight we can always look forward to, and we are just about one month away from a total solar eclipse! Even if you don't live in a location where it will be visible, we can all follow along (and live vicariously) as Space.com tracks the upcoming solar eclipse around the world. And to stay as in the loop as possible, you can now get Space.com right in the palm of your hand with our new app available now on iOS and Android.
Ad astra, per aspera
Chelsea Gohd
Content Manager, Space.com
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