Helen Mirren opens Stella McCartney’s Paris Fashion Week show with a spoken rendition of The Beatles’ “Come Together.” The Tuesday night collection focuses on humanity, animals and Mother Earth. McCartney claims her most sustainable offering yet, with 98% sustainable and 100% cruelty-free materials. Innovations include FEVVERS, a plant-based feather alternative, and PURE.TECH, a fabric that absorbs air pollutants. The show features deconstructed tailoring, vibrant colors and upcycled elements. McCartney blends eco-lux innovation with ’80s power dressing and activist theater. Her unique ability to merge spectacle with conscience challenges the fashion industry to heal the planet.
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A cluster of space weather satellites has blasted off to cast fresh eyes on solar storms. The three satellites belonging to NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration soared from Florida on Wednesday morning on the same SpaceX rocket. They're aiming for a sun-orbiting lookout 1 million miles from Earth, each on its own separate mission. Altogether, the trio are worth about $1.6 billion. Besides offering advance notice of solar disturbances heading toward Earth, the spacecraft will also serve as early warning beacons for the astronauts who will fly to the moon, beginning next year.
NASA has 10 new astronauts chosen from more than 8,000 applicants. The space agency introduced its 2025 astronaut class Monday. The six women and four men will undergo two years of training before becoming eligible for spaceflight, including trips to the moon and possibly Mars. It's the 24th astronaut class for NASA since the original Mercury Seven made their debut in 1959. The previous class was in 2021. Only 370 people have been selected by NASA as astronauts, making it an extraordinarily small and elite group.
Day and night will get equal time for a brief moment as the equinox arrives. The Earth will experience about the same amount of day and night on Monday when the autumnal equinox arrive. From there, the Northern Hemisphere will plunge into fall as night gets ever longer, and the Southern Hemisphere will head to summer. Solstices are the opposite. They happen in December and March, when the Earth is tilted most strongly toward or away from the sun, so day and night are very different lengths.
A supply ship has arrived at the International Space Station after a day's delay due to a premature engine shutdown. Astronauts used the space station's robot arm to pluck Northrop Grumman's Cygnus capsule from orbit Thursday as they soared over Africa. The 11,000-pound shipment should have reached the space station Wednesday, three days after blasting off from Florida. But when the capsule tried to climb higher, its main engine shut down too soon. Engineers traced the problem to an overly conservative software setting.
Scientists have discovered a gamma ray explosion outside our galaxy that's not only exceptionally powerful, but also long-lasting. Telescopes on Earth and in space — including Hubble — have teamed up to study the explosion of high-energy radiation first observed in July. Scientists said Tuesday that repeated bursts of gamma rays were detected over the course of a day. That's highly unusual since these kinds of bursts normally last just minutes or even milliseconds as dying stars collapse or are torn apart by black holes. Scientists say such a long and recurrent gamma ray burst has never been seen before.
New research suggests that a tiny phytoplankton that is an essential part of the marine food web may decline sharply as oceans warm. Prochlorococcus is the smallest and most abundant phytoplankton. A study published Monday in Nature Microbiology found that it could shrink by half in tropical oceans over the next 75 years if waters exceed 82 degrees Fahrenheit. Besides its crucial role in the marine food web, Prochlorococcus produces about one-fifth of the planet’s oxygen. The findings challenge previous assumptions that this phytoplankton would thrive in warmer waters. Researchers warn that the decline could have significant consequences for marine biodiversity and the global climate.
The year's second total lunar eclipse is coming up fast, and this time Asia will have the best seats in the cosmos. Earth's shadow will obscure this weekend's full moon as the home planet lines up perfectly between the moon and sun. Totality will last a lengthy one hour and 22 minutes. The shorter total lunar eclipse in March offered prime viewing in the Americas. But the upcoming spectacle unfolds on the opposite side of the world Sunday night and early Monday, local time. The entire eclipse will be visible in Asia, parts of East Africa and western Australia.
Telescope observations reveal a growing tail on the comet that's visiting from another star. Released Thursday, the pictures taken by the Gemini South telescope in Chile are the best yet of the recently discovered comet. They show a wide coma of dust and gas around the ice ball as it speeds closer toward the sun, and also a tail that's more extended than it was in previous shots. The National Space Foundation's NOIRLab says these new images confirm that the comet is becoming more active as it plows harmlessly through our solar system. It's only the third known interstellar object to venture our way.
It turns out Mars has a solid core just like Earth. A Chinese-led research team reported Wednesday that the heart of Mars, while small, is indeed solid. The scientists based their findings on seismic readings from NASA's InSight lander on Mars, which recorded more than 1,300 marsquakes before shutting down in 2022. Previous studies pointed to liquid at the center of Mars. The solid innermost core is likely composed of iron and nickel, the same ingredients as Earth's, but quite possibly also enriched with lighter elements like oxygen. The latest study appeared in the journal Nature.