In August 2025, the global scientific community and space fans alike celebrated a series of exciting milestones in space exploration and astronomical discovery. SpaceX’s Starship program achieved remarkable success on its flight 10 mission, helping pave the way for humanity’s return to the moon as part of the Artemis program. Astronomers discovered a new moon around the planet Uranus. And, a candidate exoplanet was identified in the Alpha Centauri system, offering an exciting new possibility to observe and understand the nearest star system to the solar system. There was definitely a lot to be excited about this past month!
Starship Success paves the way for Artemis III
SpaceX’s Starship achieved a significant milestone with Flight 10, successfully meeting all mission objectives after a challenging series of four consecutive failures. This triumph marks a critical step forward for the company, demonstrating the resilience and iterative progress of its engineering efforts. The success of this flight is a promising indicator for the reliability of Starship, which is integral to NASA’s Artemis program, particularly for the ambitious Artemis III mission that aims to return humans to the lunar surface.
The Artemis III mission will utilize Starship to land astronauts on the Moon’s south pole, a region of scientific interest due to its potential water ice deposits. With Artemis II scheduled to launch no later than April 2026, serving as another key milestone, the path to Artemis III relies on further Starship launches to validate critical technologies like orbital refueling and achieving full and rapid launch vehicle reuse. While Flight 10’s success is encouraging, additional tests are essential to ensure the spacecraft’s systems can handle the demands of lunar missions, reinforcing confidence in SpaceX’s role in humanity’s return to the Moon.
New Moon Discovered Orbiting Uranus with Webb
On February 2, 2025, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) detected a previously unknown moon orbiting Uranus, with the discovery officially published in August 2025. Designated S/2025 U1, this moon is remarkably small, measuring only about 10 kilometers in diameter, which explains why it went unnoticed during Voyager 2’s flyby in 1986. Its diminutive size and faint appearance make it a challenging target, highlighting the advanced capabilities of JWST in uncovering subtle celestial objects. S/2025 U1 orbits Uranus at a distance of approximately 35,000 miles, not accounting for the planet’s center, placing it relatively close to its host. The discovery adds to our understanding of Uranus’ complex satellite system and underscores the power of modern telescopes to reveal objects that were previously undetectable. This finding opens new avenues for studying the Uranian system and its dynamical environment, with further observations likely to refine our knowledge of this tiny moon’s characteristics.
Webb Finds New Potential Planet around Alpha Centauri
Using its Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) with a coronographic mask, the James Webb Space Telescope detected a potential exoplanet around Alpha Centauri A in August 2024. Alpha Centauri A and B, along with Proxima Centauri, form the closest star system to our Sun, making this discovery particularly exciting. However, the object’s visibility was lost in early 2025 due to its close proximity to Alpha Centauri A, which ironically helped prove that this was a uniformly moving object instead of a data anomaly. The candidate exoplanet is believed to follow an elliptical orbit, with an aphelion of 2 astronomical units (AU) and a perihelion of 1 AU, and is likely a gas giant similar in size to Saturn. While these initial findings are promising, further observations are required to definitively confirm the object as a planet and to better characterize its properties.
Hubble Makes New Observations of Comet 3I/ATLAS
Comet 3I/ATLAS, identified as the third interstellar object and the second interstellar comet detected in our solar system, has been closely studied by the Hubble Space Telescope. Discovered at a distance of 675,000 kilometers (approximately 419,000 miles) from the Sun, the comet is traveling at an astonishing speed of 210,000 km/h (about 130,000 mph). Hubble’s observations have refined estimates of its diameter, narrowing it down from 5.6 kilometers to as small as 320 meters, though the comet’s coma obscures its core, preventing a clear view of its nucleus. Despite its interstellar origin, Comet 3I/ATLAS exhibits behaviors remarkably similar to comets native to our solar system, offering a unique opportunity to compare interstellar and local cometary properties. The comet’s small size and high velocity make it a challenging target, but Hubble’s precise measurements provide valuable data on its composition and trajectory.
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