Sky news

The eclipse that made Einstein famous overnight — starlight bending past the darkened Sun confirmed general relativity.

A 58-cm silver sphere became the first artificial satellite; its beeps on radios worldwide started the space race.

A 27-year-old aboard Vostok 1 circled Earth once in 108 minutes and became the first human in space.

Bound for Venus, Mariner 2 became the first spacecraft to successfully fly by another planet.

22 grainy frames erased the fantasy of Martian canals and revealed a cratered, real Mars.

A Saturn V left for the Moon with three astronauts aboard — four days later, humanity would step onto another world.

"One small step…" — Eagle touched down on the Sea of Tranquility as 600 million people watched live.

Venera 7 survived Venus's 465 °C surface for 23 minutes — the first signal ever sent from another planet's ground.

First through the asteroid belt and past Jupiter, carrying a plaque addressed to whoever finds it.

It landed successfully the following year and reported from the Martian surface for six years.

Riding a once-in-176-years alignment, it would visit all four giant planets — the only spacecraft ever to do so.

Launched after its twin but on a faster path — today it is the farthest human-made object.

Halley's 76-year return, met by the Giotto probe — humanity's first look at a comet's nucleus.

The Grand Tour's final stop — after 12 years it revealed Neptune and Triton's nitrogen geysers.

Voyager 1 looked back from six billion km: Earth, one pixel. Carl Sagan gave the image its immortal caption.

From blurry-mirror embarrassment to the Deep Fields and the age of the universe — still working 35 years on.

21 comet fragments slammed into Jupiter over a week, leaving Earth-sized scars — the first planetary impact ever witnessed.

Passing just 0.1 AU away, its tail stretched 80 degrees across the sky — a once-in-a-generation comet.

Naked-eye visible for a record 18 months, its twin ion and dust tails shone even over city lights.

The 20th century's last totality ran from Cornwall to India — 350 million people stood in or near the path.

After a 122-year wait, Venus crossed the face of the Sun — a black dot drifting for six hours.

The fastest launch in history — nine and a half years later it would reveal Pluto's heart.

Six minutes 39 seconds of totality over India, China and the Pacific — unbeaten until 2132.

At 11 min 8 s the longest annular eclipse in three millennia — from Africa across the Indian Ocean, the Maldives and southern India to China.

The one-ton rover of "seven minutes of terror" fame — still climbing through Gale crater today.

Tokyo saw its first ring of fire in 173 years — at 7:34 on a weekday morning, watched by tens of millions.

A sight most people alive will never see again — the next transit comes in December 2117.

Crossing the heliopause, a human-made object entered the space between the stars for the first time.

After 9.5 years it flew past Pluto, revealing the heart-shaped plain and flowing nitrogen glaciers.

For the first time in 99 years the shadow crossed the US coast to coast.

The first confirmed object from another star — cigar-shaped, oddly accelerating, endlessly debated.

The mission to "touch the Sun" — and the first NASA craft named for a living scientist.

Europe and Japan's Mercury mission — seven years of braking through nine flybys to fall sunward.

The second interstellar visitor and the first interstellar comet — strikingly like our own.

A ring of fire from Saudi Arabia across southern India and Sumatra to Singapore, where it hung for two minutes around midday.

On the solstice, a razor-thin ring (99.4 % covered) from Africa over Tibet to Taiwan — a one-minute thread of light at Chiayi.

After surviving perihelion on 3 July it hung in the north-west after dusk — the first naked-eye great comet in 23 years, its twin tails visible even from cities.

Carrying the Ingenuity helicopter, which went on to fly 72 times — the first powered flight on another planet.

In the pandemic year, watchers in Chilean Patagonia caught the black sun through breaks in the rain.

Jupiter and Saturn appeared just 0.1° apart — the closest since 1623.

A polar ring from Ontario over northern Greenland into Siberia — at Qaanaaq the ring sat on a low midnight-sun Sun.

On Christmas morning a $10-billion origami telescope left for L2 — and cleared all 344 single points of failure.

Korea's first Moon mission took the fuel-saving ballistic lunar transfer — 4.5 months the long way round.

Slamming into Dimorphos at 22,000 km/h, DART shortened its orbit by 32 minutes — planetary defence's first field test.

ESA's icy-moons explorer — in 2034 it becomes the first craft to orbit another planet's moon.

From the pad-shattering first flight to chopstick catches — the trial-and-error chronicle of the largest rocket ever built.

Bound for the iron-nickel asteroid (16) Psyche — possibly the exposed core of a shattered protoplanet.

From Oregon to Texas across the US West — a 4 min 42 s ring above the Albuquerque balloon fiesta.

The Great North American Eclipse crossed Mexico, the US and Canada with 30 million people inside the path — Dallas saw 3m52s of totality over downtown.

More than six minutes of ring of fire above the moai of Easter Island, ending at sunset over Patagonia.

ESA's Hera departed on a Falcon 9, bound for Dimorphos to survey the crater DART left when it shifted the moonlet's orbit in 2022.

Past perihelion on 27 September and closest to Earth (0.47 AU) on 12 October, it blazed in the western sky after sunset with a long tail and a rare anti-tail.

A 70-m booster flew back to its tower and was caught mid-air — the door to full reusability opened.

NASA's largest planetary spacecraft set off for Europa's buried ocean — Mars and Earth flybys will deliver it to Jupiter in 2030.

On Christmas Eve a human-made object passed closer to a star than ever before — 6.1 million km above the surface at 690,000 km/h, flying through the corona itself.

An 82-minute totality seen across Asia — from Korea and India the whole blood-moon sequence played out in the evening sky.

The first crewed departure for the Moon since Apollo 17 — four astronauts riding Orion around the far side on a free-return trajectory.

A blood moon over the Pacific — the Moon slides through Earth's shadow in the pre-dawn Honolulu sky.

The first total eclipse over mainland Europe since 1999, sweeping Greenland, Iceland and Spain. From Madrid the eclipsed Sun hangs low near sunset.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope left for L2 — Hubble-sharp imaging over a field 100× wider, hunting dark energy and exoplanet statistics.

The flight that aims to put Starship on an orbital trajectory for the first time. A Block 3 stack (Ship 41 on Booster 21) lifts off from Starbase Pad 2; the booster splashes down in the Gulf of Mexico without a tower catch, and the ship is to circle most of the globe before splashing down in the Indian Ocean, carrying about 20 Starlink V3 satellites. The date shifts often with regulatory clearance and vehicle readiness.

JAXA's Martian Moons eXploration — the first attempt to land on Phobos and return a sample to Earth (schedule may change).

For the first time a human-made object is more than a light-day away — about 25.9 billion km (173 AU). A command now takes 24 hours to arrive, and two full days for the reply.

Seven years and nine flybys end as the ESA–JAXA spacecraft slips into Mercury orbit. Replay the whole spiral in the orbit simulator.

NASA's largest planetary spacecraft swings past Earth for the speed it needs to reach Jupiter — its second gravity assist after Mars in 2025, and the last gate before arrival in April 2030.

ESA's Hera reaches Dimorphos — the asteroid DART deflected in 2022 — to survey the aftermath of humanity's first planetary-defense test.

The longest totality on land this century — up to 6 min 23 s — crossing southern Spain, North Africa and Mecca. Six minutes of black sun over Luxor's ancient temples.

Humanity's first visit to the Trojan asteroids sharing Jupiter's orbit — frozen leftovers of planet formation.

The first crewed lunar landing since Apollo 17, targeting the ice-bearing south polar region.

From Ecuador, Peru and Brazil across the Atlantic to Spain and Portugal at sunset — Seville sees the ring low over the horizon.

A nuclear-powered rotorcraft departs for Titan, to fly through methane skies.

The path of totality runs straight over downtown Sydney — five million people under the shadow at once.

ESA's Rosalind Franklin rover will drill two metres down for molecular traces of past life.

China's round-trip bid to bring Martian soil home — potentially the first Mars sample return.

Spacecraft cannot leave for Mars at will — they depart only during windows that recur about every 26 months, when the two planets line up. The November–December 2026 window is effectively empty after SpaceX said in February 2026 that Mars would be deprioritised for five to seven years in favour of the Moon; the next opportunity is late 2028 to early 2029. No launch is currently scheduled.

On the last night of 2028 the Moon turns red — maximum eclipse around 1 a.m. on New Year's Day in East Asia.

A 370-m asteroid passes 32,000 km up — inside the geostationary ring, visible to the naked eye. Nothing this large has come this close in recorded history.

The Bennu sample courier, renamed, heads to Apophis to see how the Earth flyby reshaped it.

A total lunar eclipse for the whole of the Americas — the red Moon hangs in New York's southern sky late on June 25.

Orbit insertion at (16) Psyche — exposed planetary core, or something stranger?

NASA's largest planetary spacecraft arrives in the Jovian system to begin surveying Europa's hidden ocean.

An annular eclipse — the Moon looks slightly smaller than the Sun, leaving a ring of fire. The path runs from North Africa and Greece across Siberia to eastern Hokkaido (Kushiro, Nemuro) near sunset; Sapporo and Tokyo see a deep partial.

The era when Roman's galaxy maps start weighing dark energy and its microlensing census counts hidden worlds.

Totality begins over South Africa at breakfast time and crosses the Indian Ocean to end at sunset in Australia.

From Angola via Tanzania and Kerala to the Malay Peninsula — a five-minute ring over Kochi around 1 pm.

Hayabusa2's encore: a 30-m asteroid spinning once every 11 minutes — the first close look at such a body.

ESA's icy-moons explorer reaches Jupiter after an eight-year cruise, en route to becoming the first spacecraft to orbit another planet's moon.

If all goes to plan, Martian soil reaches Earth laboratories for the first time.

A totality timed comfortably for evening skies over Korea and East Asia.

Mercury crosses the solar disk for the first time since 2019; the next chance is 2039.

North America's next totality belongs to Alaska — a black sun over aurora country.

An Asian-evening totality — from Seoul the reddened Moon climbs the early-night eastern sky.

The shadow returns to skies neighbouring the 2027 track — Egypt's second totality in seven years.

The rotorcraft flies itself down to Titan, then hops tens of kilometres across the surface for years.

Crossing the south of New Zealand’s North Island into the Pacific — Wellington gets a brief but complete ring at 10:55 am.

The path crosses North Korea and the Kanto region — the century's closest totality to Seoul, which sees a deep partial.

Australia's second totality in nine years, passing near Sydney and across New Zealand's North Island.

After its 76-year loop Halley comes home — in a far better viewing geometry than 1986.