Two fundamental factors affect all astrophotography—timing and location. If a camera happens to be at the right place at the right time, it can capture images that have never been seen before. And with the proliferation of cameras throughout the solar system, more and more novel photos will be captured at an ever-increasing frequency. China's Tianwen-1 probe added to that novel collection to celebrate its second anniversary by taking a shot of Mars' moon Phobos.

The image itself is stunning, with clear definition of many features of the object, whose length isn't much more than that of Manhattan. Seen in full sunlight, or as we might call it on Earth, as a "full moon," there are some noticeable streaks in the upper left of the photo, which may indicate relatively recent impacts. In addition, a crater named Estonian astronomer Ernst Öpik is visible in the upper right of the image. Other features, named after other astronomers and characters from Gulliver's Travels, aren't as clear on the image, as the space around the Öpik crater is largely featureless.

A team of researchers at Iowa State University has found that it may be possible to grow alfalfa successfully on Mars. The group has written a paper describing their work and have published it on the open-access site PLOS ONE.

As various groups around the world ponder the possibility of not only sending humans to Mars but of building shelters on the Red Planet that could sustain them—possibly indefinitely—work continues on ways to make such projects possible. Such projects have many challenges to overcome before they can become reality, one of which is how to feed people living so far away.

At 6:28 a.m. EDT on Aug. 21, 1972, NASA's Copernicus satellite, the heaviest and most complex space telescope of its time, lit up the sky as it ascended into orbit from Launch Complex 36B at what is now Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Initially known as Orbiting Astronomical Observatory (OAO) C, it became OAO 3 once in orbit in the fashion of the time. But it was also renamed to honor the 500th anniversary of the birth of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543). The Polish astronomer formulated a model of the solar system with the Sun in the central position instead of Earth, breaking with 1,300 years of tradition and triggering a scientific revolution.

Fitted with the largest ultraviolet telescope ever orbited at the time as well as four co-aligned X-ray instruments, Copernicus was arguably NASA's first dedicated multiwavelength astronomy observatory. This makes it a forebear of operating satellites like NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, which watches the sky in visible, ultraviolet, and X-ray light.

With NASA's first Artemis mission to the moon set to launch before the end of the month, teams are gearing up for future missions with astronauts including just exactly where the next people to set foot on the moon will be leaving their footprints.

NASA has announced a news conference for 2 p.m. Friday to reveal potential landing locations for the Artemis III mission, which is still targeting a launch in 2025, but not before the uncrewed Artemis I flight slated to launch on Aug. 29 and a crewed Artemis II flight in 2024 that will send humans back to the moon, but not only to orbit it.

Artemis III would mark humans' return to the surface for the first time since Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmidt left the surface on Dec. 14, 1972.

The Apollo program managed six landings with two humans each for a total of 12 to walk on the moon between 1969-1972.

On August 20 1977, 45 years ago, an extraordinary spacecraft left this planet on a journey like no other. Voyager 2 was going to show us, for the first time, what the outer solar system planets looked like close-up. It was like sending a fly to New York City and asking it to report back.

Voyager 1 was launched after Voyager 2, on September 5. Attached to the flank of each Voyager was a Golden Record carrying greetings, sounds, images and music from Earth.

The spacecraft were more or less twins, but they had different trajectories and scientific instruments. While both flew by Jupiter and Saturn, Voyager 1 then sped onwards to interstellar space. Voyager 2 tarried to make the only visit ever to the ice giants, Uranus and Neptune.