Some who hope to witness Monday's total solar eclipse may see the sun obscured by clouds instead of by the moon.

There's still some time for forecasts to change, but meteorologists predict that eclipse day storms could blanket parts of the path, which stretches from Mexico and Texas through Maine and parts of Canada.

If clouds don't get in the way, viewers in the path wearing eclipse glasses will see the moon begin to slowly cover the sun until it is completely blocked, a period of darkness called "totality" during which temperatures drop and the sun's corona will be visible.

What's the forecast along the eclipse's path?

Clouds are expected in much of the eclipse's path Monday thanks to storms that are moving across the central U.S.

Sometime between now and September, a massive explosion 3,000 light years from Earth will flare up in the night sky, giving amateur astronomers a once-in-a-lifetime chance to witness this space oddity.

The binary star system in the constellation Corona Borealis—"northern crown"—is normally too dim to see with the naked eye.

But every 80 years or so, exchanges between its two stars, which are locked in a deadly embrace, spark a runaway nuclear explosion.

The light from the blast travels through the cosmos and makes it appear as if a new star—as bright as the North Star, according to NASA—has suddenly just popped up in our night sky for a few days.

A Russian space capsule with two women and one man safely landed in a steppe in Kazakhstan on Saturday after their missions aboard the International Space Station.

The Soyuz MS-24 carrying Russia's Oleg Novitsky, NASA's Loral O'Hara and Marina Vasilevskaya of Belarus touched down southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan at 12:17 p.m.

Europe's next rocket, Ariane 6, passed all its qualification tests in preparation for its first flight, and the full-scale test model has been removed from the launch pad to make way for the real rocket that will ascend to space.

The test model at Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, stood 62 m high. It is exactly the same as the "production model" Ariane 6 rockets that will soon be launched, except that its boosters do not need to be tested as part of the complete rocket, so the boosters are not fueled.

Teams preparing Ariane 6 for its inaugural flight successfully completed for the first time a launcher preparation and countdown sequence, on 18 July. Representatives of ESA, Ariane 6 prime contractor ArianeGroup and launch base prime contractor and test conductor CNES completed important objectives for system qualification and performed a series of actions fully representative of a launch chronology.

The launch simulation included the removal of the mobile gantry, the chill-down of ground and launcher fluidic systems, the filling of the upper and core stage tanks with liquid hydrogen (–253°C) and liquid oxygen (–183°C), and at the end of the test, the successful completion of a launch chronology up to the ignition of the Vulcain 2.1 engine thrust chamber by the ground system.

NASA achieved a major milestone April 3 for production of new RS-25 engines to help power its Artemis campaign to the moon and beyond with completion of a critical engine certification test series at NASA's Stennis Space Center near Bay St.