For this new Picture of the Month feature, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has provided a fantastic new view of IRAS 04302+2247, a planet-forming disc located about 525 light-years away in a dark cloud within the Taurus star-forming region. With Webb, researchers can study the properties and growth of dust grains within protoplanetary discs like this one, shedding light on the earliest stages of planet formation.

Week in images: 25-29 August 2025

Discover our week through the lens

Washington DC (UPI) Aug 28, 2025
SpaceX set a record with its 30th flight featuring Falcon 9 booster, B1067 on Thursday from the Kennedy Space Center. The Starlink mission 10-11 placed another 28 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit; more than 1,800 of these satellites have been launched across 74 missions in 2025. The booster landed its 30th landing coming down at sea on the SpaceX drone ship "a Shortfall o

Washington DC (UPI) Aug 28, 2025
The James Webb Space Telescope has helped researchers learn new information about how the Earth may have been formed as it gives a deeper look into the Butterfly Nebula. The telescope saw the creation of tiny planetary building blocks around a dead star, as it saw cosmic dust particles that create planets around young stars forming for the first time. "For years, scientists have

Raleigh NC (SPX) Aug 26, 2025
Researchers at North Carolina State University have introduced Rainbow, a fully automated multi-robot laboratory that discovers high-performance quantum dots at unprecedented speed. The system merges robotics with artificial intelligence to perform up to 1,000 experiments per day, dramatically reducing the time needed for new materials discovery. "Rainbow brings together multiple robots wo

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Aug 20, 2025
Nullspace, a deep tech company creating next-generation electromagnetic simulation software, has raised $2.5 million in seed financing. The round was led by Fathom Fund with participation from Golden Seeds LLC and several strategic angel investors. The capital will support expansion of the engineering team, faster product development, and commercial scaling across aerospace, defense, quantum com

Image: Webb observations of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS

President Trump’s recent executive order promoting commercial space competition highlights America’s unique advantage in the final frontier: our dynamic commercial space sector.

Rocket Lab moved a step closer to the first launch of its Neutron rocket Aug.