A NASA astronaut now holds the record for the longest U.S. spaceflight after returning to Earth Wednesday, but the feat did not come voluntarily.

American Frank Rubio and two Russian cosmonauts were stuck in space for just over a year. The trio landed in a remote area of Kazakhstan, descending in a Soyuz capsule that was rushed up as a replacement after their original ride was hit by space junk and lost all its coolant while docked at the International Space Station.

The mission that was supposed to be 180 days long turned into 371 days, which meant Rubio spent more than two weeks longer in space than Mark Vande Hei, who held NASA's previous endurance record for a single spaceflight.

Just last week, Rubio said he would have declined his space mission had he known he would be in orbit so long. 

RECORD-BREAKING ASTRONAUT REVEALS HE WOULD HAVE DECLINED ASSIGNMENT IF HE HAD KNOWN THIS

"If they had asked me upfront before you start training, because you do train for a year or two years before your mission, I probably would've declined," Rubio told reporters from the ISS during a NASA press conference. "That's only because of family things that were going on this past year."

"Had I known that I had to miss those very important events, I just would have had to say ‘thank you, but no thank you,’" he added.

The replacement Soyuz capsule that brought Rubio and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin back was launched in February. 

NASA DETECTS MOLECULE ON ANOTHER PLANET THAT CAN ONLY BE PRODUCED BY LIFE

"It’s good to be home," Rubio, a 47-year-old Army doctor and helicopter pilot, said after being pulled from the capsule.

Russia still holds the world record of 437 days, set in the mid-1990s.

Fox News' Jon Michael Raasch and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

For the first time in U.S. history, samples from an asteroid in deep space that were captured by NASA fell to Earth and landed in the Utah desert on Sunday, ending a seven-year journey.

The Osiris-Rex spacecraft flew by Earth on Sunday morning, releasing a capsule containing the sample, from nearly 63,000 miles away. Four hours later, the capsule landed on a stretch of military land as the Osiris-Rex spacecraft embarked on a journey to chase after another asteroid.

"We have touchdown!" Mission Recovery Operations announced, immediately repeating the news since the landing occurred three minutes early. Officials later said the orange striped parachute opened four times higher than anticipated — around 20,000 feet (6,100 meters) — basing it on the deceleration rate.

NASA CRAFT SET TO TOUCH DOWN AFTER MISSION TO MOST ‘POTENTIALLY HAZARDOUS’ ASTEROID IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM

NASA said on its website that radar data from the property where the capsule was expected to land, confirmed the space package entered the atmosphere at 10:42 a.m. off the coast of California, as planned.

Then, the drogue parachute, which is the smaller of two onboard, opened after the capsule entered the atmosphere to help with stability, before separating from the capsule.

The main parachute deployed at 10:47 a.m., slowing the capsule down from hypersonic speed to 11 mph before it touched the ground.

VIDEOS CAPTURE FIREBALL METEOR LIGHTING UP COLORADO'S EARLY MORNING SKIES

A major concern after touching down was ensuring the contents did not become contaminated.

To NASA's relief, the capsule did not appear to be breached when it was recovered, and the 4.5-billion-year-old samples were free of contamination.

Two hours after landing, the capsule was in a temporary clean room at the Defense Department’s Utah Text and Training Range after being carried by a helicopter.

NASA APPOINTS NEW DIRECTOR OF UFO RESEARCH IN PUSH TO EXAMINE 'ONE OF OUR PLANET’S GREATEST MYSTERIES'

"It’s like ‘Wow!’" NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, who was in Utah training for her own space capsule mission, said. "This is just amazing. It can go from the movies, but this is reality."

The capsule holds roughly a cup of rubble from the asteroid known as Bennu, which is supposedly carbon-rich. Despite how much the capsule can hold, it will not be known for sure until the container is opened in about a day or two.

Some of the material scooped up during the mission three years ago, spilled and floated away after it grabbed too much, jamming the lid.

JOURNALIST PRESENTS MEXICAN CONGRESS WITH ALLEGED ‘NON-HUMAN ALIEN CORPSES’ AT UFO HEARING

Japan is the only other country to get samples from an asteroid. In fact, the country has been able to collect about a teaspoon during a pair of asteroid missions.

NASA’s haul on Sunday is the biggest to be retrieved from an object further than the moon.

Osiris-Rex blasted off into space in 2016, marking the beginning of a $1 billion mission.

HARVARD PHYSICIST AVI LOEB FENDS OFF ATTACKS FROM CRITICS AFTER STUDY REVEALS POSSIBLE ‘INTERSTELLAR’ LIFE

The spaceship reached Bennu two years later and used a long stick vacuum to material from the small space rock. Once it returned to Earth, the mothership had traveled 4 billion miles.

The samples will be flown Monday morning to a new lab at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The building already houses the hundreds of pounds (kilograms) of moon rocks gathered by the Apollo astronauts.

It will take a few weeks to get a precise measurement, said NASA’s lead curator Nicole Lunning.

NASA plans a public show-and-tell in October.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

A Russian spacecraft carrying two Russians and an American docked at the International Space Station on Friday after blasting off from Kazakhstan. 

NASA astronaut Loral O'Hara and Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub departed from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and docked at the ISS approximately three hours later. 

Per NASA, the trio will join the station’s Expedition 69 crew comprising astronauts from the U.S., Russia, Denmark, and Japan. O'Hara will spend six months there while Kononenko and Chub will spend a year.

INDIA'S LUNAR ROVER COMPLETES WALK ON MOON'S SURFACE IN LESS THAN 2 WEEKS AFTER HISTORIC LANDING

The trio was supposed to fly to the space station earlier this year, but their original capsule, Soyuz MS-23, was needed as a replacement for another crew. That crew — also two Russians and an American — will ride it home on September 27. Their stay was extended from six months to a year when the capsule developed a coolant leak while parked at the station.

It's the first spaceflight for O'Hara and Chub, while mission commander Kononenko is on his fifth trip to the orbiting outpost. By the end of his yearlong stay, Kononenko will set a new record for the longest time in space, more than a thousand days. 

NASA announced Thursday it has appointed a new director of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) research in an effort by the space agency to better understand what it describes as "one of our planet’s greatest mysteries." 

The new position, according to NASA, will "centralize communications, resources and data analytical capabilities to establish a robust database for the evaluation of future UAP," which is the government’s terminology when referring to UFOs. 

"NASA’s new director of UAP research will develop and oversee the implementation of NASA’s scientific vision for UAP research, including using NASA’s expertise to work with other agencies to analyze UAP and applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to search the skies for anomalies," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement. "NASA will do this work transparently for the benefit of humanity." 

The announcement of the new position came after NASA says it commissioned an independent study involving 16 experts from fields ranging from astrobiology to oceanography to "better understand how the agency can contribute to ongoing government efforts to further the study observations of events in the sky that cannot be identified as balloons, aircraft or as known natural phenomena from a scientific perspective." 

JOURNALIST PRESENTS MEXICAN CONGRESS WITH ALLEGED ‘NON-HUMAN ALIEN CORPSES’ AT UFO HEARING 

"At NASA, it's in our DNA to explore — and to ask why things are the way they are. I want to thank the independent study team for providing insight on how NASA can better study and analyze UAP in the future," Nelson added. 

The identity of the new director has not been publicly revealed. Dan Evans, assistant deputy associate administrator for research within NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said part of the reasoning for keeping the person's identity withheld is the constant harassment team members have faced that "rose to actual threats of violence" since they began this undertaking.

ASTRONAUT JOSE HERNANDEZ GOT REJECTED BY NASA 11 TIMES BEFORE BECOMING FIRST MIGRANT WORKER IN SPACE 

"The NASA independent study team did not find any evidence that UAP have an extraterrestrial origin, but we don't know what these UAP are," Nelson said Thursday at a news conference, according to Reuters. 

NASA also announced Thursday it will "advance citizen reporting by engaging with the public and commercial pilots to build a broader, more reliable UAP dataset to use to identify future UAP incidents as well as destigmatize the study of UAP." 

In a foreward of the report issued by the independent study team Thursday, Nicola Fox, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, wrote, "unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) are one of our planet’s greatest mysteries." 

Fox News’ Chris Eberhart contributed to this report. 

NASA says it has generated enough oxygen to keep a small dog alive on Mars for at least 10 hours, marking a huge milestone for long-term plans to build bases on the Red Planet. 

The achievement came thanks to NASA’s Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment or "MOXIE." 

The 40-pound microwave-sized device was attached to the Perseverance rover when it touched down on Mars in February 2021. 

For more than two years, MOXIE has been extracting trace amounts of oxygen from the Martian atmosphere, NASA said in a press release. 

The device executed an electrochemical process that separated one oxygen atom from each molecule of carbon dioxide pumped in from Mars’ thin atmosphere, which is made up of 95% carbon dioxide, 3% nitrogen, 1.6% argon, and trace amounts of oxygen. 

FAST FACTS ABOUT MARS: EVERYTHING THERE IS TO KNOW ABOUT THE TERRESTRIAL PLANET

The aim of the mission was to find a way to supply breathable air or rocket propellant to future astronauts. 

Over the course of the mission, MOXIE was able to generate 122 grams of oxygen, which is about what a small dog consumes in 10 hours. 

At its most efficient, MOXIE produced 12 grams of oxygen an hour, which was twice as much as NASA’s original goal. 

"MOXIE’s impressive performance shows that it is feasible to extract oxygen from Mars’ atmosphere – oxygen that could help supply breathable air or rocket propellant to future astronauts," said NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy. 

"Developing technologies that let us use resources on the Moon and Mars is critical to build a long-term lunar presence, create a robust lunar economy, and allow us to support an initial human exploration campaign to Mars." 

Hawaii's Kilauea volcano is currently erupting for the third time this year, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. 

The USGS said Sunday around 3:15 p.m. local time, the "USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory observed eruptive activity in Kilauea summit webcam images and from field reports indicating that an eruption has commenced within Halemaʻumaʻu crater and on the down dropped block to the east in Kilauea’s summit caldera, within Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park." 

"The eruption was preceded by a period of strong seismicity and rapid uplift of the summit," the USGS added. 

"The opening phases of eruptions are dynamic," it also said. "Webcam imagery shows fissures at the base of Halemaʻumaʻu crater generating lava flows on the surface of the crater floor. The activity is confined to Halemaʻumaʻu and the hazards will be reassessed as the eruption progresses." 

HAWAII’S KILAUEA VOLCANO ERUPTS IN JUNE 

The volcano previously erupted in June and January this year.

As a result of the ongoing activity, the USGS says its Hawaiian Volcano Observatory is "elevating Kilauea’s volcano alert level from WATCH to WARNING and its aviation color code from ORANGE to RED as this eruption and associated hazards are evaluated." 

A red aviation code means an eruption is underway with "significant emission of volcanic ash into the atmosphere," its website says. 

The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency said on X, formerly Twitter, that "[a]t this time, lava at Kilauea is confined to the summit and does not pose a lava threat to communities."

"However, eruptions emit volcanic particles and gases which may create breathing problems for people exposed," it added. 

HAWAII’S MAUNA LOA VOLCANO ERUPTS FOR FIRST TIME IN 38 YEARS 

Volcanic gas, according to the USGS, is primarily made up of water vapor, carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide. The concern is that volcanic gas can have far-reaching effects down-wind, creating a visible haze known as vog, or volcanic smog. 

Vog, the USGS added, poses a hazard to humans, crops and livestock. 

Kilauea is one of the world's most active volcanoes with its eruption in January lasting 61 days. 

Prior to that, Hawaii’s second-largest volcano erupted in September 2021 and the volcanic activity lasted for 16 months. 

Fox News’ Greg Wehner contributed to this report. 

Researchers combing the ocean floor off the coast of Alaska have stumbled upon a mysterious "golden orb" that could possibly be a new, unknown species. 

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said its ship, Okeanos Explorer, discovered the specimen during a dive in the Gulf of Alaska on Aug. 30. 

"While gliding over a rocky outcrop at a depth of about 2 miles, they found what one of the videographers onboard helping to document the dive first referred to as a ‘yellow hat,’" the NOAA said in statement. 

"Amid a smattering of white sponges, this smooth, gold, dome-shaped specimen, a little over 4 inches in diameter, was tightly adhered to a rock. A small hole or tear near its base revealed a similarly colored interior," the statement continued. "As cameras zoomed in, scientists were stumped as to its identification, with initial thoughts ranging from a dead sponge attachment, to coral, to an egg casing." 

THE OCEAN’S CREEPIEST CREATURES: SEA PIGS, STONEFISH AND MORE 

An image released following the dive shows a researcher holding the orb in their outstretched hand. 

Sam Candio, the coordinator for the ongoing Seascape Alaska 5: Gulf of Alaska Remotely Operated Vehicle Exploration and Mapping expedition – which the orb was found during – said "While we were able to collect the 'golden orb' and bring it onto the ship, we still are not able to identify it beyond the fact that it is biological in origin. 

WORLD’S HEAVIEST ANIMAL MAY BE ANCIENT WHALE FOUND IN PERUVIAN DESERT, SCIENTISTS SAY 

"We likely won't learn more until we are able to get it into a laboratory setting where we can continue to pull from the collective expertise of the scientific community with more sophisticated tools than we are able to maintain on the ship," he also said. "While somewhat humbling to be stumped by this finding, it serves as a reminder of how little we know about our own planet and how much is left to learn and appreciate about our ocean." 

The NOAA said it was "still unclear if the golden dome is associated with a known species, a new species, or perhaps represents an unknown life stage of an existing one." 

The expedition is continuing through Sept. 16 with live-streamed dives happening daily between 1 p.m. and 8 p.m. ET. 

Five asteroids — including one as big as a house and another as big as a plane — are expected to pass Earth this week, according to NASA. 

NASA’s Asteroid Watch dashboard anticipates the five asteroids to fly by Earth between Wednesday and Sunday. 

The house-sized asteroid, named JA5 and nearly 60 feet in length, will be the first, coming approximately within 3.17 million miles of Earth. It was first observed in 2021. 

VIDEOS CAPTURE FIREBALL METEOR LIGHTING UP COLORADO'S EARLY MORNING SKIES

The next two asteroids, the plane-sized QC5 and the bus-sized GE, will fly past Earth on Friday. QC5 measures approximately 83 feet in size, and will fly within 2.53 million miles of Earth. GE is approximately 26 feet, and will be observed some 3.56 million miles from Earth. 

The next two asteroids, QE8 and QF6, are expected to fly past Earth on Sunday. QE8 is approximately 170 feet in length and will be the closest to Earth at 946,000 miles. QF6 measures just under 70 feet in length and will fly within 1.65 million miles from Earth. 

NASA’s displays the next five Earth approaches to within 4.6 million miles. An object larger than 492 feet is deemed "potentially" hazardous, yet none of the asteroids expected this week come close to that measurement.

NASA says it has captured images of the moon showing the "likely" impact site of Russia’s failed Luna 25 mission. 

The lunar lander crashed onto the surface of the moon on Aug. 19, marking an end to Russia’s first lunar mission in nearly five decades. 

"NASA’s LRO – the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter – spacecraft imaged a new crater on the Moon’s surface that is likely the impact site of Russia’s Luna 25 mission," NASA said in a statement.

Officials say Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, published an estimate of the impact location on Aug. 21. 

RUSSIAN MOON MISSION ENDS IN DISASTER AS LANDER HAS ‘CEASED TO EXIST’ 

"The LROC (short for LRO Camera) team and the LRO Mission Operations team were able to design and send commands to the LRO spacecraft on Aug. 22 to capture images of the site," according to NASA. "The sequence began on Aug. 24 at 2:15 p.m. EDT and was completed about four hours later, at 6:12 p.m. EDT. The LROC team compared images taken prior to the impact time and the sequence taken after and found a small new crater." 

NASA added that the LRO’s most recent "before" image of the area was taken in June 2022, leading officials to believe that the crater – which is about 30 feet wide -- was "formed sometime after that date." 

"Since this new crater is close to the Luna 25 estimated impact point, the LRO team concludes it is likely to be from that mission, rather than a natural impactor," NASA also said. 

At the time of the crash, Roscosmos said the spacecraft ran into a problem as it attempted to enter a pre-landing orbit. 

NASA SHARES FOOTAGE OF HURRICANE IDALIA FROM INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION 

"The apparatus moved into an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the Moon," Roscosmos said in a statement. 

Roscosmos said a commission has been set up to investigate the cause for the failure. It was Russia's first trip to lunar orbit since 1976. 

The probe was intended to search for frozen water on the lunar surface, but the international prestige of the mission was far more important for the Russian government than any scientific discoveries. 

"Study of the moon is not the goal," Russian space analyst Vitaly Egorov said previously of the mission. "The goal is political competition between two superpowers — China and the USA — and a number of other countries which also want to claim the title of space superpower." 

The Luna-25 mission was the first ever to attempt a landing at the moon's south pole, where researchers have long suspected frozen water may exist. 

Fox News’ Anders Hagstrom and Reuters contributed to this report.

Doorbell and security camera footage captured a meteor lighting up Colorado’s skies in the early morning hours of Sunday. 

The spectacle was spotted all over Colorado and a few other places in the United States, as recorded by the American Meteor Society. 

Fox News Digital has obtained footage by weather enthusiast Edward Hurrell showing the fiery meteor around 3:30 a.m. flying across the sky in Broomfield, about a 25-minute drive north of Denver. 

PERSEID METEOR SHOWER PEAKS THIS WEEKEND WITH IDEAL CONDITIONS

Other videos circulating online show the meteor flashing brightly before breaking up into smaller pieces and fading from view. 

Per NASA, fireballs and "bolides" are exceptionally bright meteors that are spectacular enough to be seen over a wide area. 

Objects that cause fireballs usually aren’t large enough to survive passage through Earth’s atmosphere intact.

Days after Russia’s failed lunar mission, India is hoping to be the first country to land a spacecraft on the moon’s south pole. 

The Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft is scheduled to land on the lunar south pole on Wednesday.

If successful, it would be the first spacecraft to land on the lunar south pole, a region whose shadowed craters are thought to contain water ice that could support future moon settlements. 

India's second attempt to land on the moon after a failure in 2019 is being seen as a display of the tenacity of its scientific institutions. 

ISRO has been sharing regular updates of the mission through posts on X, formerly Twitter.

RUSSIAN MOON MISSION ENDS IN DISASTER AS LANDER HAS ‘CEASED TO EXIST’

"The mission is on schedule. Systems are undergoing regular checks. Smooth sailing is continuing," it said on Tuesday. 

"The Mission Operations Complex (MOX) is buzzed with energy & excitement!"

The landing attempt comes days after Russia failed to return to the moon after nearly half a century. The robotic Luna-25 probe crashed onto the surface of the moon over the weekend. 

Yuri Borisov, the head of the state-controlled space corporation Roscosmos attributed the failure to the lack of expertise due to the long break in research that followed the Soviet’s last mission to the moon in the late 1970s. 

Borisov said the spacecraft’s thruster fired for 127 seconds instead of the planned 84 seconds, causing it to crash, and a government mission will investigate the glitch. 

The lunar south pole is of particular interest to scientists. The permanently shadowed polar craters are believed to contain frozen water in the rocks that future explorers could transform into air and rocket fuel. 

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report. 

The scene of the deadly wildfires that devastated the Hawaiian island of Maui was captured in satellite imagery from the International Space Station last weekend. 

An Aug. 12 image, shared by NASA, shows the community of Lahaina on the coast at the lower left. 

The space station was orbiting 259 miles above the Pacific Ocean, according to the space agency. 

Previous Maxar Technologies satellite imagery includes tighter shots of Lahaina, with "before-and-after" pictures revealing the extent of the destruction that took the lives of more than 110 people. 

HAWAII GOVERNOR VOWS TO PROTECT LOCALS FROM OUTSIDE BUYERS SEEKING REAL ESTATE OPPORTUNITIES IN MAUI

Previously lush and green landscapes were charred by the wind-fueled wildfires, with "after" images largely brown and gray.

Residents were forced to flee their homes – some directly into the ocean – and many are still missing.

As the death roll rose to 111 on Wednesday, the leader of the Maui Emergency Management Agency defended not sounding sirens during the blaze. 

Hawaii has what it touts as the largest system of outdoor alert sirens in the world, created following a 1946 tsunami that killed more than 150 people on the Big Island.

MAUI WILDFIRE DEATH TOLL REACHES 110, IS EXPECTED TO RISE AQS RECOVERY EFFORT CONTINUES

"We were afraid that people would have gone mauka," agency administrator Herman Andaya, who used a Hawaiian navigational term that can mean toward the mountains or inland, said. "If that was the case, then they would have gone into the fire."

On Tuesday, Maui officials said in a post that the fires have mostly been contained – but noted that contained does not mean extinguished.

"Know that our hearts are with every family," Gov. Josh Green said in a press conference on Wednesday.

While the start of the wildfires, the deadliest in the U.S. in more than a century, remains under investigation, an Associated Press analysis of FEMA records found that Hawaii is increasingly at risk from disasters.

President Biden and first lady Jill Biden are expected to visit Maui early next week.

"Like we saw in the pandemic, decisions we made can affect everyone across the islands. So what we're saying now is travel should not be to West Maui. But the other parts of Maui are safe," Green said Thursday, according to FOX Weather. "And the rest of the state, of course, is also safe."

FOX News' Sarah Rumpf-Whitten and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

For the first time since May 2012, the U.S. will see a "ring of fire" eclipse in October. 

The next annular eclipse — when the moon passes between the sun and the Earth, but when it is at or near its farthest point from Earth – will occur on Saturday, Oct. 14. 

Because the moon is farther away from Earth, it appears smaller than the sun and does not completely cover it, according to NASA, resulting in it appearing as a dark disk on top of a large, bright disk – creating what appears to be a ring around the moon. 

The eclipse will be visible in parts of the U.S., Mexico and many countries in South and Central America. 

WEBB REVEALS COLORS, FEATURES OF MOST DISTANT STAR EVER DETECTED

In the U.S., the event begins in Oregon at 9:13 a.m. PDT and ends in Texas at 12:03 p.m. CDT. Oregon and Texas will experience a 90% eclipse of the sun.

Weather permitting, this annular solar eclipse will be visible in multiple states – including Oregon, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Idaho, Colorado, Arizona and some parts of California – and a partial solar eclipse will be visible in all 49 continental states, including Alaska. 

NASA SAYS JULY WAS HOTTEST MONTH ON RECORD SINCE 1880

As the sun is never entirely blocked by the moon during an annular solar eclipse, it is never safe to look directly at the sun during the eclipse without specialized eye protection for solar viewing. 

Skywatchers can also use a method for indirect viewing, such as a pinhole projector.

"For NASA, this eclipse provides a unique opportunity to study the Sun, using this eclipse as a way to test and prepare scientific equipment for the total solar eclipse in April 2024," the agency said on its website. "NASA will also launch sounding rockets during the eclipse to study changes in the atmosphere."

There will be a live broadcast of the eclipse from 10:30 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. CDT on NASA TV.

Notably, a total solar eclipse will occur on April 8, 2024, in Mexico, the U.S. and Canada. 

NASA scientists say July was hotter than any other month in the global temperature record. 

Last month was 0.43 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than any other July in the agency's record. 

Additionally, an analysis from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York found it was 2.1 degrees warmer than the average July between 1951 and 1980. 

Parts of South America, North Africa, North America and the Antarctic Peninsula were especially hot, and temperature increases there were around 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit above average. 

NASA SPACECRAFT MAKES FIRST EARTH FLYBY AFTER 17-YEAR JOURNEY

NASA noted that extreme heat was linked to hundreds of heat-related illnesses and deaths with millions under heat warnings. 

It said data showed the five hottest Julys since 1880 have all happened during the past five years. 

"This July was not just warmer than any previous July – it was the warmest month in our record, which goes back to 1880," GISS Director Gavin Schmidt said. "The science is clear this isn’t normal. Alarming warming around the world is driven primarily by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. And that rise in average temperatures is fueling dangerous extreme heat that people are experiencing here at home and worldwide."

The primary focus of the analysis was long-term temperature changes over decades and centuries.

The agency said a fixed base period yields anomalies consistent over time, with temperature "normals" defined by several decades. 

SCIENTISTS PREDICT JULY WILL BE THE HOTTEST MONTH ON RECORD GLOBALLY

NASA assembles its temperature record from surface air temperature data from tens of thousands of metrological stations, as well as sea surface temperature data acquired by ship- and buoy-based instruments.

The data is analyzed using methods that account for the varied spacing of temperature stations and for urban heating effects that could skew the calculations.

"The record-breaking July continues a long-term trend of human-driven warming driven primarily by greenhouse gas emissions that has become evident over the past four decades," it wrote. 

High sea surface temperatures contributed to the record, scientists said, with analysis showing especially warm ocean temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific. 

In an update on Monday morning, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said it was "certainly is self-evident that the Earth is heating up" and stressed that NASA is just as much a climate agency as it is a space agency.

"Well, the bottom line of all this is, the last nine years are the warmest on record," he explained. "And, folks, Mother Nature is sending us a message and that message is we better act now before it's too late to save our climate. In other words, to save our planet." 

Nelson stressed there were no political boundaries or geographical boundaries. 

"We are all in this together," he concluded. 

NASA said its STEREO-A spacecraft is passing between the sun and Earth on Saturday. 

The visit marks the first Earth flyby of the nearly 17-year-old mission. 

The twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory spacecraft launched on October 25, 2006, from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. STEREO-A was first, and STEREO-B followed, orbiting around the sun.

The dual spacecraft mission provided the first stereoscopic – or multiple-perspective, allowing researchers to extract three-dimensional information from 2D images – view of our closest star. After both reached 180-degree separation in their orbits, the sun was seen as a complete sphere for the first time in 2011. 

RUSSIA LAUNCHES MOON PROBE FOR FIRST TIME IN A HALF-CENTURY

While mission control lost contact with STEREO-B after a planned reset in 2014, STEREO-A continues its journey.

The spacecraft's lead on Earth has grown to one full revolution as it "laps" the Earth in our orbit around the sun. 

The agency said the passing brings a chance for it to collaborate with other NASA missions near Earth and reveal new insights into the sun. 

It will once again combine views to achieve stereoscopic vision, synthesizing its views with NASA and the European Space Agency's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory and NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.

Earth is changing throughout the flyby, and NASA said it is "optimizing its stereo vision for different sized solar features at different times."

WEBB REVEALS COLORS, FEATURES OF MOST DISTANT STAR EVER DETECTED

Scientists taking advantage of the opportunity to test a new theory that coronal loops aren't what they appear to be and are identifying active regions with the aim of revealing 3D information about their structure that is usually lost in 2D images. 

"There is a recent idea that coronal loops might just be optical illusions," Terry Kucera, STEREO project scientist, explained. 

What the spacecraft will feel as it whizzes by Earth could also lead to major discoveries. 

During and after STEREO-A’s Earth flyby, any Earth-directed coronal mass ejection – plumes of solar material – will pass over STEREO-A and other near-Earth spacecraft, providing scientists with multipoint measurements from inside the ejection.

Notably, back in 2006, STEREO-A was close to Earth during a low point in the sun's cycle of high and low activity. This time around, NASA says, will be different. 

"In this phase of the solar cycle, STEREO-A is going to experience a fundamentally different sun," Lika Guhathakurta, STEREO program scientist, said. "There is so much knowledge to be gained from that."

The Perseid meteor shower peaks late Saturday night, with conditions ideal for skywatchers. 

NASA says its All Sky Fireball Network is already detecting the first meteors of this year's shower as the Earth passes through the debris from the comet Swift-Tuttle. 

The peak will start at around 11 p.m. local time on Saturday, Cooke told the Associated Press.

Unlike last year's full moon, this year's moon will be a waning crescent, allowing even some of the fainter meteors to be visible. A bright moon can make it harder to spot the meteors. 

HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE FINDS BOULDERS POTENTIALLY SHAKEN OFF ASTEROID FOLLOWING DART EXPERIMENT

"People in the U.S. can reasonably expect to see around 40 Perseids in the hour just before dawn on the peak nights. That’s about one every couple of minutes, which is not bad," Bill Cooke, who leads NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office, said in a statement. "However, we are assuming you are out in the country, well away from cities and suburbs."

The agency noted that last year's shower coincided with the full moon and that brighter skies in suburban areas greatly reduce the rates, with ten or fewer expected within an hour. 

PERSEID METEOR SHOWER 2023: WHAT SKYWATCHERS SHOULD KNOW

The Perseid meteor shower is often considered the best of the year due to its high meteor rates and pleasant weather conditions. 

It is also the only meteor shower to delay a Space Shuttle launch, delaying the NASA – STS-51 launch in 1993.

Viewers can best see the meteor shower in the Northern Hemisphere. 

The Perseids appear to radiate from a point in the constellation Perseus. Meteor showers take their name from the location of their point of origin.

"All you need to catch the show is a clear sky, darkness and a bit of patience. You don’t need to look in any particular direction; meteors can generally be seen all over the sky," NASA said. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Observations from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope of Earendel – the farthest star ever detected – reveal a massive B-type star that is more than twice as hot as our sun and a million times more luminous. 

The star in the very distant universe, and a billion years after the big bang, was captured by the observatory's Near-InfraRed Camera instrument. 

NASA said that Earendel – which means "morning star" in Old English and is, perhaps, a familiar-sounding name to fans of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy – is located in the Sunrise Arc galaxy.

It is detectable only due to a combination of technology and gravitational lensing. Gravitational lensing occurs when a celestial object like the foreground galaxy cluster has such a massive gravitational pull that it warps time and space around it.

WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE CAPTURES MYSTERIOUS 'QUESTION MARK' IN SHOT OF FORMING STARS

Scientists using Webb and the Hubble Space Telescope – which first discovered the star – were able to detect Earendel because of its alignment behind a wrinkle in space-time created by the massive galaxy cluster WHL0137-08. 

The galaxy cluster, located between Earth and the star, is so massive that it warps the fabric of space, producing a magnifying effect that allows astronomers to look through it. 

Earendel only appears as a single point of light, while other features in the galaxy appear multiple times because of this effect. 

Due to this, scientists have determined the object is magnified by a factor of at least 4,000 and is extremely small.

WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE CAPTURES STUNNING SHOTS OF RING NEBULA

Due to the color of Earendel, astronomers also believe they can see hints of a cooler, redder companion star. The light, NASA notes, has been stretched by the universe's expansion to wavelengths longer than the Hubble Space Telescope can detect. 

While stars as massive as Earendel often have companions, researchers did not expect Webb to reveal any such stars because they would be so close together and indistinguishable on the sky. 

NIRCam also shows other notable features in the Sunrise Arc: the most highly magnified galaxy yet detected in the universe’s first billion years. Those include young star-forming regions and older star clusters as small as just 10 light-years across. On either side of the wrinkle of maximum magnification that runs through Earendel, the features are mirrored by the distortion of the gravitational lens, with the star-forming region appearing elongated and smaller dots on either side of Earendel are two images of one older, more established star cluster. The cluster, which is estimated to be at least 10 million years old, is gravitationally bound and likely to persist until the present day. 

NASA says data analysis from Webb's Near-Infrared Spectrograph instrument observations of the Sunrise Arc galaxy and Earendel is underway, which will provide precise composition and distance measurements for the galaxy.

A group of international researchers has discovered the highest-energy light ever observed from the sun. 

In a new paper published last week in the journal Physical Review Letters, scientists found the star had emitted surprisingly bright gamma rays that had an energy level of about 1 trillion electron volts, or one tera electron volt (TeV).

Gamma rays are wavelengths of light that are known to carry the most energy of any other wavelength in the electromagnetic spectrum. 

"The sun is more surprising than we knew," Mehr Un Nisa, a postdoctoral research associate at Michigan State University and the corresponding author, said in a release. "We thought we had this star figured out, but that’s not the case."

WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE CAPTURES MYSTERIOUS 'QUESTION MARK' IN SHOT OF FORMING STARS

Nisa works with the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory — a key part of this discovery — located between two dormant volcano peaks in Mexico. 

Although the high-energy light doesn't reach the Earth's surface, the gamma rays create signatures that Nisa and her colleagues detected. 

"In this particular energy regime, other ground-based telescopes couldn’t look at the sun because they only work at night," she explained. "Ours operates 24/7."

From its position, 13,000 feet above sea level, the observatory can witness the aftermath of gamma rays striking air in the atmosphere, with collisions resulting in "air showers." 

Air showers are like particle explosions that the naked eye cannot see. The energy of the ray is "liberated and redistributed amongst new fragments consisting of lower energy particles and light," Michigan State University notes. And those particles created on the way down are what the observatory can "see." 

When those particles interact with water in its tanks, they create Cherenkov radiation that can be detected with the observatory’s instruments.

Following six years of data collection, Nisa said an "excess of gamma rays" popped out. 

NASA AI MODEL COULD HELP WORLD PREPARE FOR IMPACT OF SOLAR STORMS

"When we first saw it, we were like, ‘We definitely messed this up. The sun cannot be this bright at these energies,'" she recalled. 

The brightness and the amount of gamma rays were more than previously anticipated. 

The university notes that researchers previously hypothesized it would be rare to see gamma rays reach Earth. However NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope mission showed there were about seven times more of the rays than initially expected. Notably, the telescope's measurements of the sun's gamma rays maxed out at around 200 billion electron volts.

Ohio State University professors John Beacom and Annika Peter encouraged the observatory's international collaboration to take a look. 

"They nudged us and said, ‘We’re not seeing a cutoff. You might be able to see something,'" Nisa said.

Now, for the first time, the team has shown that the energies of the sun’s rays extend into the tera electron volts range, up to nearly 10 TeV, Nisa said. She noted that level does appear to be the maximum.

She said solar scientists will now ask how these gamma rays achieve such high energies and what role the sun’s magnetic fields play.

While questions about the universe abound, a James Webb Space Telescope image has recently raised others. 

The telescope's high-resolution Near-Infrared Camera snapshot of a pair of forming young stars also caught what appears to be a cosmic question mark toward the bottom right. 

The stars, captured in near-infrared light, are known as Herbig-Haro 46/47 and are buried in a disk of gas and dust. 

Located just 1,470 light-years from Earth in the Vela Constellation, the object is just a few thousand years old. Over millions of years, NASA says, the stars will fully form.

WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE CAPTURES STUNNING SHOTS OF RING NEBULA

The space agencies working on the telescope explain that, in the background of the shot, lie extremely distant galaxies. 

"Blue objects with diffraction spikes are stars, and the closer they are, the larger they appear. White-and-pink spiral galaxies sometimes appear larger than these stars, but are significantly farther away. The tiniest red dots, Webb’s infrared specialty, are often the oldest, most distant galaxies," the European Space Agency noted.

WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE TAKES STUNNINGLY DETAILED INFRARED IMAGE OF ACTIVELY FORMING STARS

What punctuates the image may be up for debate – but scientists told Space.com earlier this month it is likely a galaxy, or galaxies. 

"It is probably a distant galaxy, or potentially interacting galaxies (their interactions may have caused the distorted question mark-shape)," representatives of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), which manages Webb's science operations, told Space.com. 

According to the institute, the object's reddish hue in the image indicates that the object is quite distant. 

"This may be the first time we've seen this particular object," it added. "Additional follow-up would be required to figure out what it is with any certainty. Webb is showing us many new, distant galaxies – so there's a lot of new science to be done!"

Matt Caplan, an assistant professor of physics at Illinois State University, also told Space.com that the object might be two galaxies merging – although noting that there are plenty of additional possibilities. 

NASA has restored full communications with its Voyager 2 spacecraft following weeks of silence. 

The agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said Friday that NASA's Deep Space Network facility in Canberra, Australia, sent the "equivalent of an interstellar ‘shout’ more than 12.3 billion miles to Voyager 2," commanding the spacecraft to turn its antenna back to Earth. 

"With a one-way light time of 18.5 hours for the command to reach Voyager, it took 37 hours for mission controllers to learn whether the command worked," the scientists said in an update. 

Shortly before 12:30 a.m. EDT Friday, the spacecraft began returning science and telemetry data. 

NASA HEARS VOYAGER 2 'HEARTBEAT' AFTER ACCIDENTALLY CUTTING OFF COMMUNICATION

This development indicates it is operating normally and that it remains on its expected trajectory.

"I just sort of sighed. I melted in the chair," project manager Suzanne Dodd told The Associated Press. She said the two-week outage was believed to be the longest NASA had gone without hearing from Voyager 2.

"So glad I can finally phone home," the NASA X account for Voyager 2 wrote in a social media post.

NASA previously said the Deep Space Network radio antennas had picked up a "heartbeat" carrier signal, confirming that the spacecraft was still broadcasting. 

WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE CAPTURES STUNNING SHOTS OF RING NEBULA

If the command to Voyager 2 hadn't worked, NASA would have had to wait until October, when Voyager 2's onboard software automatically tells it to reset its direction.

Voyager 2 is programmed to reset its orientation multiple times each year to keep its antenna pointing at Earth. The next reset will occur Oct. 15. 

JPL initially said a series of planned commands on July 21 had "inadvertently" caused the antenna to point two degrees away from Earth.

The action resulted in Voyager 2 being unable to receive commands or transmit data back to Earth. 

Voyager 2 is located more than 12 billion miles from Earth and first launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in August 1977, along with the twin Voyager 1. 

Voyager 1 is around 15 billion miles away from Earth.

Dodd says the Voyagers may be alive and well for the 50th anniversary of their launch in 2027. 

"We’ve been very clever over the last 10 years to eke out every single little watt," she said. "Hopefully, one of them will make it to 50. But they are old, and certainly events like this one that just happened scare the dickens out of me, as far as making that type of a milestone."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.