Astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara spent hours on a spacewalk outside the International Space Station, successfully replacing hardware on the station’s solar array. (Courtesy of NASA)

During their first-ever spacewalk, astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara spent hours outside the International Space Station, successfully replacing hardware on the station’s solar array. But a tool bag became untethered and is now orbiting Earth.

Smoke from wildfires in Canada is making for colorful sunrises and sunsets in Chicago, as seen May 18, 2023. (Patty Wetli / WTTW News)

Smoke from raging wildfires in western Canada has reached Chicago, creating hazy skies and making for redder sunrises and sunsets.

(Owen Humphreys / PA Images/ Getty Images via CNN)

Known as one of the oldest-recorded meteor showers, the Lyrids are expected to produce 10 to 15 meteors per hour for three nights centered around its peak of 8:06 p.m. CST on Saturday, according to EarthSky.

The period of total coverage during the solar eclipse is seen near Hopkinsville, Ky. Monday, Aug. 21, 2017. (AP Photo / Mark Humphrey, File)

It’s been less than six years since a total solar eclipse cut across the U.S., from coast to coast. That was on Aug. 21, 2017. The next one is predicted to hit Illinois.

(Pixabay)

Headlines spun out of control when it came to new research results on the Earth’s core. In other news, narwhals have had it with noisy neighbors.

(Dan Bartlett / NASA)

According to NASA, the comet would last have been seen in the night sky more than 10,000 years ago — millennia before the birth of human civilization — and it may never pass this way again.

This processed image of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter was taken by the Mastcam-Z instrument of the Perseverance rover on June 15, 2021. (Courtesy of NASA)

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter is the first aircraft humankind has ever created that is capable of powered, controlled flight on another world. NASA’s team lead on the project discusses its significance. 

NASA’s new moon rocket lifts off from Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022. (AP Photo / John Raoux)

If all goes well during the three-week flight, the crew capsule will be propelled into a wide orbit around the moon and then return to Earth with a Pacific splashdown in December.

A total lunar eclipse, seen from Joshua Tree National Park in 2015. (Brad Sutton / National Park Service)

Election Day 2022 will kick off with a pre-dawn total lunar eclipse. There won't be another like it until March 2025.

This illustration made available by Johns Hopkins APL and NASA depicts NASA’s DART probe, foreground right, and Italian Space Agency’s (ASI) LICIACube, bottom right, at the Didymos system before impact with the asteroid Dimorphos, left. (Steve Gribben / Johns Hopkins APL / NASA via AP)

A NASA spacecraft rammed an asteroid at blistering speed Monday in an unprecedented dress rehearsal for the day a killer rock menaces Earth.

This view of Jupiter was captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft on Feb. 12, 2019, as the spacecraft performed its 17th science pass of Jupiter. (Courtesy of NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS)

Jupiter is making its closest approach to Earth since 1963 on Monday night, and the views should be especially spectacular.

This image shows the exoplanet HIP 65426 b in different bands of infrared light, as seen from the James Webb Space Telescope. Purple shows the NIRCam instrument’s view at 3 micrometers, blue shows the NIRCam instrument’s view at 4.44 micrometers, yellow shows the MIRI instrument’s view at 11.4 micrometers and red shows the MIRI instrument’s view at 15.5 micrometers. (Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA, A Carter (UCSC), the ERS 1386 team and A. Pagan)

For the first time, the James Webb Space Telescope has been used to directly image an exoplanet — that’s a planet outside of our solar system. A Northwestern astronomer was part of the team. 

This image provided by NASA shows a false color composite image of Jupiter obtained by the James Webb Space Telescope on July 27, 2022. The planet’s rings and some of its small satellites are visible along with background galaxies. (NASA via AP)

The James Webb Space Telescope took the photos in July, capturing unprecedented views of Jupiter’s northern and southern lights, and swirling polar haze.

The International Space Station was photographed by one of the STS-98 crew members aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis following separation of the Shuttle and Station on Feb. 16, 2001. (Credit: NASA)
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NASA said in February it intends to keep operating the International Space Station until the end of 2030, after which the ISS would be deorbited and crashed into a remote part of the Pacific Ocean. Commercially operated space platforms would replace the ISS as a venue for collaboration and scientific research, NASA said.

This image released by NASA on Tuesday, July 12, 2022, shows the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. (NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI via AP)

Tuesday’s releases showed parts of the universe seen by other telescopes. But Webb’s sheer power, distant location from Earth and use of the infrared light spectrum showed them in a new light that scientists said was almost as much art as science.

Egg collecting was trendy 100 years ago but today collections like the Field Museum's are rare. (Patty Wetli / WTTW News)

Chicago-area birds are nesting and laying eggs earlier than ever before. A mysterious meteor burns up over Papua New Guinea. A fossil could rewrite the history of the evolution of life on Earth. And a disturbing finding about microplastics.