A study published in Science in 2026 found that El Niño conditions in the eastern Pacific are stronger than any observed in the past millennium, according to a reconstruction of ocean surface temperatures from fossil coral records. El Niño and its cool counterpart La Niña are phases of the El Niño‑Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the largest source of year‑to‑year climate variation on Earth, influencing rainfall patterns worldwide. Researchers analyzed strontium‑to‑calcium ratios and oxygen isotopes in fossilized Galápagos corals, producing more than a dozen monthly temperature measurements per year for colonies that lived up to 900 years ago. The dataset comprised 28 time‑separated series from five islands covering scattered years back to around 1100 CE. Temperature variability since 1984 has been 36.5 percent higher than during the pre‑industrial period from 1000 to 1850 CE and 16.2 percent higher than the period from 1851 to 1982, according to the study. Model simulations that included only natural factors such as volcanic activity and solar variability were unable to reproduce the magnitude of the observed variability, with the coral‑derived increase exceeding the model range at a confidence level approaching 99 percent. Scientists said this suggests that the recent strengthening of ENSO is unlikely to be explained by natural variability alone and is consistent with the influence of human‑driven greenhouse gas emissions. Corals from the central Pacific showed a similar mean increase but with greater scatter, a pattern the authors linked to the reliance on oxygen isotope measurements alone. The authors noted that stronger temperature swings would amplify the hydrological impacts of El Niño, leading to more extreme wet and dry phases even if the magnitude of the swings themselves remained unchanged. Researchers attributed the observed changes to fossil‑fuel use and the resulting warming of the atmosphere and oceans, describing the trend as a new type of El Niño activity that may become more common.

NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Kennedy Space Center on Sunday, beginning a mission to map large portions of the sky and investigate dark energy and dark matter.

The telescope, named after astronomer Nancy Grace Roman, is the second NASA‑led great observatory launched this century after the James Webb Space Telescope in 2021. Its 300‑megapixel camera and 7.9‑foot (2.4 m) primary mirror, originally fabricated for a National Reconnaissance Office spy satellite, will provide a field of view 100 times wider than Hubble and will survey about 12 % of the sky over a year.

The Falcon Heavy lifted off at 7:25 am EDT, carrying a 20,000‑pound spacecraft to the Sun‑Earth L2 Lagrange point roughly 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. Engineers expect three months for Roman to reach its operational orbit, after which ground teams will calibrate the observatory. The mission is budgeted at $4.3 billion and was delivered ahead of schedule.

Roman will capture images of areas larger than the full Moon, enabling mapping of galaxy clusters, cosmic filaments, and exoplanet atmospheres via a coronagraph that can detect planets up to 100 million times fainter than their host stars. Scientists anticipate the telescope will identify tens of thousands of exoplanets, billions of galaxies, thousands of supernovae and tens of billions of stars, generating roughly 1.4 terabytes of data each day and a total of about 20 petabytes over its five‑year primary mission, far exceeding the data returned by Hubble.

NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute will store the data in a public cloud‑based archive accessible to researchers worldwide, with tools for both pre‑configured software and custom analysis pipelines.

SpaceX is scheduled to launch a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 1:18 a.m. PDT on Wednesday, adding 27 Starlink V2 Mini satellites to its constellation.

The first stage booster, designated B1063, is making its 35th flight and will follow a south-easterly trajectory after liftoff from Space Launch Complex 4-East. After second stage separation, the booster will target a landing on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja California.

Deployment of the satellites is expected just over an hour after liftoff. SpaceX has been basing its Starlink launch operations on the West Coast while focusing on Starship preparations at Cape Canaveral.

A study led by Zhongyuan Ni, Ruediger Berger and Hans-Juergen Butt at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz, Germany, showed that water drops can acquire electric charges of several thousand volts when they slide across a surface and that this charge can puncture protective coatings on copper, causing corrosion. Corrosion of metals exposed to rain is normally attributed to dissolved salts and the abrasive action of water combined with oxygen, while protective layers such as paints, polymer films or oxide layers are designed to resist this chemical and physical attack. The researchers released 35-microliter drops containing a small amount of salt onto tilted surfaces and let them slide about four centimeters before falling onto a copper plate coated with a 60-nanometer Teflon layer; the drops impacted the plate 3,000 times, a duration comparable to an afternoon of moderate rain. Microscopy of the impact sites after the experiment revealed pits several nanometers deep, penetrating the Teflon layer and exposing the copper, whereas drops that landed directly on the plate without sliding left the coating undamaged. High-speed video recordings captured a neutral drop maintaining a smooth shape until contact, while a charged drop elongated into a Taylor cone as electrostatic forces overcame surface tension, indicating a dielectric breakdown of the coating. Calculated field strengths showed that a drop carrying two nanocoulombs reaches 60 kilovolts per millimeter, the breakdown threshold of Teflon, at a distance of about 10 micrometers from the surface, and that the charge transferred to the metal was nearly total, with more than 99 percent of the charge deposited on impact. The amount of charge depended on sliding distance and the coating's ability to withstand electric fields; thinner polymer films were penetrated while thicker films remained intact, suggesting that coating thickness and material selection are critical for preventing electrically induced corrosion. The findings imply that composite materials with conductive or high-permittivity components embedded in insulating matrices may be vulnerable to corrosion when exposed to charged water droplets, and that current protective coatings are often chosen for chemical resistance rather than for electric field tolerance. Further research is needed to develop coatings that can tolerate the electric fields generated by sliding raindrops, a condition that occurs naturally in clouds, storms, waterfalls and industrial processes such as electrospraying.

NASA's September 2026 skywatching guide outlines Moon positions to locate Antares and the Teapot, notes Venus's peak evening brightness on September 18, marks the September 22 equinox, and describes the Harvest Moon on September 26 near Saturn and Neptune.

From September 14 through 20, the Moon moves each night, passing near Antares, a bright reddish star that marks the heart of Scorpius, and the Teapot asterism in Sagittarius, which resembles a teapot with a handle, lid, and spout; under dark skies the Milky Way center can be seen from the Teapot's spout.

On September 18, Venus reaches its greatest evening brilliance, appearing as a bright point low in the western sky shortly after sunset and remaining visible before setting.

International Observe the Moon Night is observed on September 19, inviting people worldwide to view the Moon and learn about lunar science, exploration, and cultural significance; details are available at go.nasa.gov/ObserveTheMoon.

The September 22 equinox marks the official start of fall in the Northern Hemisphere and spring in the Southern Hemisphere, with the Sun positioned directly above Earth's equator and day and night lengths nearly equal worldwide.

On September 26, the Harvest Moon rises shortly after sunset near Saturn, with faint Neptune positioned nearby; Neptune requires binoculars or a telescope to be seen because it shines at around magnitude 8.

Raquel Villanueva of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said the guide provides opportunities for public engagement with celestial events throughout the month.

NASA encourages viewers to check NASA Science for updates on upcoming astronomical phenomena.

Private Group Announces Low‑Cost Mission to Alpha Centauri

A private consortium led by mathematician and physicist Philip Johnston unveiled plans to build a small spacecraft called Fermi Explorer, targeting a launch by 2029 and a journey to Alpha Centauri that would take less than 80,000 years.

The mission seeks to demonstrate that a low‑budget probe can address two proposed solutions to the Fermi paradox: that advanced civilizations rarely attempt interstellar travel or that the technical difficulty of such travel limits expansion.

The spacecraft will carry a 1 kg payload, a tank of xenon gas, solar panels, and several scientific instruments, and will rely on solar‑electric propulsion. After a rideshare launch into low‑Earth orbit, the probe will perform a series of perihelion burns that bring it to 0.42 astronomical units from the Sun, using the Oberth effect to increase velocity to about 25 km/s. The spacecraft will exit the Solar System after roughly 12 years and coast on a ballistic trajectory toward Alpha Centauri.

Ground‑based telescopes equipped with retroreflectors will track the probe for about 18 months, after which it will be out of range. The team says the project does not require new propulsion technology or large government funding and is based on existing hardware and AI‑generated trajectory analysis.

If successful, the mission could help clarify whether the Fermi paradox reflects rarity of civilizations or short‑lived technological capability, but it will not provide definitive evidence of extraterrestrial life.

The European Space Agency held a media briefing on 31 August 2026 to discuss the upcoming separation of the Mercury Transfer Module (MTM) of the BepiColombo mission, scheduled for 3 September 2026, which marks the start of the mission’s Mercury arrival phase. BepiColombo, a joint mission between ESA and JAXA, is the most complex mission ever sent to Mercury. Prof. Geraint Jones, Lead Project Scientist at ESA, noted that the mission is the most complex ever sent to Mercury. The spacecraft will become the second and third to orbit the planet, which is the least explored inner planet of the Solar System. Studying Mercury will provide insight into the history of the Solar System. The briefing outlined several upcoming milestones. The MTM separation on 3 September 2026 will release the spacecraft for its cruise toward Mercury. Mercury orbit insertion is planned for November 2026, and the separation of the two science orbiters — ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (Mio) — is set for December 2026. Project officials said these events will enable the spacecraft to begin scientific observations around Mercury. ESA officials reported that the spacecraft is functioning as expected and that the mission remains on schedule. The mission offers opportunities to study Mercury’s composition, magnetic field, and surface geology, contributing to broader knowledge of planetary processes. The mission team expects to begin full scientific operations in early 2027 after orbit insertion, with data anticipated to refine models of Solar System formation.

A flash flood and debris avalanche hit the Nepal–China border region on 26 August 2026, causing hundreds of deaths and leaving thousands missing, according to satellite observations.

The event was triggered by a rapid slope failure after a glacier collapse on Langtang Lirung in Langtang National Park, releasing energy comparable to a magnitude 5.2 earthquake, according to the imagery.

The torrent of water, ice and debris traveled nearly 100 km downstream, overwhelming the Gyirong Port border crossing and damaging infrastructure along the Lende Kholā and Trishuli River valleys, as shown in before‑and‑after images captured by the Copernicus Sentinel‑2 mission and the US Landsat‑9 satellite.

The International Charter Space and Major Disasters and the Copernicus Emergency Mapping Service were activated to provide satellite data for emergency response, and the imagery has been used to assess damage to roads, bridges and buildings and to guide recovery planning, according to ESA.

Long‑term satellite monitoring will allow planners to evaluate lingering risks and to make informed decisions about reconstruction in the affected mountainous region.

NASA Earth Observatory releases a satellite image each month as part of its puzzler series. The September 2026 puzzle is shown above and challenges readers to identify the location depicted. Participants submit their guesses using an online form and select “Puzzler Answer” as the topic. Submissions may include a simple location guess or additional details such as the satellite, instrument, spectral bands, or geological observations. The first correct response will be recognized on the page, and other interesting answers may also be highlighted. No monetary prize or space travel is offered; recognition is the only reward. Approximately one week after the challenge closes, the correct location will be posted along with an accompanying Earth Observatory story that explains the image in detail.