This week, Mars and Jupiter will be visible in a close conjunction that hasn’t been seen in years.

From Earth’s perspective, the two planets will be closest to one another on Wednesday since 2018.

The two will actually be separated by more than 350 million miles. The experience is a phenomenal illustration of the perfect time and location combination. An astronomy phenomenon known as conjunction will occur when Mars swiftly passes Jupiter and the Earth is positioned in such a way as to make the other two planets appear extremely close.

Because of both planets’ brightness, a celestial optical illusion will be evident to the unaided eye. It will be a few years before the Mars-Jupiter encounter occurs again.

The ideal time to see the pair is a few hours before sunrise. On Wednesday, the two planets will seem closest. However, Elizabeth Warner, a professor member in the University of Maryland’s Astronomy Department, points out that viewers can begin to enjoy the pair right away and watch as the apparent distance between Mars and Jupiter gets closer and then farther apart.

“You’ll be able to see how these two kinds of dance through the sky,” she said, advising onlookers to check the sky each morning, preferably before dawn.

Mars, the red planet, will begin to move apart from Jupiter, the gas giant, after Wednesday. However, there will always be causes for concern. NASA reports that on August 27, the crescent moon will align with the two planets to form a brilliant asteroid belt.

It appears that SpaceX’s upcoming astronaut mission will not launch this month.

Crew-9 was scheduled to launch on August 18, marking SpaceX’s ninth voyage to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA. But the agency stated today, August 6, that it has been rescheduled to no sooner than September 24.

“This adjustment allows more time for mission managers to finalize return planning for the agency’s Boeing Crew Flight Test currently docked to the orbiting laboratory,” NASA stated in a statement this afternoon.

The inaugural astronaut trip of Boeing’s new Starliner capsule is called the Crew Flight Test (CFT). Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore from NASA were launched on June 5 and will spend a week on the International Space Station.

But Starliner is still up there. On route to the orbiting laboratory, the capsule encountered a number of problems, chief among them being the failure of five of its twenty-eight reaction control system thrusters. Since then, members of the CFT team have been researching the issue in an effort to ascertain whether and when Starliner would be able to safely bring Williams and Wilmore back to Earth.

That work is still in progress.

In today’s update, NASA officials stated, “NASA and Boeing continue to evaluate the spacecraft’s readiness, and no decisions have been made regarding Starliner’s return.”

“With agency leadership to discuss ongoing operations, including NASA’s Crew-9, Crew-8, and Crew Flight Test missions,” NASA will hold a press conference at 12:30 p.m. EDT (1630 GMT).

SpaceX’s Crew-8 mission, which brought four people to the International Space Station (ISS) for a roughly six-month stay in early March, is preparing to return to Earth.

Commander Zena Cardman, pilot Nick Hague, mission specialist Stephanie Wilson, and mission specialist Alexsandr Gorbunov make up the Crew-9 astronauts. Cardman, Hague, and Wilson are astronauts from NASA, while Gorbunov is a representative of Roscosmos, the Russian space agency.

On Tuesday morning, July 30, United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) iconic Atlas V rocket conducted its last national security mission.

On Tuesday at 6:45 a.m. EDT (1045 GMT), the Atlas V lifted off from Florida’s Canaveral Space Force Station to begin a classified mission known as USSF-51 for the U.S. Space Force.

On the far left, a rocket takes off into the early morning sky, leaving a foggy trail in its wake. Some buildings can be made out in the distance.

USSF-51 is a historic mission because it was the final Atlas rocket family member to launch from national security space (NSSL) since 1957.

Col. Jim Horne, senior materiel leader for Launch Execution Delta, inside the Space Force’s Space Systems Command (SSC), said via email on Friday, July 25, that “the Space Force Atlas V team has an amazing record of serving our National Security Space lift needs.”

“We have always worked extremely well with this team, and this mission, our last launch with the Atlas V, is looking great!” Horne continued.

Since its 2002 launch, the Atlas V has completed 100 flights. Last month saw a historic 100th launch, carrying two NASA astronauts on board Boeing’s Starliner capsule as it headed toward the International Space Station. It was Starliner’s and Atlas V’s first crewed flight.

The workhorse rocket completed more than 50 additional similar flights over the years after completing its initial US national security mission in 2007.

Walt Lauderdale, the director of the USSF-51 mission, stated in the same statement that “for the past 20 years, the Atlas V launch system has been the stalwart for national security launches.” “This mission, together with all those preceding, demonstrates the Atlas V integrated government/industry team’s commitment to safely deliver critical assets to space.”

The Atlas V isn’t quite ready for retirement, even though it won’t be conducting any more missions related to national security after Tuesday. There are still fifteen more launches scheduled for it, the majority of which are intended to hoist Starliner or satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband network.

After the spacecraft is certified, the Space Force intends to deploy ULA’s new Vulcan Centaur rocket for NSSL missions. (Vulcan has successfully launched one mission, the Peregrine moon lander launched by Astrobotic in January of this year. Although the launch went well, Peregrine had issues soon after taking off and did not land on the moon as scheduled.)