Reuters Science News Summary

SpaceX plans to launch its next Starship flight test as soon as this month, aiming to land the rocket's upper stage for the first time, marking a major development in reusable rocket technology.

Following is a summary of current science news briefs.

SpaceX plans next Starship launch as soon as this month, catching it on land

SpaceX as soon as this month aims to ​launch its next Starship flight test, sending its first upgraded Starlink satellites into orbit and then returning the massive rocket system's ​upper stage to land for the first time, CEO Elon Musk said on the ‌company's ​first earnings call Tuesday. The goals for Starship's 14th test flight represent a major leap in the reusable rocket's development from its last test flight in July, when Starship's upper stage appeared to demonstrate improved landing abilities over the Indian Ocean.

Ancient Roman firefighters' barracks may have been found near Colosseum

Archaeologists have uncovered a second-century building with mosaics and frescoes near the Colosseum that may have been barracks used by ancient ‌Roman firefighters, the city's archaeological office said on Wednesday. Five of the building's eight rooms have been fully excavated in the Villa Celimontana park, a former noble residence dating back to the 16th century on the Caelian Hill, one of the seven hills of ancient Rome.

Low Danube water levels in Bulgaria expose Roman-era bridge

Exceptionally low water levels on the Danube have exposed parts of the foundations of the ancient Constantine Bridge, giving Bulgarian archaeologists a rare opportunity to document what they describe as one of the Roman Empire's most impressive engineering achievements. A succession of record-breaking heatwaves in ‌Europe this summer has caused a severe drought in parts of the continent, affecting major waterways such as the Danube and the Rhine.

Spain's 'Galactic Shepherd' to watch total eclipse from DIY observatory

In a tiny Spanish farming village, retired shepherd Joaquin Tapioles is preparing to watch ‌next week's first-in-a-century total solar eclipse from the observatory he built after being inspired by the mysteries of the skies as a boy. The first total eclipse visible from the Iberian peninsula since 1912 is set to draw skywatchers from across Spain and abroad.

SpaceX plans next Starship launch as soon as this month, catching it on land

SpaceX as soon as this month aims to launch its next Starship flight test, sending its first upgraded Starlink satellites into orbit and then returning the massive rocket system's upper stage to land for the first time, CEO Elon Musk said on the company's first earnings call Tuesday. The goals for Starship's 14th test flight represent a major ⁠leap in the reusable ​rocket's development from its last test flight in July, when Starship's upper ⁠stage appeared to demonstrate improved landing abilities over the Indian Ocean.

Defunct SpaceX rocket crashes into the moon, kicks up dust

A SpaceX rocket piece floating in space since last year smashed into the moon at high speed early Wednesday morning, joining the ranks of meteoroids, wayward spacecraft and other pieces of space junk that have bombarded ⁠the lunar surface for ages, astronomers confirmed. The school-bus-size object is the second stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that had launched a lunar lander from Firefly Aerospace toward the moon in January 2025. Its predicted collision with the moon became a spectacle for astronomers and space enthusiasts eager to watch how ​it would unfold.

Swirling, vortex-like patterns observed on the sun's surface

Astronomers have obtained the highest-resolution images to date of our sun's visible surface, observing swirling, vortex-like patterns in superheated solar gases reminiscent of the shapes depicted in the nocturnal sky in Vincent ⁠van Gogh's 1889 painting "The Starry Night." The researchers made the observations of a portion of the sun's photosphere, a relatively thin layer — about 60 miles (100 km) in depth compared to the overall solar diameter of roughly 865,000 miles (1.4 million km) — using the U.S. National Science Foundation's Hawaii-based Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope.

SpaceX slides as AI spending worries overshadow early returns

SpaceX ⁠touted ​faster-than-expected returns from its AI spending on its first-ever earnings call as a public company. But investors remained concerned about how long its profitable Starlink business could continue to bankroll costly investments in data centers and Nvidia chips.

Why were there no tiny dinosaurs? You might blame the mammals

Everyone knows dinosaurs got really big. Some of the long-necked plant-eaters were the largest land animals ever on Earth, as shown by Argentinosaurus, perhaps 70 to 90 tons and upwards of 100 feet (30 meters) long. But how about tiny dinosaurs, like the size of ⁠a mouse? As far as we know, none ever existed. New research investigates this phenomenon. Scientists employed mathematical models to explore the evolution of body size across vertebrate groups. They determined that energetics and physiology can account for the sizes of mammals, birds that fly and ⁠turtles, but these factors fail to explain the absence of really small ⁠dinosaurs, aside from their avian descendants.

Blue Origin zeroes in on rocket engine issue as source of New Glenn explosion

A massive explosion of Blue Origin's centerpiece New Glenn rocket in May was triggered by an issue with one of the rocket's seven BE-4 engines, the company's CEO said on Wednesday, as it races to return the vehicle to flight later this year. "The anomaly originated at the main oxygen valve ‌on one of the BE-4 engines, which was ‌later confirmed by hardware recovery and inspections," Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp wrote on X. "The path forward is clear. We're making small modifications ​to the valve that can be quickly retrofitted to existing engines."