Tootfinder

A NASA research mission to study the Earth's magnetic tail - a #HamSCI 2026 talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SlVnbRKSKg (CINEMA is a NASA mission of 9 spacecraft in Low-Earth Orbit, recently approved - https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-selects-two-heliophysics-missions-for-continued-development/ - to move into development, to study the Earth's magnetic tail by detecting particles that are accelerated to the poles. MOVIE is its conjugate Citizen Science initiative, part of which includes building out ground instruments to compliment the main mission, expected to include All-Sky Cameras, Magnetometers, and various Radio Receivers to probe the coinciding ionospheric conditions). Also a talk about the SoFIE CubeSat Mission: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imB7_NXQeHQ

Extreme weather is deadlier than many people realize #environment

Extreme weather is deadlier than many people realize
Many Americans underestimate the health risks of extreme weather, including flooding, wildfire smoke, drought, and extreme temperatures.

Google rolls back an image generation tool in Google Earth to add "stronger guardrails" after concerns arose it can be used to create deepfake satellite imagery (Geoff Brumfiel/NPR)
https://www.npr.org/2026/07/31/nx-s1-59146

The video #Megaconstellation threat to astronomy (and more) is linked in the sidebar of the ESO release but deserves a separate shout-out. Also learned that the actual paper has just been formally published in https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/pdf/forth/aa60006-26.pdf - and see https://gizmodo.com/eso-study-finds-that-no-more-than-100000-satellites-should-orbit-earth-2000780091 for an article.

Space datacenters proposed by SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and others would
release staggering levels of pollution that would probably alter the Earth’s atmosphere
and be “catastrophic” for the planet, space industry experts and environmental groups warn in a new petition demanding a review of their impacts.
Tech companies have collectively proposed millions of “orbital datacenters”
and are pressing forward with plans, which require Federal Communications Commissi…

Space datacenters proposed by Musk and Bezos ‘catastrophic’ for planet, experts warn
New US petition demands review of plans from tech companies amid fears of environmental destruction

The #VegaC launch with #FLEX and #Sentinel3C went well: https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/FLEX_and_Sentinel-3C_launched and https://www.avio.com/press-release/avio-successfully-launches-sentinel-3-c-and-flex-satellites-with-vega-c- and https://www.dlr.de/de/aktuelles/nachrichten/2026/satelliten-flex-und-sentinel-3c-untersuchen-gesundheit-der-globalen-pflanzenwelt

More than half of America’s parks are near toxic chemical sites https://www.earth.com/environment/more-than-half-of-americas-parks-are-near-toxic-chemical-sites/

More than half of America’s parks are near toxic chemical sites
Thousands of public parks across America sit near toxic-release facilities and Superfund sites, revealing a hidden overlap in communities.