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2. Apple's next product leak is coming from the unlikeliest place, its own stores  PhoneArena
3. Apple Retail Stores Preparing for New Home Product Launches  MacRumors
4. Things I Learned About The Rumored HomePod Display From macOS Beta Code  Engadget
5. Apple Stores preparing ‘significant’ changes for new Home product launches: report  9to5Mac

1. M6 iMac Coming This Year in New Colors  MacRumors
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3. M6 iMac refresh expected before the end of 2026  AppleInsider
4. A new iMac is coming before the end of 2026, but don’t expect much beyond M6  Digital Trends
5. Apple’s M6 iMac Could Launch Before the End of 2026 With New Colors  The Mac Observer

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2. Apple’s Foldable iPhone Will Help Bring Some Magic Back  Bloomberg.com
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4. iPhone Fold Release Date: Apple’s Perfect Timing  Forbes
5. Excited to Take Deep Zoom Photos With Your Foldable iPhone? Get Ready for Disappointment  Gizmodo

1. I walked 4,000 steps with the Pixel Watch 5 vs Samsung Galaxy Watch 9 — and we have a new Android champ  Tom's Guide
2. Pixel Watch 5 Review: A Fantastic Watch That's Missing Features At Launch  Engadget
3. Pixel Watch 5 vs. Galaxy Watch 9 vs. Apple Watch Series 11: There’s more than one way to take your health seriously  Digital Trends
4. Pixel Watch 5 vs Galaxy Watch9: Price, Battery, Features Compared  TechRepublic
5. Pixel Watch 5 lets you customize double pinch to dismiss alarms, skip music, & more  9to5Google

1. The ‘GTA 6’ Leaks Get Higher Quality With No End In Sight  Forbes
2. Former Rockstar director calls 'GTA 6' leaks a 'nothing burger'  Mashable
3. ‘GTA 6’ Developer Rockstar Games Subpoenas Microsoft, Discord Amid Leaks  Variety
4. Rockstar Rattled As ‘Grand Theft Auto VI’ Leaks Again  Bloomberg.com
5. GTA 6 Suffers Sixth Straight Day of Gameplay Leaks — Here's Everything We Know  IGN

By Allison Dries-Padilla, Missions Operations Specialist at Malin Space Science Systems

Earth planning date: Friday, Aug. 14, 2026

This week of Curiosity Mars rover operations takes us back to our “regularly scheduled programming.” After taking a slight detour to investigate the “erosional surface” we are back on course to ascend Mount Sharp. As we transition into fall in Gale Crater, temperatures and the likelihood of dust storms begins to drop, but Curiosity is still on the lookout for the last gasp of late-season local and regional dust storms.

Monday’s plan for Sols 4982 to 4985 began with Curiosity standing face to face with a unique geologic feature just above the erosional supersurface contact. As you might have read in the previous blog, the team was fortunate enough to spend two planning cycles at this amazing location. MAHLI used this opportunity to reacquire selected images for the mosaic of target “Tres Morros.” This will allow the science team to have a detailed and focused view of the underside of this feature. APXS took measurements of the bedrock target “El Motacusal” after it had been brushed with the DRT. APXS took a second measurement on the “as is” bedrock target “Alto de Carmen.” Both of these APXS targets were documented with high-resolution images taken by MAHLI. ChemCam activities include LIBS spectroscopy on bedrock targets “Lagunas Bravas” and “Parququcha” and ChemCam Remote Micro-Imaging on Mishe Mokwa. I had the pleasure to be on the Mastcam uplink shift for this plan. Mastcam took a near-field mosaic of the erosional ridge, dubbed “Los Toldos,” as well as a mosaic on further away bedrock exposure above the erosional surface, named “Los Ladrillos.” In addition to these mosaics, Mastcam also provided color documentation of the previous plan’s ChemCam Remote Micro-Imaging on Cordillera and the ChemCam LIBS activities taken in this plan.

Curiosity then drove 100 feet (30 meters) to take us to our location for Friday’s plan for Sols 4985 to 4987. Although we had plenty of flat and tasty bedrock in this new location, we could not place the robotic arm in a safe position to DRT the bedrock. The left-front wheel was perched on a small rock, and we had to account for a risk the rover could slip off this rock as we move the arm around. MAHLI and APXS were still able to safely perform contact science on two bedrock targets, “Mamorecillo” and “Aguas Claras.” MAHLI had an additional housekeeping activity to image the calibration target. ChemCam plans to use its laser spectrometer to gather geochemistry on three targets in this vicinity, followed by Mastcam documentation. Today’s ChemCam LIBS targets include a dark-toned resistant layer in the bedrock “Yura Kasa.” Mastcam is planning a series of mosaics to continue imaging the stratigraphy in the unit above the erosional contact.

Today’s plan was packed with environmental monitoring activities to monitor for dust storms. Mastcam took a flurry of dust-imaging observations to measure optical depth, or “tau,” of the atmosphere. A higher tau value is associated with an increased amount of dust in the atmosphere. APXS joined in on the action by planning an overnight atmospheric measurement. Navcam took on most of the heavy lifting to monitor for dust storms. These activities include multiple large dust-devil surveys, zenith observation, in-crater line-of-sight observations, and suprahorizon cloud movies.

Curiosity will then continue to climb Mount Sharp; the planned drive distance of 150 feet (47 meters) will take the rover southwest of our current location. We will return Monday to start a new week full of contact science, remote sensing, and driving on Mars.

• Want to read more posts from the Curiosity team?

  
  
  Visit Mission Updates
  
  

• Want to learn more about Curiosity’s science instruments?

  
  
  Visit the Science Instruments page
  
  

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NASA Shares Views of August Solar Eclipse from Ground, Air, Space

On Aug. 12, a total solar eclipse darkened skies over Greenland, Iceland, and Spain. As the Moon covered the Sun, it briefly revealed the Sun’s wispy outer atmosphere — the corona — to those in the path of totality who were lucky enough to have clear skies. NASA researchers and photographers were along the eclipse path to study the corona, capture the phenomenon, and observe how the eclipse affected our planet.

One NASA photographer in Spain captured the total solar eclipse as well as the partial phases before and after, until the Sun set below the horizon.

In northern Maine, where only a partial eclipse was visible, another NASA photographer captured the International Space Station, with its crew of seven aboard, speeding past the partially eclipsed Sun.

Meanwhile, from about 250 miles above the ground, a NASA astronaut aboard the International Space Station snapped a few photos of the partial eclipse from their perspective as well.

Between the ground and the space station, NASA pilots flew NASA’s WB-57F research jet at an altitude of 50,000 feet, passing through the eclipse’s shadow to lengthen their time in the eclipse. The jet carried a suite of cameras that captured high-resolution images of the corona and prominences, plumes of electrically charged gas rising off the Sun, in several different wavelengths of light.

In both Iceland and Spain, teams of students participating in the NASA-funded Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project launched scientific balloons that carried instruments to capture images of the eclipse’s shadow and study the eclipse’s effects on our atmosphere. Even though clouds obscured the view of the eclipse from the ground in Iceland, the weather did not interfere with the balloon-borne instruments’ ability to gather information about how the brief loss of light and heat affected the lower atmosphere.

Before the eclipse, scientists at Predictive Science Inc., with support from NASA grants and supercomputers, used observations of the Sun from NASA spacecraft and ground-based telescopes to predict what the corona would look like during the eclipse. Below, their corona prediction is compared to a composite image of the corona, which combines multiple images captured by the NASA-supported DEB Initiative project during the total eclipse near León, Spain.

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Image Details

The left image shows a prediction from the morning of Aug. 12, 2026, of what the solar corona would look like to the human eye during the total solar eclipse that day. The right image is processed, composite image of the corona that combines multiple images captured near León, Spain, during the total solar eclipse on Aug. 12, 2026. Left image credit: Predictive Science Inc.; right image credit: DEB Initiative Team/Zack Stockbridge

Over the coming months, scientists will analyze the observations and images captured during the solar eclipse on Aug. 12 and present what they have learned about the Sun and its effects on our home planet. These observations will also help prepare science teams to investigate future solar eclipses, such as a much longer total solar eclipse that will be visible from southern Spain and northern Africa on Aug. 2, 2027.

Read more about NASA’s research during the eclipse and rewatch NASA’s eclipse broadcast to hear from some of the scientists and students who conducted the experiments.

About the Author

Vanessa Thomas

Vanessa Thomas is a science writer with the heliophysics communications team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

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For more information, contact Mark K. Leader, Glenn Research Center, mark.leader@nasa.gov

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NASA’s Chemical Equilibrium with Applications (CEA) code is a foundational tool for propulsion system analysis. It provides equilibrium chemistry, rocket performance, shock, and detonation calculations used across NASA and the broader aerospace community. NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) Activity TI-22-01730 modernized the legacy CEA2 Fortran code into CEA v3, a Fortran 2008, object-oriented software package with expanded interface support, updated thermochemical data, improved maintainability, and substantially improved workflow integration. The modernized code preserves backward compatibility with legacy CEA input workflows while enabling direct use from modern analysis environments, including Python, C, MATLAB, and automated design studies.

Background

CEA2 was released in 2002 and has remained widely used for propulsion and thermochemistry analysis. However, the original procedural Fortran implementation became increasingly difficult to maintain, extend, and integrate into modern engineering workflows due to the lack of a subroutine interface. Current propulsion analysis increasingly requires automated parametric sweeps, integration with other modeling tools and engineering workflows, and support for emerging propellants and fuels, including green propellants and sustainable aviation fuels. These needs motivated a comprehensive modernization effort to preserve CEA’s validated technical basis while improving its maintainability, usability, and integration with modern engineering software.

Technical Improvements

Modern Software Architecture

CEA v3 is implemented in Fortran 2008 using object-oriented data structures, stricter typing, and a thread-safe equilibrium solver architecture. The software supports Fortran, C, Python, MATLAB, and Excel interfaces. These interfaces allow CEA to be used directly in automated analysis pipelines, multidisciplinary design frameworks, and high-volume designof- experiments studies. Backward compatibility is supported through a legacy command-line interface, allowing existing CEA input files and workflows to be carried forward with minimal disruption.

Expanded Species and Thermodynamic Data

The thermodynamic database has been expanded to support additional propellants and fuels relevant to current NASA applications, including green propellant constituents such as ADN, HAN, and LMP-103S, and sustainable aviation fuel candidates such as n-Butanol. This expanded species coverage improves the applicability of CEA for next-generation propulsion, green propellant, and sustainable aviation fuel studies.

New Modeling Capabilities

CEA v3 adds or improves support for several modeling capabilities,
including:

• Subroutine interface enabling direct integration and high-volume calculations
• Negative reactant amounts
• Inert hydrocarbon fuel representations, including RP-1, Jet-A, and JP-series fuels
• Analytic total derivatives for coupling with optimization and sensitivity analysis workflows

Performance Improvements

For standalone use, individual equilibrium calculations in CEA v3 are moderately slower than comparable CEA2 calculations because the modernized architecture and added robustness introduce additional computational overhead. In representative testing, a single calculation was approximately 40 percent slower, but the absolute difference was only about 0.004 seconds per case. However, the modernized architecture provides substantial performance advantages for multi-case workflows, which are common in design-of-experiments studies, parametric sweeps, optimization, and uncertainty analyses. In one benchmark, a sweep of 108,500 cases completed in approximately 1.11 seconds with CEA v3, compared with approximately 15 minutes using CEA2. This corresponds to an approximately 800-times reduction in runtime for that workflow. These improvements make large-scale propulsion trade studies and automated design-space exploration significantly more practical.

Guidance for Engineering Use

NASA engineering users should consider the following guidance:

• Use CEA v3 for new propulsion and thermochemistry analyses when possible to take advantage of the modernized interfaces, expanded database, and improved workflow integration.
• Use the Python, MATLAB, or C interfaces for automated workflows, including parametric sweeps, optimization studies, and iterative design analyses.
• Use the updated species database for green propellant and sustainable aviation fuel studies when the relevant species are included and validated for the intended application.
• Use the classic command-line interface when continuity with legacy CEA workflows or input files is required.
• Retain appropriate engineering review and validation when transitioning established CEA2 workflows to CEA v3, particularly for mission-critical analyses or cases that depend on legacy assumptions.

References

1. NASA/TM–20260007987
2. CEA documentation: https://nasa.github.io/cea
3. CEA repository: https://github.com/nasa/cea

For more information, contact Mark K. Leader, Glenn Research Center, mark.leader@nasa.gov

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captured this Aug. 6, 2026, infrared image of part of the Carina Nebula, a star-forming region also home to the Cosmic Cliffs. This feature, called the “Treasure Chest,” is an object known as a cometary globule. A cometary globule is an isolated cloud of gas and dust with a dense, dark head and a sweeping tail.

Image credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, M. Reiter; Acknowledgement: M. H. Özsaraç