Lawmakers, foreign leaders and President Trump are gathering Tuesday for the first of two days of funeral services for the late South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham.

(Image credit: Jim LoScalzo)

Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced from their homes as powerful wildfires sweep across Spain and France, revealing the growing scale of a climate crisis already reshaping the continent.

(Image credit: Philippe Lopez)

The New York Times reporter Mike McIntire says gun companies and the NRA are broadening the scope of the Second Amendment, socializing kids to appreciate guns and marketing a new brand of masculinity.

The 2026 list includes new works from household names Douglas Stuart, Marlon James and Elizabeth Strout as well as a few debut authors.

Dry thunderstorms that popped up over the Cascade Range on the evening of July 15, 2026, peppered Oregon and Washington with thousands of lightning strikes as they moved east across the states. By the following day, NASA satellites had begun to detect large numbers of wildland fires burning throughout central and eastern Oregon.

Though initially small, these blazes strengthened as they were fanned by gusty winds and raced through landscapes parched by extreme drought and baking in summer heat. When NASA’s Aqua satellite captured the image shown above on the afternoon of July 26, smoke poured northeast from dozens of large fires that had collectively charred hundreds of square miles. The fires produced a blanket of haze, prompting state officials to issue air quality advisories for eastern Oregon.

Many communities faced evacuation orders as more than 10,000 firefighters battled wildfires throughout the state. On the day the image was captured, the largest active fires were the Hay Creek Complex, Brewer, Big Grass, Akawa Butte, and Powder River fires. Several of these blazes were less than 5 percent contained, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. State officials invoked Oregon’s Emergency Conflagration Act to protect communities as they responded to particularly threatening fires such as the Shingle, Bench, Beachcomb, and Second Flat fires.

Government satellite data are part of a global system of observations used to track fire behavior and analyze emerging trends. Among the real-time wildfire monitoring tools that NASA makes available are FIRMS (Fire Information for Resource Management System), the Worldview browser, and the Fire Event Explorer.

As of July 27, 2026, fires in Oregon had burned more than one million acres, according to news outlets. Meanwhile, the National Interagency Fire Center reported that fires had burned more than 4 million acres across the United States. The 10-year average (2016-2025) for this point in the season is 3.4 million acres.

NASA Earth Observatory image by Michala Garrison, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. Story by Adam Voiland.

Downloads

July 26, 2026

JPEG (3.07 MB)

References & Resources

• Central Oregon Fire Info (2026, July 27) The Source For Comprehensive Fire, Health, And Air Quality Information In Central Oregon. Accessed July 27, 2026.
• KGW8 (2026, July 27) Latest updates on Oregon wildfires: Fires burn more than 1 million acres across the state. Accessed July 27, 2026.
• NASA Earthdata (2026) Wildfires. Accessed July 27, 2026.
• National Interagency Fire Center (2026) Oregon. Accessed July 27, 2026.
• Northwest Interagency Coordination Center (2026, July 27) Official Fire Information. Accessed July 27, 2026.
• OPB (2026, July 27) Oregon wildfires explode over weekend with no signs of slowing down. Accessed July 27, 2026.
• Oregon State Fire Marshal (2026, July 27) OSFM Wildfire Info. Accessed July 27, 2026.
• Oregon.gov (2026, July 26) Current wildfire info. Accessed July 27, 2026.
• Oregon Smoke Information (2026, July 27) Air quality advisory for Eastern Oregon and parts of Central Oregon. Accessed July 27, 2026.
• Oregon Department of Forestry (2026, July 27) Latest News. Accessed July 27, 2026.
• U.S. Drought Monitor (2026, July 21) Oregon. Accessed July 27, 2026.

You may also be interested in:

Stay up-to-date with the latest content from NASA as we explore the universe and discover more about our home planet.

Fires Tear Through Nebraska Grasslands

3 min read

Dry, warm, and windy conditions across the U.S. Great Plains led to extreme fire activity in March 2026.

Article

Cottonwood Fire Chars Utah

5 min read

The blaze burned more than 150 square miles and swept through parts of a ski resort.

Article

Fires Rage in Georgia

3 min read

Firefighters are battling two destructive blazes in the southern part of the state as drought grips the U.S. Southeast.

Article

Keep Exploring

Discover More from NASA Earth Science

Subscribe to Earth Observatory Newsletters

Subscribe to the Earth Observatory and get the Earth in your inbox.

Earth Observatory Image of the Day

NASA’s Earth Observatory brings you the Earth, every day, with in-depth stories and stunning imagery.

Explore Earth Science

Earth Science Data

Open access to NASA’s archive of Earth science data

NASA astronaut Chris Williams will recap his recent eight-month mission aboard the International Space Station during a news conference at 2:45 p.m. EDT Tuesday, Aug. 4, from the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

NASA will stream this event live through a variety of platforms. Learn where to watch online:

https://www.nasa.gov/live

United States-based media interested in attending in person must contact the NASA Johnson newsroom no later than 5 p.m., Friday, July 31, at jsccommu@mail.nasa.gov.

Media wishing to participate by phone must contact the Johnson newsroom no later than two hours before the start of the event. To ask a question by phone, media must dial into the news conference no later than 15 minutes prior to the start of the call. NASA’s media accreditation policy is available online.

Williams returned to Earth on July 26, after logging 241 days as an Expedition 73/74 flight engineer during his first spaceflight. He returned along with Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev, completing 3,856 orbits of the Earth over the course of their more than 102-million-mile journey. They also saw the arrival of six visiting spacecraft and the departure of eight.

During his mission, Williams supported a wide range of scientific investigations and technology demonstrations. He helped advance research for new cancer treatments and improved in-space manufacturing of materials used in high-performance computers and electronics. Williams also completed two spacewalks to prep for space station power system upgrades and to replace a faulty joint on the Canadarm2 robotic arm. The crew’s work aboard the space station helps improve life on Earth and prepare for future human missions to the Moon and Mars.

To learn more about International Space Station research, operations, and its crews, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/station

-end-

Joshua Finch
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov

Anna Schneider
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
anna.c.schneider@nasa.gov

Each time the Moon covers the Sun during a total solar eclipse — darkening daytime skies and briefly revealing the Sun’s ethereal outer atmosphere, the corona — it presents new opportunities to better understand our star and its influence on Earth.

On Wednesday, Aug. 12, as the next total solar eclipse sweeps over Greenland, Iceland, and Spain, NASA-funded science teams will be chasing the Moon’s shadow with a high-altitude jet and scientific balloons to investigate the Sun’s dynamics and how the temporary darkening of our skies affects our atmosphere.

“From our unique perspective on Earth during a total solar eclipse, scientists can study the Sun’s corona in a way we can’t from anywhere else in the solar system,” said Kelly Korreck, eclipse program manager at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The Sun impacts our daily life, satellites, and astronauts in space, and we can take advantage of this moment to advance our understanding of that influence.”

High-flying jet to record solar dynamics

Soaring in the nose cone of NASA’s WB-57 high-altitude research aircraft is a suite of four cameras to take high-resolution images of the corona in several different wavelengths of visible and infrared light. Part of an instrument developed by the NASA Scientifically Calibrated In-Flight Imagery (SCIFLI) team at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, the cameras will capture at least 20 images per second, recording structures, outflows, and rapid changes in the corona during the total solar eclipse.

With these images, scientists hope to learn more about the formation of prominences (solar material that gets suspended above the Sun’s surface), better understand the corona and how it gets heated to nearly a million degrees, and investigate how material in the corona and the solar wind are related, which flows out from the Sun across the solar system.

By chasing the Moon’s shadow, the jet will extend how long the cameras can observe the corona. On the ground, the longest anyone will be able to see the corona is two minutes and 18 seconds. But flying along the eclipse path at 460 miles per hour, the jet’s view of the corona will last nearly three minutes.

NASA’s WB-57 will fly at 50,000 feet, above any clouds that might obscure the view of the corona from the ground. The altitude also allows the cameras to observe some infrared wavelengths that get absorbed by the lower atmosphere before reaching the ground, and the corona only has been observed in those wavelengths a few times before.

The instrument, called SCIFLI Multispectral Airborne Imager, or SAMI, also flew on a WB-57 during the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, providing valuable imagery and information about the corona. However, the study’s principal investigator, Amir Caspi of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, says each total solar eclipse provides new opportunities to learn more about the corona.

“The Sun is always changing,” Caspi said. “Every eclipse is different. So we could see things we didn’t see before. And we learn from each eclipse how to better observe the next one.”

Caspi’s team also is making some enhancements for the 2026 campaign based on lessons learned in 2024. For example, the team will adjust exposure times to better capture bright features that were overexposed in 2024 imagery. They will also leverage software developed since 2024 to process and analyze the data sooner than before.

The experiment is funded by NASA’s Heliophysics Low Cost Access to Space Program.

Balloons to watch atmospheric changes

When a total solar eclipse suddenly turns daytime skies dark, our atmosphere changes in ways we don’t yet fully understand.

The NASA-supported Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project, led by Angela Des Jardins at Montana State University, is sending students from several U.S. universities to Iceland and Spain to launch scientific balloons before, during, and after the eclipse to better understand those changes.

In Iceland, two teams will launch a total of 80 balloons starting 18 hours before the eclipse until eight hours afterward to study how the eclipse affects Earth’s “boundary layer,” the part of the atmosphere that touches the ground. The thickness of the boundary layer changes depending on factors such as surface temperature and moisture in the air.

Previous balloon flights during solar eclipses in October 2023 and April 2024 showed that the boundary layer collapsed, or decreased in thickness, in locations with clear skies but not where there were cloudy skies. Scientists wonder whether that will be different in Iceland in 2026. Changes in the boundary layer are driven by the day-night cycle. However, in Iceland in August, the days are long and nights are short, so the nighttime influences might not be as strong as in 2023 or 2024.

“Will this eclipse be able to collapse the boundary layer?” said Matthew Bernards, a chemical engineering professor at the University of Idaho, who leads one of the Iceland teams.

In Spain, three balloon teams will launch a total of six balloons with 360-degree cameras to image the eclipse shadow from above. These balloons also will include instruments designed to measure levels of ozone in the atmosphere, which requires sunlight to form. Similar balloon experiments showed that ozone decreased during totality in April 2024. Scientists wonder whether there will be differences with this eclipse, particularly since it happens at a later time of day and during a different season.

Follow along

While the total solar eclipse won’t be visible in the U.S., some parts of the country will be able to see a partial solar eclipse. Learn more about where to see the eclipse and how to view it safely.

by Vanessa Thomas
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Lee esta historia en español aquí.

Explore More

6 min read

NASA’s Swift Sees ‘Wandering’ Mega Black Hole Shredding Star

Article


1 day ago

6 min read

NASA’s Hubble Shows Star Formation in Andromeda Galaxy Winding Down

NASA’s Hubble finds that star formation in the Andromeda galaxy has undergone a 500-million-year decline.

Article


1 day ago

3 min read

Hubble Spies One-Sided Spiral

This Hubble image features spiral galaxy NGC 4654, located 72 million light-years away in the…

Article


4 days ago

Keep Exploring

Discover More Topics From NASA

Missions

Humans in Space

Climate Change

Solar System

NASA astronaut Chris Williams is all smiles in this July 26, 2026, photo taken shortly after he landed with Expedition 74 Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, and Sergei Mikaev in Kazakhstan. This was Williams’ first mission.

Williams spent eight months aboard the International Space Station, where he supported a wide range of scientific investigations and technology demonstrations. He also completed two spacewalks to prep for space station power system upgrades and to replace a faulty joint on the Canadarm2 robotic arm.

Image credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls