Why does Betelgeuse keep fading? The mystery of Orion's giant star

space.com Nov 4, 2026

Why does Betelgeuse keep fading? The mystery of Orion’s giant star

Curated by Shubham · TechCapsules · Nov 4, 2026

AI-summarised brief · reviewed before publication

Betelgeuse, the bright red supergiant in Orion, has dimmed noticeably over recent months, dropping from magnitude +0.5 to +0.95. The star’s 430‑day pulsation cycle, a 2,100‑day long secondary period, and a 2019–2020 Great Dimming have long puzzled astronomers. In January 2026, the ESO VLT and Hubble revealed a faint companion, Alpha Ori B (nicknamed Siwarha), orbiting every six years within Betelgeuse’s chromosphere. Its gravitational wake of dust and gas can block starlight, explaining the latest fading.

💡 Why It Matters

· The discovery of Siwarha confirms that binary interactions can drive dramatic brightness changes in red supergiants, reshaping models of stellar evolution and mass loss.

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Orbital Matter 3D-printed the first rigid beam in the vacuum of space

Orbital Matter’s Replicator 2 satellite, launched on a SpaceX rideshare, printed a half‑meter rigid plastic beam in orbit using four onboard UV‑cured resin printers. The printers extrude resin coils that solidify into cylindrical beams, demonstrating the first free‑flying spacecraft to fabricate structural components in vacuum. The successful boom also deployed a flexible solar array despite a printer anomaly, proving the concept for on‑orbit construction. The company, founded in 2022 and backed by a $3 million seed round, works with ESA and Thales Alenia and aims to scale beams to 100 m, comparable to Starlink V2’s 20‑m arrays. A follow‑up mission planned for 2028 will test larger printers and a 5 kW solar array, targeting 100 kW deployments by 2030 for future deep‑space communication platforms networks.

💡 Enabling spacecraft to print their own structures removes the launch‑fairing size bottleneck, opening a path to megawatt‑scale power stations in orbit.

space.com · Nov 4

On this day in space! Nov. 3, 1957: Laika the dog launches…

On November 3, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Laika, a three‑year‑old stray husky‑spitz mix, aboard Sputnik 2 from Baikonur Cosmodrome. Laika became the first animal to orbit Earth, but the mission was designed as a one‑way trip. The spacecraft carried only seven days of oxygen and food, and a broken heat shield caused her to overheat and die shortly after reaching orbit. The launch used the same rocket that carried the first Sputnik satellite. Laika’s death highlighted the risks of early human spaceflight experiments.

💡 Laika’s sacrifice underscored the ethical and technical challenges of pioneering space exploration, prompting future missions to prioritize life‑support and recovery systems.

space.com · Nov 4

Hubble Telescope sees cosmic ‘cat’s tail’ that could wrap around Earth and…

Astronomers using 14 years of Hubble data have resolved the “Cat’s Tail,” a filament extending from the debris disk around the young star Beta Pictoris, 63 light‑years from Earth. The team concludes the tail formed when two Pluto‑sized bodies collided, ejecting carbon‑rich, highly porous grains that absorb visible light and render the structure invisible at shorter wavelengths. The filament stretches far enough to encircle the Sun‑Earth system about 500 times, making it one of the longest known debris features. Hubble also uncovered a warp in the tail, likely caused by gravitational interaction with the system’s massive gas giant, Beta Pictoris b. The findings, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, illuminate the violent early stages of planetary system evolution.

💡 The discovery links a specific giant‑planet interaction to the shaping of distant debris, offering a rare, observable analogue of the chaotic collisions that forged our own solar system’s architecture.

space.com · Nov 3

Dimorphos in sight: Europe’s Hera probe gets its 1st look at battered…

Europe’s Hera spacecraft, launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 in October 2024, has entered the Didymos binary asteroid system and captured the first resolved image of Dimorphos, the smaller body targeted by NASA’s DART impact test. From 795 miles (1,280 km) away, Hera’s cameras now distinguish Dimorphos as a distinct pixel separate from its parent asteroid. The mission will conduct detailed surveys of the impact damage and refine models of asteroid deflection. Hera’s arrival is slated for 25 November, with higher‑resolution imaging to follow.

💡 Hera’s ability to resolve Dimorphos confirms the success of the DART test and provides critical data for future planetary defense strategies, demonstrating humanity’s capacity to alter an asteroid’s trajectory.

space.com · Nov 3

Voting in space: NASA astronauts cast ballots from International Space Station

Three NASA astronauts—Anil Menon, Luke Delaney, and Jessica Watkins—voted in the U.S. midterm elections from the International Space Station on November 3, 2026. They completed electronic ballots aboard the ISS, which were transmitted via NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System to a ground antenna in New Mexico, then forwarded to Johnson Space Center and Harris County officials for casting. This procedure, enabled by Texas law since 1997, ensures that astronauts can exercise voting rights while orbiting Earth.

💡 The event demonstrates that democratic participation can extend beyond terrestrial borders, reinforcing the principle that citizenship rights persist even in space. It also showcases the practical integration of space‑flight infrastructure with domestic electoral systems.

space.com · Nov 3

Ancient star collisions could explain mysterious Little Red Dots and ‘impossible’ black…

New simulations of the early universe indicate that densely packed stellar clusters caused frequent star‑star collisions, producing over‑massive stars that could collapse into intermediate‑mass black holes—potential seeds for the supermassive black holes observed less than a billion years after the Big Bang. The models show that slower mergers allow repeated coalescence, creating a single star whose mass rivals that of an entire cluster, while rapid impacts simply destroy the stars. These early‑universe conditions differ from modern galactic cores, where existing supermassive black holes accelerate stellar orbits, leading to high‑speed, destructive collisions that cannot form such giants. The research also links these collision‑driven seeds to the enigmatic “Little Red Dots” detected by JWST, suggesting both phenomena arise from the same dense‑cluster environment.

💡 It offers a concrete mechanism that could explain how supermassive black holes grew so quickly, tying their origin to observable early‑universe objects and reshaping theories of cosmic structure formation.