On July 3, 2026, Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities shared big news. They found a 1,600-year-old city in Egypt's Western Desert. The city is from the 4th century AD. At that time, Egypt was part of the Byzantine Empire. The city is very well preserved. Unlike many old settlements in the desert, this city was planned from the start. It had a grid of streets. Main roads ran north to south. Smaller streets crossed from east to west. The roads opened into public spaces. A large church stood in the center. Thick walls and watchtowers protected the city. Inside the mud brick houses, researchers found everyday objects. There were bread ovens and stone tools for grinding grain. Two homes were very interesting. One belonged to a deacon named Tisous. The other is called the House of Tabibos. It may have been a house church. People probably worshiped there before the main church was built. The team also found almost 200 broken pottery pieces, called ostraca. People used them like notepads. They wrote in Greek and Coptic. The pieces had everyday transactions, letters, and business notes. Other artifacts included bronze coins and some gold coins. The gold coins are from the time of Emperor Constantius II. He ruled the Roman Empire from 337 to 361 AD. Finding these coins in a remote desert farming community is very unusual. It suggests the city was rich and connected to trade. This discovery gives historians new ideas about life in Egypt during the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantine Empire was the eastern part of the Roman Empire. At its height, it controlled large areas around the Mediterranean Sea. It lasted more than 1,000 years.

Pandas are black and white bears. They live in bamboo forests in the mountains of China. Pandas are omnivores, but they mostly eat bamboo. In fact, 99 percent of their diet is bamboo. They eat for up to 12 hours a day. They can eat 12 kilograms of bamboo each day. The scientific name for a giant panda is Ailuropoda melanoleuca. It means black and white cat-foot. Giant pandas grow to be 1.2 to 1.5 meters tall. They weigh between 75 and 135 kilograms. In captivity, they live about 30 years. Baby pandas are born pink and about 15 centimeters long. That is the size of a pencil. They are born blind and open their eyes after 6 to 8 weeks. Pandas are usually solitary animals. But they sometimes meet and communicate with scent marks and calls. Female pandas give birth to one or two cubs every two years. Cubs stay with their mother for 18 months. Unlike other bears, pandas do not hibernate. In winter, they go to warmer places lower on the mountain. They keep eating bamboo there. Conservation efforts are helping pandas. Their numbers are increasing in the wild. They are no longer endangered. But there is still work to do.

Our Moon has a big new crater! But this crater was not made by a space rock. It was made by a piece of space junk. The junk was an old rocket part. It weighed 8,800 pounds. It hit the Moon on August 5, 2026. It was going 5,400 miles per hour.

The story started in January 2025. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched two lunar landers. After the landers left, the rocket's upper stage was left in space. It did not fall back to Earth. It kept flying in an orbit far from our planet.

For a year and a half, gravity from Earth, the Moon, and the Sun changed its path. Solar activity also changed it. Slowly, the rocket part was pulled toward the Moon.

The Moon has no air. So the rocket part did not burn up. On August 5, it crashed between two craters called Einstein and Bell. That side of the Moon was facing the Sun. So people on Earth could not see the first flash. But a big telescope in Chile saw two elements in the debris cloud. It saw lithium from the rocket and sodium from the Moon's surface.

A few days later, South Korea's Danuri spacecraft took pictures of the crash site. Scientists compared the new pictures with old ones. They saw a fresh crater. But the picture was not clear enough to know its exact size.

Then, between August 11 and 12, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter took a closer picture. It showed a crater 60 feet wide. Around the crater were streaks of Moon rock thrown up by the crash.

This surprise crash helped scientists learn how human-made objects affect the Moon. NASA and other space agencies are planning more Moon missions. So it is important to understand these effects. This knowledge will help scientists keep future astronauts and spacecraft safe.

New Words: crater - a big hole in the ground or on a moon - 陨石坑 space junk - old man-made things left in space - 太空垃圾 orbit - the path one object takes around another in space - 轨道 debris - broken pieces left after something is destroyed - 碎片 atmosphere - the layer of air around a planet or moon - 大气层