On July 9, 2025, scientists at the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) reported that the Earth completed its rotation approximately 1.3 to 1.6 milliseconds faster than the standard 24-hour period. Moreover, this is expected to happen again on July 22 and August 5 this year.

Despite geopolitical tension and national budget woes, one message rang out loud and clear at Living Planet Symposium 2025: Earth science is a global mission. ESA has long fostered partnerships with NASA, JAXA, ISRO and many other space agencies and those collaborations continue to underpin the progress being made today.

As for when this three-day event will happen, there are three days this summer when the moon will be around its furthest distance from Earth’s equator, resulting in the slight increase in Earth’s rotational speed. Scientists are predicting that this will happen on July 9, July 22 and Aug. 5.

The science behind why the Earth will spin just a little bit faster on July 9, July 22, and August 5, this year.

Thanks to atomic clocks (and all the worldly forces that influence them), scientists know that Earth's rotation has begun to slow down, thanks in large part to the loss of ice coverage in polar regions.

In all, there are only 400 known Mars rocks on Earth, comprising less than 1% of all known space rocks on the Blue Planet.

How did Earth, alone among the solar system's rocky planets, become the home for life? How, among all this frigid lifelessness, did our planet become warm, hospitable, and life-sustaining? The answer to these questions is complex and multi-faceted,

Stars are known for being some of the largest objects in the cosmos, with some clocking in at upwards of 1,700 times the size of our Sun. However, they’re not all like that and recently astronomers detected an Earth-sized planet orbiting a star that is only around the size of Jupiter.

July 9, 2025, saw the Earth spin through one of its shortest days on record a fleeting, nanosecond instant that passed unnoticed by most, but sent ripples within the domain of high-precision timekeeping.