For long-duration missions, female astronauts generally use hormonal contraception to suppress their periods. But this method has potential health risks and requires special storage. Pads and tampons create waste in space. Now researchers have tested menstrual cups on a sub-orbital rocket flight, where they experienced the force of launch, and found they performed identically to ground control cups. This could provide a new option to female astronauts on future missions.
Rivers are one of the main ways that plastics get into the world's oceans, and now we can identify where plastic waste accumulates from space. Researchers used data from the Worldview-3 satellite to identify and map plastic material and polymer-coated surfaces in a watershed on the US-Mexico border. They collected different waste from stream channels and then identified their specific infrared absorption features, matching them to satellite imagery.
How accurate are the exoplanet radius measurements obtained by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)? This is what a recent study accepted to The Astrophysical Journal hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated how hundreds of exoplanetary radii measured by TESS during its mission might be incorrect and the data could be underestimating the radii measurements. This study has the potential to help astronomers develop more efficient methods more estimating exoplanetary characteristics, which could influence whether or not they are Earth-sized.
What can Earth-sized exoplanets teach scientists about the formation and evolution of exoplanets throughout the cosmos? This is what a recently submitted study hopes to address as an international team of researchers announced the discovery of an Earth-sized exoplanet that exhibits temperatures and a density comparable to Earth. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand the formation and evolution of Earth-sized exoplanets and what this could mean for finding life beyond Earth.
What can the pH level of the subsurface ocean on Enceladus tell us about finding life there? This is what a recent study accepted to Icarus hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated the potential pH level of Enceladus’ subsurface ocean based on current estimates. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand the composition of Enceladus’ subsurface ocean and what this can mean for finding life as we know it.
Distant exoplanets can be dodgy to spot even in the best of observations. Despite the challenges, a team of astronomers just reported the discovery of a gas giant exoplanet that lies about 400 light-years from Earth. It's called TOI-4465 b and it takes 12 hours to transit across the face of its star during its 102-day orbit.
What is the importance of studying and utilizing lunar polar volatiles during the Artemis program, and specifically for first crewed mission, Artemis III? This is what a recent study presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference hopes to address as an international team of researchers investigated using lunar polar volatiles for in situ resource utilization (ISRU) purposes. In geology, volatiles are substances that vaporize at low temperatures, and examples include water, carbon dioxide, and sulfur dioxide. In the case of the Moon, key volatiles are water located in permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) at the lunar south polar region.
Scientists are constantly finding new ways to look at things, and that’s especially true for objects that represent an outlier of their specific type. Adjectives like “biggest”, “brightest”, or “fastest spinning” all seem to attract scientific studies - perhaps because they’re an easier sell to funding agencies. No matter the reason, that means we typically get a lot of good science on specific objects that represent their particular class of objects well, and a new paper from Ozcan Caliskan from Istanbul University in Turkey hits that nail on the head when it comes to the most massive known white dwarf star.
The challenge of building habitats on the Moon is considerable, mainly because most additive manufacturing (aka. 3-D printing) techniques are not feasible. By utilizing a 3-D printing method known as light-based sintering, future missions to the Moon could manufacture bricks out of lunar regolith, rather than trying to build whole structures. This would facilitate a long-term human presence on the lunar surface, consistent with the Artemis Program and other plans for lunar exploration and development.
Why does the Moon have two different faces?. That question frames the lunar dichotomy: The nearside that faces us is different than the lunar farside. Scientists have worked hard to understand why that is, and new research says that the presence of certain minerals could explain why.
What processes during the formation of Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, potentially led to it having cryovolcanism, and even an internal ocean? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated the formation and evolution of Charon to ascertain whether it once possessed an internal ocean during its history and if this could have led to cryovolcanism based on images obtained by NASA’s New Horizons probe.
The dwarf planet Sedna will reach its closest point to the Sun in 2075, the ideal time to send a mission to study this world that takes 11,000 years to orbit the Sun. In a new paper, researchers consider two exotic propulsion systems for a mission like this: a direct fusion drive, and an enhanced solar sail. Both methods could allow a spacecraft to reach Sedna in under a decade of flight time.
When humans finally reach Mars, they're going to rely on local resources for habitat construction. Researchers are considering how Martian explorers could use lichen and bacteria together with Martian regolith to form building materials. These biomaterials can glue together particles of crushed rock into a building material which can then be 3D-printed into houses, furniture and other buildings. This system might only require regolith, air, light and an inorganic medium to create the building material.
Scientists propose a revolutionary new method to detect primordial black holes by hunting for their Hawking radiation. Instead of searching for faint background signals, researchers suggest using the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the International Space Station to watch for distinctive spikes in positron particles as these ancient black holes pass through our solar system, emitting Hawking radiation.
This year's $10,000 Schweickart Prize is going to a team of students who are proposing a panel to address the risks that could arise when we start tinkering with asteroids.
A team of astronomers and astrophysicists affiliated with several institutions in Australia has found that a mysterious fast radio burst (FRB) detected last year originated not from a distant source, but from one circling the planet—a long-dead satellite. The team has posted a paper outlining their findings on the arXiv preprint server.
JWST is a powerful telescope and has directly observed a handful of exoplanets. But according to a new paper, it could set its sights higher, way higher. Astronomers suggest that Webb's MIRI and NIRCam instruments have the capabilities to detect planets around nearby stars as cold (or colder) than Saturn, at the same orbital separation, mass, and age as Saturn and Jupiter. They also found that clouds can have a big impact on their ability to study the planets, but it's easier for MIRI.
Space exploration enthusiasts tend to overlook the regulatory aspects of their desired goals. They focus on technologies and the science we can do with them rather than mundane things like property rights or environmental considerations. However, in the long run, those enthusiasts will have to grapple with all aspects of exploration programs as they begin to affect more and more of the public. With such foresight, various groups have started putting forward ideas for frameworks of how to holistically think about how to utilize the Moon, as that seems the most likely first stepping stone out to the wider solar system. A new paper from Ekaterina Seltikova and her colleagues at the Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC) and the University of Toronto puts forth one such framework, with a particular focus on how to develop a lunar economy that is open for everyone.
The Japanese ispace HAKUTO-R Mission 2 was supposed to touch down gently on the Moon on June 5, 2025. Unfortunately, communications with the RESILIENCE lander were lost about 90 seconds before it should have landed, and it was assumed to have crashed on the lunar surface. Now, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured the crash site from orbit at an altitude of 80 km and confirmed where it smashed into the Moon.
The observed exoplanet population contains a large number of solar systems where multiple exoplanets follow short orbital periods. The most well-known example of a compact solar system is the TRAPPIST-1 system. There are many others, and exoplanet scientists are trying to understand how they form. Scientists at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) may have figured it out.
Mercury doesn't give up its secrets easily. The smallest planet in our Solar System is also one of the most extreme, a sun-scorched, metal-rich world with a puzzling magnetic field and lavas unlike anything found on Earth. Now, groundbreaking laboratory experiments are finally beginning to unlock these mysteries, revealing how this planetary oddball could hold the key to understanding rocky planets throughout the universe.
I can recall the excitement of waiting for the first CCD Image I had taken to download, THAT was exciting. I was using a Starlight Express MX716 for those who can remember. This however is far more exciting. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has officially come online and now we're looking at its first pictures. The telescope has completed ten hours of test observations, viewing millions of galaxies and Milky Way stars. It found thousands of new asteroids in just a few hours of observations, and took incredible pictures of the Triffid and Lagoon Nebulae. Over the course of its 10-year primary mission, it'll capture 800 images of every spot in the southern sky.
After years of research, and a completed pathfinder mission, the European Space Agency has officially begun the construction of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). This will consist of three spacecraft flying in formation, sending laser signals back and forth to detect passing gravitational waves - including previously undetected supermassive black hole mergers. ESA has chosen OHB System AG to construct the spacecraft, which are due to launch in 2035 on an Ariane 6 rocket.
Mars holds two of humanity's greatest space ambitions, discovering alien life and establishing our first foothold on another world. Key to both is the discovery of water. We know it's at the poles, but where could we find it at lower latitudes? In a new paper, researchers carefully examined images of Mars taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. They found examples of features, like "brain coral terrain", expanded craters, and ridges which are evidence of water ice just under the surface.
The Solar System lacks hot-jupiters, intensely hot gas giant planets, so close to their stars they take just days or even hours to orbit once. But there are some systems that have not one, but two hot-jupiters. In a new study, researchers show the long-term gravitational interactions with binary stars that can push multiple gas giants into these extremely close orbits around their stars. Both stars can end up with hot-jupiters.
The Earth's magnetosphere is a giant magnetic field that arises from the flow of material deep inside the planet. Because the flow of material isn't constant, the strength and shape of the magnetosphere can change over geologic time. But researchers have found that changes in the magnetosphere seem to be correlated with fluctuations in the amount of oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere. Both could be responding to a single underlying process.
Just when you thought the race to reusable rockets was all wrapped up, a new competitor emerges from the shadows. Honda R&D Co (a subsidiary of Honda Motor Co) successfully tested their new experimental reusable rocket. The 6.3-meter rocket blasted off, reached an altitude of 271.4 m, and then landed within 37 cm of their touchdown point. The flight lasted for 56.6 seconds.
The early Universe was a busy place some 13 billion years ago. That's when countless young galaxies began to evolve and birthed stars at a prodigious rate. The hearts of those very distant galaxies show turbulent, lumpy disks studded with even thicker clumps of dust and gas that spawned huge batches of stars. Astronomers want to understand what's driving the clumping, so they've turned to recent surveys of closer galaxies in the "local Universe" that contain similar lumpy regions.
More than one third of the regular matter in the Universe is missing (we're not talking about dark matter, just regular matter). It's needed to make the current cosmological models work, so astronomers continue to search for it, and have found many indirect examples of it. Now a team of astronomers has directly observed it as a huge filament of hot gas bridging four galaxy clusters and containing 10 times the mass of the Milky Way.
Stephen Hawking has made a compelling case that black holes eventually evaporate, but the time scales are beyond our ability to detect it. A new paper suggests that primordial black holes passing through the Solar System could be releasing positron emissions that would be detectable when they pass up to 10 AU from Earth. If found, they would confirm Hawking's theories and provide an explanation for dark matter. Unfortunately, our best technology isn't quite sensitive enough.
The Chinese Space Agency took a major step toward its 2030 lunar mission goals this week by successfully testing the escape system of its next-generation Mengzhou spacecraft. At the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, engineers conducted their first zero-altitude escape flight test at 12:30 PM when solid rocket engines ignited, propelling the spacecraft skyward for 20 seconds before the return capsule separated, deployed parachutes, and landed safely.
As different nations begin conducing operations on the lunar surface, humanity's penchant for geopolitical struggles will likely be along for the ride. Tension between nations and/or corporations could grow. There are few rules and treaties that can calm this potential rising tension. What kinds of conflict might erupt and how can it be prevented?
You're probably aware that most of the matter of the Universe is "dark matter," and astronomers still don't know what it is. But 75% of the regular matter in the Universe is also hidden, located in the thin gas between galaxies. Probing this gas is difficult, but astronomers have used a new technique, analyzing the light from fast radio bursts as they pass through billions of light-years of gas. Longer, redder wavelengths are slowed down compared to shorter, bluer wavelengths, allowing the hidden material to be weighed.
Black holes can accumulate planets and stars' worth of material, but even they have their limits. Astronomers have discovered a supermassive black hole which has reached that limit. Excess material is now being ejected from the vicinity around the black hole at nearly a third the speed of light. Astronomers found that about 10 Earth masses of material were added to the black hole's vicinity in 5 weeks, creating a ring of matter and feeding the outflow jets.
The Vera C. Rubin is a game changing observatory that we've been keeping our eyes on. When it goes online, it'll begin a 10 year survey of the southern sky, capturing the entire sky every few nights, eventually building up a history of 800 images of each spot. It'll generate 20 terabytes of data every day, collecting 60 petabytes of raw image data. And it's almost ready to begin operations. On June 23 at 15:00 UTC, operators are going to release the first images from the telescope live to the internet, and you'll be able to watch.
When the Apollo astronauts returned to Earth, they complained that the gritty lunar dust got into everything, including their lungs. There have been decades of research into its toxicity, and a recent study has shown that it might actually be less hazardous than regular Earth-based air pollution. Sure, it can cause irritation to lung tissue, but not that kind of severe cellular damage or inflammation seen from urban Earth dust. It doesn't seem to cause long-term diseases like silicosis.
The early Solar System was filled with both hydrogen and oxygen that can chemically bond into water. But did we create all the water, or was some of it inherited from the earlier times, already present in the protostellar nebula? Astronomers have used the James Webb Space Telescope to study a newly-forming protoplanetary system called L1527 IRS, which will eventually become a star like our Sun. They found evidence that water from interstellar space is preserved when it becomes part of a new star system.
Great, another potential long-term risk of spaceflight. Researchers have studied the effects of simulated microgravity on mice and found that it could lead to periodontitis, where the gums become inflamed and the bones supporting teeth start to break down. This was compared to mice who experienced normal gravity. This could be limited to just the teeth or a larger indicator of inflammation in the body caused by weightlessness, which could have other health impacts.
If our Solar System seems stable, it's because our short lifespans make it seem that way. Earth revolves, night follows day, the Moon moves through light and shadow, and the Sun hangs in the sky. But in reality, everything is moving and influencing everything else, and the fine balance we observe can easily be disrupted. Could passing stars have disrupted Earth's orbit and ushered in dramatic climatic changes in our planet's past?
In 1912, astronomer Victor Hess discovered strange, high-energy particles called "cosmic rays." Since then, researchers have hunted for their birthplaces. Today, we know about some of the cosmic ray "launch pads", ranging from the Sun and supernova explosions to black holes and distant active galactic nuclei. What astronomers are now searching are sources of cosmic rays within the Milky Way Galaxy. One such source is a pulsar wind nebula sending high-energy particles out to space.
Shortly after astronomers detected asteroid 2024 YR4 on December 27th, 2024, they realized it posed no threat to Earth. But it still might impact the Moon in 2032. The impact debris could threaten satellites and trigger an extraordinarily stunning meteor shower.
During its commissioning phase, NASA's [*Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere*](https://ift.tt/o31gU5H) (PUNCH) mission captured high-resolution images of a [Coronal Mass Ejection](https://ift.tt/Dt5PZUd) (CME) in greater detail than was previously possible.
Solar sails are space's ultimate free ride, they get their propulsion from the Sun, so they don't need to carry propellant, but they come with their own challenges. A sail has a large surface area but a low mass, which creates a huge moment of inertia and makes it difficult to control, especially with reaction wheels. A team of engineers have cracked it though with "smart mirrors" that can instantly switch their reflectivity on command, transforming sunlight from an unruly force into a precision steering tool.
The early universe was shrouded in darkness. Just hundreds of millions of years after the Big Bang, a thick fog of hydrogen gas choked the cosmos, blocking light from traveling far. At some point, this gas became ionized, stripped of its electrons. Thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have identified the culprit: low-mass starburst galaxies emitting huge amounts of ultraviolet light. In just one patch of sky. They discovered 83 of these galactic powerhouses in one part of the sky at a time when the Universe was only 800 million years old.
An international team of astronomers using the [*Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor*](https://ift.tt/6tOo2jE) (CLASS) [reported the first-ever measurement](https://ift.tt/O1K8Mhb) announced the first-ever detection of radiation from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) interacting with the first stars in the Universe.
We don't know what dark matter is, but that doesn't stop astronomers from using it to their advantage. Dark matter is part of what makes gravitational lensing so effective. Astronomers expect the Roman Space Telescope to find 160,000 gravitational lenses, and dark matter makes a crucial contribution to these lenses.
For most of us, dust is just something we have to clean up. For astronomers, interstellar dust is a hindrance when they want to study distant objects. However, recent James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations of a distant galaxy are changing that. This infrared-sensitive observatory is letting them find a way to use dust to understand the evolution of early galaxies. In addition, it uncovered a special property of that galaxy's ice-covered dust, indicating it could be similar to the materials that formed our Solar System.
Astronomers have used JWST to study a fascinating planetary system that's only 16.7 million years old, with two bizarre giant exoplanets. Designated YSES-1, its closer planet, YSES-1b seems to be surrounded by a disk of material that could be the birthplace of moons, similar to what might have happened at Jupiter billions of years ago. The other, YSES-1c, has a layer of silicate particles in its upper atmosphere—clouds of sand.
As worldwide temperatures continue to rise and conventional solutions aren't working fast enough, governments may turn to geoengineering solutions. One idea is to place a giant sunshade somewhat like an umbrella between the Earth and the Sun to block some of the sunlight that reaches our planet. A new mission proposes sending an 81 m² sail to Earth-Sun L1 to measure the effect of blocking a tiny fraction of solar energy.
When the Sun rages and storms in Earth's direction, it changes our planet's atmosphere. The atmosphere puffs up, meaning satellites in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) meet more resistance. This resistance creates orbital decay, dragging satellites to lower altitudes. One researcher says we can change the design of satellites to decrease their susceptibility.
