Funding Astrobiology Challenges Can Bring Us Closer To Understanding the Origins of Life

Astrobiology can be split into two very distinct fields. There’s the field that astronomers are likely more familiar with, involving large telescopes, exoplanets, and spectroscopic signals that are pored over to debate whether they show signs of life. But there is another camp, collective known as the Origins researchers that focus on developing a scientific understanding of how life originally developed on Earth. A new paper from Cole Mathis at Arizona State and Harrison B. Smith at the Institute of Science in Tokyo suggests a new path forward to tackling those challenges - set them up as competitions and let a hefty prize motivate scientific teams and individuals to pursue them.

Ancient Rivers in Noachis Terra Reveal Mars' Long-Lived Wet Past

In the last couple of decades, evidence has accumulated showing that ancient Mars was a warm planet with abundant water flowing across its surface. The more scientists study the planet, the more evidence they find. New research examining Mars' Noachis Terra region adds to this evidence, showing that flowing water was once widespread across this less-often studied region.

Spotting New Interstellar Comet C/2025 N1 ATLAS

It’s the question of the hour. On the first day of the month July 1st, the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) station at Río Hurtado, Chile spotted an interstellar interloper, which would receive the official designation C/2025 N1 ATLAS or 3I/ATLAS. The ‘I’ is a rare ‘interstellar’ designation, only the third such object known of after 1I/ʻOumuamua and 2/I Borisov. But can we see it? Such a spectacle as actually seeing an interstellar comet would be a true rarity to cross off your skywatching life list.

Observing the Dark Ages of the Universe from the Far Side of the Moon

Shortly after the Big Bang, after the CMB was released, there was a time that's tricky to observe called Cosmic Dark Ages. Clouds of hydrogen could be detected at that time using a specific frequency of radio waves, but Earth's radiation introduces too much noise. Researchers are proposing a CubeSat called Cosmo Cube that could orbit the Moon, observing when it's in the quiet radio shadow cast by the Moon. It could help detect the first structures coming together, leading to the formation of the first galaxies.

Binary Stars Out of Sync: One Hosts a Giant Planet, While its Companion is Still Forming Planet

A team of international researchers led by Tomas Stolker in the Netherlands has imaged a young gas giant exoplanet near a 12-million-year-old star. The planet is orbiting a star whose planet formation has finished, while a same-aged companion star in this double star system still has a planet-forming disk.

Where Does Cosmic Dust Come From? The JWST Provides an Answer

Cosmic dust does far more than float through space. It's the raw material from which stars, planets and possibly even life emerge. Yet astronomers have long puzzled over where this vast amount of dust comes from and what it's made of.

Giant Liquid Mirrors Could Revolutionise the Hunt for Habitable Worlds

A team of researchers has cracked the code for building space telescopes with mirrors the size of a soccer field, not from perfectly figured glass, but from liquid floating in zero gravity! The new research reveals how a 50-metre liquid mirror telescope could maintain its optical quality for decades despite the constant slewing motions needed to observe different stars, with deformations taking years to propagate from the edges toward the centre. The idea could enable the next generation of space telescopes capable of directly imaging Earth-like planets around other stars, potentially answering the ultimate question: are we alone in the universe?

NASA's Future Telescope Could Solve the Mystery of Life's Origins

A team of scientists are preparing to use NASA's upcoming Habitable Worlds Observatory to answer one of the most profound questions of all time: How does life begin? Rather than searching for individual signs of life, the team plan to study patterns across dozens of exoplanets to test competing theories about the origins of life; from scenarios where life is so rare we might be alone within 33 light-years, to theories predicting that life emerges wherever basic conditions exist. This approach could transform perhaps our oldest question into testable science, potentially revealing whether our biosphere is an accident or part of a universe teeming with life.

This Planet Makes Its Star Flare and the Planet Suffers Because Of It

Astronomers have discovered hundreds of exoplanets on extremely short orbits of less than 10 days. Our Solar System has nothing like this, and these planets are so close to their stars that they can disrupt the stars' magnetic fields. Scientists think this can induce stellar flaring, and researchers have detected the first example of exoplanet-induced stellar flaring.

Finding An Ocean On An Exoplanet Would Be Huge and the Habitable Worlds Observatory Could Do It

The search for habitable exoplanets boils down to the search for water. Exoplanet scientists lack the technological capability to detect surface water on exoplanets from great distances, so instead they can only search for planets in habitable zones where surface water is likely. But what if we could directly detect the surface water itself?

High Frequency Gravitational Waves Could Be Detect By Changing The Angle Of A Mirror

Gravitational waves come in all shapes and sizes - and frequencies. But, so far, we haven’t been able to capture any of the higher frequency ones. That’s unfortunate, as they might hold the key to unlocking our understanding of some really interesting physical phenomena, such as Boson clouds and tiny block hole mergers. A new paper from researchers at Notre Dame and Caltech, led by PhD student Christopher Jungkind, explores how we might use one of the world’s most prolific gravitational wave observatories, GEO600, to capture signals from those phenomena for the first time.

How the Chemistry of Mars Both Extended and Ended Its Habitability

NASA's Curiosity Rover has been exploring Gale Crater and found that carbonate materials make up to 11% of rocks in the region. These are important because carbonates formed by pulling CO2 out of Mars's atmosphere. A new paper suggests that Mars once had a self-regulating climate system that created oases of liquid water on its surface over billions of years, keeping the planet barely habitable with alternating wet and dry periods. The atmosphere is thin because its CO2 was locked away in rocks.

What if you Threw a Paper Airplane from the Space Station?

Here's a thought experiment. What would happen if you were on the International Space Station, folded up a paper airplane, and threw it from the station? According to a new paper, it would fall from orbit in just 3.5 days, but still keep aerodynamic stability until about 120 km. Then it would heat up and combust at about 90-110 km altitude. It's a fun idea, but there are actual practical uses to probe the density of the atmosphere or test thin-film space technologies.

Quaoar's Atmosphere Doesn't Exist And Its Rings Shouldn't

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) can tell us a lot about the subjects of its observations if it spends enough time with them. That includes lonely rocks on the edges of our solar system, such as the Trans-Neptunian Object (TNO) Quaoar. Recent observations using the NIRCam on JWST and pre-published on arXiv by researchers at the University of Central Florida, the Space Telescope Science Institute, and Kyoto University add a plethora of new data to our understanding of this enigmatic object, including insights into what might be causing its ring system and its hydrocarbon atmosphere.

Globular Clusters: The Vera Rubin Observatory is Just Getting Started

The long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory has delivered some preliminary observations of the globular cluster 47 Tucanae field. 47 Tuc is the Milky Way's second-brightest globular cluster, second to Omega Centauri. The Rubin Observatory's data demonstrates the telescope's promising scientific potential.

The JWST Shows Us How Galaxies Evolve

The Milky Way and other similar galaxies have two distinct disk sections. One is the thin disk section, and it contains mostly younger stars with higher metallicity. The second is the thick disk, and it contains older stars with lower metallicity. The effort to study these disks in more galaxies and in greater detail has been stymied. But now we have the JWST, and researchers used it to examine more than 100 distant, edge-on galaxies.

When Theia Struck Earth, it Helped Set the Stage for Life to Appear

Earth life is carbon-based, and without carbon, there would be no life. New research shows how Earth got its carbon from impactors, including a boost from Theia, the impactor that created the Moon. Jupiter also pitched in to help.

Primordial Black Holes Could Have Accelerated Early Star Formation

The search for dark matter requires all of the best models, theories, and ideas we can throw at it. A new paper from Julia Monika Koulen, Stefano Profumo, and Nolan Smyth from the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) tackles the implications of the sizes and abundance of one of the more interesting dark matter candidates - primordial black holes (PBHs).

How To Use Fusion To Get To Proxima Centauri's Potentially Habitable Exoplanet

Proxima Centauri b is the closest known exoplanet that could be in the habitable zone of its star. Therefore, it has garnered a lot of attention, including several missions designed to visit it and send back information. Unfortunately, due to technological constraints and the gigantic distances involved, most of those missions only weigh a few grams and require massive solar scales or pushing lasers to get anywhere near their target. But why let modern technological levels limit your imagination when there are so many other options, if still theoretical, options to send a larger mission to our nearest potentially habitable neighbor? That was the thought behind the Master’s Thesis of Amelie Lutz at Virginia Tech - she looked at the possibility of using fusion propulsion systems to send a few hundred kilogram probe to the system, and potentially even orbit it.

Reviving SETI with High-Energy Astronomy

What new methods can be developed in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI)? This is what a recent white paper submitted to the 2025 NASA Decadal Astrobiology Research and Exploration Strategy (DARES) Request for Information (RFI) hopes to address as a pair of researchers from the Breakthrough Listen project and Michigan State University discussed how high-energy astronomy could be used for identifying radio signals from an extraterrestrial technological civilization, also called technosignatures. This study has the potential to help SETI and other organizations develop novel techniques for finding intelligent life beyond Earth.

Webb Refines the Bullet Cluster's Mass

One of the most iconic cosmic scenes in the Universe lies nearly 3.8 billion light-years away from us in the direction of the constellation Carina. This is where two massive clusters of galaxies have collided. The resulting combined galaxies and other material is now called the Bullet Cluster, after one of the two members that interacted over several billion years. It's one of the hottest-known galaxy clusters, thanks to clouds of gas that were heated by shockwaves during the event. Astronomers have observed this scene with several different telescopes in multiple wavelengths of light, including X-ray and infrared. Those observations and others show that the dark matter makes up the majority of the cluster's mass. Its gravitational effect distorts light from more distant objects and makes it an ideal gravitational lens.

Space Park Leicester and the ESA are Building a Lab that Could House Extraterrestrial Samples Someday

If Dark Energy is Decreasing, is the Big Crunch Back on the Menu?

Astronomers once wondered if the Universe might one day collapse in on itself in a Big Crunch, but the discovery of dark energy suggested that the expansion of the Universe would accelerate, removing that possibility. New data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument suggests that dark energy might be changing in strength over time, maybe even going negative. If that result holds, are we due for a Big Crunch? And how long would it take?

High-Speed Gas Clouds Fuel Star Formation in Depleted Galaxies

How do galaxies like ours continue producing stars long after they should have used up their star-forming gas. Somehow, an external gas source must find its way into the galaxy. New research has found evidence of gas clouds that found their way into a spiral galaxy, likely fueling continued star formation.

A Star Detonated as a Supernova... Twice

The beautiful supernova remnant looks a little different from other examples of stars that detonated in the past. And it should, because according to astronomers, the star that met its end exploded twice. It was a white dwarf in its former life, pulling material from a binary companion, creating the perfect conditions for a Type 1a supernova. It accumulated a blanket of helium, which exploded first, triggering a second detonation at the core of the star.

Peering Into a Starburst Galaxy With the JWST

Astronomers used the JWST to examine M82, a nearby starburst galaxy. M82 is forming stars at a prodigious rate due to its interactions with its neighbour, M81. It produces thousands of solar masses of stars per year, much more than the Milky Way.

Weather Satellites Can Even Study the Weather Over on Venus

A pair of Japanese weather satellites took a break from monitoring Earth weather to sneak a peek at Planet Venus. Despite the fact that it's relatively tiny, and millions of kilometers away, they were able to detect changes in Venus' cloud-top temperatures and see patterns and structure in its upper atmosphere. There are long-term trends on Venus that these long-lasting satellites will be able to study, beyond the timeframe of a shorter mission.

Tianwen-2 Looks Back at the Earth

China's asteroid probe turned its cameras back towards the Earth and Moon, capturing an image of our home planet on May 30, 2025. The image was taken when the spacecraft was about 590,000 km away, speeding towards asteroid 2016HO3, where it will retrieve a sample and bring it back to Earth before carrying on to main-belt comet 311P. The spacecraft has been in flight for 33 days and is now over 12 million kilometers from Earth.

In the Search for Earth-like Worlds, We Should Probably Focus on Red Dwarfs

According to the latest studies led by Heidelberg University astronomers, low-mass stars quite often host Earth-like planets. Data collected as part of the CARMENES project were the basis of this finding. By analyzing the data, an international research team succeeded in identifying four new exoplanets and determining their properties.

Inbound: Astronomers Discover Third Interstellar Object

A newly discovered object may give astronomers an opportunity to study an interstellar visitor like never before. The object (A11pl3Z) is currently at +18th magnitude, moving slowly along the border of the constellations Serpens Cauda and Sagittarius, right near the galactic plane. The object was captured on July 2nd by the Deep Random Survey remote telescope in Chile. The Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) based in Rio Hurtado made the discovery on July 1st. Sam Deen soon backed this up with pre-discovery images from worldwide ATLAS sites in Chile, Hawaii and South Africa from June 25-29.

Titan is the Perfect Benchmark for Studying Exoplanet Atmospheres

While we know of thousands of exoplanets, the science of studying their atmospheres is still in its early days. When astronomers analyze atmospheres, they have to decide which molecules to include in their models, which can bias the results. A new paper proposes that Cassini data on Titan could provide the perfect benchmark, helping to distinguish between different hydrocarbons detected in the atmosphere of an exoplanet.

Mercury Joins the 4th of July Fireworks Show

For folks in the United States, July evenings mean 4th of July fireworks. While you’re waiting for the show, be sure to watch for the most elusive of the planets as twilight falls, as Mercury shines at its very best for 2025. If you’ve never seen the innermost world before, now is a good time to try. This is because Mercury reaches greatest elongation, or its greatest point from the Sun as seen from our Earthly vantage point later this week.

Menstrual Cups Tested in Space Flight Conditions for the First Time

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.

Tracking Macroplastics Leeching Into Rivers from Space

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.

Correcting Radius Biases in TESS Exoplanet Discoveries

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.

GJ 12 b: Earth-Sized Planet Orbiting a Quiet M Dwarf Star

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.

The Oceans on Enceladus Are Highly Alkaline

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.

Worldwide Team of Citizen Scientists Help Confirm a Tricky Exoplanet

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.

In Situ Resource Utilization and the Importance of Lunar Ice for Artemis III

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.

A Supermassive White Dwarf Is Pulsating Rapidly, Revealing Details Of Its Interior

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.

How to Make Building Blocks for a Lunar Habitat

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.

The Presence of Certain Minerals May Explain Why the Lunar Farside and Nearside are so Different

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.

Cryovolcanism and Resurfacing on Pluto’s Largest Moon, Charon

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.

New Propulsion Systems Could Enable a Mission to Sedna

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.

Growing Building on Mars with Lichen and Bacteria

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.

A New Way to Detect Primordial Black Holes Through Their Hawking Radiation

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.

Schweickart Prize Goes to a Plan for Managing Asteroid Mining Risks

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 fast radio burst detected last year turned out to be from long-dead NASA satellite

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.

Webb Should Be Able to Detect Exo-Jupiters and Exo-Saturns

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.

A Framework To Ensure Lunar Resources Are Available To All

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.