How Brine Shrimp Adapted to Mars-like Conditions

The effects of Climate Change on Earth’s living systems have led to a shift in biological studies, with attention now being focused on the boundaries within which life can survive. Studying life forms that can thrive in extreme environments (extremophiles) is also fundamental to predicting if humans can live and work in space for extended periods. Last, but not least, these studies help inform astrobiological studies, allowing scientists to predict where (and in what form) life could exist in the Universe.

In a recent study, a team of Italian researchers used brine shrimp (Artemia franciscana) in the earliest stage of development (nauplii) and subjected them to Mars-like pressure conditions. Their results indicate that while the nauplii experienced physiological changes, their development remained largely unchanged. This not only demonstrates that extremophiles show great adaptability and can survive in Mars-like conditions. It also indicates that similar life forms could be found elsewhere in the Universe, representing new opportunities for astrobiological research.

Maria Teresa Muscari Tomajoli, an Astrobiology PhD Candidate at the Parthenope University of Naples, led the study. She was joined by Paola Di Donato, a Professor of Organic and Biological Chemistry at Parthenope. They were joined by researchers from the Federico II University, the INAF-Institute of Space Astrophysics and Planetology (INAF-ISAP), the INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Capodimonte, and the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN). The paper that details their findings was part of a special volume titled Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology A: Molecular & Integrative Physiology.

Brine Shrimp Artemia franciscana. Credit: Wikipedia

On Earth, extremophiles belong to all three domains of life (Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukarya). They are characterized by their ability to withstand pressure, acidity, temperatures, and other conditions that would be fatal to other organisms. After Earth, Mars is considered the most habitable planet after Earth in the Solar System, hence why most of humanity’s astrobiology efforts are focused there. In addition to the low atmospheric pressure (1/100th of Earth’s at sea level), the surface is subject to extreme temperature variations and is contaminated by perchlorites and toxic metals.

Scientists speculate that if life exists on Mars today, it will likely take the form of microbes living in high-salinity briny patches beneath the surface. As Tomajoli told Universe Today via email, this makes extremophiles (like Artemia franciscana) ideal test subjects for predicting what life is like in similar planetary environments:

“The definition of life is crucial, especially when searching for traces of it on other planetary bodies (e.g., Mars), where life might not exist as we traditionally imagine it. Artemia cysts present an interesting case: in their dormant state, they cannot be classified as living but rather as potential life. Studying organisms with such characteristics helps broaden the perspective in astrobiological research.”

In particular, extremophiles present opportunities for researching species adaptation, which has become a major focus of scientific research due to anthropogenic Climate Change. Worldwide, rising carbon emissions and increasing temperatures are leading to changes in weather patterns, increased ocean acidity, drought, wildfires, and the loss of habitats. As a result, countless marine and terrestrial species are forced to adapt to conditions that are becoming more extreme.

In this April 30, 2021, file image taken by the Mars Perseverance rover and made available by NASA, the Mars Ingenuity helicopter, right, flies over the surface of the planet. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

“In the context of climate change, life conditions are shifting toward extreme boundaries, making survival more challenging for many organisms,” Tomajoli added. “Extremophiles, which thrive in Earth’s most remote environments, are valuable models for understanding metabolic adaptations. Their apparent simplicity is, in fact, an advantage, allowing them to adapt better than more complex organisms to extreme environmental constraints.”

Tomajoli and her colleagues chose Artemia franciscana for their study, a species of brine shrimp known to thrive in high-salinity environments. The eggs they produce, known as cysts, are dormant and can be stored indefinitely, making them extremely useful for aquaculture and scientific research. As Tomajoli indicated, they have also been used in previous space missions, including the Biostack experiment on the Apollo 16 and 17 missions and the ESA’s EXPOSE platform mounted on the International Space Station’s (ISS) exterior.

These experiments all tested the resilience of certain life forms and their progeny to cosmic rays. However, as Tomajoli added, no further studies have been conducted regarding the physiological adaptations of Artemia franciscana, and there is currently no scientific literature available on the topic:

“In particular, Artemia brine shrimps are considered halophiles (literally “salt-loving” organisms) and thrive in environments that can be considered Mars analogs (or laboratories for Mars studies) such as temporary lakes that undergo frequent evaporation, prompting Artemia to produce cryptobiotic cysts. Additionally, Artemia is an easily cultivable model, making it suitable for biological and astrobiological experiments. A recent article by Kayatsha et al., 2024  also showed that Artemia franciscana was among all the microinvertebrates that were tested, the more resistant one to perchlorates salts present in the regolith of simulated martian soil.”

Artist’s impression of water under the Martian surface. Credit: ESA

For their experiment, Tomajoli and her colleagues placed dormant cysts in Mars-like pressure conditions. Once they hatched into nauplii, the team analyzed their aerobic and anaerobic metabolism, mitochondrial function, and oxidative stress. As indicated in their paper, brine shrimp born in Martian pressure conditions managed to adapt quite well. They further share how these results could lead to further studies to evaluate the metabolic adaptations of the cysts to longer exposure times, combinations of different Mars-like conditions, or studies of the adaptations of the nauplii in other stages of development:

“Artemia franciscana showed an exciting potential for physiological adaptations, enabling organisms to cope with the environmental challenges they encounter in space… Nauplii’s cells appear to activate responses to avoid mitochondrial dysfunction and continue their growth processes. These adaptation mechanisms highlight Artemia franciscana’s resilience and ability to thrive in hostile environmental conditions. The results reported in this study further support the potential use of Artemia franciscana for astrobiological purposes, highlighting the animals’ metabolic and redox state changes as a response to adaptation to an extreme condition mimicking the space.”

The implications of this research are far-reaching, embracing astrobiology, human space exploration, and mitigating the effects of Climate Change. Not only could it help point the way toward potential life on Mars, in the interior oceans of icy bodies, and other extreme environments. It could also inform future missions to Mars and other deep-space destinations, where astronauts will need to rely on closed-loop bioregenerative life support systems (BLSS), grow their own food, and conduct research into the effects of exposure to lower gravity, elevated radiation, and other harsh conditions.

At home, the study of extremophiles and adaptation mechanisms could provide insight into climate resilience and adaptation, consistent with the goals outlined in the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). As they summarize in their paper:

“Understanding the mechanisms of Artemia franciscana adaptations to space-simulated conditions could provide new insights into the study of the limits of life, as well as contribute to the search for biosignatures—traces of past life on other planetary bodies. Additionally, it could offer a viable solution for the long-term survival of human space missions, helping establish self-sustaining populations in confined environments. Artemia could serve as a renewable food source for astronauts, given its richness in essential nutrients, including proteins, lipids, and vitamins.”

Tomajoli and her colleagues have also conducted simulations with a full Mars-like atmosphere for longer periods of time. The paper describing this experiment will be released soon. In the meantime, the search for life on Mars and beyond continues. Knowing it can exist out there and under what conditions will help narrow that search and encourage us to keep investigating.

Further Reading: Science Direct

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A Giant Ribbon Can Pull Payloads Along

Innovation is a history of someone trying to build a better mouse trap – or at least that’s how it’s described in business school. But what happens if someone tries to build a better version of something that isn’t even commonly used yet? Maybe we will soon find out, as NASA recently supported an effort to build a better type of solar sail as part of its Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program.

The project, called “The Ribbon” on its announcement page, is a novel take on a typical solar sail and is being developed by a company called TestGuild Engineering out of Boulder, which seems to be run by a sole proprietor known as Gyula Greschik, who also appears to be a researcher at UC Boulder. The Ribbon consists of a “film strip with a diffractive grating” that uses the same principle as a traditional solar sail to move – light pressure. 

The diffractive grating is the key here – when the Ribbon is oriented towards the light from the Sun, the light effectively “pushes” it, just like a solar sail. But, in this case, the diffractive grating causes the force to be directed toward the “leading end” of the Ribbon. Importantly, it does this with no structure components at all – just the Ribbon itself.

Fraser discusses how awesome solar sails are.

If a payload is attached to the other end, eventually, the force being applied to the front will drag the back along with it. It might not happen immediately, but like an actual ribbon, eventually, the force will be transferred down to the payload. That would allow it to effectively tow the payload, much like a traditional solar sail.

This does have some unique advantages, including its ease of storability and potentially infinite scaling—longer ribbons would simply mean more force, much like a larger solar sail would also mean more force. In theory, at least, there is no limit to the scaling of how large you could make the Ribbon, though practically, eventually, you would hit the physical limits of the material you chose to make it out of.

TestGuild has some experience developing projects for NASA already. Back in 2017, it was given a Small Business Innovation Research grant to work on a type of deployable communications array that uses similar structural engineering techniques to the Ribbon. It’s unclear whether that project is still ongoing, but given the new interest from NASA on a completely separate use case with the same PI, it likely isn’t.

Fraser discusses the basic concept behind solar sails.

 Comparing the Ribbon’s use cases to those of more traditional solar sails will take a long time. NIAC Phase I typically takes about a year. In the press release announcing the project, Dr Greschik notes that most of this round will be focused on simulation and feasibility studies. Special emphasis is placed on how the Ribbon responds to small perturbations and what control system would be necessary to stabilize it. So, it may be some time before we see a giant Ribbon pulling a payload through space. However, new solar sail concepts always pop up, and this one could provide some inspiration for the next generation of designs, or it could see itself manifested one day.

Learn More:
Greschik & NASA – The Ribbon
UT – NASA’s Putting its Solar Sail Through its Paces
UT – Project Helianthus – a Solar Sail Driven Geomagnetic Storm Tracker
UT – Solar Sails Could Reach Mars in Just 26 Days

Lead Image:
Artist’s concept of the Ribbon.
Credit – NASA / Gyula Greschik

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DARPA Wants to Build Structures in Orbit, Without Needing a Launch from Earth

Any satellite sent to space must be able to deal with the battle with Earth’s gravitational pull, withstanding the harsh conditions of launch before reaching the zero-gravity environment it was designed for. But what if we could send raw materials into orbit and build the satellite there instead? DARPA (the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency) has formed partnerships with a number of universities to develop 3D printing technology and in-orbit assembly of satellite components. It’s recently put out a new request for proposals to explore biological growth mechanisms in space – the exciting prospect of living organisms that can increase in size, develop structures, and repair themselves.

Satellite launches from Earth began on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik 1, the world’s first artificial satellite. It marked the beginning of the space age and was followed by the U.S. launch of Explorer 1 in 1958. Over the decades that followed, advancements in rocketry culminated in the development of Saturn V capable of delivering humans to the Moon. The 1960s and 1970s saw the rise of communication, weather, and reconnaissance satellites and with the advent of reusable spacecraft like the Space Shuttle in the 1980s space became more economical. 

The Sputnik spacecraft stunned the world when it was launched into orbit on Oct. 4th, 1954. Credit: NASA

One of the biggest challenges facing agencies launching space satellites is the challenge of size and weight. The bigger and heavier it is, the more expensive it is to launch. DARPA’s 2022 NOM4D program aims to solve this by sending lightweight materials to space for on-site construction, rather than build them before launch. This innovative approach enables building much larger, more mass-efficient structures into orbit that would perhaps otherwise be impossible to launch fully assembled. The idea opens new possibilities for optimised designs that aren’t limited by launch vehicle dimensions and lifting capability. 

The partnerships established by DAPRA include Caltech (the California Institute of Technology) and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have already demonstrated wonderful advances in the first two phases. They are now continuing phase 3 with launch companies to undergo in-space testing of the assembly process. In many ways though, the concept is not new, the ISS for example has been built in orbit over many decades, it’s the first time however that the approach is being used for smaller satellites. 

International Space Station. Credit: NASA

The Caltech experiment will operate independently in orbit without human interaction once deployed. It’s going to be fascinating to watch this momentous test. On-board cameras will provide live monitoring of the construction process as an autonomous robot assembles lightweight composite fibre tubes into a circular truss 1.4 meters in diameter, representing an antenna structure. It’s a little bit like popular children’s toys like K’Nex but of course, a little more advanced. 

If successful, the technology could be scaled up to eventually construct space-based antennas exceeding 100 meters in diameter, transforming space exploration with enhanced communicating and monitoring capabilities. It goes much further than this though. DARPA is now exploring the possibility of “growing” large biological structures in space too. 

Recent advances in metabolic engineering, knowledge of extremophile organisms and developments in tunable materials like hydrogels are making space grown organic structures a tantalising possibility. It aims to DAPRA have put out a request for proposals to explore the concept. These biologically manufactured structures could enable projects that are impractical with traditional methods with dreams of space elevator tethers, orbital debris capture nets and expandable commercial space station modules perhaps not so far from being a reality. By harnessing biological growth in the unique conditions of space, entirely new construction possibilities may become feasible. Just imagine!

Source : DARPA demos will test novel tech for building future large structures in space and Large Bio-Mechanical Space Structures

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Lucy Sees its Next Target: Asteroid Donaldjohanson

NASA’s asteroid-studying spacecraft Lucy captured an image of its next flyby target, the asteroid Donaldjohanson. On April 20th, the spacecraft will pass within 960 km of the small, main belt asteroid. It will keep imaging it for the next two months as part of its optical navigation program.

Donaldjohanson is an unwieldy name for an asteroid, but it’s fitting. Donald Johanson is an American paleoanthropologist who discovered an important australopithecine skeleton in Ethiopia’s Afar Triangle in 1974. The female hominin skeleton showed that bipedal walking developed before larger brain sizes, an important discovery in human evolution. She was named Lucy.

NASA named their asteroid-studying mission Lucy because it also seeks to uncover clues about our origins. Instead of ancient skeletal remains, Lucy will study asteroids, which are like fossils of planet formation.

During its 12-year mission, Lucy will visit eight asteroids. Two are in the main belt, and six are Jupiter trojans. Asteroid Donaldjohanson is a main-belt, carbonaceous C-type asteroid—the most common variety—about 4 km in diameter and is Lucy’s first target. It’s not one of the mission’s primary scientific targets. Instead, the flyby will give Lucy mission personnel an opportunity to test and calibrate the spacecraft’s navigation system and instruments.

This image depicts the two areas where most of the asteroids in the Solar System are found: the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and the Trojans, two groups of asteroids moving ahead of and following Jupiter in its orbit around the Sun. Image Credit: NASA

The animation below blinks between images captured by Lucy on Feb. 20th and 22nd. It shows the perceived motion of Donaldjohanson relative to the background stars as the spacecraft rapidly approaches the asteroid.

via GIPHY

The flyby is like a practice run before Lucy visits the Jupiter trojans. These asteroids are clusters of rock and ice that never coalesced into planets when the Solar System formed. These are the “fossils of planet formation,” the most well-preserved evidence from the days of Solar System formation.

Currently, Donaldjohanson is 70 million km away and will remain a tiny point of light for weeks. Only on the day of the encounter will the spacecraft’s cameras capture any detail on the asteroid’s surface. In the images above, the dim asteroid still stands out from the dimmer stars of the constellation Sextans. Lucy’s high-resolution L’LORRI instrument, the Long Lucy LOng Range Reconnaissance Imager, captured the images.

Lucy is following a unique flight pattern. It’s essentially a long figure-eight.

Illustration of the Lucy spacecraft’s orbit around Jupiter, which will allow it to study its Trojan population. Though the image lists 6 flybys, the spacecraft will visit 8 asteroids. One of the listed ones is a binary, and the spacecraft already encountered the asteroid Dinkinesh. Image Credit: SwRI

Even this early in its mission, Lucy has delivered some surprising results. In November 2023, it flew past asteroid 152830 Dinkinesh. The flyby was intended as a test for the spacecraft’s braking system, but instead, it revealed that Dinkinesh has a small satellite. Closer observations showed that the satellite is actually a contact binary, which means it’s composed of two connected bodies. This was a valuable insight into asteroids.

These two images from Lucy show the asteroid Dinkinesh and its satellite Selam. The first image (L) shows Selam just coming into view behind Dinkinesh. The second image (R) reveals that Selam is actually two objects, a contact binary. Image Credits: By NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL/NOIRLab – Public Domain, https://ift.tt/QRhyXWn

There are surprising discoveries in every mission, and Lucy is no exception. As it makes its way through its list of targets, it will almost certainly show us some surprises.

The Trojans are difficult to study from a distance. They’re a long way away. Scientists aren’t certain how many there are; there may be as many Trojans as there are main-belt asteroids. The Trojans exhibit a wide variety of compositions and characteristics, which could indicate that they came from different parts of the Solar System. By studying the Trojans in all their diversity, Lucy will hopefully help scientists reconstruct their origins and how they were captured by Jupiter.

The Solar System has a long history and we’ve only just become a part of it. Some of the clues to our origins are out there among the battered rocks of the asteroid belt and the Jupiter Trojans. Lucy will give us our best look at the Trojans. Who knows what it might reveal?

• Press Release: NASA’s Lucy Spacecraft Takes Its 1st Images of Asteroid Donaldjohanson
• Press Release: NASA Lucy Images Reveal Asteroid Dinkinesh to be Surprisingly Complex
• ASU Institute of Human Origins: Lucy’s Story

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The Solar System is Taking a Fascinating Journey Through the Milky Way

Our Solar System is in motion and cruises at about 200 kilometres per second relative to the center of the Milky Way. During its long journey, it has passed through different parts of the galaxy. Research shows that the Solar System passed through the Orion star-forming complex about 14 million years ago.

The Orion star-forming complex, also known as the Orion molecular cloud complex, is part of a larger structure called the Radcliffe Wave (RW). The RW was discovered very recently, in 2020. It’s a large, coherent structure that also moves through the galaxy. It’s a wave-like structure of gas and dust that holds many star-forming regions, including the well-known Orion complex and the Perseus and Taurus molecular clouds. It’s almost 9000 light-years long and is within the Milky Way’s Orion arm.

The environment in the RW and the Orion complex is more dense, and when the Solar System passed through it, the greater density compressed the Sun’s heliosphere. This allowed more interstellar dust to enter the Solar System and reach Earth. According to new research, this affected Earth’s climate and left its mark on geological records.

The research, “The Solar System’s passage through the Radcliffe wave during the middle Miocene,” was published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. The lead author is Efrem Maconi, a doctoral student at the University of Vienna.

“We are inhabitants of the Milky Way.”

João Alves, professor of astrophysics, University of Vienna

“As our Solar System orbits the Milky Way, it encounters different Galactic environments with varying interstellar densities, including hot voids, supernova (SN) blast wavefronts, and cold gas clouds,” the authors write. “The Sun’s passage through a dense region of the interstellar medium (ISM) may impact the Solar System in several ways.”

14 million years ago, Earth was in the Middle Miocene Epoch. Notable events took place in the Miocene. Afro-Arabia collided with Eurasia, mountains were actively building on multiple continents, and the Messinan Salinity Crisis struck the Mediterranean. Overall, the Miocene is known for the Middle Miocene Climatic Optimum (MMCO). During the MMCO, the climate was warm, and the tropics expanded.

However, the Miocene is also known for something else: the Middle Miocene Disruption (MMD). The MMD followed the MMCO and saw a wave of extinctions strike both terrestrial and aquatic life. It happened around 14.8 to 14.5 million years ago, which is in line with when the Solar System passed through the Radcliffe Wave and the Orion complex.

The authors of the new research say the Solar System’s passage through the RW and the Orion complex could be responsible for the MMD.

“Imagine it like a ship sailing through varying conditions at sea,” explains lead author Efrem Maconi in a press release. “Our Sun encountered a region of higher gas density as it passed through the Radcliffe Wave in the Orion constellation.”

The researchers used data from the ESA’s Gaia mission, along with spectroscopic observations, to accurately determine when the Solar System passed through the RW. By tracing the movement of 56 open clusters in the RW, the researchers traced the motion of the RW and compared it with the Solar System’s movement. Their work shows that the two intersected from 18.2 to 11.5 Myr ago. The closest approach occurred between 14.8 and 12.4 Myr ago.

This figure from the study shows an overview of the Radcliffe wave and selected clusters in a heliocentric Galactic Cartesian frame. The Sun is placed at the center, and its position is marked with a golden-yellow ?. The red dots denote the molecular clouds and tenuous gas bridge connections that constitute the Radcliffe wave. The blue points represent the 56 open clusters associated with the region of the Radcliffe wave that is relevant to this study. The size of the circles is proportional to the number of stars in the clusters. Image Credit: Maconi et al. 2025.

This period of time coincides with the MMD. “Notably, this period coincides with the Middle Miocene climate transition on Earth, providing an interdisciplinary link with paleoclimatology,” the authors write. The correlation is striking, and the researchers say that the influx of interstellar dust shifted Earth’s climate.

“This discovery builds upon our previous work identifying the Radcliffe Wave,” says João Alves, professor of astrophysics at the University of Vienna and co-author of the study. Alves was the lead author of the 2020 paper presenting the discovery of the RW.

“Remarkably, we find that the past trajectories of the Solar System closely approached (d_Sun–cloud within 50 pc) certain selected clusters while they were in their cloud phase, hinting at a probable encounter between the Sun and the gaseous component of the Radcliffe wave,” the researchers write in their paper.

“We passed through the Orion region as well-known star clusters like NGC 1977, NGC 1980, and NGC 1981 were forming,” Alves said in the press release. “This region is easily visible in the winter sky in the Northern Hemisphere and summer in the Southern Hemisphere. Look for the Orion constellation and the Orion Nebula (Messier 42)—our solar system came from that direction!”

This image shows the well-known Orion Nebula in the center and the less well-known NGC 1977 (The Running Man Nebula) on the left. NGC 1977 was still forming when the Solar System passed through this region about 14 million years ago. Image Credit: By Chuck Ayoub – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://ift.tt/gyGCkFP

The increased dust that reached Earth during its passage through the RW could have had several effects. The interstellar medium (ISM) contains radioisotopes like 60Fe from supernova explosions, which could have created anomalies in Earth’s geological record. “While current technology may not be sensitive enough to detect these traces, future detectors could make it possible,” Alves suggests.

More critically, the dust could’ve created global cooling.

A 2005 paper showed that Earth passes through a dense giant molecular cloud (GMC) approximately every 100 million years. “Here we show that dramatic climate change can be caused by interstellar dust
accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere during the Solar System’s immersion into a dense GMC,” those researchers wrote. They explained at the time that there was no evidence linking these passages with severe glaciations in Earth’s history.

This new research from Maconi et al. is shedding some light on the issue.

“While the underlying processes responsible for the Middle Miocene Climate Transition are not entirely identified, the available reconstructions suggest that a long-term decrease in the atmospheric greenhouse gas carbon dioxide concentration is the most likely explanation, although large uncertainties exist,” Maconi said.

This figure shows when the Solar System passed through different star-forming clouds in the Radcliffe Wave. Image Credit: Maconi et al. 2025.

“However, our study highlights that interstellar dust related to the crossing of the Radcliffe Wave might have impacted Earth’s climate and potentially played a role during this climate transition. To alter the Earth’s climate the amount of extraterrestrial dust on Earth would need to be much bigger than what the data so far suggest,” says Maconi. “Future research will explore the significance of this contribution.”

With more research to come in the future, there’s most likely more to the story. In any case, one conclusion seems clear: the Earth passed through a region of dense gas that fits in with the Middle Miocene Disruption.

Research like this, when shallowly read, becomes cannon fodder in the tiresome debate about global climate change. The authors are quick to nip that in the bud.

“It’s crucial to note that this past climate transition and current climate change are not comparable since the Middle Miocene Climate Transition unfolded over timescales of several hundred thousand years. In contrast, the current global warming evolution is happening at an unprecedented rate over decades to centuries due to human activity,” Macon said.

Click on the image to explore an interactive tool showing our Solar System’s passage through the Radcliffe Wave. Image Credit: Maconi et al. 2025.

The researchers also point out some weaknesses in their results. “Our results are based on the tracebacks of the orbits of the Solar System and of the clusters associated with the Radcliffe wave. As noted throughout the text, this method requires some approximations due to inherent difficulties in modelling the past structure and evolution of the gas,” they clarify. They explain that their tracebacks should be thought of as a first approximation of their movements.

However, if they’re right, their work draws another fascinating link between our planet, its climate, and life’s struggle to persist with much larger-scale events beyond Earth.

“Notably, our estimated time interval for the Solar System’s potential location within a dense ISM region (about 14.8–12.4 Myr ago for a distance of 20–30 pc from the center of a gas cloud) overlaps with the Middle Miocene climate transition,” the researchers explain. “During this period, the expansion of the Antarctic ice sheet and global cooling marked Earth’s final transition to persistent large-scale continental glaciation in Antarctica.”

“We are inhabitants of the Milky Way,” said Alves. “The European Space Agency’s Gaia Mission has given us the means to trace our recent route in the Milky Way’s interstellar sea, allowing astronomers to compare notes with geologists and paleoclimatologists. It’s very exciting.” In the future, the team led by João Alves plans to study in more detail the Galactic environment encountered by the Sun while sailing through our Galaxy.

• Press Release: The Galactic Journey of our Solar System
• New Research: The Solar System’s passage through the Radcliffe wave during the middle Miocene
• Previous Research: A Galactic-scale gas wave in the solar neighbourhood
• Previous Research: Passing through a giant molecular cloud: ‘‘Snowball’’ glaciations produced by interstellar dust

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Is T Coronae Borealis About to Light Up?

Late is better than never for the ‘Blaze Star’ T Coronae Borealis.

It was on track to be the top astronomical event for 2024… and here we are in 2025, still waiting. You might remember around this time last year, when a notice went out that T Coronae Borealis (‘T CrB’) might brighten into naked eye visibility. Well, the bad news is, the ‘Flare Star’ is officially late to the celestial sky show… but the good news is, recent research definitely shows us that something is definitely afoot.

The outburst occurs once every 80 years. First noticed by astronomer John Birmingham in 1866, T Coronae Borealis last brightened in February 1946. That’s 80 years ago, this month. Located about 2,000 light-years distant on the Hercules/Corona Borealis/Serpens Caput constellation junction border, the star spends most of its time below +10^th magnitude. Typically during outburst, the star flares and tops out at +2^nd magnitude, rivaling the lucida of its host constellation, Alpha Coronae Borealis (Alphecca).

Finding T Corona Borealis in the Sky

We’re fortunate that T CrB currently rises in the east around local midnight. T CrB then rides high in the pre-dawn sky. Late November would be the worst time for the nova to pop, when the Sun lies between us and the star. The situation only improves as early 2025 goes on, and the region moves into the evening sky.

The constellation Corona Borealis and the location of the ‘Blaze Star.’ Credit: Stellarium

The coordinates for T CrB are:

Declination: +25 degrees, 54’ 58”

Right Ascension: 15 Hours 59’ 30”

Looking eastward in early March, two hours after local midnight. Credit: Stellarium

Rare Recurrent Novae

T CrB and other recurrent novae are typically part of a two-star system, with a cool red giant star dumping material on a hot white dwarf companion. This accretion builds up to a runaway flash point, and a nova occurs.

A chart of known recurrent novae. Adapted from The Backyard Astronomer’s Deep-Sky Field Guide by David Dickinson.

Two recent notices caught our eye concerning T Coronae Borealis: one titled T CrB on the Verge of an Outburst: H-Alpha Profile Evolution and Accretion Activity and A Sudden Increase of the Accretion Rate of T Coronae Borealis. Both hint that we may soon see some action from the latent flare star.

“My spectral analysis showed a considerable change in the strength of the H-alpha line profile, which could be considered an indicator of the possible eruption of T CrB in the near future. This change posibly resulted from a significant increase in the temperature and accretion rate,” Gesesew Reta (S.N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences) told Universe Today. “However, this cannot serve as definitive confirmation of the expected eruption. Novae are inherently unpredictable, and a more detailed analysis, considering broader parameters, is needed for a more accurate prediction.”

An artist’s conception of T Corona Borealis in outburst. Credit: NASA’s Visualization Studio/Adriana Manrique Gutierrez/Scott Wiessinger

What to expect in 2025

First, I would manage expectations somewhat; while +2^nd magnitude is bright enough to see with the naked eye, it’s not set to be the “Brightest Star…. Ever!” as touted around the web. We get naked eye galactic novae every decade or so, though recurrent novae are a rarity, with only about half a dozen known examples.

Certainly, the familiar ring-shaped northern crown asterism of Corona Borealis will look different for a few weeks, with a new rival star. Certainly, modern astrophysicists and astronomers won’t pass up the chance to study the phenomenon… I would fully expect assets including JWST and Hubble to study the star.

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Variable Star Resources

The American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) also posted a recent article on current prospects for T CrB… another good quick look for the brightness of flare star is Space Weather, which posts a daily tracker for its magnitude.

Or you could simply step outside every clear March morning, and look up at Corona Borealis with your ‘Mark-1 eyeballs’ and see if anything is amiss. Hey, you might be the very first one to catch the ‘new star’ adorning the Northern Crown, during its current once-in-a-lifetime apparition.

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Perseverance Takes A Second Look At Some Ancient Rocks

A planet’s history is told in its ancient rock. Earth’s oldest rocks are in the Canadian Shield, Australia’s Jack Hill, the Greenstone Belts in Greenland, and a handful of other locations. These rocks hold powerful clues to our planet’s history. On Mars, the same holds true.

That’s why NASA’s Perseverance rover is revisiting some of them.

Perseverance is exploring Jezero Crater, an ancient paleolake. Its thick layer of sediments may contain evidence of ancient life on Mars. Every crater has a rim, and Perseverance’s current campaign involves studying the rim. The crater rim is different than the sediments. It’s made of ancient rock uplifted and exposed on the surface by the ancient impact that created Jezero.

On Earth, geologists regularly study rock that has made itself easy to examine by coming up from the deeper crust and presenting itself. The same thing happens on Mars, though impacts do the lifting, not plate tectonics. Perseverance is studying the rocks on the crater rim in its current Crater Rim Campaign. The location it’s exploring is an exposed outcrop named Tablelands.

This image shows Perseverance’s landing ellipse (green circle) and the different regions in the Jezero Crater. The rover is currently exploring the crater rim, shown in purple. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/USGS/University of Arizona

One type of rock that can teach us a lot about Mars’ ancient history is serpentine. It’s common on Earth and Mars and forms in the presence of water. Its presence on Mars is some of our strongest evidence that the planet was once wet.

Perseverance sampled Silver Mountain, a rock in the Tablelands. The rover used its abrasion tool on its robotic arm to create a fresh surface it could analyze. That analysis showed Silver Mountain is rich in pyroxene, a type of silicate found in almost every igneous and metamorphic rock. The rover also collected a core.

After that, it visited a rock named Serpentine Lake that showed telltale signs of serpentine. Perseverance used its abrasion tool to clean the rock for a detailed investigation. Serpentine Lake has an intriguing texture, described in a press release as “cookies and cream.” It’s also high in serpentine and other minerals that form in the presence of water.

Perseverance used its Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) instrument to examine the Serpentine Lake rock. The rock shows a high concentration of serpentine, indicating that it was exposed to water for a long time, a hint of Mars’ potential ancient habitability. Its unusual texture also hints at complex geological processes. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

After that, Perseverance doubled back to revisit a rock named “Cat Arm Reservoir.”

It was the first rock the rover studied on the canyon rim. The rover analyzed its composition and detected coarse pyroxene and feldspar crystals, indicating an igneous origin. Unfortunately, Perseverance’s sample tube was empty. Sometimes, the rock the rover tries to sample is weak and turns to dust. This is rare, but it did happen during the rover’s very first sampling attempt, and it happened again with Cat Arm Reservoir.

This image from NASA’s Perseverance Location Tracker shows the rover’s convoluted path as it explores the rim of Jezero Crater. Image Credit: NASA/JPL

Perseverance travelled a small distance and tried to collect a core sample from Cat Arm Reservoir again. That attempt also failed. Then the rover chose a different spot nearby named “Green Gardens” and successfully collected a core sample. It’s next to the abrasion patch on Serpentine Lake.

NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image of the area in front of it. It shows the Serpentine Lake abrasion patch on the right-hand side of the rock, with the Green Gardens sampling location on the left. The rover used its onboard Front Right Hazard Avoidance Camera A and captured the image on Feb. 16, 2025 (sol 1420, or Martian day 1,420 of the Mars 2020 mission) at the local mean solar time of 16:45:19. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Like the Serpentine Lake rock, Green Garden is also green, which is a characteristic of the mineral serpentine. Serpentine forms in the presence of water when hydrothermal vents alter ultramafic rocks. Scientists are interested in these minerals because their structure and composition can reveal the history of water on Mars. On Earth, serpentine rock also hosts microbial life, so the same may have been true on Mars. Unfortunately, it’s not clear how much evidence of this life can be preserved.

Perseverance’s “Green Garden” core sample was collected on February 17th. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Perseverance will spend some more time exploring the Tablelands outcrop. It may re-examine the Serpentine Lake abrasion patch and analyze the debris from the Green Gardens drilling and coring. This could take a couple of weeks.

Next on its agenda is “Broom Point,” further down the crater rim. Broom Point contains a spectacular formation of layered rock, which is also intriguing to scientists.

Mars’ ancient history is told in its ancient rocks, but it’s impossible to know in advance which rock holds which clues and how everything will fall into place.

We don’t know what Perseverance will discover about Broom Point. But the rock will tell us something. It always does.

• Press Release: Cookies, Cream, and Crumbling Cores
• Press Release: Gardens on Mars? No, Just Rocks!
• Press Release: Assessing Perseverance’s First Sample Attempt
• NASA: Where is Perseverance?

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Rover Finds the Shoreline of an Ancient Beach on Mars

Data from the Chinese rover Zhurong is adding to the pile of evidence for oceans on ancient Mars. For a year, this little craft traveled over nearly two kilometers of the Martian surface and made radar scans of buried natural structures that look like ocean shorelines.

Zhurong’s ground-penetrating radar (GPR) looked under the surface to a depth of 80 meters. There, the radar instrument found thick layers of material similar to beach deposits on Earth. The best way to create such formations is by wave action stirring up and depositing sediments along the shore of an ocean. If these findings stand, they’ll provide a deeper look into Mars’s ancient warm, wet past, and the existence of long-gone seas.

Map of Utopia Planitia showing the landing site of the Zhurong rover and four proposed ancient shorelines. The landing site is about 280 kilometers north of and some 500 meters lower in elevation than the northern hypothesized shorelines. In its traverse, Zhurong traveled south from its landing site, toward the ancient shorelines. Courtesy: Hai Liu, Guangzhou University, China

Figuring Out Mars Shorelines

“The southern Utopia Planitia, where Zhurong landed on May 15, 2021, is one of the largest impact basins on Mars and has long been hypothesized to have once contained an ancient ocean,” said Hai Liu, a professor with the School of Civil Engineering and Transportation at Guangzhou University and a core member of the science team for the Tianwen-1 mission, which included China’s first Mars rover, Zhurong. “Studying this area provides a unique opportunity to investigate whether large bodies of water ever existed in Mars’ northern lowlands and to understand the planet’s climate history.”

At first, scientists considered lava flows or dunes to explain the structures Zhurong measured. But, their shapes say otherwise. “The structures don’t look like sand dunes. They don’t look like an impact crater. They don’t look like lava flows. That’s when we started thinking about oceans,” said Michael Manga, a University of California, Berkeley, professor of earth and planetary science. He was part of Hai’s team that recently published a paper about Zhurong’s findings. “The orientation of these features are parallel to what the old shoreline would have been. They have both the right orientation and the right slope to support the idea that there was an ocean for a long period of time to accumulate the sand-like beach.”

Digging into the Past

Aside from their meteorological and geological value, the presence of these shoreline structures also implies that Mars’s ancient oceans were ice-free. “To make ripples by waves, you need to have an ice-free lake. Now we’re saying we have an ice-free ocean. And rather than ripples, we’re seeing beaches,” Manga said. That tells us Mars was a warmer world—at least for a while. Rivers could well have flowed across the surface, contributing rocks and sediments along the shorelines. And, of course, there are structures that imply the presence of oceans. On Earth, oceans provide life habitats and there’s no reason to think that Mars oceans couldn’t have done that, too.

“The presence of these deposits requires that a good swath of the planet, at least, was hydrologically active for a prolonged period in order to provide this growing shoreline with water, sediment, and potentially nutrients,” said co-author Benjamin Cardenas, an assistant professor of geosciences at The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State). “Shorelines are great locations to look for evidence of past life. It’s thought that the earliest life on Earth began at locations like this, near the interface of air and shallow water.”

Shoreline Evidence for Changes on Mars

As far back as Viking, scientists had images showing what looked like irregular shorelines and flow features on the surface. Those features implied bodies of water and flowing rivers. Other missions returned images and data showing ponded areas where smaller bodies of water existed. More recent missions returned images of regions scoured and changed by catastrophic floods. The shoreline features imply that oceans existed.

We know today that Mars’s surface no longer hosts bodies of water. In the past, much of it escaped to space along with Mars’ atmosphere. But some water also went underground and remains there as ice deposits. And, some combined with rocks to form new minerals. Other geological features seem to point to the existence of Martian oceans, like the shorelines Zhurong and Viking measured.

Schematic showing how a series of beach deposits would have formed at the Zhurong landing site in the distant past on Mars (left) and how long-term physical and chemical weathering on the planet altered the properties of the rocks and minerals and buried the deposits. Courtesy: Hai Liu, Guangzhou University, China

However, the irregular shape of those shorelines continued to intrigue planetary scientists. That’s because they didn’t exactly look like shorelines like we see along Earth’s oceans, which are level. In 2007, Manga came up with the idea that the shapes of the shorelines were altered by changes in the planet’s rotation. Why did that happen? Blame it on volcanoes in the Tharsis region. Some 4 billion years ago volcanic activity there built up a huge bulge. That eventually messed with the planet’s rotation. “Because the spin axis of Mars has changed, the shape of Mars has changed. And so what used to be flat is no longer flat,” Manga explained.

If the findings hold up, the buried shorelines tell a compelling story of the last days of oceans on Mars. Based on the team’s paper, that water appears to have lasted tens of millions of years. As it disappeared and the climate dried up, wind-blown regolith covered the shorelines that Zhurong measured.

For now, the Zhurong data provides a look into shoreline deposits that are pristine—but buried under the subsurface. “There has been a lot of shoreline work done,” said Cardenas, “but it’s always a challenge to know how the last 3.5 billion years of erosion on Mars might have altered or completely erased evidence of an ocean. But not with these deposits. This is a very unique dataset.”

For More Information

Ancient Beaches Testify to Long-ago Ocean on Mars
Ancient Ocean Coastal Deposits Imaged on Mars

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So This is How You Get Magnetars

Neutron stars are stellar remnants. Composed of dense nuclear material, they all have strong magnetic fields. But the magnetic fields of some neutron stars can be a thousand times stronger. They are known as magnetars, and we aren’t entirely sure how they generated such powerful magnetic fields. But a new study in Nature Astronomy reveals some clues.

The general thought has been that magnetars create their fields through some type of dynamo process. This is where a flow of magnetic material generates a magnetic field. Since the flow is driven by heat convection, it can power strong fields. Earth’s magnetic field is unusually strong for a planet of its size and is powered by the convection of iron in its core. However, the core of a neutron star is made of nucleons, not atoms, so it is difficult to determine a specific dynamo process for magnetars.

For this study, the team wanted to understand what are known as low-field magnetars. These are magnetars that have weaker magnetic fields than most magnetars, but still generate bursts of X-rays and gamma rays. Most magnetars are identified by their high-energy emissions, since it takes intense magnetic fields to create such powerful bursts. Low-field magnetars shouldn’t have a strong enough field to create such bursts, but they sometimes do. This would suggest that at times their magnetic fields become intense. The question is how.

To answer this question, the team ran computer simulations of several dynamo models, looking for one that best fit the observational data. They found that the best fit involved what’s known as the Tayler–Spruit dynamo. This dynamo is well known in stellar models and involves the differential rotation of a stellar core. Stars don’t rotate as a single rigid object. Instead, different latitudes of a star rotate at slightly different rates. This is likely caused by a fast-rotating core, which can produce the Tayler–Spruit dynamo.

The authors demonstrated that as a low-field magnetar forms, the supernova that created the magnetar transfers angular momentum to its core, thus creating a differential rotation. Through the Tayler–Spruit dynamo, this can create bursts of intense magnetic fields that power the X-rays and gamma rays we observe from these stars. This process is likely unique for low-field magnetars, as opposed to traditional magnetars that generate their magnetic fields in other ways.

Reference: Igoshev, Andrei, et al. “A connection between proto-neutron-star Tayler–Spruit dynamos and low-field magnetars.” Nature Astronomy (2025): 1-11.

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A New Explanation for Why Mars is Red

Well that’s ruined all my lectures! I’ve spent years talking about space and a go to fact is the red colour of Mars. It’s been long believed that it was caused by the same chemical process that creates rust on Earth, a new paper suggests this is not the case! The team of researchers simulated conditions of Mars in a lab and now think a chemical called ferrihydrite, an iron oxide that contains water. It now looks like the planet’s characteristic red colour is due to a time when Mars was covered in water! 

Mars, often called the Red Planet is the fourth planet from the Sun. With a thin atmosphere composed mostly of carbon dioxide, Mars features a stark landscape of vast plains, huge volcanoes including Olympus Mons (the largest in our solar system), and deep canyons like Valles Marineris. Its surface has evidence of ancient rivers and lakes, suggesting Mars once had conditions that could have been suitable for microbial life. Its extreme temperature changes and frequent global dust storms are typical of this harsh world. 

Mars seen before, left, and during, right, a global dust storm in 2001. Credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS

The distinctive red colour goes back centuries; the ancient Egyptians called Mars ‘Her Desher’ which translates to ‘the Red One’, the Romans named it after the God of war and the Chinese called it ‘the fire star.’ Even Babylonian records that go back to 2000 BC noted its red colour. In 1610, when Galileo first observed Mars through a telescope, he confirmed its planetary nature but also noted a more red/brown hue. This was largely due to the poor quality optics of the day and it wasn’t until optics improved that its red colour was observed in all its glory.

A bust of Galileo at the Galileo Museum in Florence, Italy. The museum is displaying recovered parts of his body. Credit Kathryn Cook for The New York Times

A team of researchers led by Dr Adomas Valantinas from Brown University in USA have published a paper in Nature Communications that has analysed the red colouration of Mars and challenge the common view that it’s a rust like material that is responsible. They used data from a number of different Mars missions from NASA’s Reconnaissance Orbiter to ESA’s Mars Express and ExoMars (which has the Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System onboard.) The data from the orbiters was supported by data from various rovers too and further supplemented by analysis of artificial Mars-like materials in a laboratory.

An artist’s illustration of the Mars Express Orbiter above Mars. Its MARSIS instrument has been updated so it can study the moon Phobos. Image Credit: Spacecraft: ESA/ATG medialab; Mars: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

The analysis, which included experiments and measurements at the University of Grenoble, Brown University and the University of Winnipeg revealed the presence of Ferrihydrite. Not only was it present in the Martian dust, it seemed to be widespread across the Martian landscape. Ferriydrite is an oxyhydroxide mineral (one that contains oxygen, hydrogen and at least one metal.)

The widespread discovery of ferrihydrite on in Martian dust helps us to understand more about the geological history of Mars and its potential habitability. The existence of the ferrihydrite tells us that there were once cooler, wet conditions on Mars since that is a neccessity for the formation of the mineral. It’s an exciting discovery because its one more reason to believe that Mars was once a hospitable world. 

The team are keen to learn more and are now waiting for Martian samples to study directly and for that, they are waiting for the Perseverance rover. It has been systematically collecting core samples of Martian soil from the Jezero Crater and storing them in titanium tubes ready for transport home. Once the team has these, they will be able to check whether their theory about ferrihydrite is correct.

Source : Why Mars could be red

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