ESA Is Simulating A Solar Storms For Satellite Operator Training

Threats from space aren’t always obvious, but statistically its only a matter of time before one of them happens. One of the most concerning for many space experts is a massive solar storm, like the one that literally lit telegraph paper on fire when it hit back in 1859. In the last 150 years our technology has improved by leaps and bounds, but that also means it's much more susceptible to damage if another event like the “Carrington Event”, as the storm in 1859 is called. Estimates for potential damage range into the trillions of dollars, with full economic recovery taking well over a decade if something isn’t done to mitigate the damage beforehand. As part of that preparedness, the European Space Agency (ESA) has started requiring the operational crew of new satellites, which would be on the frontlines of any solar storm catastrophe, to simulate how they would handle such an event, as described in a recent press release focused on one of those simulations.

Phosphorus Prepared Earth For Complex Life And Could Be A Valuable Biosignature

A new study has revealed how phosphorus, a nutrient essential for photosynthesis, surged into ancient oceans and started Earth's first major rise in atmospheric oxygen more than 2 billion years ago.

Acting NASA Chief Announces More "Shakeups"

Acting NASA chief Sean Duffy announces that NASA's plan to land astronauts on the Moon by 2027 is no longer achievable and announces new competitions to develop a lunar lander.

A Galaxy's Age Determines What Type Of Planets It Can Form

The chemistry of a galaxy changes over time as generations of stars live and die, spreading the results of their nucleosynthesis out into space. But stars with different masses produce different elements, and these stars have different lifespans. That means that over time, the materials readily available for planet formation also change.

The JWST Spots A Doomed Star Entombed In Thick Dust

Astronomers working with the JWST, along with help from the Hubble, have found a red supergiant star that eventually exploded as a supernova. The discovery helps solve the 'red supergiant problem' that confounds efforts to understand how these stars serve as progenitors that eventually explode as Type II supernova.

Dark Matter Could Color Our View of the Universe

Dark matter could tint light passing through it, depending on the model. While the effect is tiny, it is just on the edge of our ability to detect it.

Two Black Holes Observed Circling Each Other for the First Time

For the first time, astronomers have managed to capture a radio image showing two black holes orbiting each other. The observation confirmed the existence of black hole pairs. In the past, astronomers have only managed to image individual black holes.

Hidden In The Sun's Glare, This Asteroid Is Uncomfortably Close To Earth

Astronomers have detected an extremely fast asteroid in the blinding light of the Sun. Objects are extremely difficult to discern in the Sun's glare, but these 'twilight' asteroids could pose a threat to Earth. It's important that we find them all.

Hera And Europa Clipper Will Pass Through 3I/ATLAS' Tail

All sorts of crazy things have been suggested regarding 3I/ATLAS, the third known interstellar object that we’ve discovered. Some are simply conspiracy theories about it being an alien spacecraft, while others have been well-thought out suggestions, like using Martian-based probes to observe the comet as it streaked past the red planet. A new paper pre-published on arXiv and accepted for publication by the Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society by Samuel Grand and Geraint Jones, of the Finnish Meteorological Institute and ESA respectively, falls into the latter category, and suggests utilizing two spacecraft already en route to their separate destinations to potentially detect ions from the object’s spectacular tail that has formed as it approaches the Sun.

Scientist Have Uncovered The First Evidence of the 4.5-Billion-Year-Old “Proto Earth”

Researchers have discovered remnants from the primordial Earth before the giant collision that created the Moon. The ingredients of this "proto-Earth" help tell the tale of the entire Solar System. But there are still unanswered questions regarding all of the material that became the Earth.

The Winds on Mars are Stronger Than We Thought

An international research team led by the University of Bern analyzed images taken by the Mars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) camera, CaSSIS, and the stereo camera HRSC, utilizing machine learning. Their work reveals that dust devils, a common feature on Mars, are faster than previously thought.

How A Trick From Radio Astronomy Could Help Astronomers Find Earth-like Planets

By treating optical telescopes as an array of smaller telescopes, astronomers could observe exoplanets more clearly.

What Do We Do If SETI Is Successful?

The Search For Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is evolving. We’ve moved on from the limited thinking of monitoring radio waves to checking for interstellar pushing lasers or even budding Dyson swarms around stars. To match our increased understanding of the ways we might find intelligence elsewhere in the galaxy, the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) is working through an update to its protocols for what researchers should do after a confirmed detection of intelligence outside of Earth. Their new suggestions are available in a pre-print paper on arXiv, but were also voted on at the 2025 International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Sydney, with potential full adoption early next year.

Constraints On Solar Power Satellites Are More Ground-Based Than Space-Based

Space-based solar power has been gaining more and more traction recently. The recent success of Caltech’s Space Solar Power Project, which demonstrated the feasibility of transmitting power from space to the ground, has been matched by a number of pilot projects throughout the world, all of which are hoping to tap into some of the almost unlimited and constant solar energy that is accessible up in geostationary orbit (GEO). But, according to a new paper from a group of Italian and German researchers, there are plenty of constraints on getting that power down here to Earth - and most of them are more logistical than technical.

Signs of Late-Stage Cryovolcanism in Pluto’s Hayabusa Terra

What can cryovolcanism on Pluto teach scientists about the dwarf planet’s current geological activity? This is what a recent study published in The Planetary Science Journal hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated potential cryovolcanic sites within specific regions on Pluto. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand the current geological activity, including how it can be active while orbiting so far from the Sun.

Within Mars’ Craters, Ice Deposits Have Recorded the History of the Planet

Mars has experienced multiple ice ages, with each one leaving less ice than the last. By studying craters that serve as “ice archives,” researchers traced how the red planet stored and lost its water over hundreds of millions of years. These frozen records not only reveal Mars’ long-term climate history but also identify hidden resources beneath the surface that could provide drinking water, oxygen, and even rocket fuel for future astronauts.

Listening For Gravitational Waves In The Rhythm of Pulsars

Astronomers are listening for cosmic gravitational waves in the rhythm of pulsars. But even after finding them, they will need to distinguish between cosmic waves and the more local waves of black holes.

Starship Could Cut The Travel Time To Uranus In Half

The ice giants remain some of the most interesting places to explore in the solar system. Uranus in particular has drawn a lot of interest lately, especially after the 2022 Decadal Survey from the National Academies named it as the highest priority destination. But as of now, we still don’t have a fully fleshed out and planned mission ready to go for the multiple launch windows in the 2030s. That might actually be an advantage, though, as a new system coming online might change the overall mission design fundamentally. Starship recently continued its recent string of successful tests, and a new paper presented at the IEEE Aerospace Conference by researchers at MIT looked at how this new, much more capable launch system, could impact the development of the Uranus Orbiter and Probe (UOP) that the Decadal Survey suggested.

ESA’s Swarm Constellation Sees Growth in the Magnetic Field’s 'Weak Spot'

Earth is a dynamic place, both on its surface and down to its very core. The European Space Agency (ESA) recently released findings from its Swarm constellation of Earth-observing satellites highlighting this fact, documenting activity in the planet’s magnetic field during its decade plus of extended operations. One key finding shows the well-known Southern Atlantic Anomaly is expanding in size.

What Happened to Those "Little Red Dots"?

An international team of astronomers addressed the mystery of the "Little Red Dots" (LRDs) observed by Webb. They conclude that they are likely to be "black hole stars," the early seeds of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) we see at the center of galaxies today. Their findings have implications for our understanding of cosmic evolution.

Research on Previously Unexamined Apollo 17 Moon Rocks Reveals Exotic Sulfur

Samples from one of the Apollo 17 drive tubes was recently opened and analyzed by Brown University researchers, who found surprising sulfur isotopes signatures inside.

Microbes Or Their DNA Could Survive In Martian Ice And A Future Rover Could Dig For It

Frozen in time, ancient microbes or their remains could be found in Martian ice deposits during future missions to the red planet. By recreating Mars-like conditions in the lab, a team of researchers from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and Penn State demonstrated that fragments of the molecules that make up proteins in E. coli bacteria, if present in Mars' permafrost and ice caps, could remain intact for over 50 million years, despite harsh and continuous exposure to cosmic radiation.

How Black Holes Produce Powerful Relativistic Jets

In a recent study, theoretical physicists at Goethe University Frankfurt described the origin of powerful jets emanating from the core regions of galaxies using a series of complex simulations.

When Tides Turn White Dwarfs Hot

White dwarfs are stellar corpses, the slowly cooling remnants of stars that ran out of fuel billions of years ago. Our Sun will eventually share this fate, collapsing into a compact object so dense that the heavier it becomes, the smaller it shrinks. This rather strange property is just one of the aspects of white dwarfs that makes them utterly fascinating and occasionally, utterly baffling. Sometimes we find white dwarfs as part of binary systems and they are usually cool and gently radiating their energy out into space. A team of astronomers have recently discovered a peculiar class of these binary systems that defies expectations. The pair of white dwarfs are orbiting each other faster than once per hour and exhibiting temperatures between 10,000 and 30,000 degrees Kelvin, significantly hotter than expected and twice their usual size.

When Black Holes Don’t Play by the Rules

Scientists have begun to piece together the origin story of a cataclysmic collision between two black holes that met their fate on an unusual orbital path. The merger, designated GW200208_222617 (that really rolls of the tongue,) stands out among gravitational wave detections as one of the rare events showing clear signs of orbital eccentricity, meaning the black holes followed a squashed, oval shaped orbit rather than a circular one as they spiralled toward their final encounter.

SpaceX Veteran Lays Out Impulse Space's Roadmap for Making Deliveries to the Moon

Impulse Space, the California-based venture founded by veteran SpaceX engineer Tom Mueller, has unveiled its proposed architecture for delivering medium-sized payloads to the moon, starting as early as 2028.

A Message in a Bottle from Another Star

For millions of years, a fragment of ice and dust drifted through interstellar space, its origin, a distant planetary system. This summer, that fragment finally entered our Solar System, becoming only the third confirmed interstellar visitor and earning the designation 3I/ATLAS. When astronomers at Auburn University pointed NASA's Swift Observatory toward this icy chunk, they detected water vapour streaming from its surface. It was revealed through the faint ultraviolet glow of hydroxyl molecules and was completely unexpected.

SpaceX Successfully Puts Starship Through 11th Flight Test to Get Ready for the Next Generation

SpaceX closed out a dramatic chapter in the development of its super-heavy-lift Starship launch system with a successful flight test that mostly followed the script for the previous flight test.

Mathematicians Are Making Earth Based Telescopes Rival Space Observatories

Earth's atmosphere has always been the enemy of ground based astronomy and don’t I know it. What would otherwise be crisp, clean datasets gets turned into blurry smudges. Space telescopes avoid the problem entirely but can only photograph tiny fragments of sky. Now, a team of mathematicians has cracked the code with an elegant algorithm that strips away atmospheric interference in seconds, potentially giving ground based observatories space quality vision whilst keeping their ability to survey great regions of sky.

How Urea and Nickel Held Back Earth's Oxygen Revolution

When I spotted a headline about Earth's ancient oceans and urea, my brain immediately went to the obvious place. Urea, the same compound found in urine. Yes, scientists are telling us that a component of wee played a crucial role in one of the most important events in our planet's history. Sometimes science really does have a sense of humour.

The ESA's Mars Express and ExoMars Orbiters Catch a Glimpse of 3I/ATLAS

Between 1 and 7 October, ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and Mars Express spacecraft turned their eyes towards interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, as it passed close to Mars.

Imaging Dark Matter One Clump at a Time

What if you could photograph something completely invisible? To our rather limited eyes that’s what astronomers seem to do all the time with infra red and radio astronomy to name a few. But, astronomers can do this in a rather intriguing way with something that does seem to be truly invisible! A team of astronomers have captured the latest "image" of a dark matter object a million times more massive than our Sun, not by seeing it, but by watching how it warps the light from galaxies billions of light years beyond it. Using an Earth sized telescope network they have revealed one of the smallest dark matter clumps ever found, offering a glimpse into the hidden structure of our universe.

Phosphine Discovered In A Brown Dwarf's Atmosphere For The First Time

Phosphine has caused quite a stir in the astronomical world lately. That was largely due to its (still hotly debated) detection in the atmosphere of Venus. While the only known way for phosphine to be created on terrestrial worlds, like Venus, is through some sort of biological origin, it is relatively common among larger gas giants and even “brown dwarfs” - failed stars larger than Jupiter but not quite large enough to start their own hydrogen fusion process. Previously, we hadn’t yet seen phosphine in the atmosphere of brown dwarf in other solar systems, but a new paper from a diverse group of researchers, available in pre-print form on arXiv, used data collected by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to find it for the first time. They also realized the mechanism that made it so hard to spot in the first place - the object’s metallicity.

New Research Says the "Dark Side" of the Moon is Also the Cold Side

The interior of the mysterious far side of the moon may be colder than the side constantly facing Earth, suggests a new analysis of rock samples co-led by a UCL and Peking University researcher.

An Asteroid Flew Closer Than The ISS Recently

An asteroid recently made the second closest pass to Earth ever observed on October 1st. And astronomers only found it after it had already completed its closest approach. That offers another lesson in how difficult it is to find small objects coming close to our planet in the vast dark ocean of space.

Yes, Mars Once Had an Ocean, says New Research

Did Mars Once Have an Ocean? New Research Suggests Yes kerryhensley45577 Wed, 10/01/2025 - 10:21 Did Mars Once Have an Ocean? New Research Suggests Yes https://ift.tt/SpVMyKr

Longstanding “Ice Giant” Classification of Uranus and Neptune Might Be Conflicted

What if our understanding of Uranus and Neptune’s compositions have been wrong, specifically regarding their classifications as “ice giants”? This is what a recent study accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics hopes to address as a team of researchers from the University of Zurich investigated the interior structures of Uranus and Neptune. This study has the potential to help scientists not only better understand the formation and evolution of Uranus and Neptune but could also provide key insights into Jupiter and Saturn, and gaseous exoplanets, too.

The Most Metal-Free Star Ever Observed is Found In Our Own Backyard

Astronomers find a nearly metal-free star in our own back yard, which tells us a few interesting things about early star formation.

Open Source Mega-Constellations Could Solve Overcrowding

Duplicating expensive resources is expensive and wasteful, and most people would agree it's unnecessary. However, the planned increase in major satellite constellations is currently causing a massive duplication of resources as individual companies and even countries try to set up their own infrastructure in space. What’s more, there is a relatively limited amount of space in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), where many of these satellites are supposed to go - any more than that and a single collision could cause Kessler Syndrome, where many of the ones already in orbit would be destroyed and we wouldn’t be able to launch any more for a long time. A new paper from researchers at the National University of Defense Technology in China suggests an alternative to these multiple megaconstellations - a single, modular system similar to how cloud computing works on the current internet.

Tianwen-2 Probe Takes a Selfie with Earth to Mark China's National Day

The China National Space Administration on Wednesday released a breathtaking image captured by the Tianwen-2 probe, showing the spacecraft and Earth framed together in a "celestial selfie."

Comet A6 Lemmon's Encore October Evening Show

October 2025 may provide a memorable sky scene, as Comet C/2025 A6 Lemmon puts on an encore appearance at dusk. The comet joins Comet R2 SWAN, which slides 0.26 Astronomical Units (AU) past Earth on October 20th. Both are currently fine objects for binoculars or a small telescope, vying for top spot at magnitude +6.

An Ultra-Fast Outflow Causes Scientists To Lower Mass Estimates Of The Brighest Quasar In the Universe

Peering back into the early years of the universe requires scientists to make a lot of assumptions. But sometimes, we get better instruments that then allow them to either confirm or replace those assumptions. That happened recently when it came to our study of J0529, a supermassive black hole that is currently the brightest known quasar in the universe. A new paper from a massive team of researchers used the GRAVITY+ instrument on the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO’s) Very Large Telescope (VLT) Interferometer to map this unique object’s Broad Line Region (BLR), and thereby calculated a new, updated mass that is 10 times smaller than previous estimates.

Check Out These Gravitational Lenses Imaged by Webb During its First Run

This ESA/Webb Picture of the Month shows eight stunning examples of gravitational lensing. Gravitational lensing, which was first predicted by Einstein, occurs because massive objects like galaxies and clusters of galaxies dramatically warp the fabric of spacetime. When a massive foreground object lines up just so with a background galaxy, the light from the background galaxy bends as it navigates the warped spacetime on its way to our telescopes.

Black Holes Have No Hair, But They Do Have Comb Overs

Black have no hair, but the material surrounding them does, and the two can interact in unusual ways. As observations from the Event Horizon Telescope show, the magnetic fields surrounding a black hole can change extremely fast.

3I/ATLAS's Coma Proves Another Cometary Formation Theory

Interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS has been constantly changing as it makes its way through our solar system. That’s to be expected, as, for the first time in potentially billions of years, it's getting close to the energy put out by a star. Scientists have been keeping a close watch on those changes, both to ensure there’s nothing unexplainable by our current understanding, but also to compare 3I/ATLAS to both previous interstellar visitors as well as comets in our own solar system. A recent paper from European researchers describes how the changes in a particular material ratio in 3I/ATLAS’ coma fit with our current understanding of cometary geology.

New Research Suggests Red Dwarf Systems are Unlikely to Have Advanced Civilizations

While no evidence of life beyond Earth has been found (yet), it is assumed that life and habitable planets are the norm (per the Copernican Principle). Meanwhile, exoplanet studies have revealed several rocky planets orbiting within the habitable zones of nearby dwarf suns. But as Columbia University Professor David Kipping argues in a recent paper, there is evidence that Earth could be an outlier, while rocky planets orbiting red dwarfs may not be capable of supporting advanced life.

Rogue Planet Found Having Massive "Growth Spurt"

New observations made with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) identified an enormous a rogue planet with the strongest growth rate ever recorded. These observations reveal that this free-floating planet is eating up gas and dust from its surroundings at a rate of six billion tonnes a second.

We Can Do More Exoplanet Science By Understanding the Dark Edge of It's Star

By modeling the limb darkening of a star, astronomers can get a better measure of the transit depth of an exoplanet. This will allow us to get better measurements of the size of exoplanets.

Take a Flight Over the Martian Surface with the ESA's Mars Express

ESA’s Mars Express takes us on another mesmerizing flight over the highlands of Xanthe Terra to the smoother lowlands of Chryse Planitia. Billions of years ago, water surged through this region, creating many of the features we see today.

Catching the October Action With Jupiter’s Moons

Jupiter and its moons are busy in October. If skies are clear, be sure to set your alarm and follow the largest planet in our solar system this month. While massive Jupiter always warrants a view through even a small telescope, its four major Galilean moons warrant special interest, as we’re in the midst of a season of rare double shadow transits.

New Organic Molecules Found In Old Cassini Data

Enceladus’ ice continues to get more and more intriguing as researchers continue to unlock more secrets taken from a probe over ten years ago. When Cassini crashed into Saturn in 2017, it ended a 13 year sojourn that is still producing new research papers today. A recent one in Nature Astronomy from the researchers at the Freie Universität Berlin and the University of Stuttgart found hints of organic molecules discovered for the first time on the icy moon, some of which could serve as precursors to even more advanced biomolecules.