More mammals were living on the ground several million years before the mass extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs, new research led by the University of Bristol has revealed.
Could microbes survive in the permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) of the moon? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC 2025) hopes to address as a team of researchers from the United States and Canada investigated the likelihood of long-term survival for microbes in the PSR areas of the moon, which are craters located at the poles that don’t see sunlight due to the moon’s small axial tilt.
What can a sample return mission from Jupiter’s volcanic moon, Io, teach scientists about planetary and satellite (moon) formation and evolution? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC 2025) hopes to address as an international team of more than two dozen scientists discussed the benefits and challenges of a mission to Io with the goal of sampling its volcanic plumes that eject from its surface on a regular basis.
In the 1970s, NASA’s Voyager probes passed through Jupiter’s system and snapped pictures of its largest moons, also known as the Galilean moons. These pictures and the data they gathered offered the first hints that a global ocean may be beneath Europa’s icy crust. Moreover, planetary models indicated that Europa’s interactions with Jupiter’s powerful gravity could lead to tidal flexing in the moon’s interior. In short, scientists learned that Europa could have all the necessary ingredients for life in its interior.
One of the first verified predictions of general relativity is the gravitational deflection of starlight. The effect was first observed in 1919 during a total solar eclipse. Since stars appear as points of light, the effect is seen as an apparent shift in the position of stars near the eclipse. But the effect happens more generally.
In-situ resource utilization will likely play a major role in any future long-term settlement of the moon. However, designing such a system in advance with our current level of knowledge will prove difficult, mainly because there’s so much uncertainty around both the availability of those resources and the efficacy of the processes used to extract them.
NASA’s SPHEREx (short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) has turned on its detectors for the first time in space. Initial images from the observatory, which launched March 11, confirm that all systems are working as expected.
A field known as synthetic biology has become one of the most highly anticipated in science. Its outputs range from golden rice, which is genetically engineered to provide vitamin A, to advances stemming from the Human Genome Project, which successfully mapped the entire human genome. Prominent voices in biotechnology have heralded it as the next wave of the future of innovation.
For the first time, researchers have demonstrated that certain lichen species can survive Mars-like conditions, including exposure to ionizing radiation, while maintaining a metabolically active state.
Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have developed a bacteria-based technique to repair bricks that can be used to build lunar habitats if they get damaged in the moon’s harsh environment.
Using the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), European astronomers have carried out multi-wavelength radio observations of a radio galaxy designated 3C 111. Results of the observational campaign, published March 24 on the arXiv preprint server, shed more light on the properties of this galaxy and its relativistic jet.
A bitcoin investor who bought a SpaceX flight for himself and three polar explorers blasted off Monday night on the first rocket ride to carry people over the North and South poles.
NASA’s celebrity astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams said Monday that they hold themselves partly responsible for what went wrong on their space sprint-turned-marathon and would fly on Boeing’s Starliner again.
The ice-giant planet Uranus, which travels around the sun tipped on its side, is a weird and mysterious world. Now, in an unprecedented study spanning two decades, researchers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have uncovered new insights into the planet’s atmospheric composition and dynamics. This was possible only because of Hubble’s sharp resolution, spectral capabilities, and longevity.
In April 2019, rare primitive meteorites fell near the town of Aguas Zarcas in northern Costa Rica. In an article published in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science, an international team of researchers describes the circumstances of the fall and show that mudball meteorites are not necessarily weak.
Europe’s physics lab CERN is planning to build a particle-smasher even bigger than its Large Hadron Collider to continue searching for answers to some of the universe’s tiniest yet most profound mysteries.
NASA’s Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS) successfully demonstrated its ability to remove regolith, or lunar dust and dirt, from its various surfaces on the moon during Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1, which concluded on March 16.
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has detected the largest organic (carbon-containing) molecules ever found on the red planet. The discovery is one of the most significant findings in the search for evidence of past life on Mars. This is because, on Earth at least, relatively complex, long-chain of carbon molecules are involved in biology. These molecules could actually be fragments of fatty acids, which are found in, for example, the membranes surrounding biological cells.
A team of biomedical engineers at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science working with a team of bio-scientist colleagues from NASA Ames Research Center, both in the U.S., has found that test mice living aboard the International Space Station (ISS) experience a significant amount of bone loss in their femurs compared to control mice on Earth.
One of the most powerful objects in the universe is a radio quasar—a spinning black hole spraying out highly energetic particles. Come too close to one, and you’d get sucked in by its gravitational pull, or burn up from the intense heat surrounding it. But ironically, studying black holes and their jets can give researchers insight into where potentially habitable worlds might be in the universe.
