The European Space Agency has achieved a European first with Celeste, successfully transmitting a navigation signal from low Earth orbit, following the launch of the mission’s first satellites on March 28.
Deep underground in a Canadian mine, a refrigerator nearly 1,000 times colder than outer space has just reached its target temperature—a milestone that brings scientists one step closer to potentially detecting dark matter, the invisible material thought to make up most of the mass in the universe.
The acquisition of the radio frequency signal from the Artemis II crewed mission to the moon by NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) is indicated by the peak in the data signal shown on the top computer screen.
Mercury released into the oceans affects marine environments worldwide. Traditionally, its distribution and quantity have been estimated using marine biogeochemical simulation models.
The four Artemis II astronauts who looped around the moon this week are expected to splash down soon. NASA’s grand mission spells a return to human deep-space travel, with renewed interest in building a long-term moon base.
The Artemis II astronauts conducted a historic lunar flyby, gathered invaluable data and took in unprecedented moon views, but one of the most crucial moments of their 10-day mission is still to come: Friday’s splashdown.
While the Artemis II astronauts have been protected from the icy vacuum of space on their journey, their bodies have nonetheless been left exposed to possibly high levels of radiation—a danger of space travel that NASA is anxiously waiting to study.
Drawing ever closer to Earth, the Artemis II astronauts tidied up their lunar cruiser for its upcoming “fireball” return and reflected on their historic journey around the moon, describing it as surreal and profound.
On April 10, Artemis II—humanity’s first mission to the moon in more than half a century—will draw to a close when the Orion capsule carrying four crew members detaches from its service module.
A research group has successfully determined, for the first time in the world, the capsid (outer shell) structure of Melbournevirus—a member of the giant virus family—at a resolution of 4.4 Å using cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM). The work is published in the journal Viruses. The team was led by Project Professor Kazuyoshi Murata at the Exploratory Research Center on Life and Living Systems (ExCELLS) / National Institute for Physiological Sciences (NIPS), in collaboration with Senior Researcher Kenta Okamoto at Uppsala University and Professor Chantal Abergel at Aix-Marseille University.
After successfully completing their mission to the moon, the Artemis II crew are about to return to Earth.
Twin control rooms at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, are actively supporting real-time mission operations in lunar orbit as part of the agency’s Artemis II mission, helping ensure astronaut safety and mission success as the crew prepares to return to Earth Friday, April 10.
A new study by researchers at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa revealed that the Madden–Julian Oscillation (MJO), a large-scale tropical disturbance that travels eastward through the tropics every 30–60 days, significantly influences climate conditions in Hawai’i. Their research, published recently in the Journal of Hydrometeorology, showed that during active MJO phases, rainfall increases across the islands, especially on windward slopes. In contrast, suppressed MJO phases tend to produce drier conditions.
The Paranal solar ESPRESSO Telescope (PoET), installed at the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO’s) Paranal site in Chile, has made its first observations. The telescope will work with ESO’s ESPRESSO instrument to study the sun in detail. Described as a solar telescope for planet hunters, PoET aims to understand how the variation in the light from stars like the sun can mask the presence of planets orbiting them, helping us in our search for worlds outside the solar system.
They took thousands of photographs and documented copious observations on their voyage around the moon, but as they sped closer to home the Artemis astronauts said Wednesday they have barely started processing the extraordinary experience they shared.
A week after astronaut Jeremy Hansen blasted off on the historic Artemis II mission to the moon, his wife Catherine recalled the anxiety and thrill of witnessing the journey from afar.
Lunar love knows no bounds. Now hurtling home from the moon, the Artemis II astronauts took a poignant page from Apollo 8 earlier this week, proposing deeply personal names for a pair of lunar craters.
After a successful trip around the moon, everything has been going smoothly on the Orion spacecraft’s journey back to Earth—except for the $23 million toilet, which has gotten clogged.
The absence of a signal could itself be a signal. This is the idea behind a new study published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, which aims to redefine how we search for dark matter, showing that it may not be necessary to find the same “clues” everywhere in order to interpret it.
Glaciers in High Mountain Asia—a region encompassing the Tibetan Plateau and its surrounding mountain ranges—are shrinking rapidly, endangering water resources for millions of people, suggests a new study. Using satellite data from NASA’s GRACE missions, results show that these extensive glacier systems, often called the “water towers of Asia,” experienced significant losses in mass between 2002 and 2023. These findings reveal that if the extreme conditions that led to this decline continue, enhanced glacier melt could intensify short-term flood risks and substantially reduce long-term meltwater availability. The researchers say the findings underscore the need for reduced greenhouse gas emissions to stave off glacier melt and preserve a larger fraction of the region’s cryospheric water storage.
