NASA said Friday it’s adding an extra moon mission by Artemis astronauts before attempting a high-risk lunar landing with a crew.
Simulated lunar dirt can be turned into extremely durable structures, potentially paving the way to more sustainable and cost-effective space missions, a new study suggests. Using a special laser 3D printing method, researchers melted fake lunar soil—a synthetic version of the fine dusty material on the moon surface, called regolith simulant—into layers and fused it with a base surface to manufacture small, heat-resistant objects.
Tardigrades, commonly known as water bears, may be better suited by a new name: Tardiguardians of the Galaxy. Unlike the fictional ragtag team of unenthusiastic heroes, the microscopic animals are providing real insight into how humans could adapt extraterrestrial resources to support space exploration, as well as whether such resources could help protect against the Earthly contaminants that humans might shed.
This striking image from the science camera on ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) shows interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS spewing dust and gas. The tiny nucleus of the comet (not visible) is surrounded by a bright halo of gas known as the coma. A long tail stretches away from the comet, and we see hints of rays, jets, streams, and filaments.
With a simple motion, a jack-in-the-box-like spring designed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory showed the potential of additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing, to cut costs and complexity for futuristic space antennas. Called JPL Additive Compliant Canister (JACC), the spring deployed on the small commercial spacecraft Proteus Space’s Mercury One on Feb. 3, 2026. An onboard camera captured a video of the spring popping out of its container as the spacecraft passed over the Pacific Ocean in low-Earth orbit.
Yale junior Donglin Wu leads a new study showing that some of the biggest stars in the universe shed some of the smallest dust particles. It’s fitting that Wu’s first major scientific journal article as lead author focuses on stardust—tiny solid grains that form from stellar winds, drift into interstellar space, and may eventually become parts of new planets.
Some of the universe’s most extreme explosions leave behind almost no trace. The original explosion is unseen, but our observations can capture the long-lived echo it leaves behind as the shock front plows into its surrounding environment. In new research accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal, we have discovered what may be the clearest example yet of one of these hidden explosions: the radio afterglow of a powerful gamma-ray burst whose initial blast went unnoticed.
Thanks to Fink, a software package created by two CNRS engineers, it is now possible to track millions of transient celestial phenomena observed in the sky by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, in real time and with unprecedented precision. Minutes after each image is taken, Fink receives, processes, enriches, and cross-references the data with existing datasets. This allows even the faintest variations in detected light to be characterized with remarkable accuracy. The data is then stored, classified, and shared with users—scientists and astronomy enthusiasts—in a concise and targeted manner.
The gilthead seabream, a species of commercial interest that migrates seasonally, does not form independent local populations in the northwestern Mediterranean but instead constitutes a single, functionally connected population on a large scale. Individuals spend the summer feeding in the coastal lagoons of the Gulf of Lion and, every autumn, undertake reproductive migrations of hundreds of kilometers to shared spawning grounds in the open sea, mainly in the Marseille region, but also in areas of the Catalan coast. They repeat this pattern year after year.
We all know we live in three-dimensional space. But what does it mean when people talk about four dimensions? Is it just a bigger kind of space? Is it “space-time,” the popular idea which emerged from Einstein’s theory of relativity?
NGC 941 is located approximately 55 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus. This faint galaxy is classified as an intermediate spiral, exhibiting characteristics between a barred spiral with a central bar and an unbarred spiral.
When you look up at the night sky, it appears unchanging. But if you look deep enough you will find that the sky is in fact constantly shifting. Satellites, asteroids and interstellar objects pass by. Stars not only shine brightly, they can suddenly burst with energy or explode in bright supernovae.
University of Florida scientists have developed a tomato packed with significantly higher levels of vitamin A, a breakthrough that could help combat one of the world’s most widespread nutritional deficiencies. In research newly published in Plant Physiology by Jingwei Fu, Denise Tieman and Bala Rathinasabapathi from UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS), the researchers introduce fortified tomatoes with boosted beta-carotene—the compound the body converts to vitamin A.
Researchers from the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford, have resolved a long-standing debate about the strength of the moon’s magnetic field. For decades, scientists have argued about whether the moon had a strong or weak magnetic field during its early history (3.5–4 billion years ago). Now a new analysis, published in Nature Geoscience, shows that both sides of the debate are effectively correct.
Dining on the moon or Mars might seem like a fantasy reserved for science fiction, but researchers are investigating how it could become a reality. Their efforts to recycle plant and human waste into a fertilizer material—turning the barren surfaces of the moon and Mars into fertile fields that might be suitable for extraterrestrial agriculture—are described in ACS Earth and Space Chemistry.
Two heads are better than one in the latest images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which reveal new detail in a mysterious, little-studied nebula surrounding a dying star. Nebula PMR 1 is a cloud of gas and dust that bears an uncanny resemblance to a brain in a transparent skull, inspiring its nickname, the “Exposed Cranium” nebula. Webb captured its unusual features in both near- and mid-infrared light.
NASA moved its grounded Artemis moon rocket from the launch pad back to its hangar Wednesday for more repairs.
In the canals, marshes, and swamps of the Florida Everglades, invasive fish are silently slipping into new waterways. Among them are the Asian swamp eel and the bullseye snakehead, two air-breathing predators that live in the region and pose growing risks to native wildlife and fragile ecosystems like the Everglades.
An international team of astronomers has employed the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to investigate molecular gas in a nearby galaxy known as NGC 1387. Results of the observational campaign, published Feb. 3 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, deliver important insights regarding the properties of giant molecular clouds of this galaxy.
Deep in the heart of Martu Country lies Karlamilyi National Park. Red rock and red sand stretch as far as the eye can see. Within some of these rocky outcrops, live a small population of wiminyji (northern quolls). But they haven’t always been restricted to such a small area.
