Camera Systems as Scientific Instruments in Artemis III EVAs

By Laurence Tognetti, MSc - June 25, 2025 02:34 AM UTC | Space Exploration
What imaging systems can NASA’s Artemis astronauts use on the Moon to conduct groundbreaking science and efficient documentation on the lunar surface? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) aspired to address as a team of researchers from the University of Texas at El Paso and Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory investigated using next-generation cameras on the Artemis III mission, which is slated to be the first lunar surface mission of the Artemis program.
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New Theory Explains Why So Many Exoplanets Crowd Close to Their Stars

By Evan Gough - June 24, 2025 02:05 PM UTC | Exoplanets
The observed exoplanet population contains a large number of solar systems where multiple exoplanets follow short orbital periods. The most well-known example of a compact solar system is the TRAPPIST-1 system. There are many others, and exoplanet scientists are trying to understand how they form. Scientists at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) may have figured it out.
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Mercury - The Tiny Planet That's Been Baffling Scientists Everywhere

By Mark Thompson - June 24, 2025 10:43 AM UTC | Planetary Science
Mercury doesn't give up its secrets easily. The smallest planet in our Solar System is also one of the most extreme, a sun-scorched, metal-rich world with a puzzling magnetic field and lavas unlike anything found on Earth. Now, groundbreaking laboratory experiments are finally beginning to unlock these mysteries, revealing how this planetary oddball could hold the key to understanding rocky planets throughout the universe.
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Pulsars Could Have Tiny Mountains

By Mark Thompson - June 24, 2025 10:20 AM UTC | Stars
Pulsars are spinning neutron stars, with several times the mass of the Sun compressed into a sphere just 10 km across. They have a theoretical "death line,” a point where pulsars should stop emitting radio waves as they slow down. But researchers have detected two pulsars still beaming radio signals despite being below this death line. One explanation is that there are tiny irregularities on their surfaces, mountains just 1 cm tall. These peaks amplify local electric fields, making it easier for the pulsars to accelerate particles and produce radio emissions that should be impossible.
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NASA’s LRO Views ispace HAKUTO-R Mission 2 Moon Lander Impact Site

By Matthew Williams - June 24, 2025 08:20 AM UTC | Missions
The Japanese ispace HAKUTO-R Mission 2 was supposed to touch down gently on the Moon on June 5, 2025. Unfortunately, communications with the RESILIENCE lander were lost about 90 seconds before it should have landed, and it was assumed to have crashed on the lunar surface. Now, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured the crash site from orbit at an altitude of 80 km and confirmed where it smashed into the Moon.
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We're Finally Seeing the Sun's Mixed Up Magnetism at its Poles

By Matthew Williams - June 23, 2025 08:31 PM UTC | Solar Astronomy
Since 2025, Solar Orbiter is the first Sun-watching spacecraft to ever get a clear look at the Sun's poles. It discovered that at the south pole, the Sun’s magnetic field is currently a mess.  This image shows a magnetic field map from Solar Orbiter's Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) instrument, centred on the Sun's south pole. Blue indicates positive magnetic field, pointing towards the spacecraft, and red indicates negative magnetic field.  There are clear blue and red patches vi...
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The First Pictures from Vera Rubin are Here!

By Mark Thompson - June 23, 2025 06:16 PM UTC | Telescopes
I can recall the excitement of waiting for the first CCD Image I had taken to download, THAT was exciting. I was using a Starlight Express MX716 for those who can remember. This however is far more exciting. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has officially come online and now we're looking at its first pictures. The telescope has completed ten hours of test observations, viewing millions of galaxies and Milky Way stars. It found thousands of new asteroids in just a few hours of observations, and took incredible pictures of the Triffid and Lagoon Nebulae. Over the course of its 10-year primary mission, it'll capture 800 images of every spot in the southern sky.
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LISA Construction Begins

By Andy Tomaswick - June 23, 2025 03:03 PM UTC | Missions
After years of research, and a completed pathfinder mission, the European Space Agency has officially begun the construction of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). This will consist of three spacecraft flying in formation, sending laser signals back and forth to detect passing gravitational waves - including previously undetected supermassive black hole mergers. ESA has chosen OHB System AG to construct the spacecraft, which are due to launch in 2035 on an Ariane 6 rocket.
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There's Ice on Mars, Just Under the Surface

By Mark Thompson - June 23, 2025 10:19 AM UTC | Planetary Science
Mars holds two of humanity's greatest space ambitions, discovering alien life and establishing our first foothold on another world. Key to both is the discovery of water. We know it's at the poles, but where could we find it at lower latitudes? In a new paper, researchers carefully examined images of Mars taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. They found examples of features, like "brain coral terrain", expanded craters, and ridges which are evidence of water ice just under the surface.
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Rare Conditions Can Make Double Hot Jupiters

By Matthew Williams - June 22, 2025 07:56 PM UTC | Exoplanets
The Solar System lacks hot-jupiters, intensely hot gas giant planets, so close to their stars they take just days or even hours to orbit once. But there are some systems that have not one, but two hot-jupiters. In a new study, researchers show the long-term gravitational interactions with binary stars that can push multiple gas giants into these extremely close orbits around their stars. Both stars can end up with hot-jupiters.
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There's a Link Between the Earth's Atmosphere and its Magnetic Field

By Matthew Williams - June 21, 2025 11:10 PM UTC | Planetary Science
The Earth's magnetosphere is a giant magnetic field that arises from the flow of material deep inside the planet. Because the flow of material isn't constant, the strength and shape of the magnetosphere can change over geologic time. But researchers have found that changes in the magnetosphere seem to be correlated with fluctuations in the amount of oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere. Both could be responding to a single underlying process.
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Honda - Yes, Honda - Tests a Reusable Rocket

By Andy Tomaswick - June 21, 2025 01:26 PM UTC | Space Exploration
Just when you thought the race to reusable rockets was all wrapped up, a new competitor emerges from the shadows. Honda R&D Co (a subsidiary of Honda Motor Co) successfully tested their new experimental reusable rocket. The 6.3-meter rocket blasted off, reached an altitude of 271.4 m, and then landed within 37 cm of their touchdown point. The flight lasted for 56.6 seconds.
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Superdense Star Factories Tell a Tale of Starbirth in the Early Universe

By Carolyn Collins Petersen - June 20, 2025 11:12 PM UTC | Extragalactic
The early Universe was a busy place some 13 billion years ago. That's when countless young galaxies began to evolve and birthed stars at a prodigious rate. The hearts of those very distant galaxies show turbulent, lumpy disks studded with even thicker clumps of dust and gas that spawned huge batches of stars. Astronomers want to understand what's driving the clumping, so they've turned to recent surveys of closer galaxies in the "local Universe" that contain similar lumpy regions.
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Vast Filament of Hidden Matter Seen for the First Time

By Evan Gough - June 20, 2025 08:13 PM UTC | Extragalactic
More than one third of the regular matter in the Universe is missing (we're not talking about dark matter, just regular matter). It's needed to make the current cosmological models work, so astronomers continue to search for it, and have found many indirect examples of it. Now a team of astronomers has directly observed it as a huge filament of hot gas bridging four galaxy clusters and containing 10 times the mass of the Milky Way.
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ESA's New Mission Can See a Solar Eclipse Every Day

By Matthew Williams - June 20, 2025 05:13 PM UTC | Solar Astronomy
Solar eclipses are beautiful, but they're a valuable chance to study the Sun's atmosphere as its surface is blocked by the Moon. Now, ESA can generate artificial solar eclipses from space with the Proba-3 mission. The two satellites fly in formation 150 meters apart. One spacecraft occults the Sun, while the other observes the faint solar corona. They can produce a new 6-hour eclipse every 19.6-hour orbit around the Earth. Solar eclipses on demand.
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Monster Oort Cloud Comet Observed in the Outer Solar System

By David Dickinson - June 20, 2025 04:30 PM UTC | Planetary Science
Comet C/2014 UN271 is one of the largest Oort Cloud comets ever observed, measuring 140 km across. It's currently at a distance of 16.5 AU from the Sun, which makes it tough to observe with all but the largest telescopes. Astronomers have used ALMA in Chile to observe the comet, watching as jets of carbon monoxide gas are erupting from its nucleus. This is a surprising level of activity for a comet that's so far from the Sun.
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The Solar System's Greatest Mystery May Finally Be Solved!

By Mark Thompson - June 20, 2025 10:19 AM UTC | Planetary Science
Scientists are using a new approach to find the mysterious - if it exists - Planet Nine by hunting for its heat signature instead of reflected light. Using data from Japan's AKARI space telescope, a team of researchers identified two promising candidates using their thermal detection method which is more effective than optical searches alone. But could these distant heat sources finally prove the existence of our Solar System's most elusive world, or will they turn out to be yet another false alarm in the decades long search?
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China Tests the Crew Escape for its New Lunar Capsule

By Mark Thompson - June 20, 2025 08:58 AM UTC | Space Exploration
The Chinese Space Agency took a major step toward its 2030 lunar mission goals this week by successfully testing the escape system of its next-generation Mengzhou spacecraft. At the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, engineers conducted their first zero-altitude escape flight test at 12:30 PM when solid rocket engines ignited, propelling the spacecraft skyward for 20 seconds before the return capsule separated, deployed parachutes, and landed safely.
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Fast Radio Bursts are Helping to Locate the Universe's Missing Matter

By Matthew Williams - June 19, 2025 11:41 PM UTC | Extragalactic
You're probably aware that most of the matter of the Universe is "dark matter," and astronomers still don't know what it is. But 75% of the regular matter in the Universe is also hidden, located in the thin gas between galaxies. Probing this gas is difficult, but astronomers have used a new technique, analyzing the light from fast radio bursts as they pass through billions of light-years of gas. Longer, redder wavelengths are slowed down compared to shorter, bluer wavelengths, allowing the hidden material to be weighed.
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Tabletop Exercises Can Help Us Understand and Avoid Potential Conflicts Over the Moon

By Evan Gough - June 19, 2025 08:40 PM UTC | Space Policy
As different nations begin conducing operations on the lunar surface, humanity's penchant for geopolitical struggles will likely be along for the ride. Tension between nations and/or corporations could grow. There are few rules and treaties that can calm this potential rising tension. What kinds of conflict might erupt and how can it be prevented?
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These Special Galaxies Lit Up the Cosmic Noon

By Evan Gough - June 19, 2025 05:07 PM UTC | Cosmology
Star formation peaked during the Cosmic Noon, which spanned from 10 to 12 billion years ago. During Cosmic Noon, star formation was 10 to 100 times greater than it is now. New research shows that a particular class of galaxy was experiencing its first intense burst of star formation during this time. Were these galaxies the progenitors of galaxies like the Milky Way?
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The Search for Advanced Civilizations is Going Real-Time

By Mark Thompson - June 19, 2025 03:21 PM UTC | Astrobiology
Modern telescopes like the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) are watching the sky for any changes, and can report a million variations in a single night. This will multiply when Vera Rubin comes online. SETI researchers are looking for specific events that could be caused by an intelligent civilization, and have developed methods to search through astronomical alerts automatically. This could give SETI researchers dozens of potential targets a night to follow up on, scanning for signals or anomalous changes in brightness.
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Spaceflight Could Be Bad For Your Teeth

By Matthew Williams - June 19, 2025 01:11 PM UTC | Space Exploration
Great, another potential long-term risk of spaceflight. Researchers have studied the effects of simulated microgravity on mice and found that it could lead to periodontitis, where the gums become inflamed and the bones supporting teeth start to break down. This was compared to mice who experienced normal gravity. This could be limited to just the teeth or a larger indicator of inflammation in the body caused by weightlessness, which could have other health impacts.
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Supermassive Black Hole Has More Material Than it Can Consume

By Evan Gough - June 18, 2025 07:46 PM UTC | Black Holes
Black holes can accumulate planets and stars' worth of material, but even they have their limits. Astronomers have discovered a supermassive black hole which has reached that limit. Excess material is now being ejected from the vicinity around the black hole at nearly a third the speed of light. Astronomers found that about 10 Earth masses of material were added to the black hole's vicinity in 5 weeks, creating a ring of matter and feeding the outflow jets.
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The First Images from Vera Rubin are About to Drop

By Mark Thompson - June 18, 2025 06:49 PM UTC | Telescopes
The Vera C. Rubin is a game changing observatory that we've been keeping our eyes on. When it goes online, it'll begin a 10 year survey of the southern sky, capturing the entire sky every few nights, eventually building up a history of 800 images of each spot. It'll generate 20 terabytes of data every day, collecting 60 petabytes of raw image data. And it's almost ready to begin operations. On June 23 at 15:00 UTC, operators are going to release the first images from the telescope live to the internet, and you'll be able to watch.
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Lunar Dust is Bad. But Not as Bad as Living in the City

By Mark Thompson - June 18, 2025 06:18 PM UTC | Space Exploration
When the Apollo astronauts returned to Earth, they complained that the gritty lunar dust got into everything, including their lungs. There have been decades of research into its toxicity, and a recent study has shown that it might actually be less hazardous than regular Earth-based air pollution. Sure, it can cause irritation to lung tissue, but not that kind of severe cellular damage or inflammation seen from urban Earth dust. It doesn't seem to cause long-term diseases like silicosis.
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Do Hycean Worlds Have Smaller Habitable Zones?

By Evan Gough - June 18, 2025 04:59 PM UTC | Exoplanets
Hycean worlds are planets covered in oceans that also have thick hydrogen atmospheres. There are no confirmed Hycean worlds—also called ocean worlds—but many candidates. Even though they're only candidates so far, researchers are curious about their habitability. New research examines the role tidal heating plays in their potential habitability.
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Using a Space Elevator To Get Water Off Ceres

By Andy Tomaswick - June 18, 2025 03:33 PM UTC
We might not currently have any technology that would make a space elevator viable on Earth. But that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t work on other bodies around the solar system. One of the most interesting places that one could work is around Ceres, the Queen of the Asteroid Belt, and potentially one of the biggest sources of resources for humanity’s expansion into space. A new paper from researchers at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs and Industrial CNT, a manufacturer of Carbon Nanotube (one potential material for the space elevator), details just how useful such an elevator could be.
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Another Tether Deorbiting Test Mission Takes Shape

By Andy Tomaswick - June 18, 2025 03:06 PM UTC
More and more satellites are being added to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) every month. As that number continues to increase, so do the risks of that critical area surrounding the Earth becoming impassable, trapping us on the planet for the foreseeable future. Ideas from different labs have presented potential solutions to this problem, but one of the most promising, electrodynamic tethers (EDTs), have only now begun to be tested in space. A new CubeSat called the Spacecraft for Advanced Research and Cooperative Studies (SPARCS) mission from researchers at the Sharif University of Technology in Tehran hopes to contribute to that effort by testing an EDT and intersatellite communication system as well as collecting real-time data on the radiation environment of its orbital path.
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How Ten Times More Rocket Launches a Year Could Impact the Ozone Layer

By David Dickinson - June 18, 2025 02:50 PM UTC | Space Policy
A recent study looked at the challenges New Space may face, in terms of impact on the ozone layer. The study was published recently in the journal of Nature (link) by researchers out of University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, Harvard University, and the Institute for Atmospheric Climate Science and the Physics-Meteorology Observatory in Switzerland.
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Exoplanetary Systems are Diverse. Our Search for Life Should Be the Same

By Mark Thompson - June 18, 2025 01:34 PM UTC | Astrobiology
With over 5,000 exoplanets now identified, astronomers have found that our Solar System isn't the only model of planetary formation. There are super-Earths, sub-Neptunes, hot-Jupiters, and Earth-sized worlds orbiting around red dwarf stars. In a new paper, researchers propose how the search for life could adapt to these bizarre environments, expanding the definition of a habitable world. Life could exist without a surface, or using different kinds of solvents than water.
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Webb Shows That Young Stars Inherit Their Water From the Cosmos

By Mark Thompson - June 18, 2025 11:03 AM UTC | Exoplanets
The early Solar System was filled with both hydrogen and oxygen that can chemically bond into water. But did we create all the water, or was some of it inherited from the earlier times, already present in the protostellar nebula? Astronomers have used the James Webb Space Telescope to study a newly-forming protoplanetary system called L1527 IRS, which will eventually become a star like our Sun. They found evidence that water from interstellar space is preserved when it becomes part of a new star system.
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Have Stellar Flybys Altered Earth's Climate in the Past?

By Evan Gough - June 17, 2025 06:31 PM UTC | Planetary Science
If our Solar System seems stable, it's because our short lifespans make it seem that way. Earth revolves, night follows day, the Moon moves through light and shadow, and the Sun hangs in the sky. But in reality, everything is moving and influencing everything else, and the fine balance we observe can easily be disrupted. Could passing stars have disrupted Earth's orbit and ushered in dramatic climatic changes in our planet's past?
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Astronomers are Closing in on the Source of Galactic Cosmic Rays

By Carolyn Collins Petersen - June 17, 2025 04:54 PM UTC | Milky Way
In 1912, astronomer Victor Hess discovered strange, high-energy particles called "cosmic rays." Since then, researchers have hunted for their birthplaces. Today, we know about some of the cosmic ray "launch pads", ranging from the Sun and supernova explosions to black holes and distant active galactic nuclei. What astronomers are now searching are sources of cosmic rays within the Milky Way Galaxy. One such source is a pulsar wind nebula sending high-energy particles out to space.
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Very Massive Stars Expel More Matter Than Previously Thought

By Andy Tomaswick - June 16, 2025 01:34 PM UTC | Stars
Very massive stars (VMSs), which typically has masses about 100 times that of our own Sun, are critical components in our understanding of the formation of important astronomical structures like black holes and supernovae. However, there are some observed characteristics of VMSs that don’t fit the expected behavior based on the best models we have of them. In particular, they hover around a relatively limited band of temperatures, which are hard to replicate with typical stellar evolution models. A new paper from Kendall Shepherd and their co-authors at the Institute for Advanced Study (SISSA) in Italy describes a series of new models based on updated solar winds that better fit the observations of VMSs in their natural environment, and might aid in our understanding of the development of some of the most fascinating objects in the Universe.
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Amateur Astronomy Outreach in Saint Lucia with LUNAA Journeys

By David Dickinson - June 16, 2025 01:05 PM UTC | Observing
LUNAA Journeys (St. LUcia National Astronomy Association) is looking to address an all too common problem in the global astronomical community. Too often, participation in astronomy is seen as cost prohibitive, the sole pursuit of large universities or organizations that can afford to build a large modern observatory, or launch the Hubble Space Telescope. This is unfortunate, as there’s never been an era of more readily accessible information, out there in terms of astronomy and skywatching.
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A Better Way to Turn Solar Sails

By Mark Thompson - June 14, 2025 11:18 PM UTC | Space Exploration
Solar sails are space's ultimate free ride, they get their propulsion from the Sun, so they don't need to carry propellant, but they come with their own challenges. A sail has a large surface area but a low mass, which creates a huge moment of inertia and makes it difficult to control, especially with reaction wheels. A team of engineers have cracked it though with "smart mirrors" that can instantly switch their reflectivity on command, transforming sunlight from an unruly force into a precision steering tool.
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Webb Sees the Galaxies that Cleared Out the Cosmic Fog

By Mark Thompson - June 14, 2025 10:46 PM UTC | Cosmology
The early universe was shrouded in darkness. Just hundreds of millions of years after the Big Bang, a thick fog of hydrogen gas choked the cosmos, blocking light from traveling far. At some point, this gas became ionized, stripped of its electrons. Thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have identified the culprit: low-mass starburst galaxies emitting huge amounts of ultraviolet light. In just one patch of sky. They discovered 83 of these galactic powerhouses in one part of the sky at a time when the Universe was only 800 million years old.
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Telescopes in Chile Capture Images of the Earliest Galaxies in the Universe

By Matthew Williams - June 14, 2025 06:59 PM UTC | Cosmology
An international team of astronomers using the [*Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor*](https://sites.krieger.jhu.edu/class/) (CLASS) [reported the first-ever measurement](https://hub.jhu.edu/2025/06/11/telescopes-look-at-cosmic-dawn/) announced the first-ever detection of radiation from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) interacting with the first stars in the Universe.
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How Bubble Muscles Could Help Astronauts Get Their Space Legs

By Mark Thompson - June 13, 2025 10:21 AM UTC | Space Exploration
When astronauts finally reach Mars, they'll face a unique challenge: walking and working in gravity that's only 37% as strong as Earth's. After spending months in the weightlessness of space, their weakened muscles and bones will struggle to cope with even this reduced gravity. Now, researchers at the University of Bristol have developed a promising solution; a soft, wearable exosuit powered by inflatable "bubble muscles."
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The Moon is Covered in Tiny Orange Glass Beads. Now We Know Why.

By Mark Thompson - June 12, 2025 11:35 PM UTC | Planetary Science
When the Apollo astronauts landed on the Moon, they discovered drifts of tiny brilliant orange glass beads glittering across the surface. Each one less than 1 mm across and formed about 3.6 billion years ago. These microscopic treasures, each smaller than a pinhead, had been hiding their secrets for billions of years. Now, cutting edge technology has finally cracked the mystery: they're perfect time capsules from the Moon's explosive volcanic past, frozen droplets of ancient lava that solidified instantly in the airless void recording the history of the Moon.
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1000 Hours with the Square Kilometre Array is Our Best Hope to Finally See Cosmic Dawn.

By Mark Thompson - June 12, 2025 11:34 PM UTC | Cosmology
The Hubble Deep Field revolutionised astronomy by staring at a seemingly empty patch of sky for thousands of hours, unveiling a cosmos teeming with distant galaxies. But even Hubble can't peer back far enough to witness the universe's first moment of illumination; the Cosmic Dawn, when primordial darkness gave way to starlight. Now, the Square Kilometre Array promises to shatter that barrier. In a groundbreaking simulation, researchers have modelled 1000 hours of SKA observations, creating astronomy's next great deep field, one designed to capture the universe's very first sunrise.
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The Solar Orbiter is Giving Us an Unprecedented Look at the Sun's Poles

By Evan Gough - June 12, 2025 11:23 PM UTC | Solar Astronomy
The ecliptic is the apparent path that the Sun follows during a year. It's an imaginary line that the planets follow, with some small deviations, around the Sun. Spacecraft find it easier to follow the ecliptic because it's generally more energy efficient. However, the Solar Orbiter isn't on the ecliptic and it's giving us our first up-close looks at the Sun's poles.
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Distant Galaxy Has Similar Icy Dust to the Milky Way. So, Similar Planets?

By Carolyn Collins Petersen - June 12, 2025 10:57 PM UTC | Extragalactic
For most of us, dust is just something we have to clean up. For astronomers, interstellar dust is a hindrance when they want to study distant objects. However, recent James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations of a distant galaxy are changing that. This infrared-sensitive observatory is letting them find a way to use dust to understand the evolution of early galaxies. In addition, it uncovered a special property of that galaxy's ice-covered dust, indicating it could be similar to the materials that formed our Solar System.
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