NASA and China plan to send astronauts and taikonauts to Mars in the coming decades. As the next step beyond lunar exploration, all major space agencies hope to send crewed missions there at some point. This should come as no surprise since Mars is the most potentially

Many health problems are faced by astronauts who spend significant amounts of time in space. But perhaps one of the most insidious is the danger to their mental health. In particular, a prolonged sense of loneliness that could crop up as part of a long-term deep space mission could have dire consequences. A recent paper from Matthieu Guitton, the editor-in-chief of the journal Computers in Human Behavior: Artificial Humans and a researcher at the CERVO Brain Research Center in Quebec, proposes one potential solution to that risk - social robots.

One of the common misconceptions about black holes is that they devour not only matter, but also the history of that matter. So when a black hole forms, you can only guess how it came to be. That isn't entirely true. Informational history is only lost when matter crosses the event horizon, and perhaps not even then. The material surrounding a black hole still has a rich history. In a recent study, astronomers have used that history to uncover the origins of a black hole system.

Though wildly different in so many ways, Earth and Saturn's moon Titan have something important in common. Among all the objects in the Solar System, they're the only two with liquids on their surfaces. There are parallels in how the liquids move in cycles on both worlds and a new mission proposal outlines how we can understand Titan better by studying these parallel processes.

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 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. This study has the potential to help researchers better understand unlikely locations where they could find life as we know it throughout the solar system.

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 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.

It’s getting a little harder to be the first humans to achieve something but, if all goes to plan, a team of four private astronauts are expected to head off into a polar orbit around Earth aboard the SpaceX Dragon capsule today (31 March) at 9:46pm ET and take the crew over the North and South Poles of Earth. Financed by Chun Wang, a Malta-based investor, they are planning a series of experiments, including attempting to grow oyster mushrooms in microgravity, which could eventually become a source of food for space missions.

Astronomers suspect that Europa has cryovolcanoes, regions where briny water could erupt through Europa's ice shell, throwing water—and hopefully organic molecules—into space. NASA's Europa Clipper and ESA's JUICE mission are on their way and will be able to scan the surface of the icy moon for signs of cryovolcanism. What should they be looking for? Pockets of brine just below the surface could be active for 60,000 years and should be warmer than their surroundings.

All long-term plans for human space exploration and research depend upon habitats that allow for long-duration stays. To date, most concepts involve surface habitats that leverage in-situ resource

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.](https://briankoberlein.com/post/einstein-and-eddington/) 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. If a distant galaxy is obscured by a closer one, some of the distant light is gravitationally lensed around the closer galaxy, giving us a warped and distorted view of the faraway stars. This effect can also magnify the distant galaxy, making its light appear brighter, and we have used this effect to observe some of the most distant stars in the Universe.