
Matthew Williams
Matt Williams is a space journalist, science communicator, and author with several published titles and studies. His work is featured in The Ross 248 Project and Interstellar Travel edited by NASA alumni Les Johnson and Ken Roy. He also hosts the podcast series Stories from Space at ITSP Magazine. He lives in beautiful British Columbia with his wife and family. For more information, check out his website.
Recent Articles
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Observing the Dark Ages of the Universe from the Far Side of the Moon
July 10, 2025Shortly after the Big Bang, after the CMB was released, there was a time that's tricky to observe called Cosmic Dark Ages. Clouds of hydrogen could be detected at that time using a specific frequency of radio waves, but Earth's radiation introduces too much noise. Researchers are proposing a CubeSat called Cosmo Cube that could orbit the Moon, observing when it's in the quiet radio shadow cast by the Moon. It could help detect the first structures coming together, leading to the formation of the first galaxies.
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Breakthrough Listen Releases Results for 27 Eclipsing Exoplanets
July 10, 2025In a recent study, a team of astronomers examined 27 confirmed and candidate exoplanets identified by TESS for signs of radio transmissions during star-planet occultations. The purpose was to see if radio signals from these targets of interest (TOIs) were interrupted as they passed behind their stars, thereby indicating that they were artificial in origin.
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HKU astrobiologist joins national effort to map out China’s Tianwen-3 Mars sample return mission
July 09, 2025China's Tianwen-3 is poised to be the first sample-return mission to Mars. The science team now includes a group of astrobiologists from Hong Kong University (HKU), led by Professor Yiliang Li. In a recent paper, the team advised the China National Space Agency (CNSA) on landing site selection and how the first samples from Mars should be analyzed and curated once they are brought back to Earth.
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Could Bioplastics be the Solution to Living Beyond Earth?
July 08, 2025An international team of scientists led by the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) proposed a new method for living beyond Earth. Their experiment demonstrated how bioplastic structures can be grown using algae, which would be rugged enough to survive the hostile Martian environment.
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Machine Learning is Surprisingly Good at Simulating the Universe
July 03, 2025Some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world are designed to simulate complex astrophysical processes, like what's happening inside a giant star as it's going supernova. But researchers have developed a new machine learning algorithm that was able to accurately simulate galaxy evolution with fewer computer resources and dramatically more quickly than a supercomputer, which could take years to fully process.
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Tianwen-2 Looks Back at the Earth
July 02, 2025China's asteroid probe turned its cameras back towards the Earth and Moon, capturing an image of our home planet on May 30, 2025. The image was taken when the spacecraft was about 590,000 km away, speeding towards asteroid 2016HO3, where it will retrieve a sample and bring it back to Earth before carrying on to main-belt comet 311P. The spacecraft has been in flight for 33 days and is now over 12 million kilometers from Earth.
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Weather Satellites Can Even Study the Weather Over on Venus
July 02, 2025A pair of Japanese weather satellites took a break from monitoring Earth weather to sneak a peek at Planet Venus. Despite the fact that it's relatively tiny, and millions of kilometers away, they were able to detect changes in Venus' cloud-top temperatures and see patterns and structure in its upper atmosphere. There are long-term trends on Venus that these long-lasting satellites will be able to study, beyond the timeframe of a shorter mission.
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Titan is the Perfect Benchmark for Studying Exoplanet Atmospheres
July 01, 2025While we know of thousands of exoplanets, the science of studying their atmospheres is still in its early days. When astronomers analyze atmospheres, they have to decide which molecules to include in their models, which can bias the results. A new paper proposes that Cassini data on Titan could provide the perfect benchmark, helping to distinguish between different hydrocarbons detected in the atmosphere of an exoplanet.
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A Spacecraft Carrying Human Remains and Cannabis Crashes into the Ocean
June 30, 2025Failed Orbital Mission Loses Human Remains, Space Pot
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How to Make Building Blocks for a Lunar Habitat
June 27, 2025The challenge of building habitats on the Moon is considerable, mainly because most additive manufacturing (aka. 3-D printing) techniques are not feasible. By utilizing a 3-D printing method known as light-based sintering, future missions to the Moon could manufacture bricks out of lunar regolith, rather than trying to build whole structures. This would facilitate a long-term human presence on the lunar surface, consistent with the Artemis Program and other plans for lunar exploration and development.
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Growing Building on Mars with Lichen and Bacteria
June 26, 2025When humans finally reach Mars, they're going to rely on local resources for habitat construction. Researchers are considering how Martian explorers could use lichen and bacteria together with Martian regolith to form building materials. These biomaterials can glue together particles of crushed rock into a building material which can then be 3D-printed into houses, furniture and other buildings. This system might only require regolith, air, light and an inorganic medium to create the building material.
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A fast radio burst detected last year turned out to be from long-dead NASA satellite
June 25, 2025A team of astronomers and astrophysicists affiliated with several institutions in Australia has found that a mysterious fast radio burst (FRB) detected last year originated not from a distant source, but from one circling the planet—a long-dead satellite. The team has posted a paper outlining their findings on the arXiv preprint server.
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NASA’s LRO Views ispace HAKUTO-R Mission 2 Moon Lander Impact Site
June 24, 2025The 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
June 23, 2025Since 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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Rare Conditions Can Make Double Hot Jupiters
June 22, 2025The 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
June 21, 2025The 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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ESA's New Mission Can See a Solar Eclipse Every Day
June 20, 2025Solar 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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Fast Radio Bursts are Helping to Locate the Universe's Missing Matter
June 19, 2025You'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.