Universe Today
New Research Reveals How Long Stays in Space Affects the Human Genome
A new study in Science Advances addresses the pressing questions about how long-duration exposure to microgravity affects the human genome.
Space Exploration
Human and robotic exploration of space
Recent Articles
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Curiosity Greets a Spectacular Dawn Sky on Mars
Mars is a planetary geologistâs paradise. NASAâs Curiosity rover drove that home recently, with a captivating panorama seen from the slopes of Mount Sharp. The image shows a stunning vista, and was not white-balance adjusted during processing, to show just what a viewer might really see at sunrise standing of Mars.
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A Trip to Mars Could Break Your Heart - Literally
When astronauts first travel to Mars, or anywhere else in deep space, they will have to contend with two problems that our planet itself protects us from on its surface - radiation and weightlessness. Scientists already know both can have a profound impact on the human body, but just how much of one, and how long that impact can last, remain a mystery. A new paper by researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin, and published in PLoS One, tackles those questions, and unfortunately comes up with some less than ideal answers in terms of the long term implications of deep space exposure.
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ESA's Hera Mission Targets Binary Asteroid Pair in November
In just one more month, the European Space Agencyâs Hera mission will make history. Moving at 12 kilometers per second versus Earth, the mission is about to rendezvous with the binary Dimorphos-Didymos asteroid pair. NASAâs Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission slammed into Dimorphos in 2022, and now Hera will provide a follow up view of the missionâs resulting handiwork. The European Space Agency (ESA) recently released a thought-provoking look at the perspectives of Hera, and what an astronaut might see from the surface of the asteroids as the mission speeds by.
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How Will Water Flow on the Moon?
Growing fresh food on the Moon is going to be crucial if astronauts there are ever going to eat anything other than freeze-dried rations. Since husbanding animals on the lunar surface isâŚdifficult (to put it mildly), most mission planners believe that plants are the solution. But we still donât entirely understand how one of the most fundamental materials to plant growth, water, operates under partial gravity. A team of researchers, led by Karl Hasenstein of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and including John Kiss of the Florida Institute of Technology, and Christopher McKay of NASAâs Ames Research Center, recently published a paper in Microgravity Science and Technology that lays out the physics for how water behaves at lunar gravity.
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Honda Wants to Put a Robotic Lab Assistant on Future Commercial Space Stations
As Iâm writing this Iâm able to stare out into my driveway at my trusty Honda Odyssey. Most of the publicâs association with Honda is through their âmobilityâ products - i.e. their cars. But the company has an impressive track record of other technical achievements, not the least of which has been in robotics. Now, itâs teaming up with space infrastructure firm Redwire to develop an automated laboratory support system for use on future commercial space stations.
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To Keep GPS Constellations From Drifting, Look To The Moon
Global Positioning Systems are a key feature in everyday life for much of the worldâs population. Whether itâs ensuring a ship delivers its goods safely, or youâre able to avoid a road closure on your commute home, GPS can help. But the system has a weakness - it relies on ground stations that could suffer from blackouts, natural disasters, or cyber attacks. And if those ground stations go offline for long enough, the whole system itself can begin to âdriftâ. Aerospace engineers have been attempting to counteract this problem for years, but so far with little success. But a new paper from a research team led by Xia Lin and Baojun Lin at the Shanghai Engineering Center for Microsatellites, and published in Satellite Navigation, explains a potential answer to this problem - link the GPS satellites up with some in orbit around the Moon.
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Space Radiation Sparks A Biological Cascade Of Cancer
Deep space travel comes with a huge potential downside - radiation exposure that can kill an astronaut either quickly or slowly over time if not managed correctly. But what exactly does that mean, and is there any way to handle it other than sticking more and more protective layers between the squishy biological systems inside a spacecraft and the radiative void of deep space? A new paper from researchers at Oklahoma State University and the University of Texas Health Science Center hopes to answer both questions, and while the causes of radiation they point out are complex, they also offer some potential solutions as well.
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Finding Life on Enceladus Could be Easier than We Thought, Says New Research
Planetary scientists from Freie Universität Berlin have published two new studies that indicate that a spacecraft could identify evidence of life much more easily than previously thought.
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Cornell Lightsail Experiment Paves the Way for Interstellar Missions
Students in Cornellâs Space Systems Design Studio have published results from two lightsail experiments (Alpha CubeSat and Sailing to the Stars) built by engineering students at Cornell University.
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A 1,000°C Lunar Microreactor Could Power the Next Era of Moon Bases
As humanity continues to move towards a permanent settlement on the Moon, we still have at least one big hurdle to face - the lunar night, which lasts for roughly fourteen days straight and can drop temperatures to a bone-chilling -223°C. In order to survive those conditions, we need a power source that doesnât come and go with the Sun, or rely on non-existent stock of coal, gas or wind. In other words, we need nuclear power, and a new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv by Julius Mercz of the Technical University of Munich and his co-authors, describes a new type of nuclear reactor that wouldnât just power a habitatâs environmental systems, but also enable its materials extraction technologies as well.
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Swiss Engineers Just Designed a Better 'Shock Absorber' for Spacecraft
Rocket launches are some of the most violent travel methods man has ever created. They generate millions of pounds of thrust and convert that into intense g-forces. Humans must undergo serious training to withstand those experiences, but machines have to do so as well, but by design rather than training. If a delicate mirror or solder joint cracks before a multi-billion dollar satellite even begins its mission, the years of effort that went into its design and assembly could be lost. Now, researchers in Switzerland have come up with an ingenious way to make sure that is much less likely to happen.
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First Diagnostic X-Rays in Space Mark New Era for Astronaut Health
A team of researchers acquired the first diagnostic X-ray images during a commercial spaceflight, demonstrating that X-ray medicine can be performed in space.
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MIT Research Could Lead to Refueling Depots on Mars
MIT PhD candidate Lanie McKinney is developing technology to convert the chemicals in the Martian atmosphere into propellant to bring astronauts home.
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Genetically Engineered Yeast Could Build the First Martian Outposts
If we are ever to have a permanent presence on Mars, we will have to learn to build there. Shipping the material from Earth to build something as simple as a pressurized habitat is prohibitively expensive, so we will have to make sure of the materials available on Marsâ surface. A research team led by Ning Liu at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology recently published a paper in Chem Circularity that uses biology to do much of the heavy lifting for the structural materials we would typically use concrete for. If their method is adopted, we might quickly find another Earth-based lifeform in abundance on Mars - yeast.
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A New Design For A Plasma Engine Fuels On Only Thin Air
Choosing what orbit to put a satellite in always comes with trade-offs. When it comes to Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO), between 100-450 km, there are distinct advantages. Remote sensing cameras can take better pictures, comms and radar require less power, and atmospheric drag will automatically clean up dead satellites. But thereâs also a cost - air friction requires any satellite in this orbit to use an engine near constantly to stay in orbit, which in turn requires fuel - typically in the form of expensive gases like Xenon. So, as part of his PhD thesis at the University of Stuttgart, which is available in arXiv, Francesco Romano decided to solve that problem by using the very air molecules that cause that friction as fuel for a plasma engine to keep satellites aloft indefinitely in VLEO.
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Japan's Hayabusa2 Achieves First-Ever Laser Ranging Experiment with an Asteroid
On Sunday July 5th, 2026, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) achieved the first-ever successful laser ranging experiment while making a flyby of an asteroid.
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Scientists Develop Test Setup For New Way To Survive Reentry
Spacecraft famously have small bits of them disintegrate on reentry. Thatâs by design, as it is one of the easiest solutions to absorbing the incredible amounts of energy they experience. However, it also results in long turn around times while these heat shields are repaired, and the shields themselves act as âdead weightâ limiting payload capacity. With the increased focus on reusable rockets, and the emphasis on payload capacity, engineers have been looking for alternative solutions to the reentry problem - and the one of the most promising is known as magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) braking. A new paper from researchers at the Tokyo Metropolitan University describes a new test setup that should help designers of these advanced braking systems truly capture what their system is doing upon reentry.
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Martian Astronomy: Percy Sees a âPhobos Eclipseâ From Mars
Sure. Itâs just another image of Phobos crossing the disk of the Sun, as seen from the surface of Mars. Like so much of the modern space era, these images, once amazing, are now almost routine. But thereâs some real science behind tasking the Mars rovers to conduct a little âMartian astronomy.â
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High-Orbit Laser Satellites Could Guide Future Lunar Travelers
Cislunar space is already getting crowded. And with that crowding comes infrastructure complications. One is navigation - there is no Global Positioning System available when you're not on the globe. Finding a spacecraftâs exact orbital path relies on networking with the Deep Space Network (DSN), a set of telescopes originally developed in the 1950s to communicate with spacecraft far afield. DSN itself is already getting overwhelmed with managing all of the missions requesting its time, so getting a precise orbital location currently can take hours. But researchers at MITâs Lincoln Laboratory think they might have a solution for this - launching a fleet of three satellites to collectively create a deep-space navigational system known as the LIght High-Orbit Utility Signal Emitter - LightHOUSE.