Universe Today (Page 3)

How Jagged Moon Dust Could Support Future Astronauts Lunar dust can be a pain – but it’s also literally the ground we will have to traverse if we are ever to have a permanent human settlement on the Moon. In that specific use case, it’s clingy, jagged, staticky properties can actually be an advantage, according to a new paper, recently published in Research from researchers at Beihang University, who analyzed the mechanical properties of samples returned by Chang’e 6 mission to the far side of the Moon. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Terraforming Mars Isn’t a Climate Problem—It’s an Industrial Nightmare Even when the idea of terraforming Mars was originally put forward, the idea was daunting. Changing the environment of an entire planet is not something to do easily. Over the following decades, plenty of scientists and engineers have looked at the problem, and most have come to the same conclusion – we’re not going to be able to make Mars anything like Earth anytime soon. A new paper available in pre-print on arXiv from Slava Turyshev of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is a good explainer as to why. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Starshade concept could reveal Earth-like exoplanets Finding Earth-like exoplanets with the composition and ingredients for life as we know it is the Holy Grail of exoplanet hunting. Since the first exoplanets were identified in the 1990s, scientists have pushed the boundaries of finding exoplanets through new and exciting methods. One of these methods is the direct imaging method, which involves carefully blocking out the host star within the observing telescope, thus revealing the orbiting exoplanets that were initially hiding within the star’s immense glare. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Astronomers Produce the Largest Image Ever Taken of the Heart of the Milky Way Astronomers have captured the central region of our Milky Way in a striking new image, unveiling a complex network of filaments of cosmic gas in unprecedented detail. Obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), this rich dataset—the largest ALMA image to date—will allow astronomers to probe the lives of stars in the most extreme region of our galaxy, next to the supermassive black hole at its center. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Astronauts Use Bacteria and Fungi to Harvest Metals in Space If humankind is to explore deep space, one small passenger should not be left behind: microbes. In fact, it would be impossible to leave them behind, since they live on and in our bodies, surfaces and food. Learning how they react to space conditions is critical, but they could also be invaluable fellows in our endeavor to explore space. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

VLT Image Captures a “Cosmic Hawk” Spanning its Wings. Today’s Picture of the Week, taken with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), seems to have captured a cosmic hawk as it spans its wings. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Making New Solar Activity Connections From Old Data It’s tough sometimes, living with a tempestuous star. Modern human civilization and technology lives at the whim of the Sun, as it sends solar storms and punishing coronal mass ejections our way. And while we understand the overall pitch of the 11 year solar cycle, it’s hard to predict exactly what the Sun is going to do next. Now, a recent study has reached back and examined over a century of solar observations, in an effort to make more accurate near-term predictions of solar activity. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

The 4.6-Billion-Year-Old Tape Recorder Hidden Inside Asteroid Dust Asteroids are critical to unlock our understanding of the early solar system. These chunks of rock and dust were around at the very beginning, and they haven’t been as modified by planetary formation processes as, say, Earth has been. So scientists were really excited to get ahold of samples from Ryugu when they were returned by Hayabusa-2 a few years ago. However, when they started analyzing the magnetic properties of those samples, different research groups came up with different answers. Theorizing those conflicting results came from small sample sizes, a new paper recently published in JGR PlanetsRead More →

Mars Express Images Reveal Mars’ Pockmarked Surface Craters, craters, and yet more craters: this snapshot from ESA’s Mars Express is packed full of them, each as fascinating as the last. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Astronomers Using MeerKAT Spot a Cosmic Laser Halfway Across the Universe Astronomers using the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa have discovered the most distant hydroxyl megamaser ever detected. It is located in a violently merging galaxy more than 8 billion light-years away, opening a new radio astronomy frontier. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Phew! NASA Rules Out Asteroid Smashup on the Moon in 2032 Here’s one less thing to worry about — or to look forward to: NASA has ruled out any chance that an asteroid called 2024 YR4 will hit the moon in 2032. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Scientists Publish the First Direct Measurement of Space Debris Pollution Back in February 2025, a SpaceX rocket that had delivered 22 Starlink satellites to orbit had a malfunction. It failed to execute a planned deorbit burn and drifted for 18 days in orbit before beginning an uncontrolled descent about 100km off the west coast of Ireland. Some parts of the rocket landed in Poland, and while they didn’t injure anybody, there was enough concern about the lack of communication that Poland dismissed the head of its space agency. But that wasn’t the only lasting impact of this failure. A new paper from Robin Wing andRead More →

Illinois and UChicago Physicists Develop a New Method for Measuring Cosmic Expansion A team of astrophysicists, cosmologists, and physicists has developed a novel way to compute the Hubble constant using gravitational waves. As our capability to observe gravitational waves improves in the future, this new method could be used to make even more accurate measurements of the Hubble constant, bringing scientists closer to resolving the Hubble tension. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

NASA’s Eclipse Megamovie Project Releases Full Data on 2024 Solar Eclipse On April 8, 2024, volunteers participating in NASA’s Eclipse Megamovie citizen science project all around the United States hurried to photograph the solar eclipse with the latest, greatest equipment, capturing groundbreaking images of the Sun’s corona. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

What Goes On Inside A Massive Star Before It Explodes As A Supernova? When people think of supernova explosions, they’re most-often thinking of Type II core-collapse supernovae, where a massive star becomes a red supergiant before collapsing on itself and exploding. New research uncovers what’s going on inside the star before it explodes, and explains why SNe light curves can be different from one another. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Introducing the ‘Interplanetary Habitable Zone’ Anyone familiar with the search for alien life will have heard of the “Goldilocks Zone” around a star. This is defined as the orbital band where the temperature is just right for liquid water to pool on a rocky planet’s surface – a good approximation for what we thought of as the early conditions for life on Earth. But what happens if that life doesn’t stay on an Earth analog? If they, like we, start to move towards their neighboring planets, the idea of a habitable zone becomes much more complicated. A new paper from Dr. Caleb Scharf of theRead More →

Cosmic Collaboration: Euclid and Hubble Team Up to Capture the Cat’s Eye Nebula It’s hard to turn away from a picture of the Cat’s Eye Nebula, even if you’ve seen it dozens of times. It may be the most visually compelling planetary nebula out there, with its billowing, layered shrouds and its intricate structure. NASA and the ESA have combined images of the Cat’s Eye from the Euclid and Hubble space telescopes for a fresh look at a favourite and historical cosmic object. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Red Dwarf Stars Might Starve Alien Plants of the “Quality” Light They Need to Breathe Red dwarfs make up the vast majority of stars in the galaxy. Such ubiquity means they host the majority of rocky exoplanets we’ve found so far – which in turn makes them interesting for astrobiological surveys. However, there’s a catch – astrobiologists aren’t sure the light from these stars can actually support oxygen-producing life. A new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv, by Giovanni Covone and Amedeo Balbi, suggests that they might not – when it comes to stellar light, quality is just as important as quantity. And according toRead More →

Some Extremophiles Could Survive an Asteroid Impact on Mars, and the Dangerous Journey to Earth Panspermia is the idea that life was spread from world to world somehow. New research shows that one type of Earthly extremophile can survive the extremely high pressure from asteroid impacts on Mars, be blasted into space, and maybe even survive the journey to Earth. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

NASA Tests Prototype 3D Printed Titanium Antenna in Space 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. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →