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China's Shenzhou-21's Crew Test New Spacesuits During Spacewalk
The Shenzhou-21 crew on board China's orbiting space station completed its first extravehicular activities on Tuesday, Dec. 9th, during which they validated the new EVA spacesuits.
Uranus and Neptune might be rock giants
A team of researchers from the University of Zurich and the NCCR PlanetS is challenging our understanding of the interior of the Solar System's planets. The composition of Uranus and Neptune, the two outermost planets, might be more rocky and less icy than previously thought.
RNA May Be Common throughout the Cosmos, New Study Suggests
New experiments show how RNA might form not just on Earth but on other rocky planets, too
It Didn't Take Long For Earth's Ancient Oceans To Become Oxygenated
For roughly two billion years of Earth’s early history, the atmosphere contained no oxygen, the essential ingredient required for complex life. Oxygen began building up in the atmosphere during the period known as the Great Oxidation Event (GOE), but it had to enter the oceans first. When and how it first entered the oceans has remained uncertain.
NextSTEP-3 B: Moon to Mars Architecture Studies
Notice ID: M2M-MSFC-0001
NAICS Codes:
- 541715 – Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences (except Nanotechnology and Biotechnology)
NASA seeks industry-led architecture concept development, concept refinement studies, and risk-reduction activities that address Moon to Mars Architecture gaps through the Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships-3 (NextSTEP-3). NASA plans to release this solicitation — NextSTEP-3 Appendix B: Moon to Mars Architectural Studies — near the beginning of calendar year 2026. For full details, consult the links under the notice ID above.
NASA’s Moon to Mars Architecture defines capabilities needed for long-term, human-led scientific discovery in deep space. The agency’s architecture approach distills agency-developed objectives into capabilities and elements that support exploration and science goals. NASA continuously evolves that blueprint for crewed exploration, setting humanity on a path to the Moon, Mars, and beyond by collaborating with experts across industry, academia, and the international community.
This proposed solicitation seeks partner participation on a recurring basis, targeting several calls per year for proposal submissions. The proposals should focus on topics addressing infrastructure, transportation, habitation, concepts of operations, and planetary science capabilities identified in the latest revision of the Architecture Definition Document. The solicitation establishes a flexible acquisition strategy that accommodates both directed-topic calls on specific areas of government interest, as well as open topic calls.
NASA anticipates the first Appendix B directed-topic study calls will focus on lunar and Mars mission concepts. NASA intends to issue a directed call for research into an integrated surface power infrastructure (or power grid) that can evolve to support increasingly ambitious lunar missions. (Note: this call excludes proposals addressing the Fission Surface Power System Announcement for Partnership Proposal but may include all technology solutions including alternate fission, solar hybrid, or other power grid approaches.)
Concurrently, NASA will issue a directed call for Mars crew transportation concept development, trade studies, and identification of risk reduction activities. This call would include in-space transportation, Mars surface access, and Mars ascent options for crew and cargo.
NextSTEP-3 B: Moon to Mars Architecture Studies
Notice ID: M2M-MSFC-0001
NAICS Codes:
- 541715 – Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences (except Nanotechnology and Biotechnology)
NASA seeks industry-led architecture concept development, concept refinement studies, and risk-reduction activities that address Moon to Mars Architecture gaps through the Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships-3 (NextSTEP-3). NASA plans to release this solicitation — NextSTEP-3 Appendix B: Moon to Mars Architectural Studies — near the beginning of calendar year 2026. For full details, consult the links under the notice ID above.
NASA’s Moon to Mars Architecture defines capabilities needed for long-term, human-led scientific discovery in deep space. The agency’s architecture approach distills agency-developed objectives into capabilities and elements that support exploration and science goals. NASA continuously evolves that blueprint for crewed exploration, setting humanity on a path to the Moon, Mars, and beyond by collaborating with experts across industry, academia, and the international community.
This proposed solicitation seeks partner participation on a recurring basis, targeting several calls per year for proposal submissions. The proposals should focus on topics addressing infrastructure, transportation, habitation, concepts of operations, and planetary science capabilities identified in the latest revision of the Architecture Definition Document. The solicitation establishes a flexible acquisition strategy that accommodates both directed-topic calls on specific areas of government interest, as well as open topic calls.
NASA anticipates the first Appendix B directed-topic study calls will focus on lunar and Mars mission concepts. NASA intends to issue a directed call for research into an integrated surface power infrastructure (or power grid) that can evolve to support increasingly ambitious lunar missions. (Note: this call excludes proposals addressing the Fission Surface Power System Announcement for Partnership Proposal but may include all technology solutions including alternate fission, solar hybrid, or other power grid approaches.)
Concurrently, NASA will issue a directed call for Mars crew transportation concept development, trade studies, and identification of risk reduction activities. This call would include in-space transportation, Mars surface access, and Mars ascent options for crew and cargo.
Mars MAVEN Mission May Be Lost in Space
NASA is working to restore communications with its MAVEN Mars Orbiter mission.
The post Mars MAVEN Mission May Be Lost in Space appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
Bassac River, Southern Vietnam
A camera on the International Space Station captured this Oct. 2, 2025, photo of the Bassac River in Cù Lao Dung, a river islet district in southern Vietnam. The Bassac River surrounds the district before emptying into the South China Sea. The river’s brown waters at its mouth result from massive amounts of silt, clay, and organic matter carried from upstream regions of the Mekong River Basin, combined with tidal forces from the sea that stir up sediment. This photograph was taken from as the space station orbited 260 miles above Earth.
Image credit: NASA
Bassac River, Southern Vietnam
A camera on the International Space Station captured this Oct. 2, 2025, photo of the Bassac River in Cù Lao Dung, a river islet district in southern Vietnam. The Bassac River surrounds the district before emptying into the South China Sea. The river’s brown waters at its mouth result from massive amounts of silt, clay, and organic matter carried from upstream regions of the Mekong River Basin, combined with tidal forces from the sea that stir up sediment. This photograph was taken from as the space station orbited 260 miles above Earth.
Image credit: NASA
Bassac River, Southern Vietnam
The world will soon be losing 3000 glaciers every year
The world will soon be losing 3000 glaciers every year
Getting a COVID Vaccine while Pregnant Slashes Risk of Premature Birth, Major New Study Finds
Pregnant people who receive a COVID vaccine are 60 percent less likely to experience severe disease and around 30 percent less likely to give birth prematurely, according to new research
ESA highlights 2025
2025 was a landmark year for Europe in space. From celebrating 50 years of ESA to new missions, scientific breakthroughs, the year reaffirmed Europe’s leadership in science, exploration, climate action and innovation.
NASA’s Roman Telescope Will Observe Thousands of Newfound Cosmic Voids
Lee esta nota de prensa en español aquí.
Our universe is filled with galaxies, in all directions as far as our instruments can see. Some researchers estimate that there are as many as two trillion galaxies in the observable universe. At first glance, these galaxies might appear to be randomly scattered across space, but they’re not. Careful mapping has shown that they are distributed across the surfaces of giant cosmic “bubbles” up to several hundred million light-years across. Inside these bubbles, few galaxies are found, so those regions are called cosmic voids. NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will allow us to measure these voids with new precision, which can tell us about the history of the universe’s expansion.
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
This narrated video sequence illustrates how NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will be able to observe cosmic voids in the universe. These highly detailed measurements will help constrain cosmological models.Credit: Video: NASA, STScI; Visualization: Frank Summers (STScI); Script Writer: Frank Summers (STScI); Narration: Frank Summers (STScI); Audio: Danielle Kirshenblat (STScI); Science: Giulia Degni (Roma Tre University), Alice Pisani (CPPM), Giovanni Verza (Center for Computational Astrophysics/Flatiron Inst.)“Roman’s ability to observe wide areas of the sky to great depths, spotting an abundance of faint and distant galaxies, will revolutionize the study of cosmic voids,” said Giovanni Verza of the Flatiron Institute and New York University, lead author on a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal.
Cosmic RecipeThe cosmos is made of three key components: normal matter, dark matter, and dark energy. The gravity of normal and dark matter tries to slow the expansion of the universe, while dark energy opposes gravity to speed up the universe’s expansion. The nature of both dark matter and dark energy are currently unknown. Scientists are trying to understand them by studying their effects on things we can observe, such as the distribution of galaxies across space.
“Since they’re relatively empty of matter, voids are regions of space that are dominated by dark energy. By studying voids, we should be able to put powerful constraints on the nature of dark energy,” said co-author Alice Pisani of CNRS (the French National Centre for Scientific Research) in France and Princeton University in New Jersey.
To determine how Roman might study voids, the researchers considered one potential design of the Roman High-Latitude Wide-Area Survey, one of three core community surveys that Roman will conduct. The High-Latitude Wide-Area Survey will look away from the plane of our galaxy (hence the term high latitude in galactic coordinates). The team found that this survey should be able to detect and measure tens of thousands of cosmic voids, some as small as just 20 million light-years across. Such large numbers of voids will allow scientists to use statistical methods to determine how their observed shapes are influenced by the key components of the universe.
To determine the actual, 3D shapes of the voids, astronomers will use two types of data from Roman — the positions of galaxies in the sky and their cosmological redshift, the latter of which is determined using spectroscopic data. To convert redshift to a physical distance, astronomers make assumptions about the components of the universe, including the strength of dark energy and how it might have evolved over time.
Pisani compared it to trying to infer a cake recipe (i.e., the universe’s makeup) from the final dessert served to you. “You try to put in the right ingredients — the right amount of matter, the right amount of dark energy — and then you check whether your cake looks as it should. If it doesn’t, that means you put in the wrong ingredients.”
In this case, the appearance of the “cake” is the shape found by statistically stacking all of the voids detected by Roman on top of each other. On average, voids are expected to have a spherical shape because there is no “preferred” location or direction in the universe (i.e., the universe is both homogeneous and isotropic on large scales). This means that, if the stacking is done correctly, the resulting shape will be perfectly round (or spherically symmetric). If not, then you have to adjust your cosmic recipe.
Power of RomanThe researchers emphasized that to study cosmic voids in large numbers, an observatory must be able to probe a large volume of the universe, because the voids themselves can be tens or hundreds of millions of light-years across. The spectroscopic data necessary to study voids will come from a portion of the Roman High-Latitude Wide-Area Survey that will cover on the order of 2,400 square degrees of the sky, or 12,000 full moons. It will also be able to see fainter and more distant objects, yielding a greater density of galaxies than complementary missions like ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) Euclid.
“Voids are defined by the fact that they contain so few galaxies. So to detect voids, you have to be able to observe galaxies that are quite sparse and faint. With Roman, we can better look at the galaxies that populate voids, which ultimately will give us greater understanding of the cosmological parameters like dark energy that are sculpting voids,” said co-author Giulia Degni of Roma Tre University and INFN (the National Institute of Nuclear Physics) in Rome.
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is managed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with participation by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California; Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California; the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore; and a science team comprising scientists from various research institutions. The primary industrial partners are BAE Systems, Inc. in Boulder, Colorado; L3Harris Technologies in Melbourne, Florida; and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging in Thousand Oaks, California.
By Christine Pulliam
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
cpulliam@stsci.edu
NASA’s Roman Telescope Will Observe Thousands of Newfound Cosmic Voids
Lee esta nota de prensa en español aquí.
Our universe is filled with galaxies, in all directions as far as our instruments can see. Some researchers estimate that there are as many as two trillion galaxies in the observable universe. At first glance, these galaxies might appear to be randomly scattered across space, but they’re not. Careful mapping has shown that they are distributed across the surfaces of giant cosmic “bubbles” up to several hundred million light-years across. Inside these bubbles, few galaxies are found, so those regions are called cosmic voids. NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will allow us to measure these voids with new precision, which can tell us about the history of the universe’s expansion.
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
This narrated video sequence illustrates how NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will be able to observe cosmic voids in the universe. These highly detailed measurements will help constrain cosmological models.Credit: Video: NASA, STScI; Visualization: Frank Summers (STScI); Script Writer: Frank Summers (STScI); Narration: Frank Summers (STScI); Audio: Danielle Kirshenblat (STScI); Science: Giulia Degni (Roma Tre University), Alice Pisani (CPPM), Giovanni Verza (Center for Computational Astrophysics/Flatiron Inst.)“Roman’s ability to observe wide areas of the sky to great depths, spotting an abundance of faint and distant galaxies, will revolutionize the study of cosmic voids,” said Giovanni Verza of the Flatiron Institute and New York University, lead author on a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal.
Cosmic RecipeThe cosmos is made of three key components: normal matter, dark matter, and dark energy. The gravity of normal and dark matter tries to slow the expansion of the universe, while dark energy opposes gravity to speed up the universe’s expansion. The nature of both dark matter and dark energy are currently unknown. Scientists are trying to understand them by studying their effects on things we can observe, such as the distribution of galaxies across space.
“Since they’re relatively empty of matter, voids are regions of space that are dominated by dark energy. By studying voids, we should be able to put powerful constraints on the nature of dark energy,” said co-author Alice Pisani of CNRS (the French National Centre for Scientific Research) in France and Princeton University in New Jersey.
To determine how Roman might study voids, the researchers considered one potential design of the Roman High-Latitude Wide-Area Survey, one of three core community surveys that Roman will conduct. The High-Latitude Wide-Area Survey will look away from the plane of our galaxy (hence the term high latitude in galactic coordinates). The team found that this survey should be able to detect and measure tens of thousands of cosmic voids, some as small as just 20 million light-years across. Such large numbers of voids will allow scientists to use statistical methods to determine how their observed shapes are influenced by the key components of the universe.
To determine the actual, 3D shapes of the voids, astronomers will use two types of data from Roman — the positions of galaxies in the sky and their cosmological redshift, the latter of which is determined using spectroscopic data. To convert redshift to a physical distance, astronomers make assumptions about the components of the universe, including the strength of dark energy and how it might have evolved over time.
Pisani compared it to trying to infer a cake recipe (i.e., the universe’s makeup) from the final dessert served to you. “You try to put in the right ingredients — the right amount of matter, the right amount of dark energy — and then you check whether your cake looks as it should. If it doesn’t, that means you put in the wrong ingredients.”
In this case, the appearance of the “cake” is the shape found by statistically stacking all of the voids detected by Roman on top of each other. On average, voids are expected to have a spherical shape because there is no “preferred” location or direction in the universe (i.e., the universe is both homogeneous and isotropic on large scales). This means that, if the stacking is done correctly, the resulting shape will be perfectly round (or spherically symmetric). If not, then you have to adjust your cosmic recipe.
Power of RomanThe researchers emphasized that to study cosmic voids in large numbers, an observatory must be able to probe a large volume of the universe, because the voids themselves can be tens or hundreds of millions of light-years across. The spectroscopic data necessary to study voids will come from a portion of the Roman High-Latitude Wide-Area Survey that will cover on the order of 2,400 square degrees of the sky, or 12,000 full moons. It will also be able to see fainter and more distant objects, yielding a greater density of galaxies than complementary missions like ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) Euclid.
“Voids are defined by the fact that they contain so few galaxies. So to detect voids, you have to be able to observe galaxies that are quite sparse and faint. With Roman, we can better look at the galaxies that populate voids, which ultimately will give us greater understanding of the cosmological parameters like dark energy that are sculpting voids,” said co-author Giulia Degni of Roma Tre University and INFN (the National Institute of Nuclear Physics) in Rome.
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is managed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with participation by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California; Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California; the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore; and a science team comprising scientists from various research institutions. The primary industrial partners are BAE Systems, Inc. in Boulder, Colorado; L3Harris Technologies in Melbourne, Florida; and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging in Thousand Oaks, California.
By Christine Pulliam
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
cpulliam@stsci.edu
How Rising Rates of Uninsured Children Will Increase Pediatric Cancer Deaths
A recent analysis showed the rate of uninsured children in the U.S. grew from 2022 to 2024. Experts say this could lead to more pediatric cancer deaths
The Radio Signal That Predicts Aurora Storms
Scientists have discovered a crucial clue to understanding one of nature's most spectacular light shows, the aurora. Research from the University of Southampton reveals that just before these magnetospheric substorms erupt, a distinct pattern of low frequency radio waves appears above the aurora, radio emissions that surge in strength precisely as mysterious "auroral beads" transform into full storms. This radio signature, detected by spacecraft and ground observatories across multiple events, provides the first direct evidence of the physical processes triggering these dramatic celestial displays, and may explain similar phenomena occurring in the magnetospheres of Jupiter and Saturn.
A New Laboratory Explores How Planets Begin
Scientists at Southwest Research Institute have opened a new laboratory dedicated to answering one of astronomy's most fundamental questions, where do planets come from? The Nebular Origins of the Universe Research (NOUR) Laboratory will recreate the extreme conditions found in interstellar clouds, vast regions of ice, gas, and dust that existed before our Solar System formed to trace how these primordial materials ultimately evolved into the worlds we see today. By simulating the chemistry of pre-planetary environments in specialised vacuum chambers, researchers aim to understand how the building blocks of life, including the components of DNA and RNA, formed in the darkness of space billions of years ago.