Universe Today
NASA's Top 5 Technical Challenges Countdown: #1: Survive the Lunar Night
Now I know this sounds like a low-budget knockoff of Five Nights at Freddy's, but it's the real deal
The Martian Atmosphere is Sputtering
The Earth's atmosphere is protected by a magnetosphere, but Mars lacks this protective shield and lost its atmosphere to space long ago through interactions with the solar wind. In a new paper, scientists report that they have directly observed this process of "atmospheric sputtering," watching how incoming ions from the solar wind directly cause neutral atmospheric particles to escape. They found the process is stronger than anticipated, especially in solar storms.
The Sun's Identity Crisis Solved
The Sun's surface has unveiled a new secret: ultra fine magnetic "curtains" that create striking patterns of bright and dark stripes across the solar photosphere. Thanks to groundbreaking observations from the NSF Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii, scientists have captured the sharpest ever images of these previously unseen structures, revealing magnetic field variations at scales as small as 20 kilometres.
The Nuclear Option: Europe's Plan for Faster Space Travel.
Whilst NASA funding has been slashed by the Trump administration with no allocation for Nuclear Thermal Propulsion or and Nuclear Electric Propulsion, scientists at the European Space Agency (ESA) have been studying nuclear propulsion.
This Map of the Cosmic Web Reaches Back in Time
The COSMOS scientific collaboration has released the largest map of the Universe ever created. It contains almost 800,000 galaxies, some from the Universe's earliest times. The map challenges some of our ideas about the early Universe.
NASA's Top 5 Technical Challenges Countdown: #2: More Power
What we have now just…isn't going to cut it. Right now if you want power in space you essentially have two options: solar panels, and a kind of nuclear power called radioisotope thermoelectric generators.
NASA's Top 5 Technical Challenges Countdown: #3: Better Computers
Computers have been involved in spaceflight since almost the very beginning. Just like on the Earth, computers aid in a variety of tasks, like navigation and communication. But unfortunately, space is really, really unkind to electronics.
NASA's Top 5 Technical Challenges Countdown: #4: Improved Navigation
But in space, like on the Moon or Mars, we have…none of that. Zero. No GPS satellites, no globe-spanning networks. Just radio broadcasts from command centers here on Earth to tell our robots and crews what to do.
NASA's Top 5 Technical Challenges Countdown: #5: High-Powered Robotics
Space is hard. There's no doubt about that. It's completely unlike any environment we have ever faced on the Earth.
We Can Use Black Holes Particle Accelerators
The Large Hadron Collider has changed particle physics, and now scientists are dreaming up even bigger supercolliders. But humanity can't match the raw particle-colliding power of a supermassive black hole. In a new paper, researchers describe how supermassive black holes create a dense environment where particles are spinning at relativistic speeds and crashing into each other, releasing other particles that could be detectable on Earth.
New Measurements for M87's Supermassive Black Hole: Spin and Accretion Rate
The monster black hole lurking at the center of galaxy M87 is an absolute beast. It is one of the largest in our vicinity and was the ideal first target for the Event Horizon Telescope. Scientists have taken a fresh look at the supermassive black hole using those iconic Event Horizon Telescope images and have now figured out just how fast this monster is spinning and how much material it's devouring.
ispace's Resilience Lander Proves the Moon is Still a Tough Customer
Japan's private space company ispace experienced another setback on Thursday 5th June when its Resilience lunar lander crashed into the surface of the Moon, marking the company's second consecutive failed landing attempt in just over two years.
NASA's FY 2026 Budget Request has been Released
It's official. NASA's Fiscal Year 2026 Discretionary Budget Request (FY 2026) has been released, and the news is decidedly mixed. In a previous article, we examined the FY 2026 Budget Request (released on May 2nd) and its recommendations for the coming year. With the release of the FY 2026 Budget, what was previewed and the anxiety it caused for many have been confirmed. While the Budget bolsters funding for NASA's exploration programs for the Moon and Mars, it also contains deep cuts to many other programs and the cancellation of key elements in NASA's Moon to Mars architecture.
Titan May be the Liveliest Place in the Solar System
Titan has no liquid water whatsoever on its surface. But it does have liquids. Seas, lakes, streams, rivers…of methane and ethane.
This Massive Gas Giant Orbiting a Tiny Red Dwarf Tests Our Planet Formation Theories
The discovery of a Saturn-sized gas giant orbiting a small red dwarf is urging astronomers to reconsider their theories of planet formation. Core accretion theory is the most widely accepted explanation for planetary formation. It describes how planet formation begins with tiny dust grains gathering together and forming planetary cores that grow larger through accretion. It explains much of what we see in our Solar System and others. This discovery introduces some doubt.
A Terrifying Simulation of a Black Hole Gobbling Up a Neutron Stars
Across the universe, dramatic events occur when a black hole meets a neutron star. A neutron star is the ultra-dense remains of a massive star that exploded — imagine all the mass of our Sun compressed into a sphere just a few tens of kilometres wide. When a black hole and neutron star spiral toward each other, the result is one of nature's most violent spectacles.
Is the Hubble Tension Starting to Go Away?
For years, scientists have been scratching their heads over the "Hubble Tension,” the mismatch between how fast the cosmos was expanding in its youth versus how fast it's expanding today. But now, armed with the most precise data ever captured by the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have found the perceived gap is starting to narrow! In fact, the expansion rate measured by Cepheid variables versus the cosmic background has overlapping error bars again. Will the tension mystery finally be resolved?
Astronomers Find a Hidden Planet Partly in the Habitable Zone of its Star
Astronomers have found another super-Earth. It's about 10 times more massive than Earth, and orbits in the habitable zone of a Sun-like star about 2475 light-years away. These massive Earth-like planets hold key information about how planets form and evolve.
Webb Watches Haze Rise and Fall in Pluto's Atmosphere
When the New Horizons spacecraft swept past Pluto and Charon in 2015, it revealed two amazingly complex worlds and an active atmosphere on Pluto. Those snapshots redefined our understanding of the system. Now, new observations using the James Webb Space Telescope taken over the space of a week, show that Pluto's atmosphere is completely different from any other one in the Solar System.
What Life on Europa Needs
As the years go by, the chance of Europa hosting life seems to keep going down. But it's not out of contention yet.