Feed aggregator

After black holes devour stars, sometimes the feast comes back up

Puzzle out the sequence of numbers that fill these polygons

The Danish government deputized private detectorists to unearth artifacts buried in farm fields. Their finds are revealing the country’s past in extraordinary detail

Science in meter and verse

Trade impulse clothing purchases for botanical dyes, upcycled apparel, creative mending, flexible sizing, and more

Toxic cigars; dueling with a swordfish

Letters to the editors for the March 2025 issue of Scientific American

To boost mood and manliness, men are spending lots of money on the hormone testosterone—yet they may see trouble instead of benefits

One hundred years after the Scopes trial, religious ideologues are still trying to supplant evidence-based curricula with myths, to the detriment of a well-informed society

Staff at the European Southern Observatory have a system to clean the La Silla Observatory's delicate mirrors without breaking them.

by Dary Felix Garcia

NASA is preparing to make history by sending humans to the Moon’s South Pole. There, astronauts will conduct moonwalks for exploration, science experiments, and prepare humanity for the journey to Mars. Missions of this scale require extensive planning, especially when accounting for emergency scenarios such as a crew member becoming incapacitated.  

To address this critical risk, the South Pole Safety Challenge invited the public to develop a compact, effective device capable of safely rescuing astronauts during emergency situations on the Moon’s surface. Given the harsh and unpredictable conditions of the lunar South Pole, the rescue system must be lightweight, easy to use, and able to transport an incapacitated crew member weighing approximately 755 lbs. (343 kg), representing the crew member and their suit, without the help of the lunar rover. It must also be capable of covering up to 1.24 miles (2 kilometers) across slopes as steep as 20 degrees. 

“The initiative saved the government an estimated $1,000,000 and more than three  years of work had the solutions been produced using in-house existing resources,” said Ryon Stewart, acting Program Manager of NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation. “The effort demonstrated how crowdsourcing provides NASA with a wide diversity of innovative ideas and skills.”

The global challenge received 385 unique ideas from 61 countries. Five standout solutions received a share of the $45,000 prize purse.  Each of the selected solutions demonstrated creativity, practicality, and direct relevance to NASA’s needs for future Moon missions.

• First Place: VERTEX by Hugo Shelley – A self-deploying four-wheeled motorized stretcher that converts from a compact cylinder into a frame that securely encases an immobilized crew member for transport up to 6.2 miles (10 kilometers).  

• Second Place: MoonWheel by Chamara Mahesh – A foldable manual trolley designed for challenging terrain and rapid deployment by an individual astronaut.  

• Third Place: Portable Foldable Compact Emergency Stretcher by Sbarellati team – A foldable stretcher compatible with NASA’s Exploration Extravehicular Activity spacesuit. 

• Third Place: Advanced Surface Transport for Rescue (ASTRA) by Pierre-Alexandre Aubé – A collapsible three-wheeled device with a 1.2 mile (2 kilometer) range.
• Third Place: Getting Rick to Roll! by InventorParents – A rapidly deployable, tool-free design suited for functionality in low gravity settings. 

NASA is identifying how to integrate some features of the winning ideas into current and future mission designs. Most intriguing are the collapsible concepts of many of the designs that would save crucial mass and volume. Additionally, the submissions offered innovative wheel designs to enhance current concepts. NASA expects to incorporate some features into planning for surface operations of the Moon. 

HeroX hosted the challenge on behalf of NASA’s Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility Program. The NASA Tournament Lab, part of the Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing program in the Space Technology Mission Directorate, managed the challenge. The program supports global public competitions and crowdsourcing as tools to advance NASA research and development and other mission needs.   

Find more opportunities at https://www.nasa.gov/get-involved/ 

by Dary Felix Garcia

NASA is preparing to make history by sending humans to the Moon’s South Pole. There, astronauts will conduct moonwalks for exploration, science experiments, and prepare humanity for the journey to Mars. Missions of this scale require extensive planning, especially when accounting for emergency scenarios such as a crew member becoming incapacitated.  

To address this critical risk, the South Pole Safety Challenge invited the public to develop a compact, effective device capable of safely rescuing astronauts during emergency situations on the Moon’s surface. Given the harsh and unpredictable conditions of the lunar South Pole, the rescue system must be lightweight, easy to use, and able to transport an incapacitated crew member weighing approximately 755 lbs. (343 kg), representing the crew member and their suit, without the help of the lunar rover. It must also be capable of covering up to 1.24 miles (2 kilometers) across slopes as steep as 20 degrees. 

“The initiative saved the government an estimated $1,000,000 and more than three  years of work had the solutions been produced using in-house existing resources,” said Ryon Stewart, acting Program Manager of NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation. “The effort demonstrated how crowdsourcing provides NASA with a wide diversity of innovative ideas and skills.”

The global challenge received 385 unique ideas from 61 countries. Five standout solutions received a share of the $45,000 prize purse.  Each of the selected solutions demonstrated creativity, practicality, and direct relevance to NASA’s needs for future Moon missions.

The global challenge received 385 unique ideas from 61 countries. Five standout solutions received a share of the $45,000 prize purse.  Each of the selected solutions demonstrated creativity, practicality, and direct relevance to NASA’s needs for future Moon missions.  

• First Place: VERTEX by Hugo Shelley – A self-deploying four-wheeled motorized stretcher that converts from a compact cylinder into a frame that securely encases an immobilized crew member for transport up to 6.2 miles (10 kilometers).  

• Second Place: MoonWheel by Chamara Mahesh – A foldable manual trolley designed for challenging terrain and rapid deployment by an individual astronaut.  

• Third Place: Portable Foldable Compact Emergency Stretcher by Sbarellati team – A foldable stretcher compatible with NASA’s Exploration Extravehicular Activity spacesuit. 

• Third Place: Advanced Surface Transport for Rescue (ASTRA) by Pierre-Alexandre Aubé – A collapsible three-wheeled device with a 1.2 mile (2 kilometer) range.
• Third Place: Getting Rick to Roll! by InventorParents – A rapidly deployable, tool-free design suited for functionality in low gravity settings. 

NASA is identifying how to integrate some features of the winning ideas into current and future mission designs. Most intriguing are the collapsible concepts of many of the designs that would save crucial mass and volume. Additionally, the submissions offered innovative wheel designs to enhance current concepts. NASA expects to incorporate some features into planning for surface operations of the Moon. 

HeroX hosted the challenge on behalf of NASA’s Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility Program. The NASA Tournament Lab, part of the Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing program in the Space Technology Mission Directorate, managed the challenge. The program supports global public competitions and crowdsourcing as tools to advance NASA research and development and other mission needs.   

Find more opportunities at https://www.nasa.gov/get-involved/ 

AI is shedding new light on the 12,000-year conversation between cats and their humans, suggesting that house cats wield a far richer vocabulary than once thought

Using NASA's Chandra X-ray space telescope, astronomers have discovered an entire galaxy cluster wrapped in a 20 million light-year-wide envelope of charged particles.

Farah Al Fulfulee was just four years old when she started climbing onto the roof of her family’s house in Iraq to gaze at the stars.

“It scared me how vast and quiet the sky was, but it made me very curious. I grew a deep passion for the stars and constellations and what they might represent,” she said.

Her father noticed her interest and began bringing home books and magazines about space. Al Fulfulee first read about NASA in those pages and was fascinated by the agency’s mission to explore the cosmos for the benefit of all humanity.

“Right then I knew I had to be an astronaut! I must go to space myself and get a closer look,” she said. “I knew I must find a way to go and work for NASA and fulfill my dream, working with other people like me who had a passion to explore the universe.”

Farah Al Fulfulee poses outside the Sonny Carter Training Facility at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Image courtesy of Farah Al Fulfulee

As a girl growing up in the Middle East, Al Fulfulee had few opportunities to pursue this dream, but she refused to give up. Her dedication to schoolwork and excellence in science and math earned her a spot at the University of Baghdad College of Engineering. She completed a degree in electronic and communication engineering — similar to American electrical and computer engineering programs — and graduated as one of the top 10 students in her class. “We had a graduation party where you dress up as what you want to be in the future,” she recalled. “I wore a spacesuit.”

Farah Al Fulfulee celebrates her graduation from the University of Baghdad while wearing a spacesuit costume. Image courtesy of Farah Al Fulfulee

Al Fulfulee was ready to launch her career, but Iraq did not have a developed space industry and finding work as a female engineer was a challenge. She accepted a project engineer position with a prominent Iraqi engineering firm in the information technology sector and spent four years working for the company in Iraq, Turkey, and Jordan, but she was disappointed to discover that her role involved very little engineering. “I was the only female on the team,” she said. “It was not common for a woman to work in the field or with customers, so I was always left behind to do office work. The job was not fulfilling.”

Still determined to join NASA, Al Fulfulee kept looking for her chance to come to the United States and finally found one in 2016, when she moved to Oklahoma to be near her sister. A new challenge soon rose: Without a degree from an American school or previous work experience in the United States, engineering opportunities were hard to come by. Al Fulfulee spent the next six years working in quality assurance for a human resources software company while she completed a MicroMasters program in software verification and management from the University of Maryland and honed her English and leadership skills.

Her big break came in 2022, when she landed a job with Boeing Defense, Space, and Security as a software quality engineer. “I was so excited,” she said. “I knew I was much closer to my dream since Boeing worked in the space industry and I would be able to apply internally to work on a space program.”

Farah Al Fulfulee participates in a NASA study that evaluated and compared the use of virtual reality and physical mockups to assess space vehicle and systems designs. Image courtesy of Farah Al Fulfulee

Less than one year later, Al Fulfulee became a system design and analysis engineer for the International Space Station Program and joined the Station Management and Control Team at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. She helps develop requirements, monitors performance, and validates testing for electrical systems and software supporting space station payloads. She also designs hardware, software, and interface specifications for those systems. Al Fulfulee has served as the team’s point of contact, delivering verification assessment and data assessment reports for NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 and Crew-10 missions, as well as the upcoming Axiom Mission 4 flight. She is currently working to support testing and verification for NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11.

“I could not be happier,” she declared.

She is also not stopping. “I won’t quit until I wear the blue suit.”

Farah Al Fulfulee tending to her backyard garden.Image courtesy of Farah Al Fulfulee

Al Fulfulee has been an enthusiastic volunteer for various NASA studies, including the Exploration Atmosphere Studies that tested spacewalk safety protocols in an analog environment. She is pursuing a master’s degree in Space Operations Engineering from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. She is an avid gardener and learning how to grow produce indoors as a volunteer experimental botanist with the Backyard Produce Project, noting that such knowledge might come in handy on Mars.

She is also helping to inspire the next generation. Earlier this year, Al Fulfulee was a guest speaker at the Women in Tech & Business Summit in Iraq – an event designed to encourage Iraqi women to pursue technology careers. “I was the only person representing women in space,” she said. “It was a really moving experience.” Al Fulfulee provided practical advice on breaking barriers in aerospace and shared her story with the crowd.

“I know my path is long and across the continents,” she said, “but I am enjoying my journey.”

Explore More 5 min read Johnson’s Jason Foster Recognized for New Technology Reporting Record Article 2 days ago 4 min read NASA, DoD Practice Abort Scenarios Ahead of Artemis II Moon Mission Article 4 days ago 4 min read Welcome Home, Expedition 72 Crew!  Article 6 days ago

Farah Al Fulfulee was just four years old when she started climbing onto the roof of her family’s house in Iraq to gaze at the stars.

“It scared me how vast and quiet the sky was, but it made me very curious. I grew a deep passion for the stars and constellations and what they might represent,” she said.

Her father noticed her interest and began bringing home books and magazines about space. Al Fulfulee first read about NASA in those pages and was fascinated by the agency’s mission to explore the cosmos for the benefit of all humanity.

“Right then I knew I had to be an astronaut! I must go to space myself and get a closer look,” she said. “I knew I must find a way to go and work for NASA and fulfill my dream, working with other people like me who had a passion to explore the universe.”

Farah Al Fulfulee poses outside the Sonny Carter Training Facility at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Image courtesy of Farah Al Fulfulee

As a girl growing up in the Middle East, Al Fulfulee had few opportunities to pursue this dream, but she refused to give up. Her dedication to schoolwork and excellence in science and math earned her a spot at the University of Baghdad College of Engineering. She completed a degree in electronic and communication engineering — similar to American electrical and computer engineering programs — and graduated as one of the top 10 students in her class. “We had a graduation party where you dress up as what you want to be in the future,” she recalled. “I wore a spacesuit.”

Farah Al Fulfulee celebrates her graduation from the University of Baghdad while wearing a spacesuit costume. Image courtesy of Farah Al Fulfulee

Al Fulfulee was ready to launch her career, but Iraq did not have a developed space industry and finding work as a female engineer was a challenge. She accepted a project engineer position with a prominent Iraqi engineering firm in the information technology sector and spent four years working for the company in Iraq, Turkey, and Jordan, but she was disappointed to discover that her role involved very little engineering. “I was the only female on the team,” she said. “It was not common for a woman to work in the field or with customers, so I was always left behind to do office work. The job was not fulfilling.”

Still determined to join NASA, Al Fulfulee kept looking for her chance to come to the United States and finally found one in 2016, when she moved to Oklahoma to be near her sister. A new challenge soon rose: Without a degree from an American school or previous work experience in the United States, engineering opportunities were hard to come by. Al Fulfulee spent the next six years working in quality assurance for a human resources software company while she completed a MicroMasters program in software verification and management from the University of Maryland and honed her English and leadership skills.

Her big break came in 2022, when she landed a job with Boeing Defense, Space, and Security as a software quality engineer. “I was so excited,” she said. “I knew I was much closer to my dream since Boeing worked in the space industry and I would be able to apply internally to work on a space program.”

Farah Al Fulfulee participates in a NASA study that evaluated and compared the use of virtual reality and physical mockups to assess space vehicle and systems designs. Image courtesy of Farah Al Fulfulee

Less than one year later, Al Fulfulee became a system design and analysis engineer for the International Space Station Program and joined the Station Management and Control Team at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. She helps develop requirements, monitors performance, and validates testing for electrical systems and software supporting space station payloads. She also designs hardware, software, and interface specifications for those systems. Al Fulfulee has served as the team’s point of contact, delivering verification assessment and data assessment reports for NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 and Crew-10 missions, as well as the upcoming Axiom Mission 4 flight. She is currently working to support testing and verification for NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11.

“I could not be happier,” she declared.

She is also not stopping. “I won’t quit until I wear the blue suit.”

Farah Al Fulfulee tending to her backyard garden.Image courtesy of Farah Al Fulfulee

Al Fulfulee has been an enthusiastic volunteer for various NASA studies, including the Exploration Atmosphere Studies that tested spacewalk safety protocols in an analog environment. She is pursuing a master’s degree in Space Operations Engineering from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. She is an avid gardener and learning how to grow produce indoors as a volunteer experimental botanist with the Backyard Produce Project, noting that such knowledge might come in handy on Mars.

She is also helping to inspire the next generation. Earlier this year, Al Fulfulee was a guest speaker at the Women in Tech & Business Summit in Iraq – an event designed to encourage Iraqi women to pursue technology careers. “I was the only person representing women in space,” she said. “It was a really moving experience.” Al Fulfulee provided practical advice on breaking barriers in aerospace and shared her story with the crowd.

“I know my path is long and across the continents,” she said, “but I am enjoying my journey.”

Explore More 5 min read Johnson’s Jason Foster Recognized for New Technology Reporting Record Article 1 day ago 4 min read NASA, DoD Practice Abort Scenarios Ahead of Artemis II Moon Mission Article 4 days ago 4 min read Welcome Home, Expedition 72 Crew!  Article 6 days ago

The beads are over 3.3 billion years old, and date from the formation of the "Man in the Moon."

Do you know the names of some of the brightest stars?

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket placed 26 Starlink internet broadband satellites into low Earth orbit, lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on June 16, 2025.

2 min read

Explore Our Dynamic Sun!

from NASA’s Heliophysics Education Activation Team (NASA HEAT) and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific/Night Sky Network

Have you ever wondered about what the Sun is made of? Or why do you get sunburned on even cloudy days? NASA’s new Explore the Sun toolkit brings the wonders of solar science to you, offering answers to these questions and more!

Solar images from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory show different features on the Sun, including sunspots in the visible light spectrum. Filaments and prominences can be seen in hydrogen-alpha, coronal mass ejections in X-ray, and details in ultraviolet light. On the right side of the banner, aurorae observed on Earth by the International Space Station is shown, along with aurorae on other planets as seen by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope. NASA/Astronomical Society of the Pacific

A collaboration between NASA’s Heliophysics Education Activation Team (NASA HEAT) and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific’s Night Sky Network program, this resource was developed for informal educators, amateur astronomers, and astronomy enthusiasts alike, providing engaging activities for anyone eager to learn more about our nearest star.

Whether you’re hosting a solar viewing event or an indoor presentation, the Our Dynamic Sun toolkit provides easy-to-use materials designed to spark curiosity. Each card in the set pairs NASA images with clear explanations for each topic:

• “What color is the Sun?” (hint: it’s not yellow!)
• “How does the Sun affect us here on Earth?”
• “When will the Sun die?”

These cards not only answer common questions the public may have, but also highlight how NASA’s solar research helps us understand space weather, solar storms, and their impacts on our daily lives.

Bring the Sun’s story to your community and inspire the next generation of explorers. You can download this free Our Dynamic Sun toolkit here: https://bit.ly/suntoolkit