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Have you seen something inexplicable in the sky? Jon Kosloski, director of the U.S. Department of Defense’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, wants to hear from you

Too few people get diagnosed and treated for postpartum depression. But a blood test could change that

Aurora chasers are on high alert for geomagnetic storm conditions overnight with northern lights possible at mid-latitudes.

Measles is not a disease to take lightly—but it is also very preventable with vaccines

Ciaran Martin, the former head of cyber security at GCHQ, says the UK government was "naive" to expect a request for Apple to weaken its encryption services to remain secret. He thinks governments must come to terms with the fact that uncrackable encryption is here to stay.

Ciaran Martin, the former head of cyber security at GCHQ, says the UK government was "naive" to expect a request for Apple to weaken its encryption services to remain secret. He thinks governments must come to terms with the fact that uncrackable encryption is here to stay.

As ESA’s Hera planetary defence mission flew past planet Mars it autonomously locked onto dozens of impact craters and other prominent surface features to track them over time, in a full-scale test of the self-driving technology that the spacecraft will employ to navigate around its target asteroids.

Uncorrected errors in science and the unconscionable reluctance to correct them erodes trust in science, throws away taxpayer money, harms the public’s health and can kill innocent people

Researchers have found an environmentally safer way to extract the lithium 6 needed to create fuel for nuclear fusion reactors. The new approach doesn’t require toxic mercury, as conventional methods do

Image: ESA's Atomic Clock Ensemble in Space at NASA's Kennedy Space Center

A riotous photography collection from a recent underwater mission off the coast of Chile shows new and fascinating deep-sea creatures—including a “mystery mollusk,” a bioluminescent jellyfish and a “sea pig”

In the ongoing debate over the benefits and harms of smartphone use in children, initial data from a US survey suggests the devices can actually improve well-being and social connections, but social media use may be more harmful

In the ongoing debate over the benefits and harms of smartphone use in children, initial data from a US survey suggests the devices can actually improve well-being and social connections, but social media use may be more harmful

Breathtaking photos of this month's total lunar eclipse capture a blood red moon and star-studded Milky Way over NOIRLab's Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.

A strange blue spiral lit up the sky over Europe on Monday night (March 24), with residents of the UK and other countries speculating on its true nature on social media.

Experts are already looking into the risks of piracy in space and solutions to this potentially devastating economic and legal problem.

When it comes to safe places for life, supermassive black holes are probably the last place you'd consider safe for nearby planets, let alone life-bearing ones. There are good reasons for this: those monsters at the hearts of galaxies suck down everything that comes into contact with them. When they do that, they blast out killer radiation. Neither activity is necessarily good for life. Or is it? As it turns out, radiation from these active galactic nuclei (AGN) can nurture life under the right circumstances.

There is no sea on Earth large enough to contain the Shark nebula.

Scientists have detected a fascinating spiral galaxy located about one billion light-years away. At the heart of this cosmic goliath, powerful radio jets are blasting out of its centre, stretching six million light years into space. A team of researchers have suggested that a smaller dwarf galaxy plunged into its centre, passing close to its supermassive black hole triggering immense flares, intense radiation and driving the colossal radio jets. Surprisingly however, despite the tremendous amounts of energy, the galaxy has kept its spiral structure.

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3 min read

Sols 4488-4490: Progress Through the Ankle-Breaking Terrain (West of Texoli Butte, Climbing Southward) NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity captured this image showing its robotic arm in action; the view also illustrates bedding on a light-toned bedrock block of the layered sulfate-bearing unit. Curiosity acquired the image using its Right Navigation Camera on March 20, 2025 — sol 4486, or Martian day 4,486 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 15:18:42 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech

Written by Lucy Lim, Planetary Scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Earth planning date: Friday, March 21, 2025

It’s the start of spring here in the Northern Hemisphere on Earth, but in Gale Crater on Mars our rover is still heading into the depths of Martian winter. We’re just a few weeks away from Mars’ aphelion — the time when it’s farthest from the Sun. The Mars-Sun distance varies more significantly than the Earth-Sun distance because of the greater eccentricity of Mars’ orbit, and its effect on the Martian weather is correspondingly more important.

As my colleague mentioned in the previous blog post, the layered sulfate bedrock in this region is broken up into large blocks that often make the driving tough going. The drive in the sol 4486 plan went very well, however, moving Curiosity nearly 35 meters (about 115 feet) southward and upward. Our new workspace is in one of the “light-toned” stripes that can be seen in the orbital imagery and is correspondingly full of light-toned laminated blocks typical of what we’ve seen before in this geologic unit.

For the second plan in a row we were also able to use the rover arm, due to the rover having parked in a stable position — not always a given in this terrain! This enabled us to plan a pair of compositional measurements by the APXS on a bedrock target (“Solstice Canyon”) to assess both the bedrock composition after dust removal and the effect of the ubiquitous dust on the instrument at other locations where the rock cannot be brushed. Our other compositional measurement tool, the LIBS, was also recruited for a co-targeted measurement on Solstice Canyon.

The second LIBS measurement and a MAHLI observation went to the one distinctive, potentially diagenetic, feature visible among all of the light-toned workspace blocks, a small grayish patch that looks like a vein or a coating in the images available at planning (“Black Oak”). The planned observations will give us both the composition and morphology of it in much greater detail.

A long-distance RMI imaging mosaic was planned to investigate some ridges on an as-yet-unnamed butte off to the west. The ridges may be evidence of the same type of diagenetic activity that produced the boxwork structures that are the next major science target for Curiosity. A passive spectral raster was also planned for a potential boxwork region. As we won’t be able to rove to every potential boxwork on Aeolis Mons, longer-distance views such as these can give us a sense of how widespread the boxwork-forming activity may have been.

Mastcam imaging included some follow-up on a hummocky sedimentary feature (“Pino Alto”) and documentation of textures in the nearby local bedrock (“Piedra Blanca”) as well as documentation imagery for the two LIBS targets.

Finally, the modern Martian atmosphere was investigated with measurements by APXS and the ChemCam passive imager to track abundances of argon and oxygen, respectively, as they vary with the Martian seasons. 

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Mar 24, 2025

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