Excerpt from The Boy Who Reached for the Stars: A Memoir by Elio Morillo. Published by HarperOne. Copyright © 2022 HarperCollins.

On September 20, 2017, Category 5 Hurricane María hit my beloved Puerto Rico, hovering over the island for the next 48 hours, uprooting trees, causing power and phone outages, and inflicting catastrophic devastation throughout the land. It was a terrifying stretch of time when those of us with loved ones in the path of this

destruction could only hope and pray they were okay. As we waited to get any type of news, my fix-it mentality kicked in—I needed to do something to channel my helplessness into action. I joined forces with a Puerto Rican who worked in another team at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory to begin collecting donations, so we would be ready to ship them out as soon as it was possible. Relief washed over us both when the worry laden silence was finally broken and we heard from our respective families and friends. More than anything, they had suffered material damage to their homes and surrounding streets, but everyone within our circles was okay otherwise. Rosa and Sonia described the experience as a powered-on jet engine sucking everything up into the air.

As more news was released of the extent of the damage people had suffered, my friend and I continued to organize donation efforts in Los Angeles. It was all we could do at the time. I had to carry my worry while I continued to work. I was assigned to avionics and thermal functions testing. In simple terms, the rover has two brains: its main day-to-day brain and what I call its lizard brain. The lizard brain is always running in the background, ready for fight or flight. It checks to make sure that the main computer, or main brain, is working well. If something goes south with the main brain, then the lizard brain can go through particular states to keep the system at a basic level of safety, putting the rover in a partially autonomous configuration that allows us time to figure out what to input to safely reconfigure its hardware.

The rover’s thermal behaviors are what helps keep it alive overnight, when Mars temperatures can drop to −100°F or lower, depending on the season. There are particular instruments and mechanisms that can only operate within a specific range of temperatures.

If they become too cold, we must be able to heat them up. If they’re too warm, we have to stop using them or actively cool them down to the range we want them to operate in. As we gradually entered an all-hands-on-deck phase ahead of our July 2020 launch date, I knew that if I was going to be an effective and successful member of the team, I needed to make the conscious decision to put my work first, but not before making my all-important pit stop to spend Christmas with my family.

This time we met up in Florida. My grandparents, who didn’t travel often, joined us from New York. And I got to reunite with Sonia and Robert, who were temporarily living in the area while they sorted through Hurricane María’s damage back home. While my abuelo made sure the TV and music were set up and ready for our gathering, my abuela got busy in the kitchen, whipping up her famous casuela or caldo de bola together with extra sides to keep us all fed, full, and happy. My tías and tíos would give them a hand while making fun of each other and roasting my cousins. And a round of Telefunken (a game similar to rummy) was always in order, with bets of up to two dollars per person per round.

The highlight of this break wasn’t just spending quality time with my relatives and chosen family; it was also getting the chance to take my 91-year-old grandfather and my brother to the Kennedy Space Center—a first for the three of us. Walking into the center and suddenly being in the presence of all this antiquated hardware took my breath away. The exhibit featuring the Saturn V launch vehicle made me feel so small. I was mesmerized by how the 1950s team was able to design the stunning hardware displayed before me with the limited technology they had access to in comparison to what we have now. Sure, they had a relatively bigger budget and thousands of people working on one problem, which is not a luxury we enjoy, but they didn’t have our software and automated procedures, and they were doing it all for the first time. As if taking all of this in wasn’t enough, being there as a NASA engineer, walking the entire center by my grandfather’s side, with me as our tour guide, explaining each piece before us, was an unparalleled full-circle moment for me. I stopped several times, glanced at my grandfather, and quietly asked, “Abuelo, are you okay? Would you like us to sit down for a little while to rest?” but he outright refused any break, likely pushed forward by a sense of pride for his walking abilities as well as the sense of wonder that had taken hold of us all as we witnessed this history-making equipment. It was an unequivocal reminder of the legacy I was now helping build with the Mars 2020 mission.

Inspired by the history I had witnessed at the Kennedy Center, and with a renewed sense of purpose, I was more eager than ever to dive even deeper into the mission at stake. February 2018 found me interacting with the Ingenuity helicopter for the first time, more specifically its base station, a component of the helicopter system that would live on the rover. This is the piece of hardware that would communicate with the helicopter on Mars. We were developing the capabilities, the hardware, all of it, to fulfill a technology demonstration to test the first powered flight on Mars, but NASA HQ still hadn’t given the okay to add it to the Mars 2020 mission. So we were operating with the hope this green light would eventually be given, and we kept plowing ahead on the rover side, considering how we’d carry the helicopter, how we’d communicate with it, how we’d operate it from this base station. Initially, many of the people on the integration side of the rover were against the idea of integrating the helicopter as a separate system, because that meant it would also have its own separate battery. What if its battery caught fire while cruising through space or on the Mars surface? How would that damage the rover itself? “There’s no way the helicopter will work” was one line of thought. The other: “There’s no way you’ll be able to get all of this work done in time.” And the third: “This helicopter will be a distraction from the rest of the science the rover has to accomplish.” Was it a risk to do this tremendous amount of work for a helicopter that might never launch? Yes, but it was one some of us were willing to take.

As the summer neared, I set my mind on Puerto Rico and the risks and sacrifices they had been forced to take when Hurricane María hit their shores. The island had far from recovered from the damage sustained a little less than a year earlier, and my colleague (turned girlfriend) and I were still eager to help in any way we could. I decided to use my social media to reach out to teachers in Puerto Rico to see how we could help that summer. I quickly received a reply from a University of Michigan friend whose mom had a colleague, Marisa, in need of some help. With the community’s blessing, she and her husband had decided to take over an abandoned school in Los Naranjos, a neighborhood in Vega Baja, located near Dorado, and turn it into a community center. The local residents had lost so much during the hurricane that she was hell-bent on making a difference. Now they were looking for volunteer to get the center off the ground. My girlfriend and I created a three-day STEM program for kids between the ages of eight and 15, called Ingenieros del Futuro (Engineers of the Future). The activities we planned introduced the kids to basic engineering concepts and revolved around three themes: robotics, electricity, and rockets. I set up a GoFundMe to help pay for some of the materials, while we paid for everything else out of pocket.

When we arrived, seeing the devastation firsthand threw me off my orbit and momentarily pushed me into an impotent void. As I painstakingly drove through intersections where the traffic lights had gone dark due to the lack of power, I slowly took in the trees scattered around the area like giant twigs, displaced rooftops, cut-down electricity cables, and attempted to store this harrowing data in a corner of my mind so I could find my way back to our main focus: the kids. I’d give myself time to process this emotional oscillation later, when I returned home.

We immediately got the kids working and building several projects—a basic robot, an electric car that used a solar panel to power it, a satellite model, and a wind turbine—to illustrate robotics, sustainable energy, and space exploration. We also scheduled outdoor time to give their brains a break and burn some energy playing soccer with us. For the last project of their three-day journey, I taught them how to build a rocket with a two-liter plastic bottle and a few other readily available components. I had also purchased a bottle launch system that pumped up the rockets and had a trigger that allowed each kid to send their own rocket into the air.

Once it reached a certain height, a parachute they had built into their system with their own hands deployed, safely landing their creation. Their excitement during each launch, descent, and landing, about further engaging with technology and pursuing opportunities in STEM, gave me hope for the people of Puerto Rico. The island currently has to import most of its food, despite once being fully reliant on its own agriculture sector. With agritech becoming more accessible, combined with the development of hydroponics, vertical farming, and more, I see this as a potentially booming sector for Puerto Rico in the future. But they will need dedicated STEM workers to make it happen. The same goes for the ever-controversial power grid. As energy storage and solar, hydro, and wind power become more accessible, microgrids will thrive, and so will the jobs related to those renewable systems.

Sinergia Los Naranjos is still active in the community. Marisa successfully launched a kitchen for folks to run catering businesses, and her husband, Ricardo, runs a reef restoration effort where many of the kids participate and get scuba training. Workshops occur in partnership with local student groups from nearby universities, mostly through grassroots funding and efforts. These kids have the power to build a better future, and I hope to continue to be able to come alongside them and encourage these developments through outreach, philanthropy, and policy influence.

By the spring of 2019, I was working with a few team members to test the capability of our rover to charge the helicopter battery through its base station while traversing space. Batteries, including those in computers and cell phones, left uncharged for a long period of time lose their properties and can’t regain their full charging potential.

Similarly, overcharging a battery and leaving it stored for a long period of time will degrade its lifetime. We had to figure out the sweet spot for the helicopter battery, then find how to measure that charge and, based on that, how to charge it from the rover battery.

Once we figured this out through tests and failures and finally verified what worked, we had to come up with the sequence of steps that needed to be taken to charge the helicopter while flying through space. It was a complicated set of tests that took up a lot of our time but was essential to the helicopter’s functionality and safety.

That summer I began to write and execute integration procedures for the helicopter deployment system, which is the assembly at the bottom of the rover that would hold the helicopter and deploy it. The system consisted of a tiny robotic arm with a motor that would keep the helicopter upright so that it could be successfully dropped onto the Martian surface. After testing this capability and gathering the necessary parameters, we determined that we could indeed deploy it on Mars. A short while after this, JPL finally approved the addition of the helicopter to the Mars 2020 mission. We got the green light. Like most times in my life, the risk proved to be worth taking.

Buy The Boy Who Reached for the Stars by Elio Morillo here.

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NASA’s upcoming Psyche mission will send a small probe to a unique metal asteroid—a curious object that may be the exposed heart of a former planet. But to prepare for the 280-million-mile journey, engineers have had to attend to a million little details over the course of years of planning and construction. Working those out took more time than anticipated: NASA delayed Psyche’s launch last year, prompting concerns about the mission’s future and triggering an investigation into what caused the set back. On Monday, NASA announced that Psyche is thriving and on track for a new launch date in October 2023.

“The 2023 launch date is credible, and the probability of mission success is high,” said A. Thomas Young, chair of the independent review board that assessed Psyche’s missteps, at a news conference. NASA Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) Director Laurie Leshin confirmed the fall blast-off: Psyche is “green across the board, and on track for October launch.” Of the 18 weeks to go until launch, seven are buffer time—a pretty impressive margin for such an intense engineering project.

Psyche, announced in 2017, was first delayed in June 2022 when issues with its flight software arose during testing. NASA commissioned the review board soon after, which delivered its findings last fall. The review cited issues across the entire laboratory—understaffing, a lack of experienced managerial oversight, budget strain, and the COVID-19 pandemic—as factors contributing to the mission’s woes. JPL’s reckoning with this review had ripple effects, including the controversial indefinite pause of the VERITAS mission to Venus.

[Related: 5 ways we know DART crushed that asteroid (but not literally)]

Now, in May 2023, the review board has reassessed JPL’s readiness. The Psyche debacle may have raised questions about the ability of JPL to juggle building more than a dozen spacecraft, but NASA officials emphasized the concerns plaguing the center’s operations has been addressed. The progress made at JPL is “not only outstanding, but world-class as determined by our review board,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

JPL’s changes include hiring more experienced staff (including luring back talent that left JPL for commercial spaceflight companies), reorganizing the engineering teams to focus on high-priority work, and updating their hybrid work policy to bring more people back in-person to the lab. “We’ve overcome our workforce issues, our missions are staffed,” said Leshin.

[Related: The asteroid that created Earth’s largest crater may have been way bigger than we thought]

If Psyche leaves Earth as scheduled in the fall, it will arrive at the asteroid 16 Psyche in 2029. The mission will hopefully reveal information about how planets form, and will confirm if 16 Psyche is the leftover metal core of a failed planet as hypothesized. Some companies even see the Psyche mission as a potential first step toward mining asteroids for precious metals, as the space rock contains approximately 10 quintillion dollars worth of materials. 

And things are looking up for other missions, too—especially since JPL recently delivered the NISAR Earth-radar satellite on schedule and is making good progress for next year’s launch of Europa Clipper. The laboratory’s strong progress is a good sign for the hopeful restart of VERITAS, which would be a huge win for planetary scientists and a monumental return to our sister planet.

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The International Space Station received roughly 7,000 pounds of supplies and scientific experiment materials early Tuesday morning following the successful autonomous docking of a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft. According to NASA, the Dragon will remain attached to the ISS for about three weeks before returning back to Earth with research and cargo. In addition to a pair of International Space Station Roll Out Solar Arrays (IROSAs) designed to expand the microgravity complex’s energy-production ability, ISS crew members are receiving materials for a host of new and ongoing experiments.

[Related: Microgravity tomatoes, yogurt bacteria, and plastic eating microbes are headed to the ISS.]

THOR, an aptly named investigation courtesy of the European Space Agency, will observe Earth’s thunderstorms from above the atmosphere to examine and document electrical activity. Researchers plan to specifically analyze the “inception, frequency, and altitude of recently discovered blue discharges,” i.e. lightning occurring within the upper atmosphere. Scientists still know very little about such phenomena’s effects on the planet’s climate and weather, but the upcoming observations could potentially shed more light on the processes.

Meanwhile, researchers are hoping to stretch out telomeres in microgravity via Genes in Space-10, part of an ongoing national contest for students in grades 7 through 12 to develop their own biotech experiments. These genetic structures protect humans’ chromosomes, but generally shorten over time as they age. Observing telomere lengthening in ISS microgravity will give scientists a chance to determine if their size change relates to stem cell proliferation. Results could help NASA and other researchers better understand effects on astronauts’ health during long-term missions, a particularly topical subject given their hopes for upcoming excursions to the moon and Mars.

ISS will also deploy the Educational Space Science and Engineering CubeSat Experiment (ESSENCE), a tiny satellite housing a wide-angle camera capable of monitoring ice and permafrost thawing within the Canadian Arctic. This satellite comes alongside another student collaboration project called Iris, which is meant to observe geological samples’ weathering upon exposure to direct solar and background cosmic radiation.

[Related: The ISS’s latest arrivals: a 3D printer, seeds, and ovarian cow cells.]

Finally, a set of plants that germinated from seeds first produced in space and subsequently traveled to Earth are returning to the ISS as part of Plant Habitat-03. According to NASA, plantlife often adapts to the environmental stresses imposed on them via spaceflight, but it’s still unclear if these changes are genetically passed on to future generations. PH-03 will hopefully help scientists better understand these issues, which could prove critical to food generation during future space missions and exploration efforts.

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After decades of the US government generally avoiding discussion of UFOs, NASA and the Department of Defense have embarked on investigations into mysterious, unexplained sightings, aerial or otherwise: what are now being dubbed unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs. NASA launched a nine-month UAP investigation in October. In the spirit of the space agency’s goal of transparency for that work, on Wednesday it live-streamed a public meeting of its independent UAP study team. The panel concluded it needed quality data, noting the fragmentary nature of what was available to analyze has restricted research into UAPs.  

The subject of UAPs “has captured the attention of the public, the scientific community, and the government alike,” said Daniel Evans, assistant deputy associate administrator for research at NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, at the meeting’s outset. “It’s now our collective responsibility to investigate these occurrences with a rigorous scientific scrutiny that they deserve.” 

The 16-person study group includes planetary scientist David Grinspoon, former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, and science journalist Nadia Drake. It’s chaired by David Spergel, an astrophysicist and president of the nonprofit science organization the Simons Foundation.

[Related: Is the truth out there? Decoding the Pentagon’s latest UFO report.]

The NASA team will write a final report by sometime in July. The study team’s mission is not to render a verdict on the nature of UAPs, Spergel said, but to set the stage for later research. They aim to clarify how NASA can go about scientifically investigating UAPs. To that end, in Wednesday’s meeting, they discussed the current knowledge about UAPs (these are not extraterrestrial), standards of evidence for determining just what they might be, and the difficulty of obtaining high-quality human reports. 

“Our role here is not to resolve the nature of these events, but rather to give NASA guidance to provide a roadmap of how it can contribute to this area,” Spergel said. 

The team has sifted through available UAP data and found that many reports can be pinned down to known sources, such as distant aircraft, sensor artifacts, high altitude balloons, or atmospheric events. When it comes to learning more about the persistently unidentifiable phenomena on record, though, the team found the information lacking. 

“The current data collection efforts regarding UAPs are unsystematic and fragmented across various agencies, often using instruments uncalibrated for scientific data collection,” Spergel said. “Existing data and eyewitness reports alone are insufficient to provide conclusive evidence about the nature and origin of every UAP event.”

[Related: The truth about Area 51 UFO sightings, according to a local expert]

It’s possible that more direct, targeted observations of UAPs could help, using everything from FAA radar installations to sensors on commercial aircraft to government spy installations. But as Sean Kirkpatrick, the director of the Department of Defense’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) told the team, “Most people, including the government, don’t like it when I point our entire collection apparatus to your backyard.”

“We’ve got to figure out how to do this only in the areas that I can get high confidence there’s going to be something there,” Kirkpatrick continued, “and high confidence I’m not going to break any laws.”

While AARO may deal with some classified UAP data, the NASA team is only working with unclassified information so that its report can be made fully public. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the data NASA has to work with is inferior to the Department of Defense’s information—many times, the classification of a UAP sighting has nothing to do with UAPs, according to Nicola Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, and everything to do with what snapped the photo.

“Unidentified anomalous phenomena sightings themselves are not classified. It’s often the sensor platform that is classified,” she said, to prevent foreign adversaries from understanding those sensor’s capabilities. “If a fighter jet took a picture of the Statue of Liberty then that image will be classified, not because of the subject in the picture, but because of the sensors on the plane.”

There are drawbacks for the NASA investigators working in public, however. Although he did not specify exactly what happened, Evans noted that members of study team “have been subjected to online abuse due to their decision to participate on this panel,” adding that “any form of harassment towards our panelists only serves to detract from the scientific process, which requires an environment of respect and openness.”

Harassment of NASA study team members also highlights another problem with seriously studying UAPs, according to Spergel: the stigma associated with reporting a UAP sighting, especially among some professionals. ”Despite NASA’s extensive efforts to reduce the stigma, the origin of the UAPs remain unclear, and we feel many events remain unreported,” he said. “Commercial pilots, for example, are very reluctant to report anomalies, and one of our goals in having NASA play a role is to remove stigma and get high quality data.”

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High altitude balloons have drawn a lot of fire lately. In February, the US military shot down a spy balloon potentially operated by the Chinese government and an “unidentified aerial phenomenon” that was later revealed to likely be a hobbyist balloon.

So, when people caught sight of another large balloon in the southern hemisphere in early May, there was concern it could be another spy device. Instead, it represents the future of astronomy: balloon-borne telescopes that peer deep into space without leaving the stratosphere.

“We’re looking up, not down,” says William Jones, a professor of physics at Princeton University and head of NASA’s Super Pressure Balloon Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT) team. Launched from Wānaka, New Zealand, on April 15, the nearly 10-foot-tall telescope has already circled the southern hemisphere four times on a football stadium-sized balloon made from polyethylene film. Its three onboard cameras also took stunning images of the Tarantula Nebula and Antennae galaxies to rival those of the Hubble Space Telescope. The findings from SuperBIT could help scientists unravel one of the greatest mysteries of the universe: the nature of dark matter, a theoretically invisible material only known from its gravitational effects on visible objects.

[Related: $130,000 could buy you a Michelin-star meal with a view of the stars]

Scientists can use next-level observatories like the James Webb Space Telescope to investigate dark matter, relying on their large mirrors and positions outside Earth’s turbulent atmosphere to obtain pristine views of extremely distant celestial objects. But developing a space telescope and launching it on a powerful rocket is expensive. Lofting Hubble into orbit cost around $1.5 billion, for instance, and sending JWST to Lagrange point 2 cost nearly $10 billion.

SuperBIT took just $5 million to launch—a price cut stemming from the relative cheapness of balloons versus rockets and the lower barrier of entry for skilled workers to build the system.

“The whole thing is run by students. That’s what makes projects such as these so nimble and able to do so much with limited resources,” Jones says, referring to the SuperBIT collaborative between Princeton, the University of Durham in the UK, and the University of Toronto in Canada. “We have no professional engineers or technicians working on this full time—only the grad students have the luxury of being able to devote their full-time attention to the project.”

SuperBIT is not the first telescope carried aloft with a balloon: That honor goes to Stratoscope I, which was built in 1957 by another astronomy group at Princeton. But SuperBIT is one of a handful of new observatories made possible by 20 years of NASA research into so-called super pressure balloons. That work finally culminated in tests flights beginning in 2015 and the groundbreaking launch of SuperBIT.

Traditional balloons contain a lifting gas that expands as the sun heats it and as atmospheric pressure changes with altitude. That changes the volume of the envelope and, in turn, the balloon’s buoyancy, making it impossible to maintain a constant altitude over time.

Superpressure balloons keep the lifting gas, typically helium, pressurized inside a main envelope so that volume and buoyancy remain constant across day and night. The balloon then uses a smaller balloon—a ballonet—inside or beneath the main envelope as a ballast, filling or emptying the pocket of compressed air to change altitude and effectively steer the ship.

The super pressure balloon carrying SuperBIT can maintain an altitude of 108,000 feet (higher than 99.2 percent of Earth’s atmosphere) while carrying the 3,500-pound payload of scientific instruments. Unlike JWST and other missions, the purpose of the SuperBIT telescope isn’t to see farther or wider swaths of the universe or to detect exoplanets. Instead, it’s hunting for signs of a more ubiquitous and enigmatic entity.  

“Dark matter is not made of any of the elements or particles that we are familiar with through everyday observations,” Jones says. That said, there’s a lot of it around us: It might make up about 27 percent of the universe. “We know this through the gravitational influence that it has on the usual matter—stars and gas, and the like—that we can see,” which make up around 5 percent of the universe, Jones explains.

Scientists estimate that the remaining 67 percent of the cosmos is made of dark energy, another largely mysterious material not to be confused with dark matter. Whereas the gravity of dark matter may help pull galaxies together and structure the way they populate the cosmos, dark energy may be responsible for the accelerating expansion of the entire universe.

Researchers probe extreme forces where dark matter might exist and calculate its presence by observing galactic clusters so massive their gravity bends the light that passes by them from more distant objects—a technique known as gravitational lensing. Astronomers can use this approach to turn galaxies into a sort of magnifying lens to see more distant objects than they normally could (something JWST excels at). It can also reveal the mass of the galactic clusters that make up the “lens,” including the amount of dark matter around them.

“After measuring how much dark matter there is, and where it is, we’re trying to figure out what dark matter is,” says Richard Massey, a member of the SuperBIT science team and a professor of physics at Durham University. “We do this by looking at the few special places in the universe where lumps of dark matter happen to be smashing into each other.”

Those places include the two large Antennae galaxies, which are in the process of colliding about 60 million light-years from Earth. Massey and others have studied the Antennae galaxies using Hubble, but it “gives it a field of view too small to see the titanic collisions of dark matter,” Massey says. “So, we had to build SuperBIT.”

Like Hubble, SuperBIT sees light in the visible to ultraviolet range, or 300- to 1,000-nanometer wavelengths. But while Hubble’s widest field of view is less than a tenth of degree, SuperBIT’s field of view is wider at half a degree, allowing it to image wider swaths of the sky at once. That’s despite it having a smaller mirror (half a meter in diameter compared to Hubble’s 1.5 meters).

SuperBIT has another advantage over space telescopes. With less time from development to deployment and without complex accessories needed to protect it from radiation, extreme temperatures, and space debris, the SuperBIT team was able to use far more advanced camera sensors than those on existing space telescopes. Where Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 contains a pair of 8-megapixel sensors, Jones says, SuperBIT contains a 60-megapixel sensor. The balloon-carried telescope is also designed to float down on a parachute after the end of each flight, which means scientists can update the technology regularly from the ground.

“We’re currently communicating with SuperBIT live, 24 hours a day, for the next 100 days,” Massey says. “It has just finished its fourth trip around the world, experiencing the southern lights, turbulence over the Andes, and the quiet cold above the middle of the Pacific Ocean.” The team expects to retrieve the system sometime in late August, likely in southern Argentina, according to Jones.

[Related on PopSci+: Alien-looking balloons might be the next weapon in the fight against wildfires]

SuperBIT may just be the beginning. NASA has already funded the development of a Gigapixel class Balloon Imaging Telescope (GigaBIT), which will sport a mirror as wide as Hubble’s. Not only is it expected to be cheaper than any space telescope sensing the same spectrum of light, GigaBIT would also be “much more powerful than anything likely to be put into space in the near term,” Jones says.

As to whether SuperBIT will crack the mystery of just what dark matter is, it’s too early to tell. After a few flights, the grad students will have to pore over the project’s findings.

“What will the [data] tell us? Who knows! That’s the excitement of it—and also the guilty secret,” Massey says. “After 2,000 years of science, we still have absolutely no idea what the two most common types of stuff in the universe are, or how they behave.”

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On Friday, NASA awarded Blue Origin a contract to provide a lunar lander for the Artemis V moon mission scheduled for 2029—two years after they lost a bid to build similar vehicles for the Artemis III and IV missions.

Blue Origin will lead a consortium that also includes Lockheed Martin and Boeing to design and build the lander, with NASA contributing $3.4 billion in funding. According to The New York Times, Blue Origin’s VP for lunar transportation also confirmed their company would also add “well north” of that number for the project.

[Related: SpaceX’s Starship launch caused a ‘mini earthquake’ and left a giant mess.]

“We are in a golden age of human spaceflight, which is made possible by NASA’s commercial and international partnerships,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said on Friday. “Together, we are making an investment in the infrastructure that will pave the way to land the first astronauts on Mars.”

Now comes the hard part: Blue Origin will soon begin designing, building, and testing a new lander that meets NASA’s mission requirements, such as the ability to dock with Gateway, a planned space station that will transfer crew into lunar orbit. The contract encompasses both an uncrewed moon landing demo, as well as the crewed Artemis V mission on track for 2029.

In 2021, Blue Origin and another company lost out to SpaceX on a contract to supply vehicles for Artemis III and IV, which both aim to put humans back on the moon’s surface for the first time in over half a century. SpaceX turned in a proposal estimated to cost $2.9 billion, while Blue Origin’s was tallied at $6 billion.

[Related: Watch SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket explode.]

Blue Origin then attempted to sue NASA in federal court over the bidding process, claiming their proposal had been unfairly evaluated. A 76-page report subsequently issued by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) laid out all the reasons NASA had every legal right to choose a contract with SpaceX, which cost around half as much as Blue Origin’s $6 billion proposal. NASA’s other concerns included the fact that Blue Origin’s proposal vehicle did not reportedly include proper safeguards for landing in the dark. As Business Insider noted at the time, “The GAO contended that NASA was not required to lay out all minute details, and Blue Origin should take into account the conditions on the moon or space itself—which is dark.”

Jeff Bezos’ company eventually lost the legal fight. “Not the decision we wanted,” Bezos tweeted afterwards, adding that he would respect the court’s judgment while wishing “full success for NASA and SpaceX on the contract.” Two years later, however, it appears Blue Origin has properly revised its proposal process—hopefully including plans for landing in the dark.

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Pilots can experience forces while flying that punish their bodies, and they can also find themselves in disorienting situations. A military pilot in a fighter jet will endure G-forces as they maneuver, resulting in a crushing sensation that causes the blood to drain downwards in their bodies, away from the brain. And someone at the controls of a plane or helicopter, even in more routine flights, can have their senses become discombobulated. One of the causes of the crash that killed Kobe Bryant in 2020 was “spatial disorientation” on the pilot’s part, according to the NTSB. 

Then there’s being launched in a rocket up into space. One astronaut recalled to PopSci that when flying in the space shuttle, the engines shut down, as planned, 8.5 minutes after launch. “It felt like the shuttle stopped, and I went straight through it,” he said. “I got a tremendous tumbling sensation.” Another astronaut noted in a recent NASA press release that he felt like he “was on a merry-go-round as my body hunted for what was up, down, left, and right,” in the shuttle as well.

And of course, anyone down on Earth who has ever experienced vertigo, a sensation of spinning, or nausea, knows that those are miserable, even frightening sensations. 

To better understand all the uncanny effects that being up in the air or in space has on humans, NASA is going to employ a Navy machine called the Kraken, which is also fittingly called the Disorientation Research Device—a supersized contraption that cost $19 million and weighs 245,000 pounds. Pity the poor person who climbs into the Kraken, who could experience three Gs of force and be spun around every which way. NASA notes that the machine, which is located in Ohio, “can spin occupants like laundry churning in a washing machine.” It can hold two people within its tumbling chamber. As tortuous as it sounds, the machine provides a way to study spatial disorientation—a phenomenon that can be deadly or challenging in the air or in space—safely down on dry land. 

[Related: I flew in an F-16 with the Air Force and oh boy did it go poorly]

The NASA plan calls for two dozen members of the military to spend an hour in the Kraken, which will be using “a spaceflight setting” for this study. After doing so, half of them, the space agency says, “will perform prescribed head turns and tilts while wearing video goggles that track their head and eye movements.” The other half will not. All of them will carry out certain exercises afterwards, like balancing on foam. Perhaps, NASA thinks, the head movements can help. “Tests with the Kraken will allow us to rigorously determine what head movements, if any, help astronauts to quickly recover their sense of balance,” Michael Schubert, an expert on vestibular disorders at Johns Hopkins University and the lead researcher on this new study, said in the NASA release on the topic.

The study will also involve civilians who have pre-existing balance challenges (due to having had tumors surgically removed), who thankfully won’t have to endure the Kraken. They will also perform the head movements and carry out the same balance exercises. The goal of all this research is to discover if these head movement techniques work, so that “astronauts could adopt specific protocols to help them quickly adapt to gravitational changes during spaceflight,” NASA says. 

Additionally, the same techniques could help regular people who aren’t going to be launched into space but do struggle with balance or dizziness down on Earth. Watch a video about the Kraken, below. 

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A golden, tissue box-sized satellite has set a new record for the fastest data transfer rate ever achieved by orbital laser light communications—breaking its own previous milestone set less than a year ago. According to a recent announcement from NASA, the agency’s TeraByte InfraRed Delivery (TBIRD) system achieved a 200 gigabit per second (Gbps) space-to-ground optical link speed on April 28 during a six-minute pass high above its corresponding ground station.

Within that time frame, NASA estimates TBIRD can transmit multiple terabytes of test data back to Earth. That’s equivalent to thousands of hours of HD video data. “This capability will change the way we communicate in space,” said Beth Keer, TBIRD’s mission manager at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

[Related: NASA’s newest office is all about putting humans on Mars.]

Since 1958, radio waves have transmitted the majority of all space communications via the Deep Space Network, a global antenna array capable of sending and receiving information for satellites and astronaut crews. As NASA explains, switching to “ultra-high-speed” optical communications crams more data into each lasers’ infrared light waves that are invisible to the naked eye. This alternative—as showcased in TBIRD’s recent record breaking demonstrations—will prove vital to future space research and exploration, particularly as humans look to return to the moon, and eventually attempt to make their way to Mars.

The TBIRD system was first delivered into space last year via NASA’s Pathfinder Technology Demonstrator 3 (PTD-3) as a tiny satellite (also known as a CubeSat) roughly the size of two stacked cereal boxes. CubeSats are popular for both their relative simplicity and cost-effectiveness. After launching aboard SpaceX’s Transporter-5 rideshare mission in May 2022, PTD-3 synchronized with the Earth’s solar orbit so that the CubeSat entered a “fixed” position relative to the sun. Once established, the TBIRD satellite could begin transmitting data twice a day as it passed over its space-to-ground command center link. Within less than a year, its capabilities have broken records twice over.

[Related: This tiny, trailblazing satellite is taking on a big moon mission.]

“Just imagine the power of space science instruments when they can be designed to fully take advantage of the advancements in detector speeds and sensitivities, furthering what artificial intelligence can do with huge amounts of data,” Kerr added. “Laser communications is the missing link that will enable the science discoveries of the future.”

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For more than 22 years, astronauts and cosmonauts have continuously inhabited the International Space Station, making the orbital laboratory the longest flying spacecraft ever. But it’s an achievement that would be impossible if not for an earlier space station, NASA’s Skylab, launched 50 years ago on May 14, 1973. 

Born out of the disappointment and leftovers over the canceled Apollo moon missions, Skylab never captured the public imagination the way the space race had during the decade prior. But the mission was crucial to all human spaceflight that came after, teaching NASA valuable lessons about how to build spacecraft safe for long-term habitation, and how to design missions around the humans that would fly them. 

“Every corner of the ISS has a lesson that’s grounded in Skylab,” says NASA’s Chief Historian Brian Odom. “Skylab is the turning point where humanity says, ‘We’re going to become a species that lives off of Earth for long periods of time.” 

Moonshots and space stations

NASA had always wanted a space station. The plan, according to Odom, was to learn to get off Earth with Project Mercury—in which Alan Shepard became the first American to fly in space—then to rendezvous and dock in orbit with Gemini, and “the next stop from that would be to build a space station,” he says. That space station would be the waypoint from which humans could venture farther out to the moon, and later to Mars. 

But everything changed with President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 speech announcing a race against the Soviet Union to land on the moon.

“Some people talk about Apollo as leapfrogging what was expected, as the natural process or the natural progression in spaceflight,” says Teasel Muir-Harmony, a space historian curator of the Apollo collection at the National Air and Space Museum. “Instead of building a space station, we went right to the moon.”

Immense amounts of money and political capital were spent so Americans got to the moon first. But public support—and congressional funding—began to wane almost immediately after the July 20, 1969, Moon landing. Apollo missions 18, 19 and 20 were canceled by 1971, and the crew of Apollo 17 would be the last humans to touch the moon for decades to come. 

The idea for Skylab originated in 1965, when NASA budgets were plump. The agency decided the program could go forward even after money tightened up, in part because the satellite would use existing Apollo infrastructure. A Saturn V rocket, originally intended to launch the Apollo 12 mission, could place Skylab in orbit. And the space station itself would be constructed out of a rocket’s third stage. 

“It was a really ingenious and practical approach to creating a space station,” Muir-Harmony says. 

[Related: A brief history of space stations before the ISS]

The architecture of Skylab wasn’t the only creative use of materials. During the May 14 launch, Skylab’s micrometeorite shield, which also functioned as a sun shade, was shorn off, leaving the newly orbital space station to roast in the direct sunlight. NASA’s “Mr. Fix It,” Jack Kinzler, officially the chief of the Technical Services Center at Johnson Space Center, used telescoping fishing rods to develop a prototype parasol-like sunshield astronauts could deploy through an airlock on Skylab. They did this in just six days, saving the space station. It was one of the first important lessons of Skylab, according to Odom. 

“It’s one of these remarkable moments that teaches us that you can respond in a crisis” Odom says. 

The lessons of Skylab 

Skylab hosted three crews from 1973 through 1974. The Skylab I crew flew for 28 days, while the Skylab II mission lasted 59 days. 

But Skylab 3, the third and final crew to fly aboard the space station, lasted 84 days, launching on November 16, 1973 and returning to Earth on February 8, 1974. 

This was a huge deal at the time. Later NASA astronauts, such as Scott Kelly and Peggy Whitson, would work for hundreds of days aboard the ISS, but in 1973, no one knew if humans could actually live in space for such a period. The Skylab III crew’s stay was longer “than all of earlier spaceflight combined,” Odom says. 

Skylab affirmatively answered the question of whether humans could endure long-term spaceflight, but it also made clear there were costs. 

“They noticed increased calcium in the urine of the astronauts, tied to bone loss,” Muir-Harmony says, which highlighted the importance of movement while in space. Exercise is now considered a key part of an ISS astronaut’s schedule. 

Skylab also identified small quality-of-life changes that could make orbit more comfortable, such as the cuisine. “The food was generally considered a bit too bland,” Muir-Harmony says. “Your ability to taste is limited by how the fluid in your body blocks your nasal cavity [in microgravity], so it’s important to have more flavorful food in space.” 

And Skylab’s supposedly water-tight microgravity shower, a cylindrical tent-like contraption, will likely be the last shower on a space station, according to Muir-Harmony. “It didn’t work all that well,” she says. “That was an important lesson to learn, that it was better to use wet wipes as opposed to trying to shower in space.” 

Another lasting lesson was that all the clever engineering in the world won’t help you if you don’t pay attention to your crew’s human needs. The Skylab III crew nearly burned out, with barely any time between tasks or to rest, forcing NASA to reassess their work schedule. “You can’t task people with just working themselves full on and then falling asleep, sleeping eight hours, waking up, and immediately going back to work,” Odom says. “They learned those lessons the hard way on Skylab by putting people to some degree through the wringer.”

[Related: 11 of NASA’s most out-of-this-world illustrations]

Skylab’s final teaching might be the most important for anyone operating in space today, particularly as the number of satellites and other spacecraft in low Earth orbit increase. Unlike the ISS, Skylab was not equipped with thrusters. It could not manage its own altitude, because it was assumed that the Space Shuttle would be operational by 1977 and could boost the station higher when necessary. But the development program dragged, and the first shuttle didn’t fly until 1981. With Skylab’s orbit degrading, NASA decided to allow the station to reenter Earth’s atmosphere on July 11, 1979, hoping the station would burn up over the Indian Ocean. Pieces of debris ended up scattered over parts of Western Australia, though no one was hurt. 

The NASA of today would consider such a reentry reckless. It’s a problem, Odom says, if you don’t know exactly where your spacecraft is going to come down. “NASA has definitely learned that lesson from 1979, in a big way.”

Skylab’s enduring legacy

Without regular rides to space, Skylab crews had only what they brought with them. Astronauts flying aboard the ISS today face fewer constraints than Skylab crews did. The ISS recycles most of its water, for instance, and regular cargo resupply missions deliver food to the astronauts there. There are now exercise facilities and more thoughtfully planned out work schedules. 

“Skylab was just a massive step forward from what anyone had experienced before,” Odom says. “Somebody’s got to be the pioneer and put the risk on. And Skylab was all about risk.”

The ISS has hosted astronauts for more than 350 days at a time—a remarkable achievement, and one that would not be possible without Skylab’s experience. 

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At least 83 moons orbit Saturn, and experts believe its most reflective one could harbor life underneath its icy surface. To find out, NASA scientists hope to send a massive serpentine robot to scour Enceladus, both atop its frozen ground—and maybe even within a hidden ocean underneath.

As CBS News highlighted on Monday, researchers and engineers are nearing completion of their Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor (EELS) prototype. The 16-foot-long, 200-pound snakelike bot is capable of traversing both ground and watery environments via “first-of-a-kind rotating propulsion units,” according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. These repeating units could act as tracks, gripping mechanisms, and underwater propellers, depending on the surrounding environment’s need. The “head” of EELS also includes 3D mapping technology alongside real-time video recording and transmission capabilities to document its extraplanetary adventure.

[Related: Saturn’s rings have been slowly heating up its atmosphere.]

In theory, EELS would traverse the surface of Enceladus towards one of the moon’s many “plume vents,” which it could then enter to use as a passageway towards its oceanic source. Over 100 of these vents were discovered at Enceladus’ southern pole by the Cassini space probe during its tenure around Saturn. Scientists have since determined the fissures emitted water vapor into space that contained amino acids, which are considered pivotal in the creation of lifeforms.

To assess its maneuverability, NASA researchers have already taken EELS out for test drives in environments such as an ice skating rink in Pasadena, CA, and even an excursion to Athabasca Glacier in Canada’s Jasper National Park. Should all go as planned, the team hopes to present a finalized concept by fall 2024. But be prepared to wait a while to see it in action on Enceladus—EELS’ journey to the mysterious moon would reportedly take roughly 12 years. Even if it never makes it there, however, the robotic prototype could prove extremely useful closer to Earth, and even on it. According to the Jet Propulsion Lab, EELS could show promise exploring the polar caps of Mars, or even ice sheet crevasses here on Earth.

[Related: Saturn has a slushy core and rings that wiggle.]

Enceladus’ fascinating environment was first unveiled thanks to NASA’s historic Cassini space probe. Launched in 1997, the satellite began transmitting data and images of the planet and its moons back to Earth after arriving following a 7 year voyage. After 13 years of service, a decommissioned Cassini descended towards Saturn, where it was vaporized within the upper atmosphere’s high pressure and temperature. Although NASA could have left Cassini to cruise sans trajectory once its fuel ran out, they opted for the controlled demolition due to the slim possibility of crashing into Enceladus or Titan, which might have disrupted the potential life ecosystems scientists hope to one day discover. 

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NASA officials have talked for years about using the moon as a stepping stone to explore Mars. But now the space agency is finally reorganizing its administration to crystallize that aim in its bureaucratic structure. At the end of March, NASA established the new Moon to Mars Program Office at its Washington, D.C., headquarters. 

This office will unify an array of programs already under way: This includes the goals of NASA’s Artemis Moon mission, such as creating spacesuits for lunar astronauts as well as the Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which successfully flew the uncrewed Artemis I test flight in November. These projects will be more formally linked to developing technologies and operations for future human journeys to Mars. 

“This new office will help ensure that NASA successfully establishes a long-term lunar presence needed to prepare for humanity’s next giant leap to the Red Planet,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement. 

In the 2022 NASA Authorization Act, Congress mandated that NASA create the Moon to Mars Program Office to ensure that each Artemis lunar mission “demonstrates or advances a technology or operational concept that will enable human missions to Mars.” Following the successful Artemis I test flight, NASA aims to launch four astronauts on a lunar flyby mission for Artemis II in late 2024, and return humans to the moon’s surface in 2025 with Artemis III. Subsequent Artemis missions, at a pace of every other year, should allow astronauts to build a lunar habitat on the moon’s South Pole—with plans to stay for a while. 

[Related: NASA finally got comfier spacesuits, but astronauts still have to poop in them]

“We are going to the moon, we are demonstrating and executing a more sustained presence than we did back on Apollo, historically,” Lakiesha Hawkins, deputy manager of the new office, tells Popular Science. “The demonstrations that we’re doing are setting us up so that we can stay for a long duration; we can, in essence, live off the land.”

NASA astronauts will run experiments to obtain water from ice in lunar craters and to melt lunar regolith, or rocky material, to extract oxygen. They’ll also practice operations and procedures as if they are on Mars, with intentionally prolonged delays in communications to Earth and help all but unavailable. On the moon, these explorers will test the reliability of life support and other systems with an eye toward the Red Planet. “The further we go, the less and less we’ll be able to look back to any capabilities of the home planet in order to help us,” Hawkins says. 

At the moment, the Moon to Mars Program Office is still getting set up and hiring for key roles, according to Hawkins, but some changes have already begun. 

[Related: Meet the first 4 astronauts of the ‘Artemis Generation’]

“One of the things that I think is an obvious change is, we used to have three different divisions,” she says, one division for SLS, Orion, and ground systems; another for a planned lunar space station called Gateway, a lunar lander spacecraft, spacesuits, and lunar surface technologies; and then a third division focused on Mars technologies and capabilities. Those are now merged under the Moon to Mars Program Office. Aligning these offices is “going to help set us up for future success,” Hawkins says.

And while the changes so far are largely administrative, Hawkins sees the Congressional mandate as vindication of NASA’s approach to our nearest extraterrestrial neighbors. “We seem to have a clear strategy that has survived and works. It worked its way through now multiple presidential administrations,” she says. “We are no kidding, returning to the moon.” And after that, eventually, on to Mars. 

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On April 19, 2021, a little more than a century after the Wright Brothers’ first test flight on Earth, humans managed to zoom a helicopter around on another planet. The four-pound aircraft, known as Ingenuity, is part of NASA’s Mars2020 exploration program, along with the Perseverance rover.

The dynamic duo made history again this month, as Ingenuity celebrated its landmark 50th flight. The small aircraft was built to fly only five times—as a demonstration of avionics customized for the thin Mars air, not a key part of the science mission—but it has surpassed that goal 10 times over with no signs of slowing down.

[Related: InSight says goodbye with what may be its last wistful image of Mars]

“Ingenuity has changed the way that we think about Mars exploration,” says Håvard Grip, NASA engineer and former chief pilot of Ingenuity. Although the helicopter started as a tech demo, proving that humans could make an aircraft capable of navigating the thin Martian atmosphere, it has become a useful partner to Percy. Ingenuity can zip up to 39 feet into the sky, scout the landscape, and inform the rover’s next moves through the Red Planet’s rocky terrain.

In the past months, Perseverance has been wrapping up its main science mission in Jezero Crater, a dried-up delta that could give astronomers insight on Mars’ possibly watery past and ancient microbial life. Ingenuity has been leap-frogging along with the rover, taking aerial shots of its robotic bestie and getting glimpses into the path ahead. This recon helps scientists determine their priorities for exploration, and helps NASA’s planning team prepare for unexpected hazards and terrain.

Unfortunately, the narrow channels in the delta are causing difficulties for the helicopter’s communications with the rover, forcing them to stay close together for fear of being irreparably separated. Ingenuity also can’t fall behind the rover, because its limited stamina (up to 3-minute-long flights at time) means it might not be able to catch up. Over the past month, the team shepherded the pair through a particularly treacherous stretch of the drive, though, and they’re still going strong—even setting flight speed and frequency records at the same time. Meanwhile, Percy has been investigating some crater walls and funky-colored rocks, of which scientists are trying to figure out the origins.

Ingenuity has certainly proven the value of helicopters in planetary exploration, and each flight adds to the pile of data engineers have at their disposal for planning the next generation of aerial robots. “When we look ahead to potential future missions, helicopters are an inevitable part of the equation,” says Grip.

What exactly comes next for Ingenuity itself, though, is anyone’s guess. “Every sol [Martian day] that Ingenuity survives on Mars is one step further into uncharted territory,” Grip adds. And while the team will certainly feel a loss when the helicopter finally goes out, they’ve already completed their main mission of demonstrating that the avionics can work. All the extra scouting and data collection is a reward for building something so sturdy. 

[Related: Two NASA missions combined forces to analyze a new kind of marsquake]

They’re now continuing to push the craft to its limits, testing out how far they can take this technology. For those at home who want to follow along, the mission actually provides flight previews on Ingenuity’s status updates page. 

“It may all be over tomorrow,” says Grip. “But one thing we’ve learned over the last two years is not to underestimate Ingenuity’s ability to hang on.” 

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In 1989, Chuck Berry and Carl Sagan partied it up at one of the biggest bashes of the summer—a celebration honoring the two Voyager spacecrafts, who were about to make a dramatic exit from our solar system. 

The twin probes, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, launched back in 1977, with only a five-year mission to take a gander at Jupiter and Saturn’s rings and moons, hauling the Golden Record containing messages and cultural snapshots from Earth (including Chuck Berry’s music). 

Obviously, the Voyager spacecrafts have persisted a lot longer than five years: 46 years, to be exact. They’re still careening through space at a distance between 12 and 14 billion miles from Earth. So how have they lasted four decades longer than expected? Much of it has to do with a bit of vintage hardware and a handful of software updates. You can find out more (and when the crafts’ expected death dates) by subscribing to PopSci+ and reading the full story by Tatyana Woodall, and by listening to our new episode of Ask Us Anything. 

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Heads up, everyone: a 600-pound, decommissioned satellite is on track to fall from orbit on Wednesday. While most of it is expected to burn up upon reentry, “some components are expected to survive,” according to NASA. Don’t worry; there’s probably no need to run for shelter, as the agency estimates that the odds for personal harm are around 1 in 2,467.

Per the space agency’s announcement, the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) is expected to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere on April 19 at approximately 9:30 pm EDT, give or take roughly 16 hours. First launched into low-Earth orbit in 2002, RHESSI was tasked with observing solar flares and coronal mass ejections through X-rays and gamma rays emitted by the sun. The data collected by RHESSI helped scientists better understand the events’ physics, as well as how they are created. According to NASA, such flares routinely emit the energy equivalent of billions of megatons of TNT “within minutes.” Here on Earth, these blasts frequently disrupt electrical grids and systems across the globe.

“RHESSI even made discoveries not related to flares, such as improving measurements of the Sun’s shape, and showing that terrestrial gamma-ray flashes—bursts of gamma rays emitted from high in Earth’s atmosphere over lightning storms—are more common than previously thought,” NASA writes in their announcement.

[Related: The FCC is finally pulling the reins on space junk.]

During its 16-year-long tenure above earth, RHESSI recorded over 100,000 X-ray events, but was finally decommissioned in 2018 following increasing communications difficulties. For the past five years, RHESSI has quietly orbited Earth alongside an estimated 30,000 fellow pieces of debris. As Space.com also pointed out on Monday, its impending atmospheric reentry once again highlights the growing issue of space junk above everyone’s heads. While RHESSI’s return is planned and closely monitored, the larger problem has attracted increasing attention, particularly following the undirected reentry of a 23-ton portion of Chinese rocket detritus in 2021. That same year, an unannounced Russian military exercise sent shards of an exploded satellite hurtling towards the International Space Station. The ISS crew was briefly forced to lockdown, although neither they nor the space station was injured.

There are currently a number of suggestions for decluttering the crowded skies, including shooting nets to drag debris back towards Earth, and using tiny, clawed satellite robots to help clean up the mess. Last week, the Federal Communications Commission officially launched its Space Bureau tasked with a variety of responsibilities, including handling orbital trash. In a statement, the new bureau’s director, Julie Kearney, explained, “The first thing we’re really focused on, of course, is modernizing regulations to match our new realities and supporting tech innovation,” while also “simultaneously focusing on space, orbital debris and space safety.”

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Since 1995 scientists have found more than 5,000 exoplanets—other worlds beyond our solar system. But while space researchers have gotten very good at discovering big planets, smaller ones have evaded detection.

However, a novel astronomy detection technique known as microlensing is starting to fill in the gaps. Experts who are a part of the Korea Microlensing Telescope Network (KMTNet) recently used this method to locate three new exoplanets about the same sizes as Jupiter and Saturn. They announced these findings in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics on April 11. 

How does microlensing work?

Most exoplanets have been found through the transit method. This is when scientists use observatories like the Kepler Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope to look at dips in the amount of light coming from a star. 

Meanwhile, gravitational microlensing (usually just called microlensing) involves searching for increases in brightness in deep space. These brilliant flashes are from a planet and its star bending the light of a more distant star, magnifying it according to Einstein’s rules for relativity. You may have heard of gravitational lensing for galaxies, which pretty much relies on the same physics, but on a much bigger scale.

The new discoveries were particularly unique because they were found in partial data, where astronomers only observed half the event.

“Microlensing events are sort of like supernovae in that we only get one chance to observe them,” says Samson Johnson, an astronomer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab who was not affiliated with the study. 

Because astronomers only have one chance and don’t always know when events will happen, they sometimes miss parts of the show. “This is sort of like making a cake with only half of the recipe,” adds Johnson.

[Related: Sorry, Star Trek fans, the real planet Vulcan doesn’t exist]

The three new planets have long serial-number-like strings of letters and numbers for names: KMT-2021-BLG-2010Lb, KMT-2022-BLG-0371Lb, and KMT-2022-BLG-1013Lb. Each of these worlds revolves around a different star. They weigh as much as Jupiter, Saturn, and a little less than Saturn, respectively. 

Even though the researchers only observed part of the microlensing events for each of these planets, they were able to rule out other scenarios that could confidently explain the signals. This work “does show that even with incomplete data, we can learn interesting things about these planets,” says Scott Gaudi, an Ohio State University astronomer who was not involved in the published paper.

The exoplanet search continues

Microlensing is “highly complementary” to other exoplanet-hunting techniques, says Jennifer Yee, a co-author of the new study and researcher at The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. It can scope out planets that current technologies can’t, including worlds as small as Jupiter’s moon Ganymede or even a few times the mass of Earth’s moon, according to Gaudi.

The strength of microlensing is that “it’s a demographics machine, so you can detect lots of planets,” says Gaudi. This ability to detect planets of all sizes is crucial for astronomers as they complete their sweeping exoplanet census to determine the most common type of planet and the uniqueness of our own solar system. 

Astronomers are honing their microlensing skills with new exoplanet discoveries like those from KTMNet, ensuring that they know how to handle this kind of data before new space telescopes come online in the next few years. For example, microlensing will be a large part of the Roman Space Telescope’s planned mission when it launches mid-decade. 

“We’ll increase the number of planets we know by several thousand with Roman, maybe even more,” says Gaudi. “We went from Kepler being the star of the show to TESS [NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite] being the star of the show … For its time period, Roman [and microlensing] will be the star of the show.”

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PLANTS ARE CRUCIAL to human survival, even when there’s no sunlight. But dealing with darkness is second nature for someone with a green thumb like Howard Levine, chief scientist for NASA’s International Space Station (ISS) Research Office. Nurturing leaves outside Earth’s atmosphere is not only important for cycling nutrients and water during future space voyages, but also helps alleviate the cooped-up feeling astronauts experience. “On the ISS, you’re up there for six months at a time. People often say it’s like being in the bathroom with six of your best friends,” says Levine, who has been growing plants in orbit for decades.  

Space might be an extreme example, but cramped, dark dwellings exist on the ground too. Keeping your houseplants alive in windowless rooms, in shadowy corners, or during short winter days can be a challenge. Luckily, there are strategies to help your flora stay lush and verdant, even when their sunny source of energy is limited. 

Mini indoor greenhouses

Darkness usually means a dip in natural heat. Colder temperatures slow our bodies down, and that’s true for plants too. The chemical reactions that control their growth decelerate and sometimes stop.  

In Iceland, horticulturist James McDaniel uses geothermal heat in his greenhouses to protect his plants from the wintry cold. Each of the structures has holes beneath that stretch deep to a pocket of steaming-hot water, he explains. “You can funnel that [steam] into the pipes through the greenhouse and use natural ventilation to keep the temperature a set range.” 

But you don’t need volcanic energy to run a mini indoor greenhouse, which can be as simple as a repurposed IKEA cabinet. A heater can add warmth, although you might want to pair it with a humidifier to keep from drying your houseplants out. For individual plants, glass dome cloches can trap heat from limited sunlight and also enclose water vapors, which protect plants from the crisp air conditioner in the summer and the prickly heater in the winter. 

Grow lights

Plant grow lights provide an easy and accessible energy boost in dim or pitch-black spaces. These specialized beams sport different features, colors, and prices. LEDs, for instance, are the cheapest and most energy-efficient option, using about a third of the electricity of old sodium lightbulbs.

While most devices stick to a warm white spectrum, plants respond differently to various illuminating hues. In Levine’s experiments on Earth, red light worked well for the slender flowering plants Arabidopsis. But in the ISS’s weightless environment, they stretched into funny shapes until he started adding blue lights. He eventually found a middle ground and doused the plants in green light at the request of astronauts who missed the familiar color.  

Bright surfaces

If electricity is a limiting factor, you can try to reflect light with mirrors or aluminum foil. Even brightening up your space with white decor, like a light-colored tablecloth, will cast a little glow onto your plants. While it’s not comparable to using a grow lamp or the sun (reflections don’t deliver as much energy), it could offer plants an extra boost. 

The makeup of your indoor garden will dictate how much brightness you need to add, Levine explains. Some flora, including lettuce and tomatoes, need more light than those like Arabidopsis; new seedlings need less light than fully grown plants. As you choose your seeds and seedlings, research their native ranges to learn how much sunshine they’d naturally get.

Plants are ultimately adaptable. They can stretch their stems toward available light sources or produce extra chlorophyll, the pigment that absorbs whatever luminescence is available. “Even though they may not be getting all the light that they would like for optimum growth, they’ll still grow,” says Levine. With only a little extra help, you and your plants can conquer the darkness. 

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It’s time for JUICE to get to work. The European Space Agency’s JUpiter ICy moons Explorer blasted off on an Ariane 5 rocket yesterday to begin its eight-year journey to the Jovian system to study Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, three of the largest moons in the entire solar system.

Together with NASA’s Europa Clipper, which will launch in October 2024 but arrive at its destination a year earlier than JUICE, the missions will get the first close-ups of Jupiter’s icy moons since NASA’s Galileo probe visited the gas giant from 1995 and 2003.

“We learned about Europa having a subsurface ocean as a result of the Galileo mission,” says Emily Martin, a research geologist in the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the Smithsonian’s National Air And Space Museum. The Galileo finding ignited interest in so-called  “ocean worlds” that have liquid water under their thick surface ice and might be the best place to look for alien life in our solar system. Ganymede and Callisto are likely ocean worlds too.

[Related: Astronomers find 12 more moons orbiting Jupiter]

While Galileo captured some images of the lesser-known siblings, it couldn’t analyze their surfaces as well as originally plannedspacecraft was hamstrung from the beginning, when its high-gain antenna, necessary for sending back large amounts of data, failed to fully deploy. Consequently, when JUICE arrives at Jupiter in 2031, it will begin providing the first truly high-resolution studies of Ganymede and Callisto, and add to the data on Europa collected by the Europa Clipper. JUICE will use its laser altimeter to build detailed topographic maps of all three moons and use measurements of their magnetic and gravitational fields, along with radar, to probe their internal structures.

“Galileo did the reconnaissance,” Martin says, “and now JUICE gets to go back and really dig deep.”

Is there water on Jupiter’s moons?

If people know one Jovian moon, it’s likely Europa: The icy moon’s subsurface ocean has been the focus of science fiction books and movies. But Martin is particularly excited about what JUICE might find at Callisto. Jupiter’s second largest moon, it orbits farther out than Europa or Ganymede. It appears to be geologically inactive and may not be differentiated, meaning Callisto’s insides haven’t separated into the crust-mantle-core layers seen in other planets and moons.

Despite the low-key profile, data from the Galileo mission suggests Callisto could contain a liquid ocean like Europa and Ganymede. Understanding just how that could be possible, and getting a look at what Callisto’s interior really looks like, could help space researchers better understand how all of Jupiter’s moons evolved.

“In some ways, Callisto is a proto-Ganymede,” Martin says.

What comes after Mars?

It’s not just Callisto’s interior that is interesting, according to Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science. It’s the only large moon that orbits outside the belts of intense radiation trapped in Jupiter’s colossal magnetic field—radiation that can fry spacecraft electrics and human explorers alike. “If humanity is to build a base on one of the Jupiter moons, Callisto would be by far the first choice,” Sheppard says. “It could be the gateway moon to the outer solar system.”      

JUICE will fly by Europa, then Callisto, and then enter orbit around Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system. With a diameter of around 3,270 miles, it’s larger than the planet Mercury, which comes in at 2,578 miles in diameter.

Geoffrey Collins, a professor of geology, physics and astronomy at Wheaton College, says he’s most excited about the Ganymede leg of the mission. “It will be the first time we’ve orbited a world like this, and I know we will be surprised by what we find.” 

If Ganymede hosts a liquid water ocean beneath its frozen shell how deep its crust is, and whether its suspected subsurface ocean is one vast cistern or consists of liquid layered with an icy or rocky mantle. JUICE will be the first mission to give scientists some real answers about to those questions.

“Even if JUICE just lets us reach a level of understanding of Ganymede like we had for Mars 20 or 30 years ago, it would be a massive leap forward from what we know now,” Collins says. “This will be the kind of thing that rewrites textbooks.”

[Related: A mysterious magma ocean could fuel our solar system’s most volcanic world]

Any clues that JUICE gathers from Ganymede and Callisto could apply to more than just Jupiter and its icy moons. They can tell us more about what to expect when we look further out from our own solar system, according to Martin.

“It contextualizes different kinds of ocean world systems and that has even broader implications to exoplanet systems,” she says. “The more we can understand the differences and the similarities between the ocean world systems that we have here in our solar system, the more prepared we’re going to be for understanding the planetary systems that we’re continuing to discover in other solar systems.”

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Few places in the solar system get hotter than the surface of the sun. But contrary to expectations, the tenuous tendrils of plasma in the outermost layer of its atmosphere—known as the corona—are way more searing than its surface.

“It is very confusing why the solar corona is farther away from the sun’s core, but is so much hotter,” says University of California, Berkeley space sciences researcher Jia Huang. 

The solar surface lingers around 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, while the thin corona can get as hot as 2 million degrees. This conundrum is known as the coronal heating problem, and astronomers have been working on solving it since the mid-1800s.

“Simply speaking, solving this problem could help us understand our sun better,” says Huang. A better understanding of solar physics is also “crucial for predicting space weather to protect humans,” he adds. Plus, the sun is the only star we can send probes to—the others are simply too far away. “Thus, knowing our sun could help understand other stars in the universe.”

A brief history of the coronal heating problem

During the 1869 total solar eclipse—an alignment of the sun, moon, and Earth that blocks out the bulk of the sun’s light—scientists were able to observe the faint corona. Their observations revealed a feature in the corona that they took as evidence of presence of a new element: coronium. Improved theories of quantum mechanics over 60 years later revealed the “new element” to be plain old iron, but heated to a temperature that was higher than the sun’s surface.

[Related: We still don’t really know what’s inside the sun—but that could change very soon]

This new explanation for the puzzling 1869 measurement was the first evidence of the corona’s extreme temperature, and kicked off decades of study to understand just how the plasma got so hot. Another way of phrasing this question is, where is the energy in the corona coming from, and how is it getting there? 

“We know for sure that this problem hasn’t yet been resolved, though we have many theories, and the whole [astronomy] community is still enthusiastically working on it,” says Huang. There are currently two main hypotheses for how energy from the sun heats the corona: the motion of waves and an explosive phenomenon called nanoflares.

Theory 1: Alfvén waves

The surface of the sun roils and bubbles like a pot of boiling water. As the plasma convects—with hotter material rising and cooler material sinking down—it generates the sun’s immense magnetic field. This magnetic field can move and wiggle in a specific kind of wave, known as Alfvén waves, which then push around protons and electrons above the sun’s surface. Alfvén waves are a known phenomenon—plasma physicists have even seen them in experiments on Earth. Astronomers think the charged particles stirred up by the phenomenon might carry energy into the corona, heating it up to shocking temperatures.

Theory 2: Nanoflares

The other possible explanation is a bit more dramatic, and is kind of like the sun snapping a giant rubber-band. As the sun’s plasma tumbles and circulates in its upper layer, it twists the star’s magnetic field lines into knotted, messy shapes. Eventually, the lines can’t take that stress anymore; once they’ve been twisted too far, they snap in an explosive event called magnetic reconnection. This sends charged particles flying around and heats them up, a happening referred to as a nanoflare, carrying energy to the corona. Astronomers have observed a few examples of nanoflares with modern space telescopes and satellites.

The coronal heating mystery continues

As is usually the case with nature, it seems that the sun isn’t simply launching Alfvén waves or creating nanoflares—it’s more than likely doing both. Astronomers just don’t know how often either of these events happen.

[Related: Hold onto your satellites: The sun is about to get a lot stormier]

But they might get some straightforward answers soon. The Parker Solar Probe, launched in 2018, is on a mission to touch the sun, dipping closer to our star than ever before. It’s currently flying through some outer parts of the corona, providing the first up-close look at the movements of particles that may be responsible for the extreme temperatures. The mission has already passed through the solar atmosphere once, and will keep swinging around for a few more years—providing key information to help scientists settle the coronal heating problem once and for all.

“I would be very confident that we could make big progress in the upcoming decade,” says Huang.

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Update (April 14, 2023): After rescheduling the launch from April 13 to April 14 due to weather conditions, the European Space Agency successfully launched JUICE at 8:14 a.m. EDT and received its first transmission from the spacecraft around 10:30 a.m.

Space enthusiasts will get to have some JUICE for breakfast on Friday morning. The European Space Agency (ESA) is set to launch the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer mission (JUICE) on April 14 from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana at 9:14 a.m. local time (8:14 a.m. EDT). Curious viewers can watch the live broadcast beginning at 7:45 a.m. EDT on the ESA’s webpage.

The spacecraft is safe inside its Ariane 5 rocket, the same rocket that launched the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in December 2021. JUICE is Europe’s first-ever mission to the Jupiter system, and the spacecraft should be in our solar system’s largest planet’s orbit by July 2031.

[Related: Astronomers find 12 more moons orbiting Jupiter.]

According to the ESA, If the mission is delayed, the team can try again to launch JUICE once each day for the rest of April. If the spacecraft fails to launch this month, the next available slot is August 2023.

Once JUICE is launched, it will deploy its antennas, solar arrays, and other instruments. The explorer has two monitoring cameras that will capture parts of the solar array deployment following launch, according to the ESA. The 52 feet-long radar antenna will deploy a few days later. 

Over the eight years that it will take to reach Jupiter, the spacecraft will conduct three Earth flybys and one flyby of Venus. The flybys will give JUICE the spacecraft the necessary gravity assists so it can launch itself towards Jupiter, around 559 million miles away from Earth.

After it reaches Jupiter’s orbit in July 2031, JUICE will make detailed observations of Jupiter and three of its biggest moons, Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa. In 2034, JUICE is slated to go into orbit around Ganymede and will become the first human spacecraft to enter orbit around another planet’s moon. Ganymede is also the only moon in the solar system that has its own magnetic field. JUICE will study how this field interacts with the even larger magnetic field on Jupiter.

[Related: Dark matter, Jupiter’s moons, and more: What to expect from space exploration in 2023.]

NASA will provide the Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) and subsystems and components for two additional JUICE instruments: the Particle Environment Package (PEP) and the Radar for Icy Moon Exploration (RIME) experiment. 

Studying Jupiter and its moons more closely will help astrobiologists understand how habitable worlds might emerge around gas giant planets, according to NASA. Jupiter’s moons are primary targets for astrobiology research, since moons like Europa are thought to have oceans of liquid water beneath their icy surfaces. Astrobiologists believe that these oceans could possibly be habitable for life.

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On Earth, we’ve decided that some places are worth saving. Whether it’s the pyramids of Giza or the battlefield lands at Gettsyburg, sites that epitomize our cultural heritage are safeguarded by legal frameworks. 

But human history extends beyond our planet. In 1969, astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first human to walk on the moon and left behind that first footprint. Some view it as comparable to any archeological site on Earth—without the same protections. Undisturbed, the footprint could last for a million years. But a revived interest in the moon means the lunar surface is about to be busier than ever. No law specifically defends the footprint or sites like it from being run over by a lunar rover or astronauts on a joyride. 

“Just in this year alone, we have four or five missions planned,” says Michelle Hanlon, a space lawyer and co-founder of the nonprofit For All Moonkind. “Not just from nations, but from private companies.” While some upcoming lunar expeditions will be flybys, others will actually land on the moon. 

In some ways, it’s a race against the clock—and Hanlon is making moves. On March 27, while attending a meeting of the legal subcommittee of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), she announced the creation of the For All Moonkind Institute on Space Law and Ethics. This new nonprofit organization will go beyond advocating for protecting off-world heritage sites and contemplate the ethics around some activities in space that are not fully covered in existing international law.  

There is some precedent to lunar law. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 governs activities in outer space and sets important boundaries: Anything but peaceful use of the moon is prohibited, and nations are not allowed to claim territory on the satellite or any celestial body.

The Outer Space treaty is also quite vague, according to Christopher Johnson, a space lawyer with the Secure World Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to space sustainability. You can use resources in space but not appropriate them. In addition, you must give other nations and companies “due regard” and avoid “harmful contamination” of the extraterrestrial environment. 

However, these general principles have never been applied to solving practical problems. “We are realizing that we just have a couple of broad dictums,” Johnson says. “You know, be nice to your neighbor, observe the golden rule, show people a little bit of respect.”

[Related: Say hello to the Commerce Department’s new space traffic-cop program]

Because these rules have not really been tested, Johnson says we can’t be sure people will follow them. The experiment is about to begin: India and Russia plan to launch their unscrewed Chandrayaan 3 and Luna 25 missions to the lunar surface this summer, for instance, while Japanese company iSpace hopes to place a lander on the lunar surface in late April. SpaceX aims to ferry a billionaire customer around the moon in a Starship vehicle by year’s end.

It was with an eye on increasing human activity on and around the moon that Hanlon co-founded For All Moonkind in 2017, an all-volunteer organization dedicated to lobbying for legal protections for areas of cultural heritage on the moon and elsewhere in space. That includes the Apollo program landing sites and the lunar landers left behind by the Soviet Union. These protections could eventually extend to natural wonders like Olympus Mons, the largest volcano on Mars and in the solar system.

Together with For All Moonkind, the Secure World Foundation produced a Lunar Policy Handbook, which they distributed at the United Nations in Vienna during the For All Moonkind Institute announcement at the end of March. Both For All Moonkind and the Secure World Foundation are official observer organizations at COPUOS and are allowed to sit in on meetings. 

The new institute and the handbook represent a modern interest among policymakers, space lawyers, and private companies to create clearer rules of the road for how humans will actually behave on the moon when there are multiple parties present around the same time. These are issues Johnson says policymakers need to be wary of and that they should think through the precedents that could be set by actions that are not necessarily against international law but might not be a good idea.

“This is why we created the Institute on Space Law and Ethics because there are people who want to know what it means to be responsible,” Hanlon says. “The problem is we don’t have a blueprint for that.”

Johnson points to the 2019 crash landing of the Israeli Beresheet lunar lander as an example, where unknown to the other parties of the mission, the nonprofit Arch Mission Foundation had included freeze-dried tardigrades, also known as water bears, in the payload. Tardigrades are hardy and known to be able to survive in the vacuum of space, so their spilling onto the lunar surface could present a form of biological contamination, although some follow-up research suggests the microscopic creatures did not survive the violent impact. 

“Smuggling tardigrades to the moon doesn’t seem to clearly violate any international law that I can point to,” Johnson says. “The ethical component steps in to fill a gap about the law to say, ‘Well, is it a good idea?’” 

[Related: Want to learn about something in space? Crash into it.]

Protecting cultural heritage sites like the Apollo landing sites, on the other hand, could actually be interpreted as violating the probation on claiming territory in space, according to Hanlon. That’s why For All Mankind is involved in discussions around the ethics of lunar activity generally, she says.  The hope is that—if the world’s nations can agree that there’s significant, shared cultural heritage on the moon—the aftereffect could be better relations between major players in the current space race. 

“The ultimate goal is a new treaty, not an amendment to the Outer Space Treaty, that recognizes cultural heritage beyond Earth,” Hanlon explains. “It’s going to be a long time, especially now with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, for us to all agree on something here at the UN. But we think it can start with that heritage, that kinship that way.”

Or as US President Lyndon Johnson put it when signing the Outer Space Treaty, we “will meet someday on the surface of the moon as brothers and not as warriors.”

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After more than 50 years, NASA is going back to the moon. If all goes as planned, the Artemis III mission will see two astronauts stepping foot on the lunar surface sometime in 2025. Subsequent Artemis missions involving the construction of a lunar space station and a permanent base on the lunar south pole could follow every one to two years, funding permitting.

But before the 21st-century moon landing, NASA wants to ensure its astronauts’ ride, the Orion spacecraft, is up to the task. The successful, uncrewed Artemis I put the new Orion space capsule and Space Launch System (SLS) rocket’s propulsion and navigation systems to the test. The recently announced crew of four astronauts for Artemis II, scheduled for November 2024, will take the next leap by giving Orion a full shakedown of its manual flight and life support systems.

“We’ll be the first humans to fly on the spacecraft,” says Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman. “We need to make sure our vehicle can keep us alive when we go into deep space.”

That makes the Artemis II mission unique, in that its primary focus is not exploration nor science experiments, but technical preparation for the astronauts on subsequent Artemis exploits. “Our focus is on what we can do to enable our co-workers to operate in the lunar environment, whether it’s on the Gateway outpost [a space station NASA plans to build in lunar orbit beginning in 2024] or the lunar surface,” Wiseman says.

To achieve that goal, Wiseman and his crewmates, NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Victor Glover, as well as Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, will kick off their 10-day flight with a series of highly elliptical orbits around the Earth. These rounds are designed to give them about 24 hours to test out their spacecraft and allow for an easy mission abort path to return home if any problems arise.

“That first 24 hours is really going to be intense. Looking at the crew timeline, you can barely fit everything in,” Wisemans says of all the spacecraft testing his team will conduct. “And then when we get finished with all of that, our reward is translunar injection,” the engine firing maneuver that will set the spacecraft on a course out of Earth’s orbit and toward the moon.

[Related: NASA’s uncrewed Orion spacecraft will get a hand from a Star Trek-inspired comms system]

About 40 minutes after launching from the Kennedy Space Center, the upper stage of the SLS rocket known as the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) will boost Orion into an ellipse that will carry the crew about 1,800 miles above the Earth at its highest point, and about 115 miles at its lowest.

After initial checks during that roughly 90-minute first orbit, the ICPS will fire again to boost the spacecraft into a much higher ellipse around the planet, this time reaching as high as 46,000 miles above it—far outstripping the 250-mile altitude where the International Space Station usually flies. This second orbit will take nearly 24 hours and is where the crew will do the most serious assessments on Orion’s systems.

“We’re gonna try to test out every manual capability that we have on Orion: manual maneuvering, manual targeting, manual communications set up,” Wiseman says. In effect, they’ll be simulating what it takes to prepare the capsule for a lunar landing—but in the Earth’s orbit, not the moon’s.

A crucial part of the testing will involve what NASA calls a ”proximity operations demonstration.” Orion and the European-built service module, which carries life support, power, and propulsion systems, will detach from the ICPS as the crew practices manual maneuvering to align their spacecraft with the discarded upper stage of the rocket. While they will not actually dock with the ICPS, they will run the systems that future Artemis crews need to dock with a lunar lander or the Lunar Gateway before journeying to the moon’s surface.  

Next, the crew will conduct support and communications checks to ensure the Orion spacecraft is ready to head into deep space. If given the go-ahead by mission control, they will use the Orion spacecraft’s main engines to conduct a translunar injection burn designed to carry the spacecraft on a looping path around the moon, reaching a peak distance of about 230,000 miles from Earth. It will take about four days just to travel to and from the moon.

Artemis II stands out from the other missions in its series in that the Orion main engine will carry out the translunar injection burn, rather than the ICPS, which will have used up its fuel boosting the capsule into the high elliptical orbit around the Earth for testing. And because Artemis II will not involve landing on the moon, the crew doesn’t have to perform an orbital insertion burn, and will instead simply loop around the moon, ultimately passing around the far side of the satellite at about 6,400 miles altitude, relying on Earth’s gravity to pull the spacecraft home without the need for another engine burn.      

The crew will have plenty of other tests during the long lunar tour to keep them occupied, according to Wiseman. While the exact science packages for the mission have yet to be announced, the astronauts’ bodies will serve as mini laboratories over the course of the flight—and after.

[Related: Artemis I’s solar panels harvested a lot more energy than expected]

“As a human explorer, there’s going to be a load of science on us, like radiation and how we handle the deep space environment,” Wiseman says. “We know a lot about humans operating in space on the International Space Station; we don’t know as much about humans operating in deep space.”

The crew leader says he is honored to be commanding Artemis II, even if that means he may not fly on Artemis III or subsequent missions. “Personally, what I really want to do is I want to go fly Artemis II, I want to come back, and I want to help my crewmates train for their missions,” he explains. “Then I want to be the largest voice in the crowd cheering for them when they get assigned to Artemis III or IV.”

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Astronomers recently detected an explosion so large they dubbed it the BOAT—the brightest of all time. This explosion—known now as GRB 221009A—was a gamma-ray burst (GRB), a flash of extremely high-energy light that resulted from the death of a colossal star.

This detonation is the brightest burst at X-ray and gamma-ray energies since human civilization began. It is 70 times brighter than any observed before. Papers describing this result and others related to the burst were published in a focus issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters in March.

“A burst this bright arrives at Earth only once every 10,000 years,” says Eric Burns, a Louisiana State assistant professor and astronomer involved in the detection. 

[Related: Black hole collisions could possibly send waves cresting through space-time]

So-called long GRBs—gamma-ray bursts that last longer than two seconds—materialize when a massive star runs out of fuel and collapses into a black hole. This catastrophic collapse causes powerful jets of material to stream out, collide with gas around the former star, and produce high-energy gamma rays. We can see this explosion from Earth if the jet is pointed directly at our planet. 

Astronomers are constantly monitoring the sky for GRBs and other bright, short-lived bursts of light—and that’s how they found the BOAT. The research team that works with NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, is notified each time a certain camera, known as the Burst Alert Telescope (BAT), spots a new GRB.

“This one was bright enough to trigger BAT twice,” says Maia Williams, a Penn State astronomer and lead author of one of the GRB 221009A papers. 

The initial detection of the burst was based on data gathered from the Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope onboard SWIFT and NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. After “it was seen by instruments on more than two dozen satellites,” explains Burns. These include the NICER x-ray telescope on the International Space Station, NASA’s NuSTAR x-ray telescope, NASA’s new Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) satellite, and even one of the Voyager spacecraft.

With this vast trove of information on the BOAT, astronomers realized it was a “more-complicated-than-usual GRB,” says Huei Sears, a Northwestern University astronomer and graduate student not involved in the discovery.

Why was the BOAT so bright? First, it’s nearby (in cosmic terms, about 1.9 billion light-years away), which adds to its extreme shine—just like a light bulb appears brighter to your eyes closer up than across a room. But its brightness isn’t just a quirk of its proximity. It’s also “intrinsically the most energetic burst ever seen,” says Burns. 

Astronomers suspect the jets blasted out of the black hole that created the BOAT were narrower  than usual. Imagine the jet setting on a garden hose—and by lucky coincidence this particular hose was aimed directly at Earth. However, why these jets behaved like this is not understood. 

“Scientifically, the BOAT has proven most of our existing models for these events to be incomplete,” says Burns.

[Related: Astronomers now know how supermassive black holes blast us with energy]

Gamma-ray bursts are at their brightest in their first moments but continue with an afterglow for much longer—possibly several years in the case of the BOAT. Williams and her team plan to continue observing the BOAT once a week with SWIFT as long as they can. They’ll also use NASA’s powerhouse James Webb and Hubble space telescopes to get a look at other wavelengths, capturing as much as they can from this rare happening.

“The BOAT is so important because it is one of those events that breaks what we know,” says Sarah Dalessi, a University of Alabama astrophysicist and graduate student involved in the detection. “This is truly a once-in-a-lifetime event.”

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Years after Apollo 17 commander Eugene Cernan returned from NASA’s last crewed mission to the moon, he still felt the massive weight of the milestone. “I realize that other people look at me differently than I look at myself, for I am one of only 12 human beings to have stood on the moon,” he wrote in his autobiography. “I have come to accept that and the enormous responsibility it carries, but as for finding a suitable encore, nothing has ever come close.”

Cernan, who died in 2017, and his crewmates will soon be joined in their lonely chapter of history by four new astronauts, bringing the grand total of people who’ve flown to the moon to 28. Today, NASA and the Canadian Space Agency announced the crew for Artemis II, the first mission to take humans beyond low-Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972. The 10-day mission will take the team on a gravity-assisted trip around the moon and back.

The big reveal occurred at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, in front of an audience of NASA partners, politicians, local students, international astronauts, and Apollo alums. NASA Director of Flight Operations Norman Knight, NASA Chief Astronaut Joe Acaba, and Johnson Space Center Director Vanessa White selected the crew. They were joined on stage during the announcement by NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and Canada’s Minister of Innovation, Science, and Industry Francois-Philippe Champagne. 

“You are the Artemis generation,” Knight said after revealing the final lineup. “We are the Artemis generation.” These are the four American and Canadian astronauts representing humanity in the next lunar launch.

Christina Koch – Mission Specialist, NASA

Koch has completed three missions to the International Space Station (ISS) and set the record for the longest spaceflight for a female astronaut in 2020. Before that, the Michigan native conducted research at the South Pole and tinkered on instruments at the Goddard Flight Space Center. She will be the only professional engineer on the Artemis II crew. “I know who mission control will be calling when it’s time to fix something on board,” Knight joked during her introduction.

Koch relayed her anticipation of riding NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) on a lunar flyby and back to those watching from home: “It will be a four-day journey [around the moon], testing every aspect of Orion, going to the far side of the moon, and splashing down in the Atlantic. So, am I excited? Absolutely. But one thing I’m excited about is that we’re going to be carrying your excitement, your dreams, and your aspirations on your mission.”

[Related: ‘Phantom’ mannequins will help us understand how cosmic radiation affects female bodies in space]

After the Artemis II mission, Koch will officially be the first woman to travel beyond Earth’s orbit. Koch and her team will circle the moon for 6,400 miles before returning home.

Jeremy Hansen – Mission Specialist, Canada

Hansen’s training experience has brought him to the ocean floor off Key Largo, Florida, the rocky caves of Sardinia, Italy, and the frigid atmosphere above the Arctic Circle. The Canadian fighter pilot led ISS communications from mission control in 2011, but this will mark his first time in space. Hansen is also the only Canadian who’s ever flown on a lunar mission.

“It’s not lost on any of us that the US could go back to the moon by themselves. Canada is grateful for that global mindset and leadership,” he said during the press conference. He also highlighted Canada’s can-do attitude in science and technology: “All of those have added up to this step where a Canadian is going to the moon with an international partnership. Let’s go.”

Victor Glover – Pilot, NASA

Glover is a seasoned pilot both on and off Earth. Hailing from California, he’s steered or ridden more than 40 different types of craft, including the SpaceX Crew Dragon Capsule in 2020 during the first commercial space flight ever to the ISS. His outsized leadership presence in his astronaut class was mentioned multiple times during the event. “In the last few years, he has become a mentor to me,” Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman said.

[Related on PopSci+: Victor J. Glover on the cosmic ‘relay race’ of the new lunar missions]

In his speech, Glover looked into the lofty future of human spaceflight. “Artemis II is more than a mission to the moon and back,” he said. “It’s the next step on the journey that gets humanity to Mars. We have a lot of work to do to get there, and we understand that.” Glover will be the first Black astronaut to travel to the moon.

G. Reid Wiseman – Commander, NASA

Wiseman got a lot done in his single foray into space. During a 2014 ISS expedition, he contributed to upwards of 300 scientific experiments and conducted two lengthy spacewalks. The Maryland native served as NASA’s chief astronaut from 2020 to 2022 and led diplomatic efforts with Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency. 

“This was always you,” Knight said while talking about Wiseman’s decorated military background. “It’s what you were meant to be.”

Flight commanders are largely responsible for safety during space missions. As the first astronauts to travel on the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft, the Artemis II crew will test the longevity and stability of NASA and SpaceX’s new flight technology as they exit Earth’s atmosphere, slingshot into the moon’s gravitational field, circumnavigate it, and attempt a safe reentry. Wiseman will be in charge of all that with the support of his three fellow astronauts and guidance from mission control.

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Nothing can really stay a secret forever, and this otherworldly mystery has evaded astronomers for four decades. Saturn’s signature ring system is heating the planet’s upper atmosphere. According to NASA, this phenomenon has never been seen in the solar system, and the unexpected interaction between Saturn and its vast rings could provide a tool for predicting if the planets around other stars have ring systems like Saturn’s.

The findings were published March 30 in the Planetary Science Journal.

The evidence that caused Saturn to spill its secrets is an excess of ultraviolet radiation that is seen as a spectral line of hot hydrogen in Saturn’s atmosphere. This bump in radiation indicates that something is heating and contaminating the planet’s upper atmosphere from the outside. 

[Related: Hubble telescope spies Saturn’s rings in ‘spoke season.’]

According to the paper, the most feasible explanation is that icy ring particles raining down onto Saturn’s atmosphere cause this heating. A few things could be driving this shower of particles, including the impact of micrometeorites, bombardments with particles from solar wind, solar ultraviolet radiation, or electromagnetic forces picking up electrically charged dust. Additionally, Saturn’s gravitational field is pulling particles into the planet while this is all occurring.

In 2017, NASA’s Cassini probe plunged into Saturn’s atmosphere and measured the atmospheric constituents, confirming that many particles are indeed falling in from the rings. This new discovery used that Cassini data in addition to observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft, and the retired International Ultraviolet Explorer mission.

“Though the slow disintegration of the rings is well known, its influence on the atomic hydrogen of the planet is a surprise. From the Cassini probe, we already knew about the rings’ influence. However, we knew nothing about the atomic hydrogen content,” astronomer and co-author Lotfi Ben-Jaffel of the Institute of Astrophysics in Paris and the Lunar & Planetary Laboratory, said in a statement. 

“Everything is driven by ring particles cascading into the atmosphere at specific latitudes. They modify the upper atmosphere, changing the composition,” said Ben-Jaffel. “And then you also have collisional processes with atmospheric gasses that are probably heating the atmosphere at a specific altitude.”

To come to this conclusion, Ben-Jaffel pulled together archival ultraviolet-light (UV) observations from four different space missions that studied the ringed planet. During these missions spaced out over 40 years, astronomers dismissed the measurements as noise in the detectors. By 2004, when the Cassini mission arrived on Saturn, it also collected UV data on the atmosphere over a period of several years. Some of the additional secret-cracking data came from Hubble and the International Ultraviolet Explorer, an international collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the United Kingdom’s Science and Engineering Research Council that launched in 1978.

[Related: The origin of Saturn’s slanted rings may link back to a lost, ancient moon.]

The lingering question among decades of data was whether all of it could be illusory or actually reflect a true phenomenon on Saturn.

The key turned out to be Ben-Jaffel’s decision to use measurements taken by the Hubble’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS). These precision observations of Saturn helped calibrate the archival UV data from all four of the other space missions that have observed Saturn. He compared the STIS UV observations of Saturn to the distribution of light from multiple space missions and instruments.

“When everything was calibrated, we saw clearly that the spectra are consistent across all the missions. This was possible because we have the same reference point, from Hubble, on the rate of transfer of energy from the atmosphere as measured over decades,” said Ben-Jaffel. “It was really a surprise for me. I just plotted the different light distribution data together, and then I realized, wow—it’s the same.”

Forty years of UV data covers multiple solar cycles and helps astronomers study the sun’s seasonal effects on Saturn. Bringing this data together and calibrating it helped Ben-Jaffel find that there was no difference in the level of UV radiation. The UV level of radiation can be followed at “at any time, any position on the planet,” which points to the steady ice rain coming from Saturn’s rings as the best explanation.

Some of the next goals for this research include seeing how it can be applied to planets that orbit other stars. 

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When NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope takes an image of a star field, it usually looks more like an abstract painting than a real piece of the universe. In the case of globular cluster M14, those drops of white, blue, and orange paint are more than 150,000 stars packed at the periphery of a spiral galaxy 29,000 light-years away from Earth.

Of course, NASA has shared many stunning views of the universe since Hubble was launched in 1990, but this newly processed image has another claim to fame—it’s known as Messier 14, one of the dozens of celestial objects cataloged by French astronomer and comet hunter Charles Messier beginning in 1758. The objects are bright and relatively easy to see with small ground telescopes, and so are popular with the amateur astronomy community.

But five years ago, the NASA Hubble team decided to begin posting the legendary space telescope’s observations of the vintage catalog online “to give people a chance to view the Messier objects in a way that they might not otherwise be able to do, especially since in many cases we can see colors of light that don’t get through the atmosphere,” says Hubble Operations Project Scientist Kenneth Carpenter. “People can’t see the ultraviolet, for instance, when they look with their ground telescopes.”

Messier was born in 1730 and developed a fascination with comets, ultimately discovering the “Great Comet” of 1769, which exhibited an extremely long tail as it passed near Earth. His catalog grew out of his notes on sightings from the Northern Hemisphere that could be confused as streaking balls of ice and dust to keep other comet seekers from wasting their time. The series includes globular star clusters like M14, nebulae such as the Eagle Nebula (M16) and Crab Nebula (M1), and even the Andromeda galaxy (M31). The numbers indicate the order in which Messier discovered the objects, though he only found 103 of the current 110—additions were made by other astronomers in the mid-20th century.

[Related: Your guide to the types of stars, from their dusty births to violent deaths]

The Hubble Messier Catalog is much newer, according to James Jeletic, NASA’s deputy project manager for Hubble. In 2017, his team was brainstorming ways to get the amateur astronomy community involved and feeling more connected with Hubble science. ”So we said, ‘Well, let’s go back to that Messier catalog,” he recalls. “That way, amateur astronomers can look at an object in their telescope, and then compare it to what Hubble sees.”

The scavenger hunt is not yet complete—the Hubble Messier Catalog currently exhibits images of 84 of the 110 Messier objects and plots them on an interactive map—but that’s partly because of the way in which the Hubble team has gone about building out the collection. They don’t purposefully take new images of Messier objects to add to the catalog; rather they wait for a scientific proposal that overlaps with the targets. That, or they comb through the Hubble archive looking for suitable scenes that haven’t been published yet and process them (as was the case with M14). “We think we found all the ones, for the most part, that are worthy of creating an image out of,” Jelectic explains. “We’re going to search one more time, you know, just to make sure.”

The Hubble team shared the image of M14 on March 19 as part of what’s called a Messier Marathon, an attempt by amateur astronomers to observe all 110 objects in a short time frame; the skygazing conditions in March and early April are considered particularly conducive to Messier Marathons because all of the objects can be seen in a single night around the spring equinox. “If you can view all 110, no matter how long it takes, you become a member of the [official Messier club] and get a certificate and pin,” Jelectic says.

For those in the Southern Hemisphere, the NASA Hubble website also includes images from the Caldwell Catalog, a collection of 109 objects visible compiled in the 1980s by English amateur astronomer Patrick Moore as a counterweight to the Messier Catalog.

[Related: Researchers found what they believe is a 2,000-year-old map of the stars]

Reflecting on the fact that astronomers, both professional and amateur, and the general public are still fascinated by objects first cataloged more than 200 years ago, Carpenter says it illustrates how science progresses over time.

“Every time you build a new telescope, whether it be on the ground or in space, that’s either larger in size so it’s more sensitive, or sensitive to a different color of light than we’ve had previously, you make wonderful new discoveries,” he says. Even after years in the field it still astonishes him what telescopes can seek. “It is just absolutely incredible, both in terms of the science and just in terms of the sheer beauty. I think a telescope is really as much a tool of art, of the creation of art, as it is of the creation and interpretation of science.”

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If you’ve ever been to the beach on a windy day, you’ve likely been treated to the not so fun feeling grains of sand hitting your face. That unpleasant experience would a walk in the park compared to what scientists have now discovered is happening in the atmosphere of the exoplanet VHS 1256 b.

A team of researchers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) found that the planet’s clouds are made up of silicate particles that range in size from tiny specks to small grains.  The silicates in the clouds are swirling in nearly constant cloud cover. Silicates are common in our solar system and make up about 95 percent of Earth’s crust and upper mantle.

[Related: These 6 galaxies are so huge, they’ve been nicknamed ‘universe breakers.’]

During VHS 1256 b’s 22-hour day, the atmosphere is continuously rising, mixing, and moving. This motion brings hotter material up and pushes colder material down, the way hot air rises  and cool air sinks on Earth. The brightness that results from this air shifting is so dramatic that the team on the study say it is the most variable planetary-mass object known to date. 

The findings were published March 22 in the The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The team also found very clear detections of carbon monoxide, methane, and water using JWST’s data and even evidence of carbon dioxide. According to NASA, it is the largest number of molecules ever identified all at once on a planet outside our solar system.

VHS 1256 b is about 40 light-years away from Earth and orbits two stars over a 10,000-year period. “VHS 1256 b is about four times farther from its stars than Pluto is from our Sun, which makes it a great target for Webb,” said study co-author and University of Arizona astronomer Brittany Miles, in a statement. “That means the planet’s light is not mixed with light from its stars.” 

The temperature in the higher parts of its atmosphere where the silicate clouds churn daily reach about 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit. JWST detected both larger and smaller silicate dust grains within these clouds that are shown on a spectrum. 

“The finer silicate grains in its atmosphere may be more like tiny particles in smoke,” said astronomer and co-author Beth Biller of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, in a statement. “The larger grains might be more like very hot, very small sand particles.”

[Related: JWST has changed the speed of discovery, for better or for worse.]

Compared to more massive brown dwarfs, VHS 1256 b has low gravity, so its silicate clouds can appear and remain higher up in its atmosphere where JWST can detect them. It is also quite young as far as planets are concerned, at only 150 million years old. As with most young humans, it’s going through some turbulent times as it ages. 

The team says that these findings are similar to the first “coins” pulled out of a treasure chest of data that they are only beginning to rummage through. “We’ve identified silicates, but better understanding which grain sizes and shapes match specific types of clouds is going to take a lot of additional work,” said Miles. “This is not the final word on this planet – it is the beginning of a large-scale modeling effort to fit Webb’s complex data.”

While these features have been spotted on other planets in the Milky Way by other telescopes, only one at a time was typically identified, according to the team. They used JWST’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) and the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) to collect the data and says that there will be much more to learn about VHS 1256 b as scientists sift through the data.

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On September 26, 2022, eyes around the world were laser focused on NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART). The car-sized spacecraft collided with an asteroid named Dimorphous about 68 million miles from Earth. The experiment of Earth’s asteroid deflection capabilities was a smashing success, and the event is now giving astronomers the chance to learn more about the material expelled from a space rock’s impact.

Two papers using data and observations taken with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile were recently published, offering new insights into the debris clouds from asteroids. 

[Related: DART left an asteroid crime scene. This mission is on deck to investigate it.]

The first study,  published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics Letters, utilized an instrument called a Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) to follow the evolution of the cloud of debris from the collision for a month. Since asteroids are some of the building blocks that constructed our solar system, studying the material ejected from this impact can help astronomers learn more about how the solar system formed. 

The authors found that the ejected cloud was bluer than the asteroid was before the impact with DART. This means that the cloud could have been made with very fine particles. In the initial hours and days after the test, clamps, spirals, and a long tail developed. The spirals and tail were redder than the initial debris cloud, which means they were possibly made with larger particles.

“Impacts between asteroids happen naturally, but you never know it in advance,” Cyrielle Opitom, study co-author and astronomer from University of Edinburgh, said in a statement. “DART is a really great opportunity to study a controlled impact, almost as in a laboratory.”

Using MUSE allowed the team to break up light emitted from the impact cloud into a rainbow-like pattern and then search for traces of different gasses. They particularly searched for oxygen and water coming from ice that was exposed by the impact with DART, but did not find either. 

“Asteroids are not expected to contain significant amounts of ice, so detecting any trace of water would have been a real surprise,” said Opitom. 

They were also not able to detect any traces of the propellant DART used, as there likely wouldn’t have been enough left in the tank from the spacecraft’s propulsion system.

A second paper was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters analyzed how colliding with DART changed the surface of Dimorphous.This team, led by Stefano Bagnulo, studied particularly the change in polarization of the asteroid.  When polarization occurs, light waves oscillate along a preferred direction rather than randomly.  Tracking how this changes with the orientation of the asteroid relative to both Earth and the sun shows what the structure and composition of the asteroid’s surface is like.

[Related: NASA is pumped about its asteroid-smacking accuracy.]

To do this, they used the telescope’s FOcal Reducer/low dispersion Spectrograph 2 (FORS2) instrument. They found that the level of polarization suddenly dropped after DART’s impact with Dimorphous and that the overall brightness of the asteroid system increased at the same time.

The team believes that one possible explanation is the impact with DART may have exposed more pristine material from inside the asteroid. “Maybe the material excavated by the impact was intrinsically brighter and less polarizing than the material on the surface, because it was never exposed to solar wind and solar radiation,” said Bagnulo, an astronomer at Armagh Observatory and Planetarium and study co-author.

It is also possible that the direct impact destroyed the particles on the surface and ejected much smaller ones into the cloud of debris.Both studies highlighted what the VLT—which boasts four almost 30-foot-long telescopes—can do.

“This research took advantage of a unique opportunity when NASA impacted an asteroid, so it cannot be repeated by any future facility,” said Opitom. “This makes the data obtained with the VLT around the time of impact extremely precious when it comes to better understanding the nature of asteroids.”

Other studies on this “picture perfect” asteroid collision found that the asteroid lost over two million pounds after the collision, altered the asteroid’s moonlet orbit by about 33 minutes, and that the experiment showed that a “kinetic impactor mission” can alter an asteroid’s trajectory and is a step towards preventing future asteroid strikes.  

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IN 1989, rock-and-roll legend Chuck Berry attended one of the biggest parties of the summer. The bash wasn’t a concert, but a celebration of two space probes about to breach the edge of our solar system: NASA’s Voyager mission. 

Launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in 1977, identical twins Voyager 1 and 2 embarked on a five-year expedition to observe the moons and rings of Jupiter and Saturn, carrying with them Golden Records preserving messages from Earth, including Berry’s smash single “Johnny B. Goode.” But 12 years later, out on the grassy “Mall” of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, scientists celebrated as Voyager 2 made a previously unscheduled flyby of Neptune. Planetary scientist Linda Spilker remembers the bittersweet moment: the sight of the eighth planet’s azure-colored atmosphere signaled the end of the mission’s solar system grand tour.

“We kind of thought of it as a farewell party, because we’d flown by all the planets,” says Spilker. “Both of them were well past their initial lifetimes.”

Many in the scientific community expected the spacecrafts to go dark soon after. But surprisingly, the pair continued whizzing beyond the heliopause into interstellar space, where they’ve been wandering ever since, for more than three decades. Spilker, now the Voyager mission project scientist, says the probes’ journeys have shed light on the universe we live in—and ourselves. “It’s really helped shape and change the way we think about our solar system,” she says. 

Currently traveling at a distance between 12 and 14 billion miles from Earth, Voyager 1 and 2 are the oldest, farthest-flung objects ever forged by humanity. Nearly five decades on, the secret to Voyager’s apparent immortality is most likely the spacecrafts’ robust design—and their straightforward, redundant technology. By today’s standards, each machine’s three separate computer systems are primitive, but that simplicity, as well as their construction from the best available materials at the time, has played a large part in allowing the twins to survive. 

For example, the spacecrafts’ short list of commands proved versatile as they hopped from one planet to the next, says Candice Hansen-Koharcheck, a planetary scientist who worked with the mission’s camera team. This flexibility of its operations allowed engineers to turn the Voyagers into scientific chameleons, adapting to one new objective after another.

As the machines puttered far from home, new discoveries, like active volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon Io and a possible subsurface ocean on neighboring Europa, helped us realize that “we weren’t in Kansas anymore,” says Hansen-Koharcheck. Since then, many of the tools that have contributed to Voyagers’ success, such as optics and multiple fail-safes, have been translated to other long-term space missions, like the Saturn Cassini space probe and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. 

Both Voyagers are expected to transmit data back to Earth until about 2025—or until the spacecrafts’ plutonium “batteries” are unable to power critical functions. But even if they do cease contact, it’s unlikely they will crash into anything or ever be destroyed in the cosmic void. 

Instead, the Voyagers may travel the Milky Way eternally, both alone and together in humanity’s most spectacular odyssey. 

Read more PopSci+ stories.

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Water is key for life here on Earth, and it will be key for humans to travel around the solar system as well. It’s a heavy resource to lug aboard a spacecraft, so it’s best to get it from your destination when possible. Thankfully, there’s already some water on the moon—and astronomers just got a better look at where it is exactly.

New observations from the SOFIA airborne observatory (which completed its final flight in September 2022) produced a detailed map of water molecules near the moon’s South Pole. These results, recently accepted to the Planetary Science Journal and presented at the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference last week, are answering a critical question for both geology and future human exploration: Where can we find water on the moon?

“We don’t really know the basics of where [the water] is, how much, or how it got there,” says Paul Hayne, a planetary scientist at the University of Colorado not affiliated with the new research.

[Related: Mysterious bright spots fuel debate over whether Mars holds liquid water]

NASA’s 2010 LCROSS mission first sparked interest in the southern end of the moon when its radar revealed frozen water stored in places where the sun’s light can’t reach, like the bottoms of craters. A slew of follow-up observations by India’s Chandrayaan probes added further evidence for lunar water, but there was a catch—what astronomers identified as possible water molecules (H₂O) could have been a different arrangement of hydrogen and oxygen called hydroxyl (OH). SOFIA, however, had the power to search for a wider range of molecular signatures, meaning it could scan for a surefire sign of water instead of something that could be confused for hydroxyl. 

“These observations with SOFIA are important because they definitively map the water molecules on the sunlit surface of the moon,” says NASA Lunar scientist Casey Honniball, co-author on the new study. An accurate map of the icy areas can help planetary scientists distinguish between different ways water moves across the lunar surface, and learn how the life-giving compound got there in the first place. 

“We see more water in shady places, where the surface temperature is colder,” says William T. Reach, director of SOFIA and lead author on the paper. This is similar to how ski slopes facing away from the sun retain more of their snow here on Earth.

Researchers are considering two main scenarios to explain the origins of lunar water: evaporating water from comets that crashed into the moon, or water trapped in volcanic minerals created long ago. The SOFIA data hasn’t helped them to narrow down the source yet. “These are observations, and they don’t come labeled with a nice, tidy explanation,” adds Reach.

Although his team is still figuring out the provenance of the observed water, detecting it at all could be a boon for future human space exploration. A confident claim of water on the south pole of the moon explains “why we are targeting these regions so intently for the next phase of human and robotic lunar exploration,” says UCLA planetary scientist Tyler Horvath, who was not involved in the project.

Unfortunately, SOFIA can’t continue mapping the moon’s water—the modified Boeing 747 and telescope are now retired to the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson, Arizona. “I hope these results help pave the way for another one of these airborne observatories to be developed in the near future,” says Horvath.

[Related: Saying goodbye to SOFIA, NASA’s 747 with a telescope]

Despite the project’s untimely end, SOFIA managed to complete a large number of observations of the moon—among other celestial targets—in its final flights. In fact, it produced so much data that scientists are still sorting through it all. SOFIA’s discoveries “will continue for years to come,” says Honniball, and could prepare teams for future missions, all tackling questions about H₂O. Some prime examples include CalTech’s Lunar Trailblazer orbiter launching later this year, NASA’s water-hunting Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER), and of course, the US Artemis program, which aims to land humans on the satellite’s southern regions as early as 2025.

These upcoming projects also promise the tantalizing prospect of delivering lunar soil samples back to Earth, something that hasn’t happened (for Americans, at least) since the Apollo program. “In the lab, even a single grain is like a world of its own revealing stories about the history and evolution of the material on the moon,” says Reach. Actually working with samples of lunar ice in a hands-on experiment could finally determine what form water takes on the moon.

Until then, planetary scientists will keep working through SOFIA’s moon maps, squeezing out every last drop of information they can.

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Venus is a searing inferno. Its surface temperatures are hot enough to melt lead. Its surface pressures, 75 times that of Earth at sea level, are enough to crush even the hardiest of metal objects. Sulfuric acid rain falls from noxious clouds in its atmosphere that choke out even the slightest glimpse of the sky.

In a typical infernal hellscape, you’d expect to find lava—but that element seems to be missing from Venus today. Astronomers are sure that our twin planet had volcanic activity in the past, but they’ve never agreed if volcanoes still erupt and reshape the Venusian surface as they do Earth’s.

Now, two planetary scientists may have found the first evidence of an active Venusian volcano hiding in 30-year-old radar scans from NASA’s Magellan spacecraft. Robert Herrick from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and Scott Hensley from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory published their breakthrough in the journal Science on March 15.  The new analysis has excited planetary scientists, many of whom are now waiting for future missions to carry on the volcano hunt.

“This [study] is the first-ever reported evidence for active volcanism on another planet,” says Darby Dyar, an astronomer at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, who wasn’t an author on the paper.

The dense Venusian clouds would hide any volcanic activity from a spacecraft in orbit. Specially honed instruments can certainly delve under the clouds, but the planet’s capricious weather tends to make probes’ lives too short to fully explore the grounds. Of the Soviet Venera landers of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, none survived longer than around two hours.

[Related: The hellish Venus surface in 5 vintage photos]

Magellan changed that. Launched in 1989 and equipped with the finest radar that the technology of its time could offer, Magellan mapped much of Venus to the resolution of a city block. In the probe’s charts, scientists found evidence of giant volcanoes, past lava flows, and lava-built domes—but no smoking gun (or smoking caldera) of live volcanic activity.

Before NASA crashed it into the Venusian atmosphere, Magellan made three different passes at mapping the planet between 1990 and 1993, covering a different chunk each time. In the process, the probe scanned about 40 percent of the planet more than once. If the Venusian terrain had shifted in the months between passes, scientists today might find it by comparing different radar images and spotting the difference.

But researchers in the early 1990s didn’t have the sophisticated software and image-analysis tools that their counterparts have today. If they wanted to compare Magellan’s maps then, they’d have had to do it manually, comparing printouts with the naked eye. So, Herrick and Hensley revisited Magellan’s data with more advanced computers. They found that in addition to blurriness, the probe often scanned the same feature from different angles, making it difficult to tell actual changes apart from, say, shadows.

“To detect changes on the surface, we need a pretty big event, something that disturbs roughly more than a square kilometer of area,” Hensley says.

Eventually, Herrick and Hensley found their smoking gun: a vent, just more than a mile wide, on a previously known mountain named Maat Mons. Between a Magellan radar image taken in February 1991 and another taken about eight months later, this vent appeared to have changed shape, with lava oozing out onto the nearby slopes.

To double-check, Herrick and Hensley constructed simulations of volcanic vents based on the shape of the feature that Magellan had spotted. Their results matched what Magellan saw: a potential volcano in the process of burping lava out onto Venus’s surface.

There is other evidence that backs up their radical results In 2012, ESA’s Venus Express mission spotted a spike in sulfur dioxide in the planet’s atmosphere, which some scientists ascribe to volcanic eruptions. In 2020, geologists identified 37 spots where magma plumes from the Venusian mantle might still touch its surface. But the evidence has so far been circumstantial, and astronomers have never actually seen a volcano in action on the “Morning Star.”

Fortunately for Venus enthusiasts, there might soon be heaps of fresh data to play with. The VERITAS space probe, part of NASA’s follow-up to Magellan, was originally scheduled for a 2028 launch, but is now pushed back to the early 2030s due to funding issues. When it does finally reach Venus, volcanoes will be near the top of its sightseeing list.

“We’ll be looking for [volcanoes] in two different ways,” says Dyar, who is also deputy principal investigator on VERITAS. The spacecraft will conduct multiple flybys to map the entire Venusian surface again, with radar that has 100 times the resolution of Magellan’s instruments (like zooming in from a city block to a single building). If there are volcanoes erupting across the planet, VERITAS might help scientists spot the changes that they etch into the landscape.

[Related: These scientists spent decades pushing NASA to go back to Venus]

Additionally, VERITAS will examine the Venusian atmosphere in search of fluids, which scientists call volatiles, that volcanoes belch out as they erupt. Water vapor, for example, is one of the most prominent volcanic volatiles. The phosphines that elicited whispers about life on Venus in 2020 also fall into this category of molecules. (Indeed, some experts tried to explain their presence via volcanoes).

VERITAS isn’t the only mission set to arrive at Earth’s infernal twin in the next decade. The European Space Agency’s EnVision—scheduled for a 2031 launch—will map the planet just like VERITAS, only with even higher resolution.

VERITAS and EnVision “will have far, far better capability to see changes with time in a variety of ways during their missions,” says Herrick, who is also involved with both missions. Not only will the two produce multiple higher-resolution scans for scientists to compare against each other, the results can also be corroborated with Magellan’s antique maps, which will be 40 years in the past by the time they arrive.

“When we get high-resolution imagery,” Dyar says, “I think that we’re going to find active volcanism all over Venus.”

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The suit was designed and built by Houston-based company Axiom Space, using some heritage NASA technology, plus a large glass fishbowl helmet and black outer cover with orange and blue highlights. During the livestream, an Axiom engineer walked out on the stage in the redesigned suit and demonstrated the enhanced mobility offered by new joints in the legs, arms, and gloves compared to the Apollo- and Space Shuttle-era suits, twisting, turning, and kneeling down with relative ease. The suits are also designed with modular components in a range of sizes to better fit astronauts of different body shapes and weights.

“We’re developing a spacesuit for a new generation, the Artemis generation, the generation that is going to take us back to the moon and onto Mars,” NASA Associate Administrator Bob Cabana said at the reveal. “When that first woman steps down on the surface of the moon on Artemis III, she’s going to be wearing an Axiom spacesuit.”

NASA had spent years developing its own next generation of spacesuits through its Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (eXMU) program, but in June 2022, the space agency awarded contracts to both Axiom and Collins Aerospace to develop spacesuits for future missions. Unlike the getups still in use on the International Space Station, NASA will only lease the suits, according to Lara Kearney, manager for NASA’s Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility Program.

“Historically, NASA has owned spacesuits,” Kearney said at the event. The spacesuit contract with Axiom is more like the arrangement NASA makes with SpaceX for flying crew and cargo to the space station aboard Falcon 9 rockets and Dragon spacecraft; the company owns and operates the equipment, and the agency simply pays for services.

Financial arrangements aside, the new spacesuits include an array of improvements and advancements, many derived from NASA research and others unique to Axiom. The suit consists of an inner bladder layer that holds pressurized air in, covered by a restraint layer that holds the shape of the bladder layer, according to Axiom deputy program manager for Extravehicular Activity, Russel Ralston. An outer flight insulation layer provides “cut resistance, puncture resistance, thermal insulation, and a variety of other other other features,” he explained at the event, and consists of multiple layers of material, including aluminized mylar.

The more mobile joints, which will allow astronauts to better handle tools and maneuver around the rocky, heavily shadowed lunar South Pole, were developed at Axiom, Ralston said. Other features, such as the rigid upper torso of the suit—useful for attaching the life support system and tools—and a visor placed further back on the helmet to allow for more visibility, were initially conceived by NASA.

The design also features an entirely new cooling system compared to older suits, will carry a high-definition camera mounted on the helmet, and allows astronauts to enter and exit the suit through a hatch on the back rather than coming as separate lower and upper body segments, as with the current spacesuits.

Importantly, given NASA’s commitment to seeing a female astronaut lead the way back to the moon, the new suits are designed to fit a wide range of body sizes for across sexes, according to Ralston. “We have different sizes of elements that we can swap out—a medium, large and small if you will—for different components,” he said at the press conference. “Then within each of those sizes, we also have an adjustability to where we can really tailor the suit to someone: the length of their leg or the length of their arm.”

Axiom is continuing to build on the spacesuit ahead of the Artemis III mission, including an outer insulation layer that will include pockets and other attachments for tools, and which will be made in white to reflect the harsh sunlight on the moon. The the black, orange and blue cover seen today is just a temporary protective cover to prevent damage to the suit’s inner layers while testing, and, per an Axiom press release, hides “proprietary design” elements.

Despite all the technological advances compared to the Apollo spacesuits of the 1960s and ‘70s, some core technologies are immune to improvement. Asked about whether Axiom found a better way for astronauts to use the restroom while wearing the new shells for up to eight hours on the lunar surface, Ralson didn’t sugarcoat it.

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A new JWST infrared image, captured last summer but shared publicly this week, exposes some of the explosive details scientists have been looking for. The telescope used a spectrograph and two of its advanced cameras to record the halo of dust emanating from WR 124. The star is currently in the “Wolf-Rayet phase,” in which it loses much of its mass to surrounding space. The bright white spot at the center shows the burning stellar core; the pink and purple ripples represent a nebula of hydrogen and other ejecta.

Stars of a certain magnitude will go through the Wolf-Rayet transformation as their lifespan winds down. WR 124 is one of the mightiest stars in the Milky Way, with 3,000 percent more mass than our sun. But its end is nye—it will collapse into a supernova in a few hundred thousand years

[Related: This could be a brand new type of supernova]

In the meantime, astronomers will use images and other data from JWST to measure WR 124’s contribution to the universe’s “dust budget.” Dust is essential to the universe’s workings, as NASA explains. The stuff protects young stars and forms a foundation for essential molecules—and planets. But much more of it exists than we can account for, the space agency notes: “The universe is operating with a dust budget surplus.”

The spectacular cloud around WR 124 might explain why that is. “Before Webb, dust-loving astronomers simply did not have enough detailed information to explore questions of dust production in environments like WR 124, and whether the dust grains were large and bountiful enough to survive the supernova and become a significant contribution to the overall dust budget. Now those questions can be investigated with real data,” NASA shared.

As JWST enters its second year of exploration, the observatory will take a sweeping look at galaxies far and near to reconstruct a timeline of the early universe. But individual stars can add to that cosmological understanding, too, even if they aren’t all on a glorious death march like WR 124.

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NASA’s Curiosity rover snapped a sunset picture that would make any influencer jealous. The car-sized Martian explorer captured a dazzling sunset on the Red Planet at the start of its new cloud-imaging campaign that began in January.

The image, taken on February 2, shows rays of light illuminating a bank of clouds. These rays are called crepuscular rays, derived from the Latin word for “twilight.” According to NASA, it is the first time that the sun’s rays have been so clearly viewed on Mars. 

[Related: What is a ‘Martian flower’?]

Curiosity’s newest twilight cloud survey is building upon observations published in May 2021 that showed night-shining (aka noctilucent) clouds. Martian clouds are mostly made out of water and ice and hover no more than 37 miles above the ground, but the clouds in this new image appear to be higher where it is especially cold. NASA says that their position suggests that the noctilucent clouds are made of carbon dioxide ice, or dry ice.

The 2021 cloud survey also included some imaging made by Curiosity’s black-and-white navigation cameras, giving astronomers a detailed look at how the structure of clouds on Mars move. This new survey will wrap up in mid-March and relies on the color Mast Camera–or Mastcam– that will help scientists see how cloud particles grow.

Curiosity also captured a set of colorful clouds on January 27. These feather-shaped clouds create a rainbow-esque display called iridescence when the sun illuminates them. 

“Where we see iridescence, it means a cloud’s particle sizes are identical to their neighbors in each part of the cloud,” said Mark Lemmon, an atmospheric scientist with the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, in a statement. “By looking at color transitions, we’re seeing particle size changing across the cloud. That tells us about the way the cloud is evolving and how its particles are changing size over time.”

[Related: Curiosity found a new organic molecule on Mars.]

The iridescent clouds and sun rays were both captured as panoramas stitched together from 28 images sent back to Earth. The images have been processed to emphasize the highlights of the images.

Curiosity is the largest and most capable rover that NASA has ever sent to Mars. It launched on November 26, 2011 and landed on the Red Plant on August 5, 2012. Since then, it has snapped the first ever panoramic image of Mars, explored the planet’s Gale Crater and picked up samples of rock, soil, and air samples for onboard analysis. In 2022, the rover even found carbon that could have come from volcanoes or even past lifeforms.

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On September 26, 2022, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft slammed into the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos at 13,000 miles per hour, altering the extraterrestrial rock’s orbit around its larger companion asteroid, Didymos. A triumphant success of planning, targeting and autonomous flight that covered 7 million miles, the impact served as the first proof of concept for kinetic impactors—spacecraft that could be used to redirect any future asteroids on a collision course with Earth.

But to understand how a DART-like mission would work in a real apocalyptic scenario, astronomers and national security experts need lots of data and detailed analysis. Data they had almost immediately, as just about every telescope and sensor that could be trained on Dimorphos, was, prior to impact. And now, detailed analyses of what happened are going public, starting with five papers published in the journal Nature on March 1.

1. Kinetic impactors like DART can make a real splash

In a study of Dimophos’s orbit led by Northern Arizona University Astronomer Cristina Thomas, an international team calculated just how much DART’s crash landing changed the asteroid’s orbital period. Using radar and light curves, measured from changes in Dimorphos’s brightness over time, they showed the space rock slowed down in its orbit by 33 minutes, give or take about three minutes.

“To serve as a proof-of-concept for the kinetic impactor technique of planetary defense, DART needed to demonstrate that an asteroid could be targeted during a high-speed encounter and that the target’s orbit could be changed,” Thomas and her colleagues write in the paper. “DART has successfully done both.”

The researchers note, however, that there were probably several reasons why DART was able to slow Dimorphos down by a full half hour. If the only factor were the spacecraft’s mass, the asteroid’s orbit should have changed by no more than seven minutes. Any other explanations would “require modeling beyond the scope of this paper,” they explained.

2. DART got a big assist from the asteroid itself

A second paper led by Andy Cheng, chief scientist for planetary defense and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, dug into why Dimorphos’s orbit shifted so dramatically.

His team’s research found that the “ejecta,” the material shaken loose from Dimorphos by the force of DART’s impact, amplified the transfer of kinetic energy from the spacecraft and the change in the asteroid’s orbit by 2.2 to 4.9 times. In fact, the authors write in the paper, “significantly more momentum was transferred to Dimorphos” from the escaping ejecta than DART itself.

[Related: NASA sampled a ‘fluffy’ asteroid that could hold clues to our existence]

Determining how much momentum a spacecraft can transfer to an asteroid and how that affects the asteroid’s orbit were key questions the DART mission sought to answer, and this study gives scientists the parameters they were waiting for. It illustrates the range of effectiveness kinetic impactors might have on hazardous asteroids given their makeup. Asteroids that respond to a strike with more ejecta may allow a DART-type spacecraft to deflect larger asteroids than it could otherwise, or to deflect an asteroid with less warning time.

3. Planning ahead is key to saving the planet

The key takeaway of the third paper, led by Terik Daly, Carolyn Ernst, and Olivier Barnouin of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, is that despite DART’s successful strike and the helpful amplification by the impact ejecta, planetary protection remains a game of observation and early warning. “Kinetic impactor technology for asteroid deflection requires having sufficient warning time—at least several years but preferably decades—to prevent an asteroid impact with the Earth,” the researchers write in the paper.

Early warning, thankfully, is something NASA has been investing in since long before the DART mission. The NASA Authorization Act of 2005 directed the space agency to catalog 90 percent of all near-Earth asteroids of 460 feet in diameter or greater, a task that is now complete. NASA is now building an infrared space telescope scheduled for launch in 2028 that will help scan the skies for unseen asteroids.

“NEO Surveyor represents the next generation for NASA’s ability to quickly detect, track, and characterize potentially hazardous near-Earth objects,” Lindley Johnson, NASA’s planetary protection officer, said in a statement.

4. DART was also secretly a planetary-science mission

Dimorphos’s ejecta not only affected the orbit of the asteroid, they gave it a dust tail that strutted more than 900 miles from the asteroid within three hours of the impact, according to a fourth study led Jian-Yang Li, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute.

Thought comets are better known for their brilliant tails, asteroids can also become “active,” as scientists put it, and form a little train on their backsides. It’s thought that this happens after some kind of impact, though the idea has never been put to the test. 

The September mission gave scientists a “detailed characterization” of the ejecta-to-tail-making process serving double duty as a planetary-protection and a planetary-science mission. “DART will continue to be the model for studies of newly discovered asteroids that show activity caused by natural impacts,” the researchers write.

5. DART really lit Dimorphos up

The last paper also falls into the planetary-science bucket with a close look at Dimorphos in its post-DART hangover. A study with ground-based telescopes in Africa and an Indian Ocean island led by SETI Institute astronomer Ariel Graykowski found it took the asteroid more than 23 days to return to its pre-impact levels of brightness in the night sky.

The analysis also found that ejecta appeared reddish at the time of impact, which is somewhat mysterious. “Typically, active bodies appear bluer in color on average than their inactive counterparts,” the researchers write in the paper, giving the examples of active comets versus inactive Kuiper Belt objects. “Some of these redder observed surface colors may be due to irradiation of organics,” they add, noting that lab experiments have shown space radiation can cause redden some of the same minerals probably found in asteroids like Dimorphos.

[Related: ‘Phantom’ mannequins will help us understand how cosmic radiation affects female bodies in space]

The five studies are just the first wave of an ongoing campaign to analyze the DART mission from different angles. The European Space Agency’s HERA mission, for instance, will rendezvous with Dimorphos sometime in 2026 to better assess the aftermath of DART’s impact in detail. Until then, NASA and other collaborators can continue to celebrate a major milestone in humanity’s relationship with the space around us.

“I cheered when DART slammed head on into the asteroid for the world’s first planetary defense technology demonstration, and that was just the start,” NASA administrator for its Science Mission Directorate, Nicola Fox, said in a statement on March 1. ”These findings add to our fundamental understanding of asteroids and build a foundation for how humanity can defend Earth.”

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Moon dust is the absolute worst. Not only does electrostatics cause it to cling to virtually everything, but it also has the consistency and feel of finely ground fiberglass. It was a genuine problem for the six Apollo crews who visited the moon’s surface—the silica particles covered their suits, worked their way into engines and electronics, and even ruined a few of their extremely expensive spacesuits. What’s more, many suffered from “lunar hay fever” upon return, leading many to worry that future astronauts on prolonged moon visits could develop symptoms similar to Black Lung Disease, along other issues including “DNA degradation.”

These are all serious issues to consider ahead of NASA’s planned return to the moon’s surface in 2025, but a team of college undergraduates at Washington State University just developed an ingenious solution to pesky moon dust dilemmas—blasting the residue with liquid nitrogen.

[Related: NASA’s Artemis I mission returns successfully.]

According to their findings recently published in the journal Acta Astronautica, the team developed a new spray that takes advantage of the Leidenfrost effect. Named after the its discoverer—the 18th-century German theologian and doctor, Johann Gottlob Leidenfrost—the process occurs when a liquid comes into close contact with a significantly hotter surface, causing it to quickly form a protective layer of vapor that briefly keeps it from evaporating, such as when water forms into droplets and runs across a very hot frying pan.

The same principle works similarly in space. In this case, a liquid nitrogen spray (typically around -320F) comes into contact with a surface’s relatively warmer lunar dust coating, causing the particles to bead and float away on the nitrogen vapors.

To test their concoction, the research team first dressed a Barbie doll wrapped with a material used to make space suits. They then hosed it down with liquid nitrogen in a normal atmospheric condition as well as a vacuum chamber similar to conditions in outer space. Not only did the liquid nitrogen spray perform better in the latter scenario, but it also resulted in minimal damage to the spacesuit material. In past lunar missions, astronauts’ specialized brush for the moon dust task often caused damage after a single use. In comparison, the liquid nitrogen spray took 75 uses before similar issues occurred.

[Related: March skies will bring a lunar illusion and a planetary reunion.]

Going forward, the team hopes to further research the intricacies that make their cleaning process so effective, as well as secure funding to construct testing chambers more closely resembling the lunar surface’s gravity. With any luck, maybe a can of their Moon-be-Gone will be aboard a future Artemis mission, ready to help astronauts avoid one of the lunar surface’s less awe-inspiring traits.

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On Friday, February 17, a part of the sun erupted. A piercingly bright flash of light—a solar flare—shone briefly from the left limb of our star, where it was captured in an ultraviolet image by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft.

“It wasn’t the largest in history by any means, but it was a significant X flare,” Thomas Berger, a solar physicist and director of the Space Weather Technology, Research, and Education Center at the University of Colorado Boulder. (The “X” refers to the letter grading system of solar flare intensity, which ranges from minor A-class to severe X-class flares. “Solar flares of that magnitude will generally cause some radio-interference on the sunlit side of the Earth for an hour or two,” he says. Ultimately, this one was fairly mild—the most powerful solar flare ever recorded, in 2003, was more than 100 times more powerful by comparison—and did not cause any major problems. 

That said, we’re about to enter a more volatile chapter in the sun’s 11-year cycle of magnetic activity. Solar flares are one of three major forms of solar-eruption activity, along with coronal mass ejections and radiation storms, which are likely to increase in frequency over the next few years, according to Berger.

”We are in the rising phase of Solar Cycle 25, and it is expected that activity is going to increase,” he says. (It’s known as Solar Cycle 25 because scientists first began keeping detailed records of sunspots in 1755, and there have been 25 cycles since that time.) The peak of this period, known as the solar maximum, should occur around 2025. The last solar maximum was in 2014.

[Related: How worried should we be about solar flares and space weather?]

That rise in activity that could majorly impact planned space activities, such as the rapidly growing constellations of low-Earth orbit satellites. And a 2025 solar maximum would coincide with NASA’s Artemis III, which aims to return humans to the surface of the moon—not the safest place to be during a solar radiation storm.

 “It’s going to be a really interesting time if we get an extreme storm in this solar cycle,” Berger says.

What is the solar magnetic cycle?

The sun is a giant sphere of roiling, superheated plasma that is essentially electrically charged gas with monstrously powerful magnetic fields.

For reasons astronomers don’t yet understand, the activity of these magnetic fields increases and decreases over an 11-year cycle. The cycle also includes changes in the dark areas on the star’s surface, otherwise known as sunspots, with more spots appearing as the sun moves toward solar maximum.

“Sunspots are the source of solar magnetic eruptions,” Berger says. “The bigger the sunspot, the bigger the explosion. The more active the sun, the more sunspots, and the bigger the sunspots get.”

The current solar cycle stands out so far in a big way: So far, it’s more active than forecast by groups like the the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center, with more sunspots showing up on the sun that predicted.    

“We don’t know if it will continue to be more active than the forecast,” Berger says. “It’s fairly early on in the game here and could regress back to that weak forecast any month.”

Will solar eruptions disrupt Earth in 2025?

Solar eruptions occur when the magnetic field lines in a sunspot get twisted and snap, Berger says, causing an explosion with three possible outcomes.

The first is a solar flare, like that seen on February 17, which is primarily a release of photons. The second is a coronal mass ejection, or a large release of plasma into interplanetary space. And the third is a radiation storm fueled by accelerating energy particles like protons, elections, and ions. Coronal mass ejections can also sometimes generate a radiation storm by pushing charged particles in front of them as they speed through space.

Solar flares, if intense enough, can cause radio interference on the sunlit side of the Earth. Coronal mass ejections are the outbursts that really cause issues. The charged plasma can generate a geomagnetic storm when it hits our planet’s magnetosphere, resulting in awe-inspiring auroras at the poles, while also wreaking havoc on both power grid technology and satellite technology, Berger says. A big geomagnetic storm can heat the atmosphere so that it swells, dragging on low-flying satellites and even pulling some from orbit, as was the doomed case of 40 newly launched Starlink satellites on February 4, 2022.

Not every coronal mass ejection will reach Earth, however. Many, like the ejection associated with the February 17 eruption, fly off into space away from our planet. The question is whether any more will be aimed our way as we hurtle toward the solar maximum.

“Recent research is really beginning to confirm that almost every solar cycle has a really, really big eruption,” Berger says, “So it’s really just a matter of what direction in space it’s going.”

How do we plan for the sun’s unruly future?

Really  powerful solar eruptions can lead to geomagnetic storms that damage electronics on the ground, such as the the storm in 1989 that knocked out some power grids. But the risks are higher today than in 1989, if just because there’s a lot more technology, and people, in space on a regular basis. For instance, there were more than 5,700 satellites in orbit at the end of 2022, while there were less than 500 satellites in 1989.

“If we do get an extreme geomagnetic storm now, there’s so much stuff up there that’s going to be moving all over the place,” Berger says. “We are concerned with an elevated risk of collision from the next one.”

[Related: What happens when the sun burns out?]

With NASA planning on heading back to the moon and eventually to Mars, scientists will need to get a lot better at forecasting solar eruptions. Physicists like Berger and researchers at the Space Weather Prediction Center can currently predict solar eruptions, but with what meteorologists would consider fairly lousy accuracy and detail compared to 10-day forecast of sunshine and rain.

“We can tell you when the coronal mass ejection will hit, roughly, plus or minus 10 hours,” Berger explains, “But we don’t have a good way to forecast what is going to happen in the low-Earth orbit environment.” In other words, it’s tough to say how much a geomagnetic storm will affect the operation and trajectory of satellites and regular electrical operations on the ground.

The sticking point for better forecasts is that while NOAA runs an ongoing simulation of the Earth’s upper atmosphere, that model isn’t yet able to assimilate real-time data the way terrestrial weather forecast models can. “That is a research program that will take several years to come to fruition,” Berger says.

In the meantime, the sun will keep climbing toward solar maximum in 2025. But even after that peak, it doesn’t mean satellites and astronauts are out of the woods as far as solar storms are concerned. “Really any time between now and 2028 or 2029, we could potentially get a large eruption beginning to hit the Earth,” Berger says. That probably won’t affect daily life, but NASA and satellite operators will need to keep an eye toward the sun.      

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In our solar system neighborhood, there’s one planetary family that we haven’t met properly: the ice giants, Uranus and Neptune. Thanks to Voyager mission flybys, we’ve said hello and we know their faces—but we’ve never stopped over for a visit. Now, planetary scientists have decided to make long-overdue plans to walk over and ring the doorbell for a house tour.

The 2022 Planetary Science Decadal Survey, an influential document for planning future missions run by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, recommended NASA prioritize sending an orbiter and probe to Uranus in the coming decades. Past decrees from this process have launched some of the most exciting projects of the 2020s, including the Mars Sample Return and the upcoming Europa Clipper mission.

With eight planets and countless smaller rocks to explore in our solar system, how could planners possibly settle on a single destination—especially when that decision involves millions, or billions, of dollars and affects hundreds of careers? In a recent commentary for Science, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab planetary scientist Kathleen Mandt argues why Uranus is the right choice—and other researchers seem to agree.

“We’ve sent missions to every other planet, to comets, to asteroids, and to trans-Neptunian objects. We’ve sent missions out of the solar system and to the surface of the sun…. Uranus and Neptune are the enigmas of the solar system,” says Will Saunders, an astronomer at Boston University who studies Uranus’s atmosphere.

Humanity’s last up-close glimpse of Uranus, and its sibling ice giant, Neptune, was back in the 1980s with the Voyager probes. Although Neptune would be nearly equally scientifically interesting—its captured Kuiper Belt Object moon, Triton, is of particular curiosity due to its icy volcanoes and more—the extra billion miles to that planet was the dealbreaker.

“The main reason that we chose Uranus first is because it is easier to get to,” Mandt tells Popular Science. “And we have already waited more than three decades for a mission to these planets. Going to Uranus first means less risk and a mission that can arrive at the planet sooner.”

For a planetary mission, “soon” means within the next few decades—the trip to Uranus takes 10 to 15 years, and engineers still need to design and build the spacecraft. As of now, the plan is to launch by 2032, hopefully reaching Uranus by the mid-2040s. The mission would have two parts: an orbiter, which would circle the planet for at least five years, and a probe to dive into the clouds and collect information about the Uranian atmosphere. 

Some key measurements that astronomers have for Jupiter and Saturn are still missing for Uranus, such as the amount of noble gases and the ratio of different types of nitrogen. The probe will measure these chemical markers because they’re fingerprints of how and when the planet formed. “The formation of the four giant planets and the way they moved to new locations had a major impact on the whole solar system,” says Mandt. This planetary rearrangement “may be how we got water on Earth,” she adds, and that motion launched many of the objects in the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud to their current positions.

[Related: Expect NASA to probe Uranus within the next 10 years]

Plus, Uranus is the only planet fully knocked on its side: It’s tilted 98 degrees, which is wild compared to Earth’s 23-degree angle. That causes some quirks in its atmosphere. Planetary scientists are puzzled by the resulting patterns of clouds and wind on Uranus, which they hope to resolve in this mission.

Uranus also has 27 moons, some of which may host oceans below their thick icy surfaces. Subsurface oceans are, of course, one of astrobiologists’ favorite targets for extraterrestrial life, and the satellites of Uranus are no exception. One of the major surprises from Voyager was that Uranus’s five largest moons—Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon—weren’t “cold dead worlds,” as Mandt describes in the article, but were instead geologically active.

“Simply put, I want another picture of Miranda before I die,” says Adeene Denton, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. “Miranda is, to me, one of the coolest and most unusual places in the solar system, covered in geologic terrains we haven’t seen anywhere else.”

The lessons from Uranus aren’t bound to our solar system, either. In the past few decades, exoplanet astronomers have found that Uranus-sized worlds may be the most common type of planet out there. An up-close study of our local example will be invaluable for astronomers trying to understand distant exoplanets—particularly helpful will be determining properties of Uranus’s core and internal structure, such as whether it’s made of rock or ice.

[Related: Uranus blasted a gas bubble 22,000 times bigger than Earth]

“We have not seen Uranus up close since before I was born. That was before we knew about the existence of exoplanets,” says University of Bristol astronomer Hannah Wakeford. “This mission to Uranus is going to change our understanding of our solar system, and planets across our galaxy.”

The upcoming Uranus orbiter and probe mission has the potential to be a revolutionary event in science, bringing our understanding of the ice giants up to par—doing what Cassini did for Saturn and Juno for Jupiter. “An orbiter is really what we need to do profound science that characterizes the entirety of the Uranian system,” says Denton. “There is so much to see and do, and committing to an orbiter is really truly worth it.” 

Plus, it will return incredible images of the edges of our solar system, certain to excite and inspire future scientists and space fans. Whenever NASA comes knocking, it always packs cameras, and this meet-and-greet is no exception.

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NASA is enlisting artificial intelligence software to assist engineers in designing the next generation of spacecraft hardware, and real world results resemble the stuff of science fiction.

The agency utilized commercially available AI software at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. NASA states that research engineer Ryan McClelland, who worked on the new materials with the assistance of AI, has dubbed them “evolved structures.” They have already been used in the design and construction of astrophysics balloon observatories, space weather monitors, and space telescopes, as well as the Mars Sample Return mission and more.

Beforehand the evolved structures are created, a computer-assisted design (CAD) specialist first sets the new objects’ “off limits” parameters, such as where the parts connects to spacecraft or other instruments, as well as other specifications like bolt and fitting placements, additional hardware, and electronics. Once those factors are defined, AI software “connects the dots” to sketch out a potential new structural design, often within just two hours or less.

The finished products result in curious, unique forms that are up to two-thirds lighter than their purely human-designed counterparts. However, proposed forms generally require some human fine-tuning, Ryan McClellans makes sure to highlight. “The algorithms do need a human eye,” McClelland said. “Human intuition knows what looks right, but left to itself, the algorithm can sometimes make structures too thin.”

[Related: NASA just announced a plane with a radical wing design.]

Optimizing materials and hardware is especially important for NASA’s spacefaring projects, given each endeavor’s unique requirements and needs. As opposed to assembly line construction for mass produced items, almost every NASA part is unique, so shortening design and construction times with AI input expands the agency’s capabilities.

When combined with other production techniques like 3D-printing, researchers envision a time when larger parts could be constructed while astronauts are already in orbit, thus reducing costly payloads. Such assembly plans might even be employed during construction of permanent human bases on the moon and Mars.

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ChatGPT’s cousin was just hired by NASA. On February 1, NASA and IBM announced a new partnership between the two major organizations, aimed at applying artificial intelligence (AI) tools to climate science, scanning research literature for quick answers and identifying features in Earth science data.

This is far from NASA’s first foray into artificial intelligence, or even the agency’s first collaboration with IBM. In 2014, NASA collaborated with the tech giant to infer measurements of the sun’s extreme radiation when a sensor failed on the Solar Dynamics Observatory. A year later, NASA started a summer bootcamp to bring scientists together with Silicon Valley engineers, known as the Frontier Development Lab. 

Plus, since the dawn of machine-learning techniques, scientists across NASA’s domains have been using these tools in their own projects, from looking at the sun to designing autonomous data-gathering robots. As AI has grown in power and complexity, though, it has become harder for individual researchers to harness the full potential of these tools. Each time they start a new project, many NASA engineers and scientists build a bespoke model for each dataset. To solve that problem, in 2020, NASA hosted a workshop on AI. It sought answers to large-scale, extra-challenging problems, dreaming bigger than one-off models for each problem—and IBM’s tech seemed like a perfect match for their needs.

“We have all heard and seen the magic” of widely-applicable machine learning models, especially language models like ChatGPT, said IBM lead developer Priya Nagpurkar in a press conference. “We are at this unique point where it’s time to take those advances and apply them to different domains…as well as advancing science.”

[Related: Is ChatGPT groundbreaking? These experts say no.]

This collaboration is the first time a particular kind of AI—a flexible, broadly-applicable technique known as a foundation model, which IBM is at the forefront of developing—has been applied to Earth sciences. “While NASA and IBM have discussed using AI to solve various problems for the past few years, IBM’s foundation model research was the catalyst for the current collaboration,” says IBM representative Danielle Cerasani.

As described in a recent press release, the collaboration plans to tackle two main projects: answering questions based on scientific literature, and analyzing large datasets of Earth to identify patterns and trends. NASA is providing access to its vast collection of Earth-observing data and its scientists, while IBM is adding AI development expertise and their existing research into this tech.

The literature search is based on technology similar to ChatGPT, and NASA hopes it will serve as a sort of ultra-advanced search engine for scientists.One of its key selling points is that its answers will come with citations—direct links to the research papers it’s pulling information from—unlike other tools that act more like a mysterious black box.  Rahul Ramachandran, senior research scientist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, said in a press conference this technology could be ready as early as mid-2023. 

Still, some scientists are skeptical. “The ability of the model to summarize information and answer questions, which is the most innovative aspect especially for the broader community, is also at higher risk of bias,” says Viviana Acquaviva, physicist and AI specialist at the City University of New York. “We have seen how state-of-the-art models like ChatGPT can easily produce biased or incorrect answers, while sounding plausible and confident.” In an advertisement for Google’s new Bard chatbot, for instance, the AI incorrectly stated that the James Webb Space Telescope imaged the first exoplanet, when the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope had done so years prior.

[Related: How old is Earth? It’s a surprisingly tough question to answer.]

Meanwhile, applying AI to Earth observations is the more scientifically interesting half of the collaboration, at least to Acquaviva. NASA hosts the world’s largest archives of data on our planet—enough to fill around a million typical iPhones—and they hope to sort it more effectively with IBM’s models.

“Our archive is currently at 70 petabytes and it’s projected to grow within a few years to 250 petabytes…We support 7 billion users worldwide who access our data for research and applications,” Ramachandran told reporters. “Clearly, given the scale of the data that we have, we have a big data problem.” 

With the new AI tech, they hope to easily track weather and natural disasters across the planet—as diverse as tornado tracks to dust clouds. Ramachandran imagined a scenario where a disaster response team could quickly analyze the extent of flooding after a hurricane, enabling faster and more effective emergency aid. The team plans to first analyze a data set known as Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2, a combination of observations from two powerful NASA satellites. This work has just started, however, with Ramachandran describing it as an “open area” of research.

The collaboration also intends to publicly release the code and other tools they develop through these projects, making them available to anyone interested in their use. “It is exciting to witness progress toward the creation of an inclusive and interdisciplinary community,” Acquaviva says, “that can make climate data and AI tools more accessible to scientists and the public.”

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Being stranded in space sounds like the makings of a dramatic science fiction movie, but reality is a bit less flashy. Real-life space travel involves rigorous preparation, massive teams of support staff, and backup plans for almost every imaginable scenario.

This intense planning is exactly why the recent coolant leak on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft isn’t as dire as it originally seemed. 

In December 2022,  a micrometeorite damaged the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft docked on the ISS, which affected the capsule’s cooling systems that keep astronauts at safe temperatures on their descent back to Earth. Engineers determined that the craft wasn’t fit for return, except in case of an emergency. The crew originally carried up on the Soyuz was stranded. 

But they were stranded aboard the safest place in space: the International Space Station. “We have the ISS as a safe haven,” says former NASA astronaut Mike Massimino, who flew aboard the space shuttle in 2002 and 2009 to service the Hubble Space Telescope. “If you get stuck up there, you just hang out there for a while until someone comes and gets you.”

The ISS is about the size of an American football field, and made up of almost 40 different modules, as diverse as solar panels to docking ports to pressurized, habitable living areas. Construction on this orbital behemoth began in 1998, and it has been occupied by at least one astronaut since the turn of the century.

[Related: ISS astronauts are building objects that couldn’t exist on Earth]

Its modular design is not only a quirk of its assembly, but a conscious design choice. In the event of an emergency—the top three are fire, depressurization, and toxic air—the crew exits the damaged area, sealing off modules as they go to isolate the leak or other issue. Even if something were to happen aboard the ISS while the crew from Soyuz MS-22 were stuck, “the chances are you’re going to be able to isolate [the problem] until you figure out how to get other folks home,” according to Massimino.

The astronauts are also trained for risky situations. They prepare on the ground before their voyages and aboard the space station. Plus, the American astronauts have to be familiar with the Russian tech on board (and vice versa) and even learn to speak Russian so that they are able to effectively work with their international counterparts.

Yet, among the many different emergencies astronauts prepare for, a damaged return capsule doesn’t feature prominently. The mission teams are more focused on ensuring the ISS remains safe and habitable, and aren’t as concerned about the ferries between space and the ground. “The spacecraft on which astronauts and cosmonauts fly to the space station are the intended spacecraft for their return to Earth,” says NASA media representative Joshua Finch.

[Related: The ISS gets an extension to 2030 to wrap up unfinished business]

In the late 1990s to early 2000s, NASA considered a dedicated “lifeboat” for the ISS, known as the X-38. It would have been a glider, similar to the space shuttle, with the sole purpose of returning astronauts to Earth in emergency situations. Although prototypes were successfully tested, the program was canceled in 2002 due to budget constraints. Instead, astronauts learned to rely on the ever-expanding ISS.

“When we had the shuttle flights after the [Space Shuttle Columbia] accident, there was a real possibility that you might not be able to come back because of your return vehicle,” Massimino recalls. “And we weren’t worried about that because if you inspected the vehicle and you couldn’t repair it, you would just stay on the space station.” Given that people have lived aboard the ISS for as much as a year at a time, a brief layover there while waiting for your connecting spaceflight doesn’t seem so bad.

American and Russian mission support teams also immediately began coordinating their next steps after the recent leak, putting their rigorous training into action while astronauts waited onboard. Numerous plans were considered, from fitting more astronauts into the SpaceX capsule also docked on the ISS to sending up new vehicles to bring them home. “Engineers at each space agency work together to provide safe return options in the event of an emergency situation,” Finch explains, “as NASA and Roscosmos have done while creating the Soyuz 68S crew return plan.”

In early January, NASA and Roscosmos decided the best course of action was to move up the date of the next Soyuz launch, sending up an uncrewed capsule to give the astronauts a ride home. The launch will send up the Soyuz MS-23 on February 20—and until then, the astronauts will continue with business as usual and ride out their stay on the ISS, humanity’s only oasis in space beyond our home planet.

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Sometime later this year—perhaps this summer, perhaps this fall—an electric aircraft from NASA, the X-57, is set to take flight in California. It’s what NASA describes as its “first all-electric experiment aircraft,” and when it does lift off the ground, it won’t look the way that NASA has been depicting the plane on its website.

Instead of a whopping 14 electric motors and propellers, the aircraft will have just two. But those two motors, powered by more than 5,000 cylindrical battery cells in the aircraft’s fuselage, should be enough to get it up in the air before 2023 is over, which is when the X-57 program is set to power down, too. 

Here’s what to know about how the plane will work, the challenges the program has faced, and how lessons from spaceflight helped inform the details of its battery system. 

Modification 2 

If the plane does indeed take flight this year as planned, it will do so in a form called Modification 2, which involves one electric motor and propeller on each wing giving the aircraft the thrust it needs to take to the skies.

While the aeronautics and space agency had hoped to fly the plane—which is based on a Tecnam P2006T—in additional configurations, known as Modifications 3 and 4, that won’t happen. Why? Because making a plane that flies safely on just electricity is hard, and the program is only funded through 2023. (IEEE Spectrum has more on the program’s original plans.)

“We’ve been learning a lot over the years, and we thought we’d be learning through flight tests—it turns out we had a lot of lessons to learn during the design and integration and airworthiness qualification steps, and so we ended up spending more time and resources on that,” says Sean Clark, the principle investigator for the X-57 program at NASA. 

“And that’s been hugely valuable,” he adds. “But it means that we’re not going to end up having resources for those Mod 4 [or 3] flights.” 

It will still fly as an all-electric plane, but in Mod 2, with two motors. 

Exploding transistors 

One glitch that the team had to iron out before the aircraft can safely take flight involves components that electricity from the batteries have to travel through before they reach the motors. The problem was with transistor modules inside the inverters, which change electricity from DC to AC. 

“We were using these modules that are several transistors in a package—they were specced to be able to tolerate the types of environments we were expecting to put it in,” says Clark. “But every time we would test them, they would fail. We would have transistors just blowing up in our environmental test chamber.” 

[Related: This ‘airliner of the future’ has a radical new wing design]

A component failure—such as a piece of equipment blowing up—is the type of issue that aircraft makers prefer to resolve on the ground. Clark says they figured it out. “We did a lot of dissection of them—after they explode, it’s hard to know what went wrong,” he notes, lightheartedly, in a manner suggesting an engineer faced with a messy problem. The solution was newer hardware and “redesigning the inverter system basically from the ground up,” he notes. 

They are now “working really well,” he adds. “We’ve put a full set through qualification, and they’ve all passed.”

Lessons from space

Traditional aircraft burn fossil fuels, an obviously flammable and explosive substance, to power their engines. Those working on electric aircraft, powered by batteries, need to ensure that the battery cells don’t spark fires, either. Last year in Kansas, for example, an FAA-sponsored test featured a pack of aviation batteries being dropped by 50 feet to ensure they could handle the impact. They did. 

In the X-57, the batteries are a model known as 18650 cells, made by Samsung. The aircraft uses 5,120 of them, divided into 16 modules of 320 cells each. An individual module, which includes both battery cells and packaging, weighs around 51 pounds, Clark says. The trick is to make sure all of these components are packaged in the right way to avoid a fire, even if one battery experiences a failure. In other words, failure was an option, but they plan to manage any failure so that it does not start a blaze. “We found that there was not an industry standard for how to package these cells into a high-voltage, high-power pack, that would also protect them against cell failures,” Clark says. 

[Related: The Air Force wants to modernize air refueling, but it’s been a bumpy ride]

Help came from higher up. “We ended up redesigning the battery pack based on a lot of input from some of the design team that works on the space station here at NASA,” he adds. He notes that lithium batteries on the International Space Station, as well as in the EVA suits astronauts use and a device called the pistol grip tool, were relevant examples in the process. The key takeaways involved the spacing between the battery cells, as well how to handle the heat if a cell did malfunction, like by experiencing a thermal runaway. “What the Johnson [Space Center] team found was one of the most effective strategies is to actually let that heat from that cell go into the aluminum structure, but also have the other cells around it absorb a little bit of heat each,” he explains.

NASA isn’t alone in exploring the frontier of electric aviation, which represents one way that the aviation industry could be greener for short flights. Others working in the space include Beta Technologies, Joby Aviation, Archer Aviation, Wisk Aero, and Eviation with a plane called Alice. One prominent company, Kitty Hawk, shuttered last year.

Sometime this year, the X-57 should fly for the first time, likely making multiple sorties. “I’m still really excited about this technology,” says Clark. “I’m looking forward to my kids being able to take short flights in electric airplanes in 10, 15 years—it’s going to be a really great step for aviation.”

Watch a brief video about the aircraft, below:

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Step into a commercial airliner like a Boeing 737, take a seat, and look out the window: You’ll likely be able to see the wing protruding out from the lower part of the plane’s body, partly blocking your view of the ground below. 

But today, NASA announced that it will be working with Boeing to produce an experimental new aircraft demonstrator that looks radically different from the jets that passengers are used to seeing. The flying machine will feature long, skinny wings that extend from the top of the plane’s fuselage, above the windows, not below. And because these wings will be more slender and more lengthy than typical wings on commercial aircraft, they will be supported by trusses. 

The reason for creating this new plane, which will be called the Sustainable Flight Demonstrator, is simple: To find a way to make the aircraft much more fuel efficient and better for the environment. The figure that NASA is shooting for is as much as 30 percent better efficiency, although that radically better efficiency gain wouldn’t come from new wings alone. 

At a press conference in Washington, DC today, Pamela Melroy, NASA’s deputy administrator, said the initiative was a “major new NASA commitment to reducing carbon emissions in the air transportation system,” which she referred to as “one of the most difficult industries to decarbonize.” 

In addition to those long, skinny wings, the aircraft will have two engines—one under each wing—and a tail in the rear shaped like a T. It will be a single-aisle aircraft like a Boeing 737 or an Airbus A320, and not a wide-body with two aisles, like a 787 or an A350. The goal is that planes like this would serve the typical, workaday flights of commercial air travel, connecting destinations like New York City with Chicago. 

The star of the show is the wing.

“We’re going to reduce as much as 30 percent the fuel consumption—with better engines, and look at this wing,” Bill Nelson, NASA’s administrator, said at the event. The wing is “so long and thin, it has to have a brace.” 

In addition to supporting the wings—which are what give an airplane the lift it needs to fly—the trusses, or braces, can pull off another trick. “You can actually get lift on this brace, as well as [from] the wing, [like] the old concept of the old biplanes,” Nelson added. 

Aircraft engineering is all about tradeoffs: This experimental plane needs those trusses to support the skinny wings, but there’s a good reason for the wings to be long and skinny in the first place. “It’s our plan to demonstrate this extra-long thin wing—stabilized by the braces—that will make commercial airliners much more fuel efficient by creating less drag,” he said. 

The plane’s design is technically referred to as a TTBW, which stands for Transonic Truss-Braced Wing. In May of 2020, Popular Science took a close look at NASA’s efforts regarding such an aircraft. Aerospace engineers say that the reason why long slender wings produce less drag is because they can reduce vortices at the wing tips. A NASA senior aerospace engineer, Kevin James, explained it at the time like this: “Out at the tip of the wing, where there’s no more wing beyond what the air can see, the air is very clever, and it will simply just go around the tip,” he said. But by making the wings longer, there is “more lift that we can generate, more efficiently.”

[Related: The illuminating tech inside night vision goggles, explained]

Drawbacks to configurations like this include the fact that a long, narrow wing could flutter, like a bridge or a sign blowing in strong winds, which is why a plane with these wings needs to have trusses. And of course, if aircraft with this design end up taking the place of narrowbody planes like 737s, they’ll need to fit into the gate at the airport—and long wings could make that challenging. 

NASA said today that along with Boeing, they plan to get this futuristic, more-fuel efficient bird flying by 2028, and even said that planes like this could be in service in the 2030s.

Globally, aviation represented more than 2 percent of carbon dioxide emissions in 2021 from “energy-related” sources, according to the International Energy Agency. In addition to exploring new aircraft designs like the TTBW in the form of the Sustainable Flight Demonstrator, there are other ways of trying to make aircraft greener, including running smaller planes on purely electric power to using sustainable aviation fuel. “I’m still very concerned about the carbon footprint of global air travel,” Melroy said at the beginning of the event. “The aviation sector is a giant in the global economy, and we have to take that seriously.” 

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The lifetime of the universe is, unfortunately, so long that we can’t just wait and watch what happens to understand how it works. It’s a movie marathon that started billions of years before our species began, and will likely continue after us, too. But what if there was a recording, and we could wind back the tape?

Astronomers are doing just that with the famed James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), using the behemoth flying observatory to rewind through our universe’s history, searching for early galaxies. As a result, astronomers have found hundreds of galaxies from 11 to 13 billion years ago that also show a remarkable diversity of shapes: disks, bulges, clumps, lumps, and more. These star groupings emerged earlier in the universe’s timeline than previously thought, according to new research recently presented at the American Astronomical Society meeting and soon to be published in The Astrophysical Journal.

“It is amazing to be able to see the structures of these distant galaxies with such clarity for the first time,” said Jeyhan Kartaltepe, Rochester Institute of Technology astronomer and lead author on the new study. “They are anything but boring.”

To estimate the ages, Kartaltepe and her team used a well-established method in astronomy. Galaxies farther away from us in space also go back further in the universe’s history, thanks to the finite speed of light. Plus, given that the universe is expanding, galaxies farther away from us appear more red than they would if they were nearer, as their light gets stretched out while traveling the vast, lengthening cosmic distances to our telescopes. This gives astronomers an easy way to mark when something existed in the universe, known as redshift. 

But, this also means targets with a higher redshift literally appear red, or even shine mostly in the infrared. So, a galaxy that looked bright blue billions of years ago may appear bright in infrared light to our cameras. This is the distinct advantage of JWST—because it sees the universe in the infrared, it can spot these distant, red galaxies. The telescope is also quite simply bigger than past space tools, and in the world of telescopes, bigger really is better.

[Related: How the James Webb Space Telescope is hunting for ‘first light’]

With previous data from the Hubble Space Telescope, which sees in the visible and near-infrared, astronomers already knew there were interesting and diverse galaxies in our universe from 11 billion years ago. To find out when the sweeping spirals and rotund bulges (like those in our own Milky Way) first formed, though, researchers needed to rewind the tape a bit further. 

“We do not know what happened in the early universe to create disks and bulges, or when it happened, or where it happened, or how it happened—and we had no way of finding this out until JWST,” says University of Melbourne astronomer Benji Metha, a researcher not affiliated with the new findings. “We can use these [galactic] observations like a fossil record, to dig back through time and see what features existed in these galaxies while the universe was still under construction.”

The team gathered images of 850 galaxies with JWST, and classified them into the typical galaxy shapes: disks (like our own spiral galaxy), clumps, irregulars, or some combination of the three. The data was all analyzed by hand, with astronomers sifting through each and every file. “One thing I love about this paper is how human it is,” says Metha. He explains how a century ago, American astronomer Edwin Hubble used the Mount Wilson Observatory in California to sort different types of nearby galaxies, creating the classification system most astronomers use today. “At its core, this paper uses the exact same method that Hubble used: Look at some pictures, and write down what you see,” Metha adds.

The international group of researchers found lots of disks, which may be precursors to galaxies like the Milky Way. They also spotted lots of irregulars, which are signs of two galaxies whose gravitational fields got a little too close and nudged each others’ stars around, or even merged completely.

“We see all sorts of structures across cosmic time less than a billion years after the Big Bang,” says Olivia Cooper, an astronomer at UT Austin. These new images, she said, “demonstrate what we are able to do with JWST and hint at a universe that hosted evolved galaxies earlier than we thought.”

The fact that there was such a variety of galaxies while the universe was still young is puzzling, and sure to keep astronomers busy as they build better models to learn how these cosmic entities formed and grew. The study also shows that to see the first galaxies, experts will need to keep rewinding that tape, and pushing the boundaries of how far back JWST can peer into the universe’s past.

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A Russian Soyuz spacecraft damaged by a micrometeorite while docked at the International Space Station (ISS) will return to Earth uncrewed, NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos announced today. Investigations by both space agencies found no damage to the ISS or any of the other spacecraft connected to it.

In a teleconference with reporters, Roscosmos Executive Director for Human Spaceflight Sergei Krikalev and NASA’s ISS Program Manager Joel Montalbano said Russia will launch another uncrewed Soyuz spacecraft on February 20 to provide a ride home for the two cosmonauts and single astronaut that flew to the ISS in September 2022 aboard the now stricken Soyuz MS-22.

Both officials stopped short of calling the coming launch a rescue mission, however. “I’m calling it a replacement Soyuz,” Montalbano told reporters Wednesday. “This is the next Soyuz that was scheduled to fly in March; it will just fly a little earlier.”

[Related: 2 astronauts survived a ‘ballistic descent’ in a Russian rocket]

Soyuz MS-22 carried Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio to the ISS last fall. The trio had expected to return home aboard that same spacecraft this March after a new Soyuz, MS-23, delivered a replacement crew to the space station.

But on December 14, the MS-22 began leaking coolant from a radiator system. Visual inspection of the spacecraft, modeling, and experiments on the ground in Russia using a hyper-velocity gun suggest the damage came from a micrometeorite about 1 millimeter in diameter, Krikalev told reporters Wednesday. Roscosmos officials believe it was a tiny chunk of rock and not a piece of space debris, he explained, because the material was traveling at an estimated 4.3 miles per second—too fast to have maintained an orbit shared by the ISS.

Without a functioning radiator system, Krikalev said, temperatures within the Soyuz spacecraft could rise to as high as 104 degrees Fahrenheit during the roughly six hours necessary for a normal reentry process in Earth’s atmosphere. That heat, along with high humidity, is considered too risky to bring astronauts home.

The MS-22 spacecraft could be used in the highly unlikely event of an emergency requiring evacuation of the ISS. But Montalbano noted that in such a situation, NASA would consider bringing one crew member home on the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft that is also currently docked to the station. This carries its own problems, however, as spacesuits are specific to each spacecraft, and a suit fitted to an astronaut for flight on a Soyuz may not fit optimally when flying aboard a Crew Dragon.

Although Petelin, Prokopyev, and Rubio will get a new vehicle to ride home in late February, they may stay aboard the space station on an extended mission into September. That’s when Roscosmos plans to send the next crew rotation up to the ISS on another Soyuz spacecraft. As Montalbano stressed to reporters Wednesday, the risk lies in going forward with a normal crewed reentry on the MS-22 Soyuz, not the daily operations on the space station itself. “There is no immediate need for the crew to come home today,” he said. “They are excited to be in space.”

While the damage done to MS-22 appears to have come from a micrometeorite, the situation illustrates the kinds of problems even miniscule pieces of uncontrolled material can cause in orbit. The ISS has maneuvered to avoid space debris more than 30 times since 1999, for instance, including a close encounter with fragments from an anti-satellite missile test by the Russian military that destroyed a Soviet-era spy satellite in November 2021.

[Related on PopSci+: How harpoons, magnets, and ion blasts could help us clean up space junk]

The extended mission for Petelin, Prokopyev, and Rubio is also far from the first time an astronaut or cosmonaut has had to stay in space for longer than expected. NASA’s Mark Vande Hei set a US record of 355 consecutive days in space after heading to the ISS on April 9, 2021 and returning on March 30, 2022. His original flight home in October 2021 was canceled to allow a Russian filmmaker and an actor to shoot a scene aboard the space station. 

Krikalev, meanwhile, was a cosmonaut with extensive flight experience on the ISS and the Russian Mir space station before taking on an executive role with Roscosmos. He once boarded the Mir space station in May of 1991 and didn’t come home until March 1992 due to the fall of the Soviet Union on December 26, 1991.

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The past few years have been a space launch boom: Late 2021 saw the long-awaited arrival of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and in 2022 NASA finally launched its massive new Space Launch System Moon rocket. This year will continue that trend, as several scientific and commercial craft zoom off our world to orbit and beyond.

This year’s historic flights include missions to Jupiter and the asteroid belt, robotic moon landings, and the maiden flight of a new spacecraft to take astronauts to and from the aging International Space Station (ISS). Here are some of the major launches to look forward to in 2023.

Asteroids and icy moons

Both NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have big plans for studying celestial bodies beyond the orbit of Mars that kick off in 2023.

ESA’s JUpiter ICy moons Explorer, or JUICE mission, will study the icy Galilean moons of Jupiter, Europa, Callisto and Ganymede. Of the three moons, Europa has so far garnered the lion’s share of scientific interest due to the global liquid water ocean beneath the moon’s icy crust, an environment that could host alien life. But evidence now suggests Callisto and Ganymede may also host subsurface liquid water oceans. JUICE, which is scheduled to launch atop an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana sometime in April and will arrive at Jupiter in 2031, will fly by each of the three moons to compare the three icy worlds.

[Related: Jupiter’s moons are about to get JUICE’d for signs of life]

The JUICE spacecraft will enter orbit around Ganymede in 2034, the first time a spacecraft has circled a moon other than Earth’s, where it will spend roughly a year studying the satellite in greater detail. Ganymede, in addition to its potential subsurface ocean and potential habitability, is the only moon in the solar system with its own magnetic field. JUICE will study how this field interacts with Jupiter’s even  larger one.

NASA’s Psyche mission, meanwhile, will blast off no earlier than October 10 on a mission to rendezvous with its namesake asteroid, when it arrives in the belt between Mars and Jupiter in August 2029. The Psyche mission was originally scheduled to launch in August 2022, but was delayed due to problems developing mission-critical software at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The asteroid 16 Psyche is a largely metallic space rock that scientists believe could be the exposed core of a protoplanet that formed in the early solar system. If that theory bears out, the Psyche spacecraft could end up traveling millions of miles to give scientists a better understanding of the Earth’s iron core far beneath their feet.

India returns to the moon

The Indian Space Research Organization, ISRO, is going back to the moon with its Chandrayaan-3 mission, which is scheduled to launch over the summer. The space agency’s Chandrayaan-2 mission carried an orbiter and lander to the moon in 2019, but a software glitch caused the lander to crash on the lunar surface. The Chandrayaan-3 mission is ditching the orbiter in favor of a redesigned lander and rover intended for the lunar South Pole. Carrying a seismometer and spectrographs, among other instruments, the lander and rover will study the chemical composition and geology of the polar region. 

[Related: 10 incredible lunar missions that paved the way for Artemis]

The hunt for dark matter

Astrophysicists believe dark matter and dark energy shape the structures of entire universes—and drive the accelerated expansion of ours. But experts don’t understand much about these enigmatic phenomena. ESA’s Euclid space telescope, scheduled to launch sometime in 2023, will measure the effects of these dark forces on the cosmos over time to try and discern their properties.

After launch, Euclid will make its way to the same operational location as JWST, entering an orbit around Lagrangian Point 2, about 1 million miles behind Earth. From there, Euclid will use its nearly 4-foot diameter mirror, visible light imaging system, and near-infrared spectrometer to survey a third of the sky out to a distance of about 15 billion light years. That will give a view  some 10 billion years into the past. By studying how galaxies and galaxy clusters change over eons and across much of the sky, Euclid scientists hope to grasp how dark matter and dark energy shape galactic formation and the evolution of the entire universe.

Boeing catches up to SpaceX

Boeing will finally launch a crewed test flight of its Starliner spacecraft sometime in April 2023. Boeing developed the Starliner, a capsule that holds up to seven people, as a competitor to the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. Like Dragon, Starliner will ferry astronauts and cargo to and from the ISS as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.

[Related: ISS astronauts are building objects that couldn’t exist on Earth]

But while Crew Dragon began flying astronauts to the ISS in November 2020, the Starliner ran into many delay-causing problems, beginning with a software glitch that kept the spacecraft from rendezvousing with the ISS during an uncrewed test flight in December 2020. Boeing kept at it, however, and completed a second attempt at an uncrewed rendezvous with the ISS in May 2022, paving the way for the coming crewed test flight.

If all goes well, NASA will integrate Starliner flights alongside Crew Dragon launches within the Commercial Crew program, providing the space agency some redundancy in case of problems with either type of spacecraft.

The (private) enterprise

As NASA becomes more and more reliant on Boeing, SpaceX, and other contractors for flights to the ISS, private space operators have big plans of their own for 2023.

Axiom Space plans to send a crew of private citizens for a two-week stay on the ISS in the  summer, following the company’s first mission in April 2022 when four private astronauts spent more than two weeks aboard the space station. Axiom Space plans to build a new habitat—first connected to the ISS, then separated to create a free-flying space station when NASA retires the ISS in 2031.

[Related: SpaceX’s all-civilian moon trip has a crew]

Jared Isaacman, the billionaire who funded the first ever all-private orbital space flight in September 2021 with the Inspiration 4 mission, will also be back at it in 2023. The Polaris Dawn mission is scheduled to launch no sooner than March and will once again see Isaacman fly aboard a chartered SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft along with three crewmates. Unlike Inspiration 4, at least two of the Polaris Dawn crew plan to conduct the first-ever private astronaut spacewalks outside a spacecraft.

The Jeff Bezos-founded Blue Origin, meanwhile, will attempt to launch the first test flight of its orbital rocket, known as New Glenn, sometime in 2023. While the company has flown celebrities such as Bezos and William Shatner to the edge of space aboard its suborbital New Shepard rocket, the company has yet to make an orbital flight. This year, it’s aiming higher.

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The James Webb Space Telescope, NASA’s newest and biggest off-world observatory, has been collecting jaw-dropping images of the cosmos since June. Astronomers quickly shared their results online, even before the telescope’s calibrations were finished. Some of these findings were record-breaking, including observations of the most distant galaxies yet found. Significant debate and discussion ensued among researchers—was science moving too quickly by publishing observations before peer review, forsaking rigor for the glory of being first to a new discovery?

As the dust has settled, many astronomers think the early results remain informative. But, in the rush to work with a groundbreaking new observatory and sift through its mountains of data, they report stressful working conditions. That’s a scenario they hope to improve upon in 2023 and beyond, finding a balance between quickly offering exciting results to the public and taking the time needed for rigorous, sustainable science.

“I was actually quite excited to see science happening very fast,” says Klaus Pontoppidan, JWST project scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute. “This is the way science works … if there are issues with calibration, that gets tested by other teams, and any errors get corrected later.”

[Related: A fierce competition will decide James Webb Space Telescope’s next views of the cosmos]

Every day JWST returns around 60 gigabytes of data to Earth, about the amount of information a basic iPhone can hold. This may not seem like much, but the steady stream of data amounts to a whopping 12,000 gigabytes so far—enough to fill a roomful of laptops—with much more to come. Each bit of this valuable data will be subject to the intense scrutiny of astronomers, who are trying to glean as much information as they can about the cosmos with JWST’s new view.

Some of that analysis started almost as soon as the telescope was operational, with programs known as Early Release Science (ERS), which made JWST data publicly available this June and July. 

Hannah Wakeford, an astronomer at the University of Bristol, worked on some of these early release science programs. Although she is excited about the scientific breakthroughs, she also experienced an extremely intense work environment—she hasn’t taken a break since mid-July. She criticizes this initial period of rushed results, saying that usually “fast science results in poorer or incomplete work. This is not necessarily the scientists themselves at fault for this, but the enormous external pressure to get publications.”

On the other hand, Ryan Trainor, an astrophysicist at Franklin & Marshall College, considers this frenzy as just “part of the modern scientific process, particularly given the pressure to be first to any big discovery.” Wakeford and Trainor’s statements are not mutually exclusive—the race to publish is both an accepted part of science and a possible hazard. For those trying to make astronomy their career, publishing an idea first and getting the credit for it is a necessary evil.

As we approach the one year anniversary of JWST’s launch on Christmas Day, the debate about the speed of astronomy has resurfaced again, now in the context of observations proposed by teams of scientists. NASA reportedly planned to make all data available from the telescope immediately, removing so-called proprietary periods that allow astronomers time to work with data they planned and designed. There isn’t currently a clear deadline for this change, but it may fall in line with the White House’s call for open access science by 2026.

Those in favor of removing proprietary periods claim that public access to the data will be more equitable, allowing anyone a chance to explore the wonders of the new telescope. Many astronomers disagree, though, explaining that their field will become impossibly competitive without proprietary periods to protect scientists’ ideas. The rush to publish would undermine work-life balance, and disadvantage those who can’t work as fast: parents who have to contend with childcare, astronomers at smaller schools with fewer resources, early career students who are still learning, and others.

[Related: James Webb Space Telescope reconstructed a ‘star party,’ and you’re invited]

“JWST will produce ground-breaking, paradigm-shifting science over the next 20 years of its observing time,” says Wakeford. “Why not cut the scientists a break and give them time to make sure we can do the work with rigor, while not destroying our mental and physical health at the same time?” 

Lafayette College astronomer Stephanie Douglas agrees, explaining that “this is an equity issue. We need to protect the more vulnerable members of our community.”

The situation is not so simple for the NASA scientists in charge of the telescope, though. They have a responsibility to both scientists and the general public, whose taxpayer money funds the entire program. “I think it’s a balance,” says Pontoppidan. “You’re balancing public programs and proprietary time, and both things you need to do for equity.” The future of proprietary periods is yet undecided, but no matter the outcome it will surely affect the process of science in JWST’s second year. Astronomers are currently preparing for the second round of proposals to use JWST, due just after the holidays in January. “I’m hoping that we’ll see some really ambitious proposals,” says Pontoppidan. The first year of JWST observations explored what the observatory could do—and now astronomers can start pushing the limits of those capabilities.

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The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) proves yet again that its gorgeous images are the gift that keeps on giving in 2022.

A dazzling new image is one of the first medium-deep wide-field images of the cosmos and accompanies a paper published Wednesday in the Astronomical Journal. It features a region of the sky called the North Ecliptic Pole and comes from the Prime Extragalactic Areas for Reionization and Lensing Science (PEARLS) program. PEARLS’ main goal is to study, “galaxy assembly, AGN growth, and First Light,” using the data from JWST.

[Related: The James Webb Space Telescope is about to beam us monster amounts of cosmic data.]

The term medium-deep refers to the faintest objects that can be seen within this image, and they are roughly 29th magnitude (1 billion times more faint than the unaided eye can see). Wide-field refers to the total area that will be covered by the PEARLS program, about one-twelfth the area of the full moon.

The new image uses data collected from the JWST and the dependable Hubble Space Telescope. It’s made up of eight different colors of near-infrared light captured by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), and is also boosted with three colors of ultraviolet and visible light from the Hubble.

The colors show off in stellar detail the depth of a universe that’s chock full of galaxies, many of which were previously unseen by Hubble or even the largest and most sophisticated land-based telescopes. The image includes thousands of galaxies and some of the light in the image traveled roughly 13.5 billion years. These far ranging stars are shown alongside an assortment of stars within our own Milky Way galaxy, giving it an all-inclusive vibe.

“The stunning image quality of Webb is truly out of this world,” said co-author Anton Koekemoer, research astronomer at STScI, who assembled the PEARLS images into very large mosaics, in a statement. “To catch a glimpse of very rare galaxies at the dawn of cosmic time, we need deep imaging over a large area, which this PEARLS field provides.”

[Related: The most awesome aerospace innovations of 2022.]

Some of the pinpricks of light within the image show the range of stars that are present in our home Milky Way galaxy and is a useful tool in understanding the universe’s past.

“The diffuse light that I measured in front of and behind stars and galaxies has cosmological significance, encoding the history of the universe,” said co-author Rosalia O’Brien, a graduate research assistant at Arizona State University (ASU), in a statement. “I feel very lucky to start my career right now. Webb’s data is like nothing we have ever seen, and I’m really excited about the opportunities and challenges it offers.”

The NIRCam observations will also be combined with data from another instrument on JWST, the Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS), allowing the team to search for faint objects with spectral emission lines, which can then be used to estimate their distances more accurately.

The new image shows just a portion of the full PEARLS field, which will eventually be about four times larger. However, this huge panel of stars exceeded scientists’ expectations from the simulations they ran they ran before JWST began making scientific observations (and sending us gorgeous images) in July.

“There are many objects that I never thought we would actually be able to see, including individual globular clusters around distant elliptical galaxies, knots of star formation within spiral galaxies, and thousands of faint galaxies in the background,” said co-author Jake Summers, a research assistant at ASU, in a statement.

In the future, the PEARLS team hopes to catch a glimpse of more space objects in this region, such as the varying flares of light around black holes or distant exploding stars.

“This unique field is designed to be observable with Webb 365 days per year, so its time-domain legacy, area covered, and depth reached can only get better with time,” said lead study author Rogier Windhorst, from ASU and PEARLS principal investigator, in a statement.

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An essential part of any space mission is power. If a spacecraft runs out of energy, the communications go down, the craft becomes unsteerable, and life support systems shut off—a scenario that’s the stuff of sci-fi nightmares. 

For a spacecraft, the sun is a particularly vital supplier of energy, and the recent Artemis I mission proved just how powerful it can be to harness solar energy in space. During the nearly month-long flight around the moon, NASA tested all functions of the uncrewed spacecraft, including the Orion crew capsule’s innovative solar panels. The vehicle’s solar panels exceeded expectations, proving themselves to be a key technology for the future of human space exploration.

“Initial results show that the arrays are providing significantly more power than expected,” says Philippe Berthe, an engineer who manages the Orion European Service Module Project Project at the European Space Agency (ESA).

[Related: Welcome back to Earth, Orion]

Engineers from ESA and the European company Airbus collaborated with NASA and Lockheed Martin to build the Orion spacecraft, the component that separates from the launch rockets and will ferry astronauts to their destination and back during subsequent Artemis flights. The Paris-based agency’s main contribution to Orion is the European Service Module, which houses the solar panels and other critical systems. 

Orion has four wings, each nearly the length of a British double-decker bus, that unfolded 18 minutes into its journey while still in low-Earth orbit. Each of these wings holds three gallium arsenide solar panels, a particularly efficient and durable type of solar cell made for space. Together, the four wings generate “the equivalent of two households’” worth of power, according to Berthe. 

This type of solar cell is commonly used by military and research satellites. What’s innovative about Orion’s panels is how they’re maneuvered. “Usually solar arrays have only one axis of rotation so that they can follow the sun,” says Berthe. The ones on the capsule, however, can move in two directions, folding up to withstand the pressures of spaceflight and the heat of Orion’s powerful thrusters.

During Artemis I’s 26-day mission, the combined NASA and ESA team tested all aspects of the solar panels, including their ability to rotate, unfold, and produce power. According to Berthe, the panels worked so well they provided 15 percent more power than what engineers had projected. That has consequences for future Artemis missions: “Either the size of the solar arrays could be reduced,” he says, “or they could provide more power to Orion.” Smaller solar arrays could reduce the cost of missions, but more power could allow for additional capabilities onboard the crewed spacecraft.

These nimble solar panels are also equipped with cameras on their wingtips, which Matthias Gronowski, Airbus Chief Engineer for the European Service Module, likens to a “selfie stick” for the mission. These cameras have provided incredible images of the spacecraft as it cruised between the moon and Earth, and can even help the mission engineers inspect the spacecraft for damage. Because the arrays are maneuverable, they act like robotic arms, providing a “chance to inspect the whole vehicle,” says Gronowski.

[Related: These powerful solar panels are as thin as human hair]

Artemis I is NASA’s first step in testing the technology needed to return humans to the moon, and eventually venture further to Mars using the Orion crew capsule. The new lunar program plans to carry humans beyond low-Earth orbit, where the International Space Station resides, for the first time since the 1970s, including the first woman and first person of color to set foot on the moon.

The solar panels are one part of the pioneering technology of Artemis and Orion, and this first test flight proves they are a reliable technology for distant space travel. Moveable arrays like those on Artemis I will be key for future missions that require even more powerful engines, allowing the panels to shift into a protective configuration as the spacecraft speeds up. 

“We are very proud to be part of the program,” says Gronowski. “And we are very proud to be basically bringing humans back to the moon.”

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Today, at 12:40 PM EST the Orion spacecraft made its grand entrance back on Earth after an unofficial time of 25 days 10 hours 54 minutes 50 seconds in space. It covered 1.4 million miles through space, orbited the moon, and collected crucial data along the way. Orion safely landed in the Pacific Ocean, off the Baja coast near Guadalupe Island, around 300 miles south of San Diego where the landing was originally planned.

Orion entered the Earth’s atmosphere traveling at about 25,000 miles per hour, before its reentry and its parachutes brought the spacecraft down to roughly 20 mph before splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

Orion performed its crucial crew module separation at 12:00 pm EST and began the crucial entry interface stage at 12:20 pm EST. Entry interface was described as the “moment of truth,” for Orion, where the spacecraft’s important heat shield felt the effects of temperatures of 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Orion also experienced two expected blackout periods during entry interface when NASA lost communication with the spacecraft for a few minutes.

According to NASA aerospace engineer Koki Machin, Orion’s 11 parachutes are very similar to the ones that accompanied the Apollo missions, with the larger size of Orion’s parachutes being the primary difference. Orion’s parachutes are called hybrid parachutes and they are made of both nylon and kevlar. Kevlar is an extremely strong aramid fiber that is used to make bulletproof vests.

A recovery team comprised of NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems engineers and technicians and Navy divers and sailors from the USS Portland arrived in San Diego, California, just after Thanksgiving to rehearse recovering the space capsule.

The team practiced off the California coast by reeling in a mock capsule and loading it onto the ship. The USS Portland is an amphibious vessel and has both a flight deck and a well deck that leads to the ocean.

“The mission that we’re doing is kind of amphibious in nature; it’s just … normally were recovering marine vehicles or hovercraft, instead of doing that, we’re just grabbing the orbital,” USS Portland Captain John Ryan told NBC 7 San Diego.

Since Orion doesn’t have any crew members onboard (except for its “moonikins“), the team had a roughly six hour long window to retrieve the capsule.

In a press conference on December 5, Orion Deputy Program Manager Debbie Korth said, “We’re really pushing the envelope with this spacecraft to see what we can get out of performance,” referring to longer burn times for the spacecraft’s engines (from 17 seconds to 100 seconds) and thermal response from solar arrays.

Orion will return to Kennedy Space Center later this month, where NASA will remove the vehicle’s accelerometers, mannequins, dosimeters, and microphones for further study.

The Artemis I Mission launched on November 16 and is the first integrated test of NASA’s latest deep space exploration technology: the Orion spacecraft itself, the all-powerful Space Launch System rocket, and the ground systems at Kennedy Space Center. It is the first of three missions, and will provide NASA with more critical information on non-Earth environments, the health impacts of space travel, and more for further research around the solar system. It also showcases the agency’s commitment and capability to return astronauts to the moon.

[Related: Orion will air kiss the moon today during important Artemis exercise.]

Artemis I and II will also pave the way to land the first woman and first person of color on the moon as early as 2025 as part of Artemis III. “When we talk about sustained exploration on the lunar surface and getting onto Mars, Artemis I is that step,” James Free, associate of NASA’s Exploration Systems Development, said in August. “Our next step beyond this is Artemis II, we’re putting a crew on it.”

According to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, the ambitious goal of advancing human space travel to reach Mars will come after Artemis III. NASA hopes to establish a base on the moon and send astronauts to the Red Planet by the late 2030s or early 2040s.

“It is one that marks new technology,” Nelson said about Orion and the Artemis I mission on Sunday following the splash down, “a whole new breed to astronaut, a vision for the future that captures the DNA of particularly Americans, although we do this as an international venture, and that DNA is we are adventurers, we are explorers, we always have a frontier. And that frontier now is to continue exploring the heavens.”

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When the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) began sending back its incredible images in July, some of the first data showed that there were at least two, and possibly three more unseen stars in the oblong, curvy shapes of the Southern Ring Nebula.

The Southern Ring Nebula is a planetary nebula, which actually doesn’t have anything to do with planets. Instead, it is the result of the implosion of a star called a red giant. According to the European Space Agency (ESA), a star swells into a red giant when a star that is a bit bigger than our sun runs out of hydrogen fuel at its core and red giants can even be hundreds of times wider than the original star. The red giant eventually sheds its outer layers, which then forms the nebula, and contracts into the cooling remnants called a white dwarf.

[Related: The James Webb Space Telescope’s first glimpses into deep space reveal 4 mind-blowing finds.]

Now, researchers have reconstructed an image of this particular nebula roughly 2,000 light years away from Earth , that shows there were up to five stars at this ‘star party,’ but only two partying stars appear there now.

The team of almost 70 researchers led by Orsola De Marco of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia details the findings in a study published yesterday in the journal Nature Astronomy. They began by analyzing Webb’s 10 highly detailed exposures of the Southern Ring Nebula to reconstruct the “party scene.” According to NASA, it’s common for small groups of stars that span a range of masses to form together and continue to orbit one another as they get older. The team used this principle to travel back in time thousands of years to figure out what might explain the shapes of the colorful clouds of gas and dust in this nebula.

They found that possibly more than one star in the nebula interacted with the dimmer of the two central partying stars (shown in red), before that star created this planetary nebula. “The first star that ‘danced’ with the party’s host created a light show, sending out jets of material in opposite directions. Before retiring, it gave the dim star a cloak of dust. Now much smaller, the same dancer might have merged with the dying star – or is now hidden in its glare,” writes the team at NASA.

Adding to the mix, a third partygoer may have gotten close to the central star several times. That star then stirred up the jets ejected by the first companion, which helped form the wavy shapes at the edges of the gas and dust in the nebula. The fourth star didn’t want to be left out, and contributed to the celebration with its wider orbit. It then circled the scene, stirring up the gas and dust, creating the big system of rings on the outside the nebula. The fifth star is the best known and life of the party. It’s the bright white-blue star that continues to orbit the gathering “predictably and calmly.”

[Related: The 100 greatest innovations of 2022.]

In addition to taking a peek at the star party, the team also accurately measured the mass that the central star had before it shed layers of gas and dust. They estimate that the star was about about three times the mass of the sun before it created this specific planetary nebula. After ejecting the dust and gas, it was about 60 percent of the sun’s mass.

According to NASA, this is some of the first published research regarding some of the first images taken by the JWST to be published, so more details and findings are likely to be released. It also shows the first time that images taken with JWST’s NIRCam and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), were paired with existing data from the ESA’s Gaia observatory. This data enabled the team to precisely pinpoint the mass of the central star before it created the nebula.

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Fifty years ago, on December 7, 1972, NASA’s Saturn V rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying the last of the Apollo-era astronauts to walk on the lunar surface. 

Apollo 17—the sixth and final mission of NASA’s history-making initiative to land human explorers on the moon—was a scientific breakthrough: During their 75-hour lunar stay, crewmembers Eugene A. Cernan, Ronald E. Evans, and Harrison H. Schmitt collected rare types of lunar rock and samples of “orange soil,” or regolith, that once formed in a lunar volcanic eruption, indicating that the moon’s past eras of geologic activity lasted longer than previously thought—which recent research has confirmed. But their most influential observation quickly became a milestone in our culture: With the help of one iconic photo, the mission vastly changed the way humans view our space environment. 

About five hours into the crew’s moon-bound journey, the shrinking sphere of our world drew someone’s gaze (it’s still up in the air which member of the three-person crew was responsible) to the window. Upon seeing the beautiful, brightly illuminated Earth, a particularly astute astronaut grabbed hold of the onboard Hasselblad film camera and began snapping. Among those images was the one now known as the Blue Marble shot, the first photograph ever taken of the planet in its entirety. 

The once-in-a-lifetime shot showcases the African continent, which is almost completely visible and backed by the swirling blue ocean. Above it, chaotic, wind-swept clouds dot our atmosphere. This was Earth as humanity had never seen it before, richly detailed and alight with life.

Easily one of the most recognizable space images ever made, Blue Marble is the only picture of the entire, round Earth taken by human hands to date. It and those first few stunning images of our planet went on to inform how official space agency photographers arrange shots of Earth and other celestial bodies, and influenced the way we take and share images of space today. 

Travis Rector, an astronomer at the University of Alaska Anchorage and an astrophotographer, someone who takes photos of space phenomena in their free time, believes that all astronomers of his generation were especially inspired by the beauty of early space-age photos. “They were our first high-quality views of exotic worlds like Mars and the moon, turning these dots in the sky into real worlds we could imagine visiting in person,” he says. “The Blue Marble photo is especially important because not only does it show the spectacular beauty of our world but also its limits.” 

[Related: How scientists colorize Hubble’s deep space photographs]

Those limits are all the world’s resources, like the food, air, and water that sustain us, he says. Yet in celebrating Apollo 17’s 50th anniversary, how has humanity’s ability to capture otherworldly beauty evolved since we began heading to the stars? 

When Blue Marble is compared to modern high-resolution pictures of Earth and other celestial entities delivered by satellite, or by the Artemis program’s soon-to-be-returning Orion spacecraft, for example, the difference a few decades of technological advancement makes is palpable. In fact, the advent of more powerful cameras, able to take photos in infrared, X-ray, and other light that our eyes cannot see, is a major influence on our expectations about what the universe looks like. 

The second factor, Rector notes, is “better data-processing and image-processing software.” As every iteration of spacecraft improved, camera-equipped craft have taken many of the daring space images that adorn our nerdiest space merchandise. And humanity has only gotten better at sending and receiving data from its most distant space explorers. Though Apollo often sent back grainy black and white video from the moon, according to NASA, the Artemis II mission will transmit ultra high-definition video from lunar orbit.

Such incredible technicolor is a far cry away from when the Voyager missions, twin crafts that are now celebrating their 45th mission year, were sent to space with what would be now rudimentary 800×800 pixel digital video cameras. “For comparison, the Wide Field Instrument that will fly on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is a 300-megapixel camera,” Rector says. He imagines that the technology we use to take high-resolution images of space might still evolve as cameras get better at measuring light without the need for filters, noting that it “will open up all sorts of new ways to make color composite images of space.”

[Related: 2021’s best space photos are out of this world]

Astrophotography has become a beloved staple across social media, the final product of which is often featured on hundreds of dedicated websites, and emblazoned on clothing, book covers, and space-inspired posters. And as the first of NASA’s next-generation lunar missions comes to an end, the returned stills and videos gifted us by Orion have already cemented their place as some of the most absorbing snapshots to ever come out of a space program. 

Apollo 17’s famous photo marked the end of an era in human spaceflight. It ended up being a hallmark in the history of space photography,

It’s a fitting tribute to human exploration of the moon—a feat that was once deemed impossible.

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The sun roils with heat as thermonuclear reactions in its center produce high amounts of energy. Day to day, that energy is responsible for making Earth livable. But sometimes, solar flares can burst forth, sending highly energetic particles hurtling at top speeds into space. If our planet is in the radiation’s path, it can wreak havoc on our lives. 

[Related: What happens when the sun burns out?]

Although such consequences are rare, satellites and technology that relies on electricity and wireless networks are particularly vulnerable. In 1989, a geomagnetic storm set off by a powerful solar flare triggered a major blackout across Canada that left six million people without electricity for nine hours. In 2000, a solar eruption caused some satellites to short-circuit and led to radio blackout. In 2003, a series of solar eruptions caused power outages and disrupted air travel and satellite systems. And in February 2022, a geomagnetic storm destroyed at least 40 Starlink satellites just as they were being deployed, costing SpaceX more than $50 million.

What exactly are solar flares and solar storms?

Generally speaking, the term “solar storm” describes when an intense eruption of energy from the sun shoots into space and interacts with Earth. Charged particles constantly flow away from the sun into space in what is called the solar wind. But more significant eruptions can originate as solar flares, often from temporarily dark patches called sunspots, and intense explosions called coronal mass ejections. Any kind of variation in this activity can cause auroras. 

Solar flares are essentially flashes of light. They happen when strong solar magnetic fields protruding from the surface of the sun snap, releasing immense amounts of electromagnetic radiation at extremely high speeds. When that radiation slams into Earth, it injects energy into our planet’s ionosphere, the uppermost reaches of our atmosphere, explains Guhathakurta. The extreme ultraviolet radiation from the sun can polarize the particles in Earth’s ionosphere, she says, which can have cascading effects on any other charged particles in the vicinity—meaning anything that uses electricity is at risk.

And solar flares travel at the speed of light, says Jesse Woodroffe, who leads the space weather research program in NASA’s Heliophysics Division. That makes them difficult to anticipate and prepare for. “There is no way to get a signal to Earth faster than the solar flares, which are already traveling at the speed of light,” he notes. “So you have to predict the flare itself is going to happen. And that is a challenging science problem that we have not yet cracked.”

While solar flares are intense bursts of radiation, coronal mass ejections are explosions of energy particles. As such, they travel a bit slower. They occur when large portions of the outer atmosphere of the sun (the corona) explodes, sending superheated gas out into space. These “big blobs of solar material are ejected out at a very high speed, hundreds and hundreds of kilometers per second, but it is much slower than the speed of light,” Woodroffe adds. Those can take anywhere from half a day to three days to reach Earth, he says.

How to forecast space weather

Forecasting space weather isn’t quite like terrestrial weather forecasts. The big difference: On Earth, meteorologists have millions of measurements they can make and integrate into their predictive models. In space, Woodroffe says, there are just a few places scientists can put instruments to observe solar activity.

NASA shares the data from its solar observatories with the National Oceanic at Atmospheric Administration, which provides a probabilistic forecast of geomagnetic storm warnings and watches based on likelihood and geomagnetic intensity. Depending on how fast a solar storm is moving, they can send out warnings a few days before that space weather touches Earth, or just a couple of hours.

The ultimate goal, Woodroffe says, is to improve space weather forecasting to be on par with hurricane forecasting. His Earth-focused colleagues can predict where a hurricane might go by running different models, producing a range of outcomes within a high range of confidence, he says. “We are developing those sorts of capabilities for space weather.”

Are we seeing more solar flares?

So, back to those apocalyptic solar flare headlines. Is the sun really getting feistier and threatening the collapse of modern society each week? 

Space weather activity hasn’t changed recently, says Guhathakurta—but humanity has. In the past century, people have become increasingly reliant on electronics, and anything with an “on and off switch is vulnerable to solar storms,” she says. 

[Related: Make your own weather station with recycled materials]

When those energy particles come surging from the sun to Earth, the disturbance they cause in our planet’s magnetic field “creates electromagnetic fluctuation and voltage fluctuation, which can penetrate beneath the ground and create fluctuations on our electric power grid,” Guhathakurta says. And with growing dependence on devices that rely on orbiting satellite systems like GPS, our electronics are even more exposed to bursts of solar radiation.

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At the heart of nearly all of NASA’’s complex space missions is an unseen quartermaster, a key system often referred to as the agency’s “eyes”: the Deep Space Network.

The largest and most sensitive telecommunications system on the planet, the Deep Space Network, or DSN, is an international array of giant radio antennas. The network is made up of three ground-based facilities around the world, each located 120 degrees apart in longitude (or between 5,000 and 10,000 miles away) from each other, with one based at Goldstone near Barstow, California, another in Madrid, Spain, and the last in Canberra, Australia). This powerful network allows NASA to remain in constant communication with spacecraft that venture far beyond Earth’s orbit. 

[Related: NASA is testing space lasers to shoot data back to Earth]

Operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, the system has played a crucial role in deep space communications since it began continuous operation in 1963. In its youth, the network was an important part of tracking and communicating with the Apollo 11 moon landing mission, and has since contributed to the well-being of dozens of NASA’s most historic projects. For instance, it helped transmit data back and forth from missions like DART, Lucy, the Solar Parker Probe, and the James Webb Space Telescope. As of 2021, the DSN tracks and supports 39 missions regularly, with another 30 more NASA missions in development.  

Jeff Berner, the Deep Space Network’s chief engineer, says that the network still even tracks NASA’s Voyager probes—the twin crafts that launched in 1977 and continue to float far outside the solar system. “As spacecrafts get further away, the power received from a spacecraft goes down,” he says. “So the signal gets weaker and weaker as the spacecraft gets further and further away.” 

For perspective, sending and receiving data to the moon and back (an average of 477,710 miles) would take only a few seconds, but the same signal sent to Mars (about 280 million miles round-trip) could take anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes to arrive. For a craft as far out of humanity’s range as Voyager, Berner says a signal’s two-way light time (the time it takes to get to the craft and back to Earth) could take upwards of 29 hours. Additionally, because any mission can be tracked using any of the DSN’s powerful antennas, the easy flexibility of this complex relay network is one of the reasons why the DSN is “truly a multi-mission system,” Berner explains. Each complex is home to a 230-foot-wide antenna and numerous 111-feet-wide ones that, besides communicating with spacecraft as Earth rotates, are also used to conduct radio science, like studying planets and black holes. But a close look at the inner-workings of this system reveals how integral the DSN will be to NASA’s latest push to reach the lunar surface with the Artemis program.

Getting Artemis I to the moon and back

Last week, NASA’s Orion spacecraft kissed the moon, and is now shuffling along right behind our satellite, covertly taking jaw-dropping new high-definition images of its crater-dotted surface. But if Orion is Earth’s latest spy, then the DSN is essentially mission control, the voice in every good hero’s ear. 

According to the JPL, the DSN is currently supporting a large, constant influx of data from the uncrewed capsule, a process which will continue throughout its outbound journey, the mission maneuvers in between, as well as the craft’s much-awaited return. The process will ensure commands can be sent and data can be swiftly returned, even while deftly supporting the many other missions the network tracks. Artemis initially relied on NASA’s Near Space Network (NSN), another relay communications system managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, that can connect with government or commercial missions in near-Earth orbit. But because its antennas aren’t able to get enough energy to support high data rates, or the rapid transmission of data to ground stations once a spacecraft goes beyond low-Earth orbit, the DSN became a better fit for Artemis to go the distance. Without the existence of the DSN, “you would not be able to get the data rates that they are getting for the moon,” Berner says. That means that all of those fantastic photos and images the craft has already sent back would certainly be less precise, and surely, more dull. 

Just before Orion is slated to splash down back on Earth, the DSN will pass the baton back to the NSN once more. This handoff marks a new chapter of human space exploration—together with the Space Communications and Navigation program, the telecommunications systems will lay the groundwork for future crewed Artemis launches to the moon. 

A space network for the future

To keep up with NASA’s jam-packed mission schedule, the nearly 60-year-old network will need a few upgrades. “We’ve got equipment that’s been in the network for 30, 40 years that, needless to say, is very hard to maintain,” says Berner, who was present when the DSN first began converting its analog systems to digital in the early 1990s. But bringing the DSN up-to-date with the latest technology “takes time and money.” 

Berner says there are a number of improvements the network will undergo in the next few years to ensure it has the capability to support new missions, specifically NASA’s Gateway, an outpost that will orbit the moon and provide support for long-term human lunar and deep space exploration. Because many of those future systems will be using higher data rates at higher frequencies than previous missions, antennas at each DSN complex are being upgraded to support much higher data rates at uplink and downlink, or transmissions to and from a craft. 

[Related: NASA is launching a new quantum entanglement experiment in space]

But as humanity once again seeks to plant its flag on the moon (hopefully more permanently this time), Berner notes that the success of a spacecraft mission often depends on the ground-based tracking system that supports them, a concept that can sometimes get lost in the mix and pushed to the shadows in celebration of new discoveries. Ultimately, behind every far-reaching, data-hungry spacecraft is a harmony of capable antennas enabling it to go further. 

“When you see the pictures in the newspaper about the discoveries, [if] we didn’t have the network’s on the ground, you wouldn’t see any of this stuff,” Berner says. 

The post 60 years of moonshots, made possible by the Deep Space Network appeared first on Popular Science.

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Stars love personal growth, but even they have limits. A new composite image from NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) illustrates how the youngest members of a cluster in the Milky Way can exert “self control” in a process known as “stellar feedback.”

The action takes place in RCW 36, a cloud of mostly hydrogen ions located 2,900 light-years away from Earth. A group of stars is emerging from super-hot gas there—and leaving a strange pair of voids in its wake. The formation is also pulled together by dense, cool gas, giving it an hourglass-like appearance.

With data collected from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, APEX telescope, and the now-retired SOFIA and Herschel space instruments, a team of international researchers dove into RSW 36’s deserted regions. They learned that the ring of freezing gas (estimated at -430 to -410 degrees Fahrenheit) is being pushed out by the pressure of sizzling atoms in the middle (estimated at 3.6 million degrees Fahrenheit). Radiation from the natal stellar bodies also helped clear out raw materials from both sides of the cloud. “This process should drastically slow down the birth of new stars, which would better align with astronomers’ predictions for how quickly stars form in clusters,” NASA explained in a blog post this week.

The pressure and plasma coming out of the hotspots are called “stellar winds,” and act similar to a galactic power washer. The scientists observing RSW 36 think the cold gas could be moving upward of 30,000 miles per hour, which means it’d be cleaning out 170 Earths worth of mass per year. At that rate, the cloud could be free of any fertile bits in the next 1 to 2 million years.

[Related: The Milky Way’s oldest star is a white-hot pyre of dead planets]

The team’s findings, which were published in The Astrophysical Journal in August 2022, indicate that the ruthless “stellar feedback” strategy could be seen elsewhere in the Milky Way and cosmos. Lucky for us, NASA and ESA has the tools to catch the stars red-handed.

The post Young star clusters know when it’s time to stop growing appeared first on Popular Science.

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On a cloudy Christmas morning last year, a rocket carrying the most powerful space telescope ever built blasted off from a launchpad in French Guiana. After reaching its destination in space about a month later, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) began sending back sparkling presents to humanity—jaw-dropping images that are revealing our universe in stunning new ways.

Every year since 1988, Popular Science has highlighted the innovations that make living on Earth even a tiny bit better. And this year—our 35th—has been remarkable, thanks to the successful deployment of the JWST, which earned our highest honor as the Innovation of the Year. But it’s just one item out of the 100 stellar technological accomplishments our editors have selected to recognize. 

The list below represents months of research, testing, discussion, and debate. It celebrates exciting inventions that are improving our lives in ways both big and small. These technologies and discoveries are teaching us about the nature of the universe and treating diseases, but they’re also giving us better ways of entertaining and expressing ourselves. 

With 10 categories spanning from aerospace to sports and outdoors, the list is a doozy. We’ve got Naval fighter jets on the big screen and TikTok filters on your phone. There’s gear to help you explore the great outdoors, and devices to help you improve your health and home. We’ve got gadgets galore, a very long suspension bridge, and an EV with a range of 747 miles. So buckle up, and explore the winners below. 

• Aerospace
• Engineering
• Gadgets
• Health
• Entertainment
• Personal Care
• Emergency Services and Defense
• Automotive
• Sports and Outdoors
• Home

Aerospace

In space, no one can hear a probe smash into an asteroid—but that’s just what happened in September, when NASA’s successful DART experiment proved that it’s possible to reroute a space rock by crashing into it on purpose. And that wasn’t even the most important event to materialize in space this year—more on the JWST in a moment. Back on Earth, innovation also reached new heights in the aviation industry, as a unique electric airplane took off, as did a Black Hawk helicopter that can fly itself. 

Innovation of the Year

The James Webb Space Telescope by NASA: A game-changing new instrument to see the cosmos 

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Once a generation, an astronomical tool arrives that surpasses everything that came before it. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is just such a creation. After more than two decades and $9.7 billion in the making, JWST launched on December 25, 2021. Since February of this year, when it first started imaging—employing a mirror and aperture nearly three times larger in radius than its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope—JWST’s vibrant images have captured the attention of the world.

The JWST can see deep into fields of forming stars. It can peer 13 billion years back in time at ancient galaxies, still in their nursery. It can peek at exoplanets, seeing them directly where astronomers would have once had to reconstruct meager traces of their existence. It can teach us about how those stars and galaxies came together from primordial matter, something Hubble could only glimpse.

While Hubble circles in low Earth orbit, JWST instead sits hundreds of thousands of miles farther away, in Earth’s shadow. It will never see sunlight. There, protected even further by a multi-layer sunshield thinner than a human fingernail, the telescope chills at -370 degrees F, where JWST’s infrared sight works best. Its home is a fascinating location called L2, one of several points where the sun and Earth’s gravities balance each other out. 

All this might just be JWST’s prologue. Since the telescope used less fuel than initially anticipated when reaching its perch, the instrument might have enough to last well past its anticipated 10-year-long window. We can’t wait to see what else it dazzles us with.

Parallel Reality by Delta: A screen customized for you

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You’ve probably found yourself running through an airport at some point, squinting up at a screen filled with rows of flight information. A futuristic new offering from Delta and a startup called Misapplied Sciences aims to change that. At Detroit Metro Airport, an installation can show travelers customized information for their flight. A scan of your boarding pass in McNamara Terminal is one way to tell the system who you are. Then, when you look at the overhead screen, you see that it displays only personalized data about your journey, like which gate you need to find. The tech behind the system works because the pixels in the display itself can shine in one of 18,000 directions, meaning many different people can see distinct information while looking at the same screen at the same time. 

Electronic bag tags by Alaska Airlines: The last tag you’ll need (for one airline)

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Believe it or not, some travelers do still check bags, and a new offering from this Seattle-based airline aims to make that process easier. Flyers who can get an electronic bag tag from Alaska Airlines (at first, 2,500 members of their frequent flier plan will get them, and in 2023 they’ll be available to buy) can use their mobile phone to create the appropriate luggage tag on this device’s e-ink display while at home, up to 24 hours before a flight. The 5-inch-long tag itself gets the power it needs to generate the information on the screen from your phone, thanks to an NFC connection. After the traveler has done this step at home, they just need to drop the tagged bag off in the right place at the airport, avoiding the line to get a tag. 

Alice by Eviation: A totally electric commuter airplane 

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The aviation industry is a major producer of carbon emissions. One way to try to solve that problem is to run aircraft on electric power, utilizing them just for short hops. That’s what Eviation aims to do with a plane called Alice: 8,000 pounds of batteries in the belly of this commuter aircraft give its two motors the power it needs to fly. In fact, it made its first flight in September, a scant but successful eight minutes in the air. Someday, as battery tech improves, the company hopes that it can carry nine passengers for distances of 200 miles or so. 

OPV Black Hawk by Sikorsky: A military helicopter that flies itself 

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Two pilots sit up front at the controls of the Army’s Black Hawk helicopters, but what if that number could be zero for missions that are especially hazardous? That’s exactly what a modified UH-60 helicopter can do, a product of a DARPA program called ALIAS, which stands for Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System. The self-flying whirlybird made its first flights with zero occupants on board in February, and in October, it took flight again, even carrying a 2,600-pound load beneath it. The technology comes from helicopter-maker Sikorsky, and allows the modified UH-60 to be flown by two pilots, one pilot, or zero. The idea is that this type of autonomy can help in several ways: to assist the one or two humans at the controls, or as a way for an uninhabited helicopter to execute tasks like flying somewhere dangerous to deliver supplies without putting any people on board at risk. 

Detect and Avoid by Zipline: Drones that can listen for in-flight obstacles

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As drones and other small aircraft continue to fill the skies, all parties involved have an interest in avoiding collisions. But figuring out the best way for a drone to detect potential obstacles isn’t an easy problem to solve, especially since there are no pilots on board to keep their eyes out and weight is at a premium. Drone delivery company Zipline has turned to using sound, not sight, to solve this conundrum. Eight microphones on the drone’s wing listen for traffic like an approaching small plane, and can preemptively change the UAV’s route to get out of the way before it arrives. An onboard GPU and AI help with the task, too. While the company is still waiting for regulatory approval to totally switch the system on, the technique represents a solid approach to an important issue.

DART by NASA and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory: Smashing into an asteroid, for good 

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Earthlings who look at the sky in fear that a space rock might tumble down and devastate our world can now breathe a sigh of relief. On September 26, a 1,100-pound spacecraft streaked into a roughly 525-foot-diameter asteroid, Dimorphos, intentionally crashing into it at over 14,000 mph. NASA confirmed on October 11 that the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART)’s impact altered Dimorphos’s orbit around its companion asteroid, Didymos, even more than anticipated. Thanks to DART, humans have redirected an asteroid for the first time. The dramatic experiment gives astronomers hope that perhaps we could do it again to avert an apocalypse.

CAPSTONE by Advanced Space: A small vessel on a big journey

Advanced Space

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Some lunar craft fill up whole rooms. On the other hand, there’s CAPSTONE, a satellite that can fit on a desk. Despite control issues, CAPSTONE—which launched on June 28—triumphantly entered lunar orbit on November 13. This small traveler is a CubeSat, an affordable design of mini-satellite that’s helped make space accessible to universities, small companies, and countries without major space programs. Hundreds of CubeSats now populate the Earth’s orbit, and although some have hitched rides to Mars, none have made the trip to the moon under their own power—until CAPSTONE. More low-cost lunar flights, its creators hope, may follow.

The LSST Camera by SLAC/Vera C. Rubin Observatory: A 3,200-megapixel camera

SLAC/Vera C. Rubin Observatory

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Very soon, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in the high desert of Northern Chile will provide astronomers with what will be nearly a live-feed view of the southern hemisphere’s sky. To do that, it will rely on the world’s largest camera—with a lens 5 feet across and matching shutters, it will be capable of taking images that are an astounding 3,200 megapixels. The camera’s crafters are currently placing the finishing touches on it, but their impressive engineering feats aren’t done yet: In May 2023, the camera will fly down to Chile in a Boeing 747, before traveling by truck to its final destination.

The Event Horizon Telescope by the EHT Collaboration: Seeing the black hole in the Milky Way’s center

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Just a few decades ago, Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at our galaxy’s heart, was a hazy concept. Now, thanks to the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), we have a blurry image of it—or, since a black hole doesn’t let out light, of its surrounding accretion disc. The EHT is actually a global network of radio telescopes stretching from Germany to Hawaii, and from Chile to the South Pole. EHT released the image in May, following years of painstaking reconstruction by over 300 scientists, who learned much about the black hole’s inner workings in the process. This is EHT’s second black hole image, following its 2019 portrait of a behemoth in the galaxy M87.

Starliner by Boeing: A new way of getting to the ISS 

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After years of budget issues, technical delays, and testing failures, Boeing’s much-awaited Starliner crew capsule finally took to the skies and made it to its destination. An uncrewed test launch in May successfully departed Florida, docked at the International Space Station (ISS), and landed back on Earth. Now, Boeing and NASA are preparing for Starliner’s first crewed test, set to launch sometime in 2023. When that happens, Starliner will take its place alongside SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, and NASA will have more than one option to get astronauts into orbit. There are a few differences between the two: Where Crew Dragon splashes down in the sea, Starliner touches down on land, making it easier to recover. And, where Crew Dragon was designed to launch on SpaceX’s own Falcon 9 rockets, Starliner is more flexible. 

Engineering

Zero-emissions vehicles, artificial intelligence, and self-charging gadgets are helping remake and update some of the most important technologies of the last few centuries. Personal devices like headphones and remote controls may be headed for a wireless, grid-less future, thanks to a smaller and more flexible solar panel. Boats can now sail human-free from the UK to the US, using a suite of sensors and AI. Chemical factories, energy facilities, trucks and ships are getting green makeovers as engineers figure out clever new ways to make them run on hydrogen, batteries, or other alternative, non-fossil fuel power sources.

Grand Award Winner

1915 Çanakkale by the Republic of Turkey: The world’s longest suspension bridge

Çanakkale Motorway Bridge Construction Investment Operation

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An international team of engineers had to solve several difficult challenges to build the world’s largest suspension bridge, which stretches 15,118 feet across the Dardanelles Strait in Turkey. To construct it, engineers used tugboats to float out 66,000-ton concrete foundations known as caissons to serve as pillars. They then flooded chambers in the caissons to sink them 40 meters (131 feet) deep into the seabed. Prefabricated sections of the bridge deck were carried out with barges and cranes, then assembled. Completed in March 2022, the bridge boasts a span between the two towers that measures an incredible 6,637 feet. Ultimately the massive structure shortens the commuting time across the congested strait, which is a win for everyone.

NuGen by Anglo American: World’s largest hydrogen fuel cell EV

Anglo American

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When carrying a full load of rock, the standard issue Komatsu 930E-5 mining truck weighs over 1 million pounds and burns 800 gallons of diesel per work day. Collectively, mining trucks emit 68 million tons of carbon dioxide each year (about as much as the entire nation of New Zealand). This company’s solution was to turn to hydrogen power, and so Anglo American hired American contractor First Mode to hack together a hydrogen fuel cell version of their mining truck. It’s called NuGen. Since the original Komatsu truck already had electric traction motors, powered by diesel, the engineers replaced the fossil-fuel-burning engine with eight separate 800-kw fuel cells that feed into a giant 1.1 Mwh battery. (The battery further recaptures power through regenerative braking.)  Deployed at a South African platinum mine in May, the truck refuels with green hydrogen produced using energy from a nearby solar farm.

Hydeal España by ArcelorMittal, Enagás, Grupo Fertiberia and DH2 Energy: The biggest green hydrogen hub

Negro Elkha – stock.adobe.com

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Hydrogen can be a valuable fuel source for decarbonizing industrial processes. But obtaining the gas at scale requires using energy from natural gas to split water into hydrogen and oxygen with electrical currents. To be sustainable, this process needs to be powered with renewables. That’s the goal of an industrial consortium in Spain, comprised of the four companies listed above. It’s beginning work on HyDeal España, set to be the world’s largest green hydrogen hub. Solar panels with a capacity of 9.5 GW will power electrolysers that will separate hydrogen from water at an unprecedented scale. The project will help create fossil-free ammonia (for fertilizer and other purposes), and hydrogen for use in the production of green steel. The hub is scheduled to be completed in 2030, and according to its estimates, the project will reduce the greenhouse gas footprint of Spain by 4 percent. 

DALL-E 2 by Open AI: A groundbreaking text-to-image generator

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Art students will often mimic the style of a master as part of their training. DALL-E 2 by Open AI takes this technique to a scale only artificial intelligence can achieve, by studying hundreds of millions of captioned images scraped from the internet. It allows users to write text prompts that the algorithm then renders into pictures in less than a minute. Compared to previous image generators, the quality of the output is getting rave reviews, and there are “happy accidents” that feel like real creativity. And it’s not just artists—urban planning advocates and even a reconstructive surgeon have used the tool to visualize rough concepts.

The P12 shuttle by Candela: A speedy electric hydrofoil ferry

Candela

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When the first Candela P12 electric hydrofoil goes into service next year in Stockholm, Sweden, it will take commuters from the suburbs to downtown in about 25 minutes. That’s a big  improvement from the 55 minutes it takes on diesel ferries. Because the P12 produces almost no wake, it is allowed to exceed the speed restrictions placed on other watercraft; it travels at roughly 30 miles per hour, which according to the company makes it the world’s fastest aquatic electric vessel. Computer-guided stabilization technology aims to make the ride feel smooth. And as a zero-emissions way to avoid traffic congestion on bridge or tunnel chokepoints without needing to build expensive infrastructure, the boats are a win for transportation.

Bioforge by Solugen: Zero-emission chemical factory

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Petrochemical plants typically require acres of towering columns and snaking pipes to turn fossil fuels into useful products. In addition to producing toxic emissions like benzene, these facilities put out 925 million metric tons of greenhouse gas every year, according to an IEA estimate. But outside Houston, Solugen built a “Bioforge” plant that produces 10,000 tons of chemicals like fertilizer and cleaning solutions annually through a process that yields zero air emissions or wastewater. The secret sauce consists of enzymes: instead of using fossil fuels as a feedstock, these proteins turn corn syrup into useful chemicals for products much more efficiently than conventional fossil fuel processes– and at a competitive price. These enzymes even like to eat pieces of old cardboard that can’t be recycled anymore, turning trash into feedstock treasure. Solugen signed a deal this fall with a large company to turn cardboard landfill waste into usable plastics.

HydroSKIN by ILEK/U of Stuttgart: Zero-Emissions Cooling

Institute for Lightweight Structures and Conceptual Design (ILEK), University of Stuttgart

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Air conditioners and fans already consume 10 percent of the world’s electricity, and AC use is projected to triple by the year 2050. But there are other ways to cool a structure. Installed in an experimental building in Stuttgart, Germany, an external facade add-on called HydroSKIN employs layers of modern textiles to update the ancient technique of using wet cloth to cool the air through evaporation. The top layer is a mesh that serves to keep out bugs and debris. The second layer is a thick spacer fabric designed to absorb water—from rain or water vapor when it’s humid out—and then facilitate evaporation in hot weather. The third layer is an optional film that provides additional absorption. The fourth (closest to the wall of the building) is a foil that collects any moisture that soaks through, allowing it to either be stored or drained.  A preliminary estimate found that a single square meter of HydroSKIN can cool an 8x8x8 meter (26x26x26 feet) cube by 10 degrees Kelvin (18 degrees F).

Powerfoyle by Exeger: Self-charging gadgets

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Consumer electronics in the U.S. used about 176 terawatt hours of electricity in 2020, more than the entire nation of Sweden. Researchers at the Swedish company Exeger have devised a new architecture for solar cells that’s compact, flexible, and can be integrated into a variety of self-charging gadgets. Silicon solar panels generate power cheaply at massive scale, but are fragile and require unsightly silver lines to conduct electricity.  Exeger’s Powerfoyle updates a 1980s innovation called dye-sensitized solar cells with titanium dioxide, an abundant material found in white paint and donut glaze, and a new electrode that’s 1,000 times more conductive than silicon. Powerfoyle can be printed to look like brushed steel, carbon fiber or plastic, and can now be found in self-charging headphones by Urbanista and Adidas, a bike helmet, and even a GPS-enabled dog collar.

The Mayflower by IBM: Uncrewed trans-Atlantic voyage

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Collecting data in the corrosive salt waves and high winds of the Atlantic can be dull, dirty, and dangerous. Enter the Mayflower, an AI-captained, electrically-powered ship. It has 30 sensors and 16 computing devices that can process data onboard in lieu of a galley, toilets, or sleeping quarters. After the Mayflower successfully piloted itself from Plymouth in the UK to Plymouth, MA earlier this year—with pit stops in the Azores and Canada due to mechanical failures—the team is prepping a vessel more than twice the size for a longer journey. The boat is designed to collect data on everything from whales to the behavior of eddies or gyres at a hundredth the cost of a crewed voyage and without risking human life. The next milestone will be a 12,000 mile trip from the UK to Antarctica, with a return trip via the Falkland Islands.

The Wheatridge Renewable Energy Facilities by NextEra Energy Resources and Portland General Electric: A triple threat of renewable energy

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In Oregon, the Wheatridge Renewable Energy Facilities, co-owned by NextEra Energy Resources and Portland General Electric (PGE), is combining solar, wind, and battery storage to bring renewable energy to the grid at utility scale. Key to the equation are those batteries, which stabilize the intermittency of wind and solar power. All told, it touts 300 megawatts of wind, 50 megawatts of solar, and 30 megawatts of battery storage capable of serving around 100,000 homes, and it’s already started producing power. The facility is all part of the Pacific Northwestern state’s plan to achieve 100-percent carbon-free electricity by 2040. 

Gadgets

Over the past 15 years or so, smartphones have consumed many familiar gizmos. Calculators, TV remotes, cameras, and other standalone devices have converged into the smartphone that lives in our pockets. Recently, however, that trend has slowed. Phones have been iteratively improving with increasingly granular updates. The gadget and computer market has felt more diverse as more and more devices find their niche outside the confines of a smartphone. That includes hardcore computer hardware, VR and AR devices, and even smart-home tech. Our winner this year addresses the ever-present disparity in the ways we use electronic devices, because gadgets should ultimately give us as many options as possible for how we interact with them.

Grand Award Winner

Adaptive Accessories by Microsoft: Making computers accessible to all

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Microsoft’s Adaptive Mouse might not look very advanced. It’s a simple, squircle-shaped device with two buttons, a scroll wheel, and several slots around its edges. You’re not meant to use it as it ships, however. This mouse is one of Microsoft’s Accessible Accessories that easily connect to custom, 3D-printed attachments to accommodate a wide variety of users with different physical needs. The Microsoft Adaptive Hub allows people to connect up to three of the Accessible Accessories to any computer. Compatible devices include an Adaptive D-pad button, an Adaptive Dual Button, and an Adaptive Joystick button, all of which can accommodate people with limited mobility through the Shapeways 3D printing platform. The hub connects via USB-C or Bluetooth wireless, so it can integrate third-party accessibility devices along with Microsoft’s own accessories. The company plans to continue expanding the platform to help ensure the most people can interact with their computers in ways not previously possible with common mice and keyboards.

C1 Webcam by Opal: A webcam that goes beyond its hardware

Opal

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Computational photography relies on software and processing power in order to make camera hardware perform well above its technical capabilities, which is what makes your smartphone camera so good at what it does. The Opal C1 draws heavily on computational photography to apply those same improvements to a webcam. It relies on a smartphone imaging chip previously found in older Google Pixel phones, which stands to reason since the Opal was developed by a former Google designer, Kenny Sweet. Right out of the box, the camera corrects for common issues like heavy backlighting, mixed lighting (which can make you look sickly), and overly contrasty ambient illumination. People can also customize the look they want based on their environment or personal tastes.

Arc GPUs by Intel: A new chip to shake up the graphics processor market

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The market for graphics processing units (or GPUs) isn’t very crowded. Two companies, AMD and Nvidia, have dominated for decades. Chipmaker Intel abandoned its GPU ambitions more than 10 years ago—until this year’s release of its Arc hardware. These graphics cards deliver surprisingly powerful performance for even more surprisingly affordable prices. The Arcs’ strength comes from their efficiency. The top-end A770 card isn’t meant to take on the most powerful models from other brands. Instead, at just $329, it provides 1440p gaming for players who might otherwise have to rely on wimpy integrated graphics or an older and outdated card. That should rally gamers who want solid graphics performance without having to shell out the money and power required to run the increasingly ridiculous flagship graphics cards on the market right now.

Ultra Reality Monitor by Brelyon: AR and VR without the headset

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Typical virtual reality headsets create shallow stereoscopic depth by showing each eye a slightly different perspective of the same scene. Brelyon’s new Ultra Reality monitor relies on a more complex phenomenon called monocular depth modulation, which allows the eye to focus deeper into a scene just as it could in the real world. Brelyon’s combination of optics and display tech fill a viewer’s field of vision with 3D images that simulate a 120-inch display—with a device the size of a typical gaming monitor. The eye can focus at various depths in the scene, which makes the display feel as though it extends far beyond the physical bounds of the hardware. Eventually, tech like this could, on a much larger scale, essentially create a Star Trek-like Holodeck that creates room-scale VR without the need for a headset.

Ryzen 7000 Series CPUs by AMD: A big leap in processing performance

AMD

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CPUs (or central processing units) get faster all the time. AMD’s latest Ryzen 7000 Series chips, however, represent more than an iterative jump of pure processing power. These powerful little chips rely on a brand new architecture that AMD calls Zen 4. It’s built on a 5nm process, which doesn’t indicate the actual physical size of the transistors, but rather their density on the chip. By moving to this architecture, AMD has created the fastest CPUs to date for creative and gaming purposes. AMD’s plans for these chips go beyond personal computers and extend out into its commercial data center hardware. But for now, they’ll render those Adobe Premiere edits with the quickness.

OLED Flex LX3 TV by LG: A screen that goes from flat to curved and back again

LG

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Curved displays can immerse you in a viewing or video game experience. Try watching content with a group, however, and that curve becomes a hindrance as the picture loses contrast and color accuracy for everyone sitting off-center. LG’s new 42-inch OLED, however, can rest completely flat for group viewing, then mechanically adjust its curvature with built-in motors. It curves all the way to 900R, which is just shy of the human eye’s natural shape. Because it’s an OLED, this TV offers superior contrast and color reproduction no matter what orientation you choose. Plus, it offers a full suite of advanced features, including HDMI 2.1 and an anti-reflective coating to keep the picture glare-free.

Quest Pro VR by Meta: A VR headset that ropes in reality

Meta

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Until a company convinces us to collectively install Matrix-style data jacks in the backs of our skulls, headsets will be our way into the metaverse. Meta’s new flagship headset offers capabilities well beyond its Quest 2 VR headset that earned a Best of What’s New award in 2020. The Quest Pro features front-facing cameras, which add a mixed-reality element to the overall experience. It can pump a real-time feed of the outside world into high-res displays while integrating digital elements as if they really exist. Replace your desk with a virtual workspace. Get real-time directions on how to fix a piece of machinery. Play fantastical games in a hyper-realistic setting. We’ve seen devices that have promised this kind of AR/VR synergy before, but Meta has brought it a very real step closer to actual reality.

Z9 Mirrorless Camera by Nikon: A professional camera with almost no moving parts

Nikon

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Take the lens off a high-end mirrorless camera and you’ll still find a mechanical shutter that moves up and down when you take a shot. That’s not the case with Nikon’s Z9. This pro-grade mirrorless camera relies entirely on a super-fast, stacked imaging sensor that’s capable of shooting up to 30 fps at its full 45.7-megapixel resolution or up to 120 fps if you only need 11 megapixels. In making this switch, Nikon increased the camera’s overall speed and removed its biggest moving part, which tends to be the first piece that needs repair after heavy use. The Z9 can shoot detailed, high-res raw files for the studio, super-fast bursts of small jpegs for sports, and even 8K video for cinema shooters. And yes, it will shoot the fanciest selfies you’ve ever seen.

Archer Omni Router by TP-Link: A router that transforms to augment wireless connectivity

TP-Link

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Single-point routers have fallen out of fashion thanks to the popularity of mesh Wi-Fi systems, but TP-Link’s AXE200 Omni could change all that. At the push of a button, each of its four antennas move automatically to optimize its signal based on where you need the internet most in your home. Positioning router antennas has been annoying for nearly 20 years, so it’s refreshing to see a major networking company take the hassle out of it. The various arrangements can throw signals evenly around an area or divert the antennas in order to focus coverage in one specific direction. Under the hood, the AXE200 is a monster of a router. By adopting Wi-Fi 6e, the router can reach speeds of up to 11 Gbps, and its eight-core processor manages antenna movement and enables HomeShield, a built-in security system.

Matter Smart Home Platform by the Connectivity Standards Alliance: Sync your whole smart home

Matter

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Smart home gadgets are stubborn and territorial. Their refusal to play together nicely can throw a wrench in anyone’s plans to build an automated electronic utopia around the house. The Connectivity Standards Alliance aims to change that with Matter. It’s a set of standards that ensure smart devices—even those designed to work with specific smart assistants—can talk to each other during the setup process and forever after in regular use. The first iteration includes smart plugs, thermostats, lights, and just about anything else you control with Siri, Alexa, or whatever other assistant you’ve chosen. As devices evolve, so will the standards, so hopefully you’ll never have to struggle through a long setup or an unresponsive device again.

12S Ultra Smartphone by Xiaomi: A smartphone camera with evolved hardware

Xiaomi

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Smartphone cameras rely heavily on processing and AI to make their videos and images perform outside the bounds of the built-in hardware. Xiaomi has taken a different approach with its 12S Ultra Android phone, however. It has a truly impressive and relatively huge array of 1-inch and ½-inch sensors behind lenses designed by iconic German manufacturer Leica. It still provides the AI and computational capabilities you’d expect from a modern flagship phone camera, but it backs up the processing with hardware well beyond what you’ll find in a typical device. The 50-megapixel main camera takes full advantage of a 1-inch Sony sensor—similar to what you’d find in a dedicated camera. The ultra-wide and telephoto cameras both sport ½-inch chips that are also much bigger than most of their smartphone competition. That extra real estate allows for better light gathering and overall image capture before the computing hardware crunches a single pixel.

Phone (1) by Nothing: Light-based notifications help kick the screen habit

Nothing

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From the front, Nothing’s debut phone looks a lot like a typical flagship Android device. Flip the phone over, however, and you’ll find Nothing’s extremely clever light-based notification system, designed to let users know what’s happening on their device without having to look at the screen. Users can customize the lights (Nothing calls them glyphs) in a surprising number of ways. For instance, individual contacts can have their own light pattern that flashes whenever they call. A strip of LEDs at the bottom of the device can act as a battery charge indicator or give feedback from the built-in Google Assistant. The circular ring of lights around the center surround the Qi wireless charging pad, which can top up a pair of earbuds. Beyond the built-in functions, the lights are deeply customizable and will only gain more functionality in future updates. After all, anything that helps look at our phone screens less is OK with us.

Car Crash Detection by Apple: Smart sensors that can save a life in an accident

Apple

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One of the most advanced features of this year’s iPhone and Apple Watch models is one the company hopes you’ll never have to use. Car Crash detection uses an iPhone 14 Pro’s or Apple Watch 8’s upgraded gyroscope, which can measure up to 256 G of force, and checks for changes 3,000 times per second. This data, along with information collected by an accelerometer and the built-in barometer, can sense the change in a car’s cabin pressure caused by a deployed airbag. Once it detects a crash, the watch will automatically send emergency services to your location if you don’t respond to an alert within a few seconds. Your device will also give you the option to manually call emergency services if you’re conscious but need help. The feature is enabled by default, and the information your phone collects is never shared with Apple or a third party.

Health

Almost three years into the pandemic, the spotlight isn’t just on COVID medicine anymore. While booster shots and take-home antiviral pills gave us new tools to fight the infectious disease, health researchers and drug makers regained momentum in other crucial areas, like organ transplants, STI prevention, and white-whale therapies for alopecia and HIV. At the same time, AI deepened its role as a diagnostic aid, while mental health services got an accessibility boost across the US. We know the pandemic isn’t over—and other pathogens and illnesses are likely lurking undetected—but the progress we make in medical labs, factories, and care centers can help nurse societies back to health before the next storm hits.

Grand Award Winner

AuriNova by 3DBio Therapeutics: A replacement ear that’s made from ear cells

3DBio

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About 1,500 people in the US are born each year with absent or underdeveloped external ears. Traditional reconstruction techniques might fix the cosmetic issue, but a new 3D-printed ear transplant, called AuriNovo, offers a living substitute. The implant is made with proteins, hydrogel, and a patient’s own cells, giving it far more flexibility than any constructed with synthetic materials; plus, the procedure is less invasive than, say, transplanting tissue from a patient’s ribs. To build the replacement, a surgeon first takes a sample of an individual’s ear tissue to separate and culture the cartilage-making cells. Then, based on a 3D scan of the fully formed ear on the patient, the part is printed with collagen-based “bio ink” and surgically inserted above the jaw. A 20-year-old woman from Mexico was the first to get the implant this June. 3DBio Therapeutics, the New York-based regenerative medicine company behind AuriNovo, hopes to use the technology to one day create other replacement body parts, like noses, spinal discs, and larger organs. 

Paxlovid by Pfizer: The first take-home treatment for COVID-19

Pfizer

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COVID therapies have come a long way since the start of the pandemic, and now include several antiviral drugs and monoclonal antibodies. But Pfizer’s Paxlovid was the first oral treatment for the disease to receive emergency authorization from the FDA, meaning it can be obtained with a prescription. It’s also highly effective: Clinical trials show it reduces hospitalization and death from the virus up to 90 percent more than a placebo. The remedy is a combination of two pills: nirmatrelvir, which prevents the novel coronavirus from replicating, and ritonavir, which causes the body to metabolize nirmatrelvir more slowly. The drug does have downsides—it can interact with other medications and sometimes causes a foul aftertaste. Plus, rare cases of rebound COVID symptoms and positive tests have occurred in people following Paxlovid treatment, although research indicates that the latter might be related to the immune system responding to residual viral RNA. Still, it represents a crucial new safeguard for healthcare providers and the public.

EVO Visian Implantable Collamer Lenses by STAAR Surgical: Combining the perks of contacts and laser surgery

STAAR Surgical

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Most cases of nearsightedness and astigmatism, which is blurred vision caused by an irregularly shaped cornea, can be fixed with laser eye surgery. But the procedure requires some corneal tissue to be removed and often leaves recipients with lingering dry eyes. EVO ICL provides an alternative with a minimally invasive new way to correct or reduce both conditions. During the approximately hour-long procedure, a flexible collagen-containing lens is implanted between the iris and natural lens. The implant is meant to sit in the eye permanently, but can also be plucked out by an ophthalmologist if needed. In published clinical trial results, close to 88 percent of patients reported 20/20 or better and nearly all achieved 20/32 or better distance vision after six months. The lenses also block some UV rays for added protection.

Olumiant by Eli Lilly and Incyte: Long-term relief for severe alopecia

Eli Lilly and Incyte

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More than 300,000 people of all ages in the US live with severe alopecia areata, a condition that causes the immune system to attack hair follicles, leading to patchy baldness on the scalp and elsewhere. Hair loss in the nose and ears can affect patients’ hearing and allergies, and a lack of eyelashes can leave people vulnerable to eye irritation from dust. Olumiant, the first medication to secure the FDA’s approval for severe alopecia, can help hair grow back over the entire body. It belongs to a group of drugs called JAK inhibitors, which block certain inflammation-promoting enzymes. It was originally greenlit by the agency in 2018 to treat some forms of rheumatoid arthritis, but in clinical trials for alopecia, it helped roughly a third of participants to regrow up to 80 percent of their hair by 36 weeks, and nearly half after a year. Other JAK inhibitors in development could provide alternatives for patients who don’t fully respond to Olumiant.

AIR Recon DL by GE Healthcare: Sharper MRIs in half the time

GE Healthcare

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Laying motionless for an hour or longer in a magnetic scanner can be a claustrophobic and sometimes nauseating experience. A next-level neural network by GE Healthcare reduces the stress on patients, while filtering out visual noise from movement or faulty processing. The software combs through raw radio-wave data from MRI machines and turns the most accurate bits into high-resolution 3D images. Originally, the AI-reconstructed images had to be stitched together—but the updated tech, which received FDA approval this September, delivers in one go. The speedy precision can cut exam times in half, help hospitals and clinics serve more patients, and possibly improve the rate of diagnosis by giving radiologists a much cleaner view of tissues, bones, masses, and more.

ONE Male Condom by ONE: Latex that works for anal sex

ONE

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At first glance this condom isn’t all that different from those by other brands. It’s made from natural latex, comes in three thicknesses, and has a wide range of sizes for best fit. But the contraceptive is the first to also be clinically tested for STI protection during anal sex—and has proven to be extremely effective. In studies involving 252 male-male couples and 252 male-female couples, the condoms had a less than 2-percent chance of breakage, slippage, discomfort, and adverse events (which included urinary tract infections and bacteria and viruses spread during sex). With such a healthy showing, the company earned the FDA nod to label the product as “safe for anal sex.” With widespread availability, there’s hope that the condom can help beat back a record rise in chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, and other STIs.

Bivalent COVID-19 vaccines by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech: A one-shot-fits-all approach

Ringo Chiu, AFP via Getty Images

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One of the niftiest features of mRNA vaccines such as Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID shots is that they can be tweaked and scaled up quickly to keep up with an ever-changing virus. This August, the FDA authorized the first bivalent COVID boosters, modified with new genetic data to target both the original version of SARS-CoV-2 and the Omicron sub-variants BA.4 and BA.5. Just how much added protection the bivalent shots offer against the latest versions of COVID remains to be seen, although in early results, the Pfizer-BioNTech booster increased antibodies against the BA.4 and BA.5 sub-variants by up to 11 times, while the Moderna booster did so by up to 15 times. Experts anticipate that the bivalent COVID vaccines, which are available to all adults and children ages 5 and older in the US, could save thousands of lives if the virus surges again this winter. 

Umbilical cord blood transplant for HIV by Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Weill Cornell Medicine: The right cells for viral resistance

NIH

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There are now three official cases of patients in long-term HIV remission—but this one might be the most promising for the millions around the world living with the virus. In 2017, an unidentified American received a blood transplant packed with genes that were resistant to the pathogen behind AIDS. More than four years later, her doctors at Weill Cornell Medicine confirmed that the procedure at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center had indeed made her free of the disease. The miraculous sample was specifically taken from a relative’s umbilical cord blood cells, which were still in the process of maturing and specializing, making it easier for the transplant to take. Previous attempts to cure the disease depended on bone marrow donations that carry a mutated gene only known in Northern Europeans. This alternative treatment makes transplants more accessible for patients from other ethnic backgrounds, so their bodies can fight HIV in the long run as well.

988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by SAMSHA: Streamlining the call for help 

SAMHSA

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When you have a general emergency, you might call 911. But for people experiencing a mental crisis, the number has been a lot less intuitive. This July, however, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, run by the US Department of Health and Human Services since 2005, fully switched over to a three-digit code that’s easy to punch in: 988. The shortcut was years in the making, but required major collaboration with the Federal Communication Commission to connect every phone service provider to the alternative number. Since it went live, officials have reported shorter hold times and a 45-percent increase in use compared to August 2021, including on a specialized veteran hotline. The service shakeup also came with $177 million for states and tribes to support the transition in different ways, like alleviating surcharges, setting up call centers, and integrating crisis relief with existing or new emergency responses.

eCoin Peripheral Neurostimulator by Valencia Technologies: A discreet implant for bladder control 

Valencia Technologies

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Pads, vaginal seals, and skin patches can be a burden for anyone who has to deal with urinary incontinence on a daily basis. A new electrode device, about as small as a nickel and implanted above the ankle, nips the issue in the bud in a more private and convenient way. Incontinence typically occurs when the muscles in and around the bladder contract too often or too much. To prevent leaks and constant trips to the toilet, the eCoin sends low-key shocks through the tibial nerve, targeting the pelvic organs and relaxing the bladder wall. A doctor can control the intensity of the pulses with a remote, making the device more customizable for a broad range of patients. Neurostimulators have become a vanguard treatment for different nervous system conditions, including chronic back pain and even paralysis—but few are so adaptable as this.

Entertainment

The entertainment category for Best of What’s New used to primarily contain devices meant for consuming content. But that’s changed. While our Grand Award Winner goes to a big-budget movie this year, you’ll find an increasing number of devices meant for actually making content. Self-flying drones, all-encompassing camera rigs, and even high-end monitors give people the opportunity to make their own content rather than simply consuming it. Other items on this list—primarily the earbuds—provide a reminder that content is a constant part of our lives. We’ve changed the content we consume for entertainment, but more than that, we’ve changed the way we interact with it. And these gadgets help shape that relationship.

Grand Award Winner

Top Gun: Maverick by Skydance Media/Paramount: A high-speed upgrade to practical filmmaking

Paramount Pictures, Skydance and Jerry Bruckheimer Films

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We’re all too used to watching computer-generated action sequences in movies. When Hulk smashes up the scene or aliens attack a city, we know it’s fake. The sequel to Top Gun, which arrived in May—36 years after the original—did it differently. Actors trained in real aircraft to prepare to climb into Navy F/A-18F Super Hornets, and when they did, they experienced crushing G forces as the jets maneuvered at speeds that ranged from about 250 mph to more than 400. To film it, the studio turned to custom cameras carefully mounted within the cockpits, and other aircraft like the L-39 CineJet shot while airborne, too. That approach, plus scenes shot on both the USS Theodore Roosevelt and USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carriers, all add up to give the film a degree of excitement and verisimilitude that’s rare. While the film is still a product of Hollywood that made some use of CGI, and doubles as a recruiting vehicle for the Navy, we still salute its commitment to capturing the thrill and speed of Naval aviation.

Freestyle Projector by Samsung: An advanced projector that handles its own setup process

Samsung

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Samsung’s Freestyle fixes one of our biggest complaints with projectors: that moving them to find the perfect angle is a pain. The floating, tube-shaped all-in-one projector is attached to its frame on a pair of hinges, which lets it be tilted up or down with very little force. The Freestyle can be twisted a full 180 degrees, allowing it to be pointed forward for a traditional viewing experience, or vertically to play games on your ceiling. You can use your phone to enable “smart calibration,” which adjusts its brightness and color settings based on the color of your walls and the room’s lighting conditions. The Freestyle’s fun form factor and smart settings are complemented by impressive hardware features, like native 1080p resolution, stereo speakers, and an HDMI port for connecting external devices. There’s also a USB-C port in case you’d like to connect the Freestyle to a high-capacity power bank to take it on the go.

Frame TV Anti-Glare Matte Display by Samsung: A 4K TV that isn’t afraid of a bright room

Samsung

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A couple of years ago, Samsung imagined a creative way to make use of a large, borderless, high-resolution screen when you’re not using it to watch videos or play games: displaying famous artwork on your wall. The problem was the TV’s LCD panel, which reflected light and made older paintings look like they were displayed on a screen rather than a canvas. That changes with the second-generation Frame, which has an anti-reflective matte display. Despite the change in technologies, Samsung says you’ll still be able to see a billion colors on the screen, and that it’ll continue to automatically adjust its color balance based on your brightness preferences. If you can’t justify the cost of an original Rembrandt, Samsung’s new Frame will be the next best thing.

Linkbuds by Sony: Earbuds that mix your audio with the real world

Sony

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Sony created its LinkBuds to be the antithesis of noise-canceling headphones. They let outside sound in so you never need to take them out. The buds have a hard-shelled body, which means they won’t create a tight seal around your ear, and boast a circular cutout, which Sony calls an open ring. The ring gives LinkBuds their unique look, and is also where the earbuds’ driver is located. Sound is fed from the ring through the bud into your ear, along with some noise from the outside world. You’ll hear cars honking, airplane engines, and people on the street. But if you’re a runner who wants to hear a vehicle approach, this is a feature, not a bug.

QC II earbuds by Bose: Active noise cancellation that works across every frequency

Bose

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Typical noise-canceling headphones have trouble blocking out sound in the middle frequencies between roughly 120Hz and 400Hz. That allows sounds like voices to occasionally get through. Bose has totally reconfigured its noise-canceling algorithm and hardware setup in order to fill in that ANC gap without creating uncomfortable ear pressure or compromising audio quality. The company adjusted its noise cancellation and tuning to a user’s body by measuring the way a chime reflects off the inside of your ears back to the earbuds’ microphones. The attention to detail paid off, as outside noises are greatly reduced even if you’re not listening to music. Bose offers three listening modes by default, but you can create custom ones using the company’s app if you’d like to crank active noise cancellation all the way up, or mellow it out.

Ronin 4D by DJI: An all-encompassing cinema rig and steadicam for creators on a budget

DJI

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DJI’s Ronin 4D rig looks like a futuristic weapon pulled from a Star Wars flick. In reality, it’s a full-featured cinema rig that combines a number of essential movie-making tools into one compact and extremely stable camera rig. The modular system includes DJI’s flagship Zenmuse camera, which can capture 6K raw video at up to 60 fps or 4K video at up to 120 fps. It also boasts a full-frame sensor and interchangeable camera mounts. The whole imaging rig sits on a 4-axis gimbal that stabilizes footage so convincingly that it sometimes looks like it was shot on a dolly or a crane. Because the whole system is modular, you can swap parts like monitors, storage devices, batteries, and audio gear on the fly and customize it for your shooting needs.

Alienware AW3423DW QD-OLED Gaming Monitor by Dell: The first gaming monitor with a new brighter version of OLED tech

Dell

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OLED monitors typically provide unmatched contrast, image quality, and color reproduction, but they lack brightness. Quantum dot (or QLED) displays crank up the illumination, but lose some of the overall image impact found on an OLED. Enter QD-OLED. Like a typical OLED display, each pixel provides its own backlight. But the addition of quantum dots adds even more illumination, giving it a total peak brightness of 1,000 lumens while maintaining the certified HDR black levels to create ridiculous levels of contrast. And with its 175Hz native refresh rate, and super-fast 0.1-second response time, you can’t blame this pro-grade gaming monitor if you’re always getting eliminated mid-game.

Arctis Nova Pro Headset for Xbox by SteelSeries: A gaming headset that works across all of your machines

SteelSeries

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Gaming headsets typically require players to pick a platform for compatibility when you buy them. Some work with a console as well as a PC, but SteelSeries has given its Arctis Nova Pro headset the hardware it needs to work with Xbox, PS5, PC, and even the Nintendo Switch—all at the press of a button. Its secret lies in the GameDAC (short for digital audio converter), which connects to multiple systems and pumps out high-res certified sound with 360-degree spatial audio from whatever source you choose. Plush ear cups and a flexible suspension band ensure comfort, even during long, multi-platform gaming sessions.

Skydio 2+ drone by Skydio: A drone that follows commands or flies itself

Skydio

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Crashing a drone is bad for your footage—and your budget. But this high-end flying machine avoids obstacles with an advanced system that adjusts more than 500 times per second to prevent disaster. A fish-eye lens allows the drone to see 360 degrees around the craft. A dual-core Nvidia chipset generates a 3D-world model with more than 1 million data points per second to identify and avoid anything that might get in its way. With all those smarts, creatives can simply tell the drone to track them or program complex flight paths and the Skydio2+ will capture 4K video at 60 fps on its own. The drone also comes with more than 18 predetermined paths and programs that can make even basic action look worthy of a Mountain Dew commercial.

Dione soundbar by Devialet: True surround sound on a stick

Devialet

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Most soundbars allow buyers a chance to expand their audio system and add satellite speakers or at least a subwoofer. The Dione is different. It’s a totally stand-alone system that relies on nine 41mm drivers and eight built-in subwoofers in order to fulfill the entire sonic range you need to enjoy everything from high-pitched tire squeals to rumbling explosions. Thanks to its Dolby Atmos integration, it mimics a true 5.1.2 surround sound system. The sphere in the center of the bar contains one of the 41mm drivers; it rotates to allow the soundbar to achieve its spatial audio ambitions, whether it’s sitting on a TV stand or mounted somewhere around the television. Devialet’s Speaker Active Matching technology watches over the entire array to make sure none of the individual drivers surpass their optimal operating frequencies, and it even has a dynamic EQ mode that brings up dialog—so you can finally turn off the closed captioning and still understand what the actors are saying.

Personal Care

Our new pandemic normal made soothing stress and monitoring our health the main goals of most personal care products in 2021. But this year saw a flood of launches geared at leaving home and showing off: vibrant cosmetics, anti-aging formulas and gizmos, and skincare products designed to protect from outdoor pollutants. From a multi-dimensional hair dye that draws upon the iridescence of butterfly wings to an end-of-life solution that nourishes the Earth instead of polluting it, these 10 wellness and beauty products stood out above the rest, offering true innovations in a world too often flooded with trendy buzzwords and empty promises.

Grand Award Winner

AR Beauty Tutorials on TikTok by Grace Choi: Filters that aim to educate, not manipulate

Grace Choi

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Most TikTok filters let you play pretend and “try on” makeup—or, more insidiously, warp the shape of your face to fit an unattainable standard—but a new generation of augmented reality overlays aim to teach you something instead. Grace Choi, a Harvard MBA known for creating 2020 BOWN winner Mink’s makeup palette printer, changed the conversation this year with a digital brow stencil and contouring filter. While tutorials often assume the viewer shares the same face shape as the demonstrator, Choi notes that her filter can map out the slopes and dips of each user’s unique features and guide their makeup placement accordingly. The technique—which involves using contrasting light and dark pigment to subtly highlight some parts of your facial structure and minimize others—is notoriously tough to master using videos, as ideal pigment placement varies depending on bone structure. Choi’s filter instantly creates an easy-to-follow diagram, showing you exactly where to apply your makeup to make your cheekbones pop and your jaw look more defined.

YSL Beauté Rouge Sur Mesure by L’Oreal: Personalized lipstick, made on-demand

YSL

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Whether you want your lipstick to match the sunset or your blouse, the Yves Saint Laurent Beauté Rouge Sur Mesure can produce any hue with the touch of a few buttons. The handheld system uses color cartridges in swappable palettes of red, nude, orange, and pink to create thousands of personalized shades. The accompanying app lets you scan any object for reference, or peruse a color wheel for inspiration. You can even try the color on virtually before the gadget mixes it up for you. A hydrating lipstick packed with pigment emerges at the top of the device into a chic, removable YSL palette—perfect for on-the-go touch-ups.

Gro Ageless by Vegamour: A duo that keeps you from going gray

Vegamour

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Less than 30 percent of hair graying is dictated by your genes, according to a 2016 study in Nature. Instead, it’s predominantly driven by stress, excess UV exposure, diet, and smoking. Increased inflammation damages melanocytes, the pigment-producing cells in the hair, and saps them of their hue. Research suggests that maintaining healthy levels of B vitamins, copper, zinc, and selenium can safeguard melanocytes from damage. Vegamour’s Gro Ageless system includes oral supplements to combat those deficits from within, along with a serum that penetrates the hair follicle to stimulate melanocyte stem cells. The plant-based products add shine to strands, improve the texture of aging tresses, and can even help restore color as new hair grows in.

Smoke Alarm Drops by Pour Moi: A serum that shields your skin from wildfire smoke

Pour Moi

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It’s no secret that our planet is in trouble—and that means your skin is, too. Pour Moi Smoke Alarm Drops mark the first serum formulated specifically to protect skin when it’s exposed to smoke. Some skincare products that lock moisture in can also trap in pollutants. The resulting oxidative stress (an imbalance in a body’s ability to remove toxins or repair damage) can lead to sagging due to collagen loss, fine lines and wrinkles, and rough texture. Pour Moi’s drops address this by creating a shield within the skin’s surface layer, using hyaluronic acid, emollients, and soothing and repairing botanicals.

Dr. Harris Anti-Wrinkle Sleep Mask by CurrentBody: An eye mask that melts stress as you sleep

CurrentBody

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This mask aims to help you get your beauty sleep—literally and figuratively. The inside of the Dr. Harris Anti-Wrinkle Sleep Mask is lined with slightly raised silicone dots. Each presses imperceptibly against some of the 17,000-plus touch receptors in the skin of your face. Those receptors convert mechanical pressure into electrical signals for your autonomic nervous system, telling your brain to unfurrow your brow. Wearing the eye covering for just 15 minutes can help relax your muscles and make it easier to drift off to slumber. And since it smooths out your forehead, it also reduces the appearance of wrinkles between your eyebrows for up to five hours.

The Loop Cocoon by Loop Biotech: The world’s first living coffin

Loop Biotech

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It’s time to close the loop on the circle of life. Modern burial practices pump heaps of toxic chemicals into the ground and cremation pollutes the air with greenhouse gasses. Over the last several years, several solutions for greener burials have emerged—California has even given human composting the green light—but for most people, such alternatives have remained out of reach or even illegal. This year, Dutch company Loop Biotech became the first to offer a “living coffin” for sale to the general public. The Cocoon is made of dried mycelium, which is the cobweb-like filament that forms mushrooms and other fungi. This substance creates a sturdy coffin that breaks down once exposed to moist soil. In less than two months, it degrades entirely and seeds the burial site with mushrooms. The fungi then helps the corpse biodegrade more quickly, breaking down heavy metals and pollutants in its tissues so it can nourish surrounding plants instead of poisoning them.

TheraFace PRO by Therabody: The utility player of facial gadgets

Therabody

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There are nearly endless beauty gadgets you can buy to scrub, massage, and even electrify your face into submission. Some of them even work: Microcurrents can temporarily soften wrinkles, lymphatic drainage can briefly depuff swollen sinuses, and LED lights can kill acne-causing bacteria and stimulate skin-plumping collagen. But implementing an arsenal of such tools takes deep pockets (and a big medicine cabinet). Enter the TheraFace Pro. In addition to offering the percussive massage the brand is known for—appropriately toned down for the delicate bones of the face—the device’s suite of magnetic attachments also provide hot and cold compresses, microcurrent treatments, deep facial cleaning, and multi-hued LED light therapy. Whether you need to soothe a sore jaw muscle or induce a dewy glow for a special event, the TheraFace makes it downright sensible to own an absurd array of skincare gizmos.

Colour Alchemy by The Unseen and Schwarzkopf Professional: The world’s first holographic hair dye

The Unseen and Schwarzkopf Professional

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Most people who color their hair are looking for multi-faceted, prismatic hues—ones with slight variations that catch the light for a more interesting (and often more natural-looking) visual effect. That usually means lightening some pieces of hair, darkening others, and using multiple shades of toners and dyes. Colour Alchemy by The Unseen harnesses the power of physics to create a totally new kind of hair color: a temporary dye that turns hair strands into light-scattering prisms. The products rely on structural color—the same principle that gives beetle shells and butterfly wings iridescent hues using cellular shape instead of actual pigment. The result is hair that shifts across a spectrum of vibrant color when exposed to changes in temperature (like a blast of cool air) or light (like a camera flash). Unlike most temporary dyes, Colour Alchemy shows up on dark tresses without any bleaching. In fact, dark hair provides the best base for its sun-scattering holographic crystals.

Venom Go by Hyperice: A pocket-sized recovery tool that melts sore muscles in a flash 

Hyperice

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Recovery brand Hyperice has designed a super-portable gadget that melts muscle tension fast. The company’s Venom line, which combines vibration and targeted heat to create not-your-grandpa’s-heating-pad wearables, first launched a few years ago. But this update gave the fitness community something to buzz about. The electronic portion of the Venom Go is small enough to fit in a pocket, and you can use the simple button interface anywhere. Just slap one of the reusable adhesive patches onto the place you want to treat, snap the magnetic device into place, and turn it on for instant heat and soothing vibration.

Super Stay Vinyl Ink Longwear Liquid Lipcolor by Maybelline: A lipstick that truly lasts for hours

Maybelline

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Many lipsticks claim to be transfer-proof, but tell-tale signs prove otherwise—ruby stains on a coffee cup, pink smudges inside a face mask, berry splotches after a smooch. Products that truly offer longevity usually manage the feat by drying with a plaster-like finish, leaving your lips feeling like drywall (and sometimes flaking as badly, too). Maybelline Vinyl Ink promises 16 hours of wear without any of those pitfalls. Seven years of research involving some 100 scientists are behind its dual-phase formula, which combines a long-wear pigment with an emollient silicone resin for moisture and shine. The two components purposefully stay separated until application, when the user shakes the tube to combine them—a process that borrows the trick protein shaker bottles use to blend powder and water on the go.

Emergency Services and Defense

The past year has been marked by serious challenges, from the ongoing climate emergency, a subsequent increase in extreme forest fire frequency, and the devastating war in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion. But we’ve also seen true innovation in the field of crisis response. More exact location systems will help emergency services find people in trouble quicker. Better respirator technology is rolling out, designed to help wildland firefighters breathe a little easier. And fire trucks are finally starting to go electric. This year’s best emergency services and defense innovations offer paths out of tight spots, aiming to create a safer future—or at least a better way to handle its myriad disasters.

Grand Award Winner 

Wildland Firefighter Respirator by TDA Research: A lightweight, field-rechargeable respirator for forest firefighters

TDA

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Forest fire fighters need a lightweight wearable respirator to protect them from inhaling smoke. The Wildland Firefighter Respirator, by TDA Research, uses a hip-mounted pump to pull air through a HEPA filter, channeling it to a secure but loose-fitting half-mask (a helpful feature for people who haven’t had the chance to shave while in the field). A sensor in the system detects air flow direction, letting the pump only blow at full strength when the user inhales. Importantly, the device weighs just 2.3 pounds, which is only about 10 percent the weight of a typical urban firefighting Self Contained Breathing Apparatus. About the size of a 1-liter water bottle, the respirator is powered by a lithium-ion battery pack. To recharge in the field or away from a generator, that pack can also draw power from 6 AA batteries. Bonus: Even though it was designed for safety professionals, the device could also become civilian protective gear in fire season.

Connect AED by Avive: Connecting defibrillators to those in need, faster

Avive

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Avive’s Connect AED (Automated External Defibrillator) is designed to be a life-saving device that’s also smart. The devices can automatically do daily maintenance checks to ensure they can perform as needed, thanks to WiFi, cellular, bluetooth, and GPS. Plus, with that connectivity, 911 operators could alert nearby Connect AED holders to respond to a called-in cardiac arrest, saving time and possibly someone’s life. Once a person has been defibrillated, Connect’s connectivity also lets emergency room doctors see data the device collected, such as the patient’s heart rhythm, as well as the device’s shock history, complete with timestamps. The Connect AED also has a backpack-like form factor and touch screen for intuitive use.

Scalable Traffic Management for Emergency Response Operations by Ames Research Center: Letting drone pilots clear skies for aerial emergency vehicles 

Ames Research Center

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The sky above a forest fire can be a dangerous, crowded place, and that was before forest fire fighters added drones joined the mix. Developed by NASA, the Scalable Traffic Management for Emergency Response Operations project (STEReO) is developing tools for managing the complicated airspace above an emergency. In the spring of 2023, a NASA team field-tested a STEReO’s suitcase-sized prototype device, called the UASP-Kit, to monitor drones safely in the open airspace around prescribed burns. By tracking transponders on crewed aircraft, the UASP-Kit can play a sound through tablet speakers, alerting drone operators when helicopters and planes fly close to where they are operating. That hopefully lets drone pilots get their equipment to safety without risking aerial collision.

Locate Before Route by AT&T: Pinpointing the emergency 

AT&T

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When a person in an emergency calls 911 for help, that call is routed, based on its location, to the closest 911 operator. For cell phones, that meant matching the call to the nearest tower and hoping it sent the call to dispatch in the right county. But in May 2022, AT&T announced the nationwide rollout of a better system. Leaning on the improved location services on iOS and Android phones, AT&T’s Locate Before Route feature can pinpoint the location of the emergency call within 50 meters, sometimes even as precisely as 15 meters. This better location information should allow the call to be routed to the best dispatch center, ideally helping responders arrive faster. That data can only be used for 911 purposes, and helps first responders get where they’re needed quickly, nationwide.

GridStar Flow by Lockheed Martin: Helping to power defense with renewable energy

Lockheed Martin

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The US military is a massive consumer of fossil fuels, but if it wants to use more renewable energy, it needs a way to store that electricity to power vital functions. GridStar Flow, developed by Lockheed Martin for the US Army, is a massive battery complex that takes advantage of the space of Colorado’s Fort Carson to go big. It will store up to 10 megawatt-hours of juice, thanks to tanks of charged electrolytes and other equipment. Construction at Fort Carson broke ground on November 3, but the company has already tested out a smaller flow battery in Andover, Massachusetts. Using electrolytes that can be derived from commodity chemicals, GridStar Flow offers a power storage and release system that can help smooth the energy flow from renewable sources.

Volterra Electric Firetruck by Pierce: A more sustainable, quieter fire truck

Pierce

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Fire trucks are big, powerful vehicles, but they run on diesel, a polluting fossil fuel. The Pierce Volterra truck can deliver all that power on an electric charge, and it can also run on diesel fuel if need be. Already in use with the Madison, Wisconsin fire department, but with contracts to expand to Portland, Oregon and Gilbert, Arizona underway this year, the Volterra has enough battery power for a full day as an electric vehicle. The electric power helps complement a transition to renewable energy, but it also comes with immediate benefit to the firefighters: the vehicle doesn’t spew exhaust into the station. The quiet of the electric engine also lets firefighters coordinate better on the drive, and can help cries for help be heard when the responders arrive on site.

Vampire Drone by L3Harris: Taking down drones from kilometers away

L3Harris

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Drones are increasingly a part of modern battles, seen in wars across the globe but especially with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with both countries using a range of uncrewed aircraft to scout and fight. In August 2022, the Department of Defense announced it would send a new tool to aid Ukrainian forces as a way to counter Russian drones. Made by L3Harris, the Vehicle-Agnostic Modular Palletized ISR Rocket Equipment (VAMPIRE) system is a rocket launcher and sensor kit that can be mounted to a range of vehicles, providing a means to damage and destroy drones at a range of at least three miles. The laser-guided rockets, directed by a human operator, explode with a proximity fuse, making near misses into effective takedowns. 

Emergency SOS via satellite by Apple: Locating lost hikers with satellites

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For hikers lost in remote parts of the United States and Canada, calling for help means hoping for cell phone coverage, or waiting for a serendipitous rescue. But Apple’s Emergency SOS via Satellite, announced September 2022, will let people with an iPhone 14 transmit emergency messages via satellite, provided they can’t first establish a cellular connection. Texters will have a tap-through menu to create an information-dense but data-light report, and provided trees or mountains don’t block the signal, they can transmit crucial information, like what kind of injuries someone has sustained. With a clear view of the sky and fifteen seconds, a cry for help can reach space and then, even better, rescuers on Earth.

Automotive

We may be decades away from replacing fossil-fuel-powered vehicles with a fully electric fleet, but at the same time, EVs have continued their impressive gains on US roadways. But the most innovative companies in the automotive industry are looking beyond just batteries and charging infrastructure. They’re making the most of what we’ve got while doing the heavy lifting that goes unnoticed: Making vehicles lighter, more aerodynamic, more useful, and less wasteful. They’re also giving us faster and extremely entertaining cars—and we’re here to honor their technical brilliance.

Grand Award Winner

Vision EQXX by Mercedes-Benz: The slipperiest EV

Mercedes

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This year, Mercedes-Benz introduced a one-off, world-beating car with an altruistic purpose: To make the most out of the heavy batteries at the core of the growing EV fleet. The numbers for the Vision EQXX are otherworldly for an EV: 3,900 pounds of car and 747 miles on a single charge. It’s slow by EV and gasoline standards, yet modesty was the mission. So how did they do it? Here’s one trick: Its body can extend its sweptback tail at speed another eight inches, helping cut drag by half that of a normal sedan or crossover. To further augment efficiency, Mercedes-Benz opted for a Formula 1 subframe, magnesium wheels, tiny side-view mirrors, and a 100-kWh battery that the company claims is half the size and almost a third lighter than the powerpack in their production EQS sedan. Reducing mass and improving efficiency are old mechanical concepts that all manufacturers need to revisit if EVs are to succeed in the gasoline era. For that to happen, however, the breakthroughs must be this dramatic. Though it’s only a concept, the Vision EQXX may be the spark that ignites that reality.

Uconnect 5 by Jeep: Putting the passenger in command

Jeep

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Large SUVs typically allow the people in the back to zone out and watch whatever’s on the screens in front of them. But in the Jeep Grand Wagoneer, all the fun is in the shotgun seat—and won’t distract the driver. The Uconnect 5 infotainment system can run up to eight independent displays, including a 10.3-inch touchscreen built into the passenger-side dash. To reduce distraction, Jeep tints the display so it’s a faint glow to the driver while still looking bright to the passenger. You can connect an Xbox to the HDMI port, stream a ton of titles with the built-in Amazon Fire TV, control the 360 cameras, and set the navigation system by sending a chosen route to three of the driver displays. Best of all, there’s no ugly screen-mounting hardware to clutter the polished black dash.

Pilot Sport EV by Michelin: When tires go electric

Michelin

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Electric vehicles—performance models especially—put the strain of extra mass and torque onto their tires. The Pilot Sport EV is the first of a growing segment of EV-specific treads designed to improve both range and grip. Typically, a manufacturer can increase range by reducing the rolling resistance—the slowing effects of friction—at the expense of grip. These Michelins find balance by putting different parts of the tire in charge of handling torque and mass: The center of the tire has a grippier compound to take the brunt of an EV’s torque, while the shoulders are optimized for lower rolling resistance. It’s a mix they honed over the last eight years on Formula E racers. Compared to the company’s gold standard, the Pilot Sport 4S, the Pilot Sport EV increases range by as much as 20 percent with nearly the same level of traction. 

Android Automotive OS by Google: A car OS from an OS company

Google

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Google’s suite of car-specific software has been mediocre for the past several years. Android Auto projects a limited array of Android apps onto a car’s infotainment display; then there’s regular old Android, which is tablet software that many automakers modify for their vehicles. In either instance, their interfaces feel half-baked. Enter Android Automotive OS, which is Google’s first operating system developed specifically and only for cars. Through it, the voice assistant, maps, keyboards, and the Play store run faster and function more intuitively than a smartphone connected to Android Auto or Apple CarPlay ever could. Thanks to it, the experience on the latest Volvo, Polestar, and Chevrolet vehicles is dramatically better than anything those automakers had ever coded themselves.

GR Corolla by Toyota: A three-cylinder powerhouse

Toyota

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In 2022, it’s rare to see automakers develop all-new gasoline engines. To see Toyota craft an engine with as much output per liter as a Bugatti Chiron? That’s a cosmic event. The G16E-GTS spews 300 turbocharged ponies from three tiny cylinders displacing only 1.6 liters. This is the ferocious heart of the 2023 GR Corolla, an ordinary-looking hatchback. On the Morizo Edition, the turbocharger pumps 26.3 PSI of air through the intake—a monstrous amount that the fortified engine block can handle. First offered overseas in the smaller GR Yaris, this engine transforms the humdrum Corolla—the world’s best-selling car of all time—into an everyday sports car. It’s comfortable, practical, gets 28 mpg on the highway, and will absolutely embarrass a Porsche on a twisty road. 

FC1-X by Nitro: Rally racing at its most extreme

Nitro

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The FC1-X is what happens when motorcycle stuntman and record-breaking rally driver Travis Pastrana and a Swedish race team agree that Red Bull’s Rallycross is too slow. The FC1-X is a custom, 1000-horsepower electric car that zaps to 60 mph in 1.5 seconds and can land a 100-foot jump. A major reason: The car’s silicon carbide inverter is a fraction of the size and weight of a typical EV’s inverter—the device that converts the battery’s DC output to AC for the motors—and the battery can handle major power draws without overheating. It’s unique to Pastrana’s Nitro Rallycross series. As it evolves, FC1-X stands to influence the next generation of EVs—for both the track and the road.

Super Cruise by General Motors: Best hands-free system

GM

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General Motors’ Super Cruise strikes an ideal balance between hands-free driving assistance—giving the human operator a break—and safety. Using a network of laser-scanned highways at 10 times the accuracy of a GPS map with a full suite of ultrasonic, radar, and infrared cameras, Super Cruise can operate on more than 400,000 miles of marked US highways, including executing automatic lane changes. Most important, however, is when it won’t operate: Super Cruise will disable the system for the entire drive if the driver looks away for too long, a road is unmapped, the vehicle’s data connection goes dark, or any number of failure points to keep the person behind the wheel engaged. Next up is Ultra Cruise, which promises “door-to-door” hands-free driving, but that may be years away.

Hummer EV by GMC: A maneuverable behemoth

GMC

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Let’s get this out of the way. From the standpoint of energy consumption, the GMC Hummer EV is wasteful—and, at nearly 10,000 pounds, it’s a behemoth. Its battery pack is twice the capacity of the best Tesla Model S but delivers 80 percent of the EPA-estimated range compared to that vehicle. But underneath this super truck’s extravagance is a mind-blowing method of four-wheel steering. CrabWalk sounds too ridiculous and motion sickness-inducing to be true, but it is: All four wheels can steer the truck diagonally. The rear rims steer in tandem with the front at up to 10 degrees, enough to let this massive vehicle dance sideways like a crustacean that needs to parallel park, moving up to 25 mph. 

Nevera by Rimac: The most powerful production car

Rimac

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A Croatian scientist who converted his broken BMW to run on electricity is now, at age 34, the CEO of a hypercar company that’s fresh off a merger with Bugatti. Mate Rimac’s dream machine, the 1877-horsepower Nevera, has four electric motors and the stiffest carbon fiber monocoque—that’s a combination of the car’s frame and body—around. It’s the world’s fastest EV: 258 mph. Car enthusiasts with $2.4 million to blow will soon show us the evidence. But more importantly, Rimac’s other partners, which include Hyundai and Porsche, will benefit from the company’s EV expertise in future cars costing a fraction of that price.

MotoE by Ducati: The hottest electric racing bike

Ducati

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The heavy batteries that can be packaged easily in a car are harder to incorporate into a motorcycle that needs to balance. Instead of allowing a bulky, off-the-shelf battery pack to dictate the bike’s design, Ducati designed the battery on its MotoE—which the entire field of the 2023 FIM MotoE World Cup will ride—so that it functions as an integral part of the bike’s central frame instead of a bulky add-on. Two separate cooling systems (one for the 18-kWh battery, the other for the 150-hp motor and inverter) ensure the MotoE can sustain 171 mph and then pit for a recharge without needing to cool down. It might not be the first electric racing bike, but it is the first such bike that customers will ultimately want to ride on the road. 

Sports and Outdoors

This year’s sports and outdoor innovations make our adrenaline-filled adventures smarter, while going easier on the Earth. On land, a bike helmet can be broken down and recycled at the end of its life. In the snow, a ski that helps you tear down the mountain can also be similarly repurposed. But the best sports and outdoor tech this year helps us communicate better—whether that be a new system for catchers to relay plays to pitchers, or a satellite safety beacon that keeps you connected to family and friends. One winner represents both: an electric joy ride that makes careening through the water easy, fun, and carbon-neutral.

Grand Award Winner

Orca Carbon by Taiga: A silent, safer emission-free joy ride

Taiga

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Personal watercraft like Jet Skis are fun to ride, but this year’s winner makes them greener. Historically, personal watercrafts—or PWCs—operate on fossil fuel, emit noise up to 115 decibels, and leak unburned gasoline into the water. Enter the Taiga Orca Carbon, which takes electric vehicles aquatic. (The company built upon what it learned from its line of electric snowmobiles.) This PWC replaces the gas tank with lithium-ion batteries, which power the jet-drive impeller, creating an electric vessel that is silent and emission-free. The powertrain is located in the bottom of the hull for better handling and performance, which creates a safer ride. The Taiga Orca Carbon broadens the accessibility of on-water exploration, and shows that ditching the engine doesn’t have to decrease the fun.

Canyon Packs by Slot: Gear designed for desert rappelling

Slot

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Adventurers who go canyoneering squeeze through narrow sandstone passages, sometimes while walking in or swimming through a river, and nearly always must also manage technical gear like ropes and belay devices. Slot’s Guide 50L and Rapide 38L canyoneering packs are specifically designed with these desert conditions in mind, with an innovative rope management system. A divider separates rope from gear and allows users to feed out only the amount of line they need—from 15 to 200 feet—for each rappel. The bag keeps the rest of the rope organized inside, along with the rest of your equipment. The result is a more efficient and safer system that eliminates the need to uncoil and recoil rope for each rappel.

Stealth driver by TaylorMade: A club that’s one tough cookie

TaylorMade

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Drivers suffer the most damage compared to other golf clubs, experiencing 30,000 Gs of force in one swing. Carbon fiber—a lightweight, strong material—usually cracks under that amount of power, which led clubmakers to use flexible titanium faces for their drivers. But TaylorMade changes the golf club game with its new StealthDriver, finding a way to use carbon after all. Its light face can handle plenty of strokes, higher ball speeds, and longer drives, thanks to its 60 layers of carbon, reduced weight, and aerodynamic shape. Despite the changes, it still gives off the satisfying thwack golfers love from a club with an all-metal head.  

Piston Pro X by Kuat: An easy-loading and safe bike rack

Kuat

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Bike racks are notoriously difficult and annoying to load. Most require two hands, which makes securing a bicycle while holding the rack open almost impossible if you’re flying solo. But Kuat’s Piston Pro features smooth-opening, hydro-pneumatic arms that you can operate with just one hand and let you fasten a bike by the tires without touching the frame. The company also incorporates brake lights into the bike rack. The sleek, eye-catching piece of gear holds ebikes too; a separate ramp for electric bikes assists with loading. And a 12mm lock keeps everything secure.

Myelin Helmet by POC Sports: A lid that’s recyclable

POC Sports

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Bike helmets are typically in service for five to 10 years, then they head for the landfill. But the POC Myelin helmet gets a new life when its time protecting a rider’s head is over. The headpiece may look like a regular cycling helmet at first, but inside its clean design hides a host of advanced technical details, such as adhesive-free assembly, a recycled fabric outer shell, and cutaway fasteners. These allow the helmet to be separated into individual pieces at the end of its life for easy recycling in your home’s blue bin, or at your local recycling center.

Fuel EXe by Trek Bikes: An electric mountain bike with a no-engine feel

Trek Bikes

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Typical ebikes deliver a whiny hum and noticeable surge when you pedal with the assist they offer. Other riders can find the noise obnoxious, too. But the Trek Fuel EXe is the best new “SL,” or superlight ebike, blurring the line between purely human-powered and pedal-assist bikes. Trek partnered with German robotics manufacturer TQ to develop the new HPR50 motor, which forgoes noisy belts and gears in favor of a refined system; it’s smaller, quieter, and more durable than traditional ebike motors. The result is a sleek, powerful ride with a smooth boost that’s hard to distinguish from your own pedaling power.

The ePE membrane by Gore: A new type of waterproof tech from an old-school company

Gore

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Gore, the company that invented the waterproof but breathable GORE-TEX membrane in 1968, is back with a new material that aims to take planet-polluting chemicals out of outerwear. After more than seven years of development and rigorous testing, Gore built upon its experience with expanded polytetrafluoroethylene (ePTFE), polymer processing, and materials science to create an expanded polyethylene (ePE) membrane that’s thin, light, and strong. The new material is also free of environmentally damaging perfluorochemicals (PFCs) and made with recycled nylon and polyester, resulting in a reduced carbon footprint. You can find the new ePE membrane—which has set a new standard in waterproofing—in GORE-TEX products like the Patagonia Storm Shift jacket and pants.

PitchCom by PitchCom Sports: A 150-year baseball problem, solved

PitchCom Sports

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Signs in baseball vary from team to team and player to player: Catchers flash two fingers so the pitcher knows to hurl a fastball; coaches use signs to tell a baserunner if they should bat or bunt. However, the opposing team can read these signs and use them to their own advantage, making sign-stealing a 150-year-old problem. Now PitchCom Sports—which created a wrist transmitter for catchers and a receiver for inside the pitcher’s hat—has relieved professional players of the threat of intercepted signals. Phrases like “fastball” and “good job!” are pre-loaded as .mp3 files onto the PitchCom device and played when the catcher or coach presses the button. Only the people wearing the PitchCom receiver can hear the play. And, the commands can be played in any language, so all players on the team know the play.

Salem Dyneema Down Parka by Foehn: A puffy jacket that doesn’t wear down

Foehn

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Down jackets are known for their warmth—and their short life span. Sportswear company Foehn solves inevitable wear and tear by incorporating Dyneema, an incredibly strong synthetic fiber previously used in backpacks and other outdoor gear. The tough new garment combines high-performance insulation with the practically indestructible Dyneema to create a jacket that won’t rip while out on tundra escapades or be slashed by a dog’s untrimmed nails. It’s a lifetime investment for outdoor enthusiasts and those just looking for a tough, stylish, warm piece of kit.

The inReach Messenger by Garmin: A gadget for staying always connected

Garmin

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Satellite communicators can be expensive, tricky to connect to a signal when you need it, and are typically used for extreme outdoor adventures or emergencies only. (Or they require the newest iPhone, as we highlight in our Emergency Services and Defense category.) The Garmin inReach Messenger is designed for more everyday pursuits: when entering a deadzone during a road trip or staying connected while hiking far from cell towers. This 4-ounce  personal safety device lets you text anyone from anywhere over satellite, through pairing it to your phone and with the Garmin Messenger app, by using its virtual keyboard, or utilizing preset messages on the device itself. In case of emergency, the inReach Messenger connects the user to the Garmin Response Center. And should your phone die, the inReach Messenger’s Safety Charging gives your phone a partial charge for continued use.

Essential Ski by Rossignol: Reducing waste, one set of skis at a time

Rossignol

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The Essential Ski is a first—and a feat—for Rossignol: It’s made from 62 percent recycled, certified natural, and bio-sourced materials, including aluminum, steel, and wood. The design process uses no solvents or water. Plus, the ski can be recycled through a partnership with MTB Recycling that will repurpose the ski’s materials to the automotive, garden, or construction industries. And it’s produced using renewable energy. But don’t let its Earth-friendliness fool you: It’s a real-deal ski that lives up to Rossignol’s performance and durability standards. Plus, they’re not even guarding the secret of how they made it, so that others can make greener skis, too.

Home

Renters, homeowners, and DIY-ers don’t always have the time, money, or skills to accomplish the home improvement tasks on their lists. We get it. Fortunately, one of the benefits of living in a time of rapid innovation is that technology can easily step in where our brains, brawn, and bank accounts fall short. This year, you can upgrade your living space with an easy-install smart showerhead, use spray paint that doesn’t drip, or even consider the most compact in-home water recycling system we’ve ever seen—and that’s just the tip of the screw.

Grand Award Winner

Smart water recycling by Hydraloop: A compact, easy-to-use gray water recycling system

Hydraloop

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Gray water is the stuff that spirals down your shower and sink drains, and it’s mostly clean, usable H2O that goes to immediate waste. Recycling this wastewater is doable, but the required systems are frequently large, maintenance-intensive, and involve a complicated jumble of pipes and valves. Hydraloop founder Arthur Valkieser changed that by redesigning existing water treatment technology to eliminate filters, and shrinking his device into something that looks a lot more like a modern household appliance. As water fills the Hydraloop’s tank, sediment sinks to the bottom and lighter grime like soap and hair floats to the top, where it foams up and over as waste. Then, a torrent of air bubbles grabs any free-floating solids and removes them, too. The gray water then enters an aerobic bioreactor where live bacteria feast on any remaining organic material and soap. Every four hours after that, UV-C light disinfects the stored water to kill any remaining bacteria, and the non-potable (but sanitized) water is ready to go back into your washing machine, toilet tank, or garden.

Timberline Solar shingles by GAF Energy: Roofing and renewable energy in one

GAF Energy

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Installing traditional rack-mounted solar panels requires drilling through your existing roof, creating holes that can lead to leaks and water damage if they’re improperly sealed. GAF Energy’s Timberline Solar shingles, however, nail down just like regular asphalt roofing, thanks to a flexible thermoplastic polymer backing. With that supporting a durable photovoltaic surface, they’ll hang tight in the rain, hail, and winds up to 130 mph. Even brighter: These shingles have serious curb appeal and you won’t have to choose between spending on a roof replacement or investing in solar—you can do both at the same time.

3-in-1 Digital Laser Measurer by Dremel: Precise measurements of uneven surfaces

Dremel

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Anyone who’s tried to measure an odd-shaped object knows the struggle of fumbling with a flexible tape, laboring through numerous calculations, or painstakingly determining the length of a string that once followed the contours of the piece in question. Dremel’s 3-in-1 digital laser measurer makes this job easier with a snap-on wheel you can roll for up to 65 feet along any surface. On top of that, it’s got a laser measurer that’s accurate within an eighth of an inch, and a 5-foot tape for all your in-home measuring needs.

757 PowerHouse by Anker: A longer-lasting portable power station

Anker

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Whether you need portable outdoor power or are trying to sustain your home through a blackout, the lithium iron phosphate cells inside the Anker 757 PowerHouse will keep your devices juiced for more than 3,000 cycles. That means if you dispense and refill its full 1,500-watt output once a day, this picnic-cooler-sized hub will last for more than eight years. It’s got one car outlet, two USB-C ports, four USB-A connections, and six standard household AC plugs. Bonus: Its flat top allows it to double as a sturdy off-grid table.

Glidden Max-Flex Spray Paint by PPG: Drip-proof spray paint

PPG

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Few things are more disheartening to a DIY-er than completing a project, shaking up a can of spray paint, and then seeing your first coat start dripping all over your masterpiece. Applying a smooth sheen of color takes practice, and PPG seems to understand that not everyone has the time to learn the fine points of pigment application. The company’s Glidden Max-Flex all-surface paint eschews the traditional conical spray for a unique wide-fan pattern that not only refuses to drip, but dries in minutes. The lacquer-based formulation works on wood, glass, and metal and is available in 16 matte shades ranging from “In the Buff” to “Black Elegance.”

M18 18V Cordless Tire Inflator by Milwaukee: Faster, cooler roadside assistance

Milwaukee

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It goes without saying that cordless inflators produce lots of air, but they also generate a bunch of heat. That’s a problem when your pump conks out after 5 minutes and you have to wait for it to cool down before you can keep filling your tires. Not only will Milwaukee’s M18 cordless tire inflator push out 1.41 standard cubic feet of air per minute—making it the fastest 18-volt cordless tire inflator around—but its internal fan will keep it chugging along for up to 20 minutes. You might not even need to use it that long, either: It’ll top off a 33-inch light duty truck tire in less than a minute.

Smart Showerhead by hai: No plumber necessary

hai

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Smart showerheads frequently require skilled experts to install, and some even feature components that are built into the wall of your bathroom. That’s not accessible for the everyday homeowner. You don’t need tools or special skills to hook up hai’s smart Bluetooth showerhead, though. Just unscrew the old head, twist on the new one, connect the app, and you’ve got immediate control over both temperature and flow. Use the adjustable spray slider on the head to go from a high-pressure stream to a light mist, and choose your preferred heat level from the app. Plus, customizable LED lights will let you know when you’ve reached your self-imposed limit, saving water.

Credits:

Package Editor: Rob Verger

Judging Panel: Corinne Iozzio, Stan Horaczek, Rob Verger

Category Editors: Rachel Feltman, Stan Horaczek, Charlotte Hu, Corinne Iozzio, John Kennedy, Jen McCaffery, Amanda Reed, Purbita Saha, Rob Verger

Researchers: Kelsey Atherton, Clifford Atiyeh, Kate Baggaley, Berne Broudy, Rahul Rao, Andrew Rosenblum, Celia Shatzman, Terri Williams

Design Director: Russ Smith

The post The 100 greatest innovations of 2022 appeared first on Popular Science.

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While Americans were busy basting their Thanksgiving turkeys or making a list of the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, NASA’s Orion spacecraft was orbiting the moon and taking some images. NASA released the beautifully detailed images on the sixth day of Orion’s 25.5-day journey and they show moon’s mysterious surface and its craters frozen in time.

When asteroids and other space rocks hit the lunar surface, the collision forms an impact crater remains intact for billions of years. The moon doesn’t have weather like rain or wind or storms that can cover up the hole left behind, so the holes just stay on there. NASA believes that some of the moon’s craters have water and ice, which will be a necessary resource in the deep space missions planned over the next several years. Some of the images even have craters within craters like a bull’s-eye on an archery target.

[Related: Why it’s hard to tell if moon craters are holes or bumps.]

The images were captured about 80 miles above the surface of the moon with Orion’s onboard optical navigation camera. It is one of 16 cameras onboard the spacecraft and it does more than just snap these incredible images. It helps Orion with navigation, by taking images of both the Moon and the Earth at various phases and distances. According to NASA, the optical navigation camera images will provide an “enhanced body of data to certify its effectiveness under different lighting conditions as a way to help orient the spacecraft on future missions with crew.”

The Moon was formed more than 4 billion years ago, when a Mars-sized object collided with Earth. It is estimated that roughy 225 new impact craters are formed on the lunar surface about every seven years.

[Related: With Artemis 1 launched, NASA is officially on its way back to the moon.]

After blasting into space on November 16, the Orion spacecraft’s journey will cover about 1.3 million space miles and will fly farther than any other spacecraft built for humans. The capsule is scheduled to splash back down on Earth at the end of its mission on Sunday, December 11.

Artemis I is the first integrated test of NASA’s latest deep space exploration technology: Orion, the all-powerful Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, and the ground systems at Kennedy Space Center. It is the first of three missions, and will provide NASA with more critical information on non-Earth environments, the health impacts of space travel, and more for further research around the solar system. It also showcases the agency’s commitment and capability to return astronauts to the moon.

You can track Orion during its mission around the Moon and back in real time and view a live stream from Orion’s cameras.

The post Orion sends back new images of the moon’s craters, some of which could be home to ice and water appeared first on Popular Science.

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In the past few decades, astronomers have discovered thousands of exoplanets around other stars. Many of those worlds look nothing like the planets in our own solar system. One curious type of exoplanet is the Hot Jupiter, a planet similar in size to our own Jupiter–but, unlike our neighborhood gas giant, these are extremely close to their home stars.

A team of Japanese astronomers recently discovered one of the hottest Jupiters to date, around a star known as HD 167768, as part of their long-running Okayama Planet Search Program that began in 2001. To make the situation even weirder, this planet is around an old, dying star—a place no one would have expected a planet to survive. 

Huanyu Teng, astronomer at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and lead author of this discovery, considers this planet “a relatively lucky find” and “a rare case.”

This new planet, named HD 167768 b, is so close to its parent star that one year there is only 20 Earth days long. This planet is technically considered a warm Jupiter, since Hot Jupiters are defined as having a year shorter than 10 Earth days. But HD 167768 b is a whopping 3,000°F, about the temperature of a jet engine, which is hotter than nearly all other known Hot Jupiters, the study authors say. 

Although it takes a little longer than typical for this Hot Jupiter to complete a circle around its sun, this star has inflated, shortening the distance from its blazing surface to the planet. If most Hot Jupiters orbited stars the size of M&Ms, HD 167768 b’s star is something like a golf ball. The distance between the gas planet and its sun is one-and-a-half times the star’s diameter—for context, you could fit almost 108 of our sun’s lengths within Earth’s orbit. 

[Related: A deep-space telescope spied an exoplanet so hot it can vaporize iron]

Teng and co-authors published the discovery in November 2022 as what’s called a preprint paper, a way for scientists to share work before the expert review required for publication in a journal. In this case, the Hot Jupiter study has been accepted in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan.

Astronomers previously thought the aging process of a star would be “fatal to close-orbiting exoplanets” like HD 167768 b, says University of Kansas astronomer Jonathan Brande, who wasn’t involved in the new report. As stars run out of the fuel that sustains their nuclear fusion, they puff up, expanding their outer layers and often engulfing the closest planets—or so astronomers think. There are still many outstanding questions about what happens at the end of a solar system’s life, including whether planets survive or change as their stars die.

“There have been tens of planets discovered around evolved giant stars, but almost all of these planets are at large distances from their host stars,” says Aurora Kesseli, research scientist at the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute. HD 167768 b “helps to answer some of these questions about what happens to planets when their host stars become giants.”

[Related: Newly discovered exoplanet may be a ‘Super Earth’ covered in water]

There are other curiosities about HD 167768 b, too—it’s in a strange part of the galaxy for a planet to exist. Our Milky Way is shaped like a crepe stuffed within a fluffy pancake, where the crepe is known as the thin disk and the pancake is the thick disk. The stars in the thick disk tend to be much older, and are thought to be less favorable environments for planets to grow up around. We’re in the thin disk–but HD 167768 b was found in the thicker one.

This curious world also shows signs that it’s not alone. HD 167768 b was discovered via the tried-and-true radial velocity method, where astronomers measure the movement of a star to infer hidden planets. The team noticed two more possible planet signals in the data, hinting at neighboring planets orbiting a bit further away from the star—they would have years 41 and 95 Earth-days long. To find out if these neighbors are real, astronomers will need to take a closer look at this system, such as with the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Further observations of the new planet will allow astronomers to dig deeper into questions about old planets, now that they have this excellent specimen to analyze.

We don’t have forever to watch HD 167768 b, though. Teng and collaborators calculate that this planet will only exist for 150 million more years—an absolute blink of the eye for the timescales of the universe. (Earth, meanwhile, should stick around for at least another 5 billion years.) This is an exciting opportunity to see a planet so close to the end of its existence.

“Cosmically, this is just about the last possible time we’ll be able to study the planet,” says Brande. “As the host star is continuing to expand, eventually it will totally eat this planet for dinner.”

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The International Space Station is generally a pretty busy place, and this week sounds like no exception. Arriving this week aboard SpaceX’s 26th commercial resupply mission (CRM) is a host of supplies for upcoming experiments, including microbes capable of devouring plastic, developing shelf stable yogurt-like concoctions, and a crop of space tomatoes.

[Related: The ISS’s latest arrivals: a 3D printer, seeds, and ovarian cow cells.]

First up is Pseudomonas putida, the plastic-craving microorganism. Organized by SeedLabs in a collaboration with MIT Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Weill Cornell Medicine, and Harvard Medical School, the upcoming experiments will test out the microbes’ capabilities in space, potentially providing important advancements for both pollution reduction on Earth as well as uses for astronauts during future lunar and Martian explorations. As Fast Company explained earlier today, Pseudomonas putida is not only capable of breaking down PET, an extremely common plastic often used in bottling and packaging, but also turning those broken down compounds into β-ketoadipic acid, “a nylon monomer that can be made into fabric or used in existing manufacturing processes.”

Researchers are hopeful that the microbes’ development in a zero-gravity, high UV radiation-environment might actually strengthen the organisms, which would be a boon both for future space missions as well as humans’ attempts to rein in pollution here on Earth. “Studying how the bacteria fare in space also generally helps glean more information about the microbes’ biological makeup, and if they could withstand changing environmental conditions on Earth,” Fast Company adds.

Pseudomonas putida isn’t the only microscopic arrivals aboard the ISS this week. As Tech Crunch notes, astronauts are receiving additional microbes as part of “the second phase of an attempt to create a shelf-stable pre-yogurt mix that, when hydrated, results in the bacteria naturally producing a target nutrient” like glucose and other complex molecules for medications. Gaining a better understanding of how these processes develop in space could also help future explorations’ achieve greater self-sufficiency in producing meals and necessary drugs.

[Related: NASA astronaut Victor J. Glover on the cosmic ‘relay race’ of the new lunar missions.]

Speaking of meals: ISS denizens have a batch of cosmic tomatoes to enjoy. These “Red Dwarf” miniature tomatoes are part ongoing experiments aimed at growing healthy food in micro- and zero-gravity environments using only artificial lighting. While recent work focused on leafy greens like spinach, the Veg-05 project is concerned with larger products like the red fruit—yes, fruit, remember? After a 104-day growth period from seed to finished food, astronauts will reportedly get a chance to conduct their own taste test. No word on whether space-bound bacon and lettuce will be available on the ISS by then, unfortunately.

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Following an investigation by NASA into James Webb’s career, NASA will not be renaming the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) which launched on December 25, 2021. From 1941-1968, Webb, a government official and Marine Corps pilot, held high-ranking government positions at the Department of State and was NASA’s second administrator. During this time, a panic about the sexual orientation of government employees led to mass firings and discriminatory policies during what is called the Lavender Scare.

LGBTQI+ scientists and astronomers have protested the name, saying it glorifies a hateful period in American history.

[Related: After years of delays, the James Webb telescope is finally in space.]

The telescope was named in 2002, when it was still in its planning stages, by former NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe. The name is meant to recognize Webb’s contributions to government service, including running NASA as it developed the Apollo program from 1961 to 1968. However, the fact that Webb held high positions of power during a time of such rampant discrimination should be enough for his name to not be on the telescope, says a group of astronomers working to get it renamed.

“It is hypocritical of NASA to insist on giving Webb credit for the exciting things that happened under his leadership — activities that were actually conducted by other people — but refuse to accept his culpability for the problems,” four astronomers wrote in a petition to rename the telescope in 2021. “NASA’s top leadership is engaging in historical cherry picking, which is deeply unscientific in our view.”

Additionally, NASA has struggled with the politics surrounding the decision based on internal e-mails and pressure from NASA’s Astrophysics Advisory Committee (APAC). Lucianne Walkowicz, one of the authors of the petition, resigned from this committee after the agency first declined to change the telescope’s name.

Brian C. Odom, NASA’s chief historian published a report on November 18 into Webb’s career, particularly his time at the Department of State from 1949 to 1950 and then his time at NASA from 1961 to 1968. The State Department fired hundreds of employees for alleged homosexuality throughout the course of the 1940s and 1950s.

“For decades, discrimination against LGBTQI+ federal employees was not merely tolerated, it was shamefully promoted by federal policies. The Lavender Scare that took place following World War II is a painful part of America’s story and the struggle for LGBTQI+ rights,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson SAID in a statement following the release of the report. “NASA’s core values of equality and inclusivity are in part what makes this agency so great, and we remain committed to ensuring those values are lived out throughout the workplace.”

[Related: As PopSci turns 150, we reflect on the highs and lows of our long history.]

According to NASA, the historical investigation examined two particular meetings during June 1950 in which Webb appears relation to the Lavender Scare. In the first meeting, President Harry Truman and Webb discussed whether or not to cooperate with investigators from Congress who were seeking records and information on State Department employees. After the meeting, Webb met with North Carolina Senator Clyde Hoey and several of President Truman advisers and gave Hoey “some material on the subject” of homosexuality one of Webb’s colleagues had prepared. The NASA report says, “To date, no available evidence directly links Webb to any actions emerging from this discussion. Other employees at the state department had responsibility for following up. Because of this, it is a sound conjecture that Webb played little role in the matter.”

The report also looked into whether Webb was aware of the firing of NASA GS-14 budget analyst Clifford J. Norton in 1963. Norton was fired based on a civil service policy against homosexuality, after being arrested by Washington, DC police in October 1963 for having made a “homosexual advance.” He sued the Civil Service Commission, and and won the 1969 federal case Norton v. Macy, which is one several cases that helped overturn the civil service’s policy in 1975. NASA did not find any evidence that Webb knew about the firing.

The name and other issues dealing with past discrimination will likely continue to be debated as the scientific community continues to examine the more shameful parts of its past.

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The Orion spacecraft is set to make its closest approach to the moon today, passing behind the orb for a little more than 30 minutes before skimming 80 or so miles above its surface. The flyby will take place at 7:44 am EST, and can be viewed over the NASA Artemis I stream.

Flight controllers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston had a busy weekend maneuvering Orion between Earth and its satellite. The team performed three trajectory correction burns with thrusters to nudge the capsule into the perfect spot and speed for the Artemis I mission’s milepost. As a result, the vehicle moved into “the lunar sphere of influence,” or more simply put, the moon’s gravitational field.

But the work doesn’t end there. The flyby will require precision in both navigation and propulsion to get maximum assistance from the moon’s gravity (which is only about a sixth as powerful as Earth’s). To enter the optimal elliptical pathway, Orion will use its main engine to push away from the celestial body and essentially, slingshot around it. The spacecraft is currently traveling at 547 miles per hour, though its velocity will change dramatically as lunar forces take over.

[Related: Have we been measuring gravity wrong this whole time?]

At 80 miles from the moon, Orion will snap images of its vantage point with its 16 onboard cameras. Other missions have made closer contact: The US, former Soviet Union, and China have combined for 21 successful lunar landings since the 1960s. But it’s important to remember that Artemis I is forging a path, somewhat literally, to exploring new regions of the moon. It will help NASA scientists finetune their measurements and procedures for sending more space systems, and one day, astronauts, to the satellite’s south pole.

Orion’s route over the next 19 days involves maximum coasting. One of the mission’s objectives is to see how well the capsule will fare in distant retrograde orbit, or DRO. This high-altitude, clockwise movement will bring the spacecraft around the moon 1.5 times—with minimum fuel use. Orion is already loaded with four first-of-their-kind solar arrays, which have been producing enough electricity to run two average-sized US homes. DRO, however, will let it cut down power use and save the energy for instruments and additional trajectory burns.

On the opposite end of its travels, the capsule will edge 40,000 miles past the far side of the moon, which is the farthest any habitable vehicle has gone in space. At that point of the orbit, it will be close to 300,000 miles away from Earth. Orion should hit that milepost in early December, and then start making its circuitous way back home.

Watch this morning’s action here:

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NASA engineers devote lots of time and effort to make sure spacecraft are durable enough to survive the hazards of space. Sometimes, though, rockets or probes are designed to crash on purpose!

In 2022, there have been a number of notable space crashes, both planned and unplanned. While unexpected events can be dangerous, planned crashes can provide important information about our solar system—revealing features as diverse as a planet’s atmosphere or the chemicals in an asteroid’s surface. They pave the way for future space missions by testing new technologies, too. And crashing a machine into a space rock can even give data that could one day be used to protect Earth from a threatening asteroid.

The history of space exploration is rich with crashes—humanity’s early voyages to the moon relied on impacts to study the lunar surface in detail, like the Russian Luna 2 that became the first spacecraft to touch the surface of the moon in 1959, and the NASA Ranger program that returned the first close-up images of the moon in the 1960s. This decades-old tradition is carried on by modern missions, from Deep Impact smashing into a comet in 2005 to DART knocking around an asteroid in 2022. It’s very likely there will be more deliberate crashes in the future, too.

The NASA lander designed to crash

One of the riskiest parts of a mission to Mars is the landing. Many mechanical parts and software programs have to work properly to avoid such a situation—a computer glitch caused a European Mars lander to catastrophically crash in 2016. So far, NASA has dealt with this through a variety of technologies: giant bouncing airbags, parachutes designed to slow down the craft in the thin Martian atmosphere, and even their complicated sky crane system—essentially a jetpack that gently lowers a lander to the surface—that the Perseverance rover used.

As successful as these technologies are, they’re also expensive. Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) are working on a new technique that may reduce costs—a device intended to crash, known as SHIELD. They call it an impact attenuator, something that’s made to absorb all the force of the crash and protect the sensitive electronics inside. It’s made of steel, with the shape of an upside-down wedding cake. When it hits the ground, it crumples, absorbing the shock of the impact just like the “crumple zone” of modern cars.

While the largest and most ambitious missions will always need traditional landing gear, they also take a long time to prepare. SHIELD’s tech allows for smaller, more frequent missions in addition to those. Lou Giersch, a mechanical engineer at JPL and leader of the SHIELD project, says this device could “increase the rate of scientific discovery” by making missions to Mars speedier and cheaper. “It’s sort of a complement to the more conventional Mars landing,” Giersch adds. 

The team tested SHIELD at full Mars-landing speed–a whopping 110 miles per hour–for the first time in August 2022, strapping a smartphone to it. The smartphone survived and remained fully functional, even after hitting a two-inch-thick steel plate, which is much harder than actual Martian dirt. 

NASA hopes this sort of tech will allow it to send more small missions to Mars, maybe even establishing a network of probes across the Red Planet. These could be like the local weather stations we use on Earth. One day, atmospheric scientists might tell you the local daily forecasts for Olympus Mons or Schiaparelli Crater. Being able to monitor the whole globe at once could reveal more about Mars’ dust, its atmosphere, and even marsquakes—and it all may happen after repeated successful crash landings.

A mysterious rocket on the moon

Astronomers puzzled over a surprise crash this year, when a piece of rocket debris smashed into the moon on March 4. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) later spotted a strange double crater created by the impact. Although some astronomers hoped this impact may be able to give them new information about the lunar surface, nothing much came of it besides a hunt for the wayward rocket’s culprit.

Astronomer Bill Gray first identified it as a SpaceX part, but later realized it was actually part of a 2014 Chinese test mission, called Chang’e 5-T1. Chinese officials deny this was their booster, though, so its origin remains somewhat of a mystery. The biggest takeaway here is how alarming it is that no one was sure exactly what this piece was, or where it came from—and that there are many other lost hunks of space debris just like it.

[Related: What happens when a rocket hits the moon? It’s not always what astronomers predict.]

Although this crash was a loss for lunar scientists, there have been intentional impacts on the moon before—notably  LCROSS, a mission to hit a permanently shadowed crater on the moon’s south pole in 2009. NASA astronomers sent one spacecraft to strike the surface, followed shortly after by a probe containing scientific instruments to measure the materials stirred up by the impact. This mission helped confirm a fact we now take for granted—the existence of water ice on the lunar surface. 

University of Hawaii planetary scientist Chiara Ferrari-Wong notes that LCROSS data is still keeping scientists busy—the materials it revealed on the moon are strikingly different from those on Mercury, which is similarly cratered. “We are working to untangle what happened in each planet’s unique history that makes them similar yet different,” she says.

Knocking around asteroids

A clear highlight of this year in space crashes comes from DART, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, a spacecraft that smacked an asteroid to nudge its orbit. This was the first test of  planetary defense technology meant to protect Earth in the event we find an asteroid hurtling toward us.

“Thankfully, no known asteroid big enough to penetrate our atmosphere is a threat to impact Earth at any time in the next century,” says Angela Stickle, planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab and DART team member. But if an as-yet undiscovered asteroid is on a collision course with Earth, she adds, “we want to be prepared.” 

DART targeted an asteroid known as Dimorphos, which orbits another bigger asteroid called Didymos. By measuring the change in the time it takes for Dimorphos to orbit Didymos, before and after the impact, astronomers could determine how big of a punch their impacting spacecraft packed. The spacecraft changed the asteroid’s orbital period by 32 minutes, more than 25 times the goal time NASA set for a successful mission. “This was incredibly exciting and the team is still working on the details of why and how,” Stickle says.

This mission taught scientists about Didymos itself, which is actually a loose collection of rocks known as a rubble pile, showing how diverse the population of asteroids really is. For future asteroid diversions to be successful, astronomers need to know what each asteroid is made of, so they know how big of a push it needs.

[Related: NASA’s first attempt to smack an asteroid was picture perfect]

This isn’t the first time scientists have hit an asteroid, though—the Japanese Hayabusa2 mission shot a small cannon into the asteroid Ryugu in 2019, blowing up the surface just enough to expose the lower layers of dirt and to fling debris toward the main spacecraft for sample collection. But that impact was on a much smaller scale than DART, and meant for a totally different purpose. 

Now, Hayabusa2 is beginning a new mission, one that will contribute to DART’s goals of planetary protection. It’s hurtling toward a little-studied asteroid named 2001 CC21. They won’t collide; instead, the spacecraft is going to experiment with precision navigation around a fairly unknown target, a crucial skill for an asteroid-targeting planetary defense mission.

“My ideal next mission would be a spacecraft hitting an asteroid with one spacecraft watching the whole thing happen,” Stickle said about DART’s impact. “The more times we can test this technology, the better we will get.”

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With Artemis I now well underway, NASA is ready to dive into lunar exploration like never before. The game plan includes new tools, new experiments, and new landing sites, all leading up to a new generation of astronauts walking on the moon again.

But modern missions are only possible with the regolith-breaking research of the past, including decades of trial and error by NASA and other space agencies to get us closer and closer to Earth’s satellite. While Apollo might get most of the credit, there were plenty of attempts before the Saturn V rocket made it to the launch pad—and plenty of successes after the program was retired. Here’s what we’ve learned from some of those moonshots.

[Related: Is it finally time for a permanent moon base?]

Pioneer 0 (Able 1)

August 1958

The US Air Force was the first group from any nation to attempt to launch a rocket beyond Earth’s orbit and to the moon. It failed catastrophically: The booster carrying the probe exploded barely a minute after blastoff. Thankfully, the craft was uncrewed and was carrying relatively crude astronomy gear. NASA was created just a few months later. The Air Force ran its space ballistics programs under many different name though the 2000s, until the US government finally established a new military branch called Space Force.

Luna 1

January 1959

The USSR edged out the US in the 1950’s by successfully launching a lunar aircraft—that just kept going. The Soviet machine was essentially a silver ball studded with antennas, but lacking any kind of engine. While it was apparently designed to smash into the moon, it missed the satellite by about 1.5 times the lunar diameter and wound up orbiting the sun instead. That in itself was a milestone first.

Luna 2

September 1959

Luna 2 was successful where Luna 1 failed: The USSR smashed an uncrewed metal sphere into the moon, making it the first time anyone landed anything on the lunar surface. It was also the first time a human-made object touched something else in the cosmos. The mission’s precise final destination isn’t known, but it was somewhere near the northern Palus Putredinis region (which translates to “marsh of decay”), famous for hosting Apollo 15 in 1971.

Ranger 7

July 1964

This space probe, made at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which had recently pivoted to robotic extraterrestrial craft, was NASA’s first success at a lunar impact mission—after 13 straight failures. Before crashing (on purpose) into the moon’s Sea of Clouds plains, the probe took more than 4,300 photos of the lunar surface. The images were used to identify future landing sites for Apollo astronauts.

Luna 9

February 1966

When the USSR’s automatic lunar station touched down on the moon, it was the first artificial object to survive its visit. Airbags helped cushion its impact near a 82-foot-deep crater, though it still bounced around a fair bit before stabilizing. Over the next three days, the craft sent back images through its TV camera system, which were later stitched together into panoramic views. The first “soft landing” on another world was followed shortly by Luna 10, which was the first successful lunar orbiter.

Zond 5

September 1968

The first living things to travel around the moon were the two Russian steppe tortoises (and some worms) aboard a Soyuz capsule that circled the satellite for six days. The unnamed reptiles survived the journey, splashing down in the Indian Ocean before being retrieved by Soviet rescue vehicles. Since then, we’ve launched dogs, an “astrochimp,” and more benignly, baby bobtail squid into space.

Apollo 8

December 1968

Not long after the tortoise brigade, NASA’s Apollo 8 mission put the first people, American or otherwise, in lunar orbit. Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders spent Christmas Eve flying around the moon 10 times in a 13-foot-wide capsule. Anders also famously took the photo “Earthrise” on the trip.

Apollo 11

July 1969

The Apollo missions progressed in quick succession, with the climax being the first steps on the moon. Astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins logged some choice quotes as they made history in a voyage that was documented down to the last heartbeat. (Fun fact: Because NASA didn’t know whether there were microbes on the moon, the crew had to be quarantined for three weeks after their return.)

Chandrayaan-1

October 2008

India’s first deep-space mission made a big splash. The lunar probe, which kicked an ambitious new program into gear, carried NASA’s Moon Minerology Mapper, which, as a set of 2009 Science papers described, confirmed there were water molecules locked in our neighbor’s craters. Chandrayaan’s engineers lost contact with the machine 10 months into its orbital journey, following a sensor failure that caused it to overheat and killed its power supply. By then, though, the mission had completed 95 percent of its research objectives.

Chang’e 4

December 2018

The Chinese National Space Administration’s lander Chang’e 4 was the first craft to land on the moon’s far side. It touched down in a basalt crater in January 2019 and delivered a small rover, Yutu-2, that’s still exploring to this day. It also had some other special cargo: a cotton seedling that successfully germinated in a chamber on the moon, the first and only plant to do so.

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After a two-and-a-half month delay, NASA’s Artemis I mission blasted off from Kennedy Space Center today at 1:48 am EST. The launch ushers in a new era of human space exploration on the moon.

The launch came down to the wire after engineers discovered another liquid hydrogen leak in the mobile launcher about four hours before the planned go time. This prompted a “red team” to head to the blast danger zone to tighten the relevant valve, after which fueling resumed. The mission hit one more snag when the Range Flight Safety crew had to replace a faulty ethernet switch. The launch was put in a 10-minute countdown hold until a little after 1:30 am EST, when the green light finally came through.

The Orion spacecraft’s journey will cover about 1.3 million space miles and will fly farther than any other spacecraft built for humans. The mission is expected to last 25 days, 11 hours, and 36 minutes, with the capsule scheduled to splash back down on Earth on Sunday, December 11.

Artemis I is the first integrated test of NASA’s latest deep space exploration technology: Orion, the all-powerful Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, and the ground systems at Kennedy Space Center. It is the first of three missions, and will provide NASA with more critical information on non-Earth environments, the health impacts of space travel, and more for further research around the solar system. It also showcases the agency’s commitment and capability to return astronauts to the moon.

While Artemis I is uncrewed, three test dummies named Commander Moonikin Campos, Helga, and Zohar are on board to collect data on acceleration, vibration, radiation exposure, and other potential effects on the human body. The mission will also pave the way to land the first woman and first person of color on the moon as early as 2025

[Related on PopSci+: NASA astronaut Victor J. Glover on the cosmic ‘relay race’ of the new lunar missions]

Artemis I was originally scheduled to launch August 29, but was postponed due to weather an an engine bleed. Launch controllers were unable to chill down one of the the rocket’s four RS-25 engines (identified as Engine #3). It was showing higher temperatures than the other engines, and ultimately, the countdown was halted at T-40 minutes.

According to NASA, the engines needed to be thermally conditioned before a super-cold rocket propellant flowed through them before the liftoff. The launch controllers increased the pressure of the core stage liquid hydrogen tank to send a small amount of fuel to the engines and prevent any temperature shocks in the engines. This is the “bleed” the engineers were referring to. But they couldn’t get Engine #3 down to the needed launch temperature.

In a news conference on August 30, John Honeycutt, manager of the Space Launch System Program at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, said that the liquid hydrogen fuel used in the SLS rocket is about -423 degrees Fahrenheit. Engine #3 was about 30 to 40 degrees warmer than the other engines, which all reached about minus 410 degrees Fahrenheit. But the team didn’t find any technical issues with Engine #3, so the launch was rescheduled for the next available window.

During the scrubbed attempt, launch controllers faced several additional issues that were detailed by the NASA recap, including “storms that delayed the start of propellant loading operations, a leak at the quick disconnect on the 8-inch line used to fill and drain core stage liquid hydrogen, and a hydrogen leak from a valve used to vent the propellant from the core stage intertank.”

A second launch attempt was scrubbed on September 3 after the team encountered a liquid hydrogen leak while loading the propellant into the core stage of the SLS rocket. On September 26, another launch attempt was scrubbed as Hurricane Ian approached Florida.

[Related: Why the SLS rocket fuel leaks weren’t a setback]

Tropical weather also had an effect on today’s launch, which was originally scheduled for early November 14. NASA delayed it due to Hurricane Nicole and the SLS remained on the launchpad while the Category 1 late-season storm made landfall only 70 miles away.

“We design it to be out there,” said NASA’s associate administrator for exploration systems Jim Free, in a news conference following the storm. “And if we didn’t design it to be out there in harsh weather, we picked the wrong launch spot.”

On Monday, NASA gave the “go” to proceed to launch and detailed their analysis of caulk on a seam between Orion’s launch abort system and the crew module adapter. Additionally, technicians replaced a component of an electrical connector on the hydrogen tail service mast umbilical. The mission passed the final decision gate at 3:22 pm EST on November 15.

“That’s the biggest flame I’ve ever seen,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson about finally getting the SLS rocket off the ground. He also reflected on the legacy of the Apollo missions, and how Artemis will open up a new chapter of lunar research and exploration. “We’re going back, we’re going to learn a lot of what we have to, and then we’re going to Mars with humans,” he said. “It’s a great day.”

About eight minutes into the launch this morning, the space capsule successfully separated from the rocket boosters. Nineteen minutes in, Orion unfurled its four solar arrays, each 63 feet long and embedded with cameras. As it entered Earth’s orbit, it was traveling at a speed of more than 17,000 miles per hour. NASA will share more mission updates throughout the day as the vehicle nears its destination and starts beaming back photos and other data.

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Liftoff for NASA’s next moon mission, Artemis 1, is T-minus one day after being postponed three times—twice due to engine problems and once to avoid an approaching storm. Boosted by the space agency’s most powerful rocket ever, this uncrewed expedition will bring us another step closer to human lunar exploration, and you can watch the launch from the comfort of your own home. 

It’s too late to purchase tickets to the main visitor complex, but you can watch the SLS rocket soar into the sky on NASA TV, NASA’s official live broadcast, the official NASA Twitch stream, or NASA’s mobile app. You can also register for free online to let the agency know that you’re hosting a watch party through their Virtual Guest program. (This will be especially exciting if you’re interested in receiving a virtual passport as a memento for the occasion, though this is not official documentation and will not guarantee you access into space. Stamps will be mailed after the event to registered guests.)

If you’d like to get your launch coverage in Spanish, you can listen en español on NASA’s YouTube page. Coverage of the launch itself will begin there at 12 a.m. Wednesday and will include interviews with Hispanic members of the mission. You can find a detailed breakdown of NASA’s coverage schedule on the space agency’s website.

And if you just can’t wait, NASA TV has been broadcasting on a regular schedule, and you can tune in at any time to learn more about outer space while we all wait for the countdown to hit zero.

This story was originally published on August 16, 2022 and has been updated regularly to keep pace with the mission’s frequent changes.

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A four-ton payload of materials and equipment including both a 3D printer and ovarian cow cells is currently en route to the International Space Station (ISS). Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus NG-18 cargo ship launched on the company’s Antares rocket from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia, at 5:32 a.m. EST this morning. It is scheduled to dock with the ISS on Wednesday once astronauts use a robotic arm to capture the cargo ship, named the SS Sally Ride in honor of the first female astronaut who died in 2012.

[Related: What’s next for NASA’s Artemis 1.]

The 8,265 pounds of supplies includes a host of equipment and material for upcoming microgravity experiments, alongside the first satellites ever launched by both Uganda and Zimbabwe. Most notably, a 3D printer that first arrived aboard the ISS in 2019 is making its return to the station after heading back down to Earth for upgrades courtesy of its developers at Redwire Space. “We brought [the printer] back to our lab in Indiana … to add a few new capabilities, such as the ability to finely control the temperature of each printhead, and now we’re excited to see it launch,” Rich Boling, vice president of corporate advancement for in-space manufacturing and operations at Redwire, said during an October 25 press conference livestream.

Once reinstalled, the device will aid in 3D printing knee cartilage tissue using bioink and cells for possible future human patient transplants. Blood vessels and other cardiac tissues will also be created alongside “organoids,” or miniature versions of organs that are useful for drug efficacy tests. Other experiment materials include mixtures of water, air, and sand for research into global mudslides made more powerful and frequent through climate change, as well as space-borne seeds returning for study of multigenerational plant adaptations.

[Related: Mars may have been home to ill-fated methogens.]

And then, the cow cells. According to Space.com‘s writeup, ovarian cells taken from cows are also aboard the SS Sally Ride. These cells will be vital for not only researching fertility treatments here on Earth, but paving the way for studies regarding human reproduction on lunar and Martian settlements. With NASA aiming for humans’ return to the moon ahead of establishing a permanent base within the next decade, the capacity to healthily sustain multigenerational settlements in these uncharted territories is a major hurdle to overcome. Cow cells, as odd as it may sound, will potentially enable a major step forward for our journeys.

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Disclaimer: The author worked with the New Horizons team as a student researcher while she was an undergraduate.

On New Year’s Day three years ago, a small spacecraft zoomed by a chunk of ice billions of miles away, and scientists on Earth cheered. That was the second time the New Horizons probe got up close and personal with an object in the far-away Kuiper Belt—after capturing images of Pluto, its first target, in unprecedented detail.

Now, New Horizons has a third chance to revolutionize how astronomers see the distant parts of our solar system. On October 1, the spacecraft began the third phase of its life: the 2nd Kuiper Belt Extended Mission, or KEM2 for short.

Every few years, each NASA mission—yes, even the 45-year-old Voyager—undergoes a formal review in which administrators decide whether the project should continue. SOFIA, NASA’s observatory-on-an-airplane, was just a victim of this process, shutting down operations on September 30, the end of the administration’s fiscal year. New Horizons, on the other hand, was successfully renewed this summer for a two-year extension to its operations as it continues flying farther out of the solar system.

In KEM2, because the probe is traveling through a uniquely far-out place in space, New Horizons is going to expand its scope beyond the planetary science of its earlier phases. “New Horizons has become this interdisciplinary observatory in the Kuiper Belt,” says Alan Stern, principal investigator of New Horizons. 

The mission is branching out into two more disciplines: astrophysics and heliophysics. New Horizons is going to measure the solar wind, particles streaming out from the sun, and the probe will eventually reach the termination shock and heliopause, two places that can be considered outer boundaries of our solar system. Although Voyagers 1 & 2 reached the heliopause and made similar measurements, they did so with far less sophisticated tech. 

[Related: NASA’s New Horizons is so far away, it’s seeing stars from new angles]

New Horizons will help heliophysicists better understand the shape of our solar system’s edges and explore the limits of our sun’s influence on space. It’s also the “ultimate dark-sky site” for astrophysicists, allowing them to measure the amount of background light in the universe, a key constraint on the history of galaxies.

Although those aims are departures from its previous goals, it will continue to explore far-off bodies of rock and ice, too. New Horizons has been incredibly successful at exploring the outer solar system, providing the first detailed images of both the dwarf planet Pluto and a smaller Kuiper Belt object (KBO) called 2014 MU69. The Kuiper Belt contains a huge number of these icy objects, which are some of the best-preserved relics of our solar system’s early days—a window for astronomers to look into the past of how our planets formed. 

The spacecraft is currently moving a whopping 32,000 miles per hour, faster than even a rocket launching off Earth. It’s about 54 astronomical units (AU) from the sun, and will move 3 AU further away each year, rapidly approaching the edges of our solar system. It’s in unexplored territory—only four other probes, from the Voyager and Pioneer missions, have made it that far out). And those craft took different paths than New Horizons, carrying the now-outdated technology of the 1970s.

“I am excited about how far out we will be going into the distant parts of the solar system,” says Kelsi Singer, project scientist on New Horizons. In two years, she adds, the probe will be at 60 AU–at an edge of the belt that’s nearly impossible for scientists to explore using Earth-based tools. 

Because Kuiper Belt objects are so extraordinarily far away, even our largest telescopes on Earth have trouble spotting the tiny, faint specks. New Horizons, however, will have a much closer view, embedded within the Kuiper Belt itself. In the first extended mission, the team spotted 36 KBOs using the spacecraft’s onboard cameras, the closest from only 0.1 AU away, and they expect similar observations in KEM2. The team also has the opportunity to use New Horizons for unique images of the ice giants, Uranus and Neptune, from an angle we can’t see here on Earth.

[Related: The New Horizons spacecraft just revealed secrets of the most distant object we’ve ever visited]

Plus, New Horizons has an instrument, the Student Dust Counter, to measure how much space dust it encounters, tracing the distribution of dust near the edges of the solar system. Although we usually think of outer space as totally empty, there’s a good amount of dust floating around there, left over from when planets were formed—again, giving astronomers key insight into the history of the solar system. 

For now, the spacecraft is still in hibernation until it awakens in March 2023. Until then, the team is preparing for the exciting science to come, working tirelessly to hunt for new KBO targets with ground-based observations. And if they’re lucky, KEM2 may be the second of many more extended missions to come.
“The spacecraft is in perfect health, and it has the fuel and the power to run through sometime in the 2040s,” Stern says. “This is not the last hurrah of New Horizons by a long shot.”

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Space poses some massive dangers for humans, from black holes to the heat death of the universe. But as humanity considers long-haul space travel, there are other, smaller potential hazards that some researchers say may deserve more attention: microbes from Earth.

Astronauts face numerous known health problems in space, including a loss in bone density, muscle atrophy, and psychological issues. And on Earth, researchers are increasingly discovering how the various bacteria and other microorganisms that live inside and outside of people — the human microbiome — affects physical and mental health.

Space, of course, is an entirely different environment from Earth, with high radiation levels and microgravity. Although the science is far from certain, these vast differences may cause unexpected changes in the microbiome of astronauts. In turn, this could result in a range of health problems, which may be more pronounced on long-haul stints in space, like traveling to another planet.

Still, the implications of a disrupted microbiome are poorly understood, even on Earth, said David Pearce, a bioscience researcher at Northumbria University and author of a 2022 paper exploring how a trip to Mars might affect microbes in the gut — which makes the range of related illnesses and diseases in space difficult to predict. And direct research is limited because only around 600 people have ever been to space. Those who have taken the trip don’t typically stay long, as the average length of a trip to the International Space Station is about six months. And some researchers aren’t yet convinced there’s enough evidence suggesting the human microbiome will change much in space at all.

All the same, many researchers, including Pearce, are trying to figure out whether or not astronauts will enter a state in which their microbiome changes in adverse ways, called dysbiosis. “Because they’re going to be away for a long time, will that dysbiosis become a significant problem,” he said, “or lead to them having health impacts that impair their ability to function?”

Researchers try to understand the possible effects of space on the microbiome in two places: terrestrial settings that are similar in some way to those experienced in space, or in space itself. In an example of the former, Norberto González-Juarbe, a principal investigator with the astronaut microbiome research group at J. Craig Venter Institute’s Infectious Diseases and Genomic Medicine Group, is looking at the microbiomes of researchers who work in the Concordia and Neumayer stations in Antarctica. He said that these locations mimic, in part, what astronauts experience in space, particularly the darkness, confinement, and limited human contact.

The team plans to analyze samples from the researchers at these stations to see how the microbial composition of their gastrointestinal tracts change, and how their immune systems react to the space station-like conditions. According to González-Juarbe, early results show shifts in gut microbes, and the team is currently looking at the immunological data. He expects to publish the results by the end of this year.

As for studies conducted in space, there are a few. One 2019 study, for instance, compared the microbiomes of astronaut Scott Kelly and his twin brother, Mark, after the former went to the ISS for nearly a year starting in 2015. The study posited that Scott Kelly’s microbiome did indeed change in space. For him, this included a reduction in bacteria called Bacteroidetes, the dysregulation of which has been linked to neurological, immune system, and metabolic issues, as well as increase in Firmicutes, a type of bacteria that can help break down certain starches and fibers.

In 2019, another study from the J. Craig Venter Institute looked at nine astronauts who spent between 6 and 12 months on the ISS. The astronauts collected samples from various patches of their skin, noses, and tongues. The astronauts also collected stool, blood, and saliva, along with samples from various surfaces on the station and its water reservoir.

Back on Earth, the study authors extracted and sequenced the DNA from the samples to see how the astronauts’ microbiomes changed over time. The study found that various skin microbes, including types of Gammaproteobacteria, decreased in number, which the authors theorize could contribute to the common phenomenon of rashes and skin hypersensitivity among astronauts in space. The findings also suggested that the astronaut’s gastrointestinal microbiome changed, and that two types of bacteria — Akkermansia and Ruminococcus, which seem to play important roles in maintaining mucus integrity in the digestive tract and in breaking down carbohydrates — saw a five-fold decrease.

Gut microbiome changes can impact the metabolism of food, bone health, and even cognition, said González-Juarbe, who was not part of the 2019 study. Longer stints in space — like the 18 months to Mars and back — would likely compound these issues. “The saying, ‘You are what you eat,’ is kind of true,” he said. “Changes in the overall microbiome will have effects on your overall brain health, and your cognitive health.”

Not everyone is convinced that the human microbiome changes in space, however. Existing studies have too few subjects to draw any conclusions, according to Jack Gilbert, a professor of pediatrics at the University of California San Diego and biology section head for the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “With so few people up there,” he added, “doing any studies with any statistical rigor is so hard.”

Gilbert is also skeptical of the Kelly twin study: “We have lots of twin studies we compared over time on Earth, and they all show significant deviations from each other.”

Potentially more concerning for human health in space are microbes that could escape the body and become more dangerous, Gilbert said. A 2019 study by Gilbert and his colleagues suggests this might be the case. In March 2016, astronauts in the ISS collected samples from the station’s dining room table. Six days later, the samples were brought back to Earth. Gilbert and his team then isolated the microbes in the sample, selected two strains of the fungus Fusarium oxysporum, and sequenced their genes.

The team then compared the isolated fungi samples to 62 other strains and found that the genetics from the ISS samples differed from those of their terrestrial counterparts. The team also subjected small worms called nematodes to both samples. They found that some of the microbes that had come from the ISS killed more of these worms.

Gilbert said that it’s possible fungus becomes more pathogenic in response to the harshness of space, although his team is working on a new study to help clarify that connection. Microbes prefer warm, moist areas, like the environment inside the human body. So, microbes that escape from that habitat onto the cold, dry surfaces — also subject to radiation and a lack of gravity — can pick up new survival skills over generations, he said. “Unfortunately,” he added, “some of those survival strategies are associated with things like antibiotic resistance or enhanced virulence against humans.”

Gilbert noted that astronauts chosen to go to space are often incredibly healthy, so the chances of them getting sick from one of these rogue microbes is small. However, if someone on a long trip to Mars has a weakened immune system from food poisoning or exhaustion, he added, they could be infected by “these hardcore, Mad Max survivors.”

The existing research on the human microbiome in space leaves plenty of unknowns, according to all of the researchers who spoke to Undark. For instance, Nicole Buckley, team leader with the European Space Agency’s SciSpacE — or science of space environment — program noted that it’s difficult to say if any ailments in space, like loss of sleep, are caused by microbial disruptions, or if the microbes are just contributing or reacting to other ailments.

Also unclear, so far, is how researchers can restabilize a person’s microbiome in space, should it be thrown out of whack to the point of illness, Pearce said. For example, fecal transplant — which involves transplanting beneficial bacteria from the stool of a healthy donor into someone who is ill — can help restore immune functions for people with certain diseases. But because microbiomes are so complex, “it’s not like administering a drug that has an outcome,” he said. “You’re administering an organism that may become established and have a desirable outcome, or it may not become established and not have the outcome you’re hoping for.”

Some of the researchers noted, however, that fairly simple changes could make a difference for astronauts. González-Juarbe said that providing fresh fruits and vegetables and high-fiber foods can foster microbes that produce short-chain fatty acids in the stomach, which helps support the immune system. Buckley noted that pre- and probiotic foods could also help in this area.

Astronauts in space do have access to freeze-dried foods, according to an email from Grace Douglas from NASA’s Advanced Food Technology Project, which have “normal levels of food-relevant microorganisms,” but are processed to avoid containing any pathogens. Astronauts also receive small amounts of fresh fruits and vegetables via resupply missions. Still, according to Buckley, a healthy microbiome requires limiting processed foods and even more fresh fruits and vegetables and high-fiber foods.

The ESA is currently working on a study in which they provide compounds found in human breast milk called oligosaccharides, a linked group of carbohydrates, to the diets of researchers staying at the Concordia research station in the Antarctic for more than a year. These compounds are believed to be important in creating healthy microbiomes in babies. The study will test the oligosaccharides’ impact on the researchers’ microbiomes, immune systems, and mood.

There are still other fields that need to be explored that could further science’s understanding of space’s effect on the human microbiome. For instance, there’s a need for more information about individual astronauts and their microbial equilibriums, what causes their microbiomes to become stable or unstable, Pearce said.

Pearce added that astronauts may encounter familiar opportunistic pathogens — microbes that are usually benign, but can become dangerous when a person’s immune system weakens, among other factors — like those responsible for MRSA, which is found in 2 percent of people. But there could be “unknown unknowns” in this area, he said: microbes that humans will carry into space that have the undiscovered potential to become pathogenic.

Right now, there’s also no telling how the human microbiome would change on a long trip to Mars, compared to a relatively short stay on the ISS, Pearce said. But considering the timescale of spaceflight to the red planet — which NASA plans for the late 2030s or early 2040s — scientists have plenty of time to better understand the role the microbiome may play for astronauts’ health, he added. Until then, Pearce said that researchers should continue using the means available to them, whether they’re terrestrial studies that mimic space, studies in space itself, or simply tests that aim to better understand the microbiome of humans that are safely on the ground. “There’s no one way we’re going to get an answer for this,” he said.

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The age of the asteroid is nigh. Asteroid science is quickly becoming one of humanity’s chief priorities in regard to space exploration, what with the influx of upcoming research endeavors, such as NASA’s ambitious Lucy spacecraft, which is currently on a 12-year voyage to Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids, and the European Space Agency’s upcoming Hera mission, which will travel back to the asteroid Dimorphous to survey the scene of the first cosmic bump. To date, global space agencies have had about 15 missions tasked with investigating asteroids, with a few others lined up in the future.

In comparison, the universe’s vast number of both wonderful and terrifying worlds often hogs the limelight of space research. So, what makes these wandering rocky objects so deserving of our scientific scrutiny? 

According to Tom Statler, a program scientist in the planetary science division at NASA, it’s because many aspects about asteroids remain a mystery to us. “With asteroids, we are just starting to learn how diverse they really are, and understanding that diversity and how it tells the story of our solar system is an important goal,” Statler told Popular Science in an email. 

One of the most anticipated of NASA’s upcoming ventures is the Psyche mission, a craft that will fly 280 million miles away to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter to investigate whether a large metal-rich rocky body, thought to be an ancient core of an early planet, formed under the same or similar conditions to Earth’s core. By studying its properties, the details Psyche may reveal about the rock’s materials could be used to gain new insights into how our solar system survived its chaotic beginnings as well as how terrestrial planets like Earth formed.  

[Related: In its visit to Psyche, NASA hopes to glimpse the center of the Earth]

The agency planned to launch the craft earlier this year, but the mission missed its launch window due to the late delivery of the spacecraft’s flight software and equipment—technology that plays a vital part in the craft’s navigation. 

Since NASA had no time to complete preliminary testing on the system ahead of launch, the mission was pushed back until October 2023, at the earliest. To that end, NASA scientists’ have been reworking a new flight profile for Psyche because the delayed launch window also pushes back when the spacecraft would reach its destination, which had been set for 2026. Similar to its original flight plan, the spacecraft will still receive a gravity assist from Mars, a technique that uses a planet’s gravity to accelerate a spacecraft towards its goal, before finally arriving at the asteroid in August 2029. 

Though the delay is a setback, scientists are more concerned with getting the mission right than keeping to a strict schedule—after all, most science missions experience similar stops and starts during the planning and testing stages. However, NASA does plan on sharing findings and recommendations from an independent review board for the Psyche mission on Friday, November 4 during an online community townhall. Still, Psyche’s delay may cut in on other future research plans NASA has in store, namely putting a pin in Janus, one of the agency’s lesser-known asteroid-related science missions.  

Janus is a dual-spacecraft mission of twin “SmallSats”—a class of nanosatellites—which will explore two binary asteroids, systems of two asteroids that orbit a common center of mass. By taking visible and infrared images of these objects, scientists hope to understand the processes which led to their formation. Although Janus was slated to launch on the same SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket as Psyche as a secondary satellite, the mission will now have to be rescheduled just the same. 

Once released from the main spacecraft, Janus’ two satellite crafts would have gotten a gravity assist from Earth in August 2025, before heading off and reaching their respective flyby destinations in 2026. It’s unclear if Janus might just hitch a ride next year with Psyche, but a statement from NASA confirms that the agency “continues to assess options for the Janus mission.” 

[Related: NASA is pumped about its asteroid-smacking accuracy]

While the future of Janus remains to be seen, interest and investment from a slew of different research fields continues to keep asteroid science firmly in the space scene. Erik Asphaug, a planetary science professor at the University of Arizona and a co-investigator on the Psyche science team, says that studying asteroids also has both an economic and a practical value. NASA, for example, is still high off the success of the DART mission, where a spacecraft was intentionally crashed into an asteroid to prove that humans are capable of altering our cosmic environment.    

“DART was a big success, it deflected the target several times faster than we anticipated,” Asphaug says. “It’s turned an idea into something that’s more technologically ready to be applied in hazards.” And moving asteroids at our whims would be an extremely advantageous tool for setting up future bases on the moon and other potential lunar operations, he adds. Asphaug believes that instead of relying on and draining resources from Earth, in the future, resource-rich asteroids could be used to support astronauts’ water, metal and mining needs. 

“I look at the devastation of mining on the Earth and I think it’s very short-sighted,” he says. “So I’m looking for the stimulation of the space industry around asteroids so that we can get a lot of the mining and manufacturing that’s done on Earth, and do it out in space.”

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It looks like many things to many people. The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from the classic 80s movie “Ghostbusters.” A ScrubDaddy sponge. An emoji. And a jack-o’-lantern, just in time for Halloween. Last week, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured an image of the sun’s surface in an apparent smile. “Today, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory caught the sun ‘smiling.’ Seen in ultraviolet light, these dark patches on the sun are known as coronal holes and are regions where fast solar wind gushes out into space,” NASA wrote in a tweet.

The patches making up the face in the image are coronal holes—cooler sections of the sun’s outer layer. This layer is usually around 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The coronal holes show areas of high magnetic-field activity that steadily release solar wind. These cosmic gusts are a flow of protons, electrons, and other particles that travel through space.

[Related: Scientists just spotted a massive storm from a sun-like star.]

While this image is a visual treat, the activity behind it might prove to be more of a trick back here on Earth. The holes might be a solar storm that could generate a beautiful aurora borealis in Earth’s more northern latitudes or wreak havoc on the planet’s telecommunication systems. Solar storms like these can become troublesome when the particles make it to Earth’s atmosphere, where television and radio antennae can pick up their signals. A big enough solar storm can cause power outages and damage electrical grids. The Carrington Event in 1859 was one of the most significant solar storms in recorded history and caused fires at telegraph stations and even auroras in tropical regions. With significantly more telecommunications in the 21st Century, a similar event could cause severe problems to the technology we rely on daily.

One more recent spooky solar storm was the appropriately named Halloween Storms of 2003. With minimal warning, three giant sunspot groups formed on the sun’s surface by October 26, 2003. The largest of these spots was 13 times bigger than Earth’s, and 17 major solar flares erupted from the sun. “The storms affected over half of the Earth-orbiting spacecraft, intermittently disrupting satellite TV and radio services and damaging a Japanese scientific satellite beyond repair,” according to a National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration post. “The solar activity also sent several deep-space missions into safe mode or complete shutdown and destroyed the Martian Radiation Environment Experiment aboard NASA’s Mars Odyssey mission. At the height of the storms, astronauts aboard the International Space Station had to take cover from the high radiation levels, which had only happened twice before in the mission’s history.”

[Related: Violent space weather could limit life on nearby exoplanets.]

According to some researchers, the planet is also long overdue for a massive solar event. “Scientists expect that to happen on average, with a couple percent probability, every year, and we’ve just dodged all these magnetic bullets for so long,” University of California at San Diego physics professor Brian Keating told The Washington Post. “So it could be really scary, and the consequences could be much more dramatic, especially in our technology-dependent current society. There could be something on our way for Halloween night after all. Pretty spooky, but hopefully not too spooky.”

The Solar Dynamics Observatory was first launched in 2010 with a mission to investigate how solar activity is created and drives space weather. The spacecraft measures the sun’s atmosphere, magnetic field, energy output, and the sun’s steamy interior. But the Solar Dynamics Observatory is hardly the only NASA entity working hard to bring spooky images back to Earth this Halloween—the Hubble Telescope also captured a spooky “cosmic keyhole” that looks a bit like a portal into another dimension on October 28.

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Space agencies like NASA keep a close watch on our nearest neighbor, Mars. With almost a dozen active missions on or around the Red Planet, they can track its daily weather, just like our forecasts here on Earth, and notice even small changes on its surface. 

Today, though, astronomers revealed a much bigger change: two new large impact craters in the Martian crust, observed by both the Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter (MRO) and the InSight lander. These are the largest impact craters discovered by MRO to date and the first detection of seismic surface waves, according to two new studies published in the journal Science.

“We never thought we’d see anything this big,” said Ingrid Daubar, planetary scientist at NASA’S Jet Propulsion Lab and MRO/InSight team member, in a NASA press conference on the new findings. Quakes on Mars, like those resulting from these meteor impacts, reveal more detailed information on its contents, and how rocky planets, including Earth, came to be.

Here at home, we’ve been measuring earthquakes for centuries—but marsquakes are newer territory. The InSight mission, which landed on Mars in 2018, recorded its first marsquake less than a year into its operations and has since recorded more than 1,300 of them. The lander provides NASA and other research teams a unique opportunity to understand what’s going on under the Martian surface, and study its core, mantle, and crust in detail. To fully understand how rocky planets like Mars and Earth form, we need more information on exactly how they’re structured—information that InSight aims to provide. MRO, which has been orbiting around Mars for 16 years, provides detailed images of the surface for birds-eye-view context for observations taken on the ground.

Mars has plenty of quakes caused by its own seismic activity, but without a thick atmosphere to protect it like Earth, astronomers also expect meteors to hit the surface and cause additional waves. The first of the newly detected impacts, known as S1000a, happened in September 2021, and created a cluster of craters in an area of rocky, craggy terrain to the North of Mars known as Tempe Terra. The second impact, called S1094b, hit in December 2021, and was much closer to InSight. It impacted a flat, dusty region on Amazonis Planitia, and formed a larger crater 150 meters in diameter—a distance comparable to the height of the Washington Monument. This created an approximately magnitude 4 quake, which is fairly small by Earth’s standards, but large for our less tectonically active neighbor.

Both of these detections were true displays of teamwork between the various missions. For S1000a, InSight noticed the seismic signatures, and scientists used that to direct MRO’s search to image the crater. For S1094b, on the other hand, the MRO team independently noticed the freshly formed crater, and collaborated with InSight researchers to confirm that the two spacecraft’s seismic signatures were, in fact, from the same event. The impact was large enough that it could even be seen in MRO’s daily weather camera, MARCI, allowing its team to pinpoint the timing of the impact to within a day. From these visuals, they estimated that the meteor that struck Mars was around 5 to 12 meters across, somewhere between the length of a giraffe and a telephone pole. 

[Related: Meteoroids make little ‘bloop’ noises when crashing into Mars]

When quakes happen on a rocky planet, the waves bounce around in different ways depending on the materials they encounter. So far, all the quakes observed by InSight have been characterized as body waves that travel deep within the planet’s mantle. Any major event—volcanoes, earthquakes, landslides, etc.—sends both body waves and shallower surface waves rippling through a planet. This left astronomers wondering about Mars’ crust. 

They finally got a clue with the meteor impact last December. S1094b created large waves that traveled through the crust, making it possible for InSight to measure them. Doyeon Kim, senior research scientist at ETH Zurich and lead author of one of the new studies, says that these kinds of detections, called surface waves, “were already a part of the mission goals of InSight from the beginning.” This marks the first unambiguous detection of surface waves on any planet other than Earth, and revealed that Mars’ crust may be a bit more uneven than previously thought. 

Images of S1094b from MRO’s HiRISE also show peculiar lighter patches on the Red Planet’s surface around the new crater, which the team identified as frozen water dredged up from below the crust upon impact. We’ve known Mars has ice caps for a while, but this is the lowest latitude that ice has been observed at so far. What’s more, the combination of imaging and seismic data gave the researchers particularly precise measurements of the location of the impact and the path the seismic waves took through Mars, providing information on the properties of the rocks along those paths.

This groundbreaking combination of observations opens the door for a much more detailed understanding of Mars and other rocky planets, from the physics of meteor impacts to the structure of planetary interiors and beyond. Unfortunately, this may be InSight’s last hurrah—dust has been slowly covering its solar panels for months, and in around four to eight weeks it will no longer have enough power to operate. The team sees this as a high note to end on: Their observations could pave the way for fresh discoveries on Mars.

[Related: 5 new insights about Mars from Perseverance’s rocky roving]

“The new results on crustal structure far from the InSight landing site will improve our overall understanding of the formation and evolution of the Martian crust,” says Martin Knapmeyer, planetary scientist at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Berlin. “In a cooperation kindled by a common goal, international science teams of two different Mars missions joined efforts to obtain the best possible results.”

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NASA hopes to take us back to the moon for an extended stay via its Artemis lunar program, but lots of logistics still need to be worked out before we can safely set up on the moon for the long haul. One such hurdle is the actual material astronauts will use to construct a permanent lunar base, which will require a host of engineering considerations we normally never need to think about down here on Earth. Thanks to recent breakthroughs, however, Artemis organizers could at least save themselves a lot work of schlepping materials back and forth between Earth and the moon by 3D-printing base camp building blocks directly on the lunar surface using debris and saltwater.

[Related: What’s next for Artemis 1.]

According to an announcement earlier this week via the University of Central Florida, a team from the school’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering developed a new construction material composed partly of lunar regolith—the loose rocks, dust, and other debris covering the Moon’s surface. Using both 3D printing and a method called binder jet technology (BJT) in which a liquid binding agent (in this case saltwater) is infused into a bed of moon powder supplied by UCF’s Exolith Lab, Associate Professor Ranajay Ghosh’s group was able to produce bricks capable of withstanding pressure of up to 250 million times greater than our own atmosphere.

Although the initial cylindrical bricks produced are comparably weak, blasting them with 1200 degrees Celsius heat strengthened them enough to be a viable tool in the eventual structures NASA hopes to establish on the Moon, such as a modular cabin and mobile home. “This research contributes to the ongoing debate in space exploration community on finding the balance between in-situ extraterrestrial resource utilization versus material transported from Earth,” Ghosh said in UCF’s announcement. “The further we develop techniques that utilize the abundance of regolith, the more capability we will have in establishing and expanding base camps on the moon, Mars, and other planets in the future.”

[Related: Why NASA’s Artemis is aiming for the moon’s south pole.]

Apart from the structural stability, one of the chief benefits would be a dramatic reduction in material costs for the Artemis lunar base. It’s a lot cheaper to hypothetically produce at least some of your needs on the moon instead of lugging them up via extremely expensive shuttle launches. As such, the regolith bricks could also bode well for future bases on Mars, too. It definitely beats a suggestion last year from a Manchester University student that involved constructing abodes using human blood and urine as their binding agent.

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NASA’s independent study into Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) begins today, and we have the names of the 16 people comprising the team. First announced in June, the task force is charged with identifying how unclassified data gathered by civilians, government entities, commercial organizations, and other sources can potentially be utilized to “shed light on UAPs,” as well as providing a roadmap for future studies and analysis. The project is expected to take nine months, with findings to be released to the public sometime in mid-2023.

“Exploring the unknown in space and the atmosphere is at the heart of who we are at NASA,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, said in today’s official announcement. “Understanding the data we have surrounding unidentified aerial phenomena is critical to helping us draw scientific conclusions about what is happening in our skies. Data is the language of scientists and makes the unexplainable, explainable.”

[Related: Congress has concerns about UAPs.]

The team is chaired by David Spergel, founder of the Flatiron Institute for Computational Astrophysics and a MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, and features SETI Institute affiliates, astrophysicists, oceanographers, science journalists, AI theorists, as well as former International Space Station commander and astronaut, Scott Kelly.

“Without access to an extensive set of data, it is nearly impossible to verify or explain any observation, thus the focus of the study is to inform NASA what possible data could be collected in the future to scientifically discern the nature of UAP,” reads NASA’s announcement.

[Related: UFO conspiracies can be more dangerous than you think.]

The government and military rebranded UFOs as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) a few years’ back as part of an ongoing effort to de-stigmatize the genuinely baffling—and, for some, worrisome—sightings by both the public and other credible experts. Setting aside headline-grabbing theories involving alien invasions and conspiracy theories, a number of dramatic, still unexplained events in recent years present significant challenges to national security officials, with unidentified objects seemingly capable of seamlessly traversing land and water environments, as well as moving at speeds and in ways that our known technology can’t handle.

Ongoing public developments such as today’s task force launch indicate that the government is still very much concerned with getting to the bottom of these sightings, and take many of them seriously. Once NASA’s investigation presents its findings, we hopefully will get some additional information as to how these issues will be handled and analyzed in the years ahead.

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TO ALEXEI LEONOV, the colors in space were much more beautiful than those on Earth. No photograph could match what the late Russian cosmonaut experienced while floating hundreds of miles above his home planet in 1965: the distant curve of blue suspended in the deep black of space; the sunset as lines of reds, greens, and yellows skimming the horizon. Other explorers have shared this otherworldly perspective, but back then no one saw it as Leonov did—from beyond the safety of a spacecraft during history’s earliest spacewalk.

With only a 16-foot tether as his lifeline, the pilot of the Voskhod 2 mission drifted alone through low Earth orbit. But after 12 minutes, awe turned to panic when his suit ballooned to the point where he couldn’t fit back through the shuttle’s airlock door. He feared that as the first to explore the vastness of space in a suit, he might also be the first to get lost in it.

These days, spacewalks, also known as extravehicular activities or EVAs, are commonplace. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have conducted 250 of them since 1998, spending hours in the extraterrestrial elements to install or fix scientific equipment. But even as astronauts have become more adept at roaming outside controlled environments and the technology behind their suits has improved, the risks of accidents or death remain.

In Leonov’s case, the drop in atmospheric pressure caused the air in his suit to swell to dangerous proportions. If he tried to release the gas and reduce pressure, he risked bleeding off too much oxygen and asphyxiating himself. He decided to take the chance and quickly opened a valve in his suit to slim it down some, then slipped back indoors. Meanwhile, the Soviet space agency cut off a national broadcast of the mission to avoid public alarm. Leonov returned to a hero’s welcome on Earth, and it wasn’t until he shared his story that everyone realized the danger he’d faced.

Since Leonov’s pioneering foray, countries have stepped up safety and training standards for spacewalks. NASA astronauts practice EVA procedures in water tanks and zero-gravity airplanes, spending nearly seven hours submerged for each hour in orbit. More recently, they’ve practiced in virtual reality.

As a result, astronauts today are well prepared for EVAs, retired NASA payload commander Jeff Hoffman says. He performed four spacewalks throughout his career. His debut, in 1985, happened to be the first unplanned one in the agency’s history, when he ventured outside his shuttle to try to fix a broken satellite. “It showed how good the training [for spacewalking] was,” Hoffman said of the three-hour EVA. “I felt very comfortable, even though it was unplanned.”

Equipment has improved since Leonov’s era too, enabling astronauts to trek around for longer. Almost like individual spaceships, spacesuits supply oxygen, regulate temperature, and vent exhaled carbon dioxide. Other small additions make EVAs more secure and comfortable, including devices crewmembers use to propel themselves around in short bursts, guardrails on the facades of structures that improve maneuverability, anti-fog coating inside helmets, and warm gloves made of many layers of insulation and tough, flexible fabric.

Still, the dangers are real. In 2013, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano almost drowned during a spacewalk when his helmet flooded with water that had leaked earlier from the suit’s cooling system. Astronauts might also face exhaustion or blood-bubbling “bends,” caused by the same rapid pressure changes that also endanger scuba divers.

Space junk, traveling at 18,000 miles per hour, poses another risk—one that Hoffman says is getting worse as stuff accumulates in Earth’s orbit. In late 2021, NASA canceled an ISS EVA because of floating debris. Though no astronaut has been hit yet, a punctured suit could turn fatal fast.

Even as spacewalks become more regular, the potential for disaster will never be fully eliminated. After all, Hoffman says, it’s part of a job that involves sitting on a loaded rocket. “I was fully confident that if anything happened that we could do something about, we’d do the right thing. And if something happened that we couldn’t do anything about—why worry?” he explains. “I took the risk because we had useful work to do.”

This story originally ran in the Fall 2022 Daredevil Issue of PopSci. Read more PopSci+ stories.

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Tomorrow morning at approximately 7:04 a.m. EDT, NASA’s Lucy spacecraft will skim the Earth’s atmosphere, passing only 220 miles above the planet’s surfance. According to the agency, the spacecraft will be slingshotting past its home to gain some of the orbital energy it needs to travel to a never-before-visited population of asteroids. Even more, this flyby is also a bit celebratory as Sunday is the first anniversary of Lucy’s launch into space.

At around 6:55 a.m. EDT, Lucy makes its debut with observers on the ground in Western Australia (where it will be 6:55 PM). The spacecraft will quickly pass overhead there and be visible without a telescope or binoculars before disappearing at 7:02 a.m. EDT, when it passes into the Earth’s shadow. Lucy will continue its journey across the Pacific Ocean and will emerge from Earth’s shadow at 7:26 AM EDT (a bright and early 4:26 AM PTD). Those in the western US could catch a glimpse of the spacecraft with binoculars around that time, as long as cloud cover is low.

[Related: How engineers saved NASA’s new asteroid probe when it malfunctioned in space.]

“The last time we saw the spacecraft, it was being enclosed in the payload fairing in Florida,” said Hal Levison, Lucy principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) Boulder, Colorado office, in a press release. “It is exciting that we will be able to stand here in Colorado and see the spacecraft again. And this time Lucy will be in the sky.”

After floating over the West Coast, Lucy will rapidly recede from the Earth’s vicinity. It will pass the moon to take few more calibration images before continuing into interplanetary space.

“I’m especially excited by the final few images that Lucy will take of the moon,” said John Spencer, acting deputy project scientist at SwRI, in a press release. “Counting craters to understand the collisional history of the Trojan asteroids is key to the science that Lucy will carry out, and this will be the first opportunity to calibrate Lucy’s ability to detect craters by comparing it to previous observations of the moon by other space missions.”

[Related: This small asteroid has a tiny moon of its own.]

One year into a 12-year voyage, NASA’s Lucy mission is the first spacecraft launched to explore the Trojan asteroids. These are a group of primitive space rocks orbiting Jupiter. Sunday’s assist from Earth’s gravitational field will place Lucy on a new trajectory for an orbit that will last two years.

In 2024, it will return to Earth for a second gravity push that will give Lucy the energy needed to cross the solar system’s main asteroid belt. Once there, it will observe asteroid Donaldjohanson, and then travel into the leading Trojan asteroid swarm. After that, the spacecraft will fly past six Trojan asteroids: Eurybates and its satellite Queta, Polymele and its yet unnamed satellite, Leucus, and Orus. In 2030, Lucy will return to Earth for yet another bump that will gear it up for a rendezvous with the Patroclus-Menoetius binary asteroid pair in the trailing Trojan asteroid swarm.

Lucy’s current trajectory will bring the spacecraft even lower than the International Space Station. That means the probe will pass through a lot of Earth-orbiting satellites and debris. NASA has developed procedures to anticipate potential hazards, and can move Lucy out of the way if need be to avoid collision.

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At a celebratory news conference today, NASA announced that the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) successfully altered the asteroid Dimorphos’ orbit.

Before DART smashed into it on September 26, it took Dimorphos 11 hours and 55 minutes to circle its larger parent asteroid, Didymos. Astronomers have been using telescopes on Earth to measure how much that time has changed. The data shows that the impact from the small spacecraft shortened Dimorphos’ orbit around Didymos by 32 minutes, with a margin of uncertainty of about plus or minus 2 minutes. Shortening an asteroid system’s trajectory like this could help us deflect a massive space rock if it were to threaten Earth.

“All of us have a responsibility to protect our home planet. After all, it’s the only one we have,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson in a press release. “This mission shows that NASA is trying to be ready for whatever the universe throws at us. NASA has proven we are serious as a defender of the planet.”

[Related: NASA’s first attempt to smack an asteroid was picture perfect.]

Before the collision, the agency defined the minimum successful orbit period change of Dimorphos as change of 73 seconds or more. This early data shows DART surpassed this minimum benchmark by more than 25 times. Data is still being collected by ground-based telescopes from around the world and radar facilities at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Goldstone facility in California and the National Science Foundation’s Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia.

According to NASA, the focus is now shifting toward measuring the efficiency of momentum transfer from DART’s roughly 14,000-mile per hour collision with Dimorphos. There will be further analysis of the asteroidal rock that was launched into space after impact called ejecta. The recoil from the blast enhanced DART’s push against the asteroid; NASA experts described it is a little like a jet of air streaming out of a balloon, sending it in the opposite direction.

More information on of the asteroid’s physical properties will be needed to better understand how much impact the ejecta had. To project the mass and shape of the asteroid, astronomer will continue to study imagery of Dimorphos from DART’s terminal approach and from the Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids, provided by the Italian Space Agency.

“DART has given us some fascinating data about both asteroid properties and the effectiveness of a kinetic impactor as a planetary defense technology,” said Nancy Chabot, the project’s coordination lead from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, in a press release. “The DART team is continuing to work on this rich dataset to fully understand this first planetary defense test of asteroid deflection.”

[Related: What NASA’s successful DART mission means for the future of planetary defense.]

During the media briefing, Chabot also stressed that early detection of threatening asteroids will be key in employing kinetic impactor techniques in the future. “This was a 4 percent change in the orbital period of Dimorphos around Didymos. It just gave it a small nudge,” she said. “If you wanted to do this in the future, it would potentially work, but you’d want to do this years in advance. Warning time is really key here in order to enable this sort of asteroid deflection to be used as part of a larger planetary defense strategy.”

The $325-million NASA test began with DART’s launch in November 2021. On September 26th, the car-sized spacecraft made kinetic impact with Dimorphos at 14,000 mph and around 7 million miles away from Earth. The goal was for the spacecraft to nudge the 525-foot-wide asteroid into a tighter orbit around its parent rock. Dimorphos is a smaller companion to the 2,500-foot-wide Didymos, and is a moonlet orbiting the larger body at at less than a mile apart. The two make up a binary asteroid system, and were partially selected because there is zero chance that either object or their ejecta would ever threaten Earth, according to NASA.

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NASA astronaut Nicole Aunapu Mann made history last week, becoming not only the first Native American woman in space, but also the first woman to command a Crew Dragon capsule. SpaceX’s Dragon Endurance spacecraft dropped off Mann and the crew of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission. Mann is the mission commander, with NASA’s Josh Cassada serving as the pilot. Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Koichi Wakata and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina will serve as mission specialists for their expedition.

Mann is enrolled in Wailacki of the Round Valley Indian Tribes in northern California and is a colonel in the US Marine Corps. She served as a test pilot in the F/A-18 Hornet and Super Hornet and was deployed twice aboard aircraft carriers in support of combat operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

[Related: Meet the next generation of American spaceflight]

In June 2013, she was selected as one of eight members of the 21st NASA astronaut class. To prepare for her time in space, Mann completed intensive instruction in International Space Station systems, spacewalks, Russian language training, robotics, physiological training, T-38 flight training, and water and wilderness survival training, according to NASA. Mann’s training was complete in July 2015 and she has since served as the T-38 safety and training officer and as the assistant to the chief astronaut for exploration. She led the astronaut corps in the development of the Orion spacecraft, Space Launch System, and Exploration Ground Systems for missions to the Moon.

In an interview with Indian Country Today in August, Mann said, “it’s very exciting,” referring to being the first Native woman in space. “I think it’s important that we communicate this to our community, so that other Native kids, if they thought maybe that this was not a possibility or to realize that some of those barriers that used to be there are really starting to get broken down.”

[Related: SpaceX and NASA are studying how to bump Hubble into higher orbit]

Crew-5 will be aboard the ISS conducting more than 200 science experiments aimed to help prepare for human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit, such as cardiovascular health, bioprinting, and fluid behavior in microgravity. “One of the ones that I’m looking most forward to is called the biofabrication facility. And it is literally 3D printing human cells, which to me sounds so futuristic, right?” she enthusiastically told ICT.

The six month mission is the latest stage in commercial and public space exploration.

“Missions like Crew-5 are proof we are living through a golden era of commercial space exploration. It’s a new era powered by the spirit of partnership, fueled by scientific ingenuity, and inspired by the quest for new discoveries,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, in a press release.

John Herrington is the only other Indigenous American to have entered orbit. Herrington (Chickasaw) flew on a 2002 space shuttle mission and logged over 330 hours in space and has flown 30 different spacecraft before retiring from NASA in 2005.

“I feel very proud,” Mann told Reuters before lift-off. “It’s important that we celebrate our diversity and really communicate that specifically to the younger generation.” When referring to the excitement that her trip has generated among some Native American communities, she said, “that’s really, I think, an audience that we don’t get an opportunity to reach out to very often.”

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When the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) sent back its first images this summer, many of us were gobsmacked at the clarity and beauty of the pictures. But even space telescopes work best with a little support, and JWST has been designed to work with many other telescopes and facilities. Four of JWST’s first images are now getting a little jolt from x-ray vision thanks to NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. These re-mixes of the original images from JWST are composites, meaning they are layered to include data from multiple telescopes. The stellar snapshots show how much more powerful telescopes are when they work together and reveal some feature’s that weren’t visible to JWST alone, according to NASA.

Stephan’s Quintet

[Related: The James Webb Space Telescope’s first glimpses into deep space reveal 4 mind-blowing finds.]

Four galaxies within Stephan’s Quintet (about 620,000 lightyears across) are doing an intricate dance with gravity. The fifth galaxy is merely an observer, watching from a distance. The images of the quintet taken by JWST (which have red, orange, yellow, green, and blue colors) shows never-seen-before features and details of the, “results of these interactions, including sweeping tails of gas and bursts of star formation,” according to NASA. The Chandra data (in light blue) of this same system shows a shock wave heating up gas to tens of millions of degrees, while one of the galaxies passes through at about 2 million miles per hour. Infrared data from NASA’s now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope (shown in red, green, and blue) as also included.

Cartwheel Galaxy

The acrobatic Cartwheel galaxy is shaped this way due to a a collision with another smaller galaxy roughly 100 million years ago. Star formation on its outer ring and other places in the galaxy was triggered when the smaller galaxy punched the Cartwheel. Chandra X-rays, shown in blue and purple, are due to, “superheated gas, individual exploded stars, and neutron stars and black holes pulling material from companion stars,” said NASA in a statement. JWST offers an infrared view in red, orange, yellow, green, and blue shows the Cartwheel galaxy and two smaller companion galaxies that were not involved in the 100 million year old collision.

SMACS 0723.3–7327

Located about 4.2 billion light-years away from Earth, JWST’s data shows that the galaxy cluster SMACS J0723 actually contains hundreds of individual galaxies. These galaxy clusters more than their galaxies—they’re some of the biggest structures in the universe. These clusters are, “filled with vast reservoirs of superheated gas that is seen only in X-ray light,” according to NASA. The Chandra data (shown in blue) shows really hot gas. This gas is roughly tens of millions of degrees and has a total mass of about 100 trillion times that of our sun, several times higher than the mass of all of the galaxies in the cluster. A larger fraction of the mass in this cluster is made up by individual dark matter.

[Related: This kilonova could have created the first-ever extragalactic ‘sonic boom.’]

NGC 3324, The Cosmic Cliffs of the Carina Nebula

Cliffs are not just for climbing back on Earth. Chandra’s data of the “Cosmic Cliffs” (shown in pink) in the Carina Nebula reveals over a dozen individual X-ray sources. These stars on the nebula’s outer region are between 1 and 2 million years old, quite young in stellar terms. Typically, young stars are much brighter in X-rays than older stars, so X-ray studies are an, “ideal way to distinguish stars in the Carina Nebula from the many stars of different ages from our Milky Way galaxy along our line of sight to the nebula,” said NASA. The JWST data uses red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, and blue in this image as well.

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Jupiter’s moon, Europa, might have one of the best chances of supporting life in our solar system. And now, scientists at NASA have captured the closest images of the natural satellite in over two decades.

On Thursday, NASA’s Juno spacecraft came within 219 miles of the moon, allowing its camera, the JunoCam, to capture high-resolution images of Europa’s terrain. At the same time, Juno collected data about the geologic features and atmosphere, including its interior and ice shell structure. The photo and data gathering will help close gaps in understanding Europa’s surface and subsurface ocean. “The JunoCam images will fill in the current geologic map, replacing existing low-resolution coverage of the area,” Candy Hansen, a lead developer and operator of the JunoCam, said in the news release.

[Related: Europa’s icy surface may glow in the dark]

Scientists have long been interested in Europa, one of Jupiter’s 80 moons, as a prime candidate for extraterrestrial life because of its massive, potentially liquid ocean. Although the moon would need many more factors to support life than just liquid water, its icy crust and ocean floor could foster essential elements like hydrogen. The Juno mission will help scientists learn more about the moon, getting one step closer to understanding if simple organisms can survive on the icy satellite. 

Although Juno resulted in breathtaking images of Europa, it did so by working under immense constraints, with only two hours of time to collect data. Still, the spacecraft accomplished its goal as it flew by at roughly 14 miles per second. 

These photos of Europa aren’t Juno’s first big accomplishment, and NASA scientists hope they won’t be its last. The spacecraft launched in 2011, originally on a five-year trip to study Jupiter. But after traveling 1.7 billion miles and successfully orbiting the gaseous giant, scientists decided the spacecraft was not done, and Juno went on its way to study the entire Jovian system. But even after the mission ends in 2025, its impact is far from over. The Juno mission will help inform the upcoming Europa Clipper mission, scheduled to launch in 2024 and arrive at Europa in 2030. 

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Etiamophobia is the fear of an asteroid hitting the Earth, presumably ending all life as we know it. While improbable before, we now have a means to protect humanity from the whims of an unpredictable universe. 

On Monday evening, about seven million miles away, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), at last made contact with the asteroid Didymos and its football stadium-sized moonlet, a particularly small natural satellite, Dimorphus. The spacecraft journeyed for a little over 10 months to test if it would be possible to save Earth from future hazardous asteroids or comets by booting them off course. 

“We only have one home so we ought to take care of it,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson during a DART mission overview briefing on Monday afternoon before the mission collision. He went on to note that DART is “the world’s first mission to test the technology for defending Earth against an incoming killer asteroid.” 

While Earth is bombarded by asteroids and smaller meteors on a fairly regular basis, not many are noticed or pose any danger to life on the planet. While humans (so far) have been luckier than the dinosaurs, there’s no telling if Earth’s good fortune will hold up. In fact, the largest recorded asteroid impact to date happened only 115 years ago, when an asteroid the size of a 25 story-building flattened about 800 square miles of forest in an uninhabited area of Siberia, Russia. Lindley Johnson, NASA’s planetary defense officer, told Popular Science that if a similar impact were ever to occur in a metropolitan area, it would most certainly be on the scale of a natural disaster. Johnson says that DART is a “significant milestone” in humanity’s capabilities to protect the planet from such a dark outcome.

“This is the first time that humankind acquired the knowledge and the technology to start to rearrange things a little bit in the solar system, if you will, and make it a more hospitable place for life,” Johnson says.

[Related: NASA’s first attempt to smack an asteroid was picture perfect]

In the minutes before impact, DART hurled toward the moonlet at more than 14,000 miles per hour, before striking 17 meters from the craggy center and utterly destroying itself around 7:14pm EDT. By crashing the more than $3 million probe into the Didymos’ satellite, scientists expect the hit to have shaved at least a fraction of a millimeter per second off Dimorphus’ orbital speed. As DART is about 11 billion pounds smaller than its target, the craft aimed to alter the asteroid’s course, which takes less energy than trying to completely obliterate it, says Johnson. Ultimately, pushing the asteroid away is a safer and altogether surer protective maneuver. “You can never really be assured that you’re going to completely break up an asteroid or destroy it,” he says. “If you’ve done nothing to change its orbit, then you’ve just got a bunch of pieces that are headed at you.” It also saves what could be a precious amount of time before planet impact and maintains more control over the object. 

While the data from the collision is still being collected and processed, humanity’s first attempt at moving a celestial object and its first planetary defense test seems to have been a success: Along with the loss of camera visuals, the spacecraft’s impact was confirmed by a loss of signal. Although it could take anywhere from weeks to a few months before NASA knows just how far the mission was able to push the asteroid out of orbit, the spacecraft’s ability to nail its target has catapulted the concept of planetary defense out of the realm of doomsday-esque movie plots and into a real-life solution. Yet what does this triumphant first step mean for the advancement of other precautionary measures?

While the DART spacecraft met its valiant end, NASA scientists say that the real science of the mission has only just begun. Telescopes on Earth have spent years studying and measuring the Didymos-Dimorphus system, and those same telescopes will now be trained on the system to make new measurements on its orbit relative to what it was before. Other missions that survey the vast sky, like the James Webb Space Telescope, will also soon point towards the asteroid system, said Elena Adams, DART missions systems engineer at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, during a post-impact panel on Monday night. NASA and the public could also get images of the system from other active crafts like LICIACube, LUCY, as well as the Hubble Space Telescope. 

[Related: When Voyager 1 goes dark, what comes next?]

And the US isn’t the only nation investing in our planet’s defenses. In October 2024, the European Space Agency will send another probe, HERA, to examine the aftermath of the DART mission, making a detailed impact survey that will give scientists information they need to understand the experiment well enough to do again, with even more success. DART is only the beginning, but it marks the dawn of a universe where humans aren’t just passive residents, but where we can be assured of our place among the inconstant cosmos.  

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From cities in the sky to robot butlers, futuristic visions fill the history of PopSci. In the Are we there yet? column we check in on progress towards our most ambitious promises. Read the series and explore all our 150th anniversary coverage here.

Lately, all eyes are turned towards the moon. NASA has another launch attempt tentatively scheduled next week for the highly-anticipated Artemis 1 uncrewed mission to orbit Earth’s satellite, one of the first steps to set up an outpost on the lunar surface. But humans—and science fiction writers—have long imagined a moon base, one that would be a fixture of future deep space exploration. About five years before Sputnik and 17 years before the Apollo missions, the chairman of the British Interplanetary Society, Arthur C. Clarke, penned a story for the 1952 April issue of Popular Science describing what he thought a settlement on the moon could look like. Clarke, who would go on to write 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968, envisioned novel off-Earth systems, including spacesuits that would “resemble suits of armor,” glass-domed hydroponic farms, water mining and oxygen extraction for fuel, igloo-shaped huts, and even railways. 

“The human race is remarkably fortunate in having so near at hand a full-sized world with which to experiment,” Clarke wrote. “Before we aim at the planets, we will have had a chance of perfecting our techniques on our satellite.” 

Since Clarke’s detailed moon base musings, PopSci has frequently covered the latest prospects in lunar stations, yet the last time anyone even set foot on the moon was December 1972. Despite past false starts, like the Constellation Program in the early 2000s, NASA’s Artemis program aims to change moon base calculus. This time, experts say that the air—and attitude—surrounding NASA’s latest bid for the moon is charged with a different kind of determination. 

“You can talk to anyone in the [space] community,” says Adrienne Dove, a planetary scientist at the University of Central Florida. “You can talk to the folks who have been around for 50 years, or the new folks, but it just feels real this time.” Dove’s optimism doesn’t just come from the Artemis 1 rocket poised for liftoff at Kennedy Space Center. She sees myriad differentiating factors this time, including the collaboration between private companies and NASA, the growing international support for the space governance framework, the Artemis Accords, and the competition from rival nations like China and Russia to stake out a lunar presence. Perhaps one of the biggest arguments from moon base supporters is the need for a stepping stone to send humans even deeper into space. “We want to learn how to live on the moon so we can go to Mars,” Dove says.  

[Related: How Tiangong station will make China a force in the space race]

Mark Vande Hei, a NASA astronaut who returned to Earth in March 2022 after spending a US record-breaking 355 consecutive days on the International Space Station (ISS), underscores the opportunity. “We’ve got this planetary object, the moon, not too far away. And we can buy down the huge risk of going to Mars by learning how to live for long durations on another planetary object that’s relatively close.”

Ever since Sputnik made its debut as the first artificial satellite in 1957, the Soviet Union deployed several short-lived space stations; NASA’s Apollo Missions enabled humans to walk on the moon; NASA’s space shuttle fleet (now retired) flew 135 missions; the ISS has been orbiting the Earth for more than two decades; more than 4,500 artificial satellites now sweep through the sky; and a series of private companies, like SpaceX and Blue Origin, have begun launching rockets and delivering payloads into space. 

But no moon base. 

That’s because exploring the moon is not like exploring the Earth. Besides being 240,000 miles away on a trajectory that requires slicing through dense atmosphere while escaping our planet’s gravitational grip, and then traversing the vacuum of space, once on the moon, daily temperatures range between 250°F during the day and -208°F at night. Although there may be water in the form of ice, it will have to be mined and extracted to be useful. The oxygen deprived atmosphere is so thin it can’t shield human inhabitants from meteor impacts of all sizes or solar radiation. There’s no source of food. Plus, lunar soil, or regolith, is so fine, sharp, and electrostatically charged, it not only clogs machinery and lungs but can also cut through clothes and flesh. 

“It’s a very hostile environment,” says Dove, whose specialty is lunar dust. She’s currently working on multiple lunar missions, like Commercial Lunar Payload Services or CLPS, which will deploy robotic landers to explore the moon in advance of humans arriving on the future crewed Artemis missions. While Dove acknowledges the habitability challenges, she’s quick to cite a range of solutions, starting with the initial tent-pitching location: the moon’s south pole. “That region seems to be rich with resources in terms of ice, which can be used as water or as fuel,” Dove says. Plus, there’s abundant sunlight on mountain peaks, where solar panels could be stationed. She adds that “there might be some rare earth elements that can be really useful.” Rare earth elements—there are 17 metals in that category—are, well, rare on Earth, yet they’re essential to electronics manufacturing. Finding them on the moon would be a boon.

A PopSci story in July 1985 detailed elaborate plans proposed by various space visionaries to colonize the moon and make use of its resources. Among the potential technologies were laboratory and habitat modules, a factory to extract water and oxygen for subsistence and fuel, and mining operations for raw moon minerals—a precious resource that could come in handy and provide income for settlers. While NASA may provide the needed boost to get a moon base going, it’s the promise of an off-world gold rush for these rare, potentially precious elements that could solidify and expand it. 

“My hope is that this is just the beginning of a commercial venture on the Moon,” Vande Hei says. He’s looking forward to seeing how businesses will find ways to be profitable by making use of resources on the moon. “At some point, we’ve got to be able to travel and not rely on the logistics chain starting from Earth,” Vande Hei adds, taking the long view. “We’ve got to be able to travel places and use the resources.”

[Related: Space tourism is on the rise. Can NASA keep up with it?]

And space is lucrative. In 2020, the global space industry generated roughly $370 billion in revenues, a figure based mostly on building rockets and satellites, along with the supporting hardware and software. Morgan Stanley, the US investment bank, estimates that the industry could generate $1 trillion in revenue in less than two decades, a growth rate predicted to be driven in no small part by the US military’s new Space Command branch. But those rising numbers mostly reflect economic activity in Earth’s orbit and what it might take to get set up on the moon—but they do not reflect the potential to begin converting the moon into an economic powerhouse. What happens next is anyone’s guess. The big dollar signs are one reason, no doubt, that the tech moguls behind private ventures like SpaceX and Blue Origin are investing heavily in space now.

The progress towards deeper space travel—and potential long-term human colonization on the moon or beyond—begs for larger ethical and moral conversations. “It’s a little bit Wild West-y,” says Dove. Although the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and the more recent Artemis Accords strive “to create a safe and transparent environment which facilitates exploration, science, and commercial activities for all of humanity to enjoy,” according to NASA’s website, there are no rules or regulations, for instance, to govern activities like mining or extracting from the moon valuable rare earth elements for private profit. “There’s a number of people looking at the policy implications and figuring out how we start putting in place policies and ethics rules before all of this happens,” Dove adds. But, if the moon does not cough up its own version of unobtanium—the priceless element mined in the film Avatar—or if regulations are too draconian, it will be difficult for a nascent moon-economy to sustain itself before larger and more promising planetary outposts, like Mars, come to fruition and utilize its resources. After all, the building and sustainability costs and effort have been leading obstacles of establishing a moon base ever since the Apollo program spurred interest in more concrete plans.

Dove’s not really worried that private companies will pull out of the space sector—there’s little doubt they will find a way to profit. Rather, she views politics as the moon base program’s chief vulnerability. “Politics always concerns me with any of these big endeavors,” she adds. Not only domestic politics but international politics will be at play. “We see that with the ISS.”

As a retired military officer who was living on the ISS with Russian cosmonauts when Russia invaded Ukraine, Vande Hei also worries about international conflicts derailing space programs. “If we have a world war in Europe, if we’re just struggling to exist [on Earth], exploring space is not going to be at the top of the priority list.” But he also sees a bright side. He views international competition—or a moon base race—as a healthy way to create a sense of urgency. Vande Hei estimates that “a moon base is something we could do within [this] generation.”

Dove also sees the opportunities that laboratory facilities on the moon could open up for future space research—including her own. “The moon is very interesting in terms of understanding the history of Earth,” she says. “I would love to go do science on the moon.”

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Decades after Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, went their separate ways to explore the universe, the probe has lasted far longer than NASA ever expected—both have sent back discoveries of active volcanoes and new moons among the Jovian and Saturnian systems. Yet even for a spacecraft, getting older comes with its own set of problems. 

This year, without any known interference in its previously spotless record, the probe experienced a glitch in its attitude articulation and control system (AACS), the system which keeps its antennae pointed towards Earth. Confused about its position in space, the muddled probe began sending back inaccurate telemetry data through an onboard computer that had ceased functioning years earlier, corrupting the correct data. 

Although NASA engineers were recently able to fix the issue by commanding the system to revert back to its previous computer, Voyager’s slip begs the question: Is it time to retire one of the agency’s oldest, farthest-traveling space probes? Although the agency notes that the error isn’t a threat to the long-term health of the mission, some scientists have already been looking into creating Voyager’s heir-apparent. 

“We’ve gotten incredibly lucky with the Voyagers and so the fact that the things are still working as well as they are, is really a combination of technological miracle and some luck,“ says Ralph McNutt, the chief scientist for space science at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. “So if things go wrong, it’s not surprising.”

McNutt, who was lucky enough to be present at Cape Canaveral, Florida during Voyager 1’s launch in 1977, is the principal investigator of a team at the Applied Physics Laboratory that has recently submitted a detailed proposal to NASA for a mission concept that could far exceed Voyager’s limits. Dubbed the “Interstellar Probe,’‘ their craft would be able to travel even farther than the Voyager missions, while still seeking answers about the heliosphere, or the bubble-like region of space that shields our solar system from galactic radiation. 

[Related: How the most distant object ever made by humans is spending its dying days]

With the right technology, McNutt’s probe concept could be ready to launch between 2036 to 2042, depending on when it’s able to get a gravity assist from Jupiter, where the craft’s orbit would use the planet’s gravitational pull to slingshot itself into space’s outer reaches. If Interstellar Probe does come to fruition, the mission could end up breaking its predecessor’s record as the most distant human-made object in the universe. And unlike the 45-year-old Voyager, which has succeeded its original mission lifetime by a factor of 10, says McNutt, Interstellar Probe would be reliable enough to last for at least 50 years. 

But a potential launch would still be some years away. Although NASA did fund the initial study, the concept is still in its early stages, and won’t be turned into an official mission until it’s been reviewed and chosen by a decadal survey committee, whose decisions could take another two years to be finalized. 

But why exactly do we need probes when astronomers now have access to powerful telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope and the long-awaited dark matter hunter, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope? The simple answer is that the missions often have different priorities and contrasting capabilities. Probes like Voyager and the Parker Solar Probe, are heliophysics missions that study the sun’s influence in space, whereas JWST and Roman are astrophysics missions that study objects like exoplanets and faraway galaxies. Despite their differences, probes and bigger survey telescopes like JWST are also two sides of the same coin. Their discoveries are both needed to create an accurate, more comprehensive picture of our cosmic surroundings. 

[Related: What we learn from noisy signals from deep space]

While Voyager isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, some experts are appreciative of the fact that many in the scientific community are planning for the day Voyager might go dark. 

“Around 2030 is probably the last time that any of the instruments on Voyager will work,“ says Merav Opher, a professor of astronomy at Boston University, who has long been involved with the Voyager team. She says it’s encouraging that so many of her colleagues are working on next-generation projects that could eventually utilize Voyager’s knowledge to the fullest. 

“This long-term mission needs diversity,” she says. “Attention to diversity in teams is not just good diversity, but it’s good to make discoveries.” 

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The word astrobiology might conjure up images of aliens like the squeaky, claw-fearing aliens from the Toy Story franchise, Star Trek’s logical Vulcan Spock, or the hungry Grogu from The Mandalorian. But the first real signs of life and evolution in the universe will most likely come from microbes and rocks.

Astrobiology is also a key objective for NASA’s Perseverance rover’s current mission. One of the key initiatives of the mission that began when the rover was launched in 2020 is capturing samples that may contain signs of ancient microbial life. The space car is into its second science campaign, collecting rock-core samples in Mars’ Jezero Crater. Scientists have long believed that this 28 mile-wide crater could be a top prospect for finding signs of ancient microbial life on the Red Planet. The rover has collected four samples from an ancient river delta within the crater since July 7, bringing the total number of “scientifically compelling” rock samples from the mission to 12.

“We picked the Jezero Crater for Perseverance to explore because we thought it had the best chance of providing scientifically excellent samples – and now we know we sent the rover to the right location,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for science in Washington, in a press release. “These first two science campaigns have yielded an amazing diversity of samples to bring back to Earth by the Mars Sample Return campaign.”

[Related: Happy Mars-iversary, Perseverance.]

3.5 billion years ago, the Jezero Crater was home to an ancient delta, or a fan-shaped area once at the convergence of a Martian river and a lake. Perseverance is looking at the delta’s sedimentary rocks, which formed when particles of various sizes settled in the once-watery river. The rover explored the floor of the crater during its first science campaign, in 2021, and found igneous rock which form deep underground from magma or during volcanic activity at the planet’s surface.

“The delta, with its diverse sedimentary rocks, contrasts beautifully with the igneous rocks—formed from crystallization of magma—discovered on the crater floor,” Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley of Caltech in Pasadena, California said in a press release. “This juxtaposition provides us with a rich understanding of the geologic history after the crater formed and a diverse sample suite. For example, we found a sandstone that carries grains and rock fragments created far from Jezero Crater—and a mudstone that includes intriguing organic compounds.”

Within the crater, Wildcat Ridge is a rock about 3 feet wide that likely formed billions of years ago as mud and fine sand settled in an evaporating saltwater lake. The rover scraped some of the surface of Wildcat Ridge on July 20 to analyze the area with the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals (SHERLOC).

SHERLOC’s analysis show that the Martian rock samples feature a “class of organic molecules that are spatially correlated with those of sulfate minerals.” These sulfate minerals found in layers of sedimentary rock can provide inside into the watery worlds in which they formed.

Organic molecules are made up of a wide variety of compounds, but they are primarily made of carbon and usually include hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Some organic compounds are the actual chemical building blocks of life, and the presence of these specific molecules is considered to be a potential biosignature. These biosignatures are a substance or structure that is possible evidence of past life, but may also have been produced without the presence of life.

[Related: Is there life on Mars? TBD. But scientists found ancient organic matter in the Red Planet’s rocks.]

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover found evidence of organic matter in rock-powder samples in 2013 and Perseverance detected organics in Jezero Crater in 2021.

“In the distant past, the sand, mud, and salts that now make up the Wildcat Ridge sample were deposited under conditions where life could potentially have thrived,” said Farley. “The fact the organic matter was found in such a sedimentary rock—known for preserving fossils of ancient life here on Earth—is important. However, as capable as our instruments aboard Perseverance are, further conclusions regarding what is contained in the Wildcat Ridge sample will have to wait until it’s returned to Earth for in-depth study as part of the agency’s Mars Sample Return campaign.”

In September 2021, the NASA-ESA (European Space Agency) Mars Sample Return campaign began when Perseverance cored its first rock sample. The rover has since collected one atmospheric sample and two witness tubes, all of which are stored in the rover’s belly.

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What could be better than one gleaming, spiral galaxy? Two. A new image of a “galactic overlap” from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the Galaxy Zoo citizen science project appears to show two dueling galaxies more than one billion light years away from Earth. For a closer look, there is a zoomable version of the image.

While it looks like the galaxies SDSS J115331 and LEDA 2073461 might collide with one another, they are just aligned by chance and ESA likened them to two ships passing in the night. Hubble has captured similar galaxies that appear to be hanging out together in the past, such as NGC 1512 and NGC 1510 in 2017 and NGC 6285 and NGC 6286 in 2019.

[Related: Hubble image captures stars forming in a far-off phantom galaxy.]

This is one of many Hubble galaxy observations where the Galaxy Zoo project has played a big role. Since 2007, the citizen science project and its successors, including Galaxy Zoo 2 and Galaxy Zoo: CANDELS, have crowdsourced galaxy classifications from almost 90,000 volunteer astronomers. The citizen scientists classify galaxies imaged by robotic telescopes and are often the first to ever set eyes on an astronomical object, according to the European Space Agency (ESA). To date, Galaxy Zoo has classified 5,134,932 galaxies. Galaxy Zoo volunteers have also discovered a “menagerie of weird and wonderful galaxies,” such as unusual 3-armed spiral galaxies and colliding ring galaxies.

From our perspective on Earth, it’s not uncommon for galaxies to overlap like this. The new NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) captured a 150-million-pixel shot a group of five galaxies that appear to swirl together called Stephan’s Quintet in July. In this group of five, only a few of galaxies in the group are interacting. According to NASA, images like this, “provide new insights into how galactic interactions may have driven galaxy evolution in the early universe.”

[Related: Behold six galactic collisions, masterfully captured by Hubble.]

Galaxies are classified into three major categories: elliptical, spiral and irregular. Ellipticals make up about one-third of all galaxies and can vary from nearly circular to more elongated. The largest and rarest are called giant ellipticals, and are about 300,000 light-years across.

Spiral galaxies are very colorful. They typically appear as flat, blue-white disks of stars, gas and dust with yellow looking bulges in the middle. There are two types of spiral galaxies, normal and barred. Barred spirals have a bar of stars running through the central bulge and the arms usually start at the end of the bar instead off from a bulge. Normal spirals have arms that extend from a center, that look like a hurricane’s eye.

Irregular galaxies are (as the name suggests) the most unusual galaxy. They’re neither disk-like nor elliptical and contain very little dust. These are often seen by astronomers as they gaze deeper into the universe. Looking that deep is like looking back in time, and irregular galaxies are abundant in the early universe, before spirals and ellipticals even developed.

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After years of mounting anticipation, NASA’s first full-scale moonshot since 1972 finally towered over its Florida launchpad in late August—only to go nowhere due to a persnickety fuel leak.

It’s just the latest delay for Artemis 1—an uncrewed flight slated to launch from Earth, shoot itself around the moon, and return. The recent setbacks mark a renewed bout of uncertainty over when, exactly, the mission will actually launch.

So what’s causing these hold-ups, what are NASA engineers doing to fix it, and will it affect NASA’s long-term lunar dreams? (Spoiler: the answer to that last question is probably no.)

What caused the delay?

More than just a lunar launch, Artemis 1 was set to be the first test of the 21st century’s Saturn V: the Space Launch System (SLS), the behemoth rocket designed to be the backbone of the Artemis program. While flying around the moon and back is certainly very cool, testing the rocket that will power future launches is perhaps even more important.

SLS uses hydrogen as a propellant, storing it in a super-chilled liquid form, below minus 423°F. While engineers were cooling the fuel lines down to that temperature, they accidentally raised the pressure. Later, as engineers began filling up the rocket’s fuel tanks in preparation for the launch, they noticed a leak in one fuel line where it met the rocket. Whether the two issues are related isn’t yet known.

Even a simple leak could be a disaster in waiting, because it could spew out hydrogen gas: a highly flammable substance, as the Hindenburg fire demonstrated. 

(SLS is no stranger to such fueling problems. Back in April, when NASA engineers were conducting dress rehearsals of the rocket on the pad, engineers ran into recurring issues with leaking propellant while they tried to fill up the rocket’s tanks.)

[Related: With Artemis, NASA is aiming for the moon once more. But where will it land?]

NASA engineers are now trying to fix the leak, replacing seals along the fuel line. Over the next several weeks, they’ll retest on the pad.

Importantly, a scrubbed launch isn’t a failed launch. Instead, it’s a decision to abort and try again later, once engineers have sorted out the problems at hand. “They’re much more keen to scrub or delay a launch than to have something catastrophic that would really harm the mission,” says Makena Young, an aerospace analyst at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.

What happens next?

Once the engineers finish their retests, NASA can’t instantly try to launch again. To complete its mission, Artemis 1 needs the moon to be in a proper place in its orbit around Earth. That opportunity has passed by, and the next launch window doesn’t begin until late September: either the 23rd or the 27th.

Those dates are not arbitrary. Even though Artemis 1 is high-profile, it has to share support systems with other missions. In this case, it would share a deep-space tracking network with DART, an uncrewed probe that aims to change an asteroid’s course by crashing into it like, well, a dart. DART’s big day is on September 26, give or take a day. It isn’t becoming for Artemis 1 to step on DART’s toes.

A September launch isn’t certain. Another unanswered question is whether engineers will need to roll Artemis 1 back into the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), the enormous skyscraper-sized hangar where NASA assembles its rockets. The question stems from something called the Flight Termination System, a battery-powered system that causes the rocket to self-destruct if it veers off-course, avoiding collisions. 

The US Space Force—who actually has authority over NASA’s rocket launches—certified the batteries for a 25-day-long period that ends before that late September window begins. Normally, NASA would need to roll the rocket back into the VAB and replace the batteries. NASA is seeking special permission from the Space Force to swap out the batteries on the pad instead.

If NASA does need to return to the VAB, the September window might become trickier to hit. The next window won’t start until later in October. In that case, NASA would need to work around a solar eclipse on October 25 that could throw a wrench into the communication systems NASA relies upon.

What does the future hold?

By all indication, it’s not a matter of whether Artemis 1 will launch, but rather a matter of when. Still, for viewers on the ground, some of whom have been waiting decades to see Artemis materialize, the delays might feel like assembling a piece of furniture only to find that the final parts are missing.

But such is the nature of any complex aerospace project. “It’s never assumed that those things are going to go perfectly,” says Young. “So, sometimes, these delays are just the cost of doing business.”

[Related: ‘Phantom’ mannequins will help us understand how cosmic radiation affects female bodies in space]

It does help, in this case, that the other Artemis missions are well into the future. Artemis 2, which plans to take three Americans and one Canadian around the moon’s orbit and back, a la Apollo 8, is currently slated for 2024. Artemis 3—the long-awaited first boots on the Moon in over half a century—won’t launch until 2025 at least. 

The long downtime between missions, irritating as it might be for impatient Earthlings, do give NASA some slack. It means that future missions won’t pay the price of these delays.

“[Artemis 1] would have to slip much further into the winter, or even next year, to start having impacts on the rest of the program,” says Young.

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At the height of the Cold War, large-scale investigations beyond our planet served as the dramatic stage for the post-nuclear era power struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union. This anxious tension fueled the early days of the space race—catapulting new technologies, forming space agencies, and laying the foundation for future advancements in nearly every mechanical aspect of our society. 

Between the US and what is now Russia, the two nations have long been titans in the space industry, but today’s space race has a new challenger. Later this year, China will put the finishing touches on the Tiangong space station, (which translates to Heavenly Palace) the country’s first space outpost. The Chinese National Space Administration launched the first phase of the multi-module station more than a decade ago, and now the station’s construction will end with the addition of the laboratory cabin Mengtian, the third and final module needed to complete the compact T-shaped structure. Tiangong station will be China’s “most adventurous space endeavor,” the agency states.

Unlike the International Space Station (ISS) which exists thanks to a conglomerate of many other countries and their space agencies, Tiangong will be the only independent space station once in operation, a feat that in all likelihood will heighten geopolitical tensions. The ability to create and support such a fixture in orbit is often a reflection of a nation’s total global power and influence. Yet, China’s résumé of successful space enterprises, while certainly not robust, has been surprisingly packed in the decades leading up to Tiangong—at the near-end of the 20th century, it had been the fifth country in the world to successfully launch a satellite in space. The newest fire fueling their fierce determination lies in how space science has become intertwined with development, including China’s national security, economic progress, and their public science and education initiatives. 

“It hasn’t always been unquestioned. It hasn’t always been perfectly consistent,” says Alanna Krolikowski, a political scientist at the Missouri University of Science and Technology who specializes in science and technology policy. “But China’s leaders have been eyeing space activities for a very long time.”

Much of the nation’s initial push to invest time and resources into the space scene in part stemmed from both international foresight and isolation from many early cooperative space programs. Particularly, in the 80s and 90s, the country faced many domestic and economic challenges (such as the overturning of fiscal and cultural policies that had choked off growth and global commerce), but China quickly realized the space sector would become a very important domain in the years to come, says Krolikowski. Such avid commitment and self-sufficiency towards more advanced space exploration is one of the reasons why China’s achievements (and at times, their failures) have so often been in the limelight.

In recent years, China’s frenzied push to increase the scope of their space activities has resulted in a satellite navigation network (strong enough to rival the US-supported GPS system), an unmanned probe to Mars, and the first craft to explore the far side of the moon, Chang-e 4. The discoveries the robotic probe’s companion, the semi-autonomous Yutu-2 rover, made also could help pave the way for future robotic treks of the southern pole of Earth’s satellite. 

[Related: Take a closer look at Tiangong 3]

Simultaneously, the nation’s commercial space industry is beginning to bloom, as many private ventures are beginning to launch new vehicles like cargo-carrying spacecraft and other satellites. A fully independent space station could act as a launchpad for future endeavors, catapulting scientific inquiry to new heights, including progressing China’s long-held objective of getting taikonauts (the Chinese counterpart to NASA astronauts) to someday land on the moon. While the station will be a gateway for many planned ventures, Tiangong will be notably much smaller and have less crew capacity than the International Space Station. Despite these constraints, the vessel will still have more than enough room to conduct vitally important scientific experiments.

Along with the second module, Wentian, the newly-added Mengtian module is a nearly 60-foot-long pressurized laboratory where researchers will be able to conduct microgravity experiments as well as other physics and aerospace technology research for human exploration. Tiangong will also allow China to explore mutually beneficial partnerships with other countries. Once in action, the station will support over 1,000 experiments during its lifetime, many of which were submitted from researchers all over the world. 

Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard and Smithsonian in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and an astronautics historian, is especially interested to see how well the station will support Xuntian, the Chinese Space Station Telescope (CSST). While Xuntian is reputedly said to be a counterpart to the Hubble Space Telescope, because its field of view will be 300 times greater than the 32-year-old observatory, McDowell says it’s actually more similar to NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.  

“This new generation of telescopes looks at a much larger area of sky at once, perhaps in somewhat less detail [than Hubble or the James Webb Telescope],” McDowell says. “It’s mapping out large areas of the sky, rather than looking at things you already know are there and sort of probing with precision.”

[Related: With a new set of cracks, the ISS is really showing its age]

It’ll be a while before either telescope is ready to gaze into the abyss, but what is obvious is that many of China’s projects follow a deliberate pattern of replicating what’s already been achieved, applying the lessons learned by their competitors to advance and improve their own designs. For example, from the outside, Tiangong station is a near identical copy of Russia’s Mir space station, which survived nearly 15 years in orbit before breaking up over the southern Pacific Ocean in 2001. One glaring difference in China’s design is the addition of a nearly 20 foot-tall robotic arm that will be able to move different modules around as well as provide support for other spaceflight activities. As Earth’s atmosphere begins to get more crowded with human-made refuse, China’s past issues with uncontrolled rocket debris will also have to be better addressed if the agency wants to support sustainable space exploration. While there are no public plans on how the country will handle these concerns going forward, the nation is still the first and only to test experimental space debris mitigation technologies.

At present, NASA is banned from collaborating with China or Chinese-owned ventures, including providing funding and any other operational partnerships. Future collaboration between Tiangong and the ISS is also highly unlikely, given that any international scientific effort would at least in part be headed by the US. Given the United States’ tendency to take charge in its international operations, China may be wary of joining a partnership that the US has so much pull over, says McDowell.

However, the station is “very attractive to a lot of international partners that don’t have such comprehensive space programs,” says Krolikowski. “Not just developing countries that want to participate in a smaller way or in a supporting role, but even major European countries, can find attractive areas of cooperation with China.”

Still, while the nation may be behind in adopting the do’s and don’ts of responsible space practices, many in the political and scientific community are optimistic that as China’s presence in the cosmos grows, they’ll begin to catch on. 

“As time goes on and as they mature as a space power,” says McDowell, “they’ll also mature in the sense of being good space citizens.”

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As the leaves in the Northern Hemisphere begin to change colors and Halloween decorations begin to emerge from dusty attics, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) appears to be embracing “spooky season.” The powerful NASA/ESA/CSA space telescope released chilling new images of 30 Doradus aka the Tarantula Nebula yesterday. The nebula’s arachnid inspired nickname comes from its similar appearance to a burrowing tarantula’s silk-lined home, according to NASA.

The Tarantula Nebula is about 161,000 light-years away from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy and is home to some of the hottest and and biggest stars known to astronomers. It is also the biggest and brightest star-forming region in the Local Group, or the galaxies located closest to our own Milky Way. In addition to the baby stars, the images captured by JWST’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) reveal distant background galaxies and a closer look at the detailed structure and composition of the nebula’s gas and dust.

[Related: The James Webb Space Telescope’s first glimpses into deep space reveal 4 mind-blowing finds.]

The nebula’s cavity was hollowed out like a jack-o-lantern by blistering radiation from a cluster of young stars that sparkle pale blue in the new image. Only the densest surrounding areas of the nebula can resist erosion by the powerful stellar winds blown by young stars, forming the pillars that appear to point back toward the cluster. The pillars contain forming protostars, very young stars that are still gathering mass from a molecular cloud. The protostars will eventually emerge like a caterpillar from a cocoon and further shaping the nebula. JWST’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) caught a very young star doing just that, adding new knowledge to this stellar process.

“Astronomers previously thought this star might be a bit older and already in the process of clearing out a bubble around itself,” wrote NASA. “However, NIRSpec showed that the star was only just beginning to emerge from its pillar and still maintained an insulating cloud of dust around itself. Without Webb’s high-resolution spectra at infrared wavelengths, this episode of star formation in action could not have been revealed.”

[Related: NASA releases Hubble images of cotton candy-colored clouds in Orion Nebula.]

Astronomers are also reaping the benefits of JWST’s Mid-infrared Instrument (MIRI), which can detect longer infrared wavelengths and see through the stellar dust in a nebula. MIRI peered into a previously unseen cosmic environment, where that the hotter stars fade, the cooler gases and dust glow, and the points of light within the nebula’s clouds indicate embedded protostars that are still gaining mass.

The Tarantula Nebula has been a favorite of astronomers studying star formation since it has has a similar chemical makeup to that of the gigantic star-forming regions at the universe’s cosmic noon. This is when the cosmos were roughly two to three billion years old and star formation was at its peak. The Tarantula Nebula is the closest (easiest to see in detail) example of what was happening in the universe as it reached that brilliant high noon of furious star birth.

According to NASA, JWST will help give astronomers opportunity to compare and contrast observations of star formation in the Tarantula Nebula with the telescope’s deep observations of distant galaxies from the actual era of cosmic noon.

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Cyberthreat experts at the security analytics and operations management platform, Securonix, have uncovered a new computer security threat that utilizes the James Webb Space Telescope‘s first public image, SMACS 0723, as a component in its impressively complex malware campaign.

Dubbed “GO#WEBBFUSCATOR,” the multistep attack first originates as a typical phishing email (Securonix’s sample pushed false satellite phone service plans) containing a file made to look like Microsoft Office document attachment. When downloaded, the program will subsequently run if a user has certain Word macros enabled, at which point it downloads an additional file—in this case, the Webb Telescope’s SMACS 0723 photo fronting a Base64 code. Once executed, the malware runs various tests to determine a computer’s weaknesses for the hackers to then further exploit.

[Related: James Webb Space Telescope first images are here.]

Interestingly, the Webb Telescope image isn’t employed as intriguing bait for unsuspecting victims; in fact, they aren’t even supposed to ever see it. As Augusto Barros, Vice President and self-described “Cybersecurity Evangelist” at Securonix, explains, there are still very good reasons for the choice of image. “If it is flagged for review by an anti-malware solution, the reviewer may overlook it as it’s been an image shared through multiple channels lately,” he says, adding that “As the high-resolution images from James Webb Space Telescope are also massive, it also helps reduce any suspicious related to the size of the file.”

Despite the malware’s name, Barros argues that utilizing an image from the Webb Telescope isn’t even the most fascinating aspect of GO#WEBBFUSCATOR, but rather the coding language used to construct it: Go, also known as Golang. First unveiled in 2009, Go is a relatively new programming language that has quickly gained popularity its cross functionality across operating systems, and only just had its stable release on August 2.

“We are seeing evidence that this language is being adopted by malware developers. It makes it easier to develop cross-platform, network friendly software, which is what malware authors are developing,” says Barros. “It is interesting because it shows that malware developers follow the same pattern of adopting development tools according to their ‘requirements’ as any other developer.”

[Related: How to remove malware from your suffering computer.]

Although GO#WEBBFUSCATOR’s end-goal remains unclear, it’s still a particularly nasty and ingenious way to infect countless victims’ devices, both in its coding language and Trojan horse tactics. Regardless, it’s probably best to continue getting all the newest, beautiful Webb Space Telescope images directly from the source. Or, you know, from your friendly fellow admirers here at PopSci.

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For the first time ever, astronomers at NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and Canadian Space Agency (CSA) captured a direct image of an exoplanet using the James Webb Space Telescope. Extra solar planets, or exoplanets, are planets that exist outside of our solar system.

Researchers are currently analyzing the new data from these observations and are working on a paper for peer review. The findings are currently published in a preprint. But Webb’s first capture of an exoplanet already hints at future possibilities for studying distant worlds.

JWST captured the image of the inhabitable gas giant called HIP 65426 b located about 385 light-years away from Earth. It is roughly six to 12 times the mass of Jupiter (our solar system’s biggest planet) and astronomers believe that their observations could help narrow down that estimate. Compared to 4.5 billion-year-old Planet Earth, HIP 65426 b is only 15 to 20 million years-old, so still a young one as far as planets go.

[Related: In a first, James Webb Space Telescope reveals distant gassy atmosphere is filled with carbon dioxide.]

“This is a transformative moment, not only for Webb but also for astronomy generally,” said Sasha Hinkley, associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, who led these observations with a large international collaboration, in a NASA blog.

The image released by NASA/ESA/CSA shows the exoplanet through four different light filters. Unlike the human eye, JWST can see the universe in infrared light, which gives astronomers more precise measurements of an exoplanet’s mass and temperature and can even detect clouds moving in a distant planet’s sky. The infrared light pointing the way to future observations that will reveal more information than ever before about exoplanets.

JWST’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) have coronagraphs. These are sets of tiny masks that can block out starlight and enable the telescope to take direct images of certain exoplanets like HIP 65426 b. NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch this decade, will demonstrate an even more advanced coronagraph.

“It was really impressive how well the Webb coronagraphs worked to suppress the light of the host star,” said Hinkley.

While this specific image is new to astronomers, HIP 65426 b is not. The exoplanet was first detected in 2017 using the SPHERE instrument located at the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope in northern Chile. The ground-based telescope took images of the exoplanet using short infrared wavelengths of light. JWST is able to capture longer infrared wavelengths, revealing some new details that ground-based telescopes can’t necessarily see due to the intrinsic infrared glow of Earth’s atmosphere.

While more than 5,000 exoplanets have been discovered, taking direct images of them is incredibly challenging. Exoplanets revolve around a star just like Earth revolves around the sun, and those stars are typically much brighter than planets. According to NASA, HIP 65426 b is more than 10,000 times fainter than its host star in the near-infrared and a few thousand times fainter in the mid-infrared.

[Related: Newly discovered exoplanet may be a ‘Super Earth’ covered in water.]

In each filter image, HIP 65426 b appears as a slightly differently shaped blob of light due to how JWST’s optical system translates light through the different optics.

“Obtaining this image felt like digging for space treasure,” Aarynn Carter, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who led the analysis of the images said in the NASA release. “At first all I could see was light from the star, but with careful image processing I was able to remove that light and uncover the planet.”

While this is not the first direct image of an exoplanet taken from space, these images of HIP 65426 b points the way forward for JWST’s exciting exoplanet exploration.

“I think what’s most exciting is that we’ve only just begun,” said Carter. “There are many more images of exoplanets to come that will shape our overall understanding of their physics, chemistry, and formation. We may even discover previously unknown planets, too.”

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A trip to Mars will be difficult, to say the least. Although human spaceflight has become a regular occurrence in near-Earth space in recent decades, leaving our gravitational pull takes a lot of rocket power. And then leaving a planet like Mars to return to Earth will also take a lot of oomph. 

But NASA, other spaceflight agencies, and private companies have set their sights on putting humans on Mars—and returning them to Earth safely. So engineers and scientists are working to figure out how to make enough propellant to make such a trip possible. 

Oxygen, an essential component of rocket propulsion, is hard to come by on the Red Planet. But results from a prototype machine on Mars suggest the element can be yanked out of the air—hinting at future productions to power rocket launches, but not yet nearly enough for humans to breathe Martian air directly.

“It’s really difficult, if not impossible, to design a human Mars mission that doesn’t use in situ resources,” says Carol Stoker, a planetary scientist at NASA Ames Research Center who was not involved in the project, using the scientific term for “on site.”

Now, a lunch-box-sized device piggybacking on the Perseverance rover has opened the door to producing propellant from resources found on Mars. The Mars Oxygen In Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE), has successfully produced oxygen on the Red Planet.

From the time that Perseverance landed in February 2021 to the end of that year, MOXIE produced about 50 grams of oxygen over seven runs, according to a report published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. MOXIE has continued to run experiments under various conditions into 2022, says MOXIE deputy principal investigator Jeffrey Hoffman, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

The device can produce 6 to 10 grams per hour, depending on atmospheric conditions. It set that production maximum rate at the end of August, Hoffman says, when the Martian atmosphere was densest.

The purpose of MOXIE, Hoffman says, “is to verify that the process actually works on Mars. And that, I would say, we are well on the road to doing.”

[Related: 5 new insights about Mars from Perseverance’s rocky roving]

MOXIE uses the molecules that make up Mars’s atmosphere to create oxygen. But it’s not a simple extraction. The Martian atmosphere is 95 percent carbon dioxide (Earth’s atmosphere is mostly nitrogen with a large portion of oxygen as well). MOXIE has to split the CO2 molecules into carbon monoxide and oxygen. 

First, MOXIE draws in air through a HEPA filter, which keeps Martian dust out of the process. Then the Martian air goes through a compressor because, as Hoffman explains, it is not dense enough for the oxygen-producing process. The device compresses the Martian air, significantly increasing its density: from 100 times thinner than Earth’s atmosphere to about half as thin. 

Then, the carbon dioxide is heated up to about 1,500° F (800°C). Once heated, it’s time for the main event: A run through the electrolysis unit, which uses electricity to drive a chemical reaction. In there, the carbon dioxide encounters catalysts, like nickel, which cause the CO2 molecule to dissociate into carbon monoxide (CO) and an oxygen ion. Then electricity is used to pull oxygen ions through a filter into another chamber, where they combine into oxygen molecules. The result is pure oxygen that can be used for breathing or for rockets. 

“The nice thing about MOXIE is that, from the oxygen side of it, all you need is the atmosphere,” Hoffman says. “So it doesn’t matter where you are, you can go anywhere you want, and you’ve got atmosphere.”

[Related: This miniature rocket could be the first NASA craft launched from Mars]

MOXIE has produced oxygen throughout Mars’s nights, during the day, and in multiple seasons–even the winter. During the coldest months on Mars’s poles, the atmosphere’s density reduces because carbon dioxide deposits onto the polar surface as ice. That means there’s less CO2 available for MOXIE every six months, explains Margaret Landis, a research scientist in the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder. Still, it produced about 6 grams per hour during those times that the atmosphere thinned. 

“MOXIE can run any time on Mars,” Hoffman says. “If we get some more runs, we’re going to try running it at dawn and dusk when the conditions are changing rapidly, and we can show that MOXIE can adapt to those changing conditions.”

A rate of 6 to 10 grams an hour, however, will not produce nearly enough oxygen to be useful for a human mission to Mars. The average human breathes a little less than 1 kilogram of oxygen each day, Hoffman says, and rockets are even hungrier for O2. It will take tens or even hundreds of tons of oxygen to power a rocket that can launch people off the surface of Mars. But that oxygen can be accumulated over time. A full-scale version of a MOXIE-like system would need to produce something like 2 to 3 kilograms an hour of oxygen, Hoffman says, to have any chance of amassing enough liquid oxygen to use in the rocket launch system. 

Engineers already have a prototype of such a larger device, he says. Because MOXIE had to hitchhike on the Perseverance rover, it was kept small, but a future mission could send a larger MOXIE-like device to Mars on its own. Hoffman says that such a device might also have more features, like perhaps the ability to make the carbon monoxide product into something useful as well.

The ability to produce oxygen doesn’t mean that Mars-launching rockets are ready to go. Oxygen is only one part of the rocket-launch equation, says NASA’s Stoker. It provides half of a combustion reaction–the oxidizer–but a rocket still needs other ingredients for fuel. But, she adds, oxygen could supply more than three-quarters of the mass needed to propel a rocket, and that greatly reduces the amount of stuff that has to be carried to the Red Planet from Earth.

As a MOXIE-like technology is scaled up, Landis says, it’s worth considering the environmental impact that this process might have on Mars. “It’s something to think about because CO2 is a major component of Mars’s atmosphere, and plays a really major role in its seasonal cycle,” she says. “There’s still a lot to learn about the exact implications of what’s going to happen if you start changing this equilibrium between surface and atmospheric CO2” and the types of gases. 

“It sometimes does feel like you’re living in a science fiction future,” Landis says. “This is a testament to how much we’ve been able to do on Mars.”

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Artemis 1, a massive research craft intended to test whether the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket is capable of sending astronauts to the moon, failed its first launch attempt early Monday morning. Despite the engine bleed that stopped the countdown, NASA continues to troubleshoot the mission and could try again Friday September 2 at the earliest. 

“This is an incredibly hard business,” said Mike Sarafin, the mission manager for Artemis, during a NASA conference about the scrubbed launch on Monday. “We’re trying to do something that hasn’t been done in over 50 years, and we’re doing it with new technology.”

The last time humans stepped on the moon was during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. If and when Artemis 1 is able to launch, the first flight will conclude a half a century hiatus and a new era of long-term human exploration on Earth’s satellite. Over the next decade the Artemis program will roll out missions to establish a permanent lunar outpost. And NASA already has their eye on an ideal spot: the moon’s untrodden south pole. 

Artemis 2, the second scheduled flight and the first crewed flight of the Artemis program, is currently slated for launch in May 2024. The first batch of lunar astronauts won’t be making landfall. Instead they’ll be embarking on an 8 to 10 day flyby of the satellite before making their way back to Earth. If all goes well, Artemis 3, the second crewed flight of the program, will launch in 2025 for NASA’s well-awaited return to the lunar surface. Once astronauts do reach their destination, the crew, which includes the first female and first astronaut of color on the moon, will set down for about a week at one of 13 potential landing sites.

[Related: The elements we might mine on the moon]

Even as humans set foot back on the moon, the Artemis crew will head to vistas beyond those initial strolls of the Apollo missions 50 years ago. All of the possible lunar locales lie near the moon’s south pole, an area of our satellite that until now, has been drenched in mystery. 

“Some of the oldest rocks that we know to exist on the moon could be found there,” says Noah Petro, chief of planetary geology at NASA and one of the scientists who helped identify these potential regions. The moon’s south pole is a very different environment than what Apollo astronauts explored; all their missions took place near the equator. Petro says that depending on where they go, Artemis astronauts could be trudging across moon rocks that are at least 4.3 billion years old. 

“Figuratively, they’ll be transported back in time, to an early era of our history,” Petro says. And it’s that exploration that could reveal not just the history of the moon, but the history of the solar system, as well as the universe, he says. 

[Related: We now have proof that plants can grow in moon dirt]

Because of the tilt of the moon’s axis, the south pole is rife with both light and shadowed regions, which means some areas could be harder to explore than others. But it is rich with resources, such as lunar ice water, which could be used for life support systems and fuel—supplies that would be extremely helpful to NASA’s long-held goal of creating a habitable moon base. Each region is also home to its own unique geologic features and will be able to provide near continuous sunlight throughout the duration of the Artemis 3 mission. Building a base in a sunny spot is particularly imperative as solar energy provides a power source, and would help astronauts weather the moon’s freezing temperatures.  

As each site is connected to a potential launch window, it’s hard to guess exactly which of the 13 areas will bear the next lunar flag, especially with NASA’s history with scrubbing launches in favor of astronaut’s safety. Still, past flights—launched or scrubbed—are lessons for current and future mission scientists. Petro even notes that while earlier generations learned much from Apollo, people have been asking new questions in the decades leading up to Artemis. 

By teaching ourselves how to conquer the moon once more, we’re in a position to do far greater things both on Earth, and in space. 

“It’s a very exciting moment in our history,” he says. “We did not answer everything when we first explored, but now we have that place to start.”

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While most of us were busy watching for the latest Artemis I news, NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has sent back stunning new images of spiral galaxy M74. The rosy pink arms of the image show areas of new star formation. Lying around 3.2 million light-years away from earth in the constellation Pisces, M74 is also known as the “Phantom Galaxy,” and is a familiar sight for the over three-decades old space telescope.

According to the European Space Agency (ESA), the reddish blooms that spread throughout M74 are large clouds of hydrogen gas. The ultraviolet radiation from hot, young stars embedded within the hydrogen clouds make them glow. Astronomers call these regions H II regions and they mark the spot of recent star formation. H II regions are an important target for space telescopes like Hubble and ground-based telescopes because they help astronomers determine a galaxy’s distance and chemical composition. The data in this image was by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys, which even has a filter specially tailored to pick out only this specific red wavelength of light.

The Hubble team created this image from data of observations exploring the evolution of local spiral galaxies such as M74. This will help astronomers gain insights into the history of star formation in these spirals. Astronomers also observed M74 to complement observations of the region from other telescopes. By combining observations of the same object from different telescopes across the electromagnetic spectrum gives, astronomers gain far more insight than they would from a single telescope.

[Related: NASA releases Hubble images of cotton candy-colored clouds in Orion Nebula.]

Additionally, Hubble’s observations also paved the way for future instruments and M74 was one of the first targets of the powerful, newly launched James Webb Space Telescope.

NASA/ESA uses four classes to define galaxies: spiral, barred spiral, elliptical, and irregular.

Spiral galaxies typically have a rotating disc with spiral ‘arms’ that curve out from a dense central region. They have a more complex structure and are surrounded by sparsely populated halos. These halos are roughly spherical regions above and below the plane of the discs. Our galaxy, The Milky Way, is an example of a spiral galaxy.

Barred spiral galaxies have arms that do not lead all the way into the center, but are connected to the two ends of a straight bar of stars which contains the nucleus at its centre. Roughly two-thirds of all spiral galaxies are thought to be barred spiral galaxies. In 2021, the Hubble produced beautiful images of NGC 613, a barred spiral galaxy about 67-million light years away from Earth.

[Related: Astronomers may have found a galaxy that formed without dark matter.]

Elliptical galaxies do not have as defined shape as spiral galaxies, have a more spherical appearance smooth, and are typically observed in galaxy clusters. Cygnus A is one of the most famous elliptical galaxies and was a central part of the plot of Carl Sagan’s 1985 sci-fi novel “Contact.”

Irregular galaxies have odd shapes and appear to be more grainy. Unlike spiral galaxies, they do not have a central nucleus, and they are generally blue with a few exceptions that are red. IC10 is a recent example of an irregular galaxy and is the closest-known “starburst galaxy” to Earth. Starbursts are regions undergoing huge amounts of star formation do to having a lot of cool hydrogen gas to fuel it.

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At around 8:35 a.m. EST today, NASA scrubbed the planned launch of Artemis 1. According to NASA officials, the team couldn’t get past an engine bleed in Engine 3 of the Space Launch System that wasn’t showing the right temperature. This fuel bleed is a separate issue from the fuel loading leaks that the team previously encountered during tests.

According to NASA, a liquid hydrogen line did not adequately chill one of the rocket’s four core-stage engines, which are part of the preparations needed before ignition.

The countdown was halted at T-40 minutes, as engineers continued to troubleshoot. Earlier in the morning, NASA stopped and restarted the fueling of the Space Launch System rocket with nearly 1 million gallons of super-cold hydrogen and oxygen because of a leak. Thunderstorms off of Florida’s Kennedy Space Center had already delayed the fueling by nearly an hour.

[Related: Get ready to watch NASA’s most powerful rocket head for the moon.]

Technical issues during a launch like this are not uncommon. In 1986, the space shuttle Columbia launch was postponed a staggering seven times.

The earliest availability to launch is Friday September 2, but no determination has been made as to what the plan is to go forward to remedy the engine bleed.

[Related:“Counting down to the Artemis 1 launch, NASA’s biggest moon mission in decades.”]

The launch will be the first flight of the Space Launch System, a 322-foot-tall rocket that will take astronauts to the moon for the first time in over 50 years. Artemis 1 will be an un-crewed flight test and will also pave the way for missions to land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon.

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NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) continues its sizzling summer of scientific discovery, finding the first clear evidence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of an exoplanet. The findings have been accepted for publication in the journal Nature. Extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, are any planet outside of our solar system. Most of them orbit other stars the way Earth orbits the sun, but some free-floating exoplanets (aka rogue planets) orbit a galactic center, untethered to any other stars.

This new finding means that the groundbreaking JWST may be able to detect and measure key molecules like carbon dioxide in the thinner atmospheres of smaller rocky planets in the future. This kind of data gives scientists insight into the formation, composition, and evolution of the galaxy’s planets.

Exoplanet WASP-39b was first discovered in 2011. Seven years later, NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes detected water vapor, sodium, and potassium in WASP-39b’s atmosphere, offering a glimpse at what’s going on around the planet. In 2022, it became the first exoplanet to be studied by JWST.

Spinning about 700 light-years away from Earth, WASP-39b is a hot gas giant with a mass about the same as Saturn, but a diameter about 1.3 larger than Jupiter (our solar system’s biggest planet). The planet’s puffiness is partially due to the fact that it’s about 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit (900 degrees Celsius), giving it the nickname “hot Saturn.” WASP-39b is in an endless summer because it orbits its home star very closely, unlike the cooler and more compact gas giants in our solar system. It’s so close that it completes a complete orbit of its star, or one “year,” in just over four Earth-days.

[Related: NASA’s official exoplanet tally has passed 5,000 worlds.]

WASP-39b was first reported using ground-based detections of periodic dimming of light from its host star. This is when the light from the planet’s host star dims as the the planet passes in front of it, like during an eclipse. Transiting, or this eclipse-like event, can provide researchers with ideal opportunities to probe planetary atmospheres.

Different gases absorb different combinations of colors, which means researchers “can analyze small differences in brightness of the transmitted light across a spectrum of wavelengths to determine exactly what an atmosphere is made of” according to NASA. WASP-39b’s combination of inflated atmosphere and frequent transits makes it a perfect target for a technique called transmission spectroscopy.

The team used JWST’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) for these observations. “As soon as the data appeared on my screen, the whopping carbon dioxide feature grabbed me,” Zafar Rustamkulov, a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University and member of the JWST Transiting Exoplanet Community Early Release Science team, which undertook this investigation, said in a statement. “It was a special moment, crossing an important threshold in exoplanet sciences.”

[Related: Newly discovered exoplanet may be a ‘Super Earth’ covered in water.]

Measuring such subtle difference in the brightness of so many single colors across the 3 to 5.5-micron range in an exoplanet transmission spectrum is a first for researchers, NASA reports. It’s critical to access this part of the spectrum when measuring how much gas, water, methane, and carbon dioxide in exoplanets.

“Detecting such a clear signal of carbon dioxide on WASP-39 b bodes well for the detection of atmospheres on smaller, terrestrial-sized planets,” team leader Natalie Batalha of the University of California at Santa Cruz said in the NASA statement.

For scientists, understanding what makes up a planet’s atmosphere is important because it offers a window into its origin and evolution. “Carbon dioxide molecules are sensitive tracers of the story of planet formation,” research team member Mike Line of Arizona State University said in the NASA statement. “By measuring this carbon dioxide feature, we can determine how much solid versus how much gaseous material was used to form this gas giant planet. In the coming decade, JWST will make this measurement for a variety of planets, providing insight into the details of how planets form and the uniqueness of our own solar system.”

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When NASA’s Saturn V rocket launched humans to the moon a half-century ago, each blast-off amazed onlookers with its power. Flames from the launch dazzled. Its explosive liftoff was thunderously loud. It captured the imaginations of many around the world, and still holds a place in spaceflight lore.

Some tales of Saturn V’s power dramatize the acoustic potency of that explosive moment. Allegedly, the sound of the launch melted concrete and set nearby grass on fire. 

Aeroacousticians have new calculations that confirm that any such effects were certainly not caused by the sound of the launch, described in a new paper published August 23 in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. But, they say, the roars of really big rockets like the Saturn V are increasingly important to understand. NASA’s latest rocket—its biggest ever, the Space Launch System (SLS)—will launch the Artemis I mission as early as Monday. Meanwhile, government and commercial spaceflight endeavors are rapidly expanding around the globe. 

“If you’ve been to a launch, the acoustics are enormous,” says Kent Gee, a professor of physics at Brigham Young University and lead author on the new paper. But understanding the intensity of the sound isn’t just about what you might hear nearby a rocket launch. “If you don’t understand the acoustics produced by the rocket, you can’t design payloads efficiently,” he says, because rocket launch acoustics can cause damage to everything onboard. And that could make spaceflight unnecessarily challenging as humanity pushes deeper into the cosmos.

[Related: What we learn from noisy signals from deep space]

Rocket launch noise comes from a complex combination of sources, says Caroline Lubert, a professor of mathematics and an aeroacoustician at James Madison University, who was not an author on this new paper but has collaborated previously with Gee to reassess the last half century of rocket noise, a body of work that underpinned the new Saturn V paper. Aeroacousticians are most concerned about the vibrations caused by rocket noise, which can damage the craft, its payloads, or even launchpad structures. Those structures can also magnify rocket acoustics by reflecting sounds. 

And with spaceports cropping up in new places across the globe, Lubert says, noise pollution from launches is a growing concern for surrounding communities and wildlife.

New calculations to predict how noisy a launch will be are in order. Many of the ideas about the acoustical power of rocket launches is based on noise research that was done leading up to NASA’s Apollo program in the 1960, Gee says. And some of that older information was based on observations rather than directly recorded data. Determining the actual impact of the Saturn V launch allows engineers to draw direct comparisons between that lunar launch and the upcoming ones. 

When Gee and colleagues were investigating the historical records of rocket launch acoustics, he found that the reports about Saturn V’s launch sound levels varied dramatically. Some reports suggested that the sound levels of a Saturn V launch were as low as 180 decibels, while others reported as high as 235 decibels. (For context, commercial jet engines range from about 120 to 160 decibels.) And, because that is a logarithmic measure, every 10 decibels is an order of magnitude increase.

“Putting that in the perspective of a lightbulb, that’s like saying that a 10-watt lightbulb and a mega-watt lightbulb are the same thing,” Gee says. “People really didn’t have a good understanding of what the levels were and what they were saying about those levels.”

Part of the challenge when evaluating sound, Gee explains, is that there are two different things measured in decibels: sound power and sound pressure. Sound power, he says, refers to the total amount of sound energy produced by the rocket. Sound pressure, on the other hand, is the amount of sound that reaches a given distance. The farther away from the source of a noise, the quieter it is and therefore the less sound pressure at that point. 

It’s likely that some of the reports of lower decibels emitted from a Saturn V launch come from measures of sound pressure rather than sound power, he says. 

[Related: NASA recorded a black hole’s song, and you can listen to it]

When Gee and his team made a computer model of the sound power of a Saturn V launch based on the rocket’s thrust and other characteristics, they found that it would have produced about 203 decibels of sound power. That’s really, really loud—but not loud enough to melt concrete or start a grass fire. “Mankind has not produced a sound source that would be capable of that, purely from the sound waves,” Gee says. For a comparison, he says, the acoustics of a Saturn V launch would be the same amount of sound as about 700 military aircraft flying simultaneously.

Gee and his team expect the SLS launch of Artemis I to produce a similar amount of sound power to the Saturn V, perhaps one decibel higher. “There’s a little bit more thrust and a little bit more power produced by the rocket as it launches, we would use that and the modeling that we’ve done previously,” he says, “we would take that same approach and that would suggest that the SLS will be a little bit louder than the Saturn V.”

But it’s also possible that SLS ends up being more muffled due to NASA’s modern noise-suppression system, Lubert says. “We’ve done other things to compensate [in the half a decade since the Saturn V launched],” she says. “There’s so much variability and a lot of uncertainty in predicting vibroacoustic load.”

On Monday, when the SLS is slated to launch Artemis I, Gee and his team will be nearby. They’ve set up sensors at strategic points selected based on their Saturn V research, ready to check whether NASA’s most powerful rocket yet will also be its noisiest.

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NASA’s Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars nearly two years ago, has released treasure troves of data, key observations, and much-anticipated geologic findings from its first few romps across the Martian surface. 

Four papers, published Thursday in the journal Science and Science Advances, report new details of the planet’s geologic history, gleaned from Mars’s Jezero Crater, the site of an ancient meteor impact where the rover touched down just north of the Martian equator. The planet was at one time home to an abundance of lava flows and rocks that, with the presence of water, could have sustained ancient life. 

Kathryn Stack Morgan, the deputy project scientist for the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission, says that while one Martian area doesn’t necessarily reflect the entire planet’s astrobiology, Perseverance’s discoveries provide evidence to connect what scientists have learned there to other regions. The new finds also challenge what humans know about habitable environments, because it’s possible any life that sprung from Mars’s primordial soup would look completely different from anything we’re familiar with. 

Here are five rock-solid takeaways from Perseverance’s escapades exploring what used to be an ancient Martian lake, as detailed in these papers. 

Mars’s surface is sprinkled with diverse rocks.

Rocks are some of the best recordkeepers of climate and habitability, but scientists weren’t sure that Mars had the range of rocks that exist on Earth. “Prior to landing, there was a lot of speculation about whether the rocks of the crater floor would be sedimentary,” says Stack Morgan, who was a co-author on the paper. “As much as we liked sedimentary rocks for their astrobiology potential, we were really hoping to find diversity.”

And they found it sooner rather than later: One of Perseverance’s most exciting discoveries revealed that the floor of the Jezero crater is home to a substantial amount of igneous rocks, stones that can only be formed by the cooling and solidification of molten liquid magma. In essence, volcanic activity may have been a more important process in that part of Mars than scientists previously thought. 

Was Mars a slow cooler? 

One study revealed that the igneous rocks Perseverance found are made up of coarse-grained olivine, a common rock-forming mineral that is also abundant on Earth. Olivine is one of the first minerals to crystallize out of magma, but on our planet, these grains are smaller and more glassy than the coarse Martian stuff. Researchers posit that this discovery could have meant that Mars cooled rather slowly, deep underground.

As the rover also found evidence of large amounts of olivine on the surface, its presence could signal that the mineral is just as widespread in other regions beyond Jezero crater. In such a case, researchers note that this olivine-enriched ground could be explained by lava flows on Mars being thicker than on Earth. 

Martian rocks have the right stuff for life.

Although NASA has yet to uncover living things on the Red Planet, researchers found evidence that the planet may have been more habitable during the late Noachian period, from about 4.1 billion to 3.5 billion years ago. Two of the four studies describe how magma-made rocks on Mars have been altered by water. But why is water running through rocks a big deal?

On Earth, when water and certain igneous rocks interact with each other, the reaction can yield an array of nutrients, including H2 or CH4, potential energy sources for life. This creates a diverse biome, a utopia ripe for microbial life. Because of Perseverance’s expedition, scientists found that rocks on the crater floor appear to contain salt minerals like sulfate, perchlorate, and carbonate, signs that liquid water flowed through these rocks. These rocks also contain simple organic molecules, which could have helped to sustain habitable environments.

[Related: Happy Mars-iversary, Perseverance]

Although the igneous rocks they found were discovered in a volcanically active area–not an environment humans would consider conducive to existence–the study notes that there is evidence the rocks experienced water at multiple points in its history, and might once have had all the ingredients to support ancient life. “It really opens the possibilities there in terms of the kinds of habitable environments that once existed on Mars,” says Stack Morgan.

Welcome to the underground layers.

While some researchers focused on the topmost crust of the crater, one team decided to examine the ground under the rover, using an instrument called the Radar Imager for Mars Subsurface Experiment (RIMFAX). Their paper chronicles the first eight months of the mission, during which RIMFAX took a continuous radar image of the Martian subsurface. The radar revealed new properties of the bedrock about 50 feet under Jezero’s surface: The internal morphology of the crater could be categorized as either magmatic layering, formed by igneous rocks undergoing bulk chemical changes, or sedimentary layering, dirt commonly formed in aqueous environments on Earth. 

According to one of the studies, the presence of these buried structures is “compatible with a history of long-lived igneous activity and a history of multiple aqueous episodes,” effectively supporting the theory that water once flowed freely on Mars. 

Mars samples will arrive as soon as the early 2030s.

One of the most important aspects of the Perseverance mission is its capacity for Mars sample return. The rover was built to collect about 35 rock and soil samples to be transported to Earth for detailed laboratory analysis. This will be a complex, multi-year mission: It’s likely scientists won’t get their hands on the samples until the early 2030s. Besides being able to let us peer into Mars’ surface history, one study notes that the returned samples could also offer some insight into the role that Mars’ magnetic field had in its evolution.

On Earth, our geologic history is driven by dates and events in the past. But because scientists’ timescale of Mars is largely relative and can only be estimated in comparison to the age of rocks from the moon, geologists can have a hard time trying to use this method to date the surface. “We can look at the surface of Mars and say, well, we think this thing is older than that thing,” says Stack Morgan. “But we don’t actually know when these events happened.”

[Related: This miniature rocket could be the first NASA craft launched from Mars]

But by analyzing the returned samples, scientists could start to pin down exact ages and dates, and really revolutionize the geologic timescale of Mars, Stack Morgan says. But there’s still much to do before then. 

“It was an incredible first year of the mission,” she says. ”This is just the start for this whole effort, and [we] hope that everybody’s really excited about it the way that we are.”

The post 5 new insights about Mars from Perseverance’s rocky roving appeared first on Popular Science.

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It’s not surprising that Jupiter has a lot going on at its surface. According to NASA, if the Earth were a the size of a grape, the mighty Jupiter would be the size of a basketball. Now, NASA has “giant news from a giant planet.” The James Webb Space Telescope has sent back stunning new images of the fifth planet from our sun, giving scientists a better insight at the inner workings of the gas planet.

“We hadn’t really expected it to be this good, to be honest,” said planetary astronomer Imke de Pater, professor emerita of the University of California, Berkeley, in a statement. “It’s really remarkable that we can see details on Jupiter together with its rings, tiny satellites, and even galaxies in one image,” she said. DePater led the observations with the Paris Observatory’s Thierry Fouchet as part of an international collaboration for Webb’s Early Release Science program. The Webb mission itself is an international space mission led by NASA with its partners ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency). 

The two photos were taken on July 27 and are composites from several images from taken by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera. This camera has special infrared filters that can showcase the details of the planet unlike any before it. Infrared light is invisible to the human eye, so the images were colored in to translate them into the visible spectrum and make Jupiter’s features stand out, according to NASA.

[Related: Jupiter’s largest moon wrestles for attention with its Big Red Spot.]

A wide-field view of the new images show the faint rings of Jupiter with its faint rings and two small moons named Amalthea and Adrastea. “This one image sums up the science of our Jupiter system program, which studies the dynamics and chemistry of Jupiter itself, its rings, and its satellite system,” said Fouchet.

The standalone view of Jupiter was also created from a composite of several images from Webb. In it, auroras are present at both high altitudes above both the northern and southern poles of Jupiter, just like they are on Earth. A red filter highlights the auroras, yellows and greens highlight the various hazes swirling around the planet’s northern and southern poles, and blue filters show the light reflected from a deeper main cloud.

The images also show one of Jupiter’s defining characteristics: the Great Red Spot. It appears white in these photographs since it’s reflecting sunlight, according to NASA. The Great Red Spot is a giant storm bigger than our entire planet and has been raging for centuries.

“The brightness here indicates high altitude–so the Great Red Spot has high-altitude hazes, as does the equatorial region,” Heidi Hammel, Webb interdisciplinary scientist for solar system observations and vice president for science at AURA noted in a statement. “The numerous bright white ‘spots’ and ‘streaks’ are likely very high-altitude cloud tops of condensed convective storms.” By comparison, the dark ribbons north of Jupiter’s equatorial region have little cloud cover.

[Related: Jupiter formed dinky little rings, and there’s a convincing explanation why.]

NASA credits the citizen science community for their role in helping astronomers process these images. Modesto, California’s Judy Schmidt processed these new views of Jupiter. A longtime image processor in the citizen science community, she collaborated with Ricardo Hueso, a co-investigator on these observations who studies planetary atmospheres at the University of the Basque Country in Spain.

Despite having no formal background in astronomy, Schmidt’s passion for astronomical image processing was sparked by the ESA’s Hubble’s Hidden Treasure contest in 2012. The competition called for the public to find new gems buried in decades of Hubble data. Schmidt took home third place out of nearly 3,000 submissions for her image of a newborn star. 

She has continued to work with Hubble and other telescope data as a hobby. “Something about it just stuck with me, and I can’t stop,” she said in a statement to NASA. “I could spend hours and hours every day.”

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When NASA’s Artemis 1 mission launches to the moon later this month, on board the Orion space capsule will be two special passengers: Helga and Zohar.