Last Friday, NASA launched the Psyche spacecraft toward an asteroid of the same name. Psyche is blazing a trail as the first mission to a metal asteroid, and it’s also about to blaze a literal blue trail. The source of its bright wake—the probe’s remarkable propulsive system—will switch on within the first 100 days of the mission.

A mechanism known as a Hall thruster will propel the Psyche through space. This thruster glows blue as it ionizes xenon, a noble gas also used in headlights and plasma televisions, to move the spacecraft forward. This is the first time this tech, which has only been available for NASA spaceflight since 2015, has been used to travel beyond the moon—but what makes it so special, and why is Psyche using it?

When planning a space mission, engineers are focused on efficiency. Carrying chemical fuel along for the massive interplanetary journey would be like trying to drive around the entire world while having to keep all the gasoline you need in the trunk, because there are no rest stops along the way—it’s just not feasible. To get to its destination, Psyche would need thousands and thousands of pounds of chemical propellant.

[Related: How tiny spacecraft could ‘sail’ to Mars surprisingly quickly]

To get around this problem, engineers turned to electric thrusters. These come in many flavors: “There are many different types of electric thrusters, almost as many as there are different makers of cars,” explained NASA’s Psyche chief engineer Dan Goebel in a blog post. But space travel uses two kinds in particular, known as ion thrusters and Hall thrusters. “They can probably be considered the Tesla versions of space propulsion,” Goebel wrote. Rather than burning fuel, electric thrusters rip off the electrons from the propellant’s atoms in a process known as ionization. Then they chuck those ions out at some 80,000 miles per hour. This generates a higher specific impulse—which Goebel says is “equivalent to miles per gallon in your car,” but for spacecraft—than chemical fuels, enabling a thruster-powered spacecraft to go farther on less propellant.

Ion thrusters use high electric voltages to make a plasma (the fourth state of matter) and spew ions into space. NASA’s Dawn mission used these to get to dwarf planet Ceres, but they’re not the fastest—according to NASA, it would take the spacecraft four days to go from 0 to 60 miles per hour. Definitely not race car material! 

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

Hall thrusters, on the other hand, use a magnetic field to swirl electrons in a circle, producing a beam of ions. They don’t get quite as good “mileage” as ion thrusters, but they pack a bigger punch. The Psyche team picked this system because it allowed them to make a smaller, and therefore more cost-efficient, spacecraft. 

For the thrusters to work, the spacecraft needs power—which it gets from the sun, via solar panels—and something to ionize. For Psyche, that’s xenon gas. “Xenon is the propellant of choice because it’s inert (it doesn’t react with the rest of the spacecraft) and is easy to ionize,” explained Goebel. It also gives the thrusters their remarkable blue shine. Psyche carries about 150 gallons of the stuff, and gets about 10 million miles per gallon. 

Now that the mission has launched, the team will spend the next 100 days checking out all the spacecraft’s systems to ensure they’re ready for the journey. At some point in this period, those glimmering blue thrusters will turn on.

If Psyche proves to be a success, Hall thrusters will be likely to make an appearance on future space missions. They offer “the right mix of cost savings, efficiency, and power, and could play an important role in supporting future science missions to Mars and beyond,” said Steven Scott, program manager for the Psyche mission at the company Maxar, which built the thrusters, in a press release. Thanks to these propulsive devices, Psyche should reach its destination in the asteroid belt in just 3.5 years—and we can’t wait to see what lies at the end of its electric blue trail.

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The powdery material that NASA officials unveiled on Wednesday looked like asphalt or charcoal, but was easily worth more than its weight in diamonds. The fragments were from a world all their own—pieces of the asteroid Bennu, collected and returned to Earth for analysis by the OSIRIS-REx mission. The samples hold chemical clues to the formation of our solar system and the origin of life-supporting water on our planet.

The clay and minerals from the 4.5 billion-year-old rock had been preserved in space’s deep freeze since the dawn of the solar system. Last month, after a seven-year-long space mission, they parachuted to a desert in Utah, where they were whisked away by helicopter. 

And now those pristine materials sit in an airtight vessel in a clean room at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, where researchers like University of Arizona planetary scientist Dante Lauretta are getting their first chance to study the sample up close. 

“The electron microscopes were fired up and ready” by September 27, Lauretta said in a news conference. “And boy did we really nail it.” (Lauretta, the principal investigator, gave the mission its name, which stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer.) The preliminary investigation of a tiny fraction of the sample revealed it is rich in water, carbon, and organic compounds.

Carbon is essential for all living things on Earth, forming chemical bonds with hydrogen, oxygen, and other elements necessary to build proteins and enzymes. “We’re looking at the kinds of minerals that may have played essential roles in the origin of life on Earth,” Lauretta said. 

The Bennu sample contained about 4.7 percent carbon, as measured by the Carnegie Institution for Science, according to Daniel Glavin, the OSIRIS-REx sample analysis lead at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. This is “the highest abundance of carbon” the Carnegie team has measured in an extraterrestrial sample, Glavin said. “There were scientists on the team going ‘Wow, oh my God!’ And when a scientist says that ‘Wow;’ that’s a big deal.”

[Related: This speedy space rock is the fastest asteroid in our solar system]

The Bennu sample is also flush with organic compounds, too, which glowed like tiny stars within the dark sample when exposed to a black light. “We picked the right asteroid—and not only that, we brought back the right sample,” Glavin said. “This stuff is an astrobiologist’s dream.”

Asteroids like Bennu were most likely responsible for all of Earth’s wet features—the water in oceans, lakes, rivers, and rain probably arrived when space rocks landed on our young planet some 4 billion years ago. Bennu has water-bearing clay with a fibrous structure, which according to Lauretta, was the key material that ferried H₂O to Earth.

Under magnification, the clay has a sinuous shape. “We call this serpentine because they look like serpents or snakes inside the sample, and they have water locked inside their crystal structure,” he said. “That is how we think water got to the Earth.”

This is only the start. The OSIRIS-REx science team, as they catalog the sample, have months of more detailed work ahead. After six months, they will publish the catalog; scientists from around the world will be able to propose studies using the materials—though more than half the sample will be kept in reserve for research to take place years or even decades in the future. 

[Related: NASA’s mission to a weird metal asteroid will blast off … soon]

They have more than a half-pound of material to work with. OSIRIS-REx recovered an estimated 250 grams of Bennu material, more than four times the 60 grams the mission had targeted. And as the science team began dissembling the sample return capsule at Johnson Space Center, they discovered what NASA is calling bonus material: bits of Bennu adhering to the collector head and lid of the sealed canister that brought the bulk of the sample home. 

”The first thing we noticed was that there was black dust and particles all around the outer edge,” Lauretta said. “Already this is scientific treasure.”

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The 2018 winner of PopSci’s annual Best of What’s New continues to impress. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is still edging closer to the sun than any other spacecraft has ever achieved, and it’s setting new speed records in the process. According to a recent status update from the space agency, the Parker Solar Probe has broken its own record (again) for the fastest thing ever made by human hands—at an astounding clip of 394,736 mph.

The newest milestone comes thanks to a previous gravity-assist flyby from Venus, and occurred on September 27 at the midway point of the probe’s 17th “solar encounter” that lasted until October 3. As ScienceAlert also noted on October 9, the Parker Solar Probe’s speed would hypothetically allow an airplane to circumnavigate Earth about 15 times per hour, or skip between New York City and Los Angeles in barely 20 seconds. Not that any passengers could survive such a journey, but it remains impressive.

[Related: The fastest human-made object vaporizes space dust on contact.]

The latest pass-by also set its newest record for proximity, at just 4.51 million miles from the sun’s plasma “surface.” In order not to vaporize from temperatures as high as nearly 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit, the Parker Solar Probe is outfitted with a 4.5-inch-thick carbon-composite shield to protect its sensitive instruments. These tools are measuring and imaging the sun’s surface to further researchers’ understanding of solar winds’ origins and evolution, as well as helping to forecast environmental changes in space that could affect life back on Earth. Last month, for example, the probe raced through one of the most intense coronal mass ejections (CMEs) ever observed. In doing so, the craft helped prove a two-decade-old theory that CMEs interact with interplanetary dust, which will improve experts’ abilities in space weather forecasting.

Despite its punishing journey, NASA reports the Parker Solar Probe remains in good health with “all systems operating normally.” Despite its numerous records, the probe is far from finished with its mission; there are still seven more solar pass-bys scheduled through 2024. At that point (well within Mercury’s orbit), the Parker Solar Probe will finally succumb to the sun’s extreme effects and vaporize into the solar winds— “sort of a poetic ending,” as one mission researcher told PopSci in 2021.

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NASA’s Artemis III astronauts are apparently going to look incredibly fashionable walking the lunar surface. On October 4, the commercial aerospace company Axiom Space announced a new collaboration with luxury fashion house Prada to design spacesuits for the upcoming moon mission currently scheduled for 2025.

According to Wednesday’s reveal, Prada’s engineers will assist Axiom’s systems team in finalizing its Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) spacesuit while “developing solutions for materials and design features to protect against the unique challenge of space and the lunar environment.” Axiom CEO Michael Suffredini cited Prada’s expertise in manufacturing techniques, innovative design, and raw materials will ensure “not only the comfort of astronauts on the lunar surface, but also the much-needed human factors considerations absent from legacy spacesuits.”

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

NASA first unveiled an early prototype of the AxEMU spacesuit back in March, and drew particular attention to the fit accommodating “at least 90 percent of the US male and female population.” Given the Artemis mission has long promised to land the first woman on the lunar surface, such considerations are vital for astronauts’ safety and comfort.

In Wednesday’s announcement, Lorenzo Bertelli, Prada’s Group Marketing Director, cited the company’s decades of technological design and engineering experience. Although most well known for luxury fashion, Prada is also behind the cutting-edge Luna Rossa racing yacht fleet.

“We are honored to be a part of this historic mission with Axiom Space,” they said. “It is a true celebration of the power of human creativity and innovation to advance civilization.”

Despite Prada’s association with high fashion, the final AxEMU design will undoubtedly emphasize safety and function over runway appeal. After all, astronauts will need protection against both solar radiation and the near-vacuum of the lunar surface, as well as ample oxygen resources and space for HD cameras meant to transmit live feeds back to Earth. According to the BBC earlier this year, each suit will also incorporate both 3D-printing and laser cutters to ensure precise measurements tailored to each astronaut.

Although NASA’s first images of the AxEMU in March showcased a largely black-and-gray color palette with blue and orange accents, Axiom Space’s newest teases hint at an off-white cover layer more reminiscent of the classic Apollo moon mission suits. It might not be much now, but you can expect more detailed looks at the spacesuits in the coming months as the Artemis Program continues its journey back to the moon.

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NASA’s Psyche mission to a unique, metallic asteroid of the same name launched from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A at 10:20 a.m. Eastern on October 13 via a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.

It was, finally, a smooth exit from Earth for the probe. Psyche had been scheduled to blast off on October 5, the first day of a window that stretches through October 25. But NASA officials announced a delay on September 28, citing issues with the spacecraft’s maneuvering thrusters, which are used to point the vehicle where it needs to go. “The change allows the NASA team to complete verifications of the parameters used to control the Psyche spacecraft’s nitrogen cold gas thrusters,” NASA officials wrote in the announcement. 

That weeklong delay was small, though, compared to the mission’s earlier hold-ups. Psyche was first set to launch in October of 2022, but issues with the navigation software developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory forced the agency to delay the mission by a year. 

This mission should be well worth the wait. It could help uncover details about unusual asteroids and our planet. And the pioneering technology and operations it will demonstrate during its nearly six-year mission will influence the design of future spacecraft. 

Psyche to Psyche

The destination of Psyche (a spacecraft) is 16 Psyche (an asteroid)—an object about 140 miles in diameter in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It looks a bit like a cratered potato. 

Remote observations by astronomers have already determined 16 Psyche to be a highly metallic asteroid, rich in iron, and it is believed to be the exposed core of a small planet that never fully formed. Getting up close and personal with 16 Psyche could help scientists better understand Earth’s iron-rich core: It’s easier to send a spacecraft 280 million miles away to study an asteroid than to access Earth’s rocky center, 1,800 miles beneath our feet. Exploring the metallic object in space has implications for our planet’s geomagnetic field, which protects life from space radiation—that field is generated when our planet’s solid inner core spins within liquid metal surroundings. 

Thrusters and lasers

Psyche is one of NASA’s first spacecraft to use solar electric propulsion as its primary means of reaching an asteroid. Rather than relying on traditional chemical rockets, Psyche will use Hall effect thrusters, which use electrostatic fields to accelerate ions—charged particles—and expel them, generating thrust. (These are different machines from the nitrogen thrusters that caused the launch delay.) Such thrusters produce very low thrust—far less than a pound—but do so very efficiently, allowing Psyche to preserve its xenon gas propellant and build up speed over the vast distances it will cover. 

The electric thrusters will use solar power—though the sunlight it absorbs will shrink as Psyche approaches its destination. Still, it’s well prepared. While the spacecraft itself is the size of a large car, its twin solar panels are about the size of tennis courts. They’ll produce 21 kilowatts of energy near Earth and about two kilowatts when at asteroid Psyche. 

[Related on PopSci+: In its visit to Psyche, NASA hopes to glimpse the center of the Earth]

In addition to solar electric propulsion, Psyche will also test a new form of Earth-to-spacecraft transmission system called Deep Space Optical Communication. Deep Space Optical Communication encodes data in infrared lasers, rather than radio waves, and can potentially carry much more information to and from the Psyche spacecraft than can traditional methods. The laser communications are just a demonstration—Psyche will still stay in touch with Earth, and vice versa, using NASA’s radio-based Deep Space Network. 

Research on a metal world

When Psyche arrives at the asteroid 16 Psyche in 2029, it will set to work studying the iron asteroid’s magnetic properties. With the aid of an imager and two kinds of spectrometer, the probe will also use patterns of light absorption to determine what elements and compounds exist on this metal potato. 

But Psyche won’t simply scratch the surface. It will also study the asteroid’s internal structure by measuring the space rock’s gravity field. There’s no specific instrument to pull this off. Instead, scientists on the ground will use radio signals from Psyche to precisely measure the spacecraft’s orbit around the asteroid, measuring any slight perturbations that signal variations in the gravitational field, which in turn can tell scientists about the internal density of 16 Psyche. 

[Related: Smashed asteroid surrounded by a ‘cloud’ of boulders]

And while the Psyche mission has the unique potential to shed light on how planetary bodies are formed and function, it’s also a part of an expanding portfolio of NASA asteroid missions. NASA’s Lucy mission, which launched in 201, is currently on its way to fly by multiple asteroids near Jupiter between 2025 and 2033. NASA’s OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission, meanwhile, just dropped pieces of the asteroid Bennu back on Earth on September 24. It’snow headed to visit the asteroid Apophis; the mission has been renamed to OSIRIS-APEX, or Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-APophis EXplorer.

Such missions have multiple goals: they help scientists better understand the formation of the early solar system and how planets like Earth, and they can also tell us about the makeup of asteroids that could one day pose a threat—and how to deflect them if necessary. 

Apophis, for instance, was at one time considered a very hazardous asteroid; though it won’t hit Earth, it will pass within 20,000 miles of our planet on April 13, 2029. 

The people of Earth don’t have to worry about any danger from 16 Psyche, though, as it will continue along in its orbit between Mars and Jupiter indefinitely, hundreds of millions of miles from our planet. 

That is, unless humans make changes to the metallic space rock. Mining asteroids is an old idea. But, as spacecraft improve, the estimated $10 quintillion worth of metal ore on Psyche and asteroids like it might begin to look pretty appetizing to companies that want to capitalize on resources in the heavens.

This post has been updated. It was originally published on October 2.

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This article was originally published on Undark.

IN JANUARY 2023, Tara Sweeney’s plane landed on Thwaites Glacier, a 74,000-square-mile mass of frozen water in West Antarctica. She arrived with an international research team to study the glacier’s geology and ice fabric, and how its ice melt might contribute to sea level rise. But while near Earth’s southernmost point, Sweeney kept thinking about the moon.

“It felt every bit of what I think it will feel like being a space explorer,” said Sweeney, a former Air Force officer who’s now working on a doctorate in lunar geology at the University of Texas at El Paso. “You have all of these resources, and you get to be the one to go out and do the exploring and do the science. And that was really spectacular.”

That similarity is why space scientists study the physiology and psychology of people living in Antarctic and other remote outposts: For around 25 years, people have played out what existence might be like on, or en route to, another world. Polar explorers are, in a way, analogous to astronauts who land on alien planets. And while Sweeney wasn’t technically on an “analog astronaut” mission — her primary objective being the geological exploration of Earth — her days played out much the same as a space explorer’s might.

For 16 days, Sweeney and her colleagues lived in tents on the ice, spending half their time trapped inside as storms blew snow against their tents. When the weather permitted, Sweeney snowmobiled to and from seismometer sites, once getting caught in a whiteout that, she said, felt like zooming inside a ping-pong ball.

On the glacier, Sweeney was always cold, sometimes bored, often frustrated. But she was also alive, elated. And she felt a form of focus that eluded her on her home continent. “I had three objectives: to be a good crewmate, to do good science, and to stay alive,” she said. “That’s all I had to do.”

None of that was easy, of course. But it may have been easier than landing back on the earth of El Paso. “My mission ended, and it’s over,” she said. “And how do I process through all these things that I’m feeling?”

Then, in May, she attended the 2023 Analog Astronaut Conference, a gathering of people who simulate long-term space travel from the relative safety and comfort of Earth. Sweeney had learned about the event when she visited an analog facility in the country of Jordan. There, she’d met one of the conference’s founders, Jas Purewal, who invited her to the gathering.

The meeting was held, appropriately, at Biosphere 2, a glass-paneled, self-contained habitat in the Arizona desert that resembles a 1980s sci-fi vision of a space settlement — one of the first facilities built, in part, to understand whether humans could create a habitable environment on a hostile planet.

A speaker at the conference had spent eight months locked inside a simulated space habitat in Moscow, Russia, and she talked about how the post-mission period had been hard for her. The psychological toll of reintegration became a chattering theme throughout the whole meeting. Sweeney, it turned out, wasn’t alone.

Across the world, around 20 analog space facilities host people who volunteer to be study subjects, isolating themselves for weeks or months in polar stations, desert outposts, or even sealed habitats inside NASA centers. These places are intended to mimic how people might fare on Mars or the moon, or on long-term orbital stations. Such research, scientists say, can help test out medical and software tools, enhance indoor agriculture, and address the difficulties analog astronauts face, including, like Sweeney’s, those that come when their “missions” are over.

Lately, a community of researchers has started to make the field more formalized: laying out standards so that results are comparable; gathering research papers into a single database so investigators can build on previous work; and bringing scientists, participants, and facility directors together to share results and insights.

With that cohesion, a formerly quiet area of research is enhancing its reputation and looking to gain more credibility with space agencies. “I think the analogs are underestimated,” said Jenni Hesterman, a retired Air Force officer who is helping spearhead this formalization. “A lot of people think it’s just space camp.”

ANALOG ASTRONAUT FACILITIES emerged as a way to test drive space missions without the price tag of actually going to space. Scientists, for example, want to make sure tools work properly and so analog astronauts will test out equipment ranging from spacesuits to extreme-environment medical equipment.

Researchers are also interested in how astronauts fare in isolation, and so they will sometimes track characteristics like microbiome changes, stress levels, and immune responses by taking samples of spit, skin, blood, urine, and fecal matter. Analog missions “can give us insights about how a person would react or what kind of team — what kind of mix of people — can react to some challenges,” said Francesco Pagnini, a psychology professor at the Catholic University of Sacred Heart in Italy, who has researched human behavior and performance in collaboration with the European and Italian space agencies.

Some facilities are run by space agencies, like NASA’s Human Exploration Research Analog, or HERA, which is located inside NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The center also houses a 3D-printed habitat called Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog, or CHAPEA, where crews will simulate a year-long mission to Mars. The structure looks like an artificial intelligence created a cosmic living space using IKEA as its source material.

“My mission ended, and it’s over,” Sweeney said. “And how do I process through all these things that I’m feeling?”

Most analog spots, though, are run by private organizations and take research proposals from space agencies, university researchers, and sometimes laypeople with projects that the facilities select through an application process.

Such work has been going on for decades: NASA’s first official analog mission took place in 1997, in Death Valley, when four people spent a week pretending to be Martian geologists. In 2000, the nonprofit Mars Society, a space-exploration advocacy and research organization, built the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station in Nunavut, Canada, and soon after constructed the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah. (Both facilities have been used by NASA researchers, too.) But the practice was in place long before those projects, even if the terminology and permanent facilities were not: In the Apollo era, astronauts used to try out their rovers and space walks, along with scientific techniques, in Arizona and Hawaii.

Many facilities, according to Ronita Cromwell, formerly the lead scientist of NASA’s Flight Analogs Project, are located in two types of places: extreme environments or controlled ones. The former include Antarctic or Arctic research stations, which tend to be used to study topics like sleep patterns and team dynamics. The latter — sealed, simulated habitats — are primarily useful for human behavior research, like learning how cognitive ability changes over the course of a mission, or testing out equipment, like software that helps astronauts make decisions without communicating to mission control. That independence becomes necessary as crews travel farther from Earth, because the communication delays increase with distance.

During her work on NASA’s mission simulations, Cromwell saw their value. “What excited me is that we were able to create sort of spaceflight situations on the ground, to study spaceflight changes in the human body,” Cromwell said, “whether they be, you know, psychological, cognitive changes, or physiological changes.”

Psychiatry researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, for instance, recently found that members of a crew at HERA performed better on cognition tasks — like clicking on squares that randomly appear on a screen and memorizing three-dimensional objects — as their mission went on. Another recent HERA study, led by scientists at Northwestern and DePaul universities, found that over time, teams got better at executing physical tasks together, but worsened when they tried to work together creatively and intellectually, like brainstorming as many uses as possible for a given object. Those brain and behavioral changes could teach scientists about tight teams deployed in other remote, tedious, stressful situations. “I think space psychology can also speak a lot about everyday life,” said Pagnini.

On the physical side, an international team that included a NASA scientist recently used the Mars Desert Research Station to test whether analog astronauts could be quickly taught how to fix broken bones using a device that could work on Mars — or an earthly site far from medical facilities. Investigations into self-contained, sustainable living reveal how low-resource existence could work on Earth, too. For example, another crew, led by Griffith University medical researchers, performed an experiment extracting water from minerals in case of emergency.

“I think the analogs are underestimated,” said Hesterman. “A lot of people think it’s just space camp.”

While scientific research that actually takes place in space usually gets the spotlight, the ground-testing of all systems, including human ones, is necessary, if not always glamorous or publicly lauded. “I felt like I was in charge of a deep, dark secret,” said Cromwell, jokingly, of her work on the NASA analog program.

In fact, even people who work in adjacent fields sometimes haven’t heard of the field. Purewal, an astrophysicist, only learned about analog space research in 2020. With Covid-19 restrictions in place, though, most facilities had halted new missions. “If I can’t go to an analog, maybe I can bring the analog to me,” Purewal thought.

Amid the drapey willow branches and manicured hedges of her parents’ backyard in Warwick, England, she constructed a geodesic dome out of broomstick handles and tent-like materials. Purewal sequestered inside for a week, leaving only to use the bathroom — and then only while wearing a simulated spacesuit. She communicated with those outside her dome on a synthesized 20-minute delay and ate freeze-dried foods, which she came to hate, and insect protein from mealworms and locusts, which she came to like more than she anticipated.

While Purewal admits her personal analog was “low-fidelity,” it offered a test drive for more rigorous research. By 2021, Purewal had, with SpaceX civilian astronaut Sian Proctor, co-founded the Analog Astronaut Conference that Sweeney attended, along with an associated online community of more than 1,000 people. She also participated in an analog mission in someone else’s backyard — one surrounded by Utah State Trust Lands — in November 2022. Their endeavor was sponsored by the Mars Society and involved research on mental health, geologic research tools, and sustainable food supplies, all of which would be necessary if they were going to Mars.

BUT THEY WEREN’T HEADED to Mars, they were headed to Utah. About five minutes from the small town of Hanksville — home to “Hollow Mountain,” a gas station convenience store dug out of a rock formation — sits the turnoff to the Mars Desert Research Station. Operated by the Mars Society, the facility is 3.4 miles down a dirt track called N Cow Dung Road. The landscape looks otherworldly: mushroom-shaped rock formations; sandy, granular ground; and eroded hills of red rock.

The station sits in a flat spot surrounded by those hills, with a cylindrical living space two stories tall but just 26 feet in diameter. The habitat links out via above-ground “tunnels” to a greenhouse and a geodesic dome that resembles Purewal’s initial backyard creation, and houses a control center and lab.

In November 2022, Purewal brought a team there for two weeks, with Hesterman as commander. In the habitat, an astrobiology student tried to grow edible mushrooms in the crew’s food waste. Another team member wanted to see if they could make yogurt from powdered milk and bacteria. Purewal, meanwhile, was experimenting with an AI companion robot called PARO. Shaped like a baby harp seal, PARO is typically used to relieve stress in medical situations. The crew members interacted with PARO and wore bio-monitoring straps that measured things like heart rate as they did so.

Every day on “Mars” had a set of missions: spacewalks, splinting a broken ankle on a virtual reality headset, a tabletop emergency exercise about evacuating for noxious fumes, a fake pass-out to test emergency response protocol. Their personal protocols were working well, but Purewal and Hesterman, locked in together, had begun to fret about the quality and consistency of the analog enterprise more broadly. They started to think about creating standards: for the research, for the facilities themselves. At their Utah-Mars station, for instance, a pipe broke under their sink. There were electrical issues. A propane monitor was malfunctioning.

After their mission ended, they spoke with others, and heard about issues such as expired fire extinguishers, or the lack of safety training for participants who would be using specialized technologies and life support systems. They consulted Emily Apollonio, a former aircraft accident investigator. In 2022, she traveled to Hawaii to live at HI-SEAS, a 1,200-square-foot analog station located 8,200 feet above sea level on the Mauna Loa volcano. Apollonio thought HI-SEAS had avoidable problems. For one, the bathroom had only a composting toilet, which the mission crew weren’t allowed to pee in, and a urinal, which the women had to use, too.

With a draft version released this June, they hope to improve conditions for participants — ensuring, for instance, that facilities adhere to building codes and provide adequate medical support. They also want to encourage analog participants to follow research best practices to ensure rigorous outputs. The standards suggest, for instance, that each mission have its research plan pre-validated by the principal investigator and habitat director, a timeline for research completion, and an Institutional Review Board approval in place for human experiments. While projects with federal or institutional grant funding go through these steps anyway, the formality isn’t uniform across the board.

While some analogs already have rigorous protocols in place to protect participants, the safety issues and inclusivity gaps she heard about from colleagues helped inspire Apollonio to start a training and consulting company called Interstellar Performance Labs to help prepare would-be analog astronauts before their missions. She also started to work with Purewal, Hesterman, and others on a document called “International Guidelines and Standards for Space Analogs.”

The standards also detail the creation of a research database, putting all the writeups (peer-reviewed and otherwise) of analog projects in one place. That way, people aren’t duplicating efforts — as the mushroom-grower, it turns out, was — unless they mean to test the replicability of results. They can also better link their studies to space agencies’ established needs to be more directly helpful and relevant to the real world.

“I didn’t know where to look, I didn’t know where to go,” Apollonio said. “I couldn’t hear my thoughts.”

As part of this centralization effort, Purewal, Apollonio, Hesterman, and colleagues are also putting together what they call the World’s Biggest Analog: a simultaneous, month-long mission involving at least 10 isolated bases across the world, which together will simulate a large, cooperative future presence in space.

So far, though, attempts to give the community cohesion and coherency have yet to fully address the aspect of analog life that gives many participants trouble: the end of their mission. “Being in an analog mission was less difficult than coming out an analog mission,” said Apollonio, of her own experience.

Shortly after emerging from HI-SEAS, she walked around the streets of Waikiki with her husband. The lights, the noise — everything was too much. “I didn’t know where to look, I didn’t know where to go,” she said. “I couldn’t hear my thoughts.” After they chose a restaurant for dinner, and the server handed her a menu, she froze. “I have to choose my own food,” she realized. It was overwhelming, and that feeling didn’t abate.

Meanwhile, few other people understood the experience, said Hesterman. “You come home and you’re all excited, like, you want to tell everybody about it,” she continued. “You tell everybody about it once, and then they’re just done. On back to paying the bills and cutting the grass and stuff. You still want to talk about it.”

Purewal missed the team and the sense of shared purpose, and started to seek it outside the simulation. “I need to find this same feeling in my day-to-day life,” she said. “We all kind of need our crew.”

RESEARCH ON THE post-mission experience is scant, said Pagnini. In March 2023, he co-authored a review paper, commissioned by the European Space Agency, which aimed to lay out the state of research on human behavior and performance in space, including gaps in the science. Studying how astronauts react and cope “post-mission,” his research found, has been particularly neglected. The same is true of returning from analog space.

Pagnini says the research isn’t just relevant to analog or actual astronauts. Life in space has similarities to life on Earth — including in its difficulties. Italy’s heavily restrictive and prolonged Covid-19 lockdown, for instance, resembled going away on a mission. “When we got out of the lockdown phase, getting in touch with other people was kind of strange,” he said. Much of living a regular life on Earth was strange.

The strangeness also extends to other experiences, like military deployments and the subsequent return to domestic life. “The expectation is kind of that families will live happily ever after” once they’re reunited, said Leanne Knobloch, a professor of communication at the University of Illinois, who performed a large reintegration study on military couples. “So that’s why reintegration has sometimes been overlooked, but more and more researchers are starting to recognize that it is a challenging period, and it’s not the storybook ending that people make it out to be.”

She noted that her research, like that on the psychology of space travel and the post-mission experience, can apply to other arenas. “Any kind of situation where partners are separated and they come together, this research can help understand that puzzle piece more broadly,” she said.

Knobloch’s work includes suggestions for easing the transition, such as preparing people for the issues they’re likely to experience. “If you’re ready and expect that you might experience some of these problems, it won’t be so stressful,” she said. “Because you’ll recognize that they’re normal.”

Apollonio’s Interstellar Performance Labs, for one, is already planning to include education on “aftercare,” educating people about what she calls the “deorbiting effect” of returning to regular life.

WHEN THE DAY finally came for Sweeney to depart Thwaites Glacier, the aircraft seemed to materialize right out of the sky, as though the remote outpost had transformed into a busy airport. As she was leaving, she looked down at the camp where half her team remained. “You could just see how small our little footprint was,” she said. A speck in the middle of endless white space.

Since she landed in North America, Sweeney has savored time with her family. But the adjustment hasn’t been easy. “Each day that ticks by of being back, I started feeling pulled in different directions,” she said. With numerous projects ongoing — mentoring, speaking, doing her doctoral research — she felt her sense of self splintering. In Antarctica, she had been a smooth, singular whole.

But at the Analog Astronaut Conference in May, hearing about others’ similar readjustment difficulties, Sweeney felt some sense of normalcy. Having a community of support could help with post-mission struggles. Further research — aided by the new database and standardization measures — could help uncover best coping strategies, along with the keys to successful crew dynamics, stress creators and mitigators, and tools and designs that make the practicalities of a mission easier. Maybe someone will look at the database, see this scientific gap, and try to fill it.

Such research might resonate with Sweeney and others having trouble readjusting to their daily lives. “We have to get back to work, we have to go see our families, we want to pick up the projects we were doing before,” she said. “But also, we need to make space for the magnitude of the experience that we just had. And to be able to decompress from that.”

UPDATE: A previous version of this piece incorrectly stated that Tara Sweeney’s plane landed on Thwaites Glacier in November 2022. She arrived to McMurdo Station in Antarctica in November 2022, but did not land on Thwaites Glacier until January 2023. The piece also described a scene in which Sweeney left her camp on Thwaites Glacier, and incorrectly stated that she was departing Antarctica at that time. She remained in Antarctica for several weeks after she left the glacier. Lastly, a previous version stated that storms dumped feet of snow on the landscape. To clarify that the snow was not fresh snowfall, the piece has been updated to reflect that snow blew against the tents.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

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The dark side of the moon, despite its name, is a perfect vantage point for observing the universe. On Earth, radio signals from the furthest depths of space are obscured by the atmosphere, alongside humanity’s own electronic chatter, but the lunar far side has none of these issues. Because of this, establishing an observation point there could allow for unimpeded views of some of cosmic history’s earliest moments—particularly a 400 million year stretch known as the universe’s Dark Ages when early plasma cooled enough to begin forming the  protons and electrons that eventually made hydrogen.

After years of development and testing, just such an observation station could come online as soon as 2026, in part thanks to researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.

[Related: Watch a rocket engine ignite in ultra-slow motion.]

The team is currently working alongside NASA, the US Department of Energy, and the University of Minnesota on a pathfinder project called the Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment-Night (LuSEE-Night). The radio telescope is on track to launch atop Blue Ghost, private space company Firefly Aerospace’s lunar lander, as part of the company’s second moon excursion. Once in position, Blue Ghost will detach from Firefly’s Elytra space vehicle, then travel down to the furthest site ever reached on the moon’s dark side. 

“If you’re on the far side of the moon, you have a pristine, radio-quiet environment from which you can try to detect this signal from the Dark Ages,” Kaja Rotermund, a postdoctoral researcher at Berkeley Lab, said in a September 26 project update. “LuSEE-Night is a mission showing whether we can make these kinds of observations from a location that we’ve never been in, and also for a frequency range that we’ve never been able to observe.”

More specifically, LuSEE-Night will be equipped with specialized antennae designed by the Berkeley Lab team to listen between 0.5 and 50 megahertz. To accomplish this, both the antennae and its Blue Ghost transport will need to be able to withstand the extreme temperatures experienced on the moon’s far side, which can span between -280 and 250 degrees Fahrenheit. Because of its shielded lunar location, however, LuSEE-Night will also need to beam its findings up to an orbiting satellite that will then transfer the information back to Earth.

“The engineering to land a scientific instrument on the far side of the moon alone is a huge accomplishment,” explained Berkeley Lab’s antenna project lead, Aritoki Suzuki, in the recent update. “If we can demonstrate that this is possible—that we can get there, deploy, and survive the night—that can open up the field for the community and future experiments.”

If successful, LuSEE-Night could provide data from the little known Dark Ages, which breaks up other observable eras such as some of the universe’s earliest moments, as well as more recent moments after stars began to form.

According to Berkeley Lab, the team recently completed a successful technical review, and is currently working on constructing the flight model meant for the moon. Once landed, LuSEE-Night will peer out into the Dark Age vastness for about 18 months beginning in 2026. 

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On the morning of September 24, a space capsule containing a pristine sample of the near-Earth asteroid Bennu entered Earth’s atmosphere wreathed in fire. During a 10 minute descent, the craft used its heat shield to dissipate speed through friction. It safely touched down on a military range in Utah, marking the end of NASA’s seven-year-long Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer—the OSIRIS-REx mission. The roughly 9 ounces of asteroid bits, doused in nitrogen to keep out any contaminants, are now in a clean room.

For more than half a decade, the members of this mission faced multiple technical challenges: building, testing, and launching the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft in 2016; rendezvousing with asteroid Bennu in 2018 about 207 million miles from Earth; using a robotic arm to grab half a cup’s worth of Bennu in 2020; and setting a course back to Earth in 2021. 

The scope of the OSIRIS-ReX mission stretches from the distant past into the relatively closer future. Nearly two decades ago, astronomers set out to not only get up close and personal with an ancient asteroid, but actually bring some home. And its scientific observations dip billions of years into the past. Samples from this more than 4.5 billion-year-old asteroid are likely to provide clues to the origin of life itself. It will also help prepare us for a moment, centuries from now, when Bennu could threaten to strike Earth. 

The power of a pristine asteroid 

The OSIRIS-REx sample is a chance to thoroughly examine what compounds may have been present in the early solar system. By bringing pieces of the space rock to Earth, researchers can use the most powerful laboratory techniques available—not just what tools can fit on a spacecraft. 

”It’s tremendously powerful to be able to get something back in the laboratory,” says Jason Dworkin is a biochemist and astrobiologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. He’s been the project scientist for OSIRIS-REx since NASA accepted the mission proposal in 2011, and has been involved in the mission’s planning since its conception in 2004. “You can change your mind about what you’re looking for. As new discoveries come in, you can adjust your instrumentation. You can have devices that are not only too large to get on the spacecraft, but for us, even larger than the launch pad.” 

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

Dworkin has long been interested in the ways interstellar chemistry can shed light on how the early Earth’s organic compounds combined to form life as we know it. It’s possible that material from asteroids, made of similar stuff as Bennu, helped deliver some necessary ingredients when they struck our planet.

We know the strikes happened, Dworkin says, but we don’t know how relevant the “asteroidal input” from objects like Bennu was.

Rapidly recovering the sample

Before scientists like Dworkin can probe the bits of rock for data, they have to get the samples safely into the lab. Sample collection teams—NASA experts and academic mission scientists, US military representatives, and scientists and engineers from Lockheed Martin, which built the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft—have spent the summer practicing to recover the Bennu sample as quickly as possible. 

As the capsule neared Earth’s atmosphere, the recovery teams boarded helicopters, using infrared imaging to track the capsule as it descended. They swiftly arrived to where the capsule came to rest, within a 36-mile by 8.5-mile area of the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range near Salt Lake City. The reason for the haste is to limit the chances that anything Earthly would contaminate the 8.8 ounces of pristine Bennu material. 

To further guard against this, the team recovering the capsule also took samples of soil and material from around the landing site. That way, if scientists detect something “extraordinary,” Dworkin says, “we can make sure that it cannot be explained by contamination or by something else from the environment.”

The capsule, which slowed from 27,650 mph when it entered Earth’s atmosphere to 11 mph when it landed, was taken to a temporary clean room at the military range. There, it will be disassembled and on Monday packaged for a flight to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where the space agency has built a specialized clean room environment. This will be Bennu’s home on Earth.

“The sample comes back and is studied by the science team for two years,” Dworkin says. “Within six months, we produce a catalog of what we’ve observed based on how to describe the sample without damaging the sample using non-invasive techniques.”

What an asteroid on Earth can tell us

The science team has 12 major hypotheses and 54 sub-hypotheses to test, according to Dworkin, which fall into four broad categories. 

The first category is testing the observations that OSIRIS-REx made of Bennu while in space. NASA wants to know: If the results of remote instrument measurements of, say, the asteroid’s mineralogy hold up when tested on the ground? If so, this will be a baseline for additional remote studies of other asteroids NASA won’t send a spacecraft to sample. 

The second category, Dworkin’s favorite, is examining what organic compounds might exist in the sample. It may contain amino acids, sugars, and aldehydes. These are potentially some of the same ingredients that were present on Earth when life began. Studying how they exist on Bennu can reveal the chemical changes they’ve undergone over the eons in space. 

The history of the solar system is the third category. This is the tale, told by the sample, of our solar neighborhood: all the way “from the protosolar nebula to the formation of the crater out of which we collected the sample,” Dworkin says. In this view, as Bennu traveled in the frigid space, it was as if material from the solar system’s early days was held in cold storage.

[Related: Local asteroid Bennu used to be filled with tiny rivers]

And the fourth category of study will be analyzing if and how bringing a piece of Bennu home changes the sample. ”We saw images of it before we stowed it; is that the same, or did it change on the reentry into Earth’s atmosphere?” Dworkin says. “Do we have evidence of contamination from the spacecraft, from the sample processing and handling? 

Some of the answers to questions across all four categories could come within months to a few years. But NASA is preparing for the long haul. Today’s scientists will only have immediate access to about a quarter of the sample. The rest will be held in cold storage for decades, on the assumption that later generations will have better tools and more knowledge to bring to bear. 

NASA wants to avoid repeating mistakes the agency made with some of the Apollo-era moon samples, when tests weren’t as conservative with lunar material. “ “That’s arming the future, and making sure that future generations thank us instead of curse us,” Dworkin says.

There’s one final forward-looking aspect to the OSIRIS-REx mission. In the late 22nd century, sometime between 2170 and 2200, Bennu has a slim chance of hitting Earth. It’s “a small percentage, but not nothing,” Dworkin notes. Information gathered by OSIRIS-REx and subsequent sample studies could help scientists and political leaders decide, with decades of preparation, whether they need to take action to deflect Bennu to prevent a disastrous impact. 

”That’s a wonderful feeling to be able to work on a mission for so long, and have it pay off scientifically for the future, and perhaps planetary defense for the future,” Dworkin says. ”That happens when you start thinking about what happened four and a half billion years ago. You start thinking about the future too.”

Back in space, 20 minutes after this mission came to an end, the spacecraft’s new task began: OSIRIS is now headed for the 1,000-foot-wide asteroid Apophis.

This post was updated after the capsule’s successful landing.

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An unexpected and astonishing find located more than 2.5 million light-years from Earth took top honors at the Royal Observatory Greenwich’s Astronomy Photographer of the Year awards this week. Amateur astronomers Marcel Drechsler, Xavier Strottner, and Yann Sainty captured an image of a massive plasma arc near the Andromeda Galaxy, a discovery that has resulted in scientists looking closer into the giant gas cloud.

“This astrophoto is as spectacular as [it is] valuable,” judge and astrophotographer László Francsics said in a press release. “It not only presents Andromeda in a new way, but also raises the quality of astrophotography to a higher level.”

[Related: How to get a great nightsky shot]

While “Andromeda, Unexpected” captured the prestigious overall winner title, other category winners also dazzled with photos of dancing auroras, neon sprites raining down from the night’s sky, and stunning far-off nebulas that might make you feel like a tiny earthling floating through space.

Sit back and scroll in awe at all the category winners, runners-up, and highly commended images from the 2023 Royal Observatory Greenwich’s Astronomy Photographer of the Year honorees.

Galaxy

Overall winner: Andromeda, Unexpected

Runner-Up: The Eyes Galaxies

Highly Commended: Neighbors

Aurora

Winner: Brushstroke

Runner-up: Circle of Light

Highly Commended: Fire on the Horizon

Our Moon

Winner: Mars-Set

Runner-Up: Sundown on the Terminator

Highly Commended: Last Full Moon of the Year Featuring a Colourful Corona During a Close Encounter with Mars

Our Sun

Winner: A Sun Question

Runner-Up: Dark Star

Highly Commended: The Great Solar Flare 

People & Space

Winner: Zeila

Runner-Up: A Visit to Tycho

Highly Commended: Close Encounters of The Haslingden Kind

Planets, Comets & Asteroids

Winner: Suspended in a Sunbeam

Runner-Up: Jupiter Close to Opposition

Highly Commended: Uranus with Umbriel, Ariel, Miranda, Oberon and Titania

Skyscapes

Winner: Grand Cosmic Fireworks

Runner-Up: Celestial Equator Above First World War Trench Memorial

Highly Commended: Noctilucent Night

Stars & Nebulae

Winner: New Class of Galactic Nebulae Around the Star YY Hya

Runner-Up: LDN 1448 et al.

Highly Commended: The Dark Wolf – Fenrir

The Sir Patrick Moore Prize for Best Newcomer

Winner: Sh2-132: Blinded by the Light

Young Astronomy Photographer of the Year

Winner: The Running Chicken Nebula

Runner-Up: Blue Spirit Drifting in the Clouds

Highly Commended: Lunar Occultation of Mars

Highly Commended: Roses Blooming in the Dark: NGC 2337

Highly Commended: Moon at Nightfall

Annie Maunder Prize for Image Innovation

Winner: Black Echo

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This post has been updated.

A new NASA-commissioned independent study report recommends leveraging NASA’s expertise and public trust alongside artificial intelligence to investigate unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) on Earth. As such, today NASA Director Bill Nelson announced the appointment of a NASA Director of UAP Research to develop and oversee implementation of investigation efforts.

“The director of UAP Research is a pivotal addition to NASA’s team and will provide leadership, guidance and operational coordination for the agency and the federal government to use as a pipeline to help identify the seemingly unidentifiable,” Nicola Fox, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA, said in a release.

Although NASA officials repeated multiple times that the study found no evidence of extraterrestrial origin, they conceded they still “do not know” the explanation behind at least some of the documented UAP sightings. Nelson stressed the agency’s aim to begin minimizing public stigma surrounding UAP events, and begin shifting the subject “from sensationalism to science.” In keeping with this strategy, the panel report relied solely on unclassified and open source UAP data to ensure all findings could be shared openly and freely with the public.

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

“We don’t know what these UAP are, but we’re going to find out,” Nelson said at one point. “You bet your boots.”

According to today’s public announcement, the study team additionally recommends NASA utilize its “open-source resources, extensive technological expertise, data analysis techniques, federal and commercial partnerships, and Earth-observing assets to curate a better and robust dataset for understanding future UAP.”

Composed of 16 community experts across various disciplines, the UAP study team was first announced in June of last year, and began work on their study in October. In May 2023, representatives from the study team expressed frustration with the fragmentary nature of available UAP data.

“The current data collection efforts regarding UAPs are unsystematic and fragmented across various agencies, often using instruments uncalibrated for scientific data collection,” study chair David Spergel, an astrophysicist and president of the nonprofit science organization the Simons Foundation, said at the time. “Existing data and eyewitness reports alone are insufficient to provide conclusive evidence about the nature and origin of every UAP event.”

Today’s report notes that although AI and machine learning tools have become “essential tools” in identifying rare occurrences and outliers within vast datasets, “UAP analysis is more limited by the quality of data than by the availability of techniques.” After reviewing neural network usages in astronomy, particle physics, and other sciences, the panel determined that the same techniques could be adapted to UAP research—but only if datasets’ quality is both improved and codified. Encouraging the development of rigorous data collection standards and methodologies will be crucial to ensuring reliable, evidence-based UAP analysis.

[Related: You didn’t see a UFO. It was probably one of these things.]

Although no evidence suggests extraterrestrial intelligence is behind documented UAP sightings, “Do I believe there is life in the universe?” Nelson asked during NASA’s press conference. “My personal opinion is, yes.”

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What’s it like to spend a whole year in space? In just a matter of days, US astronaut Frank Rubio will be able to tell the tale. On Wednesday, he broke the record for the longest space mission taken by a US astronaut by spending 355 days in low orbit. He and his fellow Expedition 69 crew members are awaiting three new members that will arrive at the end of the week, according to NASA. 

The seven Expedition 69 members are actually a mashup of two groups, one of which, including Rubio, has been onboard for nearly a year. A Russian Soyuz capsule isn’t expected to return him and his crewmates back to Earth until September 27—meaning his full space trip will hit 371 days. This return date was rescheduled from an original March 2023 timeline so Russia could prepare the vehicle, according to CNN.

When leaving for the International Space Station, Rubio was only expected to spend six months up there. When the Russian Soyuz capsule holding him sprang a coolant leak back in December, the Russian space agency ruled that the craft wasn’t safe enough to bring Rubio and his colleagues back. In March, it made a solo trip back home, while in February a new Soyuz capsule made its way to the ISS. 

[Related: “How Russia’s war in Ukraine almost derailed Europe’s Mars rover” ]

“Rubio’s journey in space embodies the essence of exploration,” NASA administrator Bill Nelson said in a social media statement on Monday, adding that Rubio’s dedication to space research paves the way for future endeavors by a new generation of astronauts. 

While Rubio’s feat beats out previous records set by retired NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei in 2022 and Scott Kelly in 2015-2016, Russia still holds the record for longest trip to space. Between January 1994 and March 1995, astronaut Valeri Polyakov spent 437 continuous days in orbit. Another Russian astronaut, Gennadi Padalka, set the record of most cumulative days in space—879—over the course of five different flights in 2015.

This adventure certainly wasn’t planned, but Rubio is taking it in stride. “I think this [duration] is really significant, in the sense that it teaches us that the human body can endure, it can adapt and—as we prepare to push back to the moon and then from there, onward onto hopefully Mars and further on into the solar system—I think it’s really important that we learn just how the human body learns to adapt, and how we can optimize that process so that we can improve our performance as we explore further and further out from Earth,” he said in a recent interview with ABC’s Good Morning America.

At 11 AM Tuesday, NASA broadcasted a pre-recorded “space-to-ground” chat between Rubio and Vande Hei, during which Rubio acknowledged his family. “They’ve been a key component, as much as I appreciate the team and how critical the entire human space flight team has been to this, really my family has been the cornerstone that’s inspired me to keep somewhat of a good attitude as I’ve been up here,” he adds. “Having [family] made it so much easier to be up here, and I’m incredibly grateful for that.”

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Nuclear fuel cells the size of poppy seeds could power NASA’s Artemis lunar base once it begins operations around 2030. Designed by researchers at Bangor University’s Nuclear Futures Institute in the UK, the miniscule power source—dubbed “Trisofuel”—is intended to run on a micro nuclear generator roughly the size of a small car created by Rolls Royce. According to a report in the BBC, engineers intend to begin fully testing their new fuel within the next few months. If successful, Trisofuel’s uses could even extend far beyond the moon’s surface.

Momentum is quickly building towards establishing a permanent human presence on the moon, likely near its south pole where scientists hope to find water-based ice to help support habitation. NASA’s ongoing Artemis project is making progress towards its proposed end-of-decade base construction, most recently with its first successful mission in November 2022. Last month, India made history as the fourth nation to land a probe on the moon via its Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, as well as the first to do so at the lunar south pole.

[Related: India’s successful moon landing makes lunar history.]

Given its size and relative power, a resource like Trisofuel could be vital to lunar bases’ success. With its portability, however, the new nuclear fuel cell could easily be adapted to a range of other scenarios, both here on Earth and beyond.  Phylis Makurunje, a researcher involved Trisofuel testing, explained to the BBC that the tiny fuel pellets could be used to power rockets that one day take humans to Mars. “It is very powerful—it gives very high thrust, the push it gives to the rocket. This is very important because it enables rockets to reach the farthest planets,” Makurunje explained.

Trisofuel may be so strong, in fact, that it could nearly halve the time it takes to reach the Red Planet—from an estimated nine months down to between four-to-six months. “Nuclear power is the only way we currently have to provide the power for that length of space travel,” Bangor University professor Simon Middleburgh said in a release. “The fuel must be extremely robust and survive the forces of launch and then be dependable for many years.”

At a much more localized level, researchers believe that micro generators running Trisofuel could also be deployed to disaster zones with compromised electrical grids.

Having a reliable, powerful fuel source is one thing—having structures to house such systems is another hurdle altogether. Of course, researchers are currently hard at work optimizing construction options for proposed lunar base designs. Potential building materials could even be drawn from the moon itself, using lunar regolith to reinforce 3D-printed bricks to compose base structures.

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The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has taken some new images of a star that exploded during the Reagan Administration. The space telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) helped capture the images of a world renowned supernova called Supernova 1987A (SN 1987A) in September 2022. The jaw-dropping new images were officially made public on August 31. 

[Related: An amateur astronomer spotted a new supernova remarkably close to Earth.]

Supernova 1987A is roughly 168,000 light-years away from Earth and located in the Large Magellanic Cloud–a satellite dwarf galaxy of the Milky Way. The supernova is the remnants of a blue supergiant star called Sanduleak–69 202. It was believed to hold a mass about 20 times that of the sun before the explosion was detected in February 1987. It is also the closest observed supernova since 1604, when Kepler’s Supernova illuminated the Milky Way. Supernova 1987A has been the target of observations at wavelengths ranging from gamma rays to radio waves for nearly 40 years. 

The latest image shows a central structure of inner ejecta similar to a keyhole. Clumpy gas and dust pack up the center that is ejected by the supernova explosion. According to NASA, the dust is so dense that even near-infrared light that Webb can detect can’t penetrate it, shaping the dark “hole” in the keyhole. 

Surrounding the inner keyhole is a bright equatorial ring which forms a band around the “waist” of the supernova which connects the two faint arms of hourglass-shaped outer rings. The equatorial ring is formed from material ejected tens of thousands of years before the supernova even exploded.. Bright hot spots in the ring appeared as the supernova’s shock wave hit it, and now exist externally to the ring, with diffuse emission surrounding it. These are where the supernova shocks hit more exterior material.

The Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes and the Chandra X-ray Observatory have also observed Supernova 1987A, but JWST’s sensitivity and spatial resolution abilities showed a new feature in this supernova remnant–small crescent-like structures. The crescents are believed to be part of the outer layers of gas that shot out from the supernova explosion. They are very bright, which may be an indication of an optical phenomenon called limb brightening. This results from being able to observe the expanding material in three dimensions. “The viewing angle makes it appear that there is more material in these two crescents than there actually may be,” NASA wrote in a press release.

Before JWST, the now-retired Spitzer telescope observed this supernova in infrared throughout its entire 16 year lifespan, providing astronomers with key data about how Supernova 1987A’s emissions evolved over time. However, Spitzer couldn’t observe the supernova with the same level of clarity and detail as JWST.  

[Related: JWST captures an unprecedented ‘prequel’ to a galaxy.]

There are still several mysteries surrounding this supernova, namely some unanswered questions about the neutron star that should have formed in the aftermath of the supernova explosion. There is some indirect evidence for the neutron star in the form of X-ray emission that was detected by NASA’s Chandra and NuSTAR X-ray observatories. Additionally, some observations taken by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array indicate the neutron star may be hidden within one of the dust clumps at the heart of the remnant.

JWST will continue to observe the supernova over time, using the NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) instruments that give astronomers the ability to capture new, high-fidelity infrared data over time. 

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By year’s end, NASA will begin testing a fridge-sized laser communications upgrade aboard the International Space Station. It’s a major relay system demonstration for the ISS, and one which could chart a path forward for how humans communicate not just in low-orbit, but on the lunar surface and beyond. 

Although radio has long served as both piloted and unpiloted missions’ primary communications method, as Space.com notes, laser communication arrays boast a number of benefits. From a purely logistical standpoint, the equipment is both cheaper and lighter-weight than radio devices. Meanwhile, lasers’ shorter wavelengths ensure far more information can be transferred at one time compared to radio waves.

Once launched aboard a forthcoming SpaceX commercial resupply services mission, NASA’s Integrated LCRD Low Earth Orbit User Modem and Amplifier Terminal (ILLUMA-T) will work alongside the agency’s Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) launched in December 2021. ILLUMA-T will use infrared light to send and receive laser communications at a higher data rate than previously available. Once installed, these transmissions’ higher rates will allow for more videos and images to transmit back to Earth, all at around 1.2 gigabits-per-second—comparable to a solid internet connection here on Earth.

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

“Laser communications offer missions more flexibility and an expedited way to get data back from space,” said Badri Younes, former deputy associate administrator for NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program. “We are integrating this technology on demonstrations near Earth, at the Moon, and in deep space.”

After installation, ILLUMA-T will first beam data to-and-from the LCRD satellite hovering 22,000 miles above Earth in geosynchronous orbit. Meanwhile, the LCRD will transmit data back to Earth at two stations in California and Hawaii—spots chosen for their comparatively low cloud cover, which often impedes laser transmissions.

“ILLUMA-T is not the first mission to test laser communications in space but brings NASA closer to operational infusion of the technology,” NASA wrote in a recent statement,  In 2022, a small CubeSat in low Earth orbit began testing laser communications as part of the TeraByte InfraRed Delivery System. Before that, the Lunar Laser Communications Demonstration also transferred data to-and-from lunar orbit during 2014’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer mission. Still, NASA explains that all of these tests combined will further help advance aerospace communications between Earth, the moon, Mars, and beyond.

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In 2022, NASA’s Artemis I mission traveled 1.4 million miles into space. When the Orion spacecraft flew by the moon, future trees were on board. The uncrewed spacecraft contained seeds for five tree species, including sweetgums, Douglas-firs, sycamores, loblolly pines, and giant sequoias. After the 25.5 day mission, the Forest Service successfully germinated the seeds. Now, community organizations and schools across the United States now apply to receive a seedling grown from one of the tree seeds that flew by the moon that will grow to become official Artemis Moon Trees. 

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

NASA and the United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service will distribute the Artemis Moon Tree seedlings in an effort to “create new ways for communities home on Earth to connect with humanity’s exploration of space for the benefit of all” and promote STEM in the classroom and beyond. 

Institutions that can apply for a seedling include universities, museums, science centers, organizations that serve K-12 schools, and government organizations. Applications are posted here and are due by Friday October 6. 

The Artemis I Mission launched on November 16, 2022 and was 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. Orion returned to Earth after 25.5 days in space, where it journeyed 270,000 miles away from Earth, orbited the moon, and collected crucial data along the way. A plush Snoopy zero-gravity indicator, LEGO minifigures, and three ‘moonikins,’ were also aboard the spacecraft with the Artemis seeds.

“NASA’s Artemis moon trees are bringing the science and ingenuity of space exploration back down to Earth,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement. “Last year, these seeds flew on the Artemis I mission 40,000 miles beyond the Moon. With the help of the USDA, this new generation of Moon trees will plant the spirit of exploration across our communities and inspire the next generation of explorers.”

[Related: Before the Artemis II crew can go to the moon, they need to master flying high above Earth.]

The Artemis seeds are also the second generation of Moon Trees. In 1971, Apollo 14 Command Module Pilot Stuart Roosa, carried hundreds of tree seeds about the mission as a part of his personal kit. Roosa was a former Forest Service smokejumper, a group of specially trained wildland firefighters who are often the first to respond to remote firefighters. When Apollo 14 returned, the Forest Service germinated the seeds and the first generation of Apollo Moon Tree seedlings were then planted around the United States.

NASA and the Forest Service hope that this next 21st Century generation of Moon Trees carry on the legacy of inspiration launched over 50 years ago. 

“The seeds that flew on the Artemis mission will soon be Moon Trees standing proudly on campuses and institutions across the country,” Forest Service chief Randy Moore said in a statement. “These future Moon Trees, like those that came before them, serve as a potent symbol that when we put our mind to a task, there is nothing we can’t accomplish. They will inspire future generations of scientists, whose research underpins all that we do here at the Forest Service.”

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On December 6, 1968, Time magazine published an issue with a metaphor illustrated on the cover: a Soviet cosmonaut and an American astronaut were in a sprint to the moon. The actual space race had kicked off a decade earlier, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, in 1957. It ended less than a year after Time published its cover, when US Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the moon on July 20, 1969. The excitement wore off quickly—the last humans to step foot on the moon, the crew of Apollo 17, did so in 1972. So far, no one has gone back. 

But that’s changing. NASA is committed to landing astronauts on the moon again in 2025 as part of the space agency’s Artemis Program. China has plans to land humans on the moon by 2030. In the meantime, robotic missions to the moon are increasing: Russia’s endeavor to return to the moon for the first time in 47 years, the robotic Luna-25 mission, crashed this week, and India hopes to make its first soft landing there on August 23 with its Chandrayaan-3 lander. 

With so many nations headed for the moon, including an increasingly aggressive if diminished Russia, is the world at the cusp of a second space race? 

The temptation to reach for the historical space race as a model is understandable, but as long as we’re mapping history onto current events, it may not be the best guide, according to Cathleen Lewis, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museums curator of international space programs. “In my opinion, this isn’t a new race,” she says. “If you want to use historical events, this is more of a gold rush.” 

Or, more precisely, an ice rush. In 2018, scientists discovered water ice preserved in the deep, permanent shadows of polar craters. The US, China, Russia, and India are targeting portions of the lunar South Pole where that frozen resource should be. Water can be used to create rocket fuel or in lunar manufacturing. But it is heavy, and therefore expensive, to launch from Earth.  

Space agencies “haven’t quite worked out” how they are going to use this ice, or for “what technology to what end,” Lewis says. “But everyone wants to get there because we now know there is water ice to be found.” 

[Related on PopSci+: A DIY-rocket club’s risky dream of launching a human to the edge of space]

But it’s not just about the ice. The technological basis for all of this activity is entirely different than in the mid-20th century, Lewis points out. Back then, the US and the Soviet Union were developing the technology to go to the moon for the very first time. 

President Kennedy backed the lunar program because his advisors convinced him the race was technologically winnable, she says. While this competition had a destination, it also referred to the way “the USSR was racing to the maximum capacity of their technological limits.”

The Soviets had difficulty developing vehicles powerful enough to launch a crewed mission to the moon. The US created the Saturn V rocket, a singularly capable technology that was the most powerful ever launched until the first flight of NASA’s new Space Launch System (SLS) rocket in late 2022. 

Today, multiple nations and even private companies have the technological capability to send spacecraft to the moon. Space itself is now more crowded, too, host to satellites tied into terrestrial economies: carrying communications, providing guidance signals, and observing agricultural water and other resources on the ground. 

The goal is no longer to achieve technological superiority. Instead, nations are rushing to acquire existing technologies that are becoming a prerequisite for economic independence and affluence. “This is part of being in a world in a mature space age, that these are no longer optional programs, they’re no longer pickup games, jockeying to see who’s first,” Lewis says. “These are essential, existential programs for 21st century existence.”

[Related: China’s astronauts embark on a direct trip to their brand new space station]

In this sense, the current wave of moon programs are different from those in the past because they are more internally focused on economies, rather than serving as a non-military proxy contest between two superpowers. China, Lewis notes, has scaled its exploration of space to match its economic development over the past 30 years.

However, that’s not to say it will remain that way. The historical Gold Rush, after all, led to conflict over that valuable resource. Once enough players are regularly operating on the moon with regularity, the opportunities for disputes will increase. 

“Who gets to choose what we do with the moon?” Lewis asks. “We haven’t sorted out issues about who has mining and drilling rights.” 

The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 forbids nations from making territorial claims on celestial bodies, but permits using resources there. Whether that use includes mining materials to sell for a profit on Earth is less clear. “We haven’t had to deal with that profit in space,” Lewis says. ”I’m glad I’m not an attorney who specializes in these sorts of things because it’s a part of it that makes my head ache.”

But there may be plenty of time for space lawyers and diplomats to figure that out. Because, when it comes to the moon, even gold rushes move slowly. “We’ve seen missions fail,” Lewis says, such as India’s Chandrayaan-2 mission that crashed on the moon in 2019. “The moon is a lot easier than it was 60 years ago, but it’s still difficult to get there.”

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Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft was supposed to depart Earth last month in a crewed test flight scheduled for July 21. It never left the ground. Problems with the spacecraft’s parachute system and the discovery of flammable tape around internal electronics led NASA, in June, to indefinitely postpone the flight. 

The work to fix the problems with the Starliner won’t be complete until next year, NASA and Boeing officials announced this week. ”We’re anticipating that we’re going to be ready with the spacecraft in early March,” Boeing Starliner vice president and program manager Mark Nappi said during an August 7 press conference. 

It’s just the latest in a long series of problems and delays that have plagued the Starliner since its first test flight. And, in the meantime, SpaceX has been eating the more venerable aerospace giant’s lunch.

In 2014, NASA awarded both SpaceX and Boeing contracts to develop spacecraft for the space agency’s Commercial Crew Program. The goal at the time, according to Laura Forczyk, founder of the space industry analysis firm Astralytical, was to provide NASA with rides to space after the 2011 retirement of the Space Shuttle, without relying on Russia and its Soyuz spacecraft. Boeing was the clear favorite. 

“They chose to do similar redundant systems, Dragon and Starliner, for the purpose of at least one succeeding. That one was assumed to be Starliner,” Forczyk says. “And it was a question whether SpaceX would even succeed at all.”

SpaceX completed testing of its Crew Dragon spacecraft, and then flew its first official mission with NASA astronauts in November 2020. But computer issues kept Boeing’s spacecraft from completing its uncrewed flight test, the Orbital Flight Test (OFT), in December 2019. 

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

Then, in April 2021, issues with an engine valve—due to exposure to salty air at Cape Canaveral, Florida—led to the cancellation of the re-attempted uncrewed flight test, OFT-2. Boeing wouldn’t successfully complete that test until May 2022. 

The next step in Starliner testing, a crewed flight test, or CFT, was originally scheduled for December 2022. This was delayed multiple times—in February, March, and April—before the July launch date was postponed due to the issues with the parachute and flammable tape. 

According to Nappi, Boeing has redesigned linkages for the parachutes to make them more robust. The aerospace company plans to conduct a “drop test” of the new design in November, releasing a version of the Starliner from 11,000 feet over the Nevada desert. Boeing is also removing the flammable tape where possible, and considering ways to place protective coatings on the tape in areas where it cannot be so easily replaced. 

Despite marking March 2024 as the month when Starliner could be ready, NASA and Boeing do not have an official launch date in mind. And given how the program has run so far, that’s probably a wise decision, according to Forczyk. 

“There’s multiple things that could happen that will continue to delay this,” she says. “Just based on the hardware testing, I do believe that we’d have to see everything go perfectly from now until March in order for them to even optimistically consider March as a date for their next true test mission.” That an aerospace giant like Boeing is still dealing with fundamental engineering troubles this late in the game, while an upstart like SpaceX is about to fly its seventh crewed mission for NASA on August 25, has to be embarrassing for Boeing, she adds. 

More importantly though, it’s costing Boeing money: NASA awarded the company $4.2 billion to develop the Starliner in 2014, and it is on the hook for all costs beyond that amount. CNBC estimates the company has lost around $1.5 billion on Starliner so far. 

[Related on PopSci+: A DIY-rocket club’s risky dream of launching a human to the edge of space]

”This program has been such a money loss for Boeing that it makes me wonder how committed Boeing is going to be to the continuation of this program,” Forcysk says. She notes that Boeing has said it will fulfill its obligations to NASA, which include six crewed flights to the ISS, but the company may no longer be interested in trying to offer Starliner services to other governments or private customers. 

NASA, meanwhile, may soon have alternatives to Starliner. 

“Coming on board, perhaps, is Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser, which has been in development for like 20 years,” Forczyk says. And Blue Origin’s New Glenn spacecraft is expected to begin flying commercial payloads by August 2024. 

With those alternatives or backups to Crew Dragon flights, and NASA’s planned retirement of the ISS by the end of the decade, it could be that Starliner is a very expensive project that flies fewer than 10 missions. 

The end result is that SpaceX, once considered the underdog by NASA, looks to be the primary human space launch contractor for NASA for the foreseeable future. “These other systems that are in development will offer competition, but at what point does SpaceX become less dominant?” Forczyk says. “Right now SpaceX is so far ahead of everyone else in human-rated orbital launch that it’s going to take a lot for other companies to catch up.”

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Sealed safely inside the International Space Station, astronauts dress for comfort and convenience. Their typical getups—short-sleeve collared shirts and long cargo pants—are regular Earth clothes, sourced from retailers that include Cabela’s and Lands’ End. But astronauts require exceptional attire when outside the ISS’s climate-controlled confines. NASA’s chunky spacesuits are, essentially, spacecraft condensed to human size. They protect wearers from an environment that swings from 250 degrees Fahrenheit in the sun to minus 250 degrees in the shade. 

Inside the suits, spacewalkers often work up a sweat, despite cooling tubes that wick away body heat. Extravehicular activities, or EVAs, may involve hours of strenuous labor. To stay warm and pressurized, astronauts also have to wear layers—including an inner form-fitting garment akin to long underwear—that they re-wear and even share. Complicating matters still: There are no laundry machines on the ISS. Because water is so valuable, washing a suit in orbit is not an option. Which is why NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and other organizations have asked textiles experts to investigate the problem of biocontamination in suits and develop fabrics that might solve it.

[Related: Future astronauts and space tourists could rock 3D printed ‘second skin’]

Heavy work in heavy gear leads to filth. After mock EVAs on Earth, technicians who help peel stand-in astronauts out of their suits have learned to turn their heads away on the first unzip to avoid a stinky blast, says Gernot Grömer, director of the Austrian Space Forum, a research group that conducts simulated astronautical missions. “Everybody sees those beautiful, shiny white spacesuits. But nobody knows what it smells like at the ISS.” (It’s not particularly pleasant.)

As these suits are used again and again, worries go beyond foul odors to hygiene and health hazards. The possibility for biocontamination, which includes human debris, bacteria, and other foreign substances, may get worse as spacefarers travel past low-Earth orbit for longer trips to the moon. 

“Washing spacesuit interiors on a consistent basis may well not be practical” in lunar habitats, ESA materials and processes engineer Malgorzata Holynska says in a statement. That space agency is investing in unusual ways to keep suits clean, such as antibiotic chemicals churned out by microbes.

Some of the fabrics were infused with copper, which has impressive antimicrobial properties. When bacteria touch the element, it destabilizes their cell walls and membranes, making the microbes vulnerable to damage from the metal’s ions. The NASA scientists also examined textiles treated with silver—likewise toxic to germs on contact—and silicone.

After observing the gunk that grew on the fabrics for up to 14 days, they found that only one compound kept bacteria and fungi below targets set by NASA’s Constellation program—a now-defunct plan for lunar missions in which a spacesuit would have been reused up to 90 times in six months. The winner was a solution of silver molecules used for disinfecting hospital dressings and other fabrics. But the metal ion was too good at its job. “It kills everything,” Orndoff says. Total sterility can cause even more problems than grime, given than humans need a balanced ecosystem of millions of microorganisms to keep the skin and other organs healthy.

The experiments showed that concentrations of other antimicrobial compounds were generally too low to be effective. Some microbes would initially dip in numbers, but the resistant ones would repopulate the samples. The scientists worried that, at high-enough amounts, antimicrobial particles would irritate anyone wearing the fabric or pollute the space station. “After that we never really revisited antimicrobial treatments,” Orndoff explains, for the “simple reason” that it would present complications for the ISS life-support system that provides clean air and water. 

[Related: Onboard the ISS, nothing goes to waste—including sweat and pee]

While Orndoff’s team did not pursue their idea further, NASA’s commercial contractors have. In 2022, the agency hired US companies Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace to develop the next generation of suits for spacewalks. Earlier this year, Axiom unveiled a prototype suit that Artemis III astronauts might use to explore the lunar south pole. In a statement to Popular Science, the company says: “The Axiom Space AxEMU spacesuits will use textiles that have antimicrobial properties to reduce biocontamination.” The suits’ cooling system will also use biocide in its water loops “to prevent microbial buildup.” The company did not share the exact type of the agents, citing their proprietary nature.

One metabolite in particular, named violacein, survived every hostile attack with its antimicrobial properties intact. The purple-black substance can be found in the bacteria that live on the skin of red-backed salamanders. It’s so good at killing microbes that some biologists suspect it protects the amphibians from deadly chytrid fungus infections. The Austrian Space Forum plans to field-test violacein in a simulated Mars mission, in which six astronaut roleplayers will spend four weeks in Armenia’s rugged mountains in 2024. 

Grömer envisions a future where this pigment’s potent defenses leave the planet, not only on treated spacesuits but also towels and other gear. While dirty linens might just sound like a chore, they can be a breeding ground for microbes, which thrive in low gravity and may mutate faster in space. “When you go to Mars, you’re at the edge of what’s technologically possible, so little nuisances can transform into real disaster-prone situations,” Grömer says. “And so if there’s a risk we can control, hell, let’s do it.”

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A team of small, solar-powered rovers are traveling to the moon next year. There, they will attempt to autonomously organize and carry out a mission with next-to-no input from NASA’s human controllers. If successful, similar robotic fleets could one day tackle a multitude of mission tasks, thus allowing their human team members to focus on a host of other responsibilities.

Three robots, each roughly the size of a carry-on suitcase, comprise the Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration (CADRE) project. The trio will descend onto the lunar surface via tethers deployed by a 13-foot-tall lander. From there, NASA managers back on Earth, such as CADRE principal investigator Jean-Pierre de la Croix, plan to transmit a basic command such as “Go explore this region.”

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

“[T]he rovers figure out everything else: when they’ll do the driving, what path they’ll take, how they’ll maneuver around local hazards,” de la Croix explained in an August 2 announcement via NASA. “You only tell them the high-level goal, and they have to determine how to accomplish it.”

The trio will even elect a “leader” at their mission’s outset to divvy up work responsibilities, which will reportedly include traveling in formation, exploring a roughly 4,300 square foot region of the moon, and creating 3D topographical maps of the area using stereoscopic cameras. The results of CADRE’s roughly 14-day robot excursion will better indicate the feasibility of deploying similar autonomous teams on space missions in the years to come.

As NASA notes, the mission’s robot trifecta requires a careful balance of form and function. Near the moon’s equator—where the CADRE bots will land—temperatures can rise to as high as 237 degrees Fahrenheit. Each machine will need to be hardy enough to survive the harsh lunar climate and lightweight enough to get the job done, all while housing the computing power necessary to autonomously operate. To solve for this, NASA engineers believe installing a 30-minute wake-sleep cycle will allow for the robots to sufficiently cool off, assess their respective heath, and then elect a new leader to continue organizing their mission as necessary.

“It could change how we do exploration in the future,” explains Subha Comandur, CADRE project manager for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “The question for future missions will become: ‘How many rovers do we send, and what will they do together?’”

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Terms like “cultural heritage” and “archaeology” might conjure Indiana Jones-lie scenes of old and ancient things buried under the sands of time. But even now, each one of us is producing material that could interest future humans trying to record and study our own era.

For those who believe that space exploration and astronauts’ first departures from Earth are culturally significant, then there is a wealth of objects that spacefarers—crewed and uncrewed, past and present—have left in the realms beyond our atmosphere.

“This stuff is an extension of our species’ migration, beginning in Africa and extending to the solar system,” says Justin Holcomb, an archaeologist with the Kansas Geological Survey. “I argue that a piece of a lander is the exact same thing as a piece of a stone tool in Africa.”

This idea is the heart of what Holcomb and his colleagues call “planetary geoarchaeology.” In a paper published in the journal Geoarchaeology on July 21, these “space archaeologists” detail how they want to study the interactions between the items we’ve left around the solar system and the  hostile environments they now occupy. This research, the authors believe, will only become more important as human activity on the moon is set to blossom in the decades to come.

The idea of documenting and preserving what we leave behind in space isn’t a completely new concept. In the early 2000s, New Mexico State University anthropologist Beth O’Leary (who co-authored the paper with Holcomb) cataloged objects scattered around Tranquility Base, Apollo 11’s landing site on the moon. O’Leary later helped get some of those artifacts registered in California and New Mexico as culturally significant properties.

“I would argue that Tranquility Base could easily be considered the most important archaeological site that exists,” says Justin St. P. Walsh, an archaeologist at Chapman University in California who was not involved with the new paper. The base’s lunar soil can’t be declared a cultural heritage site because that would violate the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which prevents any country from claiming the soil of the moon or another world. But scholars can still list objects found there as heritage.

Naturally, O’Leary’s catalog includes the remnants of Apollo 11’s lunar module and its famed US flag, along with empty food bags, utensils, hygiene equipment, and wires. What is space junk to some is precious culture to space archaeologists. Even long-festering astronaut poop has its value—“that’s human DNA,” Holcomb says.

Archaeological sites on Earth are deeply impacted by the processes of the world around them, both natural and artificial. Likewise, Tranquility Base doesn’t just sit in tranquility. The moon’s surface is constantly bombarded by cosmic rays and micrometeoroids; even faraway human landings can kick up regolith showers.

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

Holcomb and his colleagues want to study the various states objects are left in to learn how sites on the moon and other worlds change over time—and how to preserve them for our distant descendants. “We think in deep time scales,” says Holcomb. “We’re not thinking in just the next five years. We’re thinking in a thousand years.”

That sort of research, the authors say, is still quite new. Holcomb, for instance, wants to study what happens to NASA’s Spirit rover on Mars as a sand dune washes over it. Other planetary geoarchaeology projects might focus on what the moon’s environment has wrought upon artificial materials we’ve left on the lunar surface.

“We can find out more about what happened to [castoffs] in the length of time they’ve been there,” says Alice Gorman, an archaeologist at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, who also wasn’t a co-author. 

On Earth, Gorman and colleagues plan to replicate Apollo astronauts’ boot prints in simulated lunar soil and subject them to forces like rocket exhaust. Gorman believes even engineers with no interest in archaeology may want to take interest in work like this. “These same processes will be happening to any new habitats built on the surface,” she says. “With the archaeological sites, we get a bit of a longer-term perspective.”

The moon is the immediate focus for both this paper’s authors and other space archaeologists, and it’s easy to see why. After several decades of occasional uncrewed missions and flybys, NASA’s Artemis program promises to spearhead a mass return to the satellite’s surface. The Artemis program is slated to land on the moon’s south pole, far away from existing Apollo landing sites. But a flurry of private companies have emerged with the goal of not just touching the moon as Apollo did, but extracting its resources.

Space archaeologists fear that all this future activity will place past sites at risk. “We barely know how to operate on the moon,” says Walsh.

There are some indications that the broader space community is thinking about the problem. The Artemis Accords (a US-initiated document that aims to outline the ethical guidelines for the Artemis era) and the Vancouver Recommendations on Space Mining (a 2020 white paper by primarily Canadian academics that proposes a framework for sustainable space mining) express a desire to protect space heritage sites.

Of course, these are only words on nonbinding paper, and space archaeologists do not think they go far enough. Holcomb and colleagues want experts in their field to be involved in planning—for instance, steering scientific and commercial space missions away from spots where they might interfere with existing cultural heritage. There is earthbound precedent for such a role: In many countries, archaeologists already assist infrastructure projects.

“We know we’re going to go there someday, so let’s make sure that we have the protections in place before we go and ruin things,” says Walsh.

[Related: What an extraterrestrial archaeological dig could tell us about space culture]

Moves like this can’t protect lunar heritage from every possible harm: A future satellite could very well crash-land on Tranquility Base and wreck the last remnants of Apollo 11 there. But space archaeologists say that it is valuable to take any steps we can.

“I think the paper is a really fantastic demonstration of how any mission to the moon has to be about more than just engineering, and it has to be interdisciplinary,” Gorman notes. “It’s very timely that it’s been published now, while there’s still time to incorporate its recommendations into actual lunar missions.”

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If you want to see a retired NASA space shuttle, you have a few options. You could travel to Virginia and see Discovery, or journey to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida to check out the angled Atlantis. And don’t forget about Enterprise in New York City, a shuttle that never flew into space but did glide through the atmosphere. 

Then there’s Endeavour. Right now, that space shuttle, which made 25 trips to space and back, is on display horizontally at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. But the museum has towering plans for the shuttle: It’s going to move it into a vertical position, and display it with solid rocket boosters and an external fuel tank, all attached together as if the ship was about to blast off into space. When that happens, it’ll be the only shuttle displayed vertically. And instead of having to cope with the forces of a launch, the orbiter assembly will need to withstand any California earthquakes.

As Endeavour is now, “it’s a great display, you can walk under it, look up at the tiles—it’s wonderful,” says Jeffrey Rudolph, the president and CEO of the museum. “But it will be amazing, and we think [a] far better display, when it’s vertical, with the whole stack. This’ll be 200 feet tall—20 stories tall—and you’ll be able to look at it [from] multiple perspectives, multiple views, at multiple levels.” 

To get it into the launch position requires an operation worthy of an actual NASA mission. It kicked off in earnest on July 20, when two components called aft skirts came in via crane and were lowered into position on a concrete pad. Each of those aft skirts are as wide as 18 feet and weigh 13,000 pounds and have both lifted off on actual shuttle flights. 

The aft skirts comprise the base of the solid rocket boosters (SRBs). Other segments, called the solid rocket motors, which are about 116 feet tall, will join them to make up each SRB, as will parts called forward assemblies. Those two SRBs will weigh in at a total of a quarter million pounds together. Before Endeavour can join those SRBs, the 76,000-pound external tank (technically known as ET-94) must be moved into place, too.

The plan holds that early next year, the 176,000-pound Endeavour itself will be lifted into launch position using two cranes, one of which will simply make sure the orbiter’s tail doesn’t hit the ground.  

For this whole assembly operation, “we’re basically following the same process that Kennedy Space Center used,” Rudolph notes, adding that no one has put together a shuttle at a non-NASA facility before. As an example, this incredible time-lapse video shows the space shuttle Atlantis being lifted and then mated with its solid rocket boosters and external fuel tank for the very last shuttle flight in July of 2011. 

Like a real NASA launch, Rudolph adds that weather will play a key role in when they actually carry out that maneuver of lifting the actual orbiter into place. Windy conditions, which could interact with the orbiter, would cause a delay. “It is a glider,” he points out. “It’s got wings.” 

[Related: Astronauts explain what it’s like to be ‘shot off the planet’]

The whole flight assembly—Endeavour, the solid rocket boosters, and the tank—will together weigh just over half a million pounds, according to the California Science Center. “We’ve got the last hardware—the last external tank—so it’s the only place in the world you’ll be able to see a full space shuttle stack in launch position,” Rudolph says.

To mitigate against the possibility of an earthquake, the whole shuttle configuration will be perched on a thick concrete pad that weighs more than 3 million pounds. “It’s a 8-foot-thick concrete pad that is surrounded on all four sides by a 3-foot moat, basically,” Rudolph explains. And under that pad are a half-dozen seismic isolators, which Rudolph compares to “big ball bearings.” The Los Angeles Times has helpful graphics.

“That whole pad can move independently of the building, and will withstand any foreseeable earthquake,” he adds. 

Rudolph says that it will be a couple years before the facility is actually open, and that the entire planned Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center that will house Endeavour and other exhibits costs $400 million. According to a previous NASA estimate, it cost around $450 million to actually launch a shuttle. A more recent estimate via the Center for Strategic and International Studies put the number at well over $1 billion for each launch, in fiscal year 2021 dollars. 

Rudolph says that they had hoped to display a space shuttle in this way starting as early as three decades ago. “I actually have a rendering from 1992 showing a space shuttle in launch position,” he says. With any luck, the shuttle will be moved into place in January of 2024. 

Watch a short video about the new facility, below.

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Before a spacecraft lands on Mars, or futuristic cargo planes soar above our cities, they have to be designed and rigorously tested in wind tunnels. Even passenger airliners, such as Boeing’s 747 jets used by major airlines, are subject to such tests. These facilities allow engineers to “fly” aircraft and spacecraft just a few feet off the ground. NASA, which has a 100-year history of using the machines, is finally building a new one, updated for the 21st century—the agency’s first new wind tunnel in over 40 years.

The NASA Flight Dynamic Research Facility (FDRF), slated to open in 2025 at the Langley Research Center in Virginia, will be over 100 feet tall. NASA leaders think it’s going to be key for creating the spacecraft of the future. The agency plans to use the new wind tunnel to prepare for human spaceflight to the Moon and Mars, plus robotic missions to two solar system worlds with thick atmospheres: Venus and Titan, Saturn’s methane-rich moon. It will also be key for the next generation of Earth-bound aircraft, which NASA hopes to make more sustainable, in line with its goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. 

“What we’re going to do with this facility is literally change the world,” said Clayton Turner, director of NASA Langley Research Center, in a press release from the facility’s groundbreaking ceremony. “The humble spirit of our researchers and this effort will allow us to reach for new heights, to reveal the unknown, for the betterment of humankind.” 

Wind tunnels push air past a stationary object, usually using huge fans, to simulate the motion of air around, over, and under flying craft. This allows engineers to tweak their designs based on what they see in the experiment, making vehicles more stable and aerodynamic. The wind tunnel is a safe place to try out new technologies, and a key step in testing the safety of any craft before a human jumps aboard. It’s also key for rockets and spacecraft, where engineers must ensure the vehicle can safely traverse a planet’s atmosphere. (Biologists have even used wind tunnels—though not NASA’s—to observe flying geese.)

Langley’s most recently built wind tunnel is the National Transonic Facility, constructed in 1980. That will remain in operation, but the FDRF will replace two existing wind tunnels, both near 80 years old: the 12-foot Low-Speed Spin Tunnel from 1939, and the 20-foot Vertical Spin Tunnel from 1940. The flying machines tested in the new facility will be beyond what the original builders could have dreamed. “We haven’t tested anything with a propeller on it in decades,” joked NASA Langley chief engineer Charles “Mike” Fremaux at a recent community lecture about the project.

[Related: How to build a massive wind farm]

The first NASA wind tunnel (which was the US government’s first wind tunnel) was built all the way back in 1921 at Langley. It was basically a glorified box with some powerful fans. Since then, the agency has built more than 40 wind tunnels, many with specialized purposes. Some are tiny, meant only for miniature models, and some are large enough to fit a whole jet. Each produces a different temperature, pressure, and speed of wind, meant to simulate the different conditions a craft might encounter in the real world. Some wind tunnels can move air at over 4,000 miles per hour, significantly quicker than a 747’s usual cruising speed of around 600 mph.

Many famous missions have started their journeys in a wind tunnel. The Curiosity rover’s parachute, for example, was first tested in the National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex at NASA Ames in California, long before it ballooned open in the Red Planet’s atmosphere. In the past few years, key parts of NASA’s Artemis missions, which aim to return Americans to the moon, including the Orion crew capsule and the SLS rocket, were tested in wind tunnels.

The new wind tunnel at the FDRF will be more efficient than past facilities, cutting down on costs. Plus, it’ll be safer for the staff running the wind tunnel tests, who used to run the risk of getting sucked into the machine as they deployed models. “Just like we do now…a very skilled technician is going to launch the models by hand. That’s not a joke,” said Fremaux in his presentation. In the past, there have only been some minor injuries, and most accidents just damage the facility itself. But, now there will be more fail-safes to minimize the risks.

It really might even pave the way for flying cars, too, by testing the tech for vertical takeoff, as demonstrated by Back to the Future’s hover cars or a classic Jetsons’-style flying car. Those are far-out ideas, but they’d never be able to take off without the help of the time-tested wind tunnel.

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The universe is a dusty place. Cosmic particles can range from the size of a single large molecule up to a bit larger than a grain of terrestrial sand, and these can accumulate in billowing clouds light-years wide. The general scientific understanding was that dust piles up gradually, produced by stars and supernovae over hundreds of millions of years. Dust is usually a fixture of mature galaxies, or so astronomers thought. 

But in a new paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature, astronomers found a specific type of cosmic dust, high in carbon, in young distant galaxies just 800 million years after the Big Bang. That accumulation happened far earlier than current theories of dust formation suggest is possible. It’s a finding that could change how astronomers understand the creation of stars and evolution of galaxies in the early universe, and ultimately, how that young universe grew into the cosmos we know today. 

For a long time, astronomers treated the cosmic stuff the way we might view a dust bunny under a sofa: as a nuisance. Scientists tried to look beyond large clouds of cosmic dust, treated more like obstacles than subjects of study in their own right. “The way most astronomers interact with it is that [dust] actually absorbs a lot of the light that we’re trying to observe,” says lead study author Joris Witstok, a post-doctoral researcher with the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at Cambridge, in the UK. 

But that’s changed in recent years, thanks to observatories such as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which uses infrared light to see through the clouds. Scientists have also come to appreciate the dust itself, realizing these tiny flecks of carbon, silicon, and other matter are responsible for large-scale processes in the universe, such as new star formation. 

”For example, in the Milky Way, we have these sites where new stars are forming, and they’re very dusty,” Witstok says. “There’s big clouds of gas and dust and the dust really helps to allow the gas to cool and contract and therefore form new stars.”

[Related: 5,000 tons of ancient ‘extraterrestrial dust’ fall on Earth each year]

It’s not that the early universe was dustless. Previous studies had found large quantities of dust in galaxies in the very early universe, according to Witstok. Astronomers are interested in this early dust because it represents when stars began to produce some of the first elements heavier than hydrogen.

“The first stars that started to convert hydrogen into helium, which was the only thing that was around all the way at the beginning, into the heavier elements like carbon, oxygen,” Witstok says. 

Large primordial stars may have expelled vast quantities of dust, made of these heavier elements, toward the end of their life cycles, or during supernovae explosions as they died. 

But previous studies hadn’t been able to detect carbonaceous dust—meaning it’s rich in carbon—at such early times. 

“The thing that is really a new discovery here is that we’re able to pinpoint the type of dust grains that we’re seeing,” Witstok says. ”What we’re actually able to tell is that there’s something producing, specifically, these carbon dust grains on a very short timescale. And that’s where the surprise lies.”

Spectrographic observations of dust nearer to Earth, within the Milky Way galaxy, made this discovery possible. Spectroscopy breaks light into a spectrum and looks for telltale signs of absorbed light at certain wavelengths associated with different elements and compounds—sort of like reading a unique rainbow. 

Carbonaceous dust produces a spectroscopic “bump” at a wavelength of 217.5 nanometers, a wavelength that places it in the ultraviolet portion of the spectrum. At least, that’s the wavelength of the light as it left its home galaxy billions of years ago. 

“Since it’s been traveling over roughly 13 billion years, while the universe is expanding, the light really gets stretched with that expansion,” Witstok says, a phenomenon known as redshift. Light that was ultraviolet gets stretched longer, so that the wavelength—about 1.5 to 2 micrometers—is now in the infrared, the part of the spectrum JWST is fine-tuned to measure. 

“That’s exactly why we couldn’t do this before,” Witstok says. “Because with JWST, we’re now for the first time able to look and make these very precise measurements in the infrared.”

[Related: Physicists figured out a recipe to make titanium stardust on Earth] 

Now that researchers have measured this carbonaceous dust at an earlier time in the universe than expected, they’re left trying to figure out what process could be producing it. There are two theories, Witstok says, though neither are perfect. 

The first is that supernovae in early galaxies make the dust, with dying stars expelling the material before their final fiery death throes. But the problem there, he says, is that violent forces unleashed by the supernovae might also destroy much of that dust.

Another source of the dust could be Wolf-Rayet stars, massive, hot, and fast-burning stars that can expel a large portion of their mass into space in less than a million years’ time. “But again, it’s the question of how much can they actually produce?” Witstok says. “Is it enough to explain what we’re seeing in the early universe?”

Witstok and his colleagues hope to answer those questions with computer simulations. Theorists can try to tweak models of supernovae and Wolf-Rayet stars to try to find the conditions that produce the carbonaceous dust seen in the JWST observations. 

And further observations of early galaxies may net answers as well, he says. “We could start to look at what might be hints of an unusual number of Wolf-Rayet stars within those galaxies, for example.”

Whatever is driving carbonaceous dust creation in the early universe may hold clues for understanding how galaxies in the more recent universe evolved, and how stars and planets form, too. ”Dust is this really key component of how galaxies evolve,” Witstok says. ”That we’re now starting to see more and more evidence of it forming very early on is telling us that perhaps this evolution is taking place more quickly than we previously thought. That then has a knock-on effect, down the line, as to how we get to the present.”

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In milliseconds, Google can serve up a fact that long eluded many of humanity’s deepest thinkers: The universe is nearly 14 billion years old. And many cosmologists continue to grow more confident in that number. In December of 2020, a collaboration of researchers working on the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) in Chile published their latest estimate: 13.77 billion years, plus or minus a few tens of millions of years. Their answer matches that of the Planck mission, a European satellite that made similar observations between 2009 and 2013.

The precise observations of ACT and Planck come after more than a millennium of humans watching the sky and pondering where it all could have come from. Somehow, primates with lifespans of less than a century got a handle on events that took place eons before their planet—and even the ancient stars and atoms that would form their planet—existed. Here’s a brief account of how humanity came around to figure out how old the universe is.

Antiquity: The beginning of creation

Every culture has a creation myth. The Babylonians, for instance, believed the heavens and the Earth to be hewn from the carcass of a slain god. But few belief systems specified when existence started existing (one exception is Hinduism, which teaches that the universe reforms every 4.3 billion years, not so far off from the actual age of the Earth).

The idea that stuck, at least in the West, came from the Greek philosophers, and it was actually something of a scientific step back. In the fourth and third centuries BCE, Plato, Aristotle, and other philosophers went all in on the notion that the planets and stars were embedded in eternally rotating celestial spheres. For the next millennium or so, few expected the entire universe to have an age at all.

The clash between the night sky and the infinite universe became known as Olber’s paradox, named after Heinrich Olber, an astronomer who popularized it in 1826. An early version of the modern solution came, of all people, from the poet Edgar Allan Poe. We experience night, he speculated in his prose poem “Eureka” in 1848, because the universe is not eternal. There was a beginning, and not enough time has elapsed since then for the stars to fully light up the sky.

1900s: The early and modern universes come into view

But the resolution to Olber’s paradox took time to sink in. In 1917, when Einstein’s own theory of gravity told him that the universe likely grew or shrank over time, he added a fudge factor into his equations—the cosmological constant—to get the universe to hold still (allowing it to endure forever).

[Related: From the archives: The Theory of Relativity gains speed]

Meanwhile, larger telescopes had brought clearer views of other galaxies to astronomers’ eyepieces, prompting a fierce debate over whether they were looking at far-off “island universes,” or nearby star clusters inside the Milky Way. Edwin Hubble’s keen eyes settled the argument in the late 1920s, measuring intergalactic distances for the first time. He found that not only were galaxies immense and distant objects, they were also flying away from each other.

The universe was expanding, and Hubble clocked its expansion rate at 500 kilometers per second per megaparsec, a constant that now bears his name. With the expansion of the universe in hand, astronomers had a powerful new tool to look back in time and gauge when the cosmos started to grow. Hubble’s work in 1929 pegged cosmic expansion in such a way that the universe should be roughly 2 billion years old.

“The expansion rate is telling you how fast you can rewind the history of the Universe, like an old VHS tape,” says Daniel Scolnic, a cosmologist at Duke University. “If the rewind pace is faster, then that means the movie is shorter.”

But measuring the distances to far-flung galaxies is messy business. A cleaner method arrived in 1965, when researchers detected a faint crackling of microwaves coming from every direction in space. Cosmologists had already predicted that such a signal should exist, since light emitted just hundreds of thousands of years after the universe’s birth would have been stretched by the expansion of space into lengthier microwaves. By measuring the characteristics of this Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), astronomers could take a sort of snapshot of the young universe, deducing its early size and contents. The CMB served as unassailable evidence that the cosmos had a beginning.

“The most important thing accomplished by the ultimate discovery of the [CMB] in 1965 was to force us all to take seriously the idea that there was an early universe,” wrote Nobel prize laureate Steven Weinberg in his 1977 book, The First Three Minutes.

1990 to present: Refining the calculation

The CMB let cosmologists get a sense of how big the universe was at an early point in time, which helped them calculate its size and expansion today. Scolnic likens the process to noting that a child’s arm appears one foot long in a baby picture, and then estimating the height and growth speed of the corresponding adolescent. This method gave researchers a new way to measure the universe’s current expansion rate. It turned out to be nearly 10 times slower than Hubble’s 500 kilometers per second per megaparsec, pushing the moment of cosmic genesis further back in time. In the 1990s, age estimates ranged from 7 to 20 billion years old.

Painstaking efforts from multiple teams strove to refine cosmology’s best estimate of the universe’s expansion rate. Observations of galaxies from the Hubble Space Telescope in 1993 pegged the current Hubble constant at 71 kilometers per second per megaparsec, narrowing the universe’s age to 9 to 14 billion years.

[Related: Stellar telescopes for your space-loving kids]

Then in 2003, the WMAP spacecraft recorded a map of the CMB with fine features. With this data, cosmologists calculated the universe’s age to be 13.5 to 13.9 billion years old. About a decade later, the Planck satellite measured the CMB in even more detail, getting a Hubble constant of 67.66 and an age of 13.8 billion years. The new independent CMB measurement from ACT got basically the same numbers, further bolstering cosmologists’ confidence that they know what they’re doing.

“Now we’ve come up with an answer where Planck and ACT agree,” said Simone Aiola, a cosmologist at the Flatiron Institute and member of the ACT collaboration, in a press release at the time. “It speaks to the fact that these difficult measurements are reliable.”

Up next: A cosmological conflict

But as measurements of the early and modern universes have gotten more precise, they’ve started to clash. While studies based on the CMB baby picture suggest a Hubble constant in the high 60s of kilometers per second per megaparsec, distance measurements of today’s galaxies (which Scolnic compares to a cosmic “selfie”) give brisker expansion rates in the low to mid 70s. Scolnic participated in one such survey in 2019, and another measurement based on the brightness of various galaxies came to a similar conclusion (that the modern universe is speedily expanding) in January 2021.

Taken at face value, the faster rates these teams are getting could mean that the universe is actually around a billion years younger than the canonical 13.8 billion years from Planck and ACT. Or, the mismatch may hint that something deeper is missing from modern astronomy’s picture of reality. Connecting the CMB to the present day involves assumptions about the poorly understood dark matter and dark energy that appear to dominate our universe, for instance, and the fact that the Hubble constant measurements aren’t lining up could indicate that calculating the true age of the universe will involve more than just rewinding the tape.

[Related: How to weigh the universe, according to astronomers]

Another controversial estimate claims the universe could be 26.7 billion years old, so twice as ancient as currently thought. This is based on the unconfirmed notion that redshift light from distant galaxies can be altered by physical constants other than the expansion of space. One way to test this is through finite measurements from the James Webb Space Telescope.

“I am not certain about how we are deriving the age of the universe,” Scolnic says. “I’m not saying that it’s wrong, but I can’t say it’s right.”

This story has been updated. It was originally published on January 13, 2021.

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Yesterday, electric vehicle maker Canoo announced in a press release that it had delivered three new Crew Transportation Vehicles (CTVs) to NASA. The cute-looking and totally electric vehicles will transport astronauts to the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the Artemis lunar missions.

Designed as a big update to shuttle-era Astrovan, the CTVs were made specifically for the requirements of the Artemis missions, NASA says. Each vehicle can accommodate up to four astronauts in their brand-new Orion spacesuits, plus a spacesuit technician, on the drive to Launch Pad 39B. There’s also “room for specialized equipment,” NASA says. 

“The collaboration between Canoo and our NASA representatives focused on the crews’ safety and comfort on the way to the pad ahead of their journey to the Moon,” Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, the Artemis launch director, said in a press release. 

Although safety and comfort were obviously important, NASA also put a lot of thought into the visual design of the CTVs, which is meant to pay “homage to the legacy of the agency’s human spaceflight and space exploration efforts.” Apparently, everything “from the interior and exterior markings to the color of the vehicles to the wheel wells” was carefully chosen. 

[Related: With Artemis 1 launched, NASA is officially on its way back to the moon]

“I have no doubt everyone who sees these new vehicles will feel the same sense of pride I have for this next endeavor of crewed Artemis missions,” Blackwell-Thompson, who was involved in the design process, added. Canoo intends to reveal the interior and exterior in more detail later this year.

Canoo is one of the more interesting electric vehicle manufacturers in the US. It has developed a “skateboard” modular EV platform (other EV makers use the skateboard approach too). Basically, it consists of four wheels, a battery, a motor or two, and a drive-by-wire steering wheel on a 9.35-foot wheelbase, allowing the company to develop different vehicles from the same chassis. So far, it has a van-style Lifestyle Vehicle (which the NASA CTVs are based on), a delivery-van, and a pickup truck, which the US Army is currently testing. 

Of course, developing a brand-new platform like this is never a smooth process. Canoo’s press release boasts of an “on time” delivery, hinting at some of its past troubles. As recently as May last year, the company only had enough cash on hand to last another three months. It seems a spate of binding orders for more than 15,000 vehicles from companies like Walmart and two fleet leasing companies, Zeeba and Kingbee, were enough to keep it in the clear. It’s a big reminder that the EV space is still very new, and some of the companies making headlines right now might not be the ones that we are talking about in 10 year’s time.

Although they were delivered this week, the CTVs won’t have their big day until at least November of 2024. That’s the current planned launch date for NASA’s first crewed mission to the moon in 53 years, Artemis II. The little CTVs will drive the four astronauts the first nine miles of their trip into space, though the hulking Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion spacecraft will take them for the rest of their 10-day mission. Until then, the three EVs will be used for astronaut training exercises. 

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Few scientific tools get introduced in a press conference by the commander-in-chief. But NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is no ordinary instrument. President Biden unveiled the first image from JWST in July 2022, revealing the sharpest, deepest infrared view of the universe ever taken. And that was only the beginning. 

The solar-powered device, which drifts at a stable point 930,000 miles away from Earth, has since captured giant galaxies from the cosmic dawn; helped researchers discover the most distant and active supermassive black hole; snapped glowing views of Saturn and Jupiter; and found a new world beyond our solar system. It has teased out the details of the atmospheres above exoplanets and made the first-ever in-space detection of a molecule called methyl cation, a building block for the more complex carbon compounds found on Earth. 

The telescope was built on several aerospace innovations. Its mirrors are plated in a microscopic film of gold, optimized to reflect light. Its imagers, which include the Near-Infrared Camera and Mid-Infrared Instrument, allow JWST to look beyond cosmic dust and sense weak and ancient light from up to 13 billion years ago, just 800,000 years after the universe was born. And thanks to far more recent technology, it’s also incredibly easy to set up alerts for when the JWST has captured a new image, so you never miss out.

These remarkable James Webb Space Telescope images show stars, galaxies, and space in all their sparkling glory. What are your favorites?

[Related: The best telescopes for kids]

This post has been updated. It was originally published in July 2023.

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It’s no simple feat to send a rover to space, land it on a celestial body, and get the wheels rolling. NASA has used all kinds of techniques: The Pathfinder rover landed on Mars in 1997 inside a cluster of airbags, then rolled down its landing vehicle’s “petals,” which bloomed open like a flower, to the dusty surface. Cables attached to a rocket-powered “sky crane” spacecraft dropped the Perseverance Mars rover to the Red Planet’s surface in 2021. On the moon, Apollo 15, 16, and 17 astronauts pulled mylar cables to unfold and lower their buggies from the vehicles’ compact stowage compartments on lunar landers. 

But NASA’s first-ever rover mission to the lunar south pole will use a more familiar method of getting moving on Earth’s satellite: a pair of ramps. VIPER, which stands for Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, will roll down an offramp to touch the lunar soil, or regolith, when it lands on the moon in late 2024. 

This is familiar technology in an unforgiving location. “We all know how to work with ramps, and we just need to optimize it for the environment we’re going to be in,” says NASA’s VIPER program manager Daniel Andrews.

A VIPER test vehicle recently descended down a pair of metal ramps at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, as seen in the agency’s recently published photos, with one beam for each set of the rover’s wheels. Because the terrain where VIPER will land—the edge of the massive Nobile Crater—is expected to be rough, the engineering team has been testing VIPER’s ability to descend the ramps at extreme angles. They have altered the steepness, as measured from the lander VIPER will descend from, and differences in elevation between the ramp for each wheel. 

”We have two ramps, not just for the left and right wheels, but a ramp set that goes out the back too,” Andrews says. “So we actually get our pick of the litter, which one looks most safe and best to navigate as we’re at that moment where we have to roll off the lander.” 

[Related: The next generation of lunar rovers might move like flying saucers]

VIPER is a scientific successor to NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS mission, which in 2009 confirmed the presence of water ice on the lunar south pole. 

“It completely rewrote the books on the moon with respect to water,” says Andrews, who also worked on the LCROSS mission. “That really started the moon rush, commercially, and by state actors like NASA and other space agencies.”

The ice, if abundant, could be mined to create rocket propellant. It could also provide water for other purposes at long-term lunar habitats, which NASA plans to construct in the late 2020s as part of the Artemis moon program. 

But LCROSS only confirmed that ice was definitely present in a single crater at the moon’s south pole. VIPER, a mobile rover, will probe the distribution of water ice in greater detail. Drilling beneath the lunar surface is one task. Another is to move into steep, permanently shadowed regions—entering craters that, due to their sharp geometry, and the low angle of the sun at the lunar poles, have not seen sunlight in billions of years. 

The tests demonstrate the rover can navigate a 15-degree slope with ease—enough to explore these hidden dark spots, avoiding the need to make a machine designed for trickier descents. “We think there’s plenty of scientifically relevant opportunities, without having to make a superheroic rover that can do crazy things,” Andrews says.

Developed by NASA Ames and Pittsburgh-based company Astrobotic, VIPER is a square golf-cart-sized vehicle about 5 feet long and wide, and about 8 feet high. Unlike all of NASA’s Mars rovers, VIPER has four wheels, not six. 

”A problem with six wheels is it creates kind of the equivalent of a track, and so you’re forced to drive in a certain way,” Andrews says. VIPER’s four wheels are entirely independent from each other. Not only can they roll in any direction, they can be turned out, using the rover’s shoulder-like joints to crawl out of the soft regolith of the kind scientists believe exists in permanently shadowed moon craters. The wheels themselves are very similar to those on the Mars rovers, but with more paddle-like treads, known as grousers, to carry the robot through fluffy regolith.

“The metaphor I like to use is we have the ability to dip a toe into the [permanently shadowed region],” Andrews says. ”If we find we’re surprised or don’t like what we’re finding, we have the ability to lift that toe out, roll away on three wheels, and then put it back down.”

But VIPER won’t travel very far at all if it can’t get down the ramp from its lander, which is why Andrews and his team have been spending a lot of time testing that procedure. At first, the wheels would skid, just momentarily, as the VIPER test vehicle moved down the ramps. 

”We also found we could drive up and over the walls of the rampway,” Andrews says. “That’s probably not desirable.”

[Related on PopSci+: How Russia’s war in Ukraine almost derailed Europe’s Mars rover]

Together with Astrobotic, Andrews and his team have altered the ramps, and they now include specialized etchings down their lengths. The rover can detect this pattern along the rampway, using cameras in its wheel wells. “By just looking down there,” the robot knows where it is, he says. “That’s a new touch.”

Andrews is sure VIPER will be ready for deployment in 2024, however many tweaks are necessary. After all, this method is less complicated than a sky crane, he notes: “Ramps are pretty tried and true.”

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The odds that you will ever travel to one of Jupiter’s moons is next-to-zero, but getting your name to icy Europa is only a few keystrokes away. Earlier this month, NASA and the Library of Congress announced their collaboration, Message in a Bottle—a project offering anyone the opportunity to co-sign their name alongside an original poem penned by US Poet Laureate Ada Limón.

In doing so, each signee reserves a free, guaranteed spot for their name to be laser etched into a microchip mounted aboard the solar powered Europa Clipper robotic spacecraft. Following its October 2024 scheduled launch, participants’ names will then travel the approximately 6-year, 1.8-billion-mile voyage alongside Limón’s new, moon-inspired ode, “In Praise of Mystery” also to be engraved onto Europa Clipper.

[Related: We just got our most detailed look yet at Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa.]

Europa’s icy surface alongside the likely existence of an internal ocean have long intrigued scientists as potential locations that could support extraterrestrial life. Although it won’t actually touch down on the moon’s surface, Europa Clipper’s dozens of flybys will allow it to amass detailed information on its composition, geology, and vaporous geyser eruptions.

According to NASA, Europa Clipper will span roughly 100 feet after its solar arrays are deployed, and weigh-in at approximately 13,000 pounds—half of which is solely the propellant needed to get it to its final destination. Following its scheduled October 2024 launch from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy Rocket, the craft will first travel around Mars before soaring once again past Earth to gain some much needed “gravity assist” momentum. After another three years of travel, Clipper will pass by Europa almost 50 times beginning in 2030, transmitting data back home while observing “nearly the entire” moon to gain a better sense of its potential to support life.

This isn’t the first time NASA has encouraged the public to add their names to objects bound for space, including those aboard Artemis I, as well the Preservation Rover and InSight on their multiple trips to Mars. In 1977, Voyager 1 and 2 both launched with gold-plated phonographic records aboard featuring 90 minutes of music, including a concerto by Bach and Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode.”

At the time of writing, over 305,000 people from nearly every nation across the world have already signed the Europa Clipper’s roster, and earthbound participants have until the end of 2023 to enter in their names. Until then, you can also tune into regular livestreams of the Europa Clipper’s construction and assembly.

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Astronauts aboard the International Space Station just achieved a milestone in water recycling that could prove crucial to expanding human presence in the solar system—if you can stomach it.

According to an announcement from NASA last week, the space station’s Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS) has accomplished the “significant goal” of recovering nearly 98 percent of all water brought aboard by the crew through the successful harvesting and filtration of astronauts’ breath, sweat… and yes, pee.

There’s really no way to overstate how crucial water supplies will be for human space travel beyond the Earth’s orbit. Extended, or even permanent, stays on the moon and Mars will require constant access to potable water—a requirement neither environment is particularly known for. Because of this, researchers and astronauts need to get not only creative, but flexible, when it comes to water sources.

[Related: The ISS’s latest delivery includes space plants and atmospheric lightning monitors.]

Case in point: The ECLSS Water Recovery System aboard the ISS combined multiple components to pull off the “pretty awesome achievement,” said Christopher Brown, a team member at Johnson Space Center managing ISS life support systems.

First, the Water Processor Assembly (WPA) handles wastewater to produce drinkable liquid, while state-of-the-art dehumidifiers capture cabin air moisture generated by the crew’s exhalations and perspiration. Meanwhile, a Urine Processor Assembly (UPA) relies on a method known as vacuum distillation to recover astronaut pee. As NASA details, the distillation produces two liquids—water, and a urine brine that technically still includes some reclaimable hydration.

Previously, there wasn’t much that could be done with the brine, but breakthroughs for a new Brine Processor Assembly (BPA) can now extract that remaining, usable water in a microgravity environment. To pull it off, the BPA runs the brine through a “special membrane technology” before subjecting it to warm, dry air to evaporate the water. That resulting humid air, alongside astronauts’ breath and sweat, is then collected by the previously mentioned ECLSS systems to be purified and stored for future usage via special filters and a “catalytic reactor” that destroys any trace contaminants. Iodine is then added to prevent any future microbes from growing within the new, clean water reserves.

[Related: Before the Artemis II crew can go to the moon, they need to master flying high above Earth.]

The new recovery percentage is a huge step forward according to Jill Williamson, the ECLSS water subsystems manager. Prior to implementing the BPA, the system could only retrieve between 93-to-94 percent of overall onboard water, compared to the milestone 98 percent benchmark.

Williamson goes on to explain that the processing is “fundamentally similar” to some water distribution systems here on Earth, only within a microgravity environment. As gross as it may sound to some, the water that is reclaimed, filtered, and cleaned from astronauts’ urine aboard the ISS is actually better than most available municipal water.

“The crew is not drinking urine; they are drinking water that has been reclaimed, filtered, and cleaned such that it is cleaner than what we drink here on Earth,” Williamson says.

Cheers, ISS.

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NASA said today in a conference call with reporters that it would not ever be flying its experimental electric aircraft, the X-57, citing safety concerns that are insurmountable with the time and budget they have for the project. The X-57 program will wind down without the aircraft ever going up into the sky. 

The agency had previously hoped to fly the aircraft, which would be powered by batteries and electric motors, sometime this year. While the original plans had called for the research plane to eventually have more than a dozen propellers, NASA had scaled back those plans too, intending to fly the plane in what they called Modification 2 form. Mod 2 involved the plane having just two propellers, with one on each wing. The news today means that the plane will never fly, not even in Mod 2 form. 

NASA said that the reason behind permanently scrubbing the flight is safety and time. “Unfortunately, we recently discovered a potential failure mode in the propulsion system that we determined to pose an unacceptable risk to the pilot’s safety, and the safety of personnel on the ground, during ground tests,” Bradley Flick, the director of NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in California, said in the call. “Mitigation of that failure would take the project well beyond its planned end at the end of this fiscal year, so NASA has decided to end the project on time without taking the vehicle to flight.” 

[Related: NASA’s ‘airliner of the future’ is now officially an X-plane]

The project had previously seen challenges. For example, transistor modules in the electrical inverters kept failing and “blowing up” in testing, Sean Clark, the project’s principal investigator told Popular Science in January. That problem was solved, Clark said. 

The problem that led them to scrap the plan to fly the aircraft stemmed from motors that power the propellers. Clark said today that analysis of the issue is ongoing. “As we got into the detailed analysis and airworthiness assessment of the motors themselves, we found that there were some potential failure modes with the motors mechanically, under flight loads, that we hadn’t seen on the ground,” he said. “We’ve got a great design in progress to fix it, it’s just [that] it would take too long for us to go through and implement that.” 

The NASA team emphasized that they are still proud of the ways in which they’ve contributed openly to the broader industry—private companies continue to work on electric flight—pointing towards a raft of technical papers. “It doesn’t feel great to not go to flight,” Flick conceded. The sense of disappointment, he added, doesn’t lessen “the game-changing lessons that this project team has contributed to the industry.” 

NASA has two other X-plane programs in the works—a designation that means that the aircraft is experimental and for research, and that comes from the Department of Defense. (The X-57 received its X designation in 2016.) One of the others is the X-59, which NASA intends to fly this year, hopefully demonstrating that supersonic flight can be quieter than it has been in the past. The other is the newly-designated X-66A, which is also called the Sustainable Flight Demonstrator. The current timeline for that plane has it flying in 2028. 

Flick cautiously estimated that if they had more budget and more time to get the X-57 aircraft into the sky, they could have potentially done so safely. “We have a design that would have overcome the current difficulty that we’ve had—it has not been fully analyzed and reviewed yet,” he added. “We were confident that it could have solved this problem. Whether there were other problems out there that we haven’t discovered yet is unknown.”

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Scientists have translated data from cosmic bodies and events into spectacular audio renditions for years, but NASA’s latest releases may be the first to feature accompanying real-time visual aides. Unveiled on Tuesday, a trio of brief “sonifications” derived from information gleaned by the Chandra X-ray Observatory, James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, and Spitzer Space Telescope showcase the interplay between infrared light, space gas, and other interstellar materials to create gorgeous ambient soundscapes. Taken as a series, NASA’s “cosmic harmonies” provide new, awe-inspiring ways to view the universe.

“Because different telescopes can detect different types of light, each brings its own pieces of information to whatever is being observed,” NASA explained in its June 21 announcement. “This is similar in some ways to how different notes of the musical scale can be played together to create harmonies that are impossible with single notes alone.” According to NASA, the collaboration was overseen by Chandra X-ray Center visualization scientist Kimberly Arcand, astrophysicist Matt Russo, and musician Andrew Santaguida.

NASA offers three videos with each sonification shown via a moving cursor, rendering the telescopes’ 2D images into something akin to written musical scores. An image depicting the two-star system R Aquarii, for example, is shown with a radar-esque tracker moving clockwise from a central point around the picture. As the cursor passes over Hubble’s visible light and Chandra’s X-ray images, the volume increases. Meanwhile, the music pitch rises and falls depending on the sources’ distance from the image center.

“The ribbon-like arcs captured by Hubble create a rising and falling melody that sounds similar to a set of singing bowls (metal bowls that produce different sounds and tones when struck with a mallet), while the Chandra data are rendered to sound more like a synthetic and windy purr,” explained NASA scientists.

[Related: What we learn from noisy signals from deep space.]

Another image depicts “Stephan’s Quartet,” a cluster of four galaxies moving one another via gravitational pull, along with a fifth galaxy located at a different distance. As a tracking line moves downward across the image, additional background galaxies and stars are punctuated as different glass marimba notes alongside a host of other ambient, representational tones. Finally, the Messier 104 galaxy located within the Virgo cluster received its own sonifications based on multiple light readings—infrared, X-ray, and optical.

Check out the clips below:

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This post has been updated.

Earlier this year, NASA announced that it would be working with Boeing to create an aircraft with a dramatic new look, and it could be strutting down a runway in about five years. Called the Sustainable Flight Demonstrator, it has long, thin wings that are supported by trusses to give them the stability they need. Between those wings and other efficiency tweaks, the plane could be 30 percent more fuel efficient than similar-sized aircraft today, like the single-aisle Boeing 737 or Airbus A320, according to the aeronautics and space agency. 

This week, NASA said that the aircraft, which doesn’t yet exist, has received an X-plane designation from the Department of Defense. It’s now officially the X-66A, meaning that it’s an experimental research aircraft. NASA already has two ongoing X-plane programs, so the X-66A makes three of them. Here’s what to know about all three. 

The X-66A aircraft aims for fuel efficiency

The purpose of the Sustainable Flight Demonstrator is baked into its name: to be as sustainable as it can be. While no aircraft that burns traditional fossil fuel can truly be thought of as sustainable, the goal is to make it as efficient as possible with the fuel it does consume. 

The aircraft will be the result of a collaboration between NASA and Boeing, and the agency stresses that one of the reasons they sought the X-plane designation from the Pentagon was to make the plane’s purpose apparent.

“We really wanted to make sure it was clear that this is a research airplane,” says Brent Cobleigh, the program manager for the Sustainable Flight Demonstrator at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center. “We’re really trying to learn with this airplane—it’s not a prototype, it’s not a production airplane.”

Another reason for getting the X-name is to reflect the fact that the entire design of the aircraft is something new, as opposed to NASA testing out a smaller new technology on an existing aircraft design. 

“There’s a long history that goes along with the X-plane designation,” Cobleigh reflects. Projects that have carried that label have been “some of the most interesting and innovative airplane designs.” Take a look at a list of NASA X-planes here.

NASA had to apply to the Pentagon to receive that X label. The letters that are found in aircraft names imply something about that aircraft—the F in F-16 stands for fighter, and the B in B-21 is for bomber, and in this case, the X says something too. “It’s a research airplane,” Cobleigh says. “That’s what the X means.”

The plane’s most noticeable feature is its long, skinny trussed-braced wings, which are designed to create less drag as they move through the air while giving the plane the lift it needs to fly. That efficiency boost happens because a long wing can help mitigate the vortices you might sometimes notice forming at a plane’s wingtips. Those are “almost like a tornado coming off the wingtips—that’s a lot of energy created that doesn’t really do us much benefit,” Cobleigh says. The X-66A’s wings could weaken those. 

Another way it could be more fuel efficient comes from the engines. Because the wing on the X-66A will be higher off the ground than the wing on a plane like a 737, that means it could employ larger engines that don’t risk bumping their bottoms on the runway or inhaling debris. Colloquially known as jet engines, turbofan engines are at their most efficient when they can be large, so that they can have a high bypass ratio—when a great deal more air bypasses its core than goes through it. Or the fan that propels the air could possibly have no covering on it at all. 

The goal is to have the plane first fly in 2028, but it also makes sense to expect delays in programs like these.

The X-59 aircraft aims for quieter supersonic flight

If the X-66A’s first flight is at least five years away, the NASA X-plane most likely to fly this year is called the X-59. That plane, which NASA is creating with Lockheed Martin, exists to test a hypothesis: If an aircraft is designed the right way, could it fly faster than the speed of sound but do so quietly enough to not bother people below? 

Supersonic flight by civilian aircraft is not allowed over the United States because of the boom issue. Ideally, the X-59 could demonstrate that it’s possible for an aircraft to slice through the air faster than the speed of sound, but not create the powerful shock waves that lead to people hearing boom sounds. Here’s more on why supersonic flight creates sonic booms, and how the X-59 could change that.

A NASA spokesperson notes via email that the goal is still to get this bird airborne this year: “We are still targeting 2023 for the X-59’s first flight, and we’ll have a better idea of a date once we have completed some critical testing. We are currently gearing up for weight on wheels next and then moving to the flight line and planning to start ground vibration tests and structural coupling tests.”

The X-57 aircraft aims for electric flight 

The cleanest way for an aircraft to fly would be for it to produce no direct emissions whatsoever, and an electric plane can accomplish that. That is NASA’s target with the X-57. But batteries are heavy, and they are not as energy dense as fossil fuels are, meaning that an electric aircraft won’t have anywhere near the range their fuel-burning cousins have. The challenges of this new type of flight haven’t stopped companies from getting experimental electric flying machines airborne, though, with Beta Technologies repeatedly flying an electric aircraft, Joby Aviation doing the same and teaming up with Delta Air Lines, and Eviation flying the Alice aircraft for the first time last year, to name only three examples. (Another approach is to use hydrogen.)

But the X-57 Maxwell, NASA’s electric aircraft, has had technical issues to cope with. The agency had originally wanted for the plane to undergo several different design phases, or modifications, but now plans for it just have a simple design: one propeller, powered by electricity, on each wing. 

While the plan had held for NASA to get the plane in the sky in that configuration this year, a NASA spokesperson cast a shadow of doubt on that timeline in an email to PopSci: “We are working to overcome technical challenges associated with flight tests for this aircraft and are currently evaluating our schedule and budget to determine when first flight would occur. In the meantime, the X-57 project continues to produce knowledge that benefits the aviation industry, researchers, and regulators.”

Update on June 23, 2023: NASA has officially announced that the X-57 will not be flying.

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From space, Saturn’s moon Enceladus might not seem like a hospitable place for life. Its cold surface is caked thick with fresh ice, marked by craters and active cryovolcanoes that spew ice crystals. But scientists believe beneath that frozen exterior hides a salty liquid ocean. With energy from geothermal vents on the ocean floor, and a smattering of the right ingredients, it might just provide a place for life to evolve and take hold. A new analysis of data from NASA’s Cassini mission reveals that the moon has, in theory, all the chemicals it needs to support living things. 

Plumes of water erupting from Enceladus contain phosphorus, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature by an international team of researchers. They found the phosphorus by examining data collected by the Cassini probe from its 13-year survey of the Saturian system. It’s the first time this element—an essential component of being alive—has been found in an ocean not on Earth. 

“Phosphorus in the form of phosphates is vital for all life on Earth,” says study author Frank Postberg, a planetary scientist at the Free University of Berlin. “Life as we know it would simply not exist without phosphates. And we have no reason to assume that potential life at Enceladus—if it is there—should be fundamentally different from Earth’s.”

The discovery does not provide any evidence for aliens on Enceladus. But the presence of phosphorus removes a major obstacle to any life that might evolve there. Previous studies had suggested Enceladus’s ocean might not contain any phosphorus, according to Postberg. This discovery changes how scientists must think about the moon’s potential habitability, and it may guide research on other icy moons with subsurface oceans, such as Jupiter’s moon Europa.

[Related: NASA hopes its snake robot can search for alien life on Saturn’s moon Enceladus]

Cassini was launched in 1997 and arrived at Saturn in 2004. It stayed there to study the ringed gas giant and its moons, until NASA ordered the probe  to plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere to destroy itself at the end of its mission in 2017. During its mission, Cassini flew past Enceladus several times, including a 2005 flyby when the probe discovered plumes of icy material, capturing crystals that the moon had ejected. Those plumes probably represent ocean water escaping to space—planetary scientists believe that a global ocean of liquid water lies beneath the moon’s icy shell.  

Researchers had looked at data from the ice grains during the Cassini mission primarily to hunt for inorganic and organic compounds, according to Postberg. But in 2017, his research team received a grant from the European Research Council to examine  a larger set of Enceladus ice grain data. After four years of work, they discovered phosphorus in salt form: phosphates.  

Phosphorus is one of six key elements of life as humans know it needs to exist, says Morgan Cable, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who was not involved in the study. The other five key elements are carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulfur, and oxygen. “Those elements, when you combine them in different organic molecules, they allow biochemistry, certain reactions to happen that cells need to stay alive,” Cable says. 

Phosphate is particularly important because it is the backbone of the DNA molecule. It’s also  a crucial component of cell membranes and of adenosine triphosphate, or ATP, which provides the energy for cellular activity.  “That’s the energy-carrying molecule for all known life, the energy currency,” Cable says, an arrangement likely to be used by any life that arises on Enceladus too, though perhaps in different combinations with the other elements.

[Related: Here’s why Saturn’s ‘ocean moon’ is constantly spewing liquid into space]

Enceladus’s ocean is somewhat chemically different from Earth, according to Mikhail Zolotov, a planetary geochemist at Arizona State University and the author of a commentary on the study also published Wednesday in Nature. “In our ocean, it’s mostly table salt, like sodium chloride,” Zolotov says. On Enceladus, the salt is baking soda—the same stuff you’d find in a kitchen. 

Plenty of marine Earth life could survive Enceladus’s waters just fine, according to Cable. But if any life has evolved, or ever does evolve, on the icy moon, it’s likely to be microorganisms rather than the extraterrestrial equivalent of fish or whales. That has less to do with the chemistry of the Enceladean ocean than the energy available there for life. 

“On Earth the dominant energy source that all life uses, either directly or indirectly, is sunlight. You either photosynthesize directly, or you eat the plants that do it, or you eat the animals that eat the plants,” she says.  Sunlight doesn’t reach the moon’s waters through its icy shell, so energy likely comes from geothermal sources—the structure of ice crystals caught by Cassini suggests the grains formed near geothermal vents on the ocean floor, where water meets a rocky interior. 

“If you look at the net amount of energy that you get from that versus from sunlight, it’s orders of magnitude less,” Cable says. “That means you can either support a community of microbial cells, or you can have a handful of more energy-hungry organisms.” Enceladean whales are not entirely out of the question, but it would likely be “a lonely whale singing a sad, sad song all by itself,” she says with a laugh. “How terrible would that be?”  

To know whether any kind of life exists on Enceladus will require another mission to the moon. Nothing is immediately in the works, though the influential Astrobiological Decadal Survey has recommended a flagship NASA mission to Enceladus in the next 10 years. 

But two missions are heading to worlds similar to Enceladus. The European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or JUICE, mission launched in April and will arrive at Jupiter in 2031 to study the gas giant and its icy moons Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa. In 2024, NASA will launch the Europa Clipper mission, which should arrive at that moon by 2030. The recent findings on Enceladus give a tantalizing glimpse of what might lurk beneath those other icy surfaces: All three of the satellites are believed to contain subsurface oceans, too.

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The Boeing Starliner, a space capsule that was scheduled to launch in July for its first crewed test flight, will remain on the ground for at least this summer—if not indefinitely. 

At a joint press conference on Thursday, NASA and Boeing officials explained they had discovered possible flaws in the Starliner’s parachute system. Even more alarmingly, hundreds of yards of potentially flammable tape were used to wrap electric wires throughout the spacecraft. The new problems were revealed after a parade of other hiccups: a software glitch put an early end to an uncrewed December 2020 Starliner test without people aboard, and an engine valve issue scrubbed an April 2021 follow-up attempt. 

The latest problems, though, may be the most surprising. “Just, wow,” was the response to the most recent Starliner news from Wendy Whitman Cobb, a space policy expert and instructor at the US Air Force School of Advanced Air and Space Studies. Design issues with parachutes are common within the space industry, she says, but the discovery of the tape almost a decade into the development of the spacecraft is grave. “The fact that they have essentially put off the next flight test indefinitely speaks to the seriousness of that matter,” Whitman says. 

[Related: NASA is spending big on commercial space destinations]

Boeing should have caught the software and valve issues sooner, Whitman Cobb says, and she believes the flammable tape and parachute issue are under the microscope now out of an earned abundance of caution. “Because if something goes bad on this next one, who knows?” she says. “You might put the entire program in jeopardy.”

Boeing’s craft was meant to be the aerospace giant’s answer to competitor SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, a family of capsules that have been used for more than a decade to carry cargo to space and has begun ferrying crew in recent years. The long-awaited crewed test flight of the Starliner could still happen by this fall, officials said at the news conference, but it’s not clear yet what and how much work will need to be done. With the future of the Starliner hazy—and US-Russian relations at a generational low—NASA may be forced to rely on SpaceX alone for crewed space launches to the International Space Station.

In 2014, NASA contracted the two commercial spaceflight operators to ensure the space agency always has a ride into space. Boeing and SpaceX received $4.2 billion and $2.6 billion, respectively, to develop spacecraft and launch services for what would become NASA’s Commercial Crew program. Under those contracts, Boeing produced the Starliner and SpaceX made the Crew Dragon. But, now, there’s a risk that “SpaceX runs away with [the space launch market] and then you really are left with one company,” Whitman Cobb says. “Even if and when they do get Starliner going, I think they’re going to face stiff competition from SpaceX especially.” 

NASA previously experienced the uncomfortable position of relying on only one other party—Russia—for ferrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station. The agency didn’t like it. And, had SpaceX not been able to begin service with its Dragon spacecraft, then that reliance would have become even more difficult following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

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

From the start, Boeing, with its decades of experience building sophisticated aircraft and spacecraft, was presumed to have a lock on the Commercial Crew service. NASA “wanted to give SpaceX a chance, but they did not consider them at the time to be the most reliable option for the future,” Whitman Cobb says.

This is why it came as something of a shock when Starliner’s first uncrewed orbital test flight in December 2019 failed to dock with the ISS as planned due to a software problem. SpaceX, meanwhile, flew its first official astronaut-ferrying mission with a Dragon spacecraft in November 2020. Boeing, though, didn’t successfully complete the uncrewed test flight until May 2022. 

Despite these setbacks, it’s unlikely Boeing will pull the plug on Starliner, barring some other disaster. ”Policy tends to continue on the trajectory that it is on unless and until something major happens,” Whitman Cobb says. ”Unless something goes horribly wrong, they’re going to make Starliner work.”

NASA, at least, almost certainly wants the Starliner to launch to provide redundancy, in case something happens with SpaceX. That could even lead to a strange situation where NASA pays Boeing for Starliner flights, even though the space agency could more easily hire a launch from SpaceX. “I know it doesn’t make much sense to any of us economically,” Whitman Cobb says, but in terms of having that assured access to space, “this gets NASA there.”

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In Overmatched, we take a close look at the science and technology at the heart of the defense industry—the world of soldiers and spies.

VLADIMIR PLETSER stands in front of an eclectic audience—a group of people attending the Analog Astronaut Conference in Arizona. Analog astronauts are folks who simulate the lives of spacefarers, for science, while remaining on Earth. For days or weeks or months, they inhabit and experiment in facilities that mimic cosmic conditions, living as quasi-astronauts. Sometimes those facilities are settlements in the Utah desert that look like the Red Planet, such as the Mars Desert Research Station, run by the nonprofit Mars Society; others are mocked-up astro-habitats inside NASA centers, like the Human Exploration Research Analog at Johnson Space Center. 

But Pletser, on this Saturday in May, is here to discuss a new analog facility courtesy of Blue Abyss, a company where he serves as space operations training director. That’s an appropriate position, as he’s managed microgravity research for the European Space Agency, he’s worked in support of China’s space station, and he is an astronaut candidate for Belgium.

Blue Abyss, a company focused on enabling research, training, and testing in extreme environments, is planning to build the second-deepest pools in the world. (The deepest pool is in Dubai, built for recreation and filming.) The proposed bodies of water will be 160 feet deep and about 130 to 160 feet wide. They’ll be the largest pools in the world by volume. Giant bodies of water like these will be useful to astronauts who want to practice in an environment analogous to space—an oxygen-deprived place with neutral buoyancy. They’re also of interest to deep-sea divers and people in the offshore energy sector. Then there are operators in the defense industry who find themselves in the ocean for tasks like reconnaissance, search and rescue, and mine hunting. Blue Abyss aims to serve them all.

Diving in 

The pools will be built in Cornwall, England, and Brook Park, Ohio, near Cleveland, if all goes according to plan. And they won’t just be super-size swimming holes. They will have multiple underwater levels for research and provide enough room for big instruments and vehicles to enter the buildings and the water. 

“We envisage that the size and flexibility of our pools will enable some of the more complex planetary [extravehicular activity] that will be undertaken in the future on the moon and Mars to be practiced here on Earth, something that is still quite difficult to conduct in the neutral buoyancy pools that exist today, which weren’t developed with this in mind,” says John Vickers, Blue Abyss’ CEO. The facility will also be able to mimic the tides and currents of the real world and the varied lighting conditions people might find in the ocean or outer space. Specific chambers will simulate the pressure found at depths of up to thousands of meters. 

While Blue Abyss’ plans for facilities are not limited to big pools, they will be the centerpieces. Pools like these are not a totally unique idea in the astronaut world; NASA has a similar aqueous facility, called the Neutral Buoyancy Lab, in Houston—but it goes down only 40 feet. Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, hosts its own Hydro Lab, of similar depth. China’s Neutral Buoyancy Facility in Beijing and the European Space Agency’s in Germany both dip down 33 feet. Blue Abyss’ pools will be bigger, and perhaps better able to accommodate the needs of future astronauts, who will likely be doing complex missions outside their spacecraft. 

Analog oceans aren’t exactly a new idea in the defense sector either; the US Navy, for instance, has an “indoor ocean” in Maryland, called the Maneuvering and Seakeeping Basin. It is 35 feet deep at its lowest point and is used to test scale models of subs. But existing facilities weren’t necessarily made for the seagoing vehicles of today, which are often autonomous, drone-like, or both.

Water worlds 

If they succeed, Blue Abyss’ projects will provide access via the private sector to the same types of facilities that are today, in some cases, run by governments. The pools will be for humans (be they space explorers or divers or small-craft conductors) and robots (be they remotely operated vehicles or autonomous underwater vehicles). “Centers will provide training, certification, and technology demonstration, ensuring that divers, operators, and other underwater professionals have the skills and knowledge to operate safely and effectively in challenging circumstances,” says Vickers.

Or at least, that’s the idea. “We’re still in the phase of trying to find funding,” Pletser tells those at the conference. “So the project that we have in England, in Cornwall, is going much slower than the one that we have here in the States.”

The Cleveland area—an aerospace hub—has been supportive of the venture, says Vickers, but the company has had a harder time in its home territory of England, the original proposed site. “Brexit, the pandemic, and a lack of sufficient vision within parts of government have meant that what should have been the world’s first site may now come second,” he says.

It likely isn’t the interest of the analog astronauts gathered to hear Pletser speak that makes the general idea feasible, regardless of what country the pools are constructed in. After all, the world doesn’t have that many astronauts to train. 

But Blue Abyss is hoping to attract a much larger potential pool of people, and of money, from other contexts. Those in the offshore energy sector could practice working with cables and pipes, inspecting the foundations of wind turbines, and checking out vessels—without the serious dangers that come with conducting operations in the open ocean, where unpredictable currents, sea creatures, and other X factors can provide potentially deadly complications. Divers could train regardless of the weather. Scientists could test undersea research tools before sending them into an actual oceanic abyss. And makers of submersibles could test their craft and practice tricky maneuvers in a controlled environment. “So we not only address the space sector, but also the marine sector,” says Pletser. 

Importantly, that marine sector includes the defense field, where contractors help navies and coast guards make sense of the ocean’s mysteries.

Wet work 

One contractor that does such military work is General Dynamics. “We have a number of programs of record with the US Navy,” says Michael Guay, director for autonomous undersea systems. (A subsidiary, General Dynamics Electric Boat, makes nuclear subs for the Navy.) One of General Dynamics’ programs, Knifefish, has created a vehicle that can detect, classify, and identify mines placed underwater. Similar autonomous vehicles are also useful to the military for surveillance, reconnaissance, and even anti-submarine warfare.

Autonomous vehicles can also do hydrographic surveys. Such vehicles, which use sensors to measure aspects of the water like turbidity, salinity, and fluorescence, are useful for exploring for new oil and gas drilling sites and doing scientific assessments of the oceanic environment. 

General Dynamics has its own “full-ocean-depth-simulating pressure test tank,” says Guay, and its tanks can test full vehicles or just their parts. One of its facilities is in Quincy, Massachusetts, “So we have rapid access to Boston Harbor and Massachusetts Bay,” he says. 

Another company, called SEAmagine, sells small submarines and submersible boats—specifically those that require human drivers, which has been going out of fashion. “We didn’t believe that we were going to know our oceans by simply putting cameras and robots in the water,” says Charles Kohnen, SEAMagine’s co-founder. “Somehow the human element has to remain for us to understand.”

Today, SEAmagine, based in California, offers its craft to tourists, scientific researchers, yacht operators, and the defense sector. Its manned marine craft are specifically of interest to coast guards, which use them for search and rescue. Argentina’s, for instance, uses a SEAmagine vehicle to recover bodies from the ultra-deep water in the mountainous country. “They have these lakes that are 500 meters deep in the Andes,” says Kohnen. “And they’re very full of tourists because it’s beautiful. There’s a lot of tourists, and then lots of accidents.” These diminutive subs can ride on trailers on highways and be backed into the water like regular boats—not the case for your typical submersible.

But before either company does any of that fieldwork, its vehicles have to undergo rigorous testing. “The first, most important part of testing before you go in the ocean is going to be the pressure testing of the hull,” says Kohnen. 

That happens in pressure chambers, like the ones Blue Abyss’ facilities will include. “There aren’t that many in the world that are large enough and deep enough,” says Kohnen. Today, SEAmagine uses a variety of different chambers in the US to test its hulls and other components, but Kohnen says there’s room for more. “I’d like to see more testing facilities that can do the under-pressure testing,” he says. “As you build more of a blue economy for all these marine industries, the world could use some more labs.”

Blue Abyss hopes its facilities will be useful in certifying early-stage technology—the kind of tech that companies may not want to experiment with in the actual sea—validating and demonstrating sensors and components and autonomous capabilities at work in their relevant environments. That way, they can know that the technology either works or needs a tweak, and then they can demonstrate to agencies or customers that the parts and systems are ready. 

And analog astronauts may be eager to take the plunge, too.

Read more PopSci+ stories. 

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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. 

Read more PopSci+ stories.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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 

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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 

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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 

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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

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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

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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

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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 

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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 

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

The post The ISS’s latest arrivals: a 3D printer, seeds, and ovarian cow cells appeared first on Popular Science.

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