Phys.org Astronomy and Space

• European Space Agency probing fireball that hit German home

  The European Space Agency said it is investigating a fireball that streaked across the skies of Europe on the weekend before reportedly punching a football-sized hole in the roof of a German home.

• NASA's Van Allen Probe A to re-enter atmosphere

  NASA's Van Allen Probe A is expected to reenter Earth's atmosphere almost 14 years after launch. From 2012 to 2019, the spacecraft and its twin, Van Allen Probe B, flew through the Van Allen belts, rings of charged particles trapped by Earth's magnetic field, to understand how particles were gained and lost. The belts shield Earth from cosmic radiation, solar storms, and the constantly streaming solar wind that are harmful to humans and can damage technology, so understanding them is important.

• Strange cosmic burst from colliding galaxies shines light on heavy elements

  A recently detected flash of energy appears to have emanated from the wreckage of colliding galaxies, according to an international team of astronomers led by Penn State scientists. The burst, known as GRB 230906A, was likely caused by the collision of two neutron stars hundreds of millions of years ago and is now shedding light on how the universe creates some of its heaviest elements.

• Evaluating landing sites for China's manned moon mission

  Observations of the Rimae Bode region on the moon reveal five distinct types of terrain and identify several potential landing sites for China's first crewed mission, according to research titled "Geology of Rimae Bode region as priority site candidate for China's first crewed lunar mission." The work is published in Nature Astronomy.

• How do we know what asteroids are made out of?

  Asteroids are some of the oldest objects in the solar system: leftovers from the chaotic time when planets were assembling from dust and rock. They're time capsules, preserving clues about what the early solar system was like, and, ultimately, what the building blocks of planets are.

• Terraforming Mars isn't a climate problem—it's an industrial nightmare

  Even when the idea of terraforming Mars was originally put forward, the idea was daunting. Changing the environment of an entire planet is not something to do easily. Over the following decades, plenty of scientists and engineers have looked at the problem, and most have come to the same conclusion—we're not going to be able to make Mars anything like Earth anytime soon. A new paper available in pre-print on arXiv from Slava Turyshev of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a good explainer as to why.

• Nearby red dwarf star hosts at least four planets—with one in the habitable zone

  In 2020, a study confirmed that two planets orbited the nearby red dwarf, GJ 887. Now, astronomers have confirmed the existence of two additional planets orbiting GJ 887 in a new study published in Astronomy and Astrophysics. The new study suggests that one of these newly confirmed planets is in the habitable zone.

• Record-energy neutrino may have begun its journey in blazars

  Three years ago, in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, the passage of an "ultra-energetic" cosmic neutrino was observed—the most energetic ever detected. The event drew international attention from the scientific community as well as from the media and the public, not least because the origin of this particle—whose energy exceeded that of previously observed neutrinos by more than an order of magnitude—is unknown.

• ESA analyzing fireball over Europe on 8 March 2026

  At approximately 18:55 CET (17:55 UTC) on Sunday, March 8, 2026, a very bright fireball moving from the southwest to the northeast was observed by many people in Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands.

• Multi-wavelength observations track bright gamma-ray blazar's three-year cycle

  By analyzing the data from various space observatories and ground-based telescopes, European astronomers have performed a multiwavelength study of a bright gamma-ray blazar known as S5 1044+71. The new study, published Feb. 26 on the arXiv pre-print server, delivers a comprehensive view of this blazar, which could help us better understand its nature.

• An interstellar comet packed with alcohol? What ALMA found in 3I/ATLAS

  Comet 3I/ATLAS continues to make astonishing headlines, thanks to new findings from astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). This new research reveals that 3I/ATLAS is packed with an unusually large amount of the organic molecule methanol—more than almost all known comets in our own solar system.

• Space launches are changing the chemistry of Earth's atmosphere, studies warn. Here's what can be done

  Look up on a clear night and you'll see the streaks of our new space age. What you don't see is the growing fallout for the atmosphere that keeps us alive.

• Red dwarf stars might starve alien plants of the 'quality' light they need to breathe

  Red dwarfs make up the vast majority of stars in the galaxy. Such ubiquity means they host the majority of rocky exoplanets we've found so far—which in turn makes them interesting for astrobiological surveys. However, there's a catch—astrobiologists aren't sure the light from these stars can actually support oxygen-producing life. A new paper, available on the arXiv preprint server, by Giovanni Covone and Amedeo Balbi, suggests that they might not—when it comes to stellar light, quality is just as important as quantity. And according to their calculations, Earth-like biospheres are incredibly difficult to sustain around red dwarfs.

• DART images reveal asteroids can toss slow 'cosmic snowballs' between moons

  About 15% of asteroids near Earth have small moons orbiting them, making binary asteroid systems common in our cosmic neighborhood.

• Can we grow life on Mars? Experiments show potential in simulated extraterrestrial soil

  Life's capacity to survive in simulated lunar and Martian soils has been explored in two papers published in Scientific Reports. Treating simulated lunar soil with both symbiotic fungi and worm-produced compost can significantly improve the likelihood of reproduction for chickpea plants growing in the soil, indicates one study. A separate paper suggests that some microbes may be able to absorb enough water from the atmosphere to grow in simulated Martian soil at atmospheric humidity levels comparable to those on the planet.

• The coldest 'stars' in the galaxy might actually be alien megastructures

  Ever since physicist Freeman Dyson first proposed the concept in 1960, the "Dyson sphere" has been the holy grail of techno-signature hunters. A highly advanced civilization could build a "sphere" (or, in our more modern understanding, a "swarm" of smaller components) around their host star to harvest its entire energy output. We know, in theory at least, that such a swarm could exist—but what would it actually look like if we were able to observe one? A new paper, available on the arXiv pre-print server and soon to be published in Universe from Amirnezam Amiri of the University of Arkansas, digs into that question—and in the process discloses the types of stars that are the most likely to find them around.

• V615 Vul shows rare hybrid nova signature after rapid two-day rise

  Italian astronomers have performed extensive spectroscopic monitoring of a recently discovered nova known as Vulpeculae 2024, also known as V615 Vul. Results of the new observations, presented in a paper published in the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal, shed more light on the nature of Vulpeculae 2024, suggesting that it represents a rare class of hybrid novae.

• NASA's DART test for planetary defense proved it can shift an asteroid's solar orbit

  Four years ago, NASA purposely smashed a spacecraft into a small asteroid to see if they could deflect it—a test to prove humanity could protect Earth from threatening space rocks.

• Stars like our sun may maintain the same rotation pattern for life, contrary to 45 years of theoretical predictions

  Researchers at Nagoya University in Japan have conducted the most detailed simulation of the interior of stars and disproved a theory scientists have believed for 45 years: that stars switch their rotation patterns as they age, with poles rotating faster than the equator in older stars. Scientists have now found that this switch may not occur. Stars maintain solar-type rotation, spinning fast at the equator and slow at the poles throughout their lifetime. The findings are published in Nature Astronomy.

• What's inside neutron stars? New model could sharpen gravitational-wave 'tide' clues

  Neutron stars harbor some of the most extreme environments in the universe: their densities soar to several times those of atomic nuclei, and they possess some of the strongest gravitational fields of any known objects, surpassed only by black holes. First observed in the 1960s, much of the internal composition of neutron stars is still unknown. Scientists are beginning to look to gravitational waves emitted by binary neutron‐star inspirals—pairs of mutually orbiting neutron stars—as possible sources of information about their interiors.

• Can we observe Earth-like exoplanets from our own planet?

  Finding Earth-like planets orbiting sun-like stars and identifying signs of life such as oxygen or water is a major goal in astronomy and a key interest for the public. Addressing this challenge speaks directly to one of humanity's most fundamental questions: Are we alone in the universe? However, these planets are about 10 billion times dimmer than their stars in visible light, making direct detection extremely challenging.

• Gravitational waves reveal hidden structure of galactic centers

  A new study published in Nature Astronomy indicates that the dense, star- and dark-matter–rich environments around supermassive black hole binaries pack on the order of a million solar masses into each cubic parsec. The team used gravitational-wave data from pulsar timing arrays to probe galactic centers that are otherwise impossible to observe directly.

• NASA rules out asteroid smashup on the moon in 2032

  Here's one less thing to worry about—or to look forward to: NASA has ruled out any chance that an asteroid called 2024 YR4 will hit the moon in 2032. Last year, the uncertainty surrounding the space rock's orbital path held out a slight chance of impact, but fresh observations from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope confirm that it'll be a miss.

• NASA now officially has no plans to use new mobile launcher for Artemis

  When NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced the revamped approach to the Artemis moon program, it was unclear whether the new mobile launcher that has been constructed over the last two years at Kennedy Space Center would ever get used.

• Missing technosignatures? Turbulent plasma may blur ultra-narrow signals before they leave their home star systems

  A new study by researchers at the SETI Institute suggests that stellar "space weather" could make radio signals from extraterrestrial intelligence harder to detect. Stellar activity and plasma turbulence near a transmitting planet can broaden an otherwise ultra-narrow signal, spreading its power across more frequencies and making it more difficult to detect in traditional narrowband searches. The paper is published in The Astrophysical Journal.

• Why are some stars always visible while others come and go with the seasons?

  As a space scientist, every time I go outside with my family, I tell my children to look up at the sky. The front door of our home looks southeast, and on winter nights the constellation Orion hangs majestically just above the horizon as soon as it grows dark enough to see stars.

• Introducing the Interplanetary Habitable Zone

  Anyone familiar with the search for alien life will have heard of the "Goldilocks Zone" around a star. This is defined as the orbital band where the temperature is just right for liquid water to pool on a rocky planet's surface—a good approximation for what we thought of as the early conditions for life on Earth. But what happens if that life doesn't stay on an Earth analog? If they, like we, start to move toward their neighboring planets, the idea of a habitable zone becomes much more complicated. A new paper from Dr. Caleb Scharf of the NASA Ames Research Center, and one of the agency's premier astrobiologists, tries to account for this possibility by introducing the framework of an Interplanetary Habitable Zone (IHZ). The work is published on the arXiv preprint server.

• Binary star population of open cluster NGC 2158 explored with Hubble

  Astronomers have analyzed the images collected by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to investigate a galactic open cluster known as NGC 2158. Results of the study, published Feb. 25 on the arXiv pre-print server, provide essential insights into the population of binary stars in this cluster.

• New LVK catalog adds 128 gravitational-wave candidates, more than doubling detections

  When the densest objects in the universe collide and merge, the violence sets off ripples, in the form of gravitational waves, that reverberate across space and time, over hundreds of millions and even billions of years. By the time they pass through Earth, such cosmic ripples are barely discernible.

• NASA's eclipse megamovie project releases full data on 2024 solar eclipse

  On April 8, 2024, people across the world witnessed a solar eclipse, a relatively rare event in which the moon occults (blocks out) light from the sun. To capture this event, volunteers at 143 observatories across the U.S. trained their equipment on it as part of NASA's Eclipse Megamovie citizen science project. The images they took were groundbreaking and provided some of the most detailed images to date of the sun's corona. After nearly two years of production and editing, the Eclipse Megamovie team has released the dataset from this project.