Phys.org Astronomy and Space

• How big data is transforming what we know about the universe

  Science in the modern era is increasingly reliant on enormous datasets and automated analysis. In astronomy, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST)—a ten-year survey covering the entire southern sky almost a thousand times over the next decade—will test the limits of this reliance.

• The first modern rocket launched 100 years ago, beginning a century of both innovations and challenges for spaceflight

  Apollo 11 first landed astronauts on the moon in 1969, but the journey to the lunar surface actually began 43 years before, in snowy Massachusetts.

• ISS study identifies thresholds for muscle atrophy and fiber changes in reduced gravity

  It's well known that spaceflight causes muscle atrophy and other biological changes in reduced gravity, and especially in near-zero gravity (microgravity) environments. However, the gravity threshold needed to maintain sufficient muscle health in space is still unclear.

• The seven hour explosion nobody could explain

  Gamma-ray bursts are the most violent explosions in the universe. In a fraction of a second, they can release more energy than the sun will emit across its entire 10-billion-year lifetime. Most are over before you've had time to register them, gone in seconds, minutes at most. So when something arrived on 2 July 2025 that kept going for seven hours, fired three distinct bursts spread across an entire day, and then left behind an afterglow lasting months, astronomers knew immediately they were looking at something completely new.

• Ice satellite detects powerful geomagnetic storm with precision

  It seems improbable that a satellite designed to monitor polar ice sheets and floating sea ice could accurately measure a disturbance in Earth's magnetic field. But that is just what ESA's CryoSat mission did earlier this year. This is a story of unique innovation in satellite technology. At the end of last year, the CryoSat mission, which has been operating for almost 16 years, was given a remote upgrade of new software for its platform magnetometer. This instrument is installed on the satellite to ensure it orbits at the right altitude and directs its science instruments toward the right part of Earth's surface. The platform magnetometer is therefore an operational instrument and was not designed to produce scientific data about Earth's magnetic environment.

• Globular cluster NGC 5824 is embedded in a dark matter halo, study suggests

  Using data from the Magellan Clay telescope and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT), astronomers have investigated a galactic globular cluster known as NGC 5824. Results of the new study, available in a paper published March 5 on the arXiv pre-print server, suggest that the cluster is embedded in a dark matter halo.

• SpaceX and Reflect Orbital plans would 'permanently scar' night sky, researchers warn

  The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) is alarmed by the threat to ground-based astronomy posed by proposals put forward by Elon Musk's SpaceX and Reflect Orbital. SpaceX has applied to launch one million satellites to act as data centers to power artificial intelligence, but brightness estimates show that thousands would be visible to the naked eye, many more than visible stars. On average, each image with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope would lose 10% of data due to satellite trails.

• Volunteers find oddly high solar flare rates

  Patches of the sun's surface often show strong magnetic fields. These fields can emerge within a matter of hours, and can decay slowly or quickly, sometimes over days, weeks, or even months. Thanks to a new study about these long-lived active regions, we now know much more about the patches where these strong magnetic fields take at least a month to decay.

• Planning Titan entry? New lab tests flag nitrogen-driven heat shield debris risks

  Heat shields are designed to protect the surface and cargo of a spacecraft as it enters an atmosphere. Aerospace engineers in The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign recently observed a violently destructive difference in how heat shields function in atmospheres like Earth that contain oxygen versus nitrogen-rich atmospheres such as Venus and Titan, one of Saturn's moons.

• A new class of molten planet stores abundant sulfur in a perpetual magma ocean

  A study led by the University of Oxford has identified a new type of planet beyond our solar system—one that stores large amounts of sulfur deep within a permanent ocean of magma. The findings have been published in Nature Astronomy.

• CHEOPS discovery defies planetary formation rules

  We're starting to see just how exceptional our own solar system and its history is, as more exoplanets are discovered. A fourth exoplanet discovery in the LHS 1903 system made by ESA's CHEOPS mission places a rocky world right where it shouldn't be. This "inside-out system" could challenge our current understanding of planetary formation.

• TESS discovers a super-Earth exoplanet orbiting nearby star

  Using the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), astronomers have discovered a new super-Earth exoplanet orbiting a star located about 83 light years away. The newfound alien world is slightly larger than Earth and encircles its host in less than four days. The finding was reported in a paper published Feb. 28 on the arXiv pre-print server.

• ATCA observations probe peculiar pulsar wind nebula Vela X

  Astronomers have employed the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) to investigate a peculiar pulsar wind nebula known as Vela X. Results of the new observations, published March 2 on the arXiv pre-print server, provide more hints about the properties and nature of this nebula.

• Dry ice detected in a planetary nebula for the first time

  An international team of astronomers has employed the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to observe a complex planetary nebula known as NGC 6302. The observations, detailed in a paper published Feb. 25 on the arXiv pre-print server, resulted in the discovery of dry (carbon dioxide) ice in this nebula. This is the first time dry ice has been detected in a planetary nebula.

• Dragonfly mission begins rotorcraft integration, testing stage

  Dragonfly integration and testing—the activities involved in assembling the mission's rotorcraft lander and testing it for the rigors of launch and extreme conditions of space—is officially underway in clean rooms and control rooms at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland.

• A 100-solar-mass black hole merger ripples spacetime, and may flash in gamma rays

  An international team from China and Italy has reported a possible cosmic encore to the landmark 2017 multi-messenger discovery. In November 2024, the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA observatories detected gravitational waves from a binary black hole merger, designated S241125n. Remarkably, just seconds later, satellites recorded a short gamma-ray burst (GRB) from the same region of the sky.

• This isn't just another rocky world orbiting a red dwarf—this one's special

  Astronomers have found an exoplanet that could serve as a benchmark in future studies. It's a rocky planet orbiting an M-type star, and though these planets are plentiful, this one could serve as a benchmark for understanding other M-dwarf exoplanets and their atmospheres. According to the authors of a new study, this new exoplanet could serve as "a reference system for highly irradiated rocky planets."

• Safer space travel: Scientists create a cosmic ray simulator

  Cosmic rays are one of the greatest challenges for space travel and pose a considerable risk to humans and materials. For the first time on European soil, an international research team in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) has succeeded in providing a simulator for galactic cosmic rays at the GSI/FAIR accelerator facility in Darmstadt, Germany. The results have been published in two articles in the journal Life Sciences in Space Research.

• AI accelerates elucidation of nuclear forces with explosive neutron star data

  A research team is using astrophysical explosions to understand the mysterious forces at work in some of the smallest building blocks in nature: atomic nuclei. In new research published in Nature Communications, the team uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to decipher the data from astrophysical observations to better understand how neutrons and protons interact in dense matter at the quantum level.

• Galactic islands of tranquility: 'Little red dots' may have brewed life's building blocks

  Astronomers have found that both the core of our Milky Way and the earliest proto-galaxies in the universe share a surprising trait: They are unusually calm and quiet in terms of harsh radiation. This tranquility is not just a cosmic curiosity; it may be essential for forming complex molecules that provide the ingredients of life.

• Webb spots details in nearby spiral galaxy NGC 5134

  Two powerful instruments of the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope joined forces to create this scenic galaxy view. This spiral galaxy is named NGC 5134, and it is located 65 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. Though 65 million light-years may seem like a huge distance—the light that Webb collected to create this image has been journeying to us from NGC 5134 since soon after Tyrannosaurus rex went extinct—NGC 5134 is fairly close by as far as galaxies go. Because of the galaxy's relative proximity, Webb can spot incredible details in its tightly wound spiral arms.

• NASA clears its Artemis moon rocket for an April launch with four astronauts following repairs

  NASA cleared its moon rocket on Thursday for an April launch with four astronauts after completing the latest round of repairs.

• Deep underground, a telescope may soon detect ghosts of stars that died before Earth existed

  Imagine looking up at the night sky and seeing a star suddenly burst into a blaze of light brighter than anything nearby. A flash so bright that it briefly outshines an entire galaxy before fading forever.

• NASA's tiny spacecraft sends first exoplanet images

  With the first images from the spacecraft now in hand, the team behind NASA's Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat, or SPARCS, is ready to begin charting the energetic lives of the galaxy's most common stars to help answer one of humanity's most profound questions: Which distant worlds beyond our solar system might be habitable?

• 'Ionic liquids' could redefine the habitable zone

  "Follow the water" has been a guiding mantra of astrobiology, and even space exploration more generally, for decades. If you want to find life, it makes sense to look for the universal solvent that almost all types of life on Earth use. But what if life doesn't actually need water to live or even evolve? A recent paper, available on the preprint server arXiv by researchers at MIT, including Dr. Sara Seager, and the University of Cardiff, proposes an alternative to water as the basis for life—ionic liquids (ILs) and deep eutectic solvents (DES).

• NASA plans to have a permanent base on the moon by 2030: How it can be done

  A US Senate committee has directed NASA to begin work on a moon base "as soon as is practicable." Under legislation advanced by the Senate lawmakers, the outpost would serve as a science laboratory and proving ground, where astronauts would develop the capabilities to live and work beyond Earth's orbit.

• Astronomers discuss fortifying our planetary defenses

  When people think of asteroids, they tend to picture rare, civilization-ending impacts like those depicted in movies such as "Armageddon." In reality, the asteroids most likely to affect modern society are much smaller. While kilometer-scale impacts occur only every tens of millions of years, decameter-scale (building-sized) objects strike Earth far more frequently: roughly every couple decades. As astronomers develop new ways to detect and track these smaller asteroids, planetary defense becomes increasingly relevant for protecting the space-based infrastructure that underpins modern life, from GPS navigation to global communications.

• Old NASA science satellite plunges back to Earth

  An old NASA science satellite plunged uncontrolled from orbit and reentered over the Pacific on Wednesday.

• We are not alone: Our sun escaped together with stellar 'twins' from galaxy center

  Researchers have uncovered evidence for our sun joining a mass migration of similar "twins" leaving the core regions of our galaxy, 4 to 6 billion years ago. The team created and studied an unprecedentedly accurate catalog of stars and their properties using data from the European Space Agency's Gaia satellite. Their discovery sheds light on the evolution of our galaxy, particularly the development of the rotating bar-like structure at its center.

• The Rubin Observatory's LSST will detect imminent impactors before they crash into Earth

  The Vera Rubin Observatory (VRO) has barely begun observations and is already wowing us. Images like its Cosmic Treasure Chest have us anticipating even more cosmic glory. And when the observatory sent out 800,000 alerts in one night in February, we got a taste of the scientific boost it will give astronomers. But while it's being lauded for its upcoming contributions to dark energy, supernovae, active galactic nuclei, and other distant and foundational subjects, it will also make important discoveries much closer to home. Its Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) will find asteroids by the millions, and potentially dangerous Near-Earth Objects (NEO) by the tens of thousands.