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A US-Russian space crew lands safely in Kazakhstan after an 8-month stint on the ISS

A U.S.-Russian space crew landed safely in the steppes of Kazakhstan on Sunday after an eight-month stint on the International Space Station.

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Gamma-ray pulsations reveal extreme 3.2-millisecond pulsar 3,900 light-years away

By analyzing the data from NASA’s Fermi gamma-ray space telescope, Chinese astronomers have investigated a recently identified millisecond pulsar known as PSR J0435+3233. As a result, they found that the pulsar exhibits gamma-ray pulsations. The discovery was detailed in a paper published July 17 on the pre-print server arXiv.

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SpaceX launches Starship on another test flight, this time with the most advanced Starlinks

SpaceX’s mammoth Starship rocket blasted off Friday on another test flight stretching halfway around the world, this time releasing 20 of the most advanced Starlinks.

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Rare blue optical transient points to possible new class of cosmic explosion

Chinese astronomers report the detection of a peculiar optical transient event that occurred in the center of a dwarf galaxy. The newly discovered event, designated AT2019ijn, is a fast-rising, slow-decaying blue optical transient with exceptionally bright radio emission. The finding was detailed in a paper published July 6 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

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Rocks from unexplored far side of the moon help rewrite lunar history

Ancient samples from the moon’s far side are helping scientists uncover how asteroid impacts shaped the early solar system. The findings challenge decades of thinking about when those impacts occurred and offer new insights into the conditions that influenced Earth’s evolution.

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Io’s volcanic output offers a 40‑day forecast of plasma density in Jupiter’s magnetosphere

A careful statistical comparison of observations recorded by NASA’s Juno mission and the Planetary Science Institute’s Io Input Output observatory (IoIO) shows that IoIO observations reliably predict the density of Jupiter’s plasma disk, an important part of Jupiter’s magnetosphere, according to a new Geophysical Research Letters paper co-authored by Planetary Science Institute Senior Scientist Jeff […]

Why Europa’s hidden ocean may be more difficult to reach than scientists thought

Europa, one of Jupiter’s icy moons, has long fascinated scientists because of what may lie beneath its frozen shell: a global ocean of liquid water. That hidden ocean has made Europa one of the most compelling places in the solar system to study the conditions that might support life. But new research led by Rutgers […]

UK in pole position to lead key instrument in NASA’s hunt for Earth-like worlds

UK astronomers are a step closer to playing a leading role in NASA’s search for alien life in the coming decades as they continue developing one of the core instruments of the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO). The exciting mission—the U.S. space agency’s next flagship space telescope after the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope—is expected to […]

Astronomers catch massive galaxy assembling piece by piece 1.2 billion years after Big Bang

Astronomers have discovered a remarkably tiny group of six young galaxies just 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang. This may be a rare glimpse of how some of the universe’s largest galaxies formed. The paper outlining the findings was submitted to the arXiv preprint server on July 13.

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Should scientists have research ‘reserves’ on the moon?

The worlds of the solar system are exciting and, so far, mostly pristine places for planetary scientists to study. As space missions continue to travel to Mars, Europa, asteroids and other worlds, questions arise about keeping them safe for continued exploration and observation.

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Young rift flanks suggest Venus remains tectonically active

Venus is an inhospitable place, with temperatures soaring to several hundred degrees Celsius (hundreds of degrees Fahrenheit) and no oceans like those on Earth. Planetary scientists long believed Venus was geologically dormant. However, recent research indicates that Venus remains geologically “alive” and even hosts active volcanoes.

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Could alien signals be hiding on a different radio channel?

Astronomers searching for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence may have been missing alien signals in part of the radio spectrum that has not recently been explored.

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Mars auroras reveal miniature version of Earth’s magnetic engine

NASA MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) mission scientists have uncovered a key puzzle piece in understanding certain types of auroras on Mars, finding that they form in a similar way to Earth–based auroras.

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NASA’s new space telescope will tackle some of the universe’s biggest mysteries

NASA is about to launch a space observatory that could help settle some of the biggest mysteries in modern astronomy. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will study how the universe began, what it is made of and how it has evolved over time.

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Hawai’i serves as model for Western researchers studying the moon’s volcanic history

The moon is 384,000 kilometers (239,000 miles) away from Earth, but one of the best places to study its surface is much closer to home. Western planetary scientist Catherine Neish and PhD candidate Sashank Vanga traveled to Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park in June to investigate lava flows that could reveal new clues about the moon’s […]