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Private mission launches to extend life of out-of-gas communication satellites

A two-armed space robot blasted off on a private salvage operation Tuesday to slap life-extending jetpacks on old satellites running low on fuel thousands of miles up.

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Electyrolyzer experiment designated ready-to-fly by NASA

A Southwest Research Institute and University of Texas at San Antonio experiment has passed a critical NASA review, designating it ready for parabolic flight testing. The two institutions will evaluate the performance of a patent-pending electrolyzer, the Mars Atmospheric Reactor for Synthesis of Consumables (MARS-C), in partial-gravity environments.

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Does dark energy really exist? Our work identifies cracks in the foundations of today’s cosmological model

According to current understanding, the universe is expanding—and is doing so at an accelerating rate. This is believed to be caused by something called the cosmological constant, which was first proposed by Albert Einstein in his theory of general relativity. In recent decades, it has become better known as dark energy, which is believed to […]

Black hole jet may be stirring gas cloud containing early ‘red potato’ galaxy

A black hole may be stirring a “pot” of gas containing a neighboring galaxy in the early universe, according to a new study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics that used observations from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. The galaxy slowly being “cooked” is named MQN01 J004131.9-493704, but astronomers have nicknamed it the “red potato” because of […]

New technique enables LIGO to peer farther into the distant universe

Scientists at the University of California, Riverside, have developed a new way to help gravitational-wave observatories see farther into the universe by solving one of their biggest challenges: tiny heat-induced distortions in the massive mirrors at the heart of the detectors.

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Mysterious gas ‘bullets’ race from Milky Way’s only known helium nova at up to 20 million mph

Mysterious high-speed “bullets”—clumps of possibly oxygen-rich gas traveling at up to 20 million miles per hour—have been discovered shooting out of the rarest stellar explosion in our galaxy.

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US-India satellite delivers data, reveals ‘hummingbird’ in Antarctica

As of July 20, the public can access data from the two powerful radar instruments aboard the NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellite. Teams in the United States and India will release files processed from the satellite’s L-band and S-band radars on an ongoing basis, helping researchers and other users track the movement of Earth’s […]

Jellyfish nebula may be the scene of two stars going supernova

The star that formed the Jellyfish nebula may have had a partner star that exploded 100,000 years earlier, according to international researchers, who say that this may be the first known discovery of a binary star system in which both stars have gone supernova.

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New simulation challenges leading explanation for why galaxies stop forming stars

For decades, astronomers have cast galaxy mergers as the universe’s ultimate relationship drama: two galaxies collide, chaos erupts, black holes awaken and star formation comes to a screeching halt. Upending this long-held belief, new research from Florida International University suggests most galaxies don’t “die” in spectacular cosmic pileups after all.

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New radio-burst method helps locate universe’s missing ordinary matter

Stars and galaxies make up much of the universe’s ordinary, observable matter. But for decades, scientists have wrestled with a cosmic conflict: There should be much more.

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Antarctic 12-m Terahertz Telescope project to uncover hidden galaxy formation

A new simulation study suggests that the Antarctic 12-m Terahertz Telescope (ATT12), a next-generation facility led by University of Tsukuba, could uncover between 1 and 10 million dusty star-forming galaxies throughout cosmic history.

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A new compact instrument enables high-fidelity measurements of energetic particles on CubeSats

A team of NASA-sponsored scientists and engineers has developed a novel approach to observing high-energy particles in the near-Earth space environment, incorporating miniaturized sensors into a compact, multiview particle-detection instrument unlike any before it.

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When a SpaceX rocket crashes into the moon, scientists will be watching

On Aug. 5, 2026, an abandoned piece of space junk is predicted to crash into the moon near a spot called Einstein Crater. Astronomers will be watching because the collision and aftermath may be visible from Earth.

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Finding Venus zone planets with PLATO will show us how habitable planets evolve

Dreams of finding a sort of Earth 2.0 motivate much of the thinking around the search for exoplanets. But there is more to exoplanet science than searching for potentially habitable worlds. Scientists need a deeper understanding of the overall exoplanet population to understand the cosmos.

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Scientists use dual-frequency images to explore black hole plasma physics

The first-ever image of a black hole—a glowing, ring-like structure at the heart of galaxy M87—was unveiled to the world in a landmark moment in 2019. Now, researchers have taken the next big step—moving beyond capturing a picture of the black hole to understanding its physics through dual-frequency images.

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