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CPR simulator for space use tracks the differences of blood flow in reduced gravity

The new focus on manned missions to the moon and Mars presents countless pressing challenges, including keeping humans alive in hostile environments. What happens when an astronaut or space tourist has a cardiac emergency millions of miles from the nearest hospital?

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The moon’s formation still remains a mystery in many ways

A half century after NASA’s Apollo 17 lunar module lifted off the moon’s northeastern near side quadrant, planetary scientists still don’t completely understand when or how our moon first formed. They do agree that it involved a major impactor—an object dubbed Theia by lunar scientists—that likely struck Earth some 4.51 billion years ago. But the […]

Close Juno flyby unlocks sharp new image of Jupiter moon Thebe

NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured this view of Thebe, the second largest of Jupiter’s inner moons, during a close pass on May 1, 2026. The spacecraft’s Stellar Reference Unit (SRU) captured this image from a distance of approximately 3,100 miles (5,000 kilometers) at a resolution of about 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) per pixel.

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Watch as NASA’s Curiosity Rover frees its drill from a rock

This series of images shows NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover as it got a rock stuck to the drill on the end of its robotic arm, and—after waving the arm and running the drill a few times—finally detached the rock. The imagery showing the entire process was captured by the black-and-white hazard cameras on the front […]

Planet 9 volunteers double known population of brown dwarfs

A new paper from NASA’s Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project announces that volunteers have essentially doubled the number of known brown dwarfs, with over 3,000 new discoveries made over the past 10 years since the project began. Brown dwarfs are balls of gas the size of Jupiter, less massive than stars. There’s one for every […]

Three billion years ago, Earth’s life relied on a rare metal

A collaborative team of scientists has discovered that life on Earth over three billion years ago relied on the metal molybdenum, which was incredibly scarce in the environment at the time. The study, published in Nature Communications, is the first to show that molybdenum was used by ancient life this far back in our planet’s […]

Astronomers map lifetime of over 100,000 molecular clouds across 66 galaxies

An international team of astronomers has analyzed the data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to investigate giant molecular clouds in nearby galaxies. The new study, presented April 27 on the arXiv preprint server, unveils crucial information regarding the lifetime of more than 100,000 such clouds across 66 […]

JWST pins down the origins of a planetary odd couple

Across the Milky Way galaxy, a planetary odd couple is circling a star some 190 light years from Earth. A normally “lonely” hot Jupiter is sharing space with a mini-Neptune, in a rare and unlikely pairing that’s had astronomers puzzled since the system’s discovery in 2020.

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Blue Origin moon lander completes testing at NASA vacuum chamber

Also known as Endurance, MK1 is an uncrewed cargo lander. It’s a commercial demonstration mission to advance Human Landing System capabilities in support of NASA’s Artemis program. The tests in Chamber A represent a public-private partnership model, with Blue Origin conducting work through a reimbursable Space Act Agreement.

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We might have massively underestimated Io’s thermal output

Io is a world of extremes. It is by far the most volcanically active world in our solar system. Being continually squeezed in the never-ending tug-of-war between Jupiter and its larger satellites will do that to a moon. As a result, Io has over 400 “paterae”—volcanic depressions that spew lava up onto its surface. And, […]

Optically dark gamma-ray burst reveals an unusually wide jet

Using various telescopes, an international team of astronomers has performed multi-wavelength observations of a recently identified gamma-ray burst source designated GRB 250416C. Results of the observational campaign, published April 23 on the v pre-print server, could help us better understand the nature of GRB 250416C and gamma-ray bursts in general.

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Mathematical framework solves asteroid route planning exactly for first time

A new publication from Bielefeld University sets a benchmark in optimization research. Together with an international team, Professor Michael Römer from the Faculty of Business Administration and Economics has developed a mathematical framework that solves a complex problem from space logistics exactly for the first time: the optimal planning of a route to visit several […]

A tiny world beyond Neptune has an atmosphere that shouldn’t exist

A team of professional and amateur Japanese astronomers have found evidence for a thin atmosphere around a small body in the outer solar system. The object is so small that it should not have a sustainable atmosphere, raising questions about when and how the atmosphere formed. Future observations to better characterize the atmosphere will help […]

Astronomers uncover over 1,000 radio galaxies with ‘wings,’ expanding a rare cosmic class

Astronomers recently carried out a comprehensive search for strange “winged” radio galaxies using data from the LOFAR Two-meter Sky Survey Data Release 2 (LoTSS DR2) and discovered over 1,000 new systems. The paper outlining these results was submitted to the arXiv preprint server on April 24, 2026.

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Is the Large Magellanic Cloud a first-time visitor?

Our most massive satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), has been the center of a heated debate in the astrophysics community over the last few years. That debate centers on whether this is the LMC’s first or second “pass” by the Milky Way itself—and it has huge implications for the evolution of our galaxy […]