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Little red dots may mark temporary black hole phase

Since their discovery by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in 2022, little red dots (LRDs) have been the subject of great interest to astronomers. Understanding the nature of these extremely distant, compact red sources has been a puzzling scientific endeavor.

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Curiosity Mars rover discovers field of honeycomb textures

As NASA’s Curiosity rover recently began climbing a Martian valley nicknamed “Valle Grande,” it sent back images that were a familiar sight to mission scientists: honeycomb-like textures called polygonal fractures, each about 1.5–3 inches (4–8 centimeters) across. The mission has spotted small patches of these geometric shapes several times before, but nothing at the scale […]

Black hole ‘blast’ reaches 300,000 light-years

A team of researchers has discovered that winds generated by supermassive black holes are 100 times more powerful than previously thought, carrying energy across distances of approximately 300,000 light-years. The discovery demonstrates that these explosive winds affect the vast expanse of space beyond the galaxies they inhabit.

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ESCAPADE’s cameras capture Earth and moon

In November 2025, NASA’s Mars-bound ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral with special cargo on board: two camera systems designed and built by faculty and students at NAU, with support from the University of California, Berkeley, and Rocket Lab.

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First 3D map reveals hidden thermal structure of nearby interstellar medium

Astronomers have built the first three-dimensional map of gas temperature in the space surrounding our solar system, revealing a far messier and more dynamic picture than current models predict. The study was submitted to the arXiv preprint server on July 16.

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A distant primordial object may be a newborn ‘Little Red Dot’

The infrared-sensitive James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has conducted multiple surveys of the very distant universe, digging into what was happening in the first billion years after the Big Bang. As part of these deep surveys, its sensors have been picking up mysterious objects dubbed “Little Red Dots.” It has found more than 300 of […]

US to loosen environmental safeguards on space industry

The United States on Tuesday said it plans to exempt its private space sector from numerous environmental regulations to accelerate the pace of space launches and ramp up competition with China.

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Private mission to rescue NASA’s aging telescope runs into its own trouble

The spacecraft rushing to the rescue of an aging and sinking NASA telescope has run into its own problem.

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The future of the UK’s renowned Lovell radio telescope is in question after a funding cut

Scientists have reacted with alarm to news that the British government will cut funding to the world-famous radio telescope at the Jodrell Bank Observatory, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in northwest England that has been helping explore the cosmos for almost 70 years.

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Evidence of giant rings in Venus’s atmosphere uncovered in archived observations

In 2010, scientists waiting to use the William Herschel Telescope in the Canary Islands captured a brief 36 minutes of images of Venus. They were waiting for the sun to set so they could look at distant stars and dust disks around young stars. Consequently, little attention was paid to the data, which was filed […]

Martian space suits will need to be 40% lighter

Long before a human ever sets foot on the Red Planet, we already know how harsh the environment is. Once a human finally does, the only things protecting them from that environment will be the infrastructure we’ve built there and the spacesuit that keeps them in a protective bubble. Unfortunately, modern spacesuits aren’t built with […]

Tabby’s star may be orbited by a planetary-mass companion

By analyzing data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and conducting new radial velocity measurements, U.K. and French astronomers have found evidence that the mysterious Tabby’s star may be orbited by an object about nine times more massive than Jupiter. The new findings are published on the preprint server arXiv.

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Chicxulub’s lingering dust may have turned falling debris into a global firestorm

Sixty-six million years ago, the six-mile-wide (10-kilometer-wide) Chicxulub asteroid crash-landed in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula and changed life on Earth forever. The reign of the dinosaurs ended, and only creatures that could shelter in burrows or shallow waters survived into the age of mammals that followed.

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JWST could spot volcanic ‘exo-Ios’ around super-Jupiters

Jupiter’s moon Io is the most volcanically active planetary body in the solar system, boasting hundreds of active volcanoes that spew molten lava into space. This activity results from a process called tidal heating, in which Jupiter’s massive gravity constantly stretches and compresses the much smaller moon during its noncircular orbit.

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More evidence Mars once had water emerges from old Spirit rover data

More than 20 years after NASA’s Spirit rover landed on Mars, a researcher from Edith Cowan University (ECU) has uncovered new evidence that suggests water may once have covered large parts of the red planet.

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