Phys.org Astronomy and Space

• NASA spacecraft around the moon photographs the crash site of a Japanese company's lunar lander

  A NASA spacecraft around the moon has photographed the crash site of a Japanese company's lunar lander.

• Macron says Europe must become 'space power' again

  President Emmanuel Macron said Friday that Europe must again become a global space power, warning that France risked being squeezed out of the global low-orbit satellite constellation market.

• Tabletop exercises can help us understand and avoid potential conflicts over the moon

  As different nations begin conducting operations on the lunar surface, humanity's penchant for geopolitical struggles will likely be along for the ride. Tension between nations and/or corporations could grow. There are few rules and treaties that can calm this potential rising tension. What kinds of conflict might erupt and how can it be prevented?

• The solar system's greatest mystery may finally be solved

  For years, astronomers have been searching for a mysterious ninth planet lurking in the dark outer reaches of our solar system. Now, a team of researchers have taken a completely different approach to this cosmic detective story—instead of looking for reflected sunlight, they're hunting for the planet's own heat signature.

• Radio signal from the very early universe offers clues about the first stars

  Understanding how the universe transitioned from darkness to light with the formation of the first stars and galaxies is a key turning point in the universe's development, known as the Cosmic Dawn. However, even with the most powerful telescopes, we can't directly observe these earliest stars, so determining their properties is one of the biggest challenges in astronomy.

• The summer solstice is here. What to know about the longest day of the year

  Peak sunshine has arrived in the Northern Hemisphere—the summer solstice.

• Do ocean worlds have smaller habitable zones?

  Hycean worlds are also called ocean worlds. They're planets covered in oceans that also have thick hydrogen atmospheres. There are no confirmed hycean worlds but many candidates. Even though they're only candidates so far, researchers are curious about their habitability. New research examines the role tidal heating plays in their potential habitability.

• SpaceX Starship explodes on Texas launch pad

  A SpaceX Starship rocket exploded during a routine ground test in Texas late Wednesday, the company said, in the latest setback to billionaire Elon Musk's dream of sending humans to Mars.

• The first images from Vera Rubin telescope are about to drop

  In the early 1600s, Dutch spectacle maker Jan Lippershey discovered that combining lenses could magnify distant objects. Galileo Galilei quickly improved the designs and became the first to explore the heavens, revealing the moon's craters, Jupiter's moons and the rings of Saturn.

• NASA to gather in-flight imagery of commercial test capsule re-entry

  A NASA team specializing in collecting imagery-based engineering datasets from spacecraft during launch and reentry is supporting a European aerospace company's upcoming mission to return a subscale demonstration capsule from space.

• Researchers take one small step toward planning life on Mars

  Before they take the long journey to another planet, humans will have to find the right place to land. New findings from a University of Mississippi researcher may point to just such a place on Mars.

• New study offers a double dose of hot Jupiters

  Yale astronomers may have discovered the origin story for one of the universe's most dazzling phenomena—the double hot Jupiter—as well as a plan to find more of them.

• SpaceX retargets crewed Axiom Space launch

  SpaceX has reset the countdown clock for its next human spaceflight, targeting an early Sunday morning launch of the private Axiom Space Ax-4 mission.

• Neanderthal extinction: A space physicist reopens the debate

  Neanderthals have long been the subject of intense scientific debate. This is largely because we still lack clear answers to some of the big questions about their existence and supposed disappearance.

• Another tether deorbiting test mission takes shape

  More and more satellites are being added to low Earth orbit (LEO) every month. As that number continues to increase, so do the risks of that critical area surrounding Earth becoming impassable, trapping us on the planet for the foreseeable future. Ideas from different labs have presented potential solutions to this problem, but one of the most promising, electrodynamic tethers (EDTs), have only now begun to be tested in space.

• Image: Exoplanet GJ504b, 'second Jupiter' directly observed

  GJ504b is an exoplanet orbiting a sun-like star GJ 504. It is estimated to be three to six times more massive than Jupiter, making it the lowest-mass planet ever directly imaged. This faint and cold planet, often referred to as the "second Jupiter," was discovered as part of the Strategic Explorations of Exoplanets and Disks with Subaru (SEEDS) Project. The SEEDS project aimed to conduct direct observations of exoplanets to discover and explore their features using the coronagraph imager HiCIAO and the adaptive optics system with 188 elements AO 188.

• The Cosmic Owl: Astronomers discover a peculiar galaxy merger

  An international team of astronomers reports the detection of a peculiar merger of two similar ring galaxies that morphologically resemble an owl's face. The discovery of this galaxy merger, dubbed the "Cosmic Owl," is presented in a research paper published June 11 on the arXiv preprint server.

• Escaping cosmic strings: How dark photons could finally work as dark matter

  Researchers, in a recent Physical Review Letters paper, introduce a new mechanism that may finally allow ultralight dark photons to be considered serious candidates for dark matter, with promising implications for detection efforts.

• Using a space elevator to get water off Ceres

  We might not currently have any technology that would make a space elevator viable on Earth. But that doesn't mean they wouldn't work on other bodies around the solar system. One of the most interesting places that one could work is around Ceres, the Queen of the Asteroid Belt, and potentially one of the biggest sources of resources for humanity's expansion into space.

• SpaceX rocket being tested in Texas explodes, but no injuries reported

  A SpaceX rocket being tested in Texas exploded Wednesday night, sending a dramatic fireball high into the sky.

• 'The models were right': Astronomers find 'missing' matter linking four galaxy clusters

  Astronomers have discovered a huge filament of hot gas bridging four galaxy clusters. At 10 times as massive as our galaxy, the thread could contain some of the universe's 'missing' matter, addressing a decades-long mystery.

• Stellar flybys have not altered Earth's climate in the past 56 million years, study finds

  If our solar system seems stable, it's because our short lifespans make it seem that way. Earth revolves, night follows day, the moon moves through light and shadow, and the sun hangs in the sky. But in reality, everything is moving and influencing everything else, and the fine balance we observe can easily be disrupted. Could passing stars have disrupted Earth's orbit and ushered in dramatic climatic changes in our planet's past?

• Exploring late accretion's role in terrestrial planet evolution

  Southwest Research Institute has collaborated with Yale University to summarize the scientific community's notable progress in advancing the understanding of the formation and evolution of the inner rocky planets, the so-called terrestrial planets. Their paper focuses on late accretion's role in the long-term evolution of terrestrial planets, including their distinct geophysical and chemical properties as well as their potential habitability.

• Using a unique method, astronomers have discovered an exceptional new planet

  Scientists from Vilnius University (VU) Faculty of Physics, together with colleagues from Poland and other countries, have identified an exoplanet—a gas giant located far from the galactic center. This is only the third such discovery in the entire history of observations.

• Exoplanetary systems are diverse. Experts argue search for life should be the same

  Scientists are revolutionizing the search for extraterrestrial life by challenging our somewhat Earth-centric assumptions about where and how life might exist in the universe. A new review argues that we must embrace the remarkable diversity of exoplanets discovered over the past two decades and consider a much broader range of environments that could potentially host life.

• Inside Mercury: What experimental geophysics is revealing about our strangest planet

  Mercury doesn't give up its secrets easily. The smallest planet in our solar system is also one of the most extreme—a sun-scorched, metal-rich world with a puzzling magnetic field and lavas unlike anything found on Earth.

• Surprising discovery shows a strong link between Earth's magnetic field and atmospheric oxygen levels

  Every breath we take in contains 21% oxygen, the gas that makes life on Earth possible. Oxygen, in its combined oxide state, has always been abundant in Earth's crust, but elemental diatomic oxygen became part of our atmosphere around 2.4 to 2.5 billion years ago as a gift from cyanobacteria, which triggered the Great Oxidation Event and breathed life into Earth.

• Astronomers capture most detailed thousand-color image of the Sculptor galaxy

  Astronomers have created a galactic masterpiece: an ultra-detailed image that reveals previously unseen features in the Sculptor galaxy. Using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT), they observed this nearby galaxy in thousands of colors simultaneously. By capturing vast amounts of data at every single location, they created a galaxy-wide snapshot of the lives of stars within Sculptor.

• Structural and kinematical properties of globular cluster NGC 5634 challenge its Sagittarius origins

  By analyzing the data from the DESI Legacy Imaging Survey, Chinese astronomers have investigated a globular cluster known as NGC 5634. Results of the new study, published June 5 on the arXiv pre-print server, provide more insights into the structural and kinematical properties of this cluster.

• Trump's plan to kill dozens of NASA missions threatens US space supremacy

  NASA's car-sized Perseverance rover has been roaming the surface of Mars for four years, drilling into the alien soil to collect dirt it places in tubes and leaves on the ground.