Space News & Blog Articles

All sorts of crazy things have been suggested regarding 3I/ATLAS, the third known interstellar object that we’ve discovered. Some are simply conspiracy theories about it being an alien spacecraft, while others have been well-thought out suggestions, like using Martian-based probes to observe the comet as it streaked past the red planet. A new paper pre-published on arXiv and accepted for publication by the Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society by Samuel Grand and Geraint Jones, of the Finnish Meteorological Institute and ESA respectively, falls into the latter category, and suggests utilizing two spacecraft already en route to their separate destinations to potentially detect ions from the object’s spectacular tail that has formed as it approaches the Sun.

Earth has a long, 4.5 billion history full of momentous twists and turns. Multiple prominent events played leading roles in Earth's story. One of them is the catastrophic impact with another planetesimal early in Earth's history that not only created the Moon, but altered Earth's chemistry forever.

Dust devils are a regular occurrence on Mars. Similar to Earth, these short-lived whirlwinds emerge when surface heating occurs, causing changes in air pressure and a vertical column of wind to form. As the column pulls in surrounding air, it becomes a vortex that kicks up dust, which it carries with it across the surface. While Mars has a very thin atmosphere, less than 1% that of Earth's, the lower gravity means that its dust devils grow larger than anything we see here. And according to new research by an international research team, these dust devils will reach velocities that are higher than what we expected.

The wavelengths of radio light are so large that you can't capture a high-resolution image with a single dish. To capture an image as sharp as, say, the Hubble telescope, you'd need a radio dish tens of kilometers across. So radio astronomers took a different approach. They used an array of dozens of antennas, each capturing their own signal. Since the antennas not only capture precise data but also the precise timing of that data, astronomers can use a process known as interferometry. Light from a distant radio object reaches each antenna at a slightly different time, and by correlating the arrival times, astronomers can treat the array as a virtual antenna disk the size of the entire array. From many, one, as the saying goes.

The Search For Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is evolving. We’ve moved on from the limited thinking of monitoring radio waves to checking for interstellar pushing lasers or even budding Dyson swarms around stars. To match our increased understanding of the ways we might find intelligence elsewhere in the galaxy, the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) is working through an update to its protocols for what researchers should do after a confirmed detection of intelligence outside of Earth. Their new suggestions are available in a pre-print paper on arXiv, but were also voted on at the 2025 International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Sydney, with potential full adoption early next year.

Space-based solar power has been gaining more and more traction recently. The recent success of Caltech’s Space Solar Power Project, which demonstrated the feasibility of transmitting power from space to the ground, has been matched by a number of pilot projects throughout the world, all of which are hoping to tap into some of the almost unlimited and constant solar energy that is accessible up in geostationary orbit (GEO). But, according to a new paper from a group of Italian and German researchers, there are plenty of constraints on getting that power down here to Earth - and most of them are more logistical than technical.

What can cryovolcanism on Pluto teach scientists about the dwarf planet’s current geological activity? This is what a recent study published in *The Planetary Science Journal* hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated potential cryovolcanic sites within specific regions on Pluto. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand the current geological activity, including how it can be active while orbiting so far from the Sun.

On the surface of Mars, there are numerous features that tell of a past age when the planet was warmer and wetter, with rivers, lakes, and even an ocean that covered much of its northern hemisphere. These include river channels, delta fans, sedimentary deposits, and low-lying regions rich in clay minerals. The discovery and study of these features over the past fifty years have raised some pressing questions for scientists. These include the question of how much water once flowed on Mars and what led to the gradual transition that left the planet a frigid, desiccated world, where the only water on the surface comes in the form of ice and permafrost.