Europe's plans to develop its "Argonaut" robotic moon lander are moving ahead with the announcement of an Italy-led consortium that will build a key element of the spacecraft.
Galaxies like our Milky Way grew through cascading mergers of smaller galaxies that began billions of years ago. The ancient progenitors of galaxies like ours were small galaxies similar to modern-day dwarf galaxies like the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. Research shows that both dwarf galaxies and ancient galaxies are less massive, have lower metallicity, and have lots of star-forming gas but relatively few stars. Astronomers try to understand ancient galaxies and how they grew to become so massive by studying dwarf galaxies that are interacting with each other and beginning to merge.

