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Planet protector

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By Robin George Andrews , Science.  Excerpt: More than half of the “city killer” asteroids that might threaten Earth remain undiscovered. With an infrared eye, NASA’s NEO Surveyor aims to find them. ...a stone’s throw from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), you’ll find the Neon Retro Arcade. Among its collection of vintage video games is the 1979 Atari classic Asteroids, in which a pixelated spaceship shoots down a barrage of space rocks to stave off fatal collisions. After long days of work at JPL, Amy Mainzer used to rack up high scores on that console. “It was a hoot,” she says. It was also apt, considering she oversees a space mission designed to spot dangerous asteroids before they crash into Earth. That mission, the Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor, was conceived in the early 2000s and finally got the green light in 2022. Its components are now being built, tested, and assembled in clean rooms across the United States ahead of its planned launch in September 2027.......
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Planet-Eating Stars Hint at Earth’s Ultimate Fate

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By Matthew R. Francis , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Our Sun is about halfway through its life, which means Earth is as well. After a star exhausts its hydrogen nuclear fuel, its diameter expands more than a hundredfold, engulfing any unlucky planets in close orbits. That day is at least 5 billion years off for our solar system, but scientists have spotted a possible preview of our world’s fate. Using data from the  TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) observatory , astronomers  Edward Bryant  of the University of Warwick and  Vincent Van Eylen  of University College London compared systems with stars in the main sequence of their lifetimes—fusing hydrogen, like the Sun—with post–main sequence stars closer to the end of their lifetimes, both with and without planets. “We saw that these planets are getting rarer [as stars age],” Bryant said. In other words,  planets are disappearing as their host stars grow old . The comparison between planetary systems w...
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This is what lightning on Mars sounds like

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By Benjamin Thompson  &  Nick Petrić Howe , Nature.  Excerpt: The sounds of ‘micro-lightning’ have been recorded by NASA’s Perseverance rover, ending a long search for the phenomenon on Mars. ...a microphone on Perseverance ...found 55 such examples, along with signs of electrostatic interference indicative of the phenomenon. They dubbed the electric bursts ‘micro-lightning’, as they are far smaller than the lighting seen on Earth, due to the thin Martian atmosphere....  Full article at https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03896-7 .
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Uranus’s Small Moons Are Dark, Red, and Water-Poor

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By Kimberly M. S. Cartier , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: The solar system’s oddball planet has some pretty odd moons, too. The first infrared spectra of Uranus’s small inner moons, which will be  presented  on 18 December at the 2025 AGU Annual Meeting in New Orleans, have shown that their surfaces are much redder, much darker, and more water-poor than the larger moons orbiting far from the planet. ...The new observations also revealed that some moons were not quite where they should have been, highlighting how much more astronomers have to learn about the dynamics of the Uranian system. ...In 1986, Voyager 2 flew past  Uranus  in humanity’s only visit to the system. ...astronomers knew only of the planet’s five major moons and a handful of rings. Voyager 2 discovered 11 more moons and was able to roughly measure their sizes. Since then, scientists have used ground- and space-based telescopes to discover more than a dozen additional satellites, bringing Uranus’s moon tota...
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The Moon Was an Inside Job

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By Robin George Andrews , The New York Times.  Excerpt: New research suggests that Theia, the object whose collision with Earth is theorized to have caused the formation of the moon, came from closer to the sun. ...A study published Thursday in the journal  Science  ...looking at chemical clues hidden in Earth’s rocks, meteorites and moon matter, scientists have found ghostly remnants of Theia. And they show that Theia and the early Earth were built from the same construction materials....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/20/science/moon-collision-earth-theia.html . 
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The top candidate for life beyond Earth just got even better

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By Science Advisor.  Excerpt: If the space community had to place bets on the most promising candidate for life in the solar system, Enceladus would probably win...a salty liquid ocean, as well as compounds like phosphorus and complex hydrocarbons, all necessary for life as we know it on Earth. But the world had been missing one crucial factor: stability. Since life takes a long time to evolve, a good candidate world should remain stable over many millions or billions of years. Stability is often determined through a world’s heat balance, where the amount of energy it receives from its star equals the amount of energy it radiates outward. Though scientists knew that Enceladus’s southern pole leaked out heat from the forces of Saturn’s gravity stretching and squashing the world, its heat balance was still off. But when researchers used data from NASA’s Cassini mission to study Enceladus’s north pole, they found that  the surface was around 7ºC warmer than the models predicted ....
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NASA’s ESCAPADE mission to Mars — twin UC Berkeley satellites dubbed Blue and Gold — will launch in early November

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By Robert Sanders , UC Berkeley News.  Excerpt: UPDATE 11/13/25 : After two launch delays because of weather and a solar storm, New Glenn launched from Cape Canaveral at 3:55 p.m. EST Thursday, Nov. 13. The twin satellites successfully separated from the rocket about 33 minutes after launch, and the rocket booster made a pinpoint landing on an ocean barge about 375 miles offshore — a first for New Glenn. For more updates, check  NASA’s ESCAPADE blog . ...Takeaways: (1) NASA’s ESCAPADE is the first UC Berkeley-led planetary mission. Its two identical satellites will provide an unprecedented stereo view of Mars’ magnetosphere; (2) Mapping the ionosphere and space environment are key to understanding Mars’ evolution and safeguarding astronaut communication and survival on the planet; (3) ESCAPADE will pioneer a new trajectory to Mars that will be needed for future human settlement when we send fleets of spacecraft to the planet....  Full article at https://news.berkeley.edu/...
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