Astro Blog

By Rebecca Morelle, Alison Francisand, Kevin Church, BBC News.  Excerpt: A spacecraft has launched from Japan headed for Mars' moon Phobos, where it will attempt to grab some moondust and bring it back to Earth. If it is successful, this will become the first time a sample has been returned from Mars or its moons to be analysed in laboratories here on Earth. The spacecraft is scheduled to arrive at Phobos in August 2027. It is hoped that the Mars Moons Exploration (MMX) mission, which is led by the Japanese Space Agency, will solve the mystery of how Mars's moons formed. ...Once on the surface, it will deploy a robotic arm and two samplers to grab some moon dust. This material will be packed into a small capsule that will return to Earth in 2031, landing in the Woomera desert of South Australia. The amount of material that will come back is tiny - just 10g. ...Scientists believe the sample will finally shed light on the puzzle of where Mars's m oons came from.There are two ...

By Kimberly M. S. Cartier , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Tiny asteroid Chariklo, floating through the void between Saturn and Uranus, boasts two rings. It’s the first asteroid found to have them, and their existence took astronomers by surprise when they were spotted in 2013. ...“The opacity of the outer ring is now lower than in the previous observations, but also the opacity of the inner ring was stronger,” said Pablo Santos-Sanz , an astrophysicist at Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía in Granada, Spain, and lead researcher on the discovery. ... Chariklo is a Centaur asteroid, meaning it orbits the Sun in the space between the giant planets. It’s 302 kilometers (108 miles) across, is not very spherical, and orbits about 2.3 billion kilometers (1.5 billion miles) from the Sun. In 2013, Chariklo passed between earthbound observers and a distant star, an alignment called stellar occultation. Astronomers saw that the star’s light dimmed twice before Chariklo obscured the star and twice a...

By Daniel Clery , Science.  Excerpt: NASA has selected a far-infrared space telescope to explore the faint, cool glow of gas and dust that fuel star formation and coalesce into planets. The $1.2 billion PRIMA is NASA’s first Probe class mission, intended to fill a gap between relatively inexpensive, researcher-led Explorer missions and multibillion-dollar flagship missions such as the JWST observatory. Due to launch in 2033, PRIMA would also end an observing gap for astronomers, who have lacked a space-based far-infrared instrument since Europe’s Herschel telescope ceased operation in 2013....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/new-space-telescope-will-reopen-astronomers-view-far-infrared . 

By David Nield , ScienceAlert.  Excerpt: Now, a team from the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian and the University of Oregon has announced an important first: A radio signal coming directly from an exoplanet (a planet outside the Solar System). Previously, radio detections in planet-hosting systems couldn't be unambiguously localized to the planets rather than the stars they're circling. However, this isn't aliens trying to get in touch. It's the signal coming from the exoplanet's auroras, created by charged particles interacting with atmospheric and magnetic field conditions to release energy....  Full article at https://www.sciencealert.com/astronomers-detect-radio-signals-coming-directly-from-an-exoplanet-for-the-first-time .

By Mark S. Robinson et al, Science Advances.  Abstract: Observing the aftermath of recent impact events on the Moon tests models of impact frequency, surface change rates, and cratering physics. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) Wide Angle Camera (WAC; 100-meter scale) images the whole Moon each month and has done so since 2010. ...In fall 2025, a routine temporal comparison of WAC image sets revealed a new 222-meter-diameter crater that formed in spring 2024. This is the largest contemporary impact crater found in the Solar System and, according to current models, a once-in-132-year event. ...images show that the crater exposed complex geology, inform current models of cratering mechanics, and document widespread surface changes extending more than 1000 crater radii....  Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aeh7812 .

By Daniel Clery , Science.  Excerpt: In recent years, astronomy has become a big data science, with survey telescopes capturing thousands of objects in a single look. As soon as 30 August, NASA will take that approach into space with the launch of the $4.3 billion Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. With the Hubble Space Telescope’s sharp vision but a field of view 100 times larger, Roman will rapidly survey the sky to tackle some of astronomy’s biggest questions—from the nature of dark energy to the demographics of planets around other stars....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/nasa-s-roman-telescope-readies-sweeping-view-universe .