Astro Blog

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 . 

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 ....

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/...

By Sarah Stanley , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Trapped in a gravitational push and pull between Jupiter and other Jovian moons, Io is constantly being  stretched and compressed . Heat generated by these contortions has melted  pockets  of the moon’s interior so much that Io is our solar system’s most volcanically active body. The  James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)  recently opened up new opportunities to get to know Io. Using data from its Near Infrared Spectrograph—which sees wavelengths corresponding to  different compositions and temperatures — de Pater et al.  have made new discoveries about Io’s volcanoes and atmosphere. The researchers first looked at Io  in November 2022  and found an extremely energetic volcanic eruption in the vicinity of the lava flow field Kanehekili Fluctus. These observations revealed, for the first time, that some volcanoes on Io emit an excited form of sulfur monoxide gas, confirming the team’s 2-decade-old hypoth...

By Daniel Clery , Science.  Excerpt: Later this month, a diminutive telescope called Mauve will take to space. Unusually, a government space agency is not the owner. Rather, Mauve was built by a startup company that will sell astronomical data to researchers by subscription. With a 13-centimeter telescope squeezed into a satellite smaller than a microwave oven, Mauve is squarely in the little league of astronomical missions. But its creators hope it will set a precedent....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/startup-pioneers-subscription-service-space-based-astronomy .