The FBI and a congressional committee are investigating the mysterious cases of 10 missing or dead scientists and staff who worked at sensitive nuclear or space technology laboratories.

Social media has “lit up” with theories about the disappearances and deaths, said CBS News, as speculation has “swirled” about whether they are part of an effort to “harm” US nuclear or space programmes.

‘Sinister connection’

William Neil McCasland, a retired US air force general now director of technology at an aerospace defence firm, went missing from his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on 27 February.

Investigators soon became aware of other aerospace and nuclear officials and researchers who have gone missing or died in mysterious circumstances. These cases included a nuclear physicist and MIT professor who was fatally shot outside his Massachusetts home, an aerospace engineer who went missing during a hike in Los Angeles, and two scientists working on nuclear fusion and astrophysics who were murdered in their homes.

“The similar circumstances of some of the disappearances” and the subjects’ involvement in sensitive and secret research have “fuelled speculation about whether coordinated foul play or foreign espionage may be involved”, said The Hill.

The FBI confirmed it is “spearheading the effort to look for connections” between the 10 cases that have come to light and the Republican-led House Oversight Committee said it will examine “questions about a possible sinister connection”. In a post on X, Nasa said that it was cooperating with the investigations, but “at this time, nothing related to Nasa indicates a national security threat”.

The speculation has drawn in the US president. “I hope it’s random, but we’re going to know in the next week and a half,” Donald Trump told reporters, confirming that an investigation was under way. It is “pretty serious stuff” but “hopefully a coincidence, or whatever you want to call it”.

‘People do just die’

People familiar with the cases said that what “underlies” these deaths and disappearances is “not a spy-thriller plot”, but “something more personal and tragic”, said CBS News.

McCasland’s wife said in a Facebook post that it “seems quite unlikely that he was taken to extract very dated secrets”, pointing out that her husband retired from the air force more than 12 years ago.

Julia Hicks, the daughter of Michael David Hicks, a scientist who worked at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and died in 2023, told CNN there is “no train of logic” connecting her father’s death to that of other scientists. “I can’t help but laugh about it, but at the same time, it’s getting serious,” she said.

The cases are “scattered across several years at different and only loosely affiliated organisations”, said Joseph Rodgers, from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “If all of the scientists were working on one project or weapons system, then I’d be more suspicious,” he said.

A former US Department of Energy official was more succinct. “People do just die,” they said.

President Donald Trump has nothing if not an active imagination. Since taking office, he has pitched multiple ostensibly revolutionary products and plans to the nation. Some are material planks of his America First agenda, while others are seemingly speculative flights of questionable feasibility. Whether touting settlements on Mars or “freedom cities” at home, Trump has never been at a loss for ideas about the next big thing.

Aliens

In February 2026, Trump said in a post on Truth Social that he had directed his administration to identify and release government files containing “any and all other information” about the “highly complex but extremely interesting and important” matter of aliens, UFOs and other extraterrestrial phenomena. Trump should “peel back the layers of that onion, let America decide if we can handle it,” Tennessee Republican Rep. Tim Burchett said in a Fox News interview two months later. “I think we can handle it.”

Even with Trump’s “presidential intent,” federal bureaucracy and legal safeguards will determine “whether the files are ever fully revealed,” said CNN. Those hoping for immediate bombshells may want to “temper expectations a bit,” said Christopher Mellon, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence, to the outlet. UFO hunters should expect, at minimum, a “fairly long, and probably a bit of a slow process.”

Golden Dome

As one of the first executive orders of his second term, Trump in January 2025 directed the implementation of a “next-generation missile defense shield for the United States against ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles and other next-generation aerial attacks,” said The White House. Dubbed the “Iron Dome for America” at the time, there has been “little progress” made on the since-renamed Golden Dome system, with “internal misalignment on the administration’s plans for the architecture causing delays,” National Defense said.

At the “heart” of the networked satellite defense system would be “space-based interceptors” designed to “find and destroy enemy missiles and drones in the early stages,” said Gizmodo. That technology, however, “does not exist yet and is deemed theoretically ineffective and impractical.” Nevertheless, Golden Dome will demonstrate “operational capability by the summer” of 2028, said project director Gen. Michael Guetlein to lawmakers earlier this month, per The Washington Examiner. He also admitted that pace-based interceptors may not be part of the “final architecture as originally envisioned” if the tech is shown to be “prohibitively costly,” said Breaking Defense.

Boots on Mars

While speaking remotely with NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson in 2017, the president said he would like to see a manned mission to Mars “during my first term or at worst during my second term.” The United States will “lead the world in space and reach Mars before the end of my term,” Trump said in the closing days of his 2024 reelection campaign, reiterating the promise of historic planetary exploration alongside major donor, SpaceX CEO and future-DOGE chief Elon Musk. Under his leadership, Trump said at his second inaugural address in 2025, America will “pursue our Manifest Destiny” by sending astronauts to “plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars,” a message he returned to in his address to Congress that year.

In a memo to NASA in late 2025, Trump “confirmed that he wants to send astronauts back to the moon” instead, thereby “putting eventual Mars missions on the back burner,” Le Monde said. A manned Mars mission would “likely cost hundreds of billions of dollars spread over a number of years,” said Nature. NASA, however, spends “$25 billion a year on all of its programs,” and faces further potential budget cuts from the administration.

Freedom Cities

In the lead-up to the 2024 election, Trump campaigned on establishing “Freedom Cities,” tracts of federal land where businesses could “focus on technological innovation” and potential homeowners would revel in futuristic patriotism, said Politifact. At the time, Trump’s campaign advisers framed the proposal as comparable to “Abraham Lincoln’s campaign for the transcontinental railroad, Teddy Roosevelt’s vision for a national park service and Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System,” said Politico. By March 2025, multiple interest groups had begun “drafting Congressional legislation” to advance the development of Freedom Cities “where anti-aging clinical trials, nuclear reactor startups and building construction can proceed without having to get prior approval” from the associated federal agencies, Wired said.

Concurrently, Trump’s efforts to acquire Greenland have been met with interest from “some Silicon Valley tech investors” envisioning their own “libertarian utopia with minimal corporate regulation” on an American-controlled Island, Reuters said. The notion has been “taken seriously” by U.S. Ambassador to Denmark Ken Howery, although Greenland remains, for now, in Denmark’s control. Despite his utopian campaign promises, Trump “hasn’t lent any rhetorical weight to the idea recently,” Politifact said in February. It is possible that “preliminary work undertaken by outside groups will eventually be reflected in tangible developments.”

Medbed

In September 2025, the president shared a since-deleted video to Truth Social promoting “access to new medical technology” in the form of a “cure-all bed” with roots in “conspiratorial corners of the internet,” said CNN. “Every American” will have “their own medbed card” granting access to medbed hospitals, an AI-generated Trump said in footage “intended to resemble a Fox News segment” hosted by daughter-in-law Lara Trump. Why was the footage AI? Because “no one has an actual photo” of a medbed, said McGill University’s Office for Science and Society. “Let’s be clear, they don’t exist.”

Trump is “transparent,” said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt when asked about why the president shared a doctored video of a nonexistent technology on Fox News. “He likes to share memes and videos,” she said, calling it “refreshing” that Trump is “so open and honest.”

The Artemis II trip to the moon and back might be NASA’s biggest public triumph in decades. It nonetheless is not saving the agency from proposed cuts that would massively slash its space science budget.

President Donald Trump’s plan gives a “billion-dollar boost” to efforts to land on the moon, said CNN. It also proposes “deep cuts” that would reduce the agency’s science programs by nearly 50%. Projects “designed to catalog potentially hazardous asteroids” and “discover exoplanets” would be affected, said Space Daily, as would a key climate-data-sharing program. The trimming raises questions about how NASA can “explore the cosmos” while “gutting the research efforts that underpin” the broader enterprise, said CNN. The targeted programs “feed into the human program and enable the human program,” The Planetary Society’s Jack Kiraly said to the network.

What did the commentators say?

These budget cuts “could bring NASA down” after lifting “humanity’s spirits” with the Artemis mission, the Houston Chronicle said in an editorial. Americans “lived vicariously” through the adventures of the “joyous astronaut crew.” It is crucial that the United States maintain its “momentum toward further exploration.” Otherwise, the Artemis mission will be a “brief sugar high” instead of a “bellwether for continued human spaceflight.”

“It’s an odd choice” from a White House that has repeatedly promised to “put America first,” Bill Nye said at MS NOW. China is also looking to land on the moon by 2030, so it is perplexing that the U.S. would “cede the lead” in the 21st-century space race. The U.S. cannot be “first in space” if it chooses to be “second in science and technology.” The agency has proven with the Artemis program that Americans are “capable of extraordinary things,” and it would be a shame to abandon that effort. “NASA is what makes America great.”

The United States can still “shoot for the moon,” former NASA scientist Kate Marvel said at The New York Times. But we are “losing the ability to understand our own world.” Climate research done by the agency has been targeted by the Trump administration, along with researchers “studying the sun, the stars and other planets and moons.” Rather than debate policy, the White House has “chosen to attack science itself.” NASA wants to “conjure the notion of inspiration.” For now, though, U.S. leaders are “diminishing our ability to see and understand our planet.”

What next?

The “all moon and little else” White House proposal is the “opening salvo in a multi-month budget process,” said Ars Technica. The Trump administration sought similar cuts to NASA last year but was “resoundingly rejected” by the GOP-led Congress. That may happen again. It would be a “mistake” to gut NASA’s science funding, Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), who runs the Senate subcommittee that oversees the agency, said to Politico. NASA is “doing big things” like Artemis “faster” than it used to, he said, so “more resources” are required to succeed.

‘The ripple effects of NASA’s Artemis mission could be bigger than you think’

Scott Solomon at The Washington Post

“As influential” as Apollo’s “developments were for the second half of the 20th century, NASA’s Artemis program could eventually be more consequential,” says Scott Solomon. A “major objective” is to “develop and test technologies enabling a sustained presence in space that is less reliant on resupply missions from Earth,” and the “ripple effects of these plans will echo long into the future.” If “subsequent generations are born on other worlds,” they “could evolve into new human species.”

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‘Deepfake nudes are haunting America’s teens’

Jessica Grose at The New York Times

The “creation of deepfake nudes of minors” is “arguably much worse now that AI image generation tools are ubiquitous, and the images they create are even more realistic,” says Jessica Grose. Social media companies “could be doing a far better job of prioritizing the problem.” Parents can “have a conversation with your children about the fact that AI with nudifying capabilities exists,” but it “should not be the responsibility of individual parents to patrol the entire internet.”

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‘Are Native Americans birthright citizens? It’s no April Fool’s joke.’

Paul Rosier at The Philadelphia Inquirer

Pending “court decisions loom large in the debate over Native people’s ability to exercise their American citizenship to protect their Indigenous citizenship,” says Paul Rosier. Native Americans “have fought hard throughout the 20th century and into the 21st to first gain, and then defend, those dual citizenship rights.” At stake “for Native people is their ability to challenge threats to long-standing treaty rights, which preserve their ancestral homelands, cultural identity and religious freedom, their ability to be both Native and American.”

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‘The disillusioned college grads turning to the labor movement’

Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein at The New Republic

The “story of a highly educated yet disillusioned generation has been told repeatedly since roughly 2011,” says Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein. Why “are unions now appealing to the college-educated?” Many “college grads assumed they would work in jobs that harnessed their passions.” One “appeal of unions for the college-educated is the crumbling of the narrative that pushed people into universities: Upon close inspection, the story about college being an unimpeded good begins to look more like a fairy tale.”

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Space programmes cost billions. By 2028, when the fourth mission in its current Artemis programme lands astronauts back on the Moon, Nasa will have spent $105 billion (£78 billion) – which is “a chunk of change”, said USA Today.

Spending so much seems puzzling “when we already did” the Moon thing: are “science, exploration and the possible value of moon materials” really worth it? Or would that all public money be better spent on ”healthcare or tax cuts”?

‘Futile pursuits of prestige’

“It’s absolutely self-evident to me that space exploration is pointless,” said Zoe Williams in The Guardian. And the more crises there are “besetting this planet we live on, the more pointless it becomes”. The US, “of all nations”, has got bigger issues right now, so “seriously, Nasa, can you not just knock it off”?

Ordinary Americans are tired of “these absurd expressions of vanity, these futile pursuits of prestige”, said space historian Gerard DeGroot on UnHerd. Even the Apollo missions in the late 1960s “were not as popular as Nasa pretended”: opinion polls showed “support was consistently below 50%”, with women, people of colour and the poor, in particular, questioning the “obscene cost”.

The current Artemis enterprise “reeks” of Elon Musk: his SpaceX Starship will have increasing involvement as the missions progress and, although the details of the deal are “shrouded in mystery”, it’s “safe to suspect that some quid pro quo is involved”. We know that SpaceX has received $17 billion (£12.6 billion) in government funding already.

Images to ‘catch the breath’

I've always thought the so-called “choice” between “advancing to the stars and solving problems back on earth” to be “a false one”, said Séamas O'Reilly in The New Statesman. Yes, the Artemis budget “may seem hard to justify” for what appears to be “a few rocket launches” and some “charming zero gravity footage of bulky astronauts surrounded by floating pens” but “this elides the truth” of the “titanic boost to science, technology and economies back home”.

Nasa’s Apollo programme “returned around $7 to the US economy for every $1 spent”. In all our homes, we can see “developments made at the bleeding edge of space”: if you have a laptop, a camera phone or a memory foam mattress, “you have Nasa to thank”. The same goes for advancements in water purification, landmine removal and artificial limbs – “not to mention the invention of ear thermometers and CAT scans”.

If those images beamed back from the Artemis II this week didn’t “catch the breath” in your throat, you can’t “be fully alive”, said Sam Leith in The Spectator. “The experience of seeing the Earth photographed from space” has “an effect on our collective imaginations”. The Apollo 8 “Earthrise” image, for example, is widely thought to have “kickstarted the modern environmental movement”.

Artemis II is “one small step towards living in deep space”, said evolutionary biologist Scott Solomon in The Washington Post. I see parallels between “establishing an enduring human presence” on the Moon (and, ultimately, Mars) and “the processes by which animals and plants” arrive on Earth’s islands and “evolve into new species”. Future generations living on other planets will “gradually become different from people on Earth”. And that will be “a giant leap for all humanity”.

What happened

The four astronauts of NASA’s Artemis II on Monday traveled farther into space than any humans before, photographing never-before-viewed stretches of the far side of the moon. The group also watched a solar eclipse and an Earthrise before beginning their voyage home. The lunar flyby marked humanity’s first trip back to the moon since the Apollo era ended in 1972.

Who said what

The Artemis II crew — NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch and Victor Glover and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen — broke Apollo 13’s record of 248,655 miles from Earth, then set a new record of 252,756 miles Monday night. “We, most importantly, choose this moment to challenge this generation and the next to make sure this record is not long-lived,” Hansen said to Mission Control in Houston.

The seven-hour “lunar fly-around” was “by far the highlight” of the Artemis II mission, “yielding rich science” along with awe-inspiring “celestial sightseeing,” The Associated Press said. When the moon eclipsed their view of the sun, planets including “Mercury, Venus, Mars and Saturn nodded at them from the black void,” and “the landing sites of Apollo 12 and 14 also were visible, poignant reminders of NASA’s first age of exploration.”

During the solar eclipse, the astronauts “found it difficult to describe the sight when the moon was illuminated just from Earthshine — light reflected from our planet,” The New York Times said. “It is blowing my mind what you can see with the naked eye from the moon right now,” Hansen said. “We just went sci-fi,” Glover said. “It is the strangest-looking thing that you can see so much on the surface.”

What next?

The Orion spacecraft is scheduled to reenter the Earth’s gravitational pull later this week before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego’s coast on Friday.

What happened

The four astronauts of NASA’s Artemis II mission blasted off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center shortly before sunset Wednesday, aiming to become the first humans to reach the moon in 54 years. The near-perfect launch sent NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen into Earth orbit, where Glover manually maneuvered their Orion crew capsule around the detached second stage of the SLS rocket, the first task on their historic 10-day journey into deep space.

Who said what

“We are going for all humanity,” Hansen, poised to be the first non-American in deep space, said before liftoff. “We have a beautiful moonrise,” Wiseman said five minutes into the flight, “and we’re headed right at it.”

Human spaceflight “may almost seem familiar and humdrum these days,” The Washington Post said. But Artemis II is a “crucial first chapter” in a “risky, expensive, technically challenging” and ambitious effort to “eventually return people to the lunar surface, build a base there and use it as a stepping stone to push deeper into the solar system.” All these plans “hinge on Artemis II going well,” The Associated Press said. The “biggest goal for the astronauts on this mission is to not die,” New York Times science reporter Kenneth Chang said on “The Daily” podcast.

What next?

Today, Orion “will fire its engines to push it on a path toward the moon,” which it will reach Monday, the Times said. After traveling 4,144 miles further from Earth than any humans before them and observing “portions of the far side that have never been seen by human eyes before,” the astronauts are scheduled to splash down in the Pacific Ocean on April 10.

What happened

NASA on Wednesday morning appeared on track to launch its Artemis II mission in the evening, sending four astronauts to the moon for the first time since 1972’s Apollo 17. There’s “an 80% chance of favorable weather conditions,” NASA said, and no apparent problems with the SLS rocket and Orion capsule set to take astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen around the moon and back.

Who said what

A “successful mission” would be a “crucial step” for NASA as it “seeks to return to the moon’s surface” and “validate technology” needed to travel “even further,” The Washington Post said. The “dwindling survivors of NASA’s greatest generation” are “thrilled that NASA is finally going back,” The Associated Press said. And the “power brokers in Washington” insist it’s a “vital national imperative” to beat China to the moon, The New York Times said. But “people on the street” tell pollsters they want NASA to “monitor” Earth-bound asteroids and “key parts of the Earth’s climate system,” while sending humans back to the moon ranks only above sending them to Mars.

What next?

“If all goes as planned,” AP said, the 10-day mission will take the four astronauts farther from Earth than anyone has ever gone, followed by a “six-hour flyby” of “never-before-seen regions of the lunar far side.”

What happened

NASA on Tuesday announced that in the next few years it will start building a permanent base on the moon and send three small helicopters to Mars aboard a pioneering nuclear-powered robotic spacecraft. “This is the moment where we should all start believing again,” NASA’s new administrator, Jared Isaacman, said at an international space conference in Houston. “NASA once changed everything, and we’re going to do it again.”

Who said what

NASA’s “years of talking about lunar outposts in vague terms for sometime in the indefinite future” appear to have ended with this new “road map” with “specific plans and timelines,” The New York Times said. Isaacman said that NASA has committed to return astronauts to the moon “before the end of President Trump’s term” and ahead of “real geopolitical rival” China’s planned 2030 crewed lunar landing.

As part of Isaacman’s revamp of NASA’s flagship Artemis lunar program, the Lunar Gateway orbiting station, which is “largely already built,” will be shelved, Reuters said. The new plan to repurpose its components to build the $20 billion moon base raises questions about the “future roles” of “key” Artemis partners Japan, Canada and the European Space Agency. Experts also questioned the feasibility of launching a Mars-bound spacecraft powered by nuclear electric propulsion in 2028. The “dominant reaction” among spaceflight experts, cosmologist Katie Mack said, “is somewhere on the spectrum between mockery and dismay.”

What next?

Issacson said Artemis 3, now a mission to test the Orion space capsule’s integration with lunar landers, is scheduled for 2027, while Artemis 4 will send astronauts to the moon in 2028. Tuesday’s announcements came “one week before NASA’s targeted launch of Artemis 2,” the first crewed flight around the moon since 1972’s Apollo 17, space.com said.

NASA crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid in an attempt to change the asteroid’s trajectory in 2022. Now, scientific observations have shown that the mission had more far-reaching effects than previously thought, affecting both the struck asteroid and the larger one it orbits. This could be a promising answer to the question of how to protect the planet from future cosmic threats.

No crash dummy

NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft intentionally crashed into a small asteroid called Dimorphos in September 2022. The goal of the mission was to “prove that if a killer space rock ever threatened Earth in the future, humans could deflect it,” said The New York Times. The hit was quite the success, altering not only the orbit of Dimorphos around a larger asteroid, Didymos, but also the orbit of the pair around the sun, according to a study published in the journal Science Advances.

Dimorphos and Didymos are a binary pair, which means they circle each other while orbiting the sun. The crash changed Dimorphos’ orbit around Didymos to be 33 minutes faster than it was before the strike. Scientists also found that DART made an even bigger impact than expected. Observations of the asteroid pair’s motion “revealed that the 770-day orbital period around the sun changed by a fraction of a second after the DART spacecraft’s impact on Dimorphos,” said a NASA release. That change “marks the first time a human-made object has measurably altered the path of a celestial body around the sun.”

While shifting the orbit by just 150 milliseconds per circle around the sun may seem insignificant, “given enough time, even a tiny change can grow to a significant deflection,” Thomas Statler, the lead scientist for solar system small bodies at NASA, said in the release. The study “validates kinetic impact as a technique for defending Earth against asteroid hazards and shows how a binary asteroid might be deflected by impacting just one member of the pair.”

The space between

When DART hit Dimorphos, the “impact blasted a huge cloud of rocky debris into space, altering the shape of the asteroid,” said the NASA statement. The debris “carried its own momentum away from the asteroid,” giving the asteroid an “explosive thrust.” The study found that the “debris loss doubled the punch created by the spacecraft alone.” And because Dimorphos is part of a binary pair, a “measurable change for one will affect the other,” said CNN.

Didymos “was never on a path toward Earth, and the DART experiment could not have placed it on one,” said a press release about the study. However, the “small shift in orbital speed demonstrates how spacecraft could be used to redirect a threatening asteroid if scientists detect it early enough.” In that case, a “spacecraft would strike the object and slightly alter its velocity,” and that “tiny change could accumulate into a large enough deviation to prevent a collision with Earth.”

NASA, in a similar guardian vein, is also developing its Near-Earth Object Surveyor mission, which “could spot dark, risky asteroids that have remained nearly invisible from Earth-based observatories,” said CNN. Being able to identify potential threats in space along with knowing how to change their orbit goes “hand in hand with how space agencies envision protecting Earth.”

NASA is nearing the final preparations for its first crewed moon mission since the Apollo era, but the mode of transportation has some experts worried. The agency’s Artemis II undertaking, which will launch astronauts on a flyby of the moon, is set to take off in the coming months aboard the Orion spacecraft. Yet concerns over a key element of the vehicle have led to calls to delay the mission.

What are the primary concerns?

The main issue is related to Orion’s heat shield. This coating along the bottom of the spacecraft protects the vehicle from extreme temperatures upon reentering Earth’s atmosphere. Orion’s coating for Artemis II is “nearly identical” to the one used for the uncrewed Artemis I mission, and that prior mission’s Orion vehicle “returned from space with a heat shield pockmarked by unexpected damage,” said CNN.

NASA hired an independent agency to investigate why the shield was damaged. The report was largely redacted but concluded that the shield became charred in large pieces, a phenomenon it was “not designed nor was it expected” to protect the spacecraft from. Using this investigation, NASA “identified the technical cause of unexpected char loss across the Artemis I Orion spacecraft,” the agency said in a press release.

Despite these findings, NASA plans to forge ahead with Artemis II using the same coating. Instead of “making major material changes to the heat shield itself after the fact,” NASA “opted to adjust the Artemis II mission’s flight path instead, to ensure a gentler reentry,” said Futurism. This has some experts concerned. NASA has a “deviant heat shield,” Dr. Danny Olivas, a former NASA astronaut who served on the independent review board, said to CNN. There’s “no doubt about it: This is not the shield that NASA would want to give its astronauts.”

What next?

The Artemis II flight will mark a major moment for NASA, as it will be the “first time humans have traveled beyond low Earth orbit in more than 50 years,” said ABC News. But unlike the later Apollo missions, Artemis II will not land on the moon. It will be a test flight around the lunar body ahead of Artemis III, which “aims to someday land astronauts near the moon’s South Pole, a region never explored by humans.”

Ahead of the planned mission, NASA has “full confidence” in Orion’s heat shield, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said to reporters. The agency trusts the Orion spacecraft and its heat shield, “grounded in rigorous analysis and the work of exceptional engineers who followed the data throughout the process.” But this has not stopped others from voicing their concerns.

NASA made a “huge mistake with the approach to manufacturing the heat shield, as I pointed out since the return of the first Artemis I Orion capsule nearly a year and a half ago,” Dr. Ed Pope, an expert on shield technology, said on LinkedIn after the investigation. It will “now take too long, cost too much and cause too great of a delay if they fix it. Enter the bureaucrats and politicians to make the final call. Expediency won over safety and good materials science and engineering. Sad day for NASA.”

A new high-resolution map of distant galaxies may finally help scientists understand a mysterious substance that binds the universe together.

Taken by Nasa’s James Webb Space Telescope, the latest images, published as part of a study in the journal Nature Astronomy, include information on new galaxy clusters dating back 10 billion years and, crucially, the strands of so-called “dark matter” that connect them.

‘Getting closer to unmasking dark matter’

Dark matter is “one of the most persistent and important puzzles in all of physics”, said Elizabeth Landau in National Geographic.

While ordinary matter – stars, planets, people, basically anything the eye can see – makes up just 5% of the universe, dark matter comprises over a quarter, with “dark energy”, a mysterious but constant force which pushes stars and galaxies away from each other, making up the rest.

Dark matter “doesn’t have much of an impact on your midday lunch order or your nightly bedtime ritual”, said Adithi Ramakrishnan, science reporter at The Associated Press, “but it silently passes through your body all the time and has shaped the universe.”

The problem is that it “doesn’t absorb or give off light so scientists can’t study it directly”. Instead, they have to observe “how its gravity warps and bends the star stuff around it – for example, the light from distant galaxies”. Only by studying these distortions across large swathes of the universe, can scientists “get closer to unmasking dark matter and its various hiding places”.

‘Gravitational scaffolding into which everything else falls’

The new images made with the Webb telescope are “twice as sharp as any dark matter map made by other observatories,” said Diana Scognamiglio of Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and lead author of the study.

Building on previous observations made using the Hubble Space Telescope, the new map “reveals dark matter’s influence on the largest objects in the universe, like galaxy clusters stretching millions of light years across”, said BBC Sky at Night. It shows “the overlap between dark matter and regular matter, confirming dark matter’s role in pulling regular matter together throughout the history of the universe”.

The findings “reinforce scientists’ current theory” that the gravity of dark matter “pulled ordinary matter into clumps that grew into the first structures in the universe”, said National Geographic.

“It's the gravitational scaffolding into which everything else falls and is built into galaxies. And we can actually see that process happening in this map,” said Richard Massey, study co-author and physicist at Durham University.

This matters because without it “there wouldn’t be enough matter to gravitationally bind galaxies together, and our Milky Way galaxy, housing billions of planets including Earth, would not exist in its current form”, said National Geographic.

Scientists are now using the high-res images to develop a three-dimensional version of the map, which they hope will unlock the properties of dark matter itself.

One of the oldest icebergs that has ever been tracked is feeling the blues. The megaberg A23a is most likely on its last legs, and has been captured turning blue because of meltwater. The iceberg was once the largest in the world, though it has been drastically shrinking and is now just a fraction of its former size. Given these changes, experts believe it won’t be around for much longer.

Blue period

Iceberg A23a is “sopping with blue meltwater and on the verge of complete disintegration,” said a NASA news release. The space agency’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) captured an image of the blue waterlogged iceberg at the end of December, then just a day later, an astronaut on the International Space Station took a “photograph showing a closer view of the iceberg” that had an “even more extensive melt pool.”

In parts of the iceberg, the “ponded water appears a deep, vivid blue, suggesting depths of several meters,” said New Scientist. The water volume “probably runs into billions of liters,” which is “enough to fill thousands of Olympic‑sized swimming pools.” The “weight of the water” is “sitting inside cracks in the ice and forcing them open," Ted Scambos, a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder, said in the NASA release. The images also showed a “thin white line around the outer edge of the iceberg seemingly holding in blue meltwater,” in a “‘rampart-moat’ pattern caused by an upward bending of the iceberg plate as its edges melt at the waterline.”

A23a broke off from Antarctica’s Filchner Ice Shelf in 1986, and it was over 1,500 square miles in size. Today, it is just about 456 square miles, which is a little bigger than New York City. In July, August and September of 2025, the iceberg “saw some sizable breakups as it moved into the Southern Hemisphere’s relatively warm summer conditions,” said Popular Science. It is currently drifting in the South Atlantic between the eastern tip of South America and South Georgia Island.

End of an era

The megaberg will likely not last through the austral summer, or the summer months in the Southern hemisphere. All signs indicate that A23a is “just days or weeks from totally disintegrating as it rides currents that are pushing it toward even warmer waters,” said CBS News. “Warmer air temperatures during this season could also speed up A23a’s demise in an area that ice experts have dubbed a ‘graveyard’ for icebergs.” Climate change will probably lead other icebergs to a similar fate.

Iceberg A23a has been on scientists’ radar for a while. After not moving for a long time, it began to drift in 2020. It got caught in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, where it was stuck spinning in 2024. When it began moving again, it was on course to crash into an island in 2025, though it didn’t end up making contact. Turning blue is just the next chapter in the megaberg’s long saga.

“I’m incredibly grateful that we’ve had the satellite resources in place that have allowed us to track it and document its evolution so closely,” Chris Shuman, a retired scientist from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, said in the NASA release. “A23a faces the same fate as other Antarctic bergs, but its path has been remarkably long and eventful. It’s hard to believe it won’t be with us much longer.”

Spacecraft are assembled in specialized “cleanrooms” that are designed to avoid contamination from dust and microorganisms. But bacteria called extremophiles have genetic components that allow them to survive in extreme environments, and 26 of them have been found at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The room where it happens

NASA’s cleanrooms have “stringent controls such as regulated airflow, temperature management and rigorous cleaning,” said a study published in the journal Microbiome. Despite this, “resilient microorganisms can persist in these environments, posing potential risks for space missions.” Twenty-six of such persistent microbes were found at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, where NASA assembled its Phoenix Mars Lander.

These 26 were previously unknown bacteria that “resist cleaning chemicals and cling to sterile surfaces by producing sticky films,” said an article in Nature. Many also have “genes that protect their DNA from radiation damage, while some have genes that help control cell repair under oxidative stress.” One of the bacteria, Tersicoccus phoenicis, is capable of playing dead to survive starvation and other stressors. While dormant, it “can’t be detected by the usual method of swabbing surfaces and checking which bacteria grow in culture from the swabs,” said Scientific American. That means it “could theoretically sneak aboard spacecraft that are supposed to be free of Earth contaminants.”

Contrary to popular belief, “cleanrooms don't contain ‘no life,’” said study co-author Alexandre Rosado to Live Science. “Our results show these new species are usually rare but can be found, which fits with long-term, low-level persistence in cleanrooms.” Many of these organisms are extremophiles, given their ability to survive and thrive in normally inhospitable environments. Now, scientists will be studying these organisms and what their effect on space travel might be.

Young, scrappy and hungry

These bacteria are a double-edged sword. The findings “not only raise important considerations for planetary protection but also open the door for biotechnological innovation,” said Junia Schultz, the first author of the study, in a statement. “Identifying these unusually hardy organisms and studying their survival strategies matters,” said Live Science. “Any microbe capable of slipping through standard cleanroom controls could also evade the planetary-protection safeguards meant to prevent Earth life from contaminating other worlds.”

In the case of T. phoenicis, a fresh domain like Mars “could offer a new, nutrient-rich environment to the hibernating microbes,” said Scientific American. “Astronauts trying to survive on the red planet would need to grow food, and the sugars and nutrients involved could revive the bacteria.”

The genes in these bacteria could also “lead to new biotechnologies that benefit food preservation and medicine,” said the statement. For example, if scientists can prevent bacteria like T. phoenicis from becoming dormant, they may become “easier to eliminate with antibiotics or sterilization techniques,” said the University of Houston. In addition, the bacteria could “serve as benchmark organisms for evaluating spacecraft decontamination strategies before launch, offering a unique way to validate how thoroughly a craft is sterilized,” said Daily Galaxy.

It’s been a long time coming. No human has ventured into deep space since the final Apollo mission in 1972, but that is about to change. Four astronauts – three Americans and a Canadian – will soon be heading back to the Moon as part of Nasa’s Artemis II programme, possibly as early as 6 February and “no later than April”, according to the space agency. While they won’t land on our rocky satellite during the 10-day mission, they will pass just a few thousand miles from it, in a mission that promises to unlock valuable lessons for future missions – to the Moon and beyond.

What is the Artemis programme?

Artemis began in 2017. Nasa’s aim was to return astronauts to the Moon and ultimately establish a permanent lunar base.

In November 2022, Artemis’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket – the most powerful rocket Nasa has built – and its Orion capsule were launched on a 25-day crewless test flight, Artemis I, that circled the Moon only 80 miles from its surface.

Artemis II was originally scheduled to launch between 2019 and 2021 but delays kept pushing it back. In September last year, Nasa was finally able to say that the SLS rocket was “ready to fly crew”, and in November the Orion capsule was “stacked atop the rocket for a final series of tests”, said New Scientist.

What is Artemis II’s mission?

The four astronauts will lift off from Nasa’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and spend the first two days orbiting the Earth, testing their life-support systems. Then the Orion capsule will fire up its main thruster and shoot off towards the Moon on its 240,000-mile, four-day journey. It will follow a figure-of-eight path, looping around the far side of the Moon, before beginning the four-day return trip and splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.

Orion’s heat shield will be put to the “ultimate test”, said CNN, having suffered “abnormal wear and tear” on the Artemis I mission. Nasa then spent a year trying to iron out the problems amid much “controversy and criticism”. “We feel very confident that we are going to be able to bring our crew back safely for Artemis II,” said Nasa’s Lakiesha Hawkins.

Three of the four astronauts are Nasa’s own – Reid Wiseman, the commander of the mission, Victor Glover and Christina Koch – the latter of whom would be the first woman to fly to the Moon. They have all been to space once before. The fourth member of the crew, Canadian Jeremy Hansen, will be on his maiden flight.

As well as testing the various systems on board, the crew will be test subjects themselves, helping Nasa understand the effects that space travel has on their cognition, sleep, stress, immune responses and cardiovascular health. Koch spoke of their excitement about the historic experience. “Doing something we haven’t done in over 50 years, is just absolutely phenomenal.”

What’s the next goal?

If all goes well, then Artemis III will be next. Slated for 2027, it would be the first Moon landing since 1972 and the first chance for a human to set foot on the Moon since Eugene Cernan from Apollo 17. Nasa originally planned for the crew of Artemis III to include a woman and a person of colour to set moonwalk firsts, but the plans have been dropped amid the Trump administration’s clampdown on diversity initiatives.

Artemis III will use SpaceX’s Starship lander to ferry the crew to the lunar surface, but Elon Musk’s company has been having problems with its launch vehicle and spacecraft, putting the 2027 date in doubt.

Further afield, in time and space, is the prospect of a Mars mission. The Artemis programme “will lay the groundwork for future missions to the lunar surface and to Mars”, said Nasa’s Sean Duffy.

As the mercury plummets and back-to-work blues set in for much of humankind in the UK, many other creatures are cosily spending winter in a blissfully dormant state of hibernation.

It would be easy to envy bats, bears and hedgehogs their seasonal torpor, but research has suggested that humans once hibernated, too – and scientists believe we may one day do so again.

Why don’t humans hibernate?

It’s mostly a question of time and geography. Our evolutionary ancestors were “tropical animals with no history of hibernating”, said BBC Science Focus. There is evidence of various migrations out of Africa but modern humans, homo sapiens, only migrated into the cooler “temperate and sub-Arctic latitudes” (where hibernation in winter is more common among other species) “in the last 100,000 years or so”. In evolutionary terms, that isn’t “quite long enough” to develop “all the metabolic adaptations we would need to be able to hibernate” for lengthy periods of time.

Have humans ever hibernated?

It‘s long been assumed not. After all, humans “discovered fire, clothes, shelter, hunting and agriculture”, and these are “much more effective ways of surviving the cold” than hibernating for months on end. It’s been taken as read that any “ancient tribes that tried to sleep their way through the winter” would have been swiftly “ousted” by “the guys with the fur clothes sitting around the camp fire in the next cave along”.

But this may not be the complete picture, scientists suggested in a 2020 study, published in the journal L'Anthropologie. They analysed more than 1,600 fossilised bones of hominins (extinct ancestors of modern humans), found in Spain and dating back around 500,000 years. They looked at factors “like bone structure and growth over time to backform” what these people “were eating and doing during the seasonal cycle”, said Popular Mechanics.

Their conclusions pointed to this extinct human species spending a lot of time inside caves, particularly “through the cold and difficult winter months”. Evidence of recurrent nutritional disease and bone weakening indicate that these human ancestors “sacrificed nutrition and vitamin D from the sun” in order to “spend the worst part of the year trying to sleep through it inside relatively safe caves”. Not exactly hibernation – but close.

Will humans ever hibernate in the future?

The possibility of modern-day human hibernation straddles the realm of “both science and science fiction”, said Aeon. The prospect has “always captivated us” but we haven’t yet had an “immediate or urgent need to do so”.

That could be about to change. “Putting people into sleep mode is a sci-fi concept that’s a lot closer to becoming real than you might think,” said National Geographic.

Nasa and the European Space Agency are supporting research into trials that use carefully dosed sedatives to put participants into “a state that mimics some of the key features of hibernation”, including a drastically slowed metabolism and a “twilight” state of consciousness that still allows for biological functions like eating, drinking and using the toilet. Being in a “bearlike state of hibernation” could help astronauts on future deep space missions, alleviating “the tedium of extended space travel”, reducing cargo requirements and limiting “crewmate conflict”.

It could have far-reaching effects in medical settings, too. “Controlled hypothermia and metabolism are already widely used in clinical practice” to reduce damage to the body and provide optimal conditions for complex medical interventions, said neuroscientist Vladyslav Vyazovskiy on The Conversation. The difference is that, for now, a hibernation-like state can only be achieved in humans with “the aggressive use of drugs”.

In a zesty new discovery, scientists have unearthed a strange lemon-shaped exoplanet. It is unlike one we have seen before, challenging many of the previously held assumptions about planetary formations and atmospheres.

When space gives you lemons

The exoplanet, which has been called PSR J2322-2650b, was found using NASA’s James Webb telescope. It has properties that are in “stark contrast to every known exoplanet orbiting a main-sequence star,” said a study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. PSR J2322-2650b “blurs the line between planets and stars,” and “how the planet came to be is a mystery,” said a release by the University of Chicago.

The exoplanet is about the mass of Jupiter and is “known to orbit a pulsar, a rapidly spinning neutron star,” said NASA. A pulsar “emits beams of electromagnetic radiation at regular intervals typically ranging from milliseconds to seconds” that can “only be seen when they are pointing directly toward Earth, much like beams from a lighthouse.” They are essentially highly dense remnants of dead stars left behind after they explode in a supernova.

“The planet orbits a star that's completely bizarre — the mass of the sun, but the size of a city,” said Michael Zhang, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago and a coauthor of the study, in the release. PSR J2322-2650b is extraordinarily close to its star at just 1 million miles away, compared to the Earth’s distance from the sun, which is about 100 million miles.

The tight orbit means that the exoplanet takes only 7.8 hours to go around its star. Also, because PSR J2322-2650b is “big enough and close enough to its pulsar host, the star’s gravity is pulling the planet into a lemon shape,” said Scientific American.

What has interested scientists most is the planet’s atmosphere, which “nobody has ever seen before,” said Zhang. “Instead of finding the normal molecules we expect to see on an exoplanet, like water, methane and carbon dioxide, we saw molecular carbon, specifically C3 and C2,” said Zhang.

PSR J2322-2650b’s atmosphere is “dominated by helium and carbon and likely has clouds of carbon soot that condense to create diamonds that rain down onto the planet,” said Space.com (a sister site of The Week). “Everywhere in the universe, where there’s carbon, there tends to be nitrogen and oxygen,” Zhang said to Scientific American.

Find how they are made

All these cosmic anomalies raise questions as to how PSR J2322-2650b formed in the first place. While designated as an exoplanet, some theorize that the planet is “itself the stripped remains of a former star” because of its strange composition, said Scientific American. But “that doesn’t solve the missing oxygen and nitrogen mystery.”

In this case, the star and exoplanet together can be called a “black widow system,” which is a “rare type of double system where a rapidly spinning pulsar is paired with a small, low-mass stellar companion,” said NASA. In it, the pulsar “erodes and devours” the companion with its “jets of radiation,” said Space.com.

If the planet is truly a black widow system, we may have witnessed the “very last moments” with PSR J2322-2650b “on the cusp of being entirely consumed,” said The New York Times. There is also a chance that it is something different altogether. “Did this thing form like a normal planet? No, because the composition is entirely different,” said Zhang. “Did it form by stripping the outside of a star, like ‘normal’ black widow systems are formed? Probably not, because nuclear physics does not make pure carbon.”

“Overall, it feels like last year was the prologue and this year is the first chapter, one in which the storylines can really get some momentum behind them,” said Russh.

The magazine was describing horoscope forecasts for the coming year, but it could just as easily have been talking about how politics and the global economy will be shaping up in 2026.

Last year, The Week accurately predicted Donald Trump’s tariffs, the first signs of an AI stock market bubble, the rise of the far-right in the UK and Europe, and a ceasefire in Gaza. So what could 2026 have in store?

Politics

UK local and devolved elections in May are being seen as a make-or-break moment for Keir Starmer and the Labour government.

Squeezed from the right by Reform UK and from the left by a revived Green Party and the new Your Party (as well as Plaid Cymru in Wales and the SNP in Scotland), it is already looking like being a torrid night of results for Labour. Across the board, the party faces “potential collapse” and, for the first time in a century, losing control of its Welsh heartland, said Parli-Training. Were that to happen, Starmer could be forced out of Downing Street by the summer, with Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood among the favourites to replace him.

US midterm elections are also looking pretty bleak for the incumbent Republicans. With Donald Trump’s approval ratings continuing to fall, Democrats have opened up a double-digit lead in voting intention for the congressional races in November, said the Marist Poll.

“Everywhere Republicans look, they see big political trouble,” said Axios, with poll after poll showing support among swing voters down “on just about everything Republicans do, other than fighting crime and shutting the southwest border”.

In Europe, all eyes will be on the Hungarian parliamentary election in April, where Viktor Orbán’s 16-year rule could end. Elsewhere, global research firm BMI sees a “greater likelihood of victories by the centre-right/right-wing opposition” in Brazil, Colombia and Peru, “while Israel could also see a political shift”.

The opaque process to select the next UN Secretary-General also takes place over the coming year, with the successful candidate formally taking up their post on 1 January 2027. Among those already declared or expected to throw their hat in the ring is Michelle Bachelet, former president of Chile and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Jacinda Ardern, former PM of New Zealand, and Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Economics

Following a bumpy year in which Trump’s tariff war played havoc with trade but markets continued to post record returns driven by AI investment, the outlook for the global economy in 2026 remains “dim”.

That is the assessment of the IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook, which “makes for sobering reading”, said Love Money. Growth is forecast at 3.2% next year, with “much of the drag” stemming from “US tariffs and the wider shift towards protectionism, which is sapping international trade, undermining confidence, and rattling markets”.

Interest rates (in the US, UK and elsewhere) are expected to continue to fall, however, while fears persist that this is the year the AI bubble could finally burst. Analysis from financial services firm Wedbush, reported by Investing.com, predicts tech stocks will be “up another 20% in 2026 as this next stage of the AI Revolution hits its stride”.

“Don’t count on the AI bubble popping immediately – but don’t count it out, either,” said Mashable, with chip maker Nvidia’s next quarterly earnings report, due in January, being a key moment to watch out for.

Conflicts

Despite repeated attempts to agree an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine, fighting continues to rage in what is now Europe’s bloodiest conflict since the Second World War.

With Kremlin forces making slow but steady gains but at a terrible cost to life, the “arithmetic of attrition suggests that 2026 will bring either glacial progress, a conflict frozen from exhaustion, or some sort of deal”, said The Economist. “Two other scenarios are possible: a Ukrainian frontline or political collapse, aided by Kremlin subversion; or Russia’s economy buckling as aerial attacks shut down its oil industry”, but “either of the two would have massive consequences for Europe, and the world”.

Other conflict hotspots include India/Pakistan following a deadly skirmish in 2025, Congo/Rwanda, and the ongoing civil war in Sudan. Tensions are mounting between China and Taiwan, although 2027 is seen as the more likely date for an invasion as it marks the centenary of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.

Donald Trump continues to threaten conflict against Venezuela but if he is persuaded to back down, manages to maintain the Gaza ceasefire and negotiates an end to the war in Ukraine, he could be in the running for next year’s Nobel Peace Prize announced in October.

On the pitch and out of this world

Fresh from winning the inaugural Fifa Peace Prize, Trump will be looking to use the 2026 men’s football World Cup – this year jointly hosted by the US, Canada and Mexico – to push his Maga agenda even further.

Sixteen venues across the continent will host the biggest-ever edition of the tournament, with the number of teams increasing from 32 to 48 and the tally of games upped from 64 to 104. While it is still six months until the first ball is kicked, sports statistics platform Opta Analyst has crunched the numbers and predicted that Euro 2024 champions Spain are the most likely to win the Jules Rimet trophy, followed by France, England, Argentina and Germany.

Before that, there is the small matter of the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics taking place in February.

A little further from home, the Nasa-led Artemis II mission will attempt the first manned orbit of the Moon in over half a century. The four-person crew will embark on a 10-day flight to “explore the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and to build the foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars”, said the BBC Sky at Night Magazine.

Originally planned for April 2026, the mission could now launch as early as 5 February. And while it “won’t land on the lunar surface” it will take astronauts 5,000 nautical miles past the Moon and “further into space than any human has gone before”.

What happened

Blue Origin Thursday launched its massive New Glenn rocket from Florida’s Cape Canaveral, carrying small twin spacecraft toward Mars as part of NASA’s Escapade mission. It was Blue Origin’s first NASA mission and only the second launch of the 321-foot New Glenn. Unlike the orbital rocket’s inaugural launch in January, its booster successfully touched down on Blue Origin’s landing barge, a feat previously accomplished only by Elon Musk’s rival aerospace company SpaceX.

Who said what

New Glenn’s flight “was a complete success,” The Associated Press said, and Blue Origin owner Jeff Bezos appeared “ecstatic” as the booster landed upright. That was a “major step forward” in the company’s “bid to rival SpaceX as a reliable provider of reusable rockets,” said Scientific American. Reusing boosters cuts costs and allows for more frequent launches.

Blue Origin, founded in 2000, “has long been seen as sluggish and disappointing when compared with SpaceX,” The New York Times said. But with a few more successes, that perception “could totally flip pretty quickly,” University of Central Florida space commercialization expert Greg Autry told the newspaper. SpaceX has never sent anything to Mars, and if Blue Origin can “land something on the moon successfully in the first half of next year, then they can even claim to be ahead of SpaceX in some ways.”

What next?

The Escapade mission’s satellites, named Blue and Gold, are scheduled to start orbiting Mars in 2027 to “study the Martian atmosphere and magnetic fields and take other readings” that “could help researchers understand why the planet lost its atmosphere and inform future crewed missions,” The Wall Street Journal said. Blue Origin’s ambitious launch schedule for next year includes sending a prototype lunar lander to the moon.

What happened

NASA announced Wednesday that a rock sample collected on Mars by its Perseverance rover last year contains what appear to be biosignatures, or signs of previous life, on the Red Planet. “This very well could be the clearest sign of life that we’ve ever found on Mars,” acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy said at a press conference coinciding with the publication of a paper on the findings in the journal Nature.

Who said what

NASA scientists were “giddy” when Perseverance found the rock with telltale signs of microbial life in a former lakebed called the Jezero Crater, The New York Times said. After a year studying the sample from 140 million miles away, “we are at the point where we are actually saying in detail, ‘Here is what we have found,’” study lead author Joel Hurowitz told the Times. And the chances are “better than a coin flip” that the sample contained convincing evidence of life.

The rock, dubbed Cheyava Falls, is “composed of finely packed sediment and covered in specks resembling poppy seeds and leopard spots,” said The Washington Post. Those specks, the study found, are “minerals that — on Earth — have traditionally been created from microbial activity.” That’s the “closest we’ve actually come to discovering ancient life on Mars,” NASA science mission chief Nicky Fox told reporters, but it “certainly is not the final answer.”

What happened?

The “underlying elephant in the room” is that for the NASA scientists to confirm their theories, the rock samples “need to be returned to Earth,” said Space.com, and “NASA’s Mars Sample Return program remains in limbo due to budget constraints” and “priority shifts” in the Trump administration.

What happened

SpaceX Tuesday evening conducted a largely successful 10th test flight of its mammoth Starship rocket, with both the upper stage and rocket booster making it back to Earth intact and simulating soft vertical landings in the ocean before exploding, as anticipated. In a first for Starship, the uncrewed spacecraft deployed eight dummy satellites during its hour in space.

Who said what

The "successful demo came after a year of mishaps" for Elon Musk's massive rocket, The Associated Press said. After an impressive fifth launch last year, SpaceX "experienced dramatic failures in four recent tests," The Washington Post said.

Tuesday's "nearly flawless" mission was a "likely relief to both SpaceX and NASA," which is "counting on Starship as the lander to put its astronauts on the moon in the coming years," The New York Times said. Musk also has "much riding on the rocket," envisioning it as a reusable vehicle to "carry satellites, scientific devices and, eventually, astronauts," including to Mars, The Wall Street Journal said.

What next?

SpaceX "appeared to achieve all of their test objectives," but they are still probably "six months behind where they wanted to be" due to this year's earlier failures, Todd Harrison from the American Enterprise Institute told the Times. "If they can get another test flight within six weeks or so, they can start to catch up."

The Trump administration is calling for the destruction of two satellite missions that have been crucial in global climate and ecological monitoring over the past decade. This is part of a larger NASA shift away from climate research.

How is climate research being affected?

While NASA is known for its exploration of the cosmos, the agency also plays a pivotal role in climate science through its collection of climate data. The soon-to-be-ended missions are collectively known as the Orbiting Carbon Observatories (OCO), and they can "precisely show where carbon dioxide is being emitted and absorbed and how well crops are growing," said The Associated Press.

They have been operating for more than 10 years, producing data of "exceptionally high quality," said a 2023 NASA review. "Together, the OCO-2, a free-flying satellite, and OCO-3, which is mounted on the International Space Station, measure the composition of the Earth's atmosphere, specifically sniffing out climate pollution," said CNN. The instruments are also "critical for farmers and the researchers studying forest loss."

Decommissioning the satellites is not a simple feat. OCO-3 could be "switched off and remain attached to the ISS, perhaps to be turned on again in the future," said CNN. However, the process for OCO-2 is "far more complicated — and fiery" because it would have to be "moved into a much lower orbit and exist there as space junk for years until it burns up in the Earth's atmosphere."

Can it be saved?

The Trump administration has decided to put climate change data on the back burner, or perhaps take it off the stove altogether. "All the climate science and all of the other priorities that the last administration had at NASA, we're going to move aside, and all of the science that we do is going to be directed towards exploration, which is the mission of NASA," said Sean Duffy, the acting administrator of NASA and Secretary of Transportation, to Fox Business. "That's why we have NASA — is to explore, not to do all of these Earth sciences."

The president's 2026 budget request includes no money for the OCO. The decision to decommission the missions is "extremely shortsighted," said Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist at the University of Michigan, to the AP. A lack of access to climate data may lead to unforeseen consequences down the road, which could be difficult to reverse. Destroying the OCO "will hamstring climate research for decades," said Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times. "The zeroing out of climate research budgets by the Trump White House, of which the cancellation of the OCO program is a part, is taking place just as the value of space-borne climate research has been rising sharply."

But all hope for the research is not yet lost. Congress could potentially come to the rescue and "reject Trump's proposal and offer NASA the budget it needs to maintain U.S. climate and Earth science status quo," said CNN. However, Trump would also have to sign the bill.

The OCO already received funding from Congress through Sept. 30. NASA has also said it would "consider proposals from private companies and universities that are willing to take on the cost of maintaining the device that is attached to the International Space Station, as well as another device that measures ozone in the atmosphere," said NPR.

'Jim Lovell never walked the moon, but astronaut was a true trail blazer'

Mark Davis at the Miami Herald

The late astronaut Jim Lovell "blazed that trail on the Apollo 8 voyage that showed that humans could truly leave the Earth," says Mark Davis. In "his Apollo 13 heroism," Lovell reminded "us of the best qualities Americans — and all people — can display." He "never walked on the moon," but his "path through American history, and the legacy he leaves among humanity's greatest explorers, is a journey never to be forgotten."

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'Men like Jeffrey Epstein are everywhere and they almost always get away'

Jens Ludwig at the Chicago Tribune

As the "Jeffrey Epstein case is back in the news, people are shocked by the depraved details and light punishment handed out. The real shock is that anyone is shocked," says Jens Ludwig. These "men are everywhere." It's "tempting for families in affluent urban or suburban areas to think they're safe from all sorts of violence. They are not." One of the "most unusual things about the Epstein case" is "that he got sentenced to any time at all."

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'I'm actually surprised it didn't happen sooner'

Keren Landman at The Atlantic

When "gunfire pelted the Atlanta-based headquarters of the CDC" on Friday, the "employees were not particularly shocked," says Keren Landman. Public health "workers have been facing escalating hostility since the early days of the coronavirus pandemic." In the "second Trump administration, those attacks have become commonplace — the very selling points, even, that have helped a number of President Donald Trump's health appointees gain their positions." Workers are "still getting used to the idea that the danger has arrived."

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'Lab-grown diamonds are testing the power of markets'

Allison Schrager at Bloomberg

The "popularity of lab-grown diamonds is making me question the beauty of markets, which is their ability to place a value on pretty much anything," says Allison Schrager. It is the "diamond's scarcity (as well as some good marketing) that made the market large and valuable." Now "diamonds can be made in a lab in not too much time, in just about any quantity." If the "supply of diamonds is unlimited, what is their value"?

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If you want to know where the next nuclear reactor is being built, you may have to look up at the stars. Transportation Secretary and interim NASA Administrator Sean Duffy is moving forward with a plan to construct nuclear reactors on the moon in the hopes of expanding American influence in outer space. But this may be easier said than done, thanks to the government itself, as NASA is facing significant budget cuts courtesy of the Trump administration. This could make the agency's nuclear goals difficult.

What did the commentators say?

The White House claims that the nuclear reactor project "could help accelerate U.S. efforts to reach the moon and Mars — a goal that China is also pursuing," and the "plans align with the Trump administration's focus on crewed spaceflight," said Politico, which first reported the news. It is "about winning the second space race," a NASA official told the outlet. "Let's start to deploy our technology, to move to actually make this a reality," Duffy said in a press conference.

Nuclear technology on the moon would "transform the ability of humanity to travel and live in the solar system," said The New York Times. A single lunar day is the equivalent of four weeks on Earth and cycles between two weeks of sunshine and two weeks of darkness. This "harsh cycle makes it difficult for a spacecraft or a moon base to survive with just solar panels and batteries," making nuclear power an attractive option. A "reactor would be useful for long-term stays on the moon, especially during the two-week-long nights."

Putting a "reactor on the lunar surface to help power moon exploration efforts would keep the United States ahead of China and Russia," said CNN. Both of these nations have announced similar nuclear projects, and if either of these countries managed to "achieve this feat first, it could declare a 'keep-out zone'" that "would effectively hold the U.S. back from its goal of establishing a presence on the lunar surface."

The plans for a lunar nuclear reactor aren't entirely new, as NASA has been considering them for a long time. But the administration's directive could "accelerate NASA's long-simmering — and, to date, largely fruitless — efforts to develop nuclear reactors to support space science and exploration," said Scientific American.

What next?

Duffy said NASA wants a 100-kilowatt reactor on the moon by 2030. However, questions remain about its viability, especially given recent actions by the Trump administration. While the White House has "proposed a budget that would increase human spaceflight funds," at the same time it "advocates for major slashes to other programs — including a nearly 50% cut for science missions," said Politico.

NASA had "previously funded research into a 40-kilowatt reactor for use on the moon," but this research is unlikely to move forward given current budget cuts by the Trump administration. The agency also "plans to award at least two companies a contract within six months of the agency's request for proposals," meaning the nuclear reactor initiative could move forward regardless.

This is "on-brand for America," said astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson to "CBS Mornings." What is "not on-brand is to cut science programs, not only in NASA but across the board, and then say, 'We want to excel in this one spot.'" For the U.S. "to say, 'Let's cherry-pick where we want to show the world where we're the best,' you can't really do that."

'America is becoming a nation of homebodies'

Diana Lind at The Washington Post

Americans are "voluntarily spending an extra Covid lockdown worth of time each year in the house — more than three weeks," says Diana Lind. This "excess home time has received markedly little attention compared to the ills of social media and screen time." Our "descent into hermitage demands more discussion, more research and a dedicated policy response." The "solution needs to be finding real-life environments and activities that can compete for attention with apps and streaming services at home."

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'My fix for NASA'

Sen. Mark Kelly at The New York Times

Attempts to "slash NASA's workforce and gut its budget send a message that America's leadership in space is optional. It isn't," says Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.). Due to "NASA's investments and guidance, commercial spaceflight isn’t just working; it's cheaper, faster and more flexible." This "progress is now at risk, including the very things that made NASA successful under Trump's first administration." Ensuring a "continued American presence in space is crucial to keeping our country's engine of science and innovation moving."

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'The atomic bombing of Japan was justified'

Richard B. Frank at the National Review

Many have "identified the use of atomic bombs against Japan in August 1945 as the greatest story of the 20th century," but its "moral indictment works from a grossly upside-down portrait of the number and identity of the war's victims," says Richard B. Frank. Getting the "moral calculus correct on this anniversary is by far the most important task on the path to understand and judge how the Asia-Pacific War ended." The "critical issue was casualties."

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'Standing up to ICE is a moral imperative'

Ann Toback at The Progressive

We are "seeing the terrifying start of history repeating itself, as masked federal agents are knocking on doors across America and disappearing noncitizen residents," says Ann Toback. What is "happening isn't just about immigration. It's about democracy itself." When "federal agents can disappear anyone without due process and local police become deportation enforcers, no one is safe." America was "built by people fleeing authoritarianism for freedom. Now we must defend those freedoms." Every "organized community makes resistance stronger."

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The mystery of how life on Earth originated , and whether it exists elsewhere in the universe, are "the raison d’être of space exploration", said Louis Friedman, co-founder of the Planetary Society.

The answer, he wrote in The Washington Post, "might be in one of the test tubes now sitting on Mars". But the samples, collected by Nasa's Perseverance rover, "seem doomed to endlessly wait for no answer" – because Donald Trump is cancelling the mission to bring them home.

'Crowning achievement' of Mars exploration

Since Perseverance touched down on the Red Planet in February 2021, the "car-sized, nuclear-powered robot" has been gathering samples for delivery to Earth, where "close-up inspection" might provide "the first compelling evidence of life beyond Earth", said Scientific American.

This programme, a collaboration between Nasa and the European Space Agency known as Mars Sample Return (MSR), is the "crowning achievement" of half a century of Mars exploration, the product of decades of planning and "many billions of dollars".

Unless, that is, "the Trump administration gets its way". The US president's recent "budgetary bombshell" proposed to cut Nasa's funding by a quarter and "entirely eliminate MSR", which the White House claimed was "grossly over-budget". The samples, it said, would be collected by "human missions to Mars". That is "nonsense on several levels", said Scott Hubbard, Stanford University scientist and Nasa's inaugural Mars program director. "I know of no credible 'humans to Mars' scenario that is earlier than 2039 or 2040."

It's true that "multiple independent reviews" of MSR have mentioned its "swelling price tag and slipping schedule", said Scientific American. One 2023 Nasa review estimated that the project would cost up to $11 billion (£8 billion), comparable with the James Webb Space Telescope – the most expensive astronomy project in history. But "any remotely realistic plan for a crewed Mars mission would be far more expensive".

Whether or not the European Space Agency can retrieve the MSR samples without Nasa is unclear, but a statement issued in response to Trump's proposed budget "carefully emphasises the importance of US-European cooperation in space activities".

'Strong indications' of life beyond Earth

Finding out whether the dozens of samples show evidence of life will require sophisticated equipment and "hundreds of chemical experiments", said Friedman. But these samples have been "carefully selected in potentially habitable regions"; at least one has "strong indications of past microbial life".

The answers to how life began could also "advance" fields like robotics, artificial intelligence, communications, synthetic biology, chemistry, and more. Which is why China and India are pursuing similar missions: China is planning to retrieve samples from Mars in 2028, which would make it "the first country to return potentially biologically active planetary material – including potential life forms – from beyond Earth", said Space.com.

"By abandoning return of Mars samples to other nations, the US abandons the preeminent role that JFK ascribed to the scientific exploration of space" in his 1962 Rice University speech, said the 2023 Nasa independent review of the project. In his speech, entitled "We Choose to go to the Moon", Kennedy said "We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people."

As someone who has held a host of different jobs over the course of his time in the public eye — hotelier, game show host, product pitchman — it comes as little surprise that President Donald Trump would expect his White House staff to wear multiple hats as well. That said, the sheer pervasiveness of Trump administration officials holding at least one additional high-level administrative position has alarmed some observers, raising questions of overreach and inappropriately consolidated power. As this White House continues its MAGA assault on the pillars of government with mass layoffs and strong-arm diktats, exactly how do these administration officials pulling double duty fit in with the president's vision?

'Incredibly unique' and 'irresponsible'

Trump officials holding multiple administration jobs include: Deputy Attorney General and acting Librarian of Congress Todd Blanche; Office of Management and Budget head Russ Vought, who also runs the largely shuttered Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; Daniel Driscoll, who serves as both Secretary of the Army and acting head of the Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agency — a position reassigned from former acting head, FBI Director Kash Patel; Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who was named interim NASA director this month; U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, who pulls triple duty as acting director of the Office of Government Ethics and acting special counsel of the Office of Special Counsel; and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also serves as acting administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, acting archivist for the National Archives and acting National Security Adviser.

The "time-consuming nature" of "high-level government roles" has some experts warning that running multiple agencies is not only "irresponsible," but "practically impossible," The Boston Globe said. It is, however, legal, thanks to the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998, which details the rules of how and when the president can use "exclusive power to fill government vacancies on a temporary basis." Legality aside, relying on so many staffers to fill multiple roles is "incredibly unique when you compare Trump to other presidents," said Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a Brookings Institution visiting fellow and presidential historian, to HuffPost. After "studying White House staffing since the early '90s," the notion of giving multiple jobs to a single staffer "just doesn't compute."

The White House's extensive "dual-hatting" reflects Trump's attempts to "learn from his first term," said The Atlantic. The Heritage Foundation authors of the ultra-conservative Project 2025 "lamented that Trump was very slow to appoint people to fill administration roles," and "recommended using more acting appointments" as the president grapples with the "particular problem" of "filling positions that are very important but below Cabinet rank." Whether those tapped for multiple roles are qualified for their growing portfolios "seems to hold little importance for Trump."

Government in the 'model of a confused startup operation'

As the highest-ranking member of the Trump administration to hold multiple positions, Marco Rubio has become the poster child for this White House's dual-hatting. "When Trump likes you and trusts you, he loads you up," said one White House official to Axios. "Marco is loaded up." For critics of the administration, Rubio's multiple roles are proof positive that the administration is in over its head. There's "no way" Rubio can carry "that entire load on his own," said Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) on CBS' "Face The Nation" this past spring. Rubio's roles leading both State and the National Security Council are "too much," said Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) to CNN's Jake Tapper in May.

Rubio's multiple roles are "uniquely concerning," said Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. He simultaneously serves as administrator of an agency that "may be failing to follow the Federal Records Act," as well as the nation's archivist, "responsible for ensuring that agencies follow that very law."

Dual postings can lead to "managerial challenges, constitutional questions and potential conflicts of interest," said NBC News. Loading multiple roles onto a limited talent pool is the "model of a confused startup operation," said Yale University School of Management professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld to the outlet. Ultimately, Trump may be keeping his power concentrated in such a small group, the outlet said, because it "suppresses any challenges to his authority."

Since the end of the Cold War, the US has dominated space exploration – but its star could be about to wane.

Donald Trump has proposed cutting Nasa's budget by a quarter, effectively cancelling current programmes, jeopardising planned missions and leaving scientists "reeling", said New Scientist. The draft 2026 budget, released last week, allocates just $18.8 billion (£13.9 billion) to the agency, a cut of almost 25% from 2025, slashing Nasa's workforce by almost a third, and halving funding for its science programmes. A day later, the president also "removed his nomination" of billionaire Jared Isaacman for Nasa administrator, leaving the agency in "turmoil".

What did the commentators say?

It's the biggest single-year cut to Nasa's budget in history, and (after adjusting for inflation) the smallest budget since 1961, said US space-exploration advocacy group The Planetary Society. "This is the biggest crisis facing the space agency in its history," the group's chief of space policy told New Scientist.

The reason for Isaacman's withdrawal as candidate isn't clear but he'd not been supportive of the proposed budget cuts, said the magazine. It leaves Nasa with only an acting administrator to lead it through a critical time.

These "major setbacks" also spell trouble for an agency that "faces stiff competition" from the commercial sector, said space policy expert Wendy Whitman Cobb on The Conversation. Planned and operating missions to Mars and Venus have been "targeted for elimination". The budget instead proposes a commercial "Moon to Mars" programme, under which Nasa would use systems such as Blue Origin's New Glenn and SpaceX's Starship to send Americans off-world.

"Since its founding, Nasa's mission has been largely centred on sending humans to space. If that role shifts to commercial companies, Nasa will need to grapple with what its identity and mission is, going forward."

But this isn't just about space, said Miles O'Brien on PBS. The budget targets Nasa science that has "anything to do with climate change". It cuts climate monitoring satellites, eliminates green aviation programs, and "zeroes out science education efforts, declaring them woke". More broadly it's part of the Trump administration's "wholesale targeting of federally funded science".

"What we see is a full-scale assault on science in America," said California congressman George Whitesides, a former Nasa chief of staff. "It's a poorly wielded chainsaw."

Some Republicans think that chainsaw "is required" to "refocus the federal science enterprise", said O'Brien. A lot of things "need reorientation", said Mark Albrecht, who helped lead the Trump transition team at Nasa. This reorientation could result in "a big push in new science that is managed differently".

Nasa also "offers plenty of targets" for cutting government waste, said The Economist. Artemis – "the late-running, $92 billion-and-counting programme to return astronauts to the Moon" – is one. The first four flights would cost an estimated $4.1 billion (£3 billion) each: "perhaps 20 times the price" of one of Elon Musk's SpaceX rockets. Other aspects have run wildly over budget and schedule, and either "do not function" or are "pointless". "Old Nasa hands admit Artemis is a mess" but it has proved "impossible to kill, or even modify".

Nonsense, said The Planetary Society in a statement. This budget isn't about efficiency; the proposal "wastes billions in prior taxpayer investment", as well as terminating "healthy and productive projects". It would cancel a third of Nasa's science projects, which would require "billions of new spending to replace", and create "economic uncertainty in the American industrial base". This is "an extinction-level event" for Nasa's "most productive, successful, and broadly supported activity: science".

What next?

"I will soon announce a new Nominee who will be Mission aligned, and put America First in Space," Trump posted on Truth Social.

Some of the names being "bandied about" are retired Air Force generals, said O'Brien on PBS, which "would indicate a shift in an entirely different direction" from the commercial future Isaacman – who has close ties to Elon Musk – represented. Many Republicans "would like to see space being moved more into the militaristic sphere".

The proposed budget must be debated and approved by Congress; Trump has requested it be finalised by 4 July. It could be "watered down, or even scrapped entirely", said New Scientist, "especially considering the proposed cuts would remove funding to many states, including some key Republican strongholds".

And yet my research suggests Congress "rarely appropriates more money for Nasa than the president requests", said Whitman Cobb on The Conversation.

'Florida's senators are right. Move NASA from Washington to Cape Canaveral.'

Mary Anna Mancuso at the Miami Herald

Florida "may soon be home to NASA's headquarters," and the "move makes total sense." The "infrastructure, talent and private-sector ecosystem are already here — so why shouldn't the agency's leadership be here too? It makes operational sense." Critics "argue NASA should keep its headquarters in Washington to help ensure funding," but this is "about bringing those who work in the headquarters closer to the heart of the space program." The "decision-makers should be where the action is."

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'Belgium's government abducted us as children. They must pay.'

Jacqui Goegebeur at Al Jazeera

Belgian colonizers "enforced racial segregation and prohibited interracial marriages in their colonies," says Jacqui Goegebeur. They "always split up families. It was criminal," and "systematically deporting children is a crime against humanity." There's "no justification for abducting a child and sending them to live with strangers abroad. It is a crime." Many "are calling for reparations, but in different ways. For me, I want to see funded studies to help us understand our past."

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'NATO remains our best defense'

Kay Bailey Hutchison at The Dallas Morning News

Europe is having "serious discussions about how to increase security investments while dealing with uncertainty about America's long-term commitment to the NATO alliance," says Kay Bailey Hutchison. Keeping "our European and Asia-Pacific allies and partners together and strengthening our collective defense should affect how we address the trade issues confronting us today." But "settling the economic issues does not require that we break up our long-term relationships and alliances." We "would be weakening our own security."

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'Why a weight-loss drug could become a geopolitical bargaining chip'

Gillian Tett at the Financial Times

Can a weight-loss drug become a "weapon of war? Once, that question might have seemed absurd. No longer," says Gillian Tett. "One idea floating around the Trump ecosystem is that the drugs could be a bargaining chip in future negotiations with Denmark, perhaps by pushing for a U.S. acquisition" of Danish company Novo Nordisk, the company behind drugs Ozempic and Wegovy. Another "possible tactic would be for the U.S. to demand a krone revaluation, to keep Denmark linked to dollar-based finance." But "plenty of factors might yet derail Trump."

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Human beings have evolved to become "perfectly adapted to life on Earth", said Sky News. So, spending time in space, without gravity or sunlight, and exposed to radiation, "poses a real challenge, physically".

And for "stranded" astronauts Sunita "Suni" Williams and Barry "Butch" Wilmore – whose routine eight-day visit to the International Space Station turned into an unscheduled nine-month stay – the challenge may be even bigger when they finally come back home to Earth today.

The pair, travelling in a SpaceX Dragon capsule, left the ISS early this morning. After a "fast and fiery re-entry through Earth's atmosphere", they are due to splash down off the coast of Florida tonight, said the BBC. The fresh air will feel "fantastic", said Helen Sharman, Britain's first astronaut, but such an extended space mission will, said the broadcaster, have taken a "toll on the body".

'Struggle to walk'

"You adapt incredibly quickly to being in space," Nasa astronaut Frank Rubio, who spent 371 days in space in 2023, told Time magazine last year. But readapting to life back to Earth can be "a little bit longer and more difficult". The first two or three months will be focused on recovery, "reincorporating yourself into Earth, your family, and then also rehabilitating your body".

After splashdown, the astronauts will be taken to the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas, for a medical check-up. Astronauts returning from long-duration space missions "routinely exit their spacecraft on stretchers", said CNN, because their bodies "need time to adjust to feeling Earth's gravity". "The weight and the heaviness of things just is surprising," said Janette Epps, a member of a team that spent nearly eight months in space. I was lying down "any chance I got".

Nine months without gravity will have caused "significant, and irreparable, bone density loss", said The Guardian. Being in space "causes muscles to waste in your arms, legs, trunk and elsewhere, including your heart, which, because it doesn't have to pump blood against gravity, has to work much less hard". Fluids also "don't drain as easily". The returning astronauts will "struggle to walk, get dizzy easily, and have bad eyesight", because the "build-up of fluid changes the shape of their eyeballs, and weakens their vision". They may need glasses for the rest of their lives.

In space, clothing floats off your skin, so your skin gets "almost baby-like sensitivity", said Alan Duffy, an astrophysicist at Australia's Swinburne University told the paper. On Earth, some astronauts "feel like their clothing is sandpaper".

The returning pair will also have to exercise extensively: the reconditioning will be similar to the "intense physiotherapy" performed by anyone who has come out of a coma.

'Incredible connection to humanity'

These astronauts' return "is itself a research project", said Duffy, because most research on human life in space is based on missions that last less than six months.

One major concern is exposure to radiation in space. Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field shield us from high levels of radiation, which can lead to DNA damage and increased cancer risk. But little is known about how much increased exposure in space might impact astronauts in the long-term – because only about 700 people have ever been to space.

We do know, however, that, for returning space travellers, anxiety and depression are common. Seeing the Earth from space has led some astronauts to report "an incredible connection to humanity", said The Guardian, and "an immediate sense of its fragility". "Some people call it a feeling of inspiration," astrophysicist Brad Tucker, of the Australia National University, told the paper. "Some people call it feelings of inadequacy, in terms of just how big the world is."

The astronauts also have to come back down to Earth figuratively, as well as literally. "They have to make breakfast and they have to drive to work," said Tucker. "It is a huge transition from living in a very inspiring environment."

What was the recent scare?

It was from a football field–size asteroid designated 2024 YR4. Detected in December by a telescope in Chile, the space rock was flagged for its size—it’s 130 to 300 feet long, big enough to wipe out a city—and a trajectory that put it on track to possibly hit Earth on Dec. 22, 2032. NASA initially put the chance of an impact at 1.2 percent. The odds soon jumped to 3.1 percent, or 1 in 32, a record high for an asteroid of its size. But after closer study of the asteroid’s orbit, the threat of a hit was downgraded to a negligible 0.004 percent. While humanity’s plans for the 2032 holidays are safe, the scare highlighted a threat that scientists say urgently needs more focus: the millions of giant rocks that are hurtling through space, some of which may be on collision courses with our planet. “Take it as a warning shot across our bow,” said astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson. “These things are out there.”

How many space rocks pose a risk?

NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) tracks more than 37,000 asteroids whose trajectories approach Earth’s orbit. Most are the size of a car or smaller and pose no risk, because they will burn up in our atmosphere. On the opposite end of the spectrum are “planet killers”: asteroids a kilometer or more across that could potentially wipe out civilization. About 900 have been identified. In between are a range of potential threats. A 160-foot-wide asteroid could destroy a major metropolitan area; those are thought to strike once every 1,000 years. A 500-foot- wide space rock could inflict mass casualties across a state or a small country; those arrive every 20,000 years. Of course, “these numbers are very approximate,” said planetary geologist Gordon Osinski, “and they don’t really help us figure out when the next one might happen.”

When did the last big one hit?

On Feb. 15, 2013, a roughly 60-foot-wide asteroid entered the atmosphere and exploded 19 miles above the Russian city of Chelyabinsk. It set off a blinding flash and a shock wave that damaged more than 7,000 buildings over 200 square miles, and injured more than 1,600 people, many of them hit by shattered glass. The light from the blast was like “the end of the world,” said Valentina Nikolayeva, a teacher. In 1908, a 130-foot-wide asteroid or comet—the latter is an icy ball of dust and rock—exploded 6 miles above a remote stretch of Siberia, releasing 185 times more energy than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Some 800 square miles of forest were leveled in the so-called Tunguska event. Still, that space rock was a pebble compared with the one that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. There’s no current fear of anything of that magnitude hitting Earth, but other Tunguska-size threats are out there.

Can they be stopped?

Possibly. But first we have to see them coming. In 2005, Congress directed NASA to find and track, by 2020, 90 percent of near-Earth objects—asteroids or comets that come within 30 million miles of our planet’s orbit— 460 feet or larger. Right now “we’re at something like 45 percent,” said CNEOS director Paul Chodas. NASA has built a network of telescopes, including the one in Chile that detected 2024 YR4, to identify threats. An infrared space telescope, NEO Surveyor, that will further boost detection is scheduled for launch in 2027. When a new object is found, information is shared with a global web of space agencies and observatories that go to work determining its shape, size, and orbital path. If one is judged to be headed for Earth, the next task is to try to alter its path—something NASA recently proved feasible.

How did NASA do that?

In 2022, it launched the golf cart–size Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft, which slammed into Dimorphos, a 530- foot asteroid, at 14,000 miles per hour. The collision successfully altered the projectile’s orbit. Researchers are also studying the use of a “gravitational tractor,” a spacecraft that would orbit alongside an asteroid, exerting gravitational pull that would gradually alter the rock’s course. All these efforts require years of advance planning and may not be effective against a giant asteroid. If a space rock is too large for deflection—or due to hit with relatively short notice— humanity would need to use a nuclear bomb to deflect or vaporize it. A 2021 study showed that a 1-megaton nuke launched at least two months before impact could annihilate a 330-foot asteroid. But setting off a nuke in space is no small matter. It “could be very awkward geopolitically,” said Robin George Andrews, author of How to Kill an Asteroid. It’s just one example of how asteroid response requires a globally coordinated effort.

Are countries working together?

We’re making progress. The Chelyabinsk explosion led to the creation of NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, designed in part to link efforts with other groups such as the U.N.-sponsored International Asteroid Warning Network. And last year for the first time, international representatives attended NASA’s biennial Planetary Defense Interagency Tabletop Exercise, which gamed out the discovery of a massive asteroid with a 72 percent chance of impacting Earth in 2038. Scientists say this cooperation is a step in the right direction, but that many questions remain around a potential global asteroid defense. What’s the best approach? Who would be in charge? “Asteroid impacts are one of the few natural disasters that we actually have the means to both foresee and prevent,” said NASA aerospace engineer Brent Barbee. We must be “as prepared as possible.”

Why the impact zone matters

Some 66 million years ago, an asteroid at least 6 miles wide slammed into Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. Digging a crater 125 miles wide, it triggered earthquakes and tsunamis, and firestorms that may have spanned the globe. Gas, soot, and dust blanketed the planet, blotting out the sun and sending global temperatures plummeting. That extinction event wiped out 75 percent of life on Earth—including the dinosaurs. But some experts believe the impact would have been far less calamitous if the rock had landed elsewhere. A 2017 study concluded that the asteroid struck a spot unusually rich in organic sediment, which worsened the blackout effect. The dinosaurs might have survived if not for that happenstance, the researchers believe, and the rise of the mammals—including humans— might never have occurred. “This is maybe a lucky coincidence that everything came into place like it is today,” said geochemist Mario Fischer-Gödde.

Nasa has taken another giant leap in the search for the origins of the universe – launching its newest space telescope on a mission to explore the building blocks of existence.

Spherex (the Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) will survey hundreds of millions of galaxies and "their combined cosmic glow" to give scientists new "insights into the universe's evolution since the Big Bang", said The Independent.

The $488 million (£377 million) telescope will help us "answer fundamental questions", said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, Nasa's acting head of astrophysics. "How does the universe work? How did we get here within that universe, and are we alone?"

How does Spherex work?

Spherex will spend two years orbiting Earth from a distance of 650km, collecting imagery of galaxies and stars. Its camera uses near-infrared wavelengths, and splits incoming light into 120 colours, rather like "a prism creating a rainbow from a sunray", said The Times. This technique, known as spectroscopy, will help scientists work out the "chemical footprint" of each object and its distance, "indicating when in the universe's history it was formed".

Spherex is built to survey large portions of sky, like a panoramic lens; when it picks up something of interest, the more targeted Webb or Hubble space telescopes can then zoom in greater detail.

This is "the first mission to look at the whole sky in so many colours," said Jamie Bock, Spherex's principal investigator. And "whenever astronomers look at the sky in a new way, we can expect discoveries."

What is Spherex looking for?

Mapping the universe in this way will also shed light on the physics of a cosmic phenomenon called "inflation" – or "what sparked the universe to increase in size by a trillion-trillionfold nearly instantaneously after the Big Bang", said CNN.

Spherex will also search for hidden reserves of water, carbon dioxide, and other molecules necessary for life, that are frozen within the clouds of gas and dust in which new planets and stars form. "Pinpointing these ingredients for life across our galaxy", and how common they are, "will help astronomers understand more about how they could be incorporated into newly forming planets". Astronomers are particularly keen "to look inside" these "molecular clouds" because they could contain newly formed stars and "discs of material, which form planets".

Is there anything else out there?

Packed alongside Spherex on its SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch was Punch, Nasa's $150 million (£116 million) Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere – a "constellation of four suitcase-sized satellites designed to study our Sun", said Space.com.

The four satellites will work together to take 3D images of the Sun's corona to discover the origins of solar wind, and track its journey across the solar system. Solar wind, and more intense energy bursts from the Sun, such as solar storms and flares, "influence the weather in space, causing radiation storms and impacting daily human life through power cuts and damage to communications satellites", said The Times.

It's hoped that data captured by Punch will help scientists more accurately predict these events. "Punch is going to revolutionise our physical understanding of space weather events and how they propagate through the inner heliosphere on the way to Earth," said Craig DeForest, Punch's principal investigator.

You "may want to keep your head down" on 22 December 2032, said Time. That's the day an asteroid may strike our planet.

The chances of 2024 YR4 striking Earth increased this week to 1 in 32 but then dramatically fell to just 1 in 67 after further observations, leaving lots of people confused about just how worried we should be.

What did the commentators say?

2024 YR4 measures only 130 to 300 feet across, "a pebble" compared to the asteroid that "killed the dinosaurs", which is thought to have been six to nine miles in length.

But it's "moving fast" – about 38,000mph – and it's that "screaming speed" that causes even a relatively small asteroid to "pack such destructive force" because the energy is "dissipated when it collides with something like a planet".

Humanity "does not have to be a passive target", though, because Nasa could use a kinetic impactor mission similar to DART in 2022, which "succeeded wildly" when it successfully nudged a different asteroid and changed its orbit.

"It's far from panic stations" for Earth, said Sky News. This is partly because the asteroid is "made of a rocky substance", which means it could "break into smaller pieces if it enters Earth's atmosphere".

So "I'm not worried just yet", said Carrie Nugent, author of "Asteroid Hunters", in The Guardian, because "we’ve got time to prepare" and the asteroid is "not terribly large by asteroid standards".

Also, the surface of the Earth is "mostly water" and "most experts would agree" that a 40- to 90-metre asteroid-ocean impact could happen "without loss to human life or property".

Studies suggest that the "risk corridor" of expected impact covers the eastern Pacific Ocean, northern South America, the Atlantic Ocean, Africa, the Arabian Sea and South Asia, said Forbes.

But it's not just Earth that's under threat: current calculations from Nasa estimate a 0.8% impact probability – so, a 1-in-125 chance – that the asteroid will "hit the moon rather than Earth".

What next?

The asteroid is expected to disappear from view around April, so further observations are being "conducted in a hurry", said The Independent. It will not be possible to study it again until 2028 – "at which point it could be too late".

The James Webb Space Telescope, which has an infrared eye that allows it to track the asteroid further out than optical light telescopes, will improve our understanding of the asteroid, Robin George Andrews, author of "How to Kill an Asteroid", told Ars Technica. Its "first observations" should appear by the end of March.

Meanwhile, it's important that countries work together on the threat of asteroids because global cooperation is, "unsurprisingly for a threat that comes from the stars", absolutely "essential", said The Washington Post.

'The last days of American orange juice'

Yasmin Tayag at The Atlantic

As "orange availability slides, the era of orange juice ubiquity is rapidly coming to an end," says Yasmin Tayag. The "dwindling fruit supply is making orange juice harder, but not impossible, to produce." For the "juice industry, international oranges are more of a lifeline than a long-term fix," and "more poignant, orange juice itself is beginning to lose significance." In "many ways, the decline of orange juice represents the future of many staple foods."

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'Sovereign wealth for politicians'

The Wall Street Journal editorial board

A U.S. sovereign wealth fund "would take resources from the private economy, fund political boondoggles and mess with the business decisions of private companies," says The Wall Street Journal editorial board. These funds "typically enrich a country's rulers and their friends far more than citizens," and "corruption is a constant temptation." There is "also no need for such a U.S. fund since Congress already spends on roads and bridges, technology, research and development."

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'Citi just became a magnet for ambitious working moms'

Beth Kowitt at Bloomberg

"Allowing employees to work from home is not some touchy-feely policy" for banking company Citigroup, says Beth Kowitt. It is "very likely the company will end up keeping working mothers who need and want the flexibility the most." Citi is "normalizing a mode of work that falls outside the bounds of what's considered typical or traditional, especially in the banking world," even calling it a "competitive advantage." Stereotypes have "always held back working mothers who have asked for anything other than the status quo."

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'The real point of space exploration'

Shannon Stirone at Slate

While "most of us go about our days, immersed in the minutia of our lives, we remain very much a part of something bigger than ourselves, and even bigger than humanity," says Shannon Stirone. Our "modern era of space observation and exploration deepens our connection with the universe — and with each other." President Donald Trump "cannot take what makes NASA out of NASA by deleting websites or removing the words 'women' or 'diversity' or 'people of color.'"

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Asteroid 2024 PT5, which almost became a temporary mini-moon to Earth, was recently found to be a broken-off part of the moon itself. This discovery has led scientists to believe there are many more lunar-sourced space rocks waiting to be discovered. Studying these could provide new insight into the moon and its composition.

A moon of Earth's own

While 2024 PT5 never officially joined Earth's orbit, the almost-moon still became a topic of interest and is now understood to very likely be a piece of the actual moon, according to a study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The rock was probably "flung into space by an impact on the lunar surface that occurred sometime within the past tens of thousand years," said The New York Times. "This is a story about the moon as told by asteroid scientists," said Teddy Kareta, a postdoctoral associate at Lowell Observatory in Arizona and the lead author of the study, in a NASA news release. "It's a rare situation where we've gone out to study an asteroid but then strayed into new territory in terms of the questions we can ask of 2024 PT5."

Researchers deduced the object's true nature by observing its movement through space, ruling out that it was human-made space debris. Then they "studied how the sunlight reflected off the small rock" and found it "didn't match that of any known asteroid type" — instead, the "reflected light more closely matched rocks from the moon," said USA Today. While this is convincing evidence that 2024 PT5 was once a piece of the moon, "unless you go and bring a sample back, you cannot tell for sure," said Vishnu Reddy, a professor of planetary science at the University of Arizona, to the Times.

Rock the world

Past lunar missions "have provided precious samples for laboratory study, but space rocks chipped off the moon could add another dimension to our understanding," said Earth.com. Locating moon-sourced asteroids may allow researchers to study samples from deeper in the moon, which would otherwise be difficult to extract. Also, "if a lunar asteroid can be directly linked to a specific impact crater on the moon, studying it could lend insights into cratering processes on the pockmarked lunar surface," said the NASA release.

"Mini-moon" is a misnomer for 2024 PT5 because it approached the Earth from the inside, had its "orbit slightly altered by a very close approach with the Earth-moon system" and then receded "away from us on the 'outside' in an overall horseshoe trajectory," Kareta said to CNN. Thus it never truly became a second moon to the Earth. The asteroid is only the second one ever discovered to have lunar origins; scientists predict there may be many more. "As telescopes become more sensitive to smaller asteroids, more potential moon boulders will be discovered, creating an exciting opportunity not only for scientists studying a rare population of asteroids, but also for scientists studying the moon," said the NASA release.

"If extraterrestrials do exist, scientists have found a promising location for where they could be hiding," said the Daily Mail. Named HD 20794 D, the newly discovered exoplanet orbits a star similar to the Sun, and researchers believe it may be able to sustain liquid water, which is vital for life, as we know it, to exist.

"Best of all," added the Mail, it lies just 19.7 light-years away from Earth, raising the "tantalising possibility" of being able to photograph it and, of course, "any aliens lurking there".

What is an exoplanet? 

An exoplanet is a planet outside our solar system that usually orbits a star in our galaxy. More than 7,000 have been found in the Milky Way since the first confirmed discovery in the 1990s, and "billions more remain to be discovered", said Tech Explorist.

Most of the exoplanets that have been found are within a small region of the galaxy – "'small' meaning within thousands of light-years of our solar system", said Nasa, which is as far as current telescopes are able to penetrate. One light-year is the equivalent of 5.88 trillion miles.

How was the new exoplanet found?

Methods used to find exoplanets include "watching for wobble" – that is, the changes in the light emitted by a star when it makes a tiny movement due to the gravitational tug of a passing planet.

In 2022, Dr Michael Cretignier, from the University of Oxford, spotted periodic changes in the light being emitted by the star HD 20794 D. The faintness of the signal made it difficult to confirm the presence of an exoplanet, with a chance the signal was instead the result of instrument error. The team spent the next two years analysing "highly precise measurements" from more than 20 years of data from the region to prove his theory, said the University of Oxford in a press release.

"For me, it was naturally a huge joy when we could confirm the planet’s existence," said Cretignier. "It was also a relief."

This prolonged study of the star's movement also allowed scientists to determine the planet's size as six times the mass of Earth – "the larger the wobble, the greater the mass", said Space.com.

Could life exist on HD 20794 D?

HD 20794 D is located within the so-called "Goldilocks zone", where temperatures would support the presence of liquid water, a prerequisite for life.

"Having a planet in the habitable zone is not sufficient at all to have life on it," Cretignier told the Daily Mail. "Both Mars and Venus are inside the habitable zone of the sun, but I highly don't recommend you to go there on holiday."

Unlike the circular orbit of most planets, HD 20794 D follows an elliptical orbit more elongated than any of the planets in our solar system. This means it moves from the outer edge of the habitable zone to the inner region during its 647-day journey around the star.

Winters would be "long and hard" in this "bizarre" climate, said Space.com, with any life struggling to survive on a planet that spends so much time frozen. But even if life does not exist on HD 20794 D, its strange orbit will provide an "invaluable test case" for future studies, said the University of Oxford.

The moon is now considered a threatened heritage site, alongside 24 other earthly sites, because the lunar surface holds a significant number of artifacts with the potential to be destroyed amid newer moon missions. In order to protect our celestial satellite in the future, countries will have to work together in governing space flight.

A lunar legacy

The World Monuments Fund is a preservation organization that draws attention to historic sites across the world that are at risk due to "climate change, tourism, human conflict and political crises, natural disasters, rapid urbanization or insufficient funding and resources," said Newsweek. This year, for the first time, the WMF's list extended beyond earthly borders. "The Moon is included on the Watch to reflect the urgent need to recognize and preserve the artifacts that testify to humanity's first steps beyond Earth — a defining moment in our shared history," said the president and CEO of WMF, Bénédicte de Montlaur, in a statement.

The moon has become a target for several countries because of its resource potential. The NASA Artemis mission wants to put man back on the moon and establish a lunar base. There has also been an expanding interest in space tourism. As a result, the moon has seen increased human activity, which could destroy "items such as the camera that captured the televised moon landing; a memorial disk left by astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin; and hundreds of other objects," said de Montlaur. In all, more than 90 sites on the moon's surface could be at risk in the new space race, warns the WMF.

Maintaining the moon

Preserving the moon is not an easy task. "Protections for cultural heritage are typically decided by individual countries, which makes the task of taking care of important international sites like the moon more difficult," said The New York Times. The moon does not belong to any one country. Instead, 53 countries signed the UN Artemis Accords in 2020 to "establish a common vision via a practical set of principles, guidelines, and best practices to enhance the governance of the civil exploration and use of outer space."

Despite the Artemis Accords, the moon still faces "mounting risks amidst accelerating lunar activities," de Montlaur said. On the day the WMF list was released, for example, a SpaceX rocket launched two privately developed robotic lunar landers to the moon. Many of these explorations are "undertaken without adequate preservation protocols," de Montlaur added. "Before we can send our humans back to the moon, we are sending a lot of science and a lot of technology ahead of time to prepare for that," said Nicola Fox, the head of NASA's science mission directorate, to CBS News.

"The inclusion of the Moon on the 2025 Watch advocates for international agreements and protections for lunar heritage sites and invites a broader public conversation on what this new Space Age might mean for the Moon's cultural and natural landscape," said the WMF. Other cultural sites on the WMF list this year include the city of Gaza and Kyiv Teacher's House in Ukraine, both of which have been put at risk by ongoing war.

Americans, Russians and spacefarers from other countries have been working together aboard the International Space Station for a quarter-century. But the ISS is nearing the end of its operational life. What's next for the space station, and what comes after it retires?

Following the ISS retirement in 2030, NASA expects to see the construction of "one or more commercial space stations," said The Verge. Each station will be run by a private company "for profit and part of a thriving space economy." NASA astronauts will use these stations as a platform for their work and further exploration of space. Two companies, Blue Origin and Starlab Space, are creating their own designs, while another, Axiom Space, is building modules to "begin life" attached to the ISS. The goal is ambitious, but also a gamble. Industry leaders still don't know "whether there's money to be made or not" in space, said The Verge.

Why is the ISS being retired?

The station is "showing its age," said Florida Today. A recent report from NASA's inspector general questioned whether it would be "safe or even affordable to operate past 2030," or even if it can last that long. There is an air leak in a Russian module on the station, and space suits aboard the station have been malfunctioning. So NASA is making plans to "deorbit" the station, contracting with SpaceX to build a vehicle that will bring the station "over a remote part of Earth" in 2031.

There is debate about whether that's a wise plan. Critics say crashing the ISS into an isolated part of the Pacific Ocean "could end up polluting Earth's air and water," said Space.com. Others say the effects will be negligible: Dumping the 400-ton ISS will be a "very minor contributor to ocean pollution" compared to the shipping and cargo that already sinks every year, said Luciano Anselmo of the Space Flight Dynamics Laboratory. But others argue for boosting the ISS to a higher orbit, Kevin Holden Platt said at Forbes. Up there, it could serve as a museum for "astrophysicists, astronauts and space aficionados not yet born."

What happens after the ISS retires?

Space stations have for more than 50 years "been the preserve of nation-states," said The Telegraph. That's largely been a question of capabilities: National governments alone possessed the "billions of dollars of investment" and capability to make "dozens of rocket launches" that building a station requires. No longer. Elon Musk's SpaceX has helped bring down launch costs, and now private companies are raising "billions of dollars in an effort to build future hubs" in space. Some of the entrepreneurs have literally lofty goals. One day "there will be more people living off Earth than on Earth," predicted Max Haot, CEO of Vast, which hopes to launch a small station this year.

NASA, meanwhile, is looking beyond Earth orbit to the "moon and beyond," said Mashable. America's space agency is aiming to build a "permanent lunar presence" that could serve as a launch point for humanity's first trip to Mars.

Two of the world's richest and most powerful men have launched two of the world's largest rockets this week in an escalation of their corporate space race.

Tesla and X boss Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, are gunning for top dog status in the commercial space business with their respective companies SpaceX and Blue Origin.

This week SpaceX launched Falcon 9, the world's most active rocket, carrying more of its Starlink internet satellites as well as Moon landers for Nasa. Musk's company is also conducting its seventh test flight of its new Starship megarocket, scheduled to lift off from Texas tonight.

Today Blue Origin also launched its New Glenn rocket from Florida on an inaugural mission into space, the first step into Earth's orbit for Bezos's company as it aims to take on the – until now – dominant SpaceX.

What is SpaceX?

Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies Corporation – known as SpaceX – in 2002, in the hope of "making affordable spaceflight a reality", said Britannica. SpaceX was the first private company to launch a rocket into Earth's orbit, doing so in 2008. It then won a Nasa contract worth more than $1 billion to develop a successor to the space shuttle.

SpaceX also runs Starlink, a satellite internet service that provides broadband access to remote areas. It is now developing Starship, the world's largest and most powerful rocket. It hopes to send humans and cargo to the Moon, and launch settlers to Mars.

What is Blue Origin?

Bezos founded Blue Origin 25 years ago, saying he wanted "millions of people working and living in space". For years, the company has been launching a small reusable rocket called New Shepard to take passengers to the edge of the Earth's atmosphere, including Bezos himself – famously wearing a cowboy hat. But the company has never sent anything into orbit, until now.

In the future, New Glenn will launch Blue Origin's Moon lander for Nasa.

So who's winning?

SpaceX, by a light year. It has until now "dramatically outperformed" Blue Origin, said the BBC, launching rockets 134 times last year. But today's launch will be seen as a "major step forward" for Blue Origin.

New Glenn is about "twice as powerful" as SpaceX's Falcon 9, said Sky News. It's also far larger and can accommodate "bigger batches of satellites". That said, SpaceX's Starship "would be more powerful still".

Musk could leverage his enormous influence over the incoming Trump administration to "undercut" Blue Origin, said Reuters. He has the president-elect's "ear on space matters". But Bezos has some leverage. Amazon has donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund and will stream the event. New Glenn is expected to "chip away at SpaceX's market dominance" and "kickstart" Blue Origin's emergence in the satellite launch business.

What about the future of space exploration?

Experts believe a successful New Glenn launch will "create real competition between the two companies", said the BBC, and could "drive down the costs" of space exploration. Nasa is "increasingly moving away" from relying on public money and government funding, and has issued "huge contracts" worth billions to private companies, most notably SpaceX.

The growing power of both companies could therefore affect Nasa's plans to send crewed missions back to the Moon. Last month Musk said the US should head for Mars before returning to the Moon – "fuelling concerns of a major shakeup" to Nasa's programme, said Metro. Trump has also repeatedly fixated on Mars during rallies. But Bezos is clear that he believes the US should do both.

They also aren't the only "massively rich billionaires" in the space race: don't forget Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic. The skies "could be getting crowded".

'NASA's $100 billion moon mission is going nowhere'

Michael Bloomberg at Bloomberg

Artemis was "intended to land astronauts back on the moon," but its "complexity and outrageous waste are still spiraling upward," says Michael Bloomberg. It has "become apparent" that Artemis "is a colossal waste of taxpayer money." Unlike Artemis, a "reusable SpaceX Starship will very likely be able to carry cargo and robots directly to the moon." Taxpayers "should be asking: What on Earth are we doing? And the next president should be held accountable for answers."

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'Our military deserves to vote. Trump's trying to suppress their right to do so.'

Marla Bautista at USA Today

Donald Trump's false voting claims "make it harder to pass needed reforms that would make it easier for the men and women who protect our nation to vote," says Marla Bautista. Military families "need support and clarity about exercising their voting rights." These families "deserve a voting process that respects their unique challenges and provides provisions that prioritize their participation." It is "imperative that election officials recognize the unique needs of absentee voters serving in the military."

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'No, tariffs don't fuel growth'

Phil Gramm and Donald J. Boudreaux at The Wall Street Journal

It is "true that America had high tariffs throughout the 19th century and experienced substantial economic growth," say Phil Gramm and Donald J. Boudreaux, but "tariffs were the nation's primary revenue source until the ratification of the 16th Amendment — which authorized income taxes." Trade was "incidental to America's astonishing economic expansion," and "combined with the country's vast natural resources and openness to foreign investment and immigration, this freedom — not tariffs — produced the American economic miracle."

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'A sustainable global universal basic income can be done. Here is how.'

Patrick Brown at Al Jazeera

A global universal basic income is "not just a question of poverty relief. It's also a question of social justice," says Patrick Brown. A "global UBI would not only end world poverty, but also represent a necessary and equitable redistribution of wealth from north to south." This "could be supplemented by other taxes on the global commons, including land, mining and artificial intelligence tools, recognizing the equal right we all have to a share of the world's wealth."

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What happened

Europa Clipper, the largest extraplanetary spacecraft ever built by NASA, took off from Florida's Kennedy Space Center Monday atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, headed toward Jupiter. The spacecraft, which is the size of a basketball court with its solar wings unfurled, carries an array of nice specialized instruments to study an ocean believed to be buried 10 to 15 miles under the icy surface of Jupiter's moon Europa.

Who said what

Europa Clipper's historic mission "will tackle one of biology's core questions," The New York Times said: "Can life exist anywhere else in our solar system?" The spacecraft "won't look for life" directly, The Associated Press said. Instead its instruments — cameras, magnetometer, thermal imager and an ice-penetrating radar, among others — "will zero in on the ingredients necessary to sustain life," including organic compounds.

"We want to determine if Europa has the potential to support simple life in the deep ocean under its icy layer," said mission chief scientist Robert Pappalardo of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We don't expect fish and whales and that kind of thing." Europa isn't the only documented ocean world, but its ocean is most similar to Earth's, said program scientist Curt Niebur. "If Europa Clipper can show that in our one solar system there are two habitable worlds — Earth and Europa — that has profound implications for how common habitable worlds are in the galaxy."

What next?

Europa Clipper's 1.8 billion-mile journey is expected to take 5 1/2 years. It should enter Jupiter's orbit on April 11, 2030, before making 49 flybys of Europa over the next four years, coming within 16 miles of the moon's surface.

A Nasa spacecraft bound for Jupiter's icy moon Europa is scheduled to blast off from the Kennedy Space Center this week.

The Europa Clipper is the largest planetary explorer Nasa has ever built and its mission is to conduct 44 fly-bys of the moon to determine whether it could support life.

Among the top puzzles scientists are hoping to solve is whether the moon has the "water, energy and chemical building blocks required to host life as we know it", said National Geographic. This "frozen world" is a similar size to our own moon, but potentially contains "twice the amount of water as all of Earth's oceans combined".

Evidence of Europa's gigantic global ocean of liquid saltwater beneath its frozen crust first came to light during Nasa's 1996 Galileo fly-by mission which revealed the moon had its own magnetic field. The latest mission will use ice-penetrating radar to peer beneath the crust and search for hidden pockets of liquid water.

While the Europa Clipper "cannot detect life directly", said James O'Donoghue, a planetary astronomy expert from Reading University, on The Conversation, it "marks humanity's first dedicated mission to study an ocean world and search for signs of habitability".

The spacecraft is due to launch on Thursday, but won't reach Jupiter's orbit until 2030. If there's "even a hint that the stuff of life exists" on Europa, a separate surface lander would then be needed to probe deeper.

"If Europa Clipper shows that icy ocean worlds are habitable," Paul Byrne, a planetary scientist at Washington University in St. Louis, said, "then the implications for how common habitable environments are in the universe as a whole are absolutely staggering."

The story of the three astronauts aboard Apollo 13, a Nasa spacecraft bound for the moon, who managed to make it back to Earth in April 1970 is "nothing short of astounding", said Adrian Horton in The Guardian. Little wonder then that Netflix has chosen it as the subject of its latest documentary, "meticulously and sumptuously rendered through restored archival material".

Yes, we have watched the retelling of these events before, notably in the Oscar-winning film starring Tom Hanks in 1995, but "Apollo 13: Survival" reveals never-before-seen footage, interviews with the original team for the first time, plus access to the 7,000 hours of complete audio recordings.

That the three astronauts – Fred Haise, Jack Swigert and mission commander Jim Lovell – got home is shown here to be nothing short of a miracle. They spent four "harrowing, near-suffocating" days in a lunar module designed for two people and 45 hours with just a "few light bulbs' worth" of power after the explosion almost drained the spacecraft of oxygen and electrical power. In a triumph of understatement, this was the event that prompted Swigert to utter the phrase: "Houston, we've had a problem here."

"Apollo 13: Survival" recounts the audacious rescue effort, coordinated from Nasa's control room in Houston 200,000 miles away. "Unprecedented and untested manoeuvres" were deployed to get the astronauts home, including "transferring flight data by hand to the 'lifeboat' module, catapulting off the moon's orbit, manually aiming an unpredictable rocket blast at the earth". Each of them was a last resort, "dicey and high-risk". Indeed, said The Irish Examiner's Esther McCarthy, "as Nasa's brightest sought solutions", news networks put the crew's chance of survival at 10%. 

Aside from the series of scientific masterstrokes that brought the astronauts home, the director Peter Middleton wanted to focus on the "emotional heart of the film" and the "very real impact" of the unfolding crisis on the three astronauts and their families. To that end, the team reached out to the Lovell family, who shared their extensive personal archive with the team. The film is dedicated to Jim's wife, Marilyn, who died in 2023. The archival footage is "remarkable", added Horton in The Guardian, and includes crew recordings during two crucial engine bursts and photos of Marilyn reacting to each "hairs-breadth success on the news".

One of the most notable aspects of the story is the fact that "even in crisis the (almost entirely) men of Nasa are near-psychotically cool cucumbers, relaying stressful information as if reading Ikea furniture directions". Similarly, this latest retelling "avoids sensationalism, baiting or cheesy re-enactments". It is "a real, rare and breathtaking tale of survival and ingenuity, clearly and painstakingly told".

"Apollo 13: Survival" is available on Netflix 

What happened

NASA plans to bring Boeing's troubled Starliner space capsule back to Earth on Sept. 6, undocking it from the International Space Station while leaving behind the two astronauts who flew up in the craft's inaugural crewed flight in June. Barring weather delays or other setbacks, the Starliner capsule will land in New Mexico on Saturday. Astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry "Butch" Wilmore will return on a SpaceX spacecraft in February.

Who said what

"It's been a journey to get here, and we're excited to have Starliner undock and return," Steve Stich, NASA's commercial crew program manager, said Wednesday. There was "some tension in the room," he acknowledged, when NASA decided it was prudent to bring the capsule home empty, despite Boeing's confidence in the craft's thrusters. Williams and Wilmore, who expected an eight-day trip to the ISS, are "ready to execute whatever mission we put in front of them," said Dana Weigel, NASA's program manager for the space station.

Starliner's crewless return is a "stinging loss for Boeing" and "even a successful landing will be something of a hollow victory," The Washington Post said. The June test flight was supposed to "lead to regular operational missions" to the ISS, alternating with SpaceX's spacecraft, but now the Starliner's future is unclear.

What next?

The SpaceX Crew Dragon slated to bring Williams and Wilmore home is scheduled to launch Sept. 24, with two seats empty for their return flight.

'Boeing's no-good, never-ending tailspin might take NASA with it'

Clive Irving at The New York Times

Boeing's "engineering woes extend beyond Starliner — they threaten NASA's bigger goals of going back to the moon through its Artemis program," says Clive Irving. A "loss in confidence helps put the entire Artemis program into a new state of uncertainty." Concern over Boeing now "reaches beyond the commercial aviation division," and the company needs to "recover not just the engineering skills but the ethical obligations of what 'moonshot' really means."

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'Kamala Harris is right to not make her race and gender a rallying cry'

Zeeshan Aleem at MSNBC

Kamala Harris' "class description renders her ordinary, and there is no attempt to pique interest over the historic implications of her candidacy as a woman of color," says Zeeshan Aleem. Her "reluctance to draw extra attention to her womanhood or her Black and South Asian ancestry has stood in stark contrast to Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign." Harris' "choice to go a different path is wise — and she should stay the course."

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'Mark Zuckerberg's problem isn't free speech, it's lies'

Jason Fields at Newsweek

The truth is "hard to find anywhere, but particularly on social media," and Mark Zuckerberg "wants to make it harder," says Jason Fields. A social media publisher "has a duty to act responsibly and do what it can to prevent such misinformation from spreading, just like any editorial entity does." But "whichever party is in control of the levers of government, the government gets to ask — not tell. Facebook gets to say yes or no."

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'Massachusetts just set the standard for removing PFAS from firefighter gear. Other states need to follow suit.'

Edward Kelly at The Boston Globe

It is "clear that if we want cancer to stop killing firefighters, we must get carcinogens out of firefighting gear," says Edward Kelly. Massachusetts signed a law "protecting firefighters by banning the sale of bunker gear with PFAS by January 2027," and firefighters should be "urging all cities and states to follow their lead." Removing PFAS from "bunker gear saves the lives of firefighters and helps us better protect the public when they need us most."

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'Ukraine shows we're capable of winning after largest invasion of Russia since World War II'

Oleksandr Musiienko at USA Today

The "Ukrainian offensive into the Russian Kursk region" shows that Ukraine is "still capable of winning," says Oleksandr Musiienko. Ukraine should "redeploy additional forces to the east, work with our Western partners to obtain more weapons, apply them on the battlefield and thereby halt the enemy." Forcing Putin to "make concessions can only be achieved through military pressure. This is exactly what is happening now." It is "also important to demonstrate the weakness of Putin's power in Russia."

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'Make Elon Musk head of NASA'

Arthur Herman at The Wall Street Journal

The "right choice for Mr. Musk's talents and vision is obvious," says Arthur Herman. Donald Trump "should appoint him head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration" if he wins the election. NASA is "weighed down by a bureaucratic agenda that seems more interested in meeting diversity, equity and inclusion requirements than advancing America in space." Making "SpaceX's CEO the head of NASA would breathe new life into an agency struggling to rediscover its sense of national purpose."

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'Is something rotten at the heart of the Kansas City Chiefs?'

Melissa Jacobs at The Guardian

Behind the "Super Bowl wins and the coaching records and the paparazzi swooning over the Kelce-Swift relationship is a different narrative" about the Kansas City Chiefs, says Melissa Jacobs. The Chiefs "have a pretty sordid history of ignoring off-field trouble," and their "disturbing history of turning a blind eye to controversy certainly predates" Head Coach Andy Reid. Fans "turn a blind eye to the Chiefs' history of turning a blind eye because they are winners."

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'Undecided moderate women could be the tipping point this November'

Jackie Payne at the Chicago Tribune

There is "one thing that links these historically close election results in recent years — and that's the voting behavior of America's moderate women and particularly moderate white women," says Jackie Payne. These women are "looking for a candidate who speaks to them and their concerns, and they are going to show up at the polls in November." The "candidate who can speak to these issues they care about the most will come out victorious."

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"We've all been there," said Richard Hollingham on BBC Future: stuck on a broken-down train or stranded in an airport after a cancelled flight, unsure when we'll get home. Spare a thought, then, for Nasa astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore. In June, the pair arrived on the International Space Station (ISS) with limited luggage for what was supposed to be a fleeting eight-day visit. But the spacecraft that took them there – Boeing's new Starliner – suffered helium leaks and thruster problems before docking, raising doubts about its safety for the return flight.

If Nasa can confidently establish that the issues are fixed, the two astronauts may yet be able to return in the craft. If not, the Starliner will fly back empty, and Williams and Wilmore will have to remain on the ISS until they can hitch a ride with other returning astronauts on a SpaceX spacecraft – in February 2025.

The pair aren't in any danger, according to Nasa, said Stephen Bleach in The Sunday Times, and their stock of food and clothes was topped up last week by a supply capsule. Indeed, I found myself almost envying their unexpected summer in space – all that peace and quiet, "the licensed, guilt-free idleness of it". But then I remembered that they'll be working round the clock with seven other astronauts in what amounts to a "flatshare from hell", drinking recycled sweat and urine. They'll be too busy to feel sorry for themselves, said Wiliam Hunter in the Daily Mail. With lengthy work shifts and two hours of compulsory exercise a day, ISS crew members are left with little free time to ruminate.

Discomfort, risk and uncertainty are part of the deal if you're an astronaut, said Micah Maidenberg in The Wall Street Journal. "This is just the life that we live," Wilmore said in an interview in March when asked about the risk of missions going wrong. Both he and Williams have done previous stints on the ISS: she made headlines in 2006 by running a marathon inside it on a treadmill.

Williams's husband, Michael, remarked last week that his wife would be anything but disappointed by the prospect of spending more time carrying out scientific experiments and repairs on the orbiting station 250 miles above Earth. "That's her happy place," he said.

David Bowie famously pondered whether there is life on Mars – and we might be one step closer to answering that question.

Enough water to cover the surface of Mars has been discovered within the crust, said The Sun, with profound implications for our understanding of the planet and potentially providing "proof of alien life".

What has been found?

"Once upon a time", said Space, Mars had "lots of liquid water" on its surface, with oceans, lakes and rivers, "but the water disappeared about 3 billion years ago". This means Mars rovers have explored "dried up lakebeds and empty river channels".

But the data from a NASA mission between 2018 and 2022 has found evidence of an underground reservoir of water. The space agency's lander carried a seismometer, which "recorded four years' of vibrations – Mars quakes – from deep inside the Red Planet", said the BBC.

The team used the same techniques used to search for water on Earth, or to look for oil and gas. They were excited to make their discovery but "there's a problem", said Forbes.

This water is "deep", explained Space – "very deep." It is between 11.5km and 20km deep (7.1 and 12.4 miles) and there is no water at all in the crust above 5km deep (3.1 miles).

Why does this matter?

Despite their inconvenient depths, if the aquifers are there, they may "provide new insights into the dynamics of Mars’s desiccation", said The Economist, and if Mars "ever was the abode of life", they "may be the habitat of its last survivors".

We "haven't found any evidence for life on Mars", said professor of planetary science Michael Manga of the University of California, Berkeley, but "at least we have identified a place that should, in principle, be able to sustain life".

Have you ever wanted to live on Mars? This latest discovery might bring the possibility closer. Exploring on The Conversation "what it would take" to transform Mars' "barren landscape" into "a life-friendly world", Sven Bilén explained that humans would need "liquid water, food, shelter and an atmosphere with enough oxygen to breathe and thick enough to retain heat and protect against radiation from the Sun".

What next?

Don't put your house on the market just yet because to reach the water would "require drills far beyond anything that the current generation of Mars robots could carry", said The Economist, and "even on Earth it would be hard".

Despite this, space scientists are thrilled by the development. The exploration may be expanded. Further seismometers could be sent to Mars and other planets and moons within our solar system in the future, said CNN, and "spreading them out across Mars" would reveal variations within the planet’s interior and provide a greater window into its diverse and complex history.

NASA is constantly working on new projects that expand our horizons in space and on Earth. From putting men back on the moon to revolutionizing air travel, there is a lot in the works. Below, we take a look at some of the excitement surrounding the space agency.

Artemis mission

Perhaps the mission with the most publicity, NASA's Artemis mission aims to put people back on the moon and "establish the first long-term presence."

The mission is ongoing and takes place in phases. Artemis I took place in November 2022 and tested the safety of NASA's Space Launch System rocket using mannequins in preparation for phase II. Artemis II is expected to occur no earlier than September 2025, Reuters said. The phase will last approximately 10 days when "four astronauts will fly around the moon to test NASA's foundational human deep space exploration capabilities … for the first time with crew." The next phase, Artemis III, "will mark humanity's first return to the lunar surface in more than 50 years," and "make history by sending the first humans to explore the region near the lunar South Pole." That is expected to take place no earlier than September 2026. In addition to exploring the moon, NASA hopes to mine the area by 2032. The agency is looking to develop resources on the moon including water, oxygen and eventually minerals like iron.

NASA has also been funding private companies to create lunar landers to be tested prior to humans making the attempt. The Peregrine launcher, created by the company Astrobotic Technology, was launched in January 2024, but did not make it to the moon because of a critical propellant loss. In February, the Odysseus launcher, created by the company Intuitive Machines, successfully landed on the moon "marking the first commercial spacecraft to soft-land on the moon, and the first U.S.-made vehicle to touch down on the lunar surface since the Apollo program ended more than five decades ago," said CNN.

On to Mars

NASA hopes to eventually use the outcomes of the Artemis mission to push humanity to Mars. The space agency is starting with a simulated mission known as the Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA), in which four people will live in a simulated Mars-like environment for a year to test the extent to which research can be done, as well as whether people could live and work there. There are four main complications that make traveling to Mars high risk: radiation, an eyeball swelling condition that occurs when people spend too much time in low-gravity situations, crew cooperation, and food and nutrition, CNN said. The first simulation began in June 2023, and the last one will take place in 2026.

NASA's Psyche mission, launched in October 2023 with the goal of reaching a distant asteroid, hit its first milestone by "successfully carrying out the most distant demonstration of laser communications," CNN said. This is through the Deep Space Optical Communications technology demonstration (DSOC) aboard the Psyche spacecraft. The DSOC was able to achieve "first light," successfully sending and receiving data. This is an initial step in deeper space study and can aid in further exploration and reaching Mars.

Tracking climate changes

NASA's work isn't limited to space — the agency does valuable work for Earth, as well, especially in regard to tracking climate change. NASA has an Earth-observing satellite with the ability to track carbon dioxide emissions and removal by country. Tracking carbon emissions was not the initial goal of the satellite, but it provided a unique opportunity. "NASA is focused on delivering Earth science data that addresses real-world climate challenges," said Karen St. Germain, the director of NASA's Earth Science Division. Another of NASA's satellites detected early signs of El Niño, the natural phenomenon sending global temperatures skyrocketing, as well as identified that coastlines are rapidly sinking.

NASA is also now tracking space weather, namely solar storms. The agency launched its new GOES-U satellite in June. "In addition to its critical role in terrestrial weather prediction, the GOES constellation of satellites helps forecasters predict space weather near Earth that can interfere with satellite electronics, GPS, and radio communications," NASA said. "This fleet of advanced satellites is strengthening resilience to our changing climate, and protecting humanity from weather hazards on Earth, and in space."

Sampling asteroids

Through the agency's OSIRIS-REx program, scientists have retrieved a sample from the asteroid Bennu. Researchers have only tested the black rocks and dust on the outside of the collection device, but there have already been interesting findings. "We have verified that Bennu is dominated by water-bearing clay minerals," Dante Lauretta, the principal investigator for NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission, said to NPR. "We're just beginning here, but we picked the right asteroid, and not only that, we brought back the right sample," Daniel Glavin, OSIRIS-REx sample analyst and senior scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said to CNN. "This stuff is an astrobiologist's dream."

NASA launched its Psyche mission in October 2023. The mission's goal is to travel to a "unique metal-rich asteroid with the same name, orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter," the NASA website said. The asteroid is metal-heavy and may be a "partial core of a planetesimal, a building block of an early planet." The mission is expected to begin exploring the asteroid in 2029.

Finding minerals

Dragonfly mission

NASA has started using modified U-2 spy planes to hunt for "strategic minerals" in the desert, Space.com said. The planes are being used to "locate stores of minerals hidden in the American desert," that are "vital for electronics manufacturing, the US economy and, by extension, national security."

The project is called the Geological Earth Mapping Experiment (GEMx) and is in collaboration with the United States Geological Survey. "Undiscovered deposits of at least some of these critical and strategic minerals almost certainly exist in the United States, but modern geophysical data is needed to increase our knowledge of these resources," Dean Riley, a collaborator on the project, said in a statement.

NASA officially approved the $3.35 billion Dragonfly mission, a "revolutionary project to explore Saturn's largest moon with a quadcopter drone," Ars Technica said. The rotorcraft is set to arrive at Saturn'’s moon Titan in 2034. "Dragonfly is a spectacular science mission with broad community interest, and we are excited to take the next steps on this mission," Nicky Fox, the associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate Headquarters, said in a NASA statement. "Exploring Titan will push the boundaries of what we can do with rotorcraft outside of Earth."

The goal of the mission is to "fly to dozens of promising locations on the moon, looking for prebiotic chemical processes common on both Titan and the early Earth before life developed," the statement said. The rotorcraft will explore Titan for three years. The Dragonfly mission is also the first where NASA is flying a vehicle on another planetary body for science.

Scientific Balloon Program

NASA runs an annual fall balloon campaign where "eight balloon flights carrying scientific experiments and technology demonstrations are scheduled to launch from mid-August through mid-October" from New Mexico, said NASA. "The flights will support 16 missions, including investigations in the fields of astrophysics, heliophysics, and atmospheric research." The program aims to "provide high altitude scientific balloon platforms for scientific and technological investigations," said the program website.

The Scientific Balloon Program has existed for over 30 years and has been instrumental in scientific discoveries and growing knowledge about Earth and space. "Not only are we launching a large number of missions, but these flights set the foundation for follow-on missions from our long-duration launch facilities in Antarctica, New Zealand and Sweden," said Andrew Hamilton, the acting chief of NASA's Balloon Program Office.

Supersonic research

NASA's Quesst mission aims to "collect data that could make supersonic flight over land possible, dramatically reducing travel time in the United States or anywhere in the world," said NASA. The space agency is working on a supersonic X-59 experimental spacecraft that is "designed to fly faster than the speed of sound without creating the thunderous sonic boom that typically accompanies breaking the sound barrier," said Space.com. (The Week and Space.com are owned by Future plc.) "If aircraft can be designed to achieve this, domestic flight times could be reduced by half, aiding not only in commercial air travel but also disaster relief and medical transport, for instance."

The craft would make a soft "thump" rather than the loud boom, and the agency is actively testing how loud the thump will be. NASA officially began the tests in October 2024. "The success of these runs will be the start of the culmination of the last eight years of my career," Paul Dees, NASA's deputy propulsion lead for the X-59, said in a statement. "This isn't the end of the excitement but a small stepping stone to the beginning."

What happened

Scientists have found evidence of liquid water deep below the arid surface of Mars, raising hope of discovering life on the Red Planet. A recent study, based on seismic measurements taken by NASA's InSight lander, suggests that vast quantities of water may still be trapped within rocks up to 12 miles below the Martian surface.

Who said what

Researchers said in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that analyzing the speed of the recorded Martian temblors pointed to underground water, likely the subterranean remnants of lakes, rivers and oceans that covered the Martian surface 3 millions years ago. "The ingredients for life as we know it exist in the Martian subsurface if these interpretations are correct," Vashan Wright, a lead scientist at UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said to Reuters. 

What next?

The researchers said their findings and future analysis will help humans understand Mars' aquatic history and assess "in situ resource utilization for future missions." But the discovery of liquid water is only of limited utility for "billionaires with Mars colonization plans," the BBC said. "Drilling a hole 10 kilometers deep on Mars — even for [Elon] Musk — would be difficult," said Michael Manga, one of the study co-authors and a professor at UC Berkeley.