Berlin, Germany (SPX) Dec 03, 2025
An international team from Japan, Malaysia, the UK, and Germany has proposed that life on Earth may have emerged within sticky, surface-bound gels that formed before the first cells. The researchers argue that these prebiotic gels, attached to mineral or other surfaces, could have provided both structure and chemical environments that helped early chemistry progress toward biology. The tea

Berlin, Germany (SPX) Dec 03, 2025
The OTTER Optical Traffic Tracking Experiment for Responsive Space satellite has entered service in orbit to support maritime monitoring following its launch on 28 November 2025 into an orbit at about 500 kilometres altitude. The nanosatellite has a mass of roughly six kilograms, is comparable in size to a shoebox and deployed its solar panels and instruments after separation from the launcher.

London, UK (SPX) Dec 05, 2025
Pulsar Fusion and partners have tested what they describe as the largest space plasma engine yet fired in Britain, designed to provide high-thrust in-space propulsion for heavier satellites. The engine, which the company reports is roughly ten times larger than its previous plasma thrusters, was demonstrated at the University of Southampton on 29 January in a large vacuum chamber to replicate on

Washington DC (UPI) Dec 4, 2025
The Center for Advancement of Science in Space will continue to manage the International Space Station National Laboratory for at least another five years, CASIS announced on Thursday. CASIS has managed the ISS National Lab since 2011, after Congress created it to enable researchers to build a "robust market" in low Earth orbit by leveraging the unique environment that exists in space, CAS

Washington DC (UPI) Dec 4, 2025
The United States has entered a consequential new era of competition with China in space - one that lawmakers said will shape global power, economic security and military advantage for generations. House Science, Space and Technology Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee Chairman Mike Haridopolos, R-Fla., posed the issue during a hearing Thursday as a question for the future. "Will huma

Paris (AFP) Dec 3, 2025
Light from the half a million satellites that humanity is planning to launch into Earth's orbit in the coming years could contaminate almost all the images taken by space telescopes, NASA astronomers warned Wednesday. Scientists have already been sounding the alarm about how light pollution from increasingly massive satellites threaten the future of dark skies seen from the ground. Now,

Berlin, Germany (SPX) Dec 04, 2025
DLR and ESA are recruiting volunteers for two human research campaigns at the :envihab aerospace medicine facility in Cologne that will simulate key aspects of long duration missions beyond low Earth orbit. The SOLIS100 isolation study will place six participants in a confined, spacecraft like habitat for 100 days, while the SMC3 bed rest study will keep 12 volunteers in head down tilt for 60 da

Paris, France (SPX) Dec 04, 2025
ESA's Mars Express orbiter has observed an impact crater in Mars's northern lowlands whose shape resembles a butterfly, created when an incoming space rock struck the surface at a shallow angle. The main crater, which appears somewhat like a walnut from orbit, measures about 20 km east to west and 15 km north to south and sits within the Idaeus Fossae region. The impact threw material preferenti

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Dec 04, 2025
SwRI scientists report that a reanalysis of Voyager 2 measurements suggests a powerful solar storm may explain why Uranus hosts an electron radiation belt far more intense than expected. They propose that a large-scale solar wind structure, known as a co-rotating interaction region, was passing through the Uranian system during the 1986 flyby, driving extreme space weather conditions that booste