Sydney, Australia (SPX) Jan 06, 2026
Space Machines Company (SMC) has been awarded a 2.9 million Australian dollar contract by Defence's Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator (ASCA) to develop the Space Threat Analysis and Response System, or STARS, under the Emerging and Disruptive Technologies Decision Advantage program. The capability is intended to strengthen the protection of Australian and allied space assets in increas

Colorado Springs CO (SPX) Jan 03, 2026
U.S. Space Command's Joint Operations Division hosted the command's first artificial intelligence-enabled summit Nov. 18-21, 2025, at the Bayfield facility in Colorado Springs and at a MITRE-operated facility that supports national security work. The Augmented Planning and Execution Summit brought together more than 70 leaders, including seven division chiefs and component representatives,

Often called Earth’s green lungs, tropical forests pull down massive amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, release oxygen and help regulate the global climate. While the threat of large-scale deforestation is well known, new findings reveal a surprising culprit – the clearance of small areas of forest accounts for more than half of net carbon losses across the Tropics.

London, UK (SPX) Jan 08, 2026
Scientists report signs that dark matter and neutrinos may interact, a possibility that would extend the standard cosmological model and change how structure growth in the universe is understood. The study examines how such interactions could influence the formation of galaxies and other large-scale structures, addressing a known mismatch between predictions from early-universe measurement

Newark NJ (SPX) Jan 08, 2026
Solar physicists say they have found a key source of intense gamma rays unleashed when Earth's nearest star produces its most violent eruptions. In findings published in Nature Astronomy, scientists at NJIT's Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research (NJIT-CSTR) have pinpointed a previously unknown class of high-energy particles in the Sun's upper atmosphere responsible for generating the long

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Jan 08, 2026
Astronomers have identified a young planetary system that links newborn giant worlds to the compact super Earths and sub Neptunes that dominate the Milky Way. V1298 Tau, a star about 20 million years old, hosts four planets between the sizes of Neptune and Jupiter in close-in orbits, offering a snapshot of planets during a brief and dynamic stage of evolution. Over ten years, researchers c

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jan 07, 2026
Thanks to the discovery of thousands of exoplanets to date, we know that planets bigger than Earth but smaller than Neptune orbit most stars. Oddly, our sun lacks such a planet. That's been a source of frustration for planetary scientists, who can't study them in as much detail as they'd like, leaving one big question: How did these planets form? h3>Now we know the answer /h3> An interna

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jan 08, 2026
Carnegie researcher Luke Bouma is using a naturally occurring plasma structure around certain young M dwarf stars as a kind of space weather station to investigate how stellar particles shape planetary environments and potential habitability. M dwarfs are smaller, cooler and dimmer than the Sun and commonly host at least one Earth-sized rocky planet, many of which are either too hot for liquid w

Washington DC (SPX) Jan 08, 2026
As part of the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory First Look event in June 2025, Rubin announced that it had observed thousands of asteroids cruising about our Solar System, about 1900 of which have been confirmed as never-before-seen. Within the flurry, a team of astronomers has discovered 19 super- and ultra-fast-rotating asteroids. One of these is the fastest-spinning asteroid larger than 500

Berlin, Germany (SPX) Jan 08, 2026
Martian winds lift sand grains into the air and drive them across the surface, where they erode soft sedimentary layers and gradually carve elongated grooves and ridges near the planet's equator. The remaining ridges, mounds, or columns, known as yardangs, stand above the surrounding terrain and often extend for tens of kilometres in the direction of the prevailing winds. In northern Eumen