Category: 7. Science

Defense tech company AeroVironment and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have shown off a wild concept for deploying six helicopters above the surface of Mars to scout for water and possible human landing sites.

The concept, dubbed “Skyfall,” builds on NASA’s extremely successful and revolutionary Ingenuity Mars helicopter, which became the first manmade object to achieve powered flight on another planet in 2021. It flew a whopping 72 times over three years, vastly exceeding expectations.

AeroVironment’s plan is to “deploy six scout helicopters on Mars, where they would explore many of the sites selected by NASA and industry as top candidate landing sites for America’s first Martian astronauts,” according to a press release.

As seen in a flashy animation, the “Skyfall Maneuver” will attempt to deploy the six rotorcraft from a much larger spacecraft during its descent through the Martian atmosphere, making it a highly ambitious endeavor. However, the plan would also “eliminate the necessity for a landing platform — traditionally one of the most expensive, complex and risky elements of any Mars mission,” per the company.

Whether such a venture will receive enough funding to be realized remains unclear at best. While AeroVironment has kicked off internal investments ahead of a planned 2028 launch, budgetary restraints at NASA could pose a major challenge. The Trump administration is planning to massively slash the space agency’s budget in what critics are calling an “existential threat” to science, making anything at NASA currently an uncertain bet. Just last week, NASA’s JPL reportedly held a “going out of business sale” for existing satellites, signaling tough times ahead.

It’s not the only concept vying to follow up on the tremendous success of Ingenuity. In December, NASA showed off a SUV-sized “Mars Chopper” with six rotor blades that could allow it to carry science payloads up to 11 pounds across distances of up to 1.9 miles per Mars day.

AeroVironment’s leadership claims its Skyfall concept could explore far more of the Red Planet for a fraction of the price, compared to conventional landers and rovers.

“Skyfall offers a revolutionary new approach to Mars exploration that is faster and more affordable than anything that’s come before it,” said AeroVironment’s head of space ventures, William Pomerantz, in the statement. “With six helicopters, Skyfall offers a low-cost solution that multiplies the range we would cover, the data we would collect, and the scientific research we would conduct — making humanity’s first footprints on Mars meaningfully closer.”

Skyfall is planning to borrow heavily from its predecessor Ingenuity, including “its lightweight aircraft structure suitable for the thin atmosphere of Mars.”

“Ingenuity established the United States as the first and only country to achieve powered flight on another planet,” said AeroVironment’s president of autonomous systems, Trace Stevenson. “Skyfall builds on that promise, providing detailed, actionable data from an aerial perspective that will not only be of use planning for future crewed missions, but can also benefit the planetary science community in their search for evidence that life once existed on Mars.”

AeroVironment has worked on space-based laser communication terminals, as well as ground-based phased array antennas, to improve satellite command and control capabilities. How that expertise will translate to launching and landing six rotorcraft on Mars remains to be seen — but we’ll be rooting for the project.

More on Mars helicopters: NASA Shows Off SUV-Sized “Mars Chopper” With Six Rotor Blades

Researchers have unveiled a powerful new tool that gives unprecedented insight into the stability of Antarctica’s so-called “Doomsday Glacier,” the collapse of which could lead to a catastrophic 11 feet of sea level rise, according to Penn State University.

“We’ve seen ice shelves break off, but we’ve never seen one grow back,” said Richard Alley, a Penn State geosciences professor. “This new research indicates that we can predict better the point at which these will break off.”

“It’s helping to establish the early-warning signals,” he explained.

At 80 miles wide, the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is the world’s widest glacier. In a groundbreaking study, scientists used NASA satellite data to analyze vertical cracks in the ice.

“We know little about fractures, and their behavior is much more complex than conventional models suggest,” wrote Shujie Wang, a Penn State assistant professor of geography and the study’s lead author.

These cracks destabilize the ice sheet and are a precursor to massive ice loss. Antarctica presently loses about 136 billion tons of ice every single year, according to NASA.

Watch now: Does clean energy really cause blackouts?

The Antarctic ice sheet is of special significance because, unlike sea ice, it sits atop a land mass rather than floating in water. When land ice melts, the water flows into the oceans, causing sea levels to rise.

If the entire Antarctic ice sheet were to melt, the world’s oceans would rise a civilization-altering 200 feet, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

If humans continue to release heat-trapping, planet-heating pollution into the atmosphere at current rates, the Antarctic ice sheet could be completely melted by the year 3000, a mere blink in geological time, according to NSIDC.

Researchers hope that by better understanding these ice sheets and the fractures that break them apart, humans will be better prepared to deal with the impacts of a changing climate.

The study revealed that the Thwaites Glacier, which helps stabilize the entire Antarctic ice sheet, is melting faster than previously believed, largely because seawater has permeated miles into the ice, according to Scientific American.

“We really, really need to understand how fast the ice is changing,” said Christine Dow, an associate professor of glaciology at the University of Waterloo who was involved with the study, per Scientific American.

“We were hoping it would take a hundred, 500 years to lose that ice. A big concern right now is if it happens much faster than that.”

The best way to reduce the rate at which the Antarctic ice sheet is melting is to significantly reduce the amount of heat-trapping pollution entering the atmosphere.

While international, national, and state policies have a large role to play in this process, there are plenty of actions that people can take on the local and community level, such as riding a bicycle to taking public transit,driving an electric vehicle, or installing solar panels on their home.

Join our free newsletter for weekly updates on the latest innovations improving our lives and shaping our future, and don’t miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.

Sometime between 16 and 11.6 million years ago, a young caiman came upon a tasty snack in modern-day South America. The meal, however, turned out to be rather ambitious, because the croc hadn’t come upon just any old prey.

It was a phorusrhacid, a large carnivore in its own right, aptly known as a “terror bird.” The now-extinct terror bird wouldn’t have given in without a fight—unless, of course, it was already dead, and the opportunistic croc simply scavenged its dead body. That doesn’t seem to be the case, however. The meeting of the two apex predators played out, and all that’s left of it today is a handful of puncture wounds on a fossilized bone dating back to the Middle Miocene Epoch. For paleontologists, it’s offering rare insights into a prehistoric feeding interaction between two formidable but very different beasts.

“Evidence of direct trophic [feeding] interactions between apex predators remains as a topic that has been historically understudied,” researchers wrote in a study reconstructing the encounter, published Wednesday in the journal Biology Letters. “Prey is most often represented by herbivores and other animals that are not on the top of the trophic web,” i.e. non-apex predators, according to the study. This anecdotal account of an “aquatic apex predator feeding on a terrestrial apex predator” adds to our understanding of how complex food webs can be in both modern and ancient vertebrate ecosystems,” the scientists wrote.

To investigate the prehistoric showdown, the researchers scanned the previously identified terror bird fossil to create a digital model of the puncture wounds. They then turned the tooth marks into negatives to compare them to the teeth of crocodyliforms (a group of predatory reptiles including crocodiles, alligators, and caimans) from La Venta, the fossil hotspot in Colombia where the specimen originates.

“Comparisons with specimens of [modern] black caiman, Melanosuchus niger, suggest that the traces were likely inflicted by a large caimanine, between 4.6 and 4.8 m [15.1 to 17.7 feet] long,” explained the researchers, including University of the Andes’ biologist Andres Link. “In the current fossil assemblage of La Venta, the best match for a large caiman in this size range would be a juvenile or subadult specimen of the giant caimanine P. neivensis, the largest crocodyliform in the La Venta Fauna.”

Because the bite marks on the terror bird bone don’t show signs of healing, the bird likely did not survive the Purussaurus neivensis’ attack, or was already dead.

The study ultimately sheds light on an interaction between “some of the most emblematic apex predators in the Miocene of South America,” suggesting that large phorusrhacids may have had more to worry about than researchers previously thought.

The slender waxing crescent moon will shine near the ‘Kingly’ star Regulus in the constellation Leo on the night of July 26, offering a photogenic — if challenging — target for those with a clear view of the western horizon.

Look west at sunset to find the razor-thin crescent moon hanging less than 10 degrees above the horizon. Regulus will appear as a blue-white point of light roughly 1 degree to the lower right of the moon’s glowing edge, becoming more prominent as the sun slips further below the horizon.

The molecules that form the building blocks to life may be far more common in space than once thought, according to researchers from the Max Planck Institute.

Their work, published in The Astrophysical Journal, reports the detection of over a dozen types of complex organic molecules swimming closely around a protostar in the constellation Orion, suggesting that the chemicals can survive the violent processes that give birth to stars and thus may abound in space, instead of having to wait for a planet with the right conditions to form them.

Two of the most notable organic molecules detected in the system — tentatively, the astronomers stress — are ethylene glycol and glycolonitrile. Both are precursors of the nucleic acids that form DNA and RNA.

“Our finding points to a straight line of chemical enrichment and increasing complexity between interstellar clouds and fully evolved planetary systems,” lead author Abubakar Fadul, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute, said in a statement about the work.

And thus, quoting the researchers’ statement: “this suggests that the seeds of life are assembled in space and are widespread.”

Until now, the assumption has been that most organic molecules would be destroyed when a star system is born from a chilly cloud of collapsing gas called an interstellar cloud. 

When this happens, the protostar undergoes a violent, tumultuous change, blasting out damaging radiation that heats the surrounding gas while pummeling it with powerful shockwaves. This leaves behind a protoplanetary disk that can eventually form little worlds in the star’s orbit. But in the process, this was also believed to “reset” all the progress that’d been made towards seeding the system with chemical building blocks, which wouldn’t start again until the right planet with the ideal conditions came along.

“Now it appears the opposite is true,” study co-author Kamber Schwarz, a fellow astronomer at MPI, said in a statement about the work. “Our results suggest that protoplanetary disks inherit complex molecules from earlier stages, and the formation of complex molecules can continue during the protoplanetary disk stage.”

Complex organic molecules are difficult to detect because they’re typically trapped in shards called icy dust grains, where they first formed. But in the V883 system, the star is still blasting bursts of radiation into space as it feeds on the leftover gas in its disk.

“These outbursts are strong enough to heat the surrounding disk as far as otherwise icy environments, releasing the chemicals we have detected,” Fadul said.

Once liberated, the gases quickly heat up and produce emissions that astronomers can see. The researchers spotted them, fortuitously, using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a huge radio telescope in Chile made of 66 separate antennas working in tandem.

Poetically, it appears that a young star’s destructive tendencies are freeing the seeds of life to roam space. If the precursors to life’s building blocks can survive a system’s violent formation, that means their chemical evolution can start way before planet formation begins. In short, it looks like life’s building blocks can form in space, and may be rife throughout the cosmos.

Follow-up observations will need to confirm the detections, but the results have the researchers buzzing.

“Perhaps we also need to look at other regions of the electromagnetic spectrum to find even more evolved molecules,” Fadul said. “Who knows what else we might discover?”

More on astronomy: Hubble Snaps Photos of Interstellar Invader

Hot springs in the icy, high-altitude expanses of Ladakh could be holding secrets from the very dawn of life on Earth and may even help in tracing the possible origins of life on Mars, besides providing valuable insights for India’s space exploration programmes.

A team of Indian scientists has made a breakthrough discovery that could not only rewrite our understanding of how life may have originated on Earth but also shed light on how astro-biological processes related to finding bio-signatures of life on other planetary bodies may have occurred.

Till date, Silica-based origin of life theories are proposed globally and role of carbonates, specifically calcium has been unexplored. Prior studies showed calcite, a compound of calcium, can catalyse prebiotic reactions in laboratory settings, according to the Ministry of Science and Technology. Prebiotic pertains to something existing or occurring before the emergence of life.

Scientists from Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences observed rapid carbonate precipitation in the environment of Puga valley, a high-altitude valley in south-eastern Ladakh that is known for its geothermal activity and hot springs.

The team, comprising Dr Amritpal Singh Chaddha, Dr Sunil Kumar Shukla, Dr Anupam Sharma, Prof MG Thakkar and Dr Kamlesh Kumar hypothesised that the extreme environment of Puga could act as a real-world prebiotic reactor and preservation site, and provide real world evidence of the phenomenon.

An interdisciplinary study, the team analysed the high-altitude hot spring calcium carbonate deposits (travertine) from Puga, situated at approximately 14,500 feet, using a combination of techniques based on inorganic and organic geochemistry including microscopy, gas chromatography, mass spectrometry, Raman, x-ray infrared and stable isotope geochemistry.

These revealed preserved amino acid derivatives, formamide, sulphur compounds and fatty acids encapsulated within calcite, supporting its role in concentrating and stabilising organic precursors.

“Empirical evidences suggest that the natural travertine from the Puga Hot Spring in Ladakh can trap and preserve prebiotic organic molecules, highlighting calcium carbonate as a potential natural template for origin-of-life chemistry under extreme Earth-like conditions,” Dr Chaddha, the study’s lead author said in a statement.

The study, published in ACS Earth and Space Chemistry, a peer reviewed American journal, provides a plausible mechanism of travertine formation and how organic molecules may have preserved and triggered life where there was presence of high UV in the early Earth environment.

“The findings provide insight into how life may have originated on Earth, aiding future planetary exploration (for example Mars). It could aid to ISROs future space exploration missions where identification of true biosignatures is required for identifying life and its associated biogeochemical process,” the ministry’s statement said.

It also enhances understanding of natural biomolecule preservation mechanisms, which may influence the development of new materials and life-detection technologies in astrobiology and synthetic biology, the statement added.

Six choppers will be released from one capsule on Mars

Choppers will click photos and scan under Martian surface

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New research suggests an ancient trade hub lies beneath Egypt’s Red Sea coast—offering clues to how early civilizations connected Africa to the wider world and influenced patterns of human migration.

What if one of humanity’s earliest international ports is hidden beneath the Red Sea?

In a discovery that could dramatically reshape our understanding of ancient trade, migration, and civilization, researchers have identified a region along Egypt’s Foul Bay that may have hosted a thriving coastal city—now submerged under the sea. Named Berenice Aquaterra by scientists, this lost port may have once connected Africa to the Mediterranean, serving as a critical crossroads for early human movement and commerce.

The finding comes from a study led by Jerome Dobson, professor emeritus at the University of Kansas, and Italian collaborators Giorgio Spada and Gaia Galassi. Published in Comptes Rendus Géoscience, their research uses cutting-edge glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) models to simulate ancient coastlines from 30,000 years ago to the present. These reconstructions, combined with DNA and archaeological data, suggest vast areas of land now underwater once hosted early human settlements.

“We’re not just looking at abstract coastlines,” Dobson said. “We’re potentially looking at the remains of a city that helped move goods, people, and culture between continents.”

A City Lost to Rising Seas?

During the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) roughly 21,000 years ago, sea levels were up to 125 meters lower than today, exposing large areas along the Red Sea. Foul Bay, now an inlet on Egypt’s eastern coast, was a dry and potentially strategic location—offering a shorter and safer overland route to the Nile River than the longer Suez corridor. Dobson and his team propose that this area could have developed into a port city to facilitate trade between inland Africa and seaborne routes.

What makes this hypothesis more than just theory is the unusual pattern of coral reefs in Foul Bay—over 300 patch coral formations, many growing on what may be ancient stone foundations. “Coral reefs require hard substrates. If these reefs are sitting on masonry or human-built structures, we could be looking at a submerged archaeological site of global importance,” Dobson noted.

Rewriting the Map of Ancient Trade

The potential existence of Berenice Aquaterra challenges traditional views of how early civilizations moved across and beyond Africa. Instead of relying solely on the narrow Suez land bridge, ancient people might have utilized this southern route when sea levels made it viable—connecting to the Nile and eventually reaching the Mediterranean.

“If proven, this would place Foul Bay as one of the earliest known hubs of human trade,” Dobson said. “It’s like discovering a missing piece of the ancient world’s infrastructure.”

The area’s historical counterpart, Berenice Troglodytica, became a major Greco-Roman port 2,000 years ago. But this new research suggests that Foul Bay’s significance predates that by thousands of years.

Underwater Archaeology’s Next Frontier

Despite centuries of archaeological interest in ancient Egypt, much of the region’s submerged coastline remains unexplored. The researchers are calling for underwater surveys to investigate the coral-covered seabed of Foul Bay.

“Just because something hasn’t been found doesn’t mean it never existed,” Dobson noted, referencing how the famed Lighthouse of Alexandria remained hidden for centuries—only to be rediscovered underwater near its original location.

The open-access GIA datasets provided by the team make it easier for researchers across disciplines to pursue their own investigations into humanity’s submerged past.

“This isn’t just about one city,” Dobson emphasized. “It’s about recognizing that massive portions of human history might be lying just beneath the waves, waiting to be rediscovered.”

As climate change continues to reshape our own coastlines, the lessons from Berenice Aquaterra could be more relevant than ever—offering a glimpse into how ancient humans adapted to a world in flux and how much we’ve yet to uncover about our shared origins.

University of Kansas

Jerome Eric Dobson, Giorgio Spada, Gaia Galassi, Alternative crossings into and out of Africa since 30,000 BP. Comptes Rendus. Géoscience, Volume 357 (2025), pp. 1-24. dx.doi.org/10.5802/crgeos.273

Cover Image Credit: Satellite image of Berenice, an ancient port, on the Red Sea coast. A KU researcher asserts new information about Berenice should prompt reexamination of migration into the Nile Valley before or during the Last Glacial Maximum. Coral reefs near Foul Bay might hold more clues, according to Jerome Dobson. NASA