Category: 7. Science

SpaceX just took a big step toward its next astronaut launch.

The company announced Thursday (July 24) that it has moved its Crew Dragon capsule “Endeavour” to the hangar at historic Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Endeavour is scheduled to launch atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Pad 39A — the liftoff site of most Apollo moon missions, including Apollo 11 — on July 31, kicking off SpaceX’s Crew-11 mission to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA.

Crew-11 will send four people to the ISS for a six-month stint: NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, along with Japan’s Kimiya Yui and Oleg Platonov of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos. It will be the first spaceflight for Cardman and Platonov, the second for Yui and the fourth for Fincke.

The camera on NASA’s Juno spacecraft was in trouble. Known as JunoCam, it had survived over 50 orbits around Jupiter, capturing stunning images of the planet and its moons. But by late 2023, things took a turn for the space camera.

Radiation had started to wear it down. The photos coming back were almost unusable – full of static, streaks, and distortion.

The camera had been exposed to Jupiter’s brutal radiation environment for years. With one of its most important missions approaching – a close flyby of Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io – the team needed a fix. And they had to do it from over 400 million miles away.

Camera repair in deep space

A team of experts, including scientists from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, took a shot in the dark. The experts believed the problem stemmed from radiation damage to a voltage regulator inside JunoCam. Their only remaining option was to try something risky – heat up the camera.

The process, called annealing, involves raising the temperature of a material to change it at a microscopic level. It’s a method used in electronics but rarely attempted in deep space.

Jacob Schaffner is the Managing Engineer at Malin Space Science Systems, which designed and developed JunoCam and is part of the team that operates it.

“We knew annealing can sometimes alter a material like silicon at a microscopic level but didn’t know if this would fix the damage,” said Schaffner.

“We commanded JunoCam’s one heater to raise the camera’s temperature to 77 degrees Fahrenheit – much warmer than typical for JunoCam – and waited with bated breath to see the results.”

Cranking up the heat on JunoCam

The first results were promising. The camera began producing clearer images again – but that didn’t last. Quality started to slip again.

“After orbit 55, our images were full of streaks and noise,” said JunoCam instrument lead Michael Ravine of Malin Space Science Systems. “We tried different schemes for processing the images to improve the quality, but nothing worked.”

“With the close encounter of Io bearing down on us in a few weeks, it was Hail Mary time: The only thing left we hadn’t tried was to crank JunoCam’s heater all the way up and see if more extreme annealing would save us.”

They gave it everything. The heater was turned up further, hoping that higher temperatures might realign the silicon and bring the camera back to life.

At first, it didn’t look like it worked. Test images were still noisy. But as Juno closed in on Io, the pictures began to improve – rapidly. By December 30, 2023, during its closest flyby yet – just 930 miles from Io’s surface – the images were crisp and detailed.

The camera captured towering mountains dusted with sulfur dioxide frost and active lava flows from Io’s uncharted volcanoes. It was official – JunoCam was back.

Beyond space camera repair

The team didn’t stop there. They have now applied versions of the annealing fix to other systems on the spacecraft – both science instruments and engineering subsystems.

Since its launch, Juno has made 74 orbits of Jupiter. During its most recent pass, image noise crept in again. But now the team has a tool – and some confidence – that they can respond.

“Juno is teaching us how to create and maintain spacecraft tolerant to radiation, providing insights that will benefit satellites in orbit around Earth,” said Scott Bolton, Juno’s principal investigator.

“I expect the lessons learned from Juno will be applicable to both defense and commercial satellites as well as other NASA missions.”

Lessons from a space camera

The lesson from this mission isn’t just about salvaging a camera. It’s about improvising when there’s no manual. It’s about learning how to keep hardware working long past its expected limits — under some of the harshest conditions in the solar system.

Space is punishing. JunoCam wasn’t built to last forever. But thanks to some smart thinking and a little heat, it got a second chance. And it’s still taking pictures.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS. Image processing by Gerald Eichstädt

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MADISON — When a multimillion-dollar extraterrestrial vehicle gets stuck in soft sand or gravel — as did the Mars rover Spirit in 2009 — Earth-based engineers take over like a virtual tow truck, issuing a series of commands that move its wheels or reverse its course in a delicate, time-consuming effort to free it and continue its exploratory mission.

While Spirit remained permanently stuck, in the future, better terrain testing right here on terra firma could help avert these celestial crises.

Using computer simulations, University of Wisconsin–Madison mechanical engineers have uncovered a flaw in how rovers are tested on Earth. That error leads to overly optimistic conclusions about how rovers will behave once they’re deployed on extraterrestrial missions.

An important element in preparing for these missions is an accurate understanding of how a rover will traverse extraterrestrial surfaces in low gravity to prevent it from getting stuck in soft terrain or rocky areas.

On the moon, the gravitational pull is six times weaker than on Earth. For decades, researchers testing rovers have accounted for that difference in gravity by creating a prototype that is a sixth of the mass of the actual rover. They test these lightweight rovers in deserts, observing how it moves across sand to gain insights into how it would perform on the moon.

It turns out, however, that this standard testing approach overlooked a seemingly inconsequential detail: the pull of Earth’s gravity on the desert sand.

Through simulation, Dan Negrut, a professor of mechanical engineering at UW–Madison, and his collaborators determined that Earth’s gravity pulls down on sand much more strongly than the gravity on Mars or the moon does. On Earth, sand is more rigid and supportive — reducing the likelihood it will shift under a vehicle’s wheels. But the moon’s surface is “fluffier” and therefore shifts more easily — meaning rovers have less traction, which can hinder their mobility.

“In retrospect, the idea is simple: We need to consider not only the gravitational pull on the rover but also the effect of gravity on the sand to get a better picture of how the rover will perform on the moon,” Negrut says. “Our findings underscore the value of using physics-based simulation to analyze rover mobility on granular soil.”

The team recently detailed its findings in the Journal of Field Robotics .

The researchers’ discovery resulted from their work on a NASA-funded project to simulate the VIPER rover , which had been planned for a lunar mission. The team leveraged Project Chrono, an open-source physics simulation engine developed at UW–Madison in collaboration with scientists from Italy. This software allows researchers to quickly and accurately model complex mechanical systems — like full-size rovers operating on “squishy” sand or soil surfaces.

While simulating the VIPER rover, they noticed discrepancies between the Earth-based test results and their simulations of the rover’s mobility on the moon. Digging deeper with Chrono simulations revealed the testing flaw.

The benefits of this research also extend well beyond NASA and space travel. For applications on Earth, Chrono has been used by hundreds of organizations to better understand complex mechanical systems — from precision mechanical watches to U.S. Army trucks and tanks operating in off-road conditions.

“It’s rewarding that our research is highly relevant in helping to solve many real-world engineering challenges,” Negrut says. “I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished. It’s very difficult as a university lab to put out industrial-strength software that is used by NASA.”

Chrono is free and publicly available for unfettered use worldwide, but the UW–Madison team puts in significant ongoing work to develop and maintain the software and provide user support.

“It’s very unusual in academia to produce a software product at this level,” Negrut says. “There are certain types of applications relevant to NASA and planetary exploration where our simulator can solve problems that no other tool can solve, including simulators from huge tech companies, and that’s exciting.”

Since Chrono is open source, Negrut and his team are focused on continually innovating and enhancing the software to stay relevant.

“All our ideas are in the public domain and the competition can adopt them quickly, which is drives us to keep moving forward,” he says. “We have been fortunate over the last decade to receive support from the National Science Foundation, U.S. Army Research Office and NASA. This funding has really made a difference, since we do not charge anyone for the use of our software.”

Co-authors on the paper include Wei Hu of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Pei Li of UW-Madison, Arno Rogg and Alexander Schepelmann of NASA, Samuel Chandler of ProtoInnovations, LLC, and Ken Kamrin of MIT.

A carbon dioxide-mapping satellite and four Earth-observation spacecraft are scheduled to launch tonight (July 25) from South America, and you can watch the action live.

A Vega C rocket, operated by the French company Arianespace, is scheduled to lift off from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana tonight at 10:03 p.m. EDT (11:03 p.m. local time in Kourou; 0203 GMT on July 26).

You can watch live here at Space.com in the window above, courtesy of Arianespace, or directly via the company. Coverage will begin at 9:40 p.m. EDT (0140 GMT on July 26).

The four-stage, 115-foot-tall (35 meters) Vega C is carrying five satellites on this mission, which Arianespace calls VV27.

With over 2.8 billion fungal DNA sequences from 130 countries, scientists have produced the first high-resolution global maps of underground mycorrhizal fungi. These fungi support ecosystems by transporting nutrients, capturing carbon, and protecting plant health.

Yet, over 90 percent of this underground biodiversity lies outside protected areas. That makes these vital ecosystems vulnerable to environmental damage.

The data powers a new interactive platform called the Underground Atlas. This tool helps anyone explore fungal biodiversity from Ethiopia to Brazil, and from Tasmania to West Africa.

These maps expose not only diversity but also rarity, revealing patterns previously hidden from view.

Why underground fungi matter

Mycorrhizal fungi form massive underground networks that interact with nearly every plant.

These fungal systems capture more than 13 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year – about a third of global fossil fuel emissions. They help crops grow, rebuild forests, and regulate water cycles.

Still, fungi remain missing from major conservation plans. That absence is dangerous. When these networks get disturbed, forests regenerate more slowly, crops suffer, and entire ecosystems unravel.

“For centuries, we’ve mapped mountains, forests, and oceans. But these fungi have remained in the dark,” said Dr. Toby Kiers of Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN).

“They cycle nutrients, store carbon, support plant health, and make soil. When we disrupt these critical ecosystem engineers, forest regeneration slows, crops fail, and biodiversity aboveground begins to unravel.”

“This is the first time we’re able to visualize these biodiversity patterns – and it’s clear we are failing to protect underground ecosystems.”

Maps show fungi need protection

The research team used machine learning to build predictive maps from their vast dataset. These maps reveal fungal richness and rarity at a global scale, down to one square kilometer.

Less than 10 percent of biodiversity hotspots appear in protected areas, exposing a huge gap in global conservation strategy.

This work is the first large-scale scientific product of SPUN. The group launched in 2021 with the goal to map and protect Earth’s fungal networks.

“For too long, we’ve overlooked mycorrhizal fungi. These maps help alleviate our fungus blindness,” explained Dr. Merlin Sheldrake of SPUN.

Now, SPUN offers a powerful new tool: the Underground Atlas. It allows researchers, policymakers, and conservationists to explore biodiversity anywhere on Earth.

“The idea is to ensure underground biodiversity becomes as fundamental to environmental decision-making as satellite imagery,” noted Jason Cremerius of SPUN.

Users can locate biodiversity hotspots, identify rare fungal species, and support restoration work. The tool can inform the placement of conservation areas, especially in biodiversity-rich regions that remain unprotected.

“These high-resolution maps provide quantitative targets for restoration managers,” said Dr. Alex Wegmann from The Nature Conservancy. “Restoration practices have been dangerously incomplete because the focus has historically been on life aboveground.”

No legal shield for fungi

According to the researchers, the data could help shape climate and biodiversity laws. For example, Ghana’s coast hosts a vital underground fungal hotspot – yet this coast erodes by two meters each year. If left unprotected, this fungal diversity could vanish into the sea.

“Underground fungal systems have been largely invisible in law and policy,” said César Rodriguez-Garavito of NYU. “These data are incredibly important in strengthening law and policy across all of Earth’s underground ecosystems.”

SPUN has built a global dataset of 40,000 samples covering 95,000 fungal taxa. The organization partners with more than 400 scientists and 96 “Underground Explorers” from 79 countries. These teams now sample remote regions – from Bhutan and Mongolia to Ukraine.

Future depends on these networks

Despite the achievements, scientists have sampled just 0.001% of Earth’s surface. SPUN needs more data to improve maps, define restoration goals, and identify endangered fungal communities.

“These maps reveal what we stand to lose if we fail to protect the underground,” said Dr. Kiers.

To protect Earth’s underground biodiversity, collective action is essential. Researchers can partner with SPUN to expand data collection and improve the accuracy of fungal diversity maps.

Conservationists should use these insights to design strategic interventions and prioritize high-value ecosystems. Policymakers need to recognize the critical role of underground fungi by including them in biodiversity and climate frameworks.

The public can explore the Underground Atlas to better understand this hidden world and support ongoing efforts. Funders play a key role by investing in the next phase of global fungal exploration and restoration.

To see the hidden world beneath your feet, visit the Underground Atlas and help protect the life that sustains ours.

The study is published in the journal Nature.

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In all, the astronomic hype was met with earth-shaking backlash in 2010 and 2011. In 2012, Science published two studies refuting the claim that GFAJ-1 incorporates arsenic atoms into its DNA. Outside scientists concluded that it is an arsenic-tolerant extremophile, but not a profoundly different life form.

Retraction

But now, in 2025, it is once again spurring controversy; on Thursday, Science announced that it is retracting the study once and for all.

Some critics, such as Redfield, cheered the move. Others questioned the timing, noting that 15 years had passed, but only a few months have gone by since The New York Times published a profile of Wolfe-Simon, who is now returning to science after being seen as a pariah. Wolfe-Simon and most of her co-authors, meanwhile, continue to defend the original paper and protested the retraction.

In a blog post Thursday, Science’s executive editor, Valda Vinson, and Editor-in-Chief Holden Thorp explained the retraction by saying that Science’s criteria for issuing a retraction have evolved since 2010. At the time, it was reserved for claims of misconduct or fraud but now can include serious flaws. Specifically, Vinson and Thorp referenced the criticism that the bacterium’s genetic material was not properly purified of background arsenic before it was analyzed. While emphasizing that there has been no suggestion of fraud or misconduct on the part of the authors, they wrote that “Science believes that the key conclusion of the paper is based on flawed data,” and it should therefore be retracted.

Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist at UC Davis, criticized the move. Speaking with Science’s news team, which is independent from the journal’s research-publishing arm, Eisen said that despite being a critic of the 2010 paper, he thought the discussion of controversial studies should play out in the scientific literature and not rely on subjective decisions by editors.

In an eLetter attached to the retraction notice, the authors dispute the retraction, too, saying, “While our work could have been written and discussed more carefully, we stand by the data as reported. These data were peer-reviewed, openly debated in the literature, and stimulated productive research.”

One of the co-authors, Ariel Anbar, a geochemist at Arizona State University in Tempe, told Nature that the study had no mistakes but that the data could be interpreted in different ways. “You don’t retract because of a dispute about data interpretation,” he said. If that were the case, “you’d have to retract half the literature.”

A rogue, middle-mass black hole has been spotted disrupting an orbiting star in the halo of a distant galaxy, and it’s all thanks to the observing powers of the Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory. However, exactly what the black hole is doing to the star remains in question as there are conflicting X-ray measurements.

Black holes come in different size classes. At the smaller end of the scale are the stellar-mass black holes born in the ashes of supernova explosions. At the top end of the scale are the supermassive black holes, which can grow to have many millions or billions of times the mass of our sun, lurking in the hearts of galaxies. In between those categories are intermediate-mass black holes (IMBH), which have mass ranging from hundreds up to 100,000 solar masses, or thereabouts.

July 25 (UPI) — Senegal has become the 56th country to sign the Artemis Accords for peaceful space exploration, NASA announced Friday.

Signing the Artemis Accords means to explore peaceably and transparently, to render aid to those in need, to ensure unrestricted access to scientific data that all of humanity can learn from, to ensure activities do not interfere with those of others, to preserve historically significant sites and artifacts, and to develop best practices for how to conduct space exploration activities for the benefit of all, a NASA press release said.

“Today, NASA built upon the strong relations between our two nations as the Senegalese Agency for Space Studies signed the Artemis Accords,” acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy said.

Director General of the Senegalese space agency Maram Kairé signed the accords on behalf of Senegal. Jonathan Pratt, senior bureau official for African Affairs at the U.S. State Department, and Abdoul Wahab Haidara, ambassador of Senegal to the United States, also participated in the event.

“Senegal’s adherence to the Artemis Accords reflects our commitment to a multilateral, responsible, and transparent approach to space,” Kairé said. “This signature marks a meaningful step in our space diplomacy and in our ambition to contribute to the peaceful exploration of outer space.”

Astronomers from Senegal have supported NASA missions by participating in multiple observations when asteroids or planets pass in front of stars, casting shadows on Earth.

In 2021, NASA also collaborated with Kairé and a group of astronomers for a ground observation campaign in Senegal. As the asteroid Orus passed in front of a star, they positioned telescopes along the path of the asteroid’s shadow to estimate its shape and size. NASA’s Lucy spacecraft will approach Orus in 2028, as part of its mission to explore Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids.

More countries are expected to sign the Artemis Accords in the months and years ahead, as NASA continues its work to establish a safe, peaceful and prosperous future in space, the release said.