Category: 7. Science

Impact craters exist on every continent on Earth. While many have eroded away or been buried by geologic activity, some remain visible from the ground and from above. This week, we revisit stories featuring some of our most captivating satellite images of impact sites around the planet. The images and text on this page were originally published on February 4, 2022.

In southeastern Québec lies one of the world’s largest impact craters. Manicouagan Crater was formed 214 million years ago, near the end of the Triassic Period, when an asteroid 5 kilometers (3 miles) wide struck what is now Canada. Today, the remnants of the crater are made visible by water and, sometimes, ice.

These images of Manicouagan Lake were acquired by the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s Terra satellite on January 20, 2022. A natural-color image of the frozen lake is compared with a false-color image. In the false-color image, which uses MODIS bands 7-2-1, snow or ice appears electric blue and vegetation appears green. A blanket of snow covering the surrounding vegetation gives it a greenish-blue color.

Sometimes called the “Eye of Québec,” the 1,940-square-kilometer (750-square-mile) ring-shaped lake is readily identifiable from space. The unique shape makes it a popular feature in satellite imagery and a favorite subject of astronaut photography. Despite the crater’s ancient age, the events that gave rise to the lake coincided with the dawn of the Space Age.

In the 1960s, Hydro-Québec constructed the Daniel-Johnson Dam—the largest multiple arch-and-buttress concrete dam in the world—on the Manicouagan River. Prior to the dam’s completion in 1968, two separate crescent-shaped lakes flanked the sides of the impact crater: Manicouagan Lake on the east and Mouchalagane (Mushalagan) Lake on the west. As the water levels rose over the next few years, the previously isolated water bodies joined to form the Manicouagan Reservoir, which finished filling in 1977.

Today, the reservoir reaches a depth of roughly 350 meters (1,150 feet) and holds 140 cubic kilometers (34 cubic miles) of water, making it one of the largest freshwater reservoirs in the world. The outflow from the dam drains south into the Manicouagan River, which empties into the St. Lawrence River.

After the river was impounded, water rising behind the dam encircled the higher land in the center of the impact crater; René-Levasseur Island was formed. The highest point on the island is Mount Babel, which rises 600 meters (1,970 feet) above the lake level on its northern end.

Mount Babel is the crater’s central peak, which formed in the aftermath of the impact when shattered rock and debris were uplifted. Geologists estimate that the crater was initially about 100 kilometers (60 miles) wide. It has since been heavily eroded and scoured by ice sheets and today measures 72 kilometers (45 miles) in diameter.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. Story by Sara E. Pratt.

Scientists have launched menstrual cups into space for the first time, testing whether these reusable devices can withstand the extreme conditions of space travel. The AstroCup mission represents a key step toward giving female astronauts sustainable menstrual health options during long duration missions to the Moon and Mars.

Since Sally Ride’s historic space shuttle flight in 1983, when NASA famously asked if 100 tampons would be enough for a week long mission, managing menstruation in space has been an ongoing challenge. Currently, most female astronauts use hormonal contraception to suppress menstruation entirely during missions. While this approach has practical advantages, it’s not suitable for everyone and raises health concerns for extremely long missions as we step further out into the Solar System.

Sally Ride was the first American woman in space. (Credit : NASA)

With ambitious plans for lunar bases and Mars expeditions that could last years or even decades, researchers recognised the urgent need for sustainable alternatives. An astronaut participating in multiple Artemis missions for example could face over a decade of menstrual suppression, while someone involved in the full program from 2025 to 2035 might require nearly 20 years of hormonal treatment.

Artemis I successfully launched from the Kennedy Space Center on November 16, 2022. (Credit : Bill Ingalls)

The AstroCup team, led by L ́ıgia F. Coelho from Cornell University, launched four commercially available menstrual cups aboard the Baltasar rocket during a European competition in October 2022 with two cups flying into space while two remained on the ground as controls. The rocket reached over 3 kilometres altitude during a 9 minute flight that subjected the cups to forces 16 times greater than Earth’s gravity. Before and after the flight, researchers conducted rigorous testing using water and glycerol to evaluate the cups’ structural integrity and leak proof performance.

The space flown menstrual cups performed flawlessly. Visual inspections revealed no signs of wear or tear but more importantly, the cups showed no leakage of either test liquid, maintaining their seal integrity despite experiencing extreme acceleration forces, temperature changes, and pressure variations during flight. The payload’s onboard sensors recorded challenging conditions throughout the journey with temperatures ranging from 32-34°C, humidity dropping to 40%, and atmospheric pressure falling below 70,000 Pascals at peak altitude.

These results suggest that menstrual cups could be a viable solution for managing menstruation during space missions. Unlike disposable tampons or pads, reusable cups would dramatically reduce waste, a critical consideration in space where every gram matters and disposal options are limited. Beyond practical benefits, this research addresses astronaut autonomy and choice in healthcare.

A record four women simultaneously in space aboard the International Space Station in 2010. Clockwise from lower left: Tracy Caldwell Dyson, Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, Naoko Yamazaki, and Stephanie Wilson. (Credit : NASA)

While encouraging, the AstroCup experiment was just a first step. The test occurred in Earth’s atmosphere and gravity, while the Moon has one-sixth Earth’s gravity and Mars has one-third. These different gravitational conditions could affect how menstrual fluid behaves when cups are removed or repositioned. Future studies must examine how the devices perform across multiple menstrual cycles, including cleaning and storage procedures in the environment of space.

The AstroCup mission proves that testing women’s health technologies for space is both feasible and necessary. With more women joining space programs around the world and missions growing longer, ensuring that female astronauts have safe, effective menstrual management options isn’t just a technical challenge, it’s a fundamental requirement for the future of human space exploration.

Source : One Giant Leap for Womankind: First Menstrual Cups Tested in Space Flight Conditions

We’ve sent some pretty interesting payloads to space since the first satellite (Sputnik 1) launched on October 4th, 1957. As access to space has increased, thanks largely to the commercial space industry, so too have the types of payloads we are sending. Consider the Nyx capsule created by German aerospace startup The Exploration Company, which launched on June 23rd from the Vandenberg Space Force Base atop a Falcon-9 rocket as part of a rideshare mission (Transporter-14). The payload for this flight (dubbed “Mission Possible”) included the ashes and DNA of more than 166 deceased people provided by Celestis, a Texas-based memorial spaceflight company.

While the mission achieved orbit and a controlled reentry, the capsule’s landing parachutes failed to deploy before landing. This caused the Nyx capsule to crash in the Pacific Ocean on June 24th, causing all of its cargo to be lost at sea. This was the first time The Exploration Company sent customer payloads to space, equivalent to roughly 300 kg (660 lbs) of cargo. In a statement posted on LinkedIn, the company described the flight as a “partial success (partial failure).” Per their statement:

The capsule was launched successfully, powered the payloads nominally in-orbit, stabilized itself after separation with the launcher, re-entered and re-established communication after black out. But it encountered an issue afterwards, based on our current best knowledge, and we lost communication a few minutes before splashdown. We are still investigating the root causes and will share more information soon. We apologize to all our clients who entrusted us with their payloads.

We thank our teams for their hard work and their dedication to success. We have been pushing boundaries in record time and cost. This partial success reflects both ambition and the inherent risks of innovation. Leveraging the technical milestones achieved yesterday and the lessons we will extract from our ongoing investigation, we will then prepare to re-fly as soon as possible.

Artist’s impression of The Exploration Company’s Nyx capsule in orbit. Credit: The Exploration Company

This is also the second time Celestis has lost a payload, the previous having taken place in 2023 when a rocket containing the cremated remains of the late NASA astronaut Philip K. Chapman exploded over New Mexico. Celestis also released a statement of condolences to the families of the people whose remains were lost:

In the coming days, our team will reach out to each family individually to offer support and discuss possible next steps. Though we currently believe that we cannot return the flight capsules, we hope families will find some peace in knowing their loved ones were part of a historic journey, launched into space, orbited Earth, and are now resting in the vastness of the Pacific, akin to a traditional and honored sea scattering.

In addition to the human remains and other payloads, Nyx also carried cannabis plant matter and seeds provided by Martian Grow, an open-source citizen science project. The purpose was to study the effects of microgravity on the germination and resilience, potentially providing insight into how life could adapt and fare in the Martian environment. The first, Mission Bikini, launched a smaller reentry capsule in July 2024 atop an Ariane 6 rocket, but the capsule remained in orbit after the rocket’s upper stage failed to launch it on its reentry trajectory.

This latest mission aimed to test key technologies and verify the Nyx capsule’s ability to transport cargo to space. It is hoped that future iterations of the capsule will fly spacecraft to destinations in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), including the International Space Station (ISS) and/or its successor stations. To this end, the company plans to conduct a demonstration flight to the ISS in 2028, which is pending support from the European Space Agency. In the meantime, the company plans to move forward and incorporate the lessons of this latest mission.

Further Reading: Gizmodo

Researchers from the Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have created a new nanopore sensor for single-biomolecule detection. Their findings were published in the journal PNAS. 

Nanopore sensors detect and analyze individual molecules by measuring ionic changes as the molecules pass through openings in the device. Nanopore sensors can be made from biological materials or inorganic solid-state materials. Biological nanopores are commercially available, but solid-state nanopores “offer a significant advantage over biological nanopores for massively parallelized, low-cost sequencing,” said Sihan Chen, an Illinois Grainger postdoctoral researcher and the lead author of the paper.

However, the sensor has to be small enough to have base-by-base resolution as single molecules pass through and to electrically read out the translocation of the molecules. This poses significant challenges in fabricating ultra-thin metal films encapsulated in dielectric layers. 

An innovative 2D design

This team brought together a nanopore sensor expert, Rashid Bashir, and a 2D materials expert, Arend van der Zande, to overcome the barriers presented by using ultra-thin 3D materials. 

The team integrated a 2D heterostructure into the nanopore membrane, creating a nanometer-thick out-of-plane diode for the molecules to pass through. This diode allows them to simultaneously measure the changes in electrical current during DNA translocation and apply out-of-plane biases across the diode to control the speed of the DNA translocation. 

Looking forward: important applications 

This device has potential applications in the future of precision medicine, a concept that dates back to the early 2000s but whose applications have lagged behind the initial enthusiasm. Also called personalized medicine, this approach to disease prevention and treatment is based on an individual patient’s genes, environment, and lifestyle. Creating tailored medicine and therapy regimens will require fast and affordable sequencing techniques such as this nanopore sensor. 

“In the future, we envision arrays of millions of 2D diodes with nanopores inside that could read out the sequences of DNA in parallel, reducing sequencing time from two weeks to as little as one hour,” said Rashid Bashir, Dean of The Grainger College of Engineering and an author of the paper. This could have important implications for precision medicine, making it easier and less expensive to create treatments tailored to a patient’s genetic makeup. 

The researchers anticipate further studies to improve on their design, particularly its single p-n junction, which limits the quality of control of DNA translocation. One possibility for future investigation is to use a three-layer structure to enable opposing electric fields to stretch the DNA and achieve base-by-base translocation control. 

“This work represents an important step towards base-by-base molecular control and opens doors to more advanced DNA sequencing technologies,” said Arend van der Zande, a professor of mechanical science and engineering and materials science and engineering. 

Precision medicine: a growing market 

According to Global Market Insights, the global precision medicine market is estimated at $79.9 billion in 2023, and is projected to reach $157.1 billion by 2032. 

Innovations in technology, like the new nanopore sensor, as well as the rising prevalence of cancer, are both factors that are expected to contribute to this growing market. Rising investments in human genome research will also contribute to market growth. The National Institute of Health provided $5.2 billion in funding for genome research in 2024. 

Personalized medicines accounted for 25% of the new drugs approved by the FDA in 2019, an increase from 5% in 2005, according to Global Market Insights. The number of personalized medicines on the market grew from 132 in 2016 to 286 in 2020.

Launching in the 2030s, GMT will be the world’s most powerful optical telescope. By producing images 10 times clearer than the Hubble Space Telescope, GMT will explore the distant universe, including the search for signs of life. Unique among the new class of “extremely large telescopes,” GMT will feature the widest field of view with adaptive optics to correct for blur caused by Earth’s atmosphere. 

As a partner, Northwestern will contribute its expertise in astrophysics, artificial intelligence (AI) and engineering. Specifically, Northwestern scientists will develop and apply AI tools to enhance GMT’s abilities to search for Earth-like planets across the Milky Way, probe the universe’s most energetic explosions and explore the relationship between galaxies and black holes.

Backed by nearly $1 billion in private funding — the largest private investment ever made in ground-based astronomy — the Giant Magellan is built by an international consortium of 15 universities and research institutions. Along with Northwestern, other partners include the University of Arizona, Carnegie Institution for Science, The University of Texas at Austin, Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, University of Chicago, São Paulo Research Foundation, Texas A&M University, Harvard University, Astronomy Australia Ltd., Australian National University, Smithsonian Institution, Weizmann Institute of Science, Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics and Arizona State University.

About 40% of the Giant Magellan is already under construction, with major components manufactured and tested in facilities across 36 states in the U.S., including advanced optics and primary mirrors in Arizona, science instruments in multiple states including Texas and the telescope mount structure in Illinois. At the observatory’s privately owned site in Chile, major infrastructure progress includes utilities, roads, support structures and a fully excavated foundation for the enclosure.

“The Giant Magellan Telescope represents a bold vision for the future of astrophysics,” Kalogera said. “Northwestern is proud to help shape this vision and to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers who will use this telescope to answer some of the universe’s biggest questions.”

Astronomers have discovered a distant galaxy that is a “cosmic fossil” which has remained “frozen in time” for billions of years.

Just as dinosaur fossils here on Earth are used to probe the evolution of life, this cosmic fossil in the form of the galaxy KiDS J0842+0059 could be used to understand cosmic evolution.

These pulses are gradually tearing the African continent apart and forming a new ocean basin, according to a study led by University of Southampton researchers.

The Afar region is a rare place on Earth where three tectonic rifts converge: the Main Ethiopian Rift, the Red Sea Rift, and the Gulf of Aden Rift.

Geologists have long suspected that a hot upwelling of mantle, sometimes referred to as a plume, lies beneath the region, helping to drive the extension of the crust and the birth of a future ocean basin.

But until now, little was known about the structure of this upwelling, or how it behaves beneath rifting plates.

“We found that the mantle beneath Afar is not uniform or stationary — it pulses, and these pulses carry distinct chemical signatures,” said Dr. Emma Watts, who conducted the research at the University of Southampton and is now based at Swansea University.

“These ascending pulses of partially molten mantle are channelled by the rifting plates above.”

“That’s important for how we think about the interaction between Earth’s interior and its surface.”

Dr. Watts and colleagues collected more than 130 volcanic rock samples from across the Afar region and the Main Ethiopian Rift.

They used these, plus existing data and advanced statistical modeling, to investigate the structure of the crust and mantle, as well as the melts that it contains.

Their results show that underneath the Afar region is a single, asymmetric plume, with distinct chemical bands that repeat across the rift system, like geological barcodes.

These patterns vary in spacing depending on the tectonic conditions in each rift arm.

“The chemical striping suggests the plume is pulsing, like a heartbeat,” said University of Southampton’s Professor Tom Gernon.

“These pulses appear to behave differently depending on the thickness of the plate, and how fast it’s pulling apart.”

“In faster-spreading rifts like the Red Sea, the pulses travel more efficiently and regularly like a pulse through a narrow artery.”

The findings show that the mantle plume beneath the Afar region is not static, but dynamic and responsive to the tectonic plate above it.

“We have found that the evolution of deep mantle upwellings is intimately tied to the motion of the plates above,” said Dr. Derek Keir, a researcher at the University of Southampton and the University of Florence.

“This has profound implications for how we interpret surface volcanism, earthquake activity, and the process of continental breakup.”

“The work shows that deep mantle upwellings can flow beneath the base of tectonic plates and help to focus volcanic activity to where the tectonic plate is thinnest.”

“Follow on research includes understanding how and at what rate mantle flow occurs beneath plates.”

“Working with researchers with different expertise across institutions, as we did for this project, is essential to unravelling the processes that happen under Earth’s surface and relate it to recent volcanism,” Dr. Watts said.

“Without using a variety of techniques, it is hard to see the full picture, like putting a puzzle together when you don’t have all the pieces.”

The study was published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

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E.J. Watts et al. Mantle upwelling at Afar triple junction shaped by overriding plate dynamics. Nat. Geosci, published online June 25, 2025; doi: 10.1038/s41561-025-01717-0

FireSat is capable of multispectral imaging across the visible, near-infrared, short-, mid- and long-wave infrared bands simultaneously. The firm said the broad array of IR data is essential for detecting wildfires in their early stages, monitoring fire dynamics and tracking other thermal anomalies. 

While this technology demonstration has proven successful, a further 50 or so satellites will ultimately need to be in orbit to complete the constellation. It will operate in low-Earth orbit with an observation swath width of 1,500km and a nadir ground sample distance of 50m.

The instrument’s resolution, sensitivity and large dynamic range enable it to detect small cool fires 5×5 metres while also imaging without saturation for hot, intense fires.

Google, which has provided $13m (£9.5m) to the initiative led by Earth Fire Alliance, said it will be able to “detect and track wildfires the size of a classroom within 20 minutes”. While each point on Earth will be observed every 20 minutes, key wildfire-prone regions will benefit from more frequent observations. 

Muon Space is planning to launch the first block of three additional FireSat satellites in 2026, followed by a series of further launches that should see the constellation completed by 2030.