Category: 7. Science

A new kind of onboard AI gives satellites the power to think for themselves – deciding in under 90 seconds whether a target on Earth is worth capturing. The system is called Dynamic Targeting, and it’s designed to make space-based observations sharper, quicker, and more useful.

This innovation was recently tested by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, and the results show real promise.

For the first time, a satellite orbiting Earth was able to look ahead along its flight path, analyze imagery using artificial intelligence, and then redirect its instruments without any input from people on the ground.

AI helps satellites think fast

Dynamic Targeting has been in development for over ten years. The core idea is simple: make spacecraft act less like passive cameras and more like quick-thinking observers.

During a test in July, the system ran on a commercial satellite, with a clear goal – prove that spacecraft can pick better targets on their own.

Instead of just snapping photos of whatever is below, Dynamic Targeting helps satellites avoid common issues like clouds and focus on what matters.

In the future, the system could even track fast-changing events like wildfires, volcanic eruptions, and intense storms.

“The idea is to make the spacecraft act more like a human: Instead of just seeing data, it’s thinking about what the data shows and how to respond,” said Steve Chien, principal investigator for the Dynamic Targeting project.

“When a human sees a picture of trees burning, they understand it may indicate a forest fire, not just a collection of red and orange pixels. We’re trying to make the spacecraft have the ability to say, ‘That’s a fire,’ and then focus its sensors on the fire.”

Teaching satellites to skip the clouds

In its first real-world test, Dynamic Targeting wasn’t looking for fires or storms just yet. Its mission was to dodge something far more ordinary: clouds.

For Earth-observing satellites, clouds are a major obstacle. They block the view up to two-thirds of the time. Most sensors simply collect whatever’s in front of them – even if it’s just cloud cover. That wastes valuable storage and processing time.

Dynamic Targeting changes that. The system allows the satellite to scan 300 miles ahead to check for clear skies. If it sees clouds, the shot is canceled. If the coast is clear, it captures the image as it passes overhead.

“If you can be smart about what you’re taking pictures of, then you only image the ground and skip the clouds. That way, you’re not storing, processing, and downloading all this imagery researchers really can’t use,” said Ben Smith, an associate with NASA’s Earth Science Technology Office.

Smith noted that the technology will help scientists get a much higher proportion of usable data.

How it works in orbit

The latest test flew aboard CogniSAT-6, a compact CubeSat launched in March 2024. It’s built and operated by Open Cosmos and carries a payload from Ubotica featuring an off-the-shelf AI processor.

The processor was tested earlier on the International Space Station, using similar algorithms.

Because CogniSAT-6 doesn’t have a dedicated forward-facing imager, it tilts forward by 40 to 50 degrees to take a peek ahead. The satellite uses a camera that sees in both visible and near-infrared light.

The onboard AI then analyzes that imagery to find clouds. If the view looks clear, the spacecraft turns back to look straight down and captures the scene below.

The whole cycle – scan, analyze, aim, and shoot – happens while the satellite hurtles through space at 17,000 miles per hour. And it all wraps up in under 90 seconds.

Avoiding clouds and targeting trouble

With the cloud-avoidance test complete, the team is already looking at what’s next. Upcoming trials will flip the goal: instead of dodging clouds, the satellite will target them – particularly severe storm systems.

Other tests will focus on heat anomalies like volcanic eruptions or active wildfires. Each task will use its own set of tailored algorithms.

“This initial deployment of Dynamic Targeting is a hugely important step,” Chien said. “The end goal is operational use on a science mission, making for a very agile instrument taking novel measurements.”

Ultimately, the technology could be used beyond Earth. The team actually drew inspiration from past work with ESA’s Rosetta orbiter, which proved it was possible to track gas plumes from a comet without waiting for human commands. That same thinking now informs the Dynamic Targeting system.

AI can catch what we usually miss

Back on Earth, the team is thinking about new applications. One possibility is using radar instead of optical sensors.

Radar-equipped satellites with Dynamic Targeting could lock onto short-lived weather events like deep convective ice storms – rare and dangerous winter storms that are hard to catch with current systems.

There’s also a bigger vision: satellite teamwork. In one idea, a lead satellite would process images and spot interesting targets. Then it would alert a trailing satellite to zoom in for closer study.

Eventually, a whole fleet of autonomous satellites could work together, sharing data in real time.

Chien and the team at JPL are already preparing a test of that concept, called Federated Autonomous MEasurement, that is scheduled to begin later this year.

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A mysterious interstellar object, named 3I/ATLAS, is hurtling toward the Sun at over 130,000 mph, and scientists can’t agree on what exactly it is.

Discovered on July 1, 3I/ATLAS is the third known interstellar visitor to enter our solar system, following 2017’s Oumuamua and 2019’s Borisov. It measures about 15 miles wide, making it larger than Manhattan.

While some astronomers suggest it’s a comet made of water ice and organic compounds like silicates—similar to asteroids found in the outer regions of the solar system’s main belt—others aren’t convinced it’s natural at all.

Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb, known for his bold theories about extraterrestrial intelligence, has again stirred debate. Along with researchers Adam Hibberd and Adam Crowl from the Initiative for Interstellar Studies, Loeb has proposed that 3I/ATLAS may be an alien probe, pointing to its unusual trajectory and exceptionally high speed, even greater than ?Oumuamua’s.

The team speculates that such characteristics could offer “advantages to extraterrestrial intelligence,” suggesting the object’s path might be optimized for reconnaissance.

Interestingly, some theorists believe the object is older than our solar system, possibly carrying water that predates Earth. Loeb notes that 3I/ATLAS will pass close to Mars, Jupiter, and Venus, which, he argues, could provide a discreet opportunity to deploy surveillance devices.When it makes its closest approach to the Sun in late November, 3I/ATLAS will no longer be visible from Earth—a detail Loeb says could be intentional to avoid detection during its brightest phase.

“If it’s a technological artifact,” Loeb adds, “it could support the Dark Forest theory”—a concept suggesting that alien civilizations stay silent to avoid being discovered by potentially hostile species.

He warns that if this theory holds, defensive measures might be necessary, though the object is moving too fast for any Earth-based spacecraft to intercept before it exits the Solar System.

The discovery has triggered a storm of speculation on social media, especially on X (formerly Twitter).

One post read: “Hubble just captured 3I/ATLAS and it’s weirder than anyone expected! It looks like a comet, it flies like a probe—and it might not be natural at all.”

Another conspiracy theory account added: “Is this Project Bluebeam in action? The mainstream media is pushing the ‘hostile alien object’ narrative. 3I/ATLAS could be an invader comet, just like ?Oumuamua before it mysteriously slingshotted around the Sun and left the system at an unnatural speed.”

Whether comet or craft, 3I/ATLAS continues to fuel a heated debate—raising scientific curiosity and interstellar suspicion in equal measure.

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Ancient marine fossils from North Greenland have shed light on a major misidentification. A creature once thought to be an early squid relative is not a cephalopod at all. New research shows it is actually linked to arrow worms, or chaetognaths. These creatures swam in Earth’s seas more than 500 million years ago.

The study was led by researchers from the University of Bristol, the Korean Polar Research Institute, and the University of Copenhagen.

The team examined 25 fossils of a mysterious creature called a nectocaridid. Once believed to be an ancient cephalopod, it had a squid-like shape that puzzled scientists for years.

Arrow worm fossil found in Greenland

The fossils came from Sirius Passet, a site known for exceptional preservation. Located in North Greenland, this fossil bed holds delicate remains from the Early Cambrian period, around 518 million years ago.

“Sirius Passet is a treasure trove of fossils from the Cambrian Explosion. We not only find delicate soft-bodied fossils but also their digestive systems, musculature and sometimes even their nervous system,” noted Dr. Jakob Vinther from the University of Bristol.

Fifteen years ago, a paper based on Burgess Shale fossils proposed that nectocaridids were cephalopods related to octopuses and squids. That claim confused many in the field.

“It never really made sense to me, as the hypothesis would upend everything we otherwise know about cephalopods, and their anatomy didn’t closely match cephalopods when you looked carefully,” said Dr. Vinther.

Nervous system holds the answer

As more fossils emerged, researchers noticed something unique. Many specimens had their nervous systems preserved in mineral form. This was a key breakthrough.

“We discovered our nectocaridids preserve parts of their nervous system as paired mineralised structures, and that was a giveaway as to where these animals sit in the tree of life,” said Dr. Vinther.

Soon after, the team found fossils of arrow worms, which helped solve the mystery. One clear feature made the connection possible: the ventral ganglion.

Ganglion links to arrow worm fossil

This ventral ganglion is a nerve mass found on the underside of living arrow worms. It is unique to their group and sometimes gets replaced with phosphate minerals during decay, making it fossilize well.

“These fossils all preserve a unique feature, distinct for arrow worms, called the ventral ganglion,” noted Dr. Tae-Yoon Park from the Korean Polar Institute.

That discovery gave the team the final clue they needed. “We now had a smoking gun to resolve the nectocaridid controversy. Nectocaridids share a number of features with some of the other fossils that also belong to the arrow worm stem lineage,” said Park.

Arrow worm fossil only looked like squid

Despite their similarity to squids, nectocaridids were not related. Their streamlined shape was simply an adaptation to swimming.

“Many of these features are superficially squid-like and reflect simple adaptations to an active swimming mode of life in invertebrates, just like whales and ancient marine reptiles end up looking like fish when they evolve such a mode of life,” Park explained.

This means evolution shaped their bodies for speed and stealth, and similarities with squids were not due to a shared ancestor or genetic heritage.

Eyes, antennae, and stealth

One of their most remarkable features is their eyes. These ancient creatures had complex eyes whereas today’s arrow worms can barely detect light direction.

“Nectocaridids have complex camera eyes just like ours. Living arrow worms can hardly form an image beyond working out roughly where the sun shines,” said Dr. Vinther.

“Our fossils can be much bigger than a typical living arrow worm and, combined with their swimming apparatus, eyes and long antennae, they must have been formidable and stealthy predators.”

Evidence of carnivorous diet

The team found direct proof of their predatory nature. Some fossils had remains of Isoxys, a type of swimming arthropod, in their digestive tracts. This shows they hunted and consumed other marine animals.

The new species has been named Nektognathus evasmithae. It honors Professor Eva Smith, Denmark’s first female law professor and a defender of human rights.

“My decision to name our fossil after Eva, is that this animal was a smart and stealthy fighter just like she is,” Dr. Vinther concluded.

Ultimately, this discovery changes our view of early marine food webs and the evolution of modern sea predators.

The study is published in the journal Science Advances.

Image Credit: Bob Nicholls

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Shown here is an annotated composite image of the interiors of the 33 tubes NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has used to collect samples as of July 24, 2025, the 1,574th Martian day (or sol) of the mission.

At this point, Perseverance has collected 27 rock cores, two samples of regolith (broken Mars rock and dust), and one atmospheric sample. The composite also includes images of the three witness tube interiors.

Atop each image in white text is the name given to the sample by the rover science team.

Ten of the samples depicted here – including one atmospheric sample and one witness tube – were deposited in January 2023 at the rover’s sample depot at a location dubbed “Three Forks” within Jezero Crater. The other 23 samples collected thus far remain aboard the rover. Visit this page for details on each sample.

The images of the sample tube interiors were collected by the rover’s Sampling and Caching System Camera (known as CacheCam). Larger image NASA ID: PIA26643

https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA26643
Date Created:2025-07-24

Astrobiology,

How did life here at home get its first building materials? The onset of life here on Earth likely hinged on the delivery of organic material delivered by water- and carbon-rich asteroids. To date, the argument has been that most of the water and the organics that would build life (including amino acids) originated very far out in our early solar system.

But in a paper just published in the journal Nature Communications, lead author, Matthew Genge, a geologist at Imperial College London, and colleagues argue that the building blocks of life had their origins in an intensely turbulent region of space close to our giant planet Jupiter.

The findings are based on evidence from samples of carbon-rich asteroid Ryugu, returned to Earth by the Japan Aerospace Agency Hayabusa 2 mission, Imperial College notes.

We studied microchondrules —- tiny pieces of rock from asteroid Ryugu, which is a really carbon and water rich asteroid, the kind of asteroid that probably delivered all the carbon and water for our planet, Genge told me in his office. In that sample, we discovered evidence for a whole new way of making these types of asteroids, he says. Maybe they formed not just at a great distance, but where the early solar system was turbulent and disturbed, says Genge. It’s in those places that these carbon and water rich particles are concentrated, he says.

The Ryugu specimen that I studied was only one millimeter across, says Genge. To people who study meteorites, that’s tiny, but to me it was a boulder, because I’m used to studying things 10 times smaller, he says.

Using a scanning electron microscope, the team was able to identify a shockingly large number of microchondrules, tiny spheres originally consisting of glass, that had been altered by water formed when ice melted on the asteroid, says Imperial College. The team identified them by virtue of their sulfide-rims, which could be seen in X-ray CT scans of the mm-sized Ryugu sample, the college notes.

Until now, the asteroid Ryugu had been thought to have formed at some 20 to 30 Earth-Sun distances, or out beyond the present-day orbits of Uranus and Neptune.

But new scanning electron microscope images that suggest the building-blocks of life originated near Jupiter in our early solar system, rather than from deep space as currently thought, says the imperial college London.

There was likely intense turbulence just beyond the orbit of Jupiter in the early Solar System, where gas was stirred up by the wake of the giant planet.

Just outside this region was also a pressure bump where mm-sized grains were concentrated by gas flow, Imperial College reports. This Jovian pressure bump was essentially a chondrule factory that concentrated and incorporated this material into asteroids, the college notes.

What Melts These Microchondrules?

It’s still not known but Genge says his favorite hypothesis is that the heat is generated by flash heating caused by random explosive shockwaves that moved through our solar system’s young protoplanetary disk.

These shockwaves could have caused temperatures in the disk of up to 1900 degrees Celsius, which is hot enough to melt steel. And more importantly, it was hot enough to melt these protoplanetary materials into molten droplets of primitive microchondrules.

If you’ve ever watched a movie with an explosion in it, you’ve seen an expanding shockwave, says Genge.

It’s that rapidly moving shell that flash heats the dust to make molten droplets. However, the finest grain dust particles escape most of the heating, so they keep their carbon and water and other organic material.

But due to this material’s proximity to Jupiter, there was locally an intense amount of disk turbulence which caused rapidly turning eddies of gas.

These eddies of gas throw out the big particles and keep the really fine dust, says Genge. Then, if you make an object like an asteroid there, it’s mainly fine grained, he says.

The fine grains contained carbon and water and critical prebiotic molecules such as amino acids. These and the microchondrules subsequently migrated inward towards the inner solar system and likely predate the formation of our own planet.

Yet when Earth did form, the building blocks of life were there waiting to be incorporated into our nascent planet.

The Bottom Line?

Earth was likely seeded by building blocks of life from both the cold outer regions of our solar system as well as from near our gas giant planet Jupiter.

As for what’s next?

We’ve now got a really good understanding of where in the solar system these materials come from, says Genge. But over the next twenty years, we’re going to sample more unusual asteroids and learn more about the early solar system, he says.

ForbesMars Likely Never Had Any Sort Of Life, Says Renowned GeologistBy Bruce Dorminey

Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s (UMSOM) Institute for Genome Sciences (IGS) co-led the study that published online on July 25 in the journal Cell. It is the result of a multi-year, multi-lab project at the interface of software development with important collaborations between bench and clinical team science researchers. This research eventually could lead to computer programs that could help determine the best treatment for cancer patients by essentially creating a “digital twin” of the patient.

“Although standard biomedical research has made immeasurable strides in characterizing cellular ecosystems with genomics technologies, the result is still a single snapshot in time — rather than showing how diseases, like cancer, can arise from communication between the cells,” said Jeanette Johnson, PhD, a Postdoc Fellow at the Institute for Genome Sciences (IGS) at UMSOM and co-first author of this study. “Cancer is controlled or enabled by the immune system, which is highly individualized; this complexity makes it difficult to make predictions from human cancer data to a specific patient.”

What makes this research unique is the use of a plain-language “hypothesis grammar” that uses common language as a bridge between biological systems and computational models and simulates how cells act in tissue.

Paul Macklin, PhD, Professor of Intelligence Systems Engineering at Indiana University led a team of researchers who developed the grammar to describe cell behavior. This grammar allows scientists to use simple English language sentences to build digital representations of multicellular biological systems and enabled the team to develop computational models for diseases as complex as cancer.

“As much as this new ‘grammar’ enables communication between biology and code, it also enables communication between scientists from different disciplines to leverage this modeling paradigm in their research,” said Daniel Bergman, PhD, a scientist at IGS and Assistant Professor of Pharmacology and Physiology at UMSOM and co-leading author with Dr. Johnson.

Dr. Bergman and his colleagues at IGS then combined this grammar with genomic data from real patient samples to study breast and pancreatic cancer, with technologies such as spatial transcriptomics.

In breast cancer, the IGS team modeled an effect where the immune system cannot curtail tumor cell growth and instead promotes invasion and cancer spread. They adapted this computational modeling framework to simulate a real-world immunotherapy clinical trial of pancreatic cancer.

Using genomics data from untreated tissue samples of pancreatic cancer, the model predicted that each virtual “patient” had a different response to the immunotherapy treatment — showcasing the importance of cellular ecosystems for precision oncology. For example, pancreatic cancer is a difficult cancer to treat, in part, because it is often surrounded by a dense structure of non-cancerous cells called fibroblasts. The team used new spatial genomics technology to further demonstrate the ways fibroblasts communicate with tumor cells. The program allowed the scientists to follow the growth and progression of pancreatic tumors to invasion from real patient tissue.

“What makes these models so exciting to me as someone who studies immunology is that they can be informed, initialized, and built upon using both laboratory and human genomics data,” said Dr. Johnson. “Immune cells are amazing and follow rules of behavior that can be programmed into one of these models. So, for instance, we can take data and treat it as a snapshot of what the human immune system is doing, and this framework gives us a sandbox to freely investigate our hypotheses of what’s happening there over time without extra costs or risk to patients.”

“Ever since my transitioning from my training in weather prediction at the University of Maryland, College Park into computation, I have believed that we could apply the same principles to work across biological systems to make predictive models in cancer. I am struck by how many rules of biology we don’t yet know,” said Elana J. Fertig, PhD, Director of IGS, Associate Director of Quantitative Sciences for the Greenebaum Comprehensive Center, and Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at UMSOM and a lead author on the study. “Adapting this approach to genomics technologies gives us a virtual cell laboratory in which we can conduct experiments to test the implications of cellular rules entirely in silico.”

Dr. Fertig calls the research “a tapestry of team science” with additional validation of the computational models coming from clinical collaborators at Johns Hopkins University and Oregon Health Sciences University. The National Foundation for Cancer Research funded the project.

The new grammar is open source so that all scientists can benefit from it. “By making this tool accessible to the scientific community, we are providing a path forward to standardize such models and make them generally accepted,” said Dr. Bergman. To demonstrate this generalizability, Genevieve Stein-O’Brien, PhD, the Terkowitz Family Rising Professor of Neuroscience and Neurology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (JHSOM) led researchers in using this approach in a neuroscience example in which the program simulated the creation of layers as the brain develops.

“With this work from IGS, we have a new framework for biological research since researchers can now create computerized simulations of their bench experiments and clinical trials and even start predicting the effects of therapies on patients,” said Mark T. Gladwin, MD, Vice President for Medical Affairs at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, and the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor and UMSOM Dean. “This has important applications to enable digital twins and virtual clinical trials in cancer and beyond. We look forward to future work extending this computational modeling of cancer to the clinic.”

The team of senior authors on this study include, Paul Macklin, PhD, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education and Professor of Intelligent Systems Engineering at the Indiana School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering at Indiana University, Genevieve Stein-O’Brien, Bloomberg Assistant Professor of Neuroscience and Assistant Director Single-Cell Training and Analysis Center (STAC) at Johns Hopkins University, and Dr. Fertig are continuing efforts to disseminate this software and extend its integration with genomics data for automatic model formulation through the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Informatics Technology in Cancer Research Consortium, who funded this study. Additional benchmarking of this study and applications of the software to breast and pancreatic cancer are supported from numerous NCI grants, the Jayne Koskinas Ted Giovanis Foundation, the National Foundation for Cancer Research, the Cigarette Restitution Fund Program from the State of Maryland, and the Lustgarten Foundation.