Category: 7. Science

Senegal signed the Artemis Accords Thursday during a ceremony hosted by NASA at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, becoming the latest nation to commit to the responsible exploration of space for all humanity.

“Following a meeting between Senegal President Faye and President Trump, today, NASA built upon the strong relations between our two nations as the Senegalese Agency for Space Studies signed the Artemis Accords,” said acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy. “With Senegal as the 56th signatory, I am proud to further President Trump’s strong legacy of global cooperation in space.”

Director General of the Senegalese space agency (ASES) Maram Kairé signed the Artemis Accords on behalf of Senegal. Jonathan Pratt, senior bureau official for African Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, 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,” said Kairé. “This signature marks a meaningful step in our space diplomacy and in our ambition to contribute to the peaceful exploration of outer space.”

The Artemis Accords signing ceremony took place two weeks after President Trump’s meeting in Washington with Senegal’s President Bassirou Diomaye Faye and other countries of Africa focused on U.S.-Africa engagement.

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.

In 2020, during the first Trump Administration, the United States, led by NASA and the U.S. Department of State, joined with seven other founding nations to establish the Artemis Accords, responding to the growing interest in lunar activities by both governments and private companies.

The accords introduced the first set of practical principles aimed at enhancing the safety, transparency, and coordination of civil space exploration on the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

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.

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.

Learn more about the Artemis Accords at:

https://www.nasa.gov/artemis-accords

-end-

Bethany Stevens / Elizabeth Shaw
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
bethany.c.stevens@nasa.gov / elizabeth.a.shaw@nasa.gov

What can submarine canyons teach scientists about the Earth’s oceans? This is what a recent study published in Marine Geology hopes to address as a team of scientists conducted the most extensive investigation into Antarctic submarine canyons with the goal of building on previous studies while attempting to discover new canyons. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand how submarine canyons impact ocean circulation and climate change, along with finding life in new and exciting locations.

For the study, the researchers used database maps to create the most comprehensive catalog of submarine canyons while greatly building on previous studies. To accomplish this, the team divided Antarctica into ten geographic zones with the goal of mapping submarine canyons and gullies that exist on the Southern Ocean floor. In the end, the researchers successfully identified five times the number of submarine canyons than previous studies, including a total of 322 canyon networks comprised of 3,291 streams.

 “Some of the submarine canyons we analyzed reach depths of over 4,000 meters [13,000 feet],” said Dr. David Amblàs, who is an associate professor and geologist at the University of Barcelona and co-author on the study. “The most spectacular of these are in East Antarctica, which is characterized by complex, branching canyon systems. The systems often begin with multiple canyon heads near the edge of the continental shelf and converge into a single main channel that descends into the deep ocean, crossing the sharp, steep gradients of the continental slope.”

The researchers note that better understanding of submarine canyons could help improve climate change models, as the former regulates ocean circulation, thus helping produce more accurate climate predictions.

What new discoveries about submarine canyons will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!

As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

Sources: Marine Geology, EurekAlert!

Featured Image Credit: MARC CERDÀ – UNIVERSITY OF BARCELONA

The Mars Life Explorer (MLE) mission concept offers a critical opportunity to investigate whether extant life exists within the mid-latitude ice deposits of Mars.

However, MLE’s current science traceability matrix emphasizes habitability assessment and organic chemistry over direct life detection. As crewed missions to Mars may occur as early as 2040, the window for uncontaminated robotic exploration is rapidly closing.

A high-confidence determination of Martian life must be achieved before irreversible anthropogenic contamination compromises scientific integrity.

The Mars Life Explorer (MLE) mission concept report, NASA

This paper evaluates the scientific, technical, and policy limitations of the current MLE architecture and recommends specific instrumentation upgrades and governance measures necessary to enable definitive and agnostic life detection while safeguarding planetary protection.

Gabriella Rizzo, Jan Spacek

Comments: Prepared as a white paper submission for the MEPAG Search for Life-Science Analysis Group (SFL-SAG) workshop, July 2025
Subjects: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM); Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:2507.16866 [astro-ph.IM] (or arXiv:2507.16866v1 [astro-ph.IM] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2507.16866
Focus to learn more
Submission history
From: Gabriella Rizzo
[v1] Tue, 22 Jul 2025 01:24:41 UTC (240 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.16866

Astrobiology

Grain-surface chemistry plays a crucial role in the formation of molecules of astrobiological interest, including H₂S and complex organic molecules (COMs).

They are commonly observed in the gas phase toward star-forming regions, but their detection in ices remains limited. Combining gas-phase observations with chemical modeling is therefore essential for advancing our understanding of their chemistry.

In this paper we investigate the factors that promote or hinder molecular complexity combining gas-phase observations of CH₃OH, H₂S, OCS, N₂H+, and C¹⁸O with chemical modeling in two dense cores: Barnard-1b and IC348. We observed millimeter emission lines of CH₃OH, H₂S, OCS, N₂H+, and C¹⁸O along strips using the IRAM 30m and Yebes 40m telescopes. We used the gas-grain chemical model Nautilus to reproduce the observed abundance profiles adjusting parameters such as initial sulfur abundances and binding energies.

H₂S, N₂H+ and C¹⁸O gas-phase abundances vary up to one order of magnitude towards the extinction peak. CH₃OH abundance remains quite uniform. These abundances can only be reproduced assuming a decreasing sulfur budget, which lowers H₂S and enhances CH₃OH abundances. Decreasing binding energies, which are expected in CO-rich apolar ices, are also required.

The sulfur depletion required by H₂S is generally higher than that required by CH₃OH, suggesting unknown sulfur sinks. These findings highlight the intricate relationship between sulfur chemistry and COM formation, driven by the competition between sulfur and CO for hydrogen atoms.

Our study emphasizes that the growth of CO ice and the progressive sequestration of hydrogen atoms by sulfur are critical in determining whether chemical complexity can develop, providing key insights into the early stages of star and planet formation.

D. Navarro-Almaida, A. Taillard, A. Fuente, P. Caselli, R. Martín-Doménech, J. J. Miranzo-Pastor

Comments: 46 pages and 37 figures. Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics
Subjects: Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA)
Cite as: arXiv:2507.17595 [astro-ph.GA] (or arXiv:2507.17595v1 [astro-ph.GA] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2507.17595
Focus to learn more Submission history From: David Navarro-Almaida
[v1] Wed, 23 Jul 2025 15:27:16 UTC (2,364 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.17595

Astrobiology, Astrochemistry,

While NASA maintains the lead in human space exploration, other nations have already begun their own projects. Take the China National Space Agency for example, with their CLEP, or Chinese Lunar Exploration Program. If you have any doubts about the objectives of the program, just check out their logo: a stylized crescent moon with two footprints in the middle.

The logo is meant to also resemble the Chinese character for “Moon”, which in my opinion is rather clever.

Now as we’ve seen with NASA and Artemis, plans are easy to announce but slightly harder to execute. That said, the Chinese have managed quite a few accomplishments in a short period of time.

On October 24, 2007 the Chinese launched the Chang’e 1 mission, named for the traditional goddess of the moon. This was the first launch of Phase I of the plan, which focused solely on orbital missions. The orbiter was a success, providing a detailed map of the entire lunar surface and doing some long-range scouting for future landing sites.

That missions was followed three years later with the appropriately named Chang’e 2, which did the same thing but in greater detail, then sped off to visit the asteroid 4179 Toutatis to help the agency test its communications and command systems.

In 2013 the Chinese upped the ante with Chang’e 3 (can you sense a pattern here?), which was the first soft landing on the moon achieved by that agency. That mission too was a great success, especially with the deployment of a small rover, Yutu.

In fact, that mission was so successful that it delayed the launch of Chang’e 4 because they wanted to add more capabilities to it. On January 3, 2019 the lander reached the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the far side of the moon, which also carried a rover with it, Yutu-2, the first ever rover to explore the far side.

Next up was Phase III, a pair of robotic sample-return missions. The first of missions was just a test, and the second one, Chang’e 5, launched in November 2020 and returned to Earth with 1,731 grams of lunar soil – the first samples to return to Earth since the Apollo era.

The latest mission is, you guessed it, Chang’e 6, which launched on May 3, 2024. This mission was the whole package: a lander back at the South Pole-Aitken Basin, a successful sample return of more lunar material, and a new rover, the Jinchan, to explore the far side some more, because we just can’t get enough of that farside.

While these are all great successes, they were all uncrewed robotic missions. The next in the series, Chang’e 7 expected to launch in 2026 and Chang’e 8 two years later, will begin to set the stage for human presence, developing a sort of robotic base of landers and rovers, with orbiters monitoring the whole thing and relaying communications back and forth to Earth, to test one of the most important aspects of a future lunar base: ISRU.

ISRU is an acronym that you’ll hear a lot about when it comes to future plans for the Moon, Mars, and beyond, and it stands for in-situ resource utilization. The basic idea is that launching stuff to the Moon is expensive…really expensive. And if we want any sort of base or installation there, it would require an enormous amount of resources like air, water, food, and structures to make it happen. So a cleverer approach is to use lunar soil, or regolith, to fabricate structures and pull out useful resources like water. It’s not like we could just 3D print a lunar base out of regolith, but the more we’re able to use local resources, the better our prospects for future long-term habitation.

After this, things start to get a little fuzzy with the Chinese plans. They have announced that they want to send a human mission to the Moon in 2029 or 2030. The mission will require a much beefier launch vehicle than their current capabilities, named the Long March 10, which is currently in development. Think of it like the Chinese version of the SLS or Atlas V, a single-use vehicle designed to throw as much at the Moon as possible. The current plants for it to be capable of lofting 70 tons into low-Earth orbit and 27 tons towards the Moon.

Even with this kind of lift capacity, however, the hypothetical crewed mission will still require two launches: one for the lander, and another for the spacecraft to
take the crew to the Moon. That crew would land on the surface, spend a few days poking around and looking at rocks (I’m just kidding, they’d be doing some intense flight testing and science), and return. A retread of the Apollo-style missions, for sure, but a retread is better than what we have right now, which is…nothing. So good for them.

All the components of that mission: the spacecraft, the lander, the spacesuits, all of it, are still under active development. Chinese space officials and leaders tend to keep their cards close to their chest, and it’s not like NASA where the budget undergoes regular public reviews. On the other hand, it’s pretty difficult (as in, impossible) to keep launches and space activity secret, so we know when the Chinese are able to accomplish something, but we don’t know if programs are over budget or facing major delays or technical hurdles.

It’s anybody’s guess if that expected launch date of 2029 or 2030 is reliable or not. When it comes to the Chinese, we’ll just have to wait and see.

NASA will provide coverage of the upcoming prelaunch and launch activities for the agency’s SpaceX Crew-11 mission to the International Space Station.

Liftoff is targeted for 12:09 p.m. EDT, Thursday, July 31, from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The targeted docking time is approximately 3 a.m., Saturday, Aug. 2.

Watch agency launch coverage on NASA+, Netflix, Amazon Prime and more. Learn how to watch NASA content through a variety of platforms, including social media.

The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft will carry NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov to the orbiting laboratory for a science mission. This is the 11th crew rotation mission and the 12th human spaceflight mission for NASA to the space station supported by the Dragon spacecraft since 2020 as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program.

The deadline for media accreditation for in person coverage of this launch has passed. The agency’s media credentialing policy is available online. For questions about media accreditation, please email: ksc-media-accreditat@mail.nasa.gov.

Media who need access to NASA live video feeds may subscribe to the agency’s media resources distribution list to receive daily updates and links.

NASA’s mission coverage is as follows (all times Eastern and subject to change based on real-time operations):

Saturday, July 26

1 p.m. – Crew-11 arrival media event at NASA Kennedy with the following participants:

• Zena Cardman, spacecraft commander, NASA
• Mike Fincke, pilot, NASA
• Kimiya Yui, mission specialist, JAXA
• Oleg Platonov, mission specialist, Roscosmos

Watch live coverage of the crew arrival media event on the NASA Kennedy’s social media accounts.

This event is open to in person media only previously credentialed for this event. Follow @NASAKennedy on X for the latest arrival updates.

Wednesday, July 30

5:30 p.m. – Prelaunch news conference with the following participants:

• Ken Bowersox, associate administrator, NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate
• Steve Stich, manager, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program
• Dana Weigel, manager, NASA’s International Space Station Program
• William Gerstenmaier, vice president, Build and Flight Reliability, SpaceX
• Sergei Krikalev, deputy director general, Manned and Automated Complexes, Roscosmos
• Naoki Nagai, program manager, International Space Station, Human Spaceflight Technology Directorate, JAXA

NASA will provide live coverage of the news conference on the agency’s YouTube channel.

Media may ask questions in person and via phone. For the dial-in number and passcode, media should contact the Kennedy newsroom no later than one hour prior to the beginning of the news conference at: ksc-newsroom@mail.nasa.gov.

Thursday, July 31

8 a.m. – Launch coverage begins on NASA+, Netflix, and Amazon Prime.

12:09 p.m. – Launch

Following the conclusion of launch coverage, NASA will distribute audio-only discussions between Crew-11, the space station, and flight controllers during Dragon’s transit to the orbital complex. NASA+ coverage resumes at the start of rendezvous and docking and continues through hatch opening and the welcoming remarks. 

1:30 p.m. – Postlaunch news conference with the following participants:

• Ken Bowersox, associate administrator, NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate
• Steve Stich, manager, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program
• Dana Weigel, manager, NASA’s International Space Station Program
• Sergei Krikalev, deputy director general, Manned and Automated Complexes, Roscosmos
• Kazuyoshi Kawasaki, associate director general, Space Exploration Center/Space Exploration Innovation Hub Center, JAXA
• Sarah Walker, director, Dragon Mission Management, SpaceX

NASA will provide live coverage of the postlaunch news conference on the agency’s YouTube channel.

Media may ask questions in person and via phone. Limited auditorium space will be available for in person participation. For the dial-in number and passcode, please contact the Kennedy newsroom no later than one hour prior to the beginning of the news conference at ksc-newsroom@mail.nasa.gov.

Saturday, Aug. 2

1 a.m. – Arrival coverage begins on NASA+.

3 a.m. – Targeted docking to the space-facing port of the station’s Harmony module.

4:45 a.m. – Hatch opening

5:30 a.m. – Welcome ceremony

All times are estimates and could be adjusted based on real-time operations after launch. Follow the space station blog for the most up-to-date operations information.

Live Video Coverage Prior to Launch

NASA will provide a live video feed of Launch Complex 39A approximately six hours prior to the planned liftoff of the Crew-11 mission. Pending unlikely technical issues, the feed will be uninterrupted until the prelaunch broadcast begins on NASA+, approximately four hours prior to launch. Once the feed is live, find it online at: http://youtube.com/kscnewsroom.

NASA Website Launch Coverage

Launch day coverage of the mission will be available on the NASA website. Coverage will include livestreaming and blog updates beginning no earlier than 8 a.m., July 31, as the countdown milestones occur. On-demand streaming video on NASA+ and photos of the launch will be available shortly after liftoff. For questions about countdown coverage, contact the NASA Kennedy newsroom at 321-867-2468. Follow countdown coverage on the commercial crew or Crew-11 blog.

Attend Launch Virtually

Members of the public may register to attend this launch virtually. NASA’s virtual guest program for this mission also includes curated launch resources, notifications about related opportunities or changes, and a stamp for the NASA virtual guest passport following launch.

Audio Only Coverage

Launch audio also will be available on Launch Information Service and Amateur Television System’s VHF radio frequency 146.940 MHz and KSC Amateur Radio Club’s UHF radio frequency 444.925 MHz, FM mode, heard within Brevard County on the Space Coast.

Watch, Engage on Social Media

Let people know you’re following the mission on X, Facebook, and Instagram by using the hashtags #Crew11 and #NASASocial. You may also stay connected by following and tagging these accounts:

X: @NASA, @NASAKennedy, @Space_Station, @ISS National Lab, @SpaceX

Facebook: NASA, NASAKennedy, ISS, ISS National Lab

Instagram: @NASA, @NASAKennedy, @ISS, @ISSNationalLab, @SpaceX

Coverage en Espanol

Did you know NASA has a Spanish section called NASA en Espanol? Check out NASA en Espanol on X, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube for additional mission coverage.

Para obtener información sobre cobertura en español en el Centro Espacial Kennedy o si desea solicitar entrevistas en español, comuníquese con Antonia Jaramillo: 321-501-8425; antonia.jaramillobotero@nasa.gov; o Messod Bendayan: 256-930-1371; messod.c.bendayan@nasa.gov.

NASA’s Commercial Crew Program has delivered on its goal of safe, reliable, and cost-effective transportation to and from the International Space Station from the United States through a partnership with American private industry. This partnership is opening access to low Earth orbit and the International Space Station to more people, more science, and more commercial opportunities. For almost 25 years, humans have continuously lived and worked aboard the International Space Station, advancing scientific knowledge and demonstrating new technologies that enable us to prepare for human exploration of the Moon as we prepare for Mars.

For more information about the mission, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/commercialcrew

-end-

Joshua Finch / Claire O’Shea
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov / claire.a.o’shea@nasa.gov

Steven Siceloff / Stephanie Plucinsky
Kennedy Space Center, Florida
321-867-2468
steven.p.siceloff@nasa.gov / stephanie.n.plucinsky@nasa.gov

Joseph Zakrzewski
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
joseph.a.zakrzewski@nasa.gov

Astronomers have discovered a possible new dwarf planet orbiting far beyond Pluto. First detected in March 2023 by Japan’s Subaru Telescope in Hawaii, this object has been dubbed 2023 KQ14 and nicknamed Ammonite. Ammonite’s appearance also puts a kink in what’s known as the Planet Nine hypothesis, which suggests there may be an undiscovered ninth planet in our solar system.

Led by researchers in Japan, the team announced Ammonite’s discovery in a paper published July 14 in the journal Nature Astronomy. The body gets its moniker from the fossil of a long-extinct cephalopod because it was identified as part of the survey project Formation of the Outer Solar System: An Icy Legacy, or FOSSIL.

Context. A comprehensive study of comets over a wide heliocentric distance range helps us understand the physical processes driving their activity and reveals compositional differences across dynamical groups. C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS) is a Dynamically New Oort Cloud comet (DNC) that showed activity as far as 23.75 au and displayed a CO-rich coma at 6.72 au, making it a key object to investigate pre- and post-perihelion behavior.

Aims. We aim to study the long-term activity evolution and chemical composition of C/2017 K2 using photometry and spectroscopy, from October 2017 (rh = 15.18 au) pre-perihelion to April 2025 (rh = 8.46 au) post-perihelion.

Methods. Broad-band and narrow-band imaging from both TRAPPIST telescopes enabled us to produce an 8-year light curve, color analysis, and derivation of activity slopes. Production rates of OH, NH, CN, C₃, and C₂ were computed using a Haser model, along with the dust proxy A(0)fρ. High-resolution spectra from CRIRES+ and UVES at three epochs (May – September 2022) provided simultaneous observations of parent and daughter species as the comet crossed the water sublimation zone.

Results. The light curve of C/2017 K2 shows a complex evolution with varying slopes and a brightness plateau around perihelion, indicating multiple active species. Coma colors remained constant, suggesting uniform dust properties and similarity to other active long-period comets. Gas production rates indicate a typical C₂/CN composition with a high dust-to-gas ratio. Analysis of forbidden oxygen lines shows a transition from CO and CO₂-driven activity to water-driven sublimation inside 3 au. Infrared spectra reveal C/2017 K2 as a typical-to-enriched comet, with HCN identified as the main parent of CN, and C₂ likely originating from C2H2 rather than C₂H₆.

S. Hmiddouch, E. Jehin, M. Lippi, M. Vander Donckt, K. Aravind, D. Hutsemékers, J. Manfroid, A. Jabiri, Y. Moulane, Z. Benkhaldoun

Comments: 17 pages, 16 figures, 14 tables, Accepted for publication in A&A
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:2507.13451 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2507.13451v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2507.13451
Focus to learn more
Submission history
From: Said Hmiddouch
[v1] Thu, 17 Jul 2025 18:00:20 UTC (5,500 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.13451
Astrobiology, Astrochemistry,