compiled by Arlene & David Kaplan

Artemis II Flight Day 5: Crew Demos Suits, Readies for Lunar Flyby 
The Artemis II crew of NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, continue their workday aboard the Orion spacecraft.  With a demonstration underway of the Orion crew survival system spacesuit, the crew also will prepare for their lunar flyby set for Monday, April 6…more

Artemis 2 astronauts are now headed to the moon. Why has it taken humanity so long to go back? For the first time in more than half a century, humanity is on its way to the moon.NASA’s Artemis 2 mission began heading toward lunar realms on Thursday evening (April 2), after its Orion capsule aced an engine burn that took it out of Earth orbit…more

Did Scientists Just Detect an Exploding Black Hole? On Feb. 13, 2023, a cosmic bullet of sorts zipped beneath the Mediterranean Sea near Sicily. It was a subatomic particle known as a neutrino, traveling through the depths at virtually the speed of light and carrying a whopping 220 peta-electron volts of energy. Its presence was detected by a new underwater observatory known as the Kilometer Cube Neutrino Telescope, or KM3NeT…more

A ‘Hail Mary’ for Earth, Built on Solid Science Andy Weir’s “Project Hail Mary,” published in 2021, is a story about humanity’s last-ditch attempt to save Earth from “astrophage,” a fictional, star-eating algae that has infected our sun. The book chronicles the journey of scientist-turned-science-teacher Ryland Grace, who wakes up on a spaceship and ultimately befriends Rocky…more

For 21 years, enthusiasts used their home computers to search for ET. UC Berkeley scientists are homing in on 100 signals they found. For 21 years, between 1999 and 2020, millions of people worldwide loaned UC Berkeley scientists their computers to search for signs of advanced civilizations in our galaxy. The project — called SETI@home, after the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) — generated a loyal following eager to participate in one of the most popular crowd-sourced projects in the early days of the internet…more

Why SETI Might Have Been Missing Alien Signals A new study by researchers at the SETI Institute suggests stellar “space weather” could make radio signals from extraterrestrial intelligence harder to detect. Stellar activity and plasma turbulence near a transmitting planet can broaden an otherwise ultra-narrow signal, spreading its power across more frequencies and making it more difficult to detect in traditional narrowband searches…more

Straight Shot: Hubble Investigates Galaxy with Nine Rings NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured a cosmic bullseye! The gargantuan galaxy LEDA 1313424 is rippling with nine star-filled rings after an “arrow” — a far smaller blue dwarf galaxy — shot through its heart. Astronomers using Hubble identified eight visible rings, more than previously detected by any telescope in any galaxy, and confirmed…more

Spaceflight Started 100 Years Ago in a Massachusetts Cabbage Patch Robert Goddard arrived at his aunt’s farm in Auburn, Mass., on a cold, snowy morning 100 years ago. The wide-open spaces of the farm became on March 16, 1926, a rudimentary Cape Canaveral for an event never witnessed before on Earth: the launch of a rocket that would become a trailblazer for vehicles capable of sending satellites, probes and even humans beyond our planet’s atmosphere…more

New Theory May Explain Mysterious “Little Red Dots” in the Early Universe Astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian have proposed a new explanation for some of the universe’s most puzzling early galaxies, nicknamed “little red dots.” In the study, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Authors Fabio Pacucci and Abraham (Avi) Loeb suggest that these galaxies are the result of very slowly spinning dark matter halos, an extremely rare cosmic structure…more

Sugars, ‘Gum,’ Stardust Found in NASA’s Asteroid Bennu Samples The asteroid Bennu continues to provide new clues to scientists’ biggest questions about the formation of the early solar system and the origins of life. As part of the ongoing study of pristine samples delivered to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer) spacecraft…more

NASA’s DART Mission Changed Orbit of Asteroid Didymos Around Sun New research reveals that when NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft intentionally impacted the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos in September 2022, it didn’t just change the motion of Dimorphos around its larger companion, Didymos; the crash also shifted the orbit of both asteroids around the Sun…more

Spectacular fireball over Europe sends meteorite crashing through roof of German home A meteorite has crashed through the roof of a house in the city of Koblenz in the west of Germany after a spectacular fireball lit up the night sky above western Europe on Sunday evening, March 8. More than 2,800 sightings of the fireball have been reported to the International Meteor Organization (IMO), with dozens of video recordings having been uploaded on social media…more