#NASA on @Science

CO₂ Emissions Over the U.S. Visualized by NASA

NASA has released a stunning visualization showcasing carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions across the United States. This depiction highlights emissions from both wildfires and human activities, as well as the spread of greenhouse gases. In 2021, the U.S. accounted for more than 12% of global CO₂ emissions. It would be fascinating to see this data on a global scale.

#WatchThis #ClimateChange #NASA #CO2Emissions #GreenhouseGases

@science

❗️ Crew Dragon Launches to the ISS with Russian Alexander Gorbunov and American Nick Hague

The spacecraft has successfully reached orbit.

Despite having space for four crew members, Gorbunov and Hague embarked on the mission together. The two vacant seats will be occupied during the return flight by astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams, who arrived at the ISS in June on Boeing’s first Starliner spacecraft.

Video: #NASA

@science

🚀 SpaceX to Attempt First-Ever Starship-to-Starship Refueling in March 2025

NASA has announced that SpaceX will conduct a groundbreaking test of orbital fuel transfer between two Starship spacecraft as early as March next year. This in-orbit refueling demonstration is crucial, as it could enable larger payload deliveries beyond Earth’s orbit and support future unmanned missions. Should the test succeed, SpaceX is set to land astronauts on the Moon in September 2026.

#SpaceX #Starship #NASA #SpaceExploration #OrbitalRefueling #MoonMission #FutureOfSpace #TechNews #Science

Martian Selfie with a Twist: Perseverance Captures a Dust Devil on the Horizon

NASA’s Perseverance rover just dropped a brand-new “selfie” from Mars — but it’s not alone in the shot. Look closely at the background and you’ll spot an unexpected guest: a dust devil swirling across the Martian surface.

The vortex appears in the flat terrain to the left of the rover (horizontally aligned with it in the frame), far from the elevated area where Perseverance stands. Despite the distance — around 5 kilometers — the devil is clearly visible, adding a dynamic twist to this already impressive image.

What you’re seeing isn’t a single snapshot, but a carefully assembled mosaic made from 59 individual photos. Over the course of an hour, Perseverance used its robotic arm to capture each frame, which NASA scientists then stitched together into one seamless and detailed image.

Another reminder: even on a silent, dusty world, there’s always something stirring.

#Mars #Perseverance #NASA #DustDevil #SpaceExploration

🚀 Historic Moon Mission: Artemis II Launches!

For the first time in half a century, the United States has sent a rocket carrying astronauts toward the Moon. The Artemis II mission lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida earlier today.

Crew:
• Three NASA astronauts
• One Canadian Space Agency astronaut

Mission profile:
The flight will last approximately 10 days. Unlike the Apollo missions, Artemis II will not land on the lunar surface—that milestone is planned for 2028 under the Artemis III mission.

👨‍🚀🌍🌕 #ArtemisII #NASA #MoonMission #SpaceExploration #ScienceNews #science

🚀 How Will NASA Bring Artemis II Astronauts Back to Earth? The Science Behind Splashdown

After a 10-day mission around the Moon, the Orion capsule will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere at 40,000 km/h (25,000 mph). Its heat shield will endure temperatures up to 2,800°C (5,000°F)—hotter than molten lava! How does NASA ensure a safe return? Here’s the tech behind it:

🌍 Atmospheric Braking: The Avcoat heat shield protects against temperatures rivaling the Sun’s surface.
🪂 Parachutes: Eleven chutes slow the capsule from 500 km/h (310 mph) to 30 km/h (19 mph)—like jumping off a 3-meter diving board.
🌊 Splashdown: Ocean impact absorbs the shock, with recovery teams waiting just 5 km (3 miles) away.

📖 Original: Dive deeper into Artemis II’s return tech in NASA’s article.



#ArtemisII #NASA #SpaceTech #Science #Moon #SpaceExploration

🪐 A Wobbling “Peanut” Asteroid May Still Carry Traces of Ancient Water

NASA’s Lucy mission has revealed one of the strangest small worlds ever seen up close: asteroid Donaldjohanson — a young, peanut-shaped rock in the main asteroid belt that tumbles through space and still preserves chemical hints of liquid water from its distant past.

Lucy flew past Donaldjohanson on April 20, 2025, at about 30,000 mph, coming within just 650 miles of the asteroid. The encounter was meant partly as a rehearsal before Lucy reaches Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids in 2027. Instead, it became a science story of its own.

Donaldjohanson does not rotate like a simple spinning rock. Data from Lucy show that it tumbles end-over-end once every 10.5 Earth days, while also wobbling around its long axis every 26.5 days — more like an unstable top than a normal asteroid.

Its shape is just as unusual. Donaldjohanson is a contact binary: two lobes joined by a narrow neck, giving it a cosmic peanut-like form. Scientists think it formed about 155 million years ago, when fragments from a violent collision gently came back together under their own gravity.

Since then, sunlight has been slowly reshaping it. Through the YORP effect — a tiny torque caused when sun-warmed surfaces radiate heat back into space — Donaldjohanson’s spin appears to have slowed by at least a factor of 10 over the last 20–60 million years. As the rotation changed, loose material likely slid down its slopes, softening craters and reshaping the surface.

But the most intriguing clue came from Lucy’s infrared data: iron-rich clay minerals on the surface. These minerals form in the presence of liquid water, meaning Donaldjohanson’s parent body once experienced aqueous alteration. But unlike Bennu and Ryugu, which contain magnesium-rich clays suggesting longer exposure to water, Donaldjohanson’s chemistry points to a much shorter episode.

🔹 Donaldjohanson is a bilobed “contact binary” asteroid
🔹 It tumbles on two axes, with rotation periods of 10.5 and 26.5 days
🔹 Its current body likely formed around 155 million years ago
🔹 Sunlight gradually slowed its spin through the YORP effect
🔹 Iron-rich clays suggest liquid water was present — but only briefly
🔹 The flyby was also a successful rehearsal for Lucy’s Trojan asteroid encounters, beginning with Eurybates in August 2027

Important caveat: this was a fast flyby, not an orbital mission or a sample return. Lucy measured the surface remotely; the asteroid’s interior remains unknown.

Still, Donaldjohanson matters because it gives scientists a rare comparison point. Bennu and Ryugu are near-Earth asteroids with long migration histories. Donaldjohanson is a much younger main-belt object that stayed closer to its birthplace. Its strange shape, unstable spin, and brief water history offer a fresh clue to how small bodies evolved — and how water-rich material may have moved through the early Solar System.

📄 Sources: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aec0503

#NASA #LucyMission #Asteroid #PlanetaryScience #SolarSystem

🔭 NASA Discovers a “Wandering” Supermassive Black Hole Devouring a Star Far from Any Galactic Center

Astronomers have observed something never before seen in optical light: a supermassive black hole tearing apart a star more than 30,000 light-years from the center of its host galaxy — far from where such giants are normally found.

The event, designated TDE 2025abcr, was first detected in November 2025 by the Zwicky Transient Facility. An AI algorithm scanning roughly 500,000 transient events every night flagged an unusual flare despite its highly unexpected location in the outskirts of a galaxy.

At its peak, the flare shone with the luminosity of roughly 10 billion Suns, briefly outshining its host galaxy in ultraviolet light. Follow-up observations with NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory showed that the culprit is a black hole with a mass of about one million Suns, feeding on a star that wandered too close.

So how did such a massive black hole end up so far from the galactic center?

Astronomers propose two leading explanations:

• it was gravitationally ejected during a past merger involving multiple supermassive black holes;

• or it originally belonged to a dwarf galaxy that is still merging with the larger host galaxy.

The discovery demonstrates a new way to find these otherwise invisible wandering supermassive black holes. With the Vera C. Rubin Observatory beginning operations and NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on the horizon, astronomers expect to uncover many more—revealing how common these cosmic wanderers really are and providing new clues about the violent merger history of galaxies.

Sources:

NASA: https://science.nasa.gov/missions/swift/nasas-swift-sees-wandering-mega-black-hole-shredding-star/

The Astrophysical Journal Letters: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ae77f3

#Astronomy #BlackHoles #NASA #Astrophysics #SpaceScience

🌌 Astronomers Found 84 Cosmic Objects We Somehow Missed for Decades

They were already sitting in NASA’s data.

We simply weren’t looking at the right kind of light.

Astronomers mining observations from the Chandra X-ray Observatory have uncovered 84 mysterious objects across six nearby galaxies, including Andromeda and the Pinwheel Galaxy. They appear to belong to a previously unrecognized population researchers are calling hypersoft X-ray sources.

The strange part is their spectrum.

Most bright X-ray binaries radiate strongly above 0.3 keV. These objects do almost the opposite: they appear primarily below 0.3 keV, right near the boundary between X-rays and extreme ultraviolet light. That makes them exceptionally difficult to see, because this radiation is easily absorbed by gas between the stars — and because standard astronomical surveys were not optimized to search this faint corner of the spectrum.

Some of the objects may contain white dwarfs, neutron stars or black holes feeding on companion stars. Their true energy output could be enormous, with much of it emerging as invisible extreme-ultraviolet radiation.

That matters for two big reasons.

Such systems could provide a previously hidden source of radiation capable of ionizing gas throughout galaxies. And some may be accreting white dwarfs — systems astronomers suspect can eventually become Type Ia supernovae, the stellar explosions we use as cosmic distance markers.

Researchers do not yet know exactly what these objects are. “Hypersoft source” currently describes what astronomers observe, rather than one confirmed type of star system.

But the discovery carries a wonderful scientific lesson:

Sometimes the Universe does not need a new telescope to reveal something new.

Sometimes you just need to ask an old telescope a question nobody asked before.

#Astronomy #Space #Chandra #Xrays #BlackHoles #Supernovae #NASA #Science

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-026-02959-7