NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter with the HiRISE camera, after nearly two decades in orbit around the Red Planet, captured its 100,000th photograph, a historical frame of the Syrtis Major region revealing dynamic dunes, mesas, and traces of changing Martian winds. It further emphasizes the mission's role in future exploration and planning for human missions.
The latest James Webb telescope image of the month unveils the young cluster Westerlund 2 in the Gum 29 nebula, filled with thousands of hot stars, brown dwarfs, and disks where planets form, revealing how an extreme environment shapes star systems in our galaxy and their future evolution.
NASA’s SPHEREx space telescope has captured the first complete 3D infrared map of the entire sky in 102 colors in just six months, revealing traces of inflation after the Big Bang, the distribution of galaxies, and water and organic molecules in the Milky Way. Data is publicly available to scientists and the public and complements observations from the James Webb, Euclid, and other missions.
The Gaia space telescope and the ALMA radio telescope reveal hidden planets, brown dwarfs, and stellar companions in transitional protoplanetary disks. New results show how early massive objects form and how they shape dust cavities and the future architecture of planetary systems.
The European Space Agency is developing a passive solar tracker that uses 4D printed metastructures to follow the Sun independently, without motors or electronics. The technology is based on basalt and natural fiber composites, scaled by robotic arms, and paves the way for sustainable construction for future missions on the Moon and Earth.
NASA's Perseverance rover has been exploring Jezero Crater on Mars for almost five years, covering dozens of kilometers of demanding terrain, drilling rocks, and collecting samples. Each core cylinder preserves traces of ancient water and possible microscopic life and prepares the ground for the future return of samples to Earth.