https://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. The spacecraft aced its encounter with Mars. Now, mission scientists are studying a trove of data from the flyby in preparation for its arrival at asteroid Psyche in 2029. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-nasa-psyche-mission-mars-flyby.html Planetary Sciences Sat, 18 Jul 2026 14:51:26 EDT news703605061 A rare CO chondrite meteorite was the probable impacter that struck Earth 66 million years ago, wiping out 75% of Earth's species, including nonavian dinosaurs. These findings are published in Science Advances. Researchers at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Paris, Brussels and Vienna, used advanced nickel isotope analysis of samples to narrow down the composition of the deadly Cretaceous-Paleogene meteorite. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-class-oddball-meteorite-dinosaurs.html Biotechnology Fri, 17 Jul 2026 14:00:11 EDT news703496174 A Southwest Research Institute-led study has proposed a connection between a specific collision in the main asteroid belt and an inner-solar-system-wide bombardment episode that may have had measurable biological and geological consequences on Earth. The research suggests that the catastrophic breakup of the Eulalia parent body could be linked to an impact shower that struck the terrestrial planets about 800 million years ago. The work is published on the arXiv preprint server. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-asteroid-breakup-solar-bombardment-million.html Planetary Sciences Wed, 15 Jul 2026 15:00:12 EDT news703338887 On July 16, 2024, a daytime meteor shook New York City with a sonic boom as it passed just south of the Statue of Liberty. Now, an international team of researchers reports in the journal Science Advances that a short time later, a meteorite weighing more than 2 pounds crashed through the roof of a house in the town of Hillsborough, New Jersey. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-alien-world-chemistry-meteorite-struck.html Space Exploration Wed, 15 Jul 2026 14:00:03 EDT news703263418 Scientists have detected evidence of landslides on Pluto for the first time. A paper published in the journal Icarus reports that images taken by the New Horizons spacecraft during a flyby revealed six large landslides in three impact craters. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-massive-landslides-icy-pluto.html Astrobiology Mon, 13 Jul 2026 15:30:02 EDT news703172932 Like a shelf in an old house, the Earth collects a lot of dust from its surroundings. This "space dust" is mostly made up of micrometeorites that survive atmospheric entry and provides researchers with a cheap and easy way to obtain samples to study our cosmic neighbors. However, it can be difficult to determine which objects certain samples originated from if their parent bodies aren't already in available catalogs. A recent study, published in Science Advances, describes a new subset of space dust with such mysterious origins and how researchers are tracking down potential sources. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-earth-space-unidentified-asteroids.html Astrobiology Tue, 07 Jul 2026 12:50:02 EDT news702646844 The moon is not the only natural object traveling through space alongside Earth. Several small asteroids travel around the sun in near lockstep with our planet. And just like Earth, these space rocks also take a year to complete a full orbit. Today, we know of eight such "quasi-moons" or quasi-satellites. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-asteroid-piece-moon-chinese-spacecraft.html Astronomy Fri, 03 Jul 2026 08:00:08 EDT news702280682 When a bright fireball streaked across the Alaska sky last spring, the usual tools scientists rely on to track such events—cameras and satellites—did not provide a detailed picture. But the meteoroid left behind something else: low-frequency sound waves that traveled hundreds of miles and were captured by a dense network of earthquake and volcano-monitoring sensors on the ground. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-reconstruct-alaska-fireball-path-cameras.html Planetary Sciences Tue, 30 Jun 2026 16:00:10 EDT news702041402 Life on Earth took a long evolutionary journey that eventually created us, the purportedly intelligent species that dominates the planet. But there was no grand plan or design, only happenstance, nature and luck. Life on Earth suffered multiple extinctions, but got up, dusted itself off and continued on its long march to complexity. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-gravitational-tides-earth-extinctions.html Planetary Sciences Wed, 24 Jun 2026 20:00:01 EDT news701516829 Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) scientists studying the inner main-belt asteroid Donaldjohanson have found that its rotation wobbles. Rather than rolling through space in a steady pattern, Donaldjohanson turns on two axes, rotating end over end once every 10.5 Earth days while wobbling around its horizontal axis every 26.5 days. The findings are published in the journal Science. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-asteroid-donaldjohanson-rotates-lucy-flyby.html Planetary Sciences Thu, 18 Jun 2026 17:20:02 EDT news701013601 The first few billion years of Earth's history saw the rise of life, the atmosphere and the oceans. Still, that time is shrouded in mystery: Not many rocks remain that preserve a record of those early iterations of our modern world. Dynamic geologic processes like erosion, subduction and burial mean the surface is constantly being reshaped, and older rocks aren't very common. But that time period is critical to understanding our own origins and how catastrophic events like asteroid impacts might have affected early life on the planet. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-scientists-billion-year-asteroid-impact.html Earth Sciences Tue, 09 Jun 2026 16:00:06 EDT news700233527 A sonic boom shook Boston and the larger New England area with the force of 230 tons of TNT. The source came from outer space. The Saturday afternoon event triggered shock waves online, with thousands inquiring what could have caused houses to shake and a sound heard as far away as New Hampshire and Rhode Island. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-meteors-extremely-common-england-rare.html Planetary Sciences Thu, 04 Jun 2026 10:20:03 EDT news699785941 MIT engineers are testing a new propulsion system that combines the power and speed of conventional chemical thrusters with the precision and fuel-efficiency of electrical thrusters. The system could enable the design of nimbler, more flexible small satellites, which could perform both fast, powerful maneuvers and slower, precise adjustments, depending on the mission and moment at hand. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-satellites-small-briefcase-space-lot.html Space Exploration Tue, 02 Jun 2026 10:00:01 EDT news699610981 SpaceX seems to have mistaken shooting for the moon with shooting at the moon. Forecast to occur on Aug. 5, a five-story-long piece of a rocket from one of the private space exploration company's recent lunar missions is expected to hit the moon at around 5,400 miles per hour, around 24 times the speed of a Formula 1 racecar. As it currently stands, projections put the rocket's crash course with the moon at 2:44 a.m. Eastern Time. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-spacex-rocket-moon-space-private.html Space Exploration Wed, 20 May 2026 08:40:01 EDT news698479668 Earth has a group of cosmic stalkers. Known as "co-orbitals," these small bits of rock have a 1:1 mean motion resonance with Earth. Basically, they take the exact same amount of time to orbit the sun as we do. Astronomers have long believed these objects wandered in from the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, but recent spectral analysis suggests they better match the space-weathered lunar silicates that make up the moon's surface. As such, there has been an ongoing debate about whether these cosmic stalkers are actually visitors from the belt or blasted pieces of the moon. A new study, published in Icarus, from researchers Elisa Alessi and Robert Jedicke provides strong hints that the belt is the more likely source—but pretty soon we'll get a definitive answer from a spacecraft. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-earth-constant-companion-stray-asteroid.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 18 May 2026 16:40:01 EDT news698331253 A NASA spacecraft chasing a rare metal asteroid swings past Mars this week for a gravity boost, snapping thousands of pictures as practice for the main encounter in 2029. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-nasa-psyche-spacecraft-mars-rare.html Planetary Sciences Thu, 14 May 2026 13:13:00 EDT news697983111 If you've ever taken an introductory astronomy class, you've probably seen the Hertzsprung-Russell (HR) diagram. This graph maps out the life cycle of stars by plotting their temperature against their luminosity, and has been a "cheat sheet" for stellar astrophysics for over a century. But the universe is full of more than just stars, and a new paper in the journal Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific by Gabriel Steward and Matthew Hedman of the University of Idaho, attempts to do for the density and mass of all objects what the HR diagram did for the lifecycle of stars—provide a coherent, visual map to represent them. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-graph-universe.html Astronomy Tue, 12 May 2026 18:20:03 EDT news697810264 A great Tyrannosaurus rex strides through the conifer trees of her territory, sniffing the air. She picks up the scent from the carcass of a dead horned dinosaur, Triceratops, that she was feeding on yesterday. She walks over and strips off some more shreds of meat, but the smell is foul even for her. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-dinosaurkilling-asteroid-armageddon-blowbyblow-account.html Paleontology & Fossils Mon, 11 May 2026 18:00:01 EDT news697724041 NASA's Psyche spacecraft will get a boost from Mars on Friday, May 15, passing just 2,800 miles (4,500 kilometers) from the planet's surface at some 12,333 mph (19,848 kph). The spacecraft will harness the planet's gravitational pull to speed up and adjust its trajectory toward the metal-rich asteroid Psyche, one of the more unusual objects in our solar system. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-mars-reshape-nasa-psyche-journey.html Planetary Sciences Sat, 09 May 2026 08:48:13 EDT news697535243 Using preliminary data from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, scientists have discovered over 11,000 new asteroids. The data were confirmed by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center (MPC), making this the largest single batch of asteroid discoveries submitted in the past year. The discoveries were made using data from Rubin's early optimization surveys and offer a powerful preview of the observatory's transformative impact on solar system science. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-early-vera-rubin-observatory-reveals.html Planetary Sciences Thu, 02 Apr 2026 16:40:04 EDT news694359721 When we think of asteroids, we almost immediately think of giant rocks bouncing around like the iconic chase scene in "The Empire Strikes Back," and we often hear how they are remnants from the birth of the solar system. While the asteroids that comprise the Main Asteroid Belt of our solar system are not only spread far apart from one another, they are also not all made of rock. One asteroid approximately the size of the state of Massachusetts called 16 Psyche is made of metal, which planetary scientists hypothesize could be the remnants of a protoplanet's core that didn't build into a full-fledged planet. But how did such a unique asteroid form? https://phys.org/news/2026-03-giant-craters-reveal-psyche-lost.html Planetary Sciences Sat, 28 Mar 2026 10:00:01 EDT news693570548 Even 200 years after asteroid 16 Psyche was discovered, astronomers continue to puzzle over its formation. Psyche is the 10th-most massive asteroid in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, and the largest known metallic asteroid, at 140 miles in diameter. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-large-craters-clues-asteroid-psyche.html Astronomy Tue, 17 Mar 2026 07:00:02 EDT news692946841 When people think of asteroids, they tend to picture rare, civilization-ending impacts like those depicted in movies such as "Armageddon." In reality, the asteroids most likely to affect modern society are much smaller. While kilometer-scale impacts occur only every tens of millions of years, decameter-scale (building-sized) objects strike Earth far more frequently: roughly every couple decades. As astronomers develop new ways to detect and track these smaller asteroids, planetary defense becomes increasingly relevant for protecting the space-based infrastructure that underpins modern life, from GPS navigation to global communications. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-astronomers-discuss-fortifying-planetary-defenses.html Planetary Sciences Thu, 12 Mar 2026 10:16:42 EDT news692529327 Anyone familiar with the search for alien life will have heard of the "Goldilocks Zone" around a star. This is defined as the orbital band where the temperature is just right for liquid water to pool on a rocky planet's surface—a good approximation for what we thought of as the early conditions for life on Earth. But what happens if that life doesn't stay on an Earth analog? If they, like we, start to move toward their neighboring planets, the idea of a habitable zone becomes much more complicated. A new paper from Dr. Caleb Scharf of the NASA Ames Research Center, and one of the agency's premier astrobiologists, tries to account for this possibility by introducing the framework of an Interplanetary Habitable Zone (IHZ). The work is published on the arXiv preprint server. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-interplanetary-habitable-zone.html Astrobiology Thu, 05 Mar 2026 11:30:01 EST news691932301 Asteroid mining companies are finally getting off the ground, and that is raising some concerns about the impact those activities will have on the space environment. A new paper published in Acta Astronautica by Anna Marie Brenna of the University of Waikato in New Zealand discusses a framework that she thinks might work to solve the legal challenges facing those who want to protect the space environment and those who want to exploit it. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-legal-void-asteroid-gold.html Space Exploration Tue, 24 Feb 2026 13:00:04 EST news691159512 Astronomers have long debated why so many icy objects in the outer solar system look like snowmen. Michigan State University researchers now have evidence of the surprisingly simple process that could be responsible for their creation. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-space-snowmen-gravitational-collapse-contact.html Astronomy Thu, 19 Feb 2026 14:00:15 EST news690567661 The United Arab Emirates announced on Tuesday that it would extend its Mars probe mission, now in its fifth year, for an additional three, underlining the oil-rich state's space ambitions. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-uae-mars-probe-mission.html Space Exploration Tue, 17 Feb 2026 10:30:01 EST news690546317 Most near-Earth asteroids are thought to drift in from the main asteroid belt. But a small subset may have a much closer origin: the moon. One intriguing example is 469219 Kamoʻoalewa (2016 HO3), an Earth quasi-satellite whose reported spectrum resembles lunar material and which is a target of China's Tianwen-2 sample-return mission. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-rubin-survey-underway-simulations-lunar.html Astronomy Mon, 02 Feb 2026 12:18:07 EST news689256956 Betelgeuse is the star that everybody can't wait to see blow up, preferably sooner rather than later. That's because it's a red supergiant on the verge of becoming a supernova and there hasn't been one explode this close in recorded human history. It's been changing its brightness and showing strange surface behavior, which is why astronomers track its activity closely. Are these changes due to its aging process? Do they mean it's about to blow up? Probably not. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-siwarha-betelgeuse.html Astronomy Wed, 14 Jan 2026 08:19:33 EST news687601142 Astronomers analyzing data from Vera C. Rubin Observatory have discovered the fastest-ever spinning asteroid with a diameter over half a kilometer—a feat uniquely enabled by Rubin. The study provides crucial information about asteroid composition and evolution, and demonstrates how Rubin is pushing the boundaries of what we can discover within our own solar system. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-vera-rubin-observatory-asteroid-pre.html Astronomy Wed, 07 Jan 2026 14:28:23 EST news687018482