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. NASA is moving fast on its plans to build a moon base and return astronauts to the lunar surface in as little as two years. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-nasa-apollo-urgency-moon-base.html Space Exploration Sat, 24 Oct 2026 05:28:00 EDT news712038417 Establishing a long-term presence on the moon will require solving challenges that are easy to overlook on Earth. Lunar temperatures, for instance, can vary from hundreds of degrees below zero to boiling, making effective insulation essential for lunar habitats. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-everyday-mylar-insulator-lunar-habitats.html Space Exploration Fri, 23 Oct 2026 15:20:01 EDT news711979621 Do cosmic radiation doses near the moon differ significantly from those received by astronauts in low Earth orbit? Experimental lithium fluoride detectors, installed aboard the Orion spacecraft during the Artemis I mission, have now made it possible to obtain preliminary estimates. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-artemis-crystals-experimental-detectors-doses.html Space Exploration Fri, 23 Oct 2026 11:40:01 EDT news711967966 The Kronshtadskiy subglacial lake near East Antarctica's Amery Ice Shelf was hidden beneath Antarctica's ice, but its drainage left a mark visible from space as a broad depression that deepened by more than 6 meters (20 feet) at its center. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-antarctic-ice-reveals-hidden-lake.html Earth Sciences Fri, 23 Oct 2026 10:00:07 EDT news711808123 A joint research team from KAIST and the APEC Climate Center has found that the East Asian summer front has migrated north over the past half century, with the shift exceeding 200 km (124 miles) in late summer. This raises the risk that the Korean Peninsula will experience heavy rain and heat stress at the same time. The findings suggest that summer disaster planning should address flood prevention and heat-illness management together, through late September. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-east-asia-summer-belt-shifted.html Earth Sciences Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:00:06 EDT news711963421 What, exactly, is a plant made of? Scientists have a good understanding of the essential nutrients plants need to grow. But what plants need and what they contain are not necessarily the same. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-global-database-fuller-picture-elements.html Biochemistry Thu, 22 Oct 2026 18:20:11 EDT news711903362 Scientists doubling as art detectives have traced Vincent van Gogh's "The Starry Night" to a celestial scene that suggests a new date for one of the world's most famous paintings. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-sky-van-gogh-starry-night.html Astronomy Thu, 22 Oct 2026 11:00:15 EDT news711804301 Earthquakes and the seismic waves they generate provide some of the best clues to Earth's interior. To extend that success to other worlds, scientists placed seismometers on the Apollo missions to the moon and on the Viking Mars landers, which reached Mars in 1976. Though the Apollo detectors proved a resounding success, Viking's results on Mars were less clear: Viking 1's seismometer failed to deploy properly, and Viking 2 recorded only two ambiguous events. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-reexamined-viking-reveals-marsquake-region.html Planetary Sciences Wed, 21 Oct 2026 12:40:06 EDT news711799802 A new study led by researchers at the Konkoly Observatory of the HUN-REN Research Centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences (HUN-REN CSFK) in Budapest has revealed what makes a distant red giant star the most explosively active in the entire Kepler field—and the answer lies in a surprisingly subtle interplay between a close stellar companion, vast dark starspots and a highly efficient internal magnetic dynamo. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-astronomers-uncover-powerful-stellar-flares.html Astronomy Wed, 21 Oct 2026 09:20:06 EDT news711791342 A sequence on the Bayeux Tapestry shows King Harold alongside a crowd gazing at the sky, beneath the embroidered caption Isti mirant stella ("those people marvel at the star"). Above Harold sits Halley's Comet, with ghostlike invasion boats in the border below—a Norman framing of Harold as a doomed usurper whose betrayal invited destruction. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-terror-kings-halley-comet-medieval.html Astronomy Tue, 20 Oct 2026 17:30:01 EDT news711735061 Leptospirosis is a neglected zoonotic disease caused by pathogenic Leptospira bacteria and can affect humans and animals, including horses. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-connecticut-horses-exposed-leptospira-bacteria.html Veterinary medicine Tue, 20 Oct 2026 15:20:14 EDT news711713359 Today, as part of the official release of California's Fifth Climate Change Assessment, researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have launched a platform, data and tools that community leaders can use to estimate the block-by-block climate risks and the cost-effectiveness of adaptation solutions for reducing coastal damages. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-analysis-tool-coastal-communities-benefits.html Environment Tue, 20 Oct 2026 14:40:15 EDT news711712457 The Orionids—one of two major meteor showers caused by remnants from Halley's Comet—will peak this week, though a large moon will dim visibility until after it sets late at night. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-orionid-meteor-shower.html Space Exploration Tue, 20 Oct 2026 14:30:01 EDT news711722869 On Oct. 16, 2021, NASA's Lucy spacecraft began its journey to the never-before-explored Jupiter Trojan asteroids with an early morning launch. Now less than a year away from the first-ever close-up of a Trojan, the Southwest Research Institute–led mission has already made several findings during its first five years. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-lucy-mission-years-discoveries.html Space Exploration Tue, 20 Oct 2026 07:00:07 EDT news711691156 A Japanese spacecraft rocketed toward Mars on Tuesday on a quest to explore its mysterious moons and bring back samples. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-japan-spacecraft-mysterious-moons-mars.html Space Exploration Tue, 20 Oct 2026 05:40:13 EDT news711693525 Japanese scientists will launch a spacecraft on Tuesday that aims to be the first to retrieve samples from one of Mars' moons, potentially helping unlock the origins of the solar system and life on Earth. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-japan-world-mission-moon-mars.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 19 Oct 2026 15:30:01 EDT news711639870 Mercury remains one of our solar system's most elusive and difficult planets to study. It's easier to send probes to the icy moons of Saturn or Jupiter, or even to Pluto, than to land on our innermost planet, Mercury. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-enigmatic-mercury-puzzle-lander.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 19 Oct 2026 09:20:02 EDT news711610218 Ken Schreiber was 9 when Neil Armstrong took his first steps on the moon in 1969—a moment he would never forget. Like Armstrong, he too became a military fighter pilot. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-historical-society-buy-neil-armstrong.html Space Exploration Mon, 19 Oct 2026 03:54:26 EDT news711600835 Japanese scientists are readying a mission to Mars' moons to retrieve samples that could help unlock the origins of the solar system and life on Earth, in what aims to be the first round trip to the Martian region. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-japan-historic-mission-mars-moon.html Space Exploration Sun, 18 Oct 2026 16:20:01 EDT news711555681 A Japanese space mission is about to launch towards Mars. But it will not land on the planet itself. Instead, the Martian Moons Exploration (MMX) mission will focus on Phobos, the bigger of Mars's two small moons. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-japan-mmx-mission-aims-swipe.html Space Exploration Sun, 18 Oct 2026 10:00:01 EDT news711356214 Japan is set to launch a spacecraft on the world's first mission to bring back samples from Phobos, one of the two small, potato-shaped moons orbiting Mars. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-japan-spacecraft-mission-samples-martian.html Planetary Sciences Sun, 18 Oct 2026 07:38:40 EDT news711527854 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers are developing three-dimensional simulations to examine how a nuclear device could be used to deflect or potentially disrupt an asteroid threatening Earth. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-simulations-explore-nuclear-mitigation-asteroid.html Planetary Sciences Sat, 17 Oct 2026 15:00:05 EDT news711191693 The ocean beneath Saturn's moon Enceladus lies under kilometers of ice, but some of its contents do reach the surface. Jets near the south pole spray out water vapor and icy particles, offering a way to investigate the hidden ocean without drilling down to it. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-salt-crystals-clues-life-beneath.html Astrobiology Sat, 17 Oct 2026 11:40:01 EDT news711288914 NASA's Artemis II mission sent four astronauts around the moon and brought them safely back to Earth, laying a foundation for crewed flights to the moon's surface. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-rigorous-analysis-nasa-artemis-ii.html Space Exploration Thu, 15 Oct 2026 19:40:01 EDT news711292475 A new study of young tectonic landforms on the moon offers the most detailed estimate yet of how much the moon has contracted as its interior gradually cooled over time. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-lunar-fault-reveal-moon.html Planetary Sciences Thu, 15 Oct 2026 18:40:08 EDT news711296581 A transistor normally requires several fundamentally different materials—a semiconductor to carry current, an insulating dielectric to control it and metallic contacts through which current enters and leaves. Integrating all of these components becomes increasingly difficult as semiconductor devices approach the atomic scale. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-2d-crystal-transistor-built-insulation.html Nanophysics Thu, 15 Oct 2026 16:40:06 EDT news711293041 The Earth got its moon when a small planet collided with our planet more than 4 billion years ago. This impact hurled molten rock into space, which eventually coalesced to form the satellite we can see every night from across our planet. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-mars-moons-japan-mmx-space.html Space Exploration Thu, 15 Oct 2026 15:40:05 EDT news711282372 If you've ever had your car start sluggishly, or not at all, on a particularly frigid winter morning, you know standard batteries do not like extreme cold. That's why NASA researchers are working to develop a battery that could function in the brutal cold of the moon's south pole, where nighttime temperatures plunge to minus 328 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 200 degrees Celsius). https://phys.org/news/2026-10-nasa-batteries-power-humanity-moon.html Space Exploration Wed, 14 Oct 2026 19:40:02 EDT news711213681 Most kinds of coral spawn once a year. In an enormous multiday event synchronized to specific phases of the moon, they release vast slicks of eggs and sperm into the ocean to be mixed together by the drifting currents. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-spawning-coral-quintillions-eggs-year.html Ecology Wed, 14 Oct 2026 18:20:01 EDT news711193934 A commercial lander that will be at the forefront of NASA's efforts to establish a moon base, humanity's first lunar outpost, has passed a series of critical tests at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. The tests simulated the extreme temperatures and vacuum of space, as well as the intense shaking and ear-splitting roar of launch. Results show that Voyager Technologies' Griffin Mission One (Griffin-1) spacecraft is ready to survive the rigors of space exploration. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-nasa-jpl-readies-voyager-technologies.html Space Exploration Tue, 13 Oct 2026 15:00:19 EDT news711107527