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. A major theme in communist governments is the idea of central planning. Every five years, the central authorities in communist countries lay out their goals for the country over the course of the next five years, which can range from limiting infant mortality to increasing agricultural yield. China, the largest current polity ruled by communists, recently released its fifteenth five-year plan, which lays out its priorities for 2026–2030. This one, accompanied by a press release of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), the country's state-owned giant aerospace corporation, has plenty of ambitious goals for its space sector. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-decoding-china-space-philosophy.html Space Exploration Sat, 14 Feb 2026 11:00:01 EST news689867619 Under the leadership of the University of Bonn, a research team led by Prof. Dr. Pavel Kroupa from the Helmholtz Institute for Radiation and Nuclear Physics has discovered that galaxy clusters are about twice as heavy as previously assumed. The additional mass comes mainly from neutron stars and stellar black holes and also explains the observed quantities of heavy elements. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-stellar-remnants-mystery-mass-galaxy.html Astronomy Mon, 09 Feb 2026 18:00:04 EST news689860535 If humans want to live in space, whether on spacecraft or the surface of Mars, one of the first problems to solve is that of water for drinking, hygiene, and life-sustaining plants. Even bringing water to the International Space Station (ISS) in low Earth orbit costs on the order of tens of thousands of dollars. Thus, finding efficient, durable, and trustworthy ways to source and reuse water in space is a clear necessity for long-term habitation there. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-road-sustainable-space.html Space Exploration Mon, 09 Feb 2026 16:40:06 EST news689867986 A major study by an international team of researchers using data from the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini spacecraft has revealed a lattice-like structure of crisscrossing reflected waves that flow downstream behind the moon in Saturn's equatorial plane, but also reach up to very high northern and southern latitudes. The analysis of data from four instruments aboard Cassini, collected over the mission's 13-year duration, demonstrates the crucial role that Enceladus plays in circulating energy and momentum around Saturn's space environment. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-tiny-enceladus-giant-electromagnetic-saturn.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 09 Feb 2026 13:11:21 EST news689865062 NASA on Monday delayed by one day the journey of four astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) over weather conditions. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-iss-thursday-weather-nasa.html Space Exploration Mon, 09 Feb 2026 12:30:01 EST news689862137 Using an advanced machine-learning algorithm, researchers in the UK and Japan have identified several promising candidate locations for the long-lost landing site of the Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft. Publishing their results in npj Space Exploration, the team, led by Lewis Pinault at University College London, hope that their model's predictions could soon be tested using new observations from India's Chandrayaan-2 orbiter. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-lost-soviet-spacecraft-ai-mystery.html Space Exploration Mon, 09 Feb 2026 10:00:01 EST news689851278 When the next mission to the International Space Station blasts off from Florida next week, a special keepsake will be hitching a ride: a small stuffed rabbit. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-astronaut-year-cuddly-rabbit-space.html Space Exploration Mon, 09 Feb 2026 04:20:05 EST news689833145 The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was designed to look back in time and study galaxies that existed shortly after the Big Bang. In so doing, scientists hoped to gain a better understanding of how the universe has evolved from the earliest cosmological epoch to the present. When Webb first trained its advanced optics and instruments on the early universe, it discovered a new class of astrophysical objects: bright red sources that were dubbed "Little Red Dots" (LRDs). Initially, astronomers hypothesized that they could be massive star-forming regions, but this was inconsistent with established cosmological models. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-red-dots-webb-collapse-black.html Astronomy Sun, 08 Feb 2026 13:00:01 EST news689583900 Astronomers from the University of Tokyo in Japan and elsewhere have employed the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to observe a distant ultraviolet-luminous galaxy known as CEERS2-588. Results of the observational campaign, published January 29 on the arXiv preprint server, shed more light on the nature and properties of this galaxy. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-webb-unveils-nature-distant-ultraviolet.html Astronomy Sat, 07 Feb 2026 11:50:01 EST news689502965 Four astronauts will blast off to re-staff the International Space Station (ISS) next week, NASA said Friday, after an emergency medical evacuation of the previous crew. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-nasa-flight-iss-medical-evacuation.html Space Exploration Sat, 07 Feb 2026 01:58:46 EST news689651892 When Apollo 17 astronauts returned from the moon in 1972, they visited NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, to thank staff for their contributions to the mission, saying "we stood on the shoulders of giants as we shot for the stars." https://phys.org/news/2026-02-nasa-langley-artemis-ii-mission.html Space Exploration Thu, 05 Feb 2026 16:45:46 EST news689532301 SpaceX launched 26 missions from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad 39-A in 2025, including four human spaceflight missions. That era is coming to an end. A massive crane was put in place this week with speculation it will soon remove the crew access arm from the historic launch site that hosted most of the Apollo and space shuttle missions as SpaceX shifts plans for all future launches of its Crew Dragon spacecraft to its neighboring pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-spacex-kennedy-space-center-year.html Space Exploration Thu, 05 Feb 2026 16:41:44 EST news689532061 Four astronauts could blast off to the International Space Station (ISS) next week, after setbacks including a mysterious medical evacuation of the previous crew, last-minute rocket problems, and some scheduling conflicts with NASA's moon mission. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-crew-iss-medical-evacuation.html Space Exploration Thu, 05 Feb 2026 04:50:01 EST news689487705 When the International Space Station comes back to Earth in 2030, it will mark the end of three decades of peaceful international cooperation—and an era when space became central to our daily lives. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-iss-era-global-cooperation.html Space Exploration Thu, 05 Feb 2026 04:30:01 EST news689487659 Satellites and spacecraft in the vast region between Earth and the moon and just beyond—called cislunar space—are crucial for space exploration, scientific advancement and national security. But figuring out where exactly to put them into a stable orbit can be a huge, computationally expensive challenge. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-simulations-supercomputing-million-cislunar-orbits.html Space Exploration Wed, 04 Feb 2026 12:50:01 EST news689431258 Astronomers have strengthened long-standing predictions that massive runaway stars could have originated in binary pairs, and were dramatically ejected into space when their companion stars underwent supernova explosions. Through a combination of observations and stellar models, a team led by Baha Dinçel at the University of Jena in Germany revealed that the star HD 254577 likely did just this—and that its origins can be tied back to a companion whose remnants now form the Jellyfish nebula. The research is published in Astronomy & Astrophysics. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-astronomers-runaway-star-companion-supernova.html Astronomy Wed, 04 Feb 2026 10:20:04 EST news689420154 Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team of astronomers has discovered a new massive and quiescent red galaxy, which they dubbed "Red Potato." The discovery was reported in a research paper published January 28 on the arXiv pre-print server. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-red-potato-galaxy-astronomers.html Astronomy Wed, 04 Feb 2026 09:40:01 EST news689419747 Almost as tall as a football field, NASA's Space Launch System rocket and capsule stack traveled slowly—just under one mile per hour—out to the Artemis II launchpad, its temporary home at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, on Jan. 17, 2026. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-nasa-artemis-ii-crew-moon.html Space Exploration Tue, 03 Feb 2026 22:40:01 EST news689355073 The Lunar Gateway is a planned space station that will orbit the moon. It is part of the NASA‑led Artemis program. Artemis aims to return humans to the moon, establishing a sustainable presence there for scientific and commercial purposes, and eventually reach Mars. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-space-station-moon.html Space Exploration Tue, 03 Feb 2026 19:00:03 EST news689338384 As commercial spaceflight draws ever closer and time spent in space continues to extend, the question of reproductive health beyond the bounds of planet Earth is no longer theoretical but now "urgently practical," according to a new study published in the journal Reproductive Biomedicine Online. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-reproduction-space-environment-hostile-human.html Space Exploration Tue, 03 Feb 2026 19:00:01 EST news689324729 Picture a spacecraft returning to Earth after a long journey. The vehicle slams into the planet's atmosphere at roughly 17,000 miles per hour. A shockwave erupts. Molecules in the air are ripped apart, forming a plasma—a gas made of charged particles that can reach tens of thousands of degrees Fahrenheit, many times hotter than the surface of the sun. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-kind-plasma-tunnel-recreates-extreme.html Space Exploration Tue, 03 Feb 2026 17:10:01 EST news689342970 NASA said Tuesday its next crew rotation to the International Space Station could be delayed after SpaceX announced it was grounding flights of its Falcon 9 rocket to investigate an unspecified issue. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-spacex-grounds-falcon-missions-impact.html Space Exploration Tue, 03 Feb 2026 16:00:01 EST news689356004 Where starlight doesn't reach, new things are born: For the first time, an international research team has directly measured the effect of cosmic radiation in a cold molecular cloud. The observation shows how charged high-energy particles influence the gas in these lightless regions where stars are formed. Dr. Brandt Gaches, head of the Emmy Noether Group Towards the Next Generation in Cosmic Ray Astrochemistry at the University of Duisburg-Essen, was part of the effort to propose and observe these effects with the James Webb Space Telescope and provided support through astrochemical models of cosmic-ray chemistry. The findings are published in Nature Astronomy. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-cosmic-brought-ionization-dark-cloud.html Astronomy Tue, 03 Feb 2026 14:30:01 EST news689348270 Four astronauts preparing for an extended stay in space have started quarantine as they get ready for their next big mission. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-nasa-crew-quarantine-february-space.html Space Exploration Tue, 03 Feb 2026 12:10:01 EST news689342058 Imagine a world where fresh vegetables and herbs sprout in the heart of our cities without the need for sprawling farms. Hydroponics—a method of growing plants without soil—uses a nutrient-rich water solution instead of earth and is useful in areas where soil quality is poor, land is frequently flooded, water supply is unreliable, or there simply isn't enough space. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-cape-town-hydroponic-farming-urban.html Agriculture Tue, 03 Feb 2026 11:51:37 EST news689341861 NASA said Tuesday it's delaying until March the launch of its first crewed flyby mission to the moon in more than 50 years, after encountering leaks during final tests. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-nasa-moon-mission-delayed.html Space Exploration Tue, 03 Feb 2026 11:10:01 EST news689338345 The mushrooms spread out on the chopping board seemed normal enough. They were rich and dense, and had a strong earthy aroma. In the saucepan, they melted—along with the cheese—to form a creamy pasta sauce. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-ate-space-mushrooms-survived-tale.html Space Exploration Tue, 03 Feb 2026 11:00:06 EST news689338528 A research team led by Prof. Zhu Yongguan, a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) at the CAS Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, has identified the mechanisms by which sponge city construction significantly enhances urban plant diversity, according to a study published in Cell Reports Sustainability on January 27. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-sponge-city-fuels-major-gains.html Ecology Tue, 03 Feb 2026 10:30:03 EST news689336482 NASA said Tuesday it will now target a March launch of its new moon rocket after running into exasperating fuel leaks during a make-or-break test a day earlier. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-nasa-moon-rocket-reveals-fuel.html Space Exploration Tue, 03 Feb 2026 09:20:06 EST news689325223 Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have discovered a new dwarf galaxy, which received designation CAPERS-39810. Further investigation of CAPERS-39810 revealed that it is an extremely metal-poor galaxy. The discovery was detailed in a paper published January 24 on the arXiv pre-print server. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-jwst-extremely-metal-poor-dwarf.html Astronomy Tue, 03 Feb 2026 07:50:03 EST news689324681