Scientific advances that inspire — new discoveries, research milestones, space missions, nature insights, and emerging technologies
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Turkey will sign the Artemis Accords during a ceremony at 2:30 p.m. EDT Monday, Aug. 31, at NASA Headquarters in Washington, becoming the 71st country signatory. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman will host Turkish Minister of Industry and Technology Mehmet Fatih Kacır for the ceremony, together with U.S. Department of State officials. This event is in person only. […]
New civil servants and guests pose for a group photo with NASA and center leadership in the National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex (NFAC) 80-by-120-foot test section, N221 on Aug. 24, 2026. The civil servants were sworn-in the same day in the largest swearing-in ceremony ever hosted at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley since […]
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is set to launch at 7:26 a.m. EDT on Sunday, Aug. 30. While you wait to watch the launch, brush up on some key facts about this wide-view mission. To learn more about the Roman mission, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/roman Media contact: Claire AndreoliNASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.claire.andreoli@nasa.gov301-286-1940
A new machine-learning framework aims to improve the success rate of computational protein design while moving away from results that reproduce sequences found in nature.
After nearly a decade of service to NASA, including an eight-month science expedition aboard the International Space Station, astronaut Jonny Kim’s last day at the agency is Thursday. He will continue serving as lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy. Kim launched to the space station in April 2025 aboard the Soyuz MS‑27 spacecraft to conduct […]
Researchers used AI to search through more than 100 million possible settings for 3D-printing a high-performance NASA alloy. After only 40 experiments, the system identified six successful configurations, including one that worked at a record-low 500 watts. That could allow GRCop-42, currently difficult and expensive to print, to be made with much more widely available equipment.
Astronomers have captured their clearest image yet of Betelgeuse’s long-suspected companion, potentially ending a search that lasted about 100 years. The surprisingly massive hidden star could help explain Betelgeuse’s changing brightness and may influence its future supernova.
Ancient teeth and human DNA are revealing a surprising history of insect eating. Modern humans in northern Eurasia appear to have eaten insects only occasionally, while Neanderthals may have consumed them much more regularly. Populations near the tropics also retained genes that make insect exoskeletons easier to digest.
Researchers, led by Prof. Alhanan Bornstein from Tel Aviv University, mapped for the first time the gut bacteria of more than 900 pet dogs and found that the microbiome composition changes with age, is influenced by diet type, and even allows estimation of the dog's biological age. The findings could advance veterinary medicine and provide new insights into human aging processes.
She was only 17-19 years old when she was buried in northern Poland around the mid-17th century, with a chain around her neck and a lock on her ankle. Now, using DNA testing, isotope analysis and other archaeological findings, researchers are trying to understand who "Zosia" was, why she was buried in such an unusual way, and exactly what her community feared at that time.
Today’s mysterious gravitational-wave background may preserve clues about how the Universe’s first supermassive black holes formed. Descendants of hypothetical Dark Stars could be responsible for a major portion of the signal, offering a surprising new way to investigate cosmic dawn and dark matter.
Scientists have found a surprising way to potentially switch on an unusual form of magnetism in ruthenium dioxide, a material that normally appears nonmagnetic. When the material was made into an ultrathin film only a few atomic layers thick and placed under strain, its electrons developed patterns consistent with altermagnetism, a recently proposed magnetic state with promising uses in advanced electronics.
APOD Science APOD APOD: 2026 August 27 –… Today’s APOD Archive Submissions Index Search Calendar RSS Education About Discuss APOD Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. Colorful Aurora over […]
Ancient fossils suggest insects conquered land through a long amphibious phase rather than making an abrupt jump from water to dry ground. A newly identified 324-million-year-old species still carried paddle-like abdominal limbs, revealing an evolutionary bridge between aquatic ancestors and modern six-legged insects.
Scientists created smart nanoparticles that can both illuminate hidden glioblastoma cells during surgery and destroy microscopic cancer left behind afterward. In mice, the treatment prevented recurrence and led to 100% survival at 60 days, though it has not yet been tested in humans.
Researchers discovered a brain-based “brake” that can shut down chronic nerve pain in mice by calming an overactive pain circuit. Targeting this system more precisely could one day lead to powerful pain relief without affecting opioid receptors throughout the entire body.
NASA’s Earth-observing satellite missions track dozens of features of a changing planet — aerosols, sea levels, land cover, cloud cover — over years and decades. Sustaining that record for the scientific and operational communities who depend on it requires more than engineering talent. It requires planning for an uncertain future: anticipating where a mission delay […]
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, encapsulated in its payload fairing, travels from the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility to the SpaceX hangar at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026, ahead of mating to a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. Roman’s science instruments are designed to help researchers understand dark […]
During the Aug. 12 total solar eclipse over Europe, scientists aimed to study a long-standing mystery: why the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, is far hotter than its visible surface. Capturing the data they needed meant being in exactly the right place at the right time. Pilots from NASA’s Johnson Space Center flew the WB-57F high altitude research aircraft from Ellington Field in Houston to Iceland, their […]
Altair, centerpiece of Aqulia, the Eagle, is the twelfth-brightest star in the night sky and one of the closest stars to Earth. The post Meet Altair, the Eagle’s Eye appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
