NASA’s Dragonfly Rotorcraft Mission to Saturn’s Moon Titan Confirmed
NASA has confirmed its Dragonfly rotorcraft mission to Saturn’s organic-rich moon Titan. The decision allows the mission to progress to completion of final design, followed by the construction and testing of the entire spacecraft and science instruments.

Dragonfly is confirmed with a total lifecycle cost of $3.35 billion and a launch date of July 2028. This reflects a cost increase of about two times the proposed cost and a delay of more than two years from when the mission was originally selected in 2019.

To compensate for the delayed arrival at Titan, NASA also provided additional funding for a heavy-lift launch vehicle to shorten the mission’s cruise phase.

The rotorcraft, targeted to arrive at Titan in 2034, will fly to dozens of promising locations on the moon, looking for prebiotic chemical processes common on both Titan and the early Earth before life developed. Dragonfly marks the first time NASA will fly a vehicle for science on another planetary body. The rotorcraft has eight rotors and flies like a large drone.

Your Spinal Cord Can Learn And Recall Without Brain Input And We Finally Know How
Devoid of a head, many insects will continue to kick and twitch until at last, drained of all life, their movements grind to a complete stop.

Scientists have known for some time that the spinal cord is capable of executing limb movements beyond reflex jerking motions, even to the point of adapting to avoid unpleasant stimulations.

Just how its neurons 'learn' new responses without the brain's say-so has never been clear.

A study on transgenic mice conducted by researchers from the VIB-Neuro-Electronics Research Flanders in Belgium has discovered the role of a specific gene expressed in spinal nerves in memorizing responses to potential threats.

As NASA continues to study the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, two space telescopes have made new observations, together providing more information about its size, physical properties, and chemical makeup.

NASAWebb observed the object with its Near-Infrared Spectrograph instrument https://t.co/gICD3Y7l4x and the new SPHEREx telescope contributed new data as well https://t.co/4Rh8sHfLsE

All about this comet, the third such interstellar visitor that NASA has observed:
https://t.co/dEHTuQNNKC

Data from 1977 was hard to parse, given the lack of modern computer systems, but volunteers from the Big Ear Observatory in Delaware, Ohio, where the original signal was collected, preserved the records after the observatory was shut down in 1998 and turned into a golf course. Using modern computing technology, the volunteers ran over 75,000 pages of original data through an optical character recognition routine, with visual help from human validators, allowing in-depth computational analysis of the original signal for the first time.

This more detailed analysis led to slight changes in three of the signal’s main characteristics.

...the signal was likely astronomical in origin, though the most likely explanation still isn’t extraterrestrials. The most likely culprit is a HI cloud - clouds of neutral atomic hydrogen floating in space that have been known to produce narrow-band signals that look similar to the “Wow!” Signal, but never on anything approaching the power levels seen that one time in 1977.

The European Space Agency's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) is on track for its gravity-assist flyby at Venus on 31 August, following the successful resolution of a spacecraft communication anomaly that temporarily severed contact with Earth.

On August 20, IBM and NASA announced the launch of Surya, a foundation model for the sun. Having been trained on large datasets of solar activity, this AI tool aims to deepen humanity’s understanding of solar weather and accurately predict solar flares—bursts of electromagnetic radiation emitted by our star that threaten both astronauts in orbit and communications infrastructure on Earth.

Surya was trained with nine years of data collected by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), an instrument that has orbited the sun since 2010, taking high-resolution images every 12 seconds. The SDO captures observations of the sun at various different electromagnetic wavelengths to estimate the temperature of the star’s layers. It also takes precise measurements of the sun’s magnetic field—essential data for understanding how energy moves through the star, and for predicting solar storms.

Déjà vu? Professor Avi Loeb has sparked controversy by suggesting - again - that a recently detected interstellar body passing through the Solar System (3I/ATLAS) could be an alien spacecraft. Today, we dive into what he his claiming and whether it holds up - just the science.

Scientists at UT Southwestern Medical Center have identified how a hormone binds to a receptor on immune cells, allowing cancer cells to evade the body’s defenses. The study, published in Nature Immunology, points to potential new directions in cancer immunotherapy and may also open avenues for treating inflammatory and neurological conditions.

Like Jupiter's moon Europa, and Saturn's moons Titan and Enceladus, scientists have speculated that Ceres could be an "Ocean World," meaning that it could have a liquid water interior that could support life. Dawn's findings indicated that the planetoid is too cold in its interior to prevent water from freezing, and any liquid it contains is likely to be concentrated brines. But according to new research by NASA scientists, Ceres may have had the right conditions to support single-celled lifeforms about 2.5 to 4 billion years ago.

Physicists at the University of Sydney have achieved a breakthrough in quantum computing by creating a universal logic gate inside a single atom.

Using a powerful error-correcting system known as the Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) code — often called the “Rosetta Stone” of quantum computing — they managed to entangle vibrations of a trapped ion. This achievement drastically reduces the number of physical qubits needed, tackling one of the biggest hurdles in scaling quantum computers and bringing practical, large-scale quantum machines closer to reality.

#PPOD: NASA's Psyche Images Earth 🌍 and Moon 🌖

That bright speck isn't a star – it's Earth! And the dot above it is the Moon. The Psyche mission captured this image from 290 million kilometers away while calibrating its cameras. The spacecraft is en route to a metal-rich asteroid between Mars and Jupiter.

Credit: NASA NASAJPL Caltech ASU

Your package has arrived... at the Space Station 📬

SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft, carrying cargo and scientific experiments, docked with the orbiting laboratory at 7:05am ET (1105 UTC).

New Moon of Uranus 🪐

Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope discovered a new moon orbiting Uranus in images taken by Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera). This image shows the moon, designated S/2025 U1, as well as 13 of the 28 other known moons orbiting the planet. (The small moon Cordelia orbits just inside the outermost ring, but is not visible in these views due to glare from the rings.) Due to the drastic differences in brightness levels, the image is a composite of three different treatments of the data, allowing the viewer to see details in the planetary atmosphere, the surrounding rings, and the orbiting moons. The data was taken with NIRCam’s wide band F150W2 filter that transmits infrared wavelengths from about 1.0 to 2.4 microns.

Credit: NASA esa csa asc STScI, M. El Moutamid (SwRI), M. Hedman (University of Idaho)

To help, Centre national de la recherche scientifique in France developed a coronagraph attachment for the JWST’s MIRI instrument which can reproduce the effect observed during an eclipse. Such masking makes objects around a star easier to observe.

With infinite stars it's necessary to find targets of opportunity so astronomers focus on younger stars where the planets are still hot and the system discs can be viewed by us 'from above' - pole on.

TWA 7 has three distinct rings, one very narrow and surrounded by two empty areas with almost no matter. JWST was able to find a source within the heart of this narrow ring - an exoplanet.

The new planet is comparable in size to Saturn, but that is 10 times lighter than those captured in previous images, and has been named TWA 7 b.

Jupiter holds secrets at its heart that continue to puzzle scientists. The largest planet in our Solar System has what researchers call a "dilute core,” a central region that doesn't have sharp boundaries like once expected. Instead of a distinct rocky centre surrounded by layers of gas, Jupiter's core gradually blends into the hydrogen-rich layers above it, creating a smooth transition zone.

This unusual structure was first discovered by NASA's Juno spacecraft, which has been orbiting Jupiter since 2016. The finding surprised astronomers, who had assumed giant planets would have more clearly defined cores. The mystery deepened when observations revealed that Saturn appears to have a similar dilute core structure.

One popular explanation for Jupiter's fuzzy core involved a catastrophic collision early in the planet's history. Scientists theorised that a massive object, perhaps containing half of Jupiter's core material, crashed into the young planet with such force that it thoroughly mixed the central region. This collision would have been so violent that it scrambled the dense rock and ice at Jupiter's centre with the lighter hydrogen and helium surrounding it.

A team of researchers at Durham University decided to put this giant impact theory to the test using powerful computer simulations. Working with scientists from NASA, SETI, and the University of Oslo, they used the DiRAC COSMA supercomputer to model what would happen when massive objects collide with Jupiter sized planets. The team ran multiple simulations using cutting edge software, testing various impact scenarios including extremely violent collisions. They employed new methods to better simulate how materials would mix during such catastrophic events.