NASA has officially lost contact with a spacecraft that has been orbiting Mars since 2014.

The MAVEN spacecraft – Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution – abruptly lost contact with Earth on 6 December 2025 while passing behind the red planet in the normal course of its orbit. When MAVEN re-emerged from behind Mars, however, NASA ground control was unable to reestablish a connection.

On December 9, the space agency announced it is investigating the issue and attempting to locate a signal.

All systems had been working normally before MAVEN passed behind Mars.

MAVEN is one of a fleet of seven orbiters currently actively observing Mars. It launched from Earth in 2013 and reached Mars orbit in September 2014, tasked with studying the red planet's upper atmosphere and ionosphere, and how they interact with the solar wind.

By observing ongoing rates and mechanisms of atmospheric loss, MAVEN has given scientists the tools to understand how Mars may have changed from a once-wet planet to the cold, dry dustball it is today.

Scientists are hard at work trying to assess the scale of our microplastic pollution problem and the likely health impacts. A new study now identifies several downstream health risks these tiny plastic fragments may pose as they traverse the environment.

Research suggests microplastics by themselves can be harmful to our biology, and they're also known to absorb other toxic pollutants.

Now, on top of this, new findings from researchers at the University of Exeter and the Plymouth Marine Laboratory in the UK suggest microbes also develop biofilms on top of microplastics.

These biofilms (or 'plastispheres') can harbor dangerous bacteria and aid their growth and survival – meaning microplastics might potentially be spreading pathogens and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) as well.

That poses several serious health risks, from disease-causing bacteria finding their way into the food chain, to an increased spread of drug-resistant bacteria that make infections harder to treat and medical procedures more risky.

"Our research shows that microplastics can act as carriers for harmful pathogens and antimicrobial-resistant bacteria, enhancing their survival and spread," says marine scientist Pennie Lindeque, from the Plymouth Marine Laboratory.

"This interaction poses a growing risk to environmental and public health and demands urgent attention."

Rarely seen by humans, a humpback whale birth is a truly special moment 💙 Now that it has entered the world, this humpback calf will spend the next 10 years of its life growing to its full adult size.

And you thought it was hard to scroll through all the photos on your phone...

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has snapped its 100,000th image of the surface with its HiRISE camera. More on this milestone image: go.nasa.gov/4oXJQpu

I created a little web game which I'm going to use for a future video explaining how aircraft used to navigate by radio before VORs. No special equipment needed, just listen to morse code tones, if you're on one of the 4 beams then you'll hear a continuous tone, so find a beam, stay on it and get to the destination, then it gets harder, removing the map, and eventually just relying on the audio alone:
illectro.github.io
(Not mobile friendly currently)

Another trip around the Sun ☀️

NASAHubble turned 35 this year. Even after more than three decades in orbit, the telescope continues to revolutionize our view of the universe.

🔭 Until now, observing the inner regions of the Sun’s enigmatic atmosphere – the corona – was close to impossible.

🛰️🛰️☀️ The satellite duo making up our Proba-3 mission fills this observation gap by creating artificial solar eclipses in orbit.

Read more: esa.int/Enabling_Suppo…

Artificial intelligence can now produce acclaimed essays and support medical diagnoses with impressive precision, yet biological brains still outperform machines in one essential area: flexibility. Humans can absorb new information and adapt to unfamiliar situations with very little effort. People can jump into new software, follow a recipe they have never tried before, or learn the rules of a game they have just discovered, while AI systems often struggle to adjust in real time and to learn effectively “on the fly.”

A new study from Princeton neuroscientists offers insight into why the brain excels at this kind of rapid adjustment. The researchers found that the brain repeatedly draws on the same cognitive “blocks” when performing different types of tasks. By recombining these blocks in new ways, the brain can quickly generate fresh behaviors.

From claims that vaccines don't work to manipulated images and deliberately misrepresenting what politicians say, social media is often rife with misinformation. But far from being a recent phenomenon, there is nothing new about so-called "fake news," according to a new paper published in the journal Interface. Researchers argue that misinformation is an inherent and inevitable property of biological systems, from bacteria to birds and human societies.

Misinformation is everywhere
Social communication is a key part of social evolution and collective behavior. It is how an organism learns about its immediate environment without having to rely on risky, trial-and-error or how a bacterium coordinates its behavior with its neighbors to launch a collective defense. However, these social connections can also act as channels for misinformation. While there are many studies on the spread of misinformation in human societies, our understanding of its biological origins is limited.

So the team reviewed decades of empirical and theoretical studies of misinformation in biological systems to see where and how it happens in nature. They found plenty of examples, such as a bird giving a false alarm call, causing the entire flock to flee, an animal population copying outdated migratory paths and even deceptive signaling in bacteria.

This finding supports a groundbreaking view that sleep arises from the interplay between the brain and the microbiome — a partnership that could reshape how we understand consciousness, evolution, and health. The work opens a new frontier in sleep science, suggesting that the key to our rest may lie as much in our gut as in our heads.

What Drives Sleep? A New Look at the Gut-Brain Connection
What causes us to sleep? The answer may lie not only in the brain itself, but also in how it interacts with the microorganisms that develop in the gut.

New research from Washington State University points to a shift in how scientists think about sleep. The study found that peptidoglycan, a material that forms part of bacterial cell walls, appears naturally in the brains of mice and aligns closely with their sleep patterns.

These results build on a long-running scientific idea at WSU that suggests sleep may emerge from communication between the body’s systems that regulate rest and the large community of microbes that live inside us.