A new image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope of a portion of the Helix Nebula highlights comet-like knots, fierce stellar winds, and layers of gas shed off by a dying star interacting with its surrounding environment. Webb’s image also shows the stark transition between the hottest gas to the coolest gas as the shell expands out from the central white dwarf.

Curious what 22 years of Chandra observations sound like? This sonification includes every Chandra observation from 1999 - 2021. 🎵

40 years ago, Voyager 2 made its closest approach to Uranus.

Over its months-long encounter, the spacecraft returned more than 7,000 photographs of Uranus, revealing 11 new moons, two new rings orbiting the planet, and a wealth of information for scientists to analyze for years to come. To this day, it is the first and only spacecraft to study Uranus up close!

How do scientists search for life in the universe? 🧬

SETIInstitute President & CEO Bill Diamond explains three key methods: send missions like NASAPersevere to explore other planets, use telescopes to detect signs of life in exoplanet atmospheres, or search for alien technology like laser pulses or radio signals that nature doesn’t produce. Each one could reveal intelligent life far beyond our solar system.

Forty years ago, Challenger’s STS‑51L mission lifted off with seven remarkable individuals aboard — explorers, engineers, educators, and pioneers.

Francis “Dick” Scobee, Michael Smith, Judith Resnik, Ellison Onizuka, Ronald McNair, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe brought curiosity, courage, and a shared belief in the power of discovery.

The loss of Challenger on January 28, 1986, was a moment that changed NASA forever. It sparked deep reflection, hard lessons, and a renewed commitment to the safety and care of every crew who follows in their footsteps.

Stopping Alzheimer’s may begin with dissolving tiny tau protein clusters before damage takes hold.

Scientists at Tokyo Metropolitan University have turned to polymer physics to better understand one of the defining features of Alzheimer’s disease: the formation of tau protein fibrils. Their research shows that these fibrils do not form directly. Instead, tau proteins first gather into large clusters, similar to how polymers begin to crystallize. When researchers disrupted these early clusters, fibrils failed to develop in solution.

This finding points to a major shift in how future treatments for neurodegenerative diseases might be designed.

Scientists rebuilt human brain circuits in the lab and discovered that the thalamus acts as a central organizer of cortical wiring. The findings offer new insight into how brain networks form and why they sometimes go awry.

A team of researchers in Japan has recreated key human neural circuits in a laboratory setting by using tiny, multi-region brain models known as assembloids. These structures are grown from induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells and combine multiple brain-like regions into a single system. Using this approach, the researchers showed that the thalamus plays a vital role in shaping specialized neural circuits within the human cerebral cortex.

Perseverance did something it’s never done before.

On Dec. 8 and 10, 2025, the Mars rover completed drives planned by generative AI. The first-of-its-kind demonstration hints at a future of more efficient exploration and even more science. jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-per…