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…

Modern mammals have unique hearing abilities, able to sense a broad range of volumes and frequencies using middle-ear features, including our eardrums and a few small bones.

A new study from paleontologists at the University of Chicago in the US has revealed these physical features began to emerge nearly 50 million years earlier than we thought.

They found their evidence within a 250-million-year-old fossil of the mammal ancestor, Thrinaxodon liorhinus. Using computed tomography scans of the animal's skull and jaw, they created 3D models that allowed them to simulate how Thrinaxodon's anatomy might have reacted to the different sound pressures and frequencies, using engineering software to see how its bones 'wiggled' in response.

Thrinaxodon lived during the Early Triassic, before the first dinosaurs. It was a cynodont – a close relative of early mammals – with a body that looks somewhere in between a lizard and a fox.

Some of its genes follow the same blueprint modern mammals carry today, and this new study suggests the architecture of its hearing is also something we share.

Early cynodonts had ear bones – the malleus, incus, and stapes – that were attached to their jaw. In later species, these tiny fragments eventually became detached from the jaw to form the distinctly mammalian middle ear.

Before the middle ear and its associated 'tympanic' hearing abilities, animals relied on bone-conducted sound, where nerves carry signals from vibrations in the jawbone to the brain.

NASA completed a wet dress rehearsal for the Artemis II mission in the early morning hours on Feb. 3. To allow teams to review data and conduct a second wet dress rehearsal, NASA will now target March as the the earliest possible launch opportunity for the Artemis II mission. go.nasa.gov/4ka7tKs

While we are past the solar maximum, the peak of activity of the Sun in its 11-year cycle, we are still getting fireworks from our little star – fireworks that have caused several radio blackouts and one of the strongest flares in the last 30 years. 

They are all coming from the same sunspot complex, a region known as 4366. Since Sunday, it has released six X-class flares. The X-class is the category to which the most powerful solar flares belong; multiple occurrences from the same region indicates that a lot is happening there. 

Sunspots are cooler regions of the Sun’s surface where intense magnetic fields penetrate deep into the Sun. These magnetic field lines can snap and reconnect as the sunspots move, accelerating electrically charged particles to extremely high-speeds. This produces the flashes of intense light.

Autism has historically been viewed as a condition that affects men and boys more frequently than women and girls. But a massive new study based on data from millions of people suggests this isn't actually the case, at least in Sweden.

While boys are diagnosed with the condition at higher rates during childhood, by adulthood, the ratio is roughly 1:1. This suggests it's not a case of fewer women having autism: it's just that they aren't diagnosed until later in life.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis rates have been climbing since the 1990s, but diagnoses are not equal between males and females. The DSM-5, which defines mental health conditions and recommended treatments, states that for every four males diagnosed with autism, only one female receives a diagnosis.

But the recent study, led by medical epidemiologist Caroline Fyfe of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, paints a very different picture, adding to a growing body of research that suggests autistic women and girls are being let down by current systems of diagnosis and treatment.

Hop on board Mars Express, for a flight over Flaugergues Crater.

Be sure to turn up the volume for the audio guide 🔊
More info, images and a map showing the route of the video 👉 esa.int/Science_Explor…

In the new study, the team subjected a sample of the metal-rich Campo del Cielo meteorite to 27 high-energy pulses of the 440 gigaelectronvolt SPS proton beam, in order to recreate impact conditions and measure their effects. While not necessarily bad news for those who want a real-life Armageddon, the meteor sample didn't quite act how one would expect. 

“The material became stronger, exhibiting an increase in yield strength, and displayed a self-stabilising damping behaviour,” Melanie Bochmann, co-team lead, explained in a statement. 

"These results suggest that high-energy proton irradiation not only hardens iron meteorite material but may transform it into a composite-like structure with improved damping characteristics," the team added in their paper.

In short, the meteorite held together a lot better than expected. While making a potentially-deadly asteroid stronger doesn't sound like a particularly good idea, the goal is not to shatter it apart, but to deflect it onto a safe course for Earth. On that front, this may actually be good news.

Duplicated genes that appear in every branch of the tree of life can provide us with insight into the evolution that occurred between the first lifeform and the last from which we all descend, geneticists claim.

As far as we can tell, life only evolved on Earth once, and everything alive today is a descendant of that initial breakthrough. However, the divergence that gave us mushrooms, mice, and maple trees probably didn’t take place straight away. That is, the tree of life had a trunk, possibly quite a long one, before it started branching off into familiar kingdoms like animals, plants, fungi, and bacteria, let alone into further divisions within each. 

The point immediately before the branching began is known as the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA). We think we have learned something of LUCA’s nature by looking for traits all surviving lifeforms share. But what about LUCA’s predecessors? What can we learn about the steps that turned those first strands of RNA into LUCA? It’s widely assumed the answer is nothing, but a new paper challenges that view.

“While the last universal common ancestor is the most ancient organism we can study with evolutionary methods,” said Professor Aaron Goldman of Oberlin College in a statement, “some of the genes in its genome were much older.”

Attempts to reconstruct LUCA have reached the conclusion it was a relatively complex organism, one that could not have spontaneously appeared. Instead, LUCA was the product of a long period of evolution from simpler life.

Remarkably, Goldman and colleagues say they can expose some of that process by reconstructing LUCA’s genes. 

New infrared observations reveal the rare interstellar visitor comet 3I/ATLAS dramatically brightening during its farewell tour of the solar system.

NASA's SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) space telescope captured views in December 2025 of the comet releasing a surge of gas, dust and complex molecules two months after the object's closest approach to the sun — a surprising outburst that's giving scientists their clearest chemical look yet at material formed around another star, according to a statement from NASA.

The SPHEREx images were taken as the comet was already heading back out of the inner solar system. Instead of fading quietly into the dark, 3I/ATLAS flared with activity, developing a glowing coma rich in water vapor, carbon dioxide and organic compounds. Observations also show a pear-shaped dust tail, created by rocky material being ejected as the comet's activity increases.

The names of nearly 11 million Earthlings are riding along with Perseverance as it explores the Martian landscape. (This view was taken on Tuesday.)

There's still time to send your name to travel with NASAArtemis astronauts on their journey to the Moon! go.nasa.gov/artemisnames

Anew breakthrough in the pathology of glioblastoma – the most common type of brain cancer, currently incurable – has been found, opening up the potential for a future treatment that could be as simple as taking a pill.

Each year, more than 14,000 people in the US alone will be diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive, unpredictable, and unpreventable brain cancer. Each one of those new patients will live an average of 12 to 18 more months – without any treatment, it can be much less – and only one in 20 will still be alive after five years.

“Glioblastoma is a devastating disease. Essentially no effective therapy exists,” said Hui Li, a researcher in the University of Virginia School of Medicine’s Department of Pathology, in a statement this week. But back in 2020, Hui and his colleagues made a first step towards finding one: they discovered the so-called “oncogene” that triggers the development of glioblastoma.

“The novel oncogene we discovered promises to be an Achilles’ heel of glioblastoma,” he said at the time, “with its specific targeting potentially an effective approach for the treatment of the disease.”

Now, his team have announced the next stage in the development of a treatment or cure for glioblastoma: the identification of a specific molecule which can block the activity of this oncogene, and which, in mouse studies, was able to destroy glioblastoma cells without affecting healthy tissue.

“What’s novel here is that we’re targeting a protein that [glioblastoma] cells uniquely depend on, and we can do it with a small molecule that has clear in vivo activity,” Li explained. “To our knowledge, this pathway hasn’t been therapeutically exploited before.”

Many tiny specks of ancient water are locked within one of the oldest and most famous Martian meteorites ever to fall to Earth, a new study finds. The surprising discovery, achieved using a new form of "neutron scanning," reveals more clues about the Red Planet's watery past, which may have set the stage for extraterrestrial life to flourish.

Meteorite NWA 7034, more commonly known as Black Beauty, is a roughly 11-ounce (320 grams) chunk of Mars that was ejected when another space rock slammed into the Red Planet. It was discovered in 2011 by nomads in the Moroccan region of the Sahara Desert, although it is unclear when it fell to Earth. The meteorite has since become famous for its dark hue, which has been further accentuated by heavy polishing on one of its faces.

Black Beauty likely originates from the 6-mile-wide (10 kilometers) Karratha crater near Mars' equator, and was ejected into space between 5 million and 10 million years ago, according to Live Science's sister site Space.com. However, it is much older than that, and scientists have since dated the coal-like rock to at least 4.44 billion years ago, making it the oldest Martian meteorite found to date.

New research suggests that dark matter, the universe's most puzzling and mysterious substance, may not exist. But removing dark matter from our cosmological models could hinge on the possibility that gravity behaves differently on very large scales, one scientist says.

Dark matter has been a thorn in the side of physicists because, despite outweighing ordinary matter by a ratio of 5 to 1, it remains effectively invisible. That's because it doesn't interact with light, or more technically, electromagnetic radiation. Because the particles that comprise the atoms that make up stars, planets, moons, living things, and everything we see around us, do interact with light, scientists have been searching for particles that could make up dark matter. However, this addition to particle physics, which has thus far eluded all attempts to uncover it, isn't needed if we are wrong about how gravity behaves on galactic scales. At least, that is what Naman Kumar of the Indian Institute of Technology suggests.

Averill is one of a group of researchers who are exploring a new potential avenue for treating PTSD: psychedelics. Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, using MDMA or psilocybin, may act on the brain systems disrupted in PTSD, rather than simply treating the symptoms.

The early findings have been positive: A recent clinical trial showed that 67% of patients who received MDMA-assisted therapy no longer met PTSD criteria after treatment, compared with 32% in the placebo group, and clinical trials investigating psilocybin's potential to treat the condition are showing promise.

Averill is currently leading a pioneering Texas state-funded clinical trial investigating psilocybin for veterans with PTSD and has seen how quickly the drugs can act.

View archived version if blocked