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Meet Orpheus - A Hopper Mission Built To Hunt For Life In Martian Volcanoes

We’ve spent decades scratching the surface of Mars trying to uncover life there. But we’ve been searching a barren wasteland bombarded by radiation and bathed in toxic perchlorates. The entire time, it's likely that it’s been too hostile to harbor extant life. So if we want a better shot at finding currently living life on Mars, we need to go underground. That is exactly the purpose of Orpheus, a proposed Mars vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) hopper mission put forth by Connor Bunn and Pascal Lee of the SETI Institute at the 57th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC). from Universe Today https://ift.tt/YSZb4Uo via IFTTT
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SuperCDM Experiment Reaches Critical Temperature, Bringing it One Step Closer to Detecting Dark Matter

The Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (SuperCDMS) experiment has reached its coldest operating temperature, hundreds of times colder than outer space. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/8GSPAnC via IFTTT
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The Outer Solar System Contributed Nothing To Earth

New research shows that Earth formed from inner Solar System material. Isotopic geochemistry analysis found no evidence that material from beyond Jupiter contributed to Earth's bulk composition. The results also support the idea that Earth's water wasn't delivered by comets. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/rktpdY6 via IFTTT
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JAXA Plans To Bring Back Pristine Early Solar System Samples From A Comet

Japan’s space agency, JAXA, has been knocking it out of the park with small-body exploration missions for decades. They had historic successes with both Hayabusa and Hayabusa2, and they are going to visit the Martian Moons soon with the Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission. But after that, they are aiming for something much more pristine and arguably more difficult - a comet. The Next Generation Small-Body Return (NGSR) was recently described in a paper at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC), and is under assessment as a large-class mission for the 2030s. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/CGTDuUj via IFTTT
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Blue Origin Plans A Pair Of Low-Flying Prospectors Around The Lunar South Pole

The water locked up in the Permanently Shadowed Regions (PSRs) of the Moon’s south pole is a critical resource if we are ever going to get a permanent lunar presence off the ground. But while we know the water ice there exists, we don’t really know how much. We have to move from general estimates to mineable-scale prospecting data. That is what Oasis-1, the newly proposed lunar prospecting mission from Blue Origin that was recently introduced at the 2026 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) is meant to do. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/i4SqjUx via IFTTT
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JWST Spies Once-hidden Treasures in the W51 Starbirth Crèche

Star formation is a dramatic and complex process that erupts throughout the Universe. Yet, a lot of the action gets hidden by clouds of gas and dust. That's where observatories such as the James Webb Telescope JWST and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) come in handy. They use infrared light and radio waves, respectively, to pierce the veil surrounding the process of starbirth. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/LhyRD1C via IFTTT
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Artemis II Mission Shares First Photo of Earth

NASA astronaut and Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman took this picture of Earth from the Orion spacecraft's window after completing the translunar injection burn. There are two auroras (top right and bottom left) and zodiacal light (bottom right) is visible as the Earth eclipses the Sun. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/OUCyWnY via IFTTT
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