alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: A thorough investigation published in May 2023 found that the inner core of the Moon is, in fact, a solid ball with a density similar to that of iron. To figure it out once and for all, [astronomer Arthur Briaud of the French National Centre for Scientific Research in France] and his colleagues collected data from space missions and lunar laser-ranging experiments to compile a profile of various lunar characteristics. These include the degree of its deformation by its gravitational interaction with Earth, the variation in its distance from Earth, and its density.

... they found that the lunar core is very similar to that of Earth â" with an outer fluid layer and a solid inner core. According to their modeling, the outer core has a radius of about 362 kilometers (225 miles), and the inner core has a radius of about 258 kilometers (160 miles). That's about 15 percent of the entire radius of the Moon. The inner core, the team found, also has a density of about 7,822 kilograms per cubic meter. That's very close to the density of iron. [...] The research has been published in Nature.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin has landed the booster of its New Glenn mega-rocket on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean on just its second attempt -- making it the second company to perform such a feat, following Elon Musk's SpaceX. It's an accomplishment that will help the new rocket system become an option to send larger payloads to space, the Moon, and beyond. Thursday's launch wasn't just about the landing attempt, though. Roughly 34 minutes after takeoff, the upper stage of New Glenn successfully deployed the rocket's first commercial payload: twin spacecraft for NASA that will travel to Mars to study the red planet's atmosphere. The pair of achievements are remarkable for the second-ever launch of such a massive rocket system. And it could put Blue Origin in position to compete with SpaceX, which dominates the world's launch market with its Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Starship rockets. You can watch a recording of the launch here.

Should we leave space exploration to robots — or prioritize human spaceflight, making us a multiplanetary species?

Harvard professor Robin Wordsworth, who's researched the evolution and habitability of terrestrial-type planets, shares his thoughts: In space, as on Earth, industrial structures degrade with time, and a truly sustainable life support system must have the capability to rebuild and recycle them. We've only partially solved this problem on Earth, which is why industrial civilization is currently causing serious environmental damage. There are no inherent physical limitations to life in the solar system beyond Earth — both elemental building blocks and energy from the sun are abundant — but technological society, which developed as an outgrowth of the biosphere, cannot yet exist independently of it. The challenge of building and maintaining robust life-support systems for humans beyond Earth is a key reason why a machine-dominated approach to space exploration is so appealing...

However, it's notable that machines in space have not yet accomplished a basic task that biology performs continuously on Earth: acquiring raw materials and utilizing them for self-repair and growth. To many, this critical distinction is what separates living from non-living systems... The most advanced designs for self-assembling robots today begin with small subcomponents that must be manufactured separately beforehand. Overall, industrial technology remains Earth-centric in many important ways. Supply chains for electronic components are long and complex, and many raw materials are hard to source off-world... If we view the future expansion of life into space in a similar way as the emergence of complex life on land in the Paleozoic era, we can predict that new forms will emerge, shaped by their changed environment, while many historical characteristics will be preserved. For machine technology in the near term, evolution in a more life-like direction seems likely, with greater focus on regenerative parts and recycling, as well as increasingly sophisticated self-assembly capabilities. The inherent cost of transporting material out of Earth's gravity well will provide a particularly strong incentive for this to happen.

If building space habitats is hard and machine technology is gradually developing more life-like capabilities, does this mean we humans might as well remain Earth-bound forever? This feels hard to accept because exploration is an intrinsic part of the human spirit... To me, the eventual extension of the entire biosphere beyond Earth, rather than either just robots or humans surrounded by mechanical life-support systems, seems like the most interesting and inspiring future possibility. Initially, this could take the form of enclosed habitats capable of supporting closed-loop ecosystems, on the moon, Mars or water-rich asteroids, in the mold of Biosphere 2. Habitats would be manufactured industrially or grown organically from locally available materials. Over time, technological advances and adaptation, whether natural or guided, would allow the spread of life to an increasingly wide range of locations in the solar system.
The article ponders the benefits (and the history) of both approaches — with some fasincating insights along the way.

"If genuine alien life is out there somewhere, we'll have a much better chance of comprehending it once we have direct experience of sustaining life beyond our home planet."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: Vanguard feels and smells like a new RV. It has long, gray banquettes that convert into bunks, a microwave cleverly hidden under a counter, a functional steel sink with a French press and crockery above. A weird little toilet hides behind a curtain. But some clues hint that you can't just fire up Vanguard's engine and roll off the lot. The least subtle is its door, a massive disc of steel complete with a wheel that spins to lock. Once it is sealed and moved to its permanent home beneath the waves of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary early next year, Vanguard will be the world's first new subsea habitat in nearly four decades. Teams of four scientists will live and work on the seabed for a week at a time, entering and leaving the habitat as scuba divers. Their missions could include reef restoration, species surveys, underwater archaeology, or even astronaut training.

One of Vanguard's modules, unappetizingly named the "wet porch," has a permanent opening in the floor (a.k.a. a "moon pool") that doesn't flood because Vanguard's air pressure is matched to the water around it.It is this pressurization that makes the habitat so useful. Scuba divers working at its maximum operational depth of 50 meters would typically need to make a lengthy stop on their way back to the surface to avoid decompression sickness. This painful and potentially fatal condition, better known as the bends, develops if divers surface too quickly. A traditional 50-meter dive gives scuba divers only a handful of minutes on the seafloor, and they can make only a couple of such dives a day. With Vanguard's atmosphere at the same pressure as the water, its aquanauts need to decompress only once, at the end of their stay. They can potentially dive for many hours every day. That could unlock all kinds of new science and exploration.

An anonymous reader shared this report from CNN: [C]iting delays in Starship's development and competitive pressure from China, NASA asked SpaceX and Blue Origin — which holds a separate lunar lander contract with the space agency — to submit plans to expedite development of their respective spacecraft by October 29. Both companies have responded. But the space agency is also asking the broader commercial space industry to detail how they might get the job done more quickly, hinting that NASA leadership is prepared to sideline its current partners. CNN spoke with half a dozen companies about how they plan to respond to NASA's call to action, which the agency will formally issue once the government shutdown ends, according to a source familiar with the matter.
One possibility is Lockheed Martin... Notably, as a legacy NASA contractor, the company built the $20.4 billion Orion spacecraft that astronauts will ride when they take off from Earth... Now, Lockheed says it can piece together a two-stage lunar lander that uses spare parts harvested from Orion. The company would make use of Space Shuttle-era OMS-E engines — which are also used on Orion — to serve as the propulsion for an "ascent stage" of the lunar lander, providing the thrust for the vehicle to lift off the moon after a mission is completed. But the vehicle also needs a descent stage to get down to the lunar surface in the first place...

Other commercial space companies contacted by CNN — including Firefly Aerospace and Northrop Grumman — said simply that they were "ready to support" NASA in its endeavor to find a faster way to complete the Artemis III mission. They did not confirm whether they would formally respond to the space agency's anticipated request for companies to submit proposals.
The more important goal, argue some experts, is to pave the way for a permanent lunar base where astronauts can live and work... [P]erhaps the true winner will be the country that is able to build lasting infrastructure, experts say. "It makes great press fodder to frame this as competition," said one space policy source, who was among several that spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity to discuss controversial issues. "But this is about the long game and the sustainability."

schwit1 shares a report from Behind the Black: SpaceX is going to land this spaceship manned on the Moon, whether or not NASA's SLS and Orion are ready. And even if those expensive, cumbersome, and poorly designed boondoggles are ready for those first two Artemis landings, SpaceX is likely to quickly outmatch them with numerous other private missions to the Moon, outside of NASA. It has the funds to do it, and it knows it has the customers willing to buy the flights. The news comes from a detailed update SpaceX released today on the Starship lunar lander. Here's the section where SpaceX "made it clear that it sees Starship and Superheavy as its own space effort, irrelevant of NASA": "To return Americans to the Moon, SpaceX aligned Starship development along two paths: development of the core Starship system and supporting infrastructure, including production facilities, test facilities, and launch sites -- which SpaceX is self-funding representing over 90% of system costs -- and development of the HLS-specific Starship configuration, which leverages and modifies the core vehicle capability to support NASA's requirements for landing crew on and returning them from the Moon. SpaceX is working under a fixed-price contract with NASA, ensuring that the company is only paid after the successful completion of progress milestones, and American taxpayers are not on the hook for increased SpaceX costs. SpaceX provides significant insight to NASA at every stage of the development process along both paths, including access to flight data from missions not funded under the HLS contract.

Both pathways are necessary and made possible by SpaceX's substantial self-investments to enable the high-rate production, launch, and test of Starship for missions to the Moon and other purposes. Starship will bring the United States back to the Moon before any other nation and it will enable sustainable lunar operations by being fully and rapidly reusable, cost-effective, and capable of high frequency lunar missions with more than 100 tons of cargo capacity."

"Japan's new HTV-X cargo spacecraft launched on its first-ever mission to the International Space Station on Saturday," reports Space.com: The robotic HTV-X lifted off atop an H3 rocket from Japan's Tanegashima Space Center at 8 p.m. EDT (0000 GMT and 9 a.m local Japan time on October 26). It is expected to arrive at the station for its capture and berthing on Wednesday (Oct. 29) at about 11:50 a.m. EDT (1550 GMT)...

The HTV-X's potential uses also extend beyond the ISS, according to JAXA. The agency envisions it aiding "post-ISS human space activities in low Earth orbit" as well as possibly flying cargo to Gateway, the space station NASA may build in lunar orbit as part of its Artemis program.

HTV-X's debut increases the stable of ISS cargo craft by one-third. The currently operational freighters are Russia's Progress vehicle and Cygnus and Dragon, spacecraft built by the American companies Northrop Grumman and SpaceX, respectively. Only Dragon is reusable; the others (including HTV-X) are designed to burn up in Earth's atmosphere when their missions are over.

NASA has reopened SpaceX's $4.4 billion moon lander contract to new bidders like Blue Origin and Lockheed Martin after delays in Starship's development threatened the 2027 Artemis 3 mission. Reuters reports: The move paves the way for rivals such as Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin to snatch a high-profile mission to land the first astronauts on the moon in half a century. "I'm in the process of opening that contract up. I think we'll see companies like Blue get involved, and maybe others," the U.S. space agency's acting chief Sean Duffy, who also serves as U.S. Transportation Secretary, told Fox News' "Fox & Friends" program.

Duffy's comments follow months of mounting pressure within NASA to speed up its Artemis lunar program and push SpaceX to make greater progress on its Starship lunar lander, while China progresses toward its own goal of sending humans to the moon by 2030. It represents a major shift in NASA's lunar strategy, starting a new competitive juncture in the program for a crewed moon lander just two years before the scheduled landing date. Blue Origin is widely expected to compete for the mission, while Lockheed Martin has indicated it would convene an industry team to heed NASA's call.

Starship, picked by NASA in 2021 under a contract now worth $4.4 billion, faces a 2027 moon landing deadline that agency advisers estimate could slip years behind schedule, citing competing priorities. Musk sees Starship as crucial to launching larger batches of Starlink satellites to space and eventually ferrying humans to Mars, among other missions. "They do remarkable things, but they're behind schedule," Duffy said of SpaceX's lunar lander work, adding President Donald Trump wants to see the mission take place before his White House term ends in January 2029.

The James Webb Space Telescope gets its highest resolution with the aperture masking interferometer (or AMI), "a tiny piece of precisely machined metal that slots into one of the telescope's cameras," according to a new article by Benjamin Pope, an associated math professor at Macquarie University.

"We can finally present its first successful observations of stars, planets, moons and even black hole jets." [AMI] was put on Webb to diagnose and measure any blur in its images. Even nanometres of distortion in Webb's 18 hexagonal primary mirrors and many internal surfaces will blur the images enough to hinder the study of planets or black holes, where sensitivity and resolution are key. AMI filters the light with a carefully structured pattern of holes in a simple metal plate, to make it much easier to tell if there are any optical misalignments. We wanted to use this mode to observe the birth places of planets, as well as material being sucked into black holes. But before any of this, AMI showed Webb wasn't working entirely as hoped.

At very fine resolution — at the level of individual pixels — all the images were slightly blurry due to an electronic effect: brighter pixels leaking into their darker neighbours. This is not a mistake or flaw, but a fundamental feature of infrared cameras that turned out to be unexpectedly serious for Webb. This was a dealbreaker for seeing distant planets many thousands of times fainter than their stars a few pixels away: my colleagues quickly showed that its limits were more than ten times worse than hoped. So, we set out to correct it...

We built a computer model to simulate AMI's optical physics, with flexibility about the shapes of the mirrors and apertures and about the colours of the stars. We connected this to a machine learning model to represent the electronics with an "effective detector model" — where we only care about how well it can reproduce the data, not about why. After training and validation on some test stars, this setup allowed us to calculate and undo the blur in other data, restoring AMI to full function. It doesn't change what Webb does in space, but rather corrects the data during processing. It worked beautifully — the star HD 206893 hosts a faint planet and the reddest-known brown dwarf (an object between a star and a planet). They were known but out of reach with Webb before applying this correction. Now, both little dots popped out clearly in our new maps of the system... With the new correction, we brought Jupiter's moon Io into focus, clearly tracking its volcanoes as it rotates over an hour-long timelapse.
"This correction has opened the door to using AMI to prospect for unknown planets at previously impossible resolutions and sensitivities..." the article points out.

"Our results on painstakingly testing and enhancing AMI are now released on the open-access archive arXiv in a pair of papers."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.

Scientists have discovered complex organic molecules within the icy plume erupting from Saturn's moon Enceladus, strengthening the case that its hidden saltwater ocean may harbor the conditions for life. The Guardian reports: The sixth largest of Saturn's moons, Enceladus has become one of the leading contenders in the search for bodies that could harbor extraterrestrial life, with the Cassini mission -- which ended in 2017 -- revealing the moon has a plume of water ice grains and vapors erupting from beneath the surface at its south pole. The phenomenon has since been captured by the James Webb space telescope, with the plume reaching nearly 6,000 miles into space. The source of this material is thought to be a saltwater ocean that lies beneath the moon's icy crust.

Now researchers studying data from the Cassini mission say they have discovered organic substances within the plume, with some types of molecule detected there for the first time. Dr Nozair Khawaja, a planetary scientist at Freie University Berlin and lead author of the work, said the results increased the known complexity of the chemistry that is happening below the surface of Enceladus. "When there is complexity happening, that means that the habitable potential of Enceladus is increasing right now," he said. Writing in the journal Nature Astronomy, Khawaja and colleagues reported how their previous work had revealed the presence of organic substances and salts within ice grains found in a ring of Saturn, known as the "E-ring," that is composed of material ejected from Enceladus. [...]

While the new findings do not show that there is life on Enceladus, Khawaja said they indicate there are complex chemical pathways at play that could lead to the formation of substances that could be biologically relevant. The results, he added, support plans by the European Space Agency (ESA) to investigate the moon for signs of life. "I think all the signals are green here for Enceladus," Khawaja said. The findings add momentum to ESA's proposed mission to directly search for biological signs around 2042. According to the ESA, the mission will consist of an orbiter around Enceladus that will also fly through the plumes, as well as a lander that will touch down in the south pole region of the moon.

BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: NASA has awarded Solstar Space a $150,000 SBIR Phase I contract to develop a Lunar Wi-Fi Access Point (LWIFI-AP). The system is designed to provide wireless connectivity for astronauts, rovers, and orbiting spacecraft as part of the Artemis and Commercial Lunar Payload Services programs. Solstar's goal is to build a space-rated, multi-band, multi-protocol access point that can survive radiation, extreme lunar temperatures, and other harsh conditions. NASA has identified Wi-Fi and 3GPP standards as core communication needs across mission systems ranging from the Human Landing System and Lunar Terrain Vehicle to the Lunar Gateway.

Although this is only an early-stage contract, Solstar's proposal addresses a clear gap in space-qualified networking hardware. The company says that just as Wi-Fi transformed daily life on Earth, it will be equally important for living and working on the Moon. If the project advances, astronauts could soon be relying on familiar wireless technology that has been adapted for one of the most challenging environments in existence.

NASA aims to launch its first crewed lunar mission in over 50 years, as early as February. The 10-day Artemis II mission will send four astronauts on a lunar flyby to test systems, paving the way for future Moon landings under the Artemis program. The BBC reports: Lakiesha Hawkins, Nasa's acting deputy associate administrator said it would be an important moment in the human exploration of space. "We together have a front row seat to history," she told a news conference this afternoon. "The launch window could open as early as the fifth of February, but we want to emphasize that safety is our top priority." Artemis Launch Director, Charlie Blackwell-Thompson explained that the powerful rocket system built to take the astronauts to the Moon, the Space Launch System (SLS) was "pretty much stacked and ready to go." All that remained was to complete the crew capsule, called Orion, connected to SLS and to complete ground tests.

The Artemis II launch will see four astronauts go on a ten-day round trip to the Moon and back to the Earth. The astronauts, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, of Nasa and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency, will not land on the Moon, though they will be the first crew to travel beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972. The lead Artemis II flight director, Jeff Radigan explained that the crew would be flying further into space than anyone had been before. "They're going at least 5,000 nautical miles (9,200Km) past the Moon, which is much higher than previous missions have gone," he told reporters. Further reading: NASA Introduces 10 New Astronaut Candidates

NASA has unveiled 10 new astronaut candidates drawn from over 8,000 applicants. The diverse group includes four men and six women -- pilots, scientists, and medical professionals -- who will train for future missions to the ISS, the moon, and eventually Mars. CBS News reports: This is NASA's first astronaut class with more women than men. It includes six pilots with experience in high-performance aircraft, a biomedical engineer, an anesthesiologist, a geologist and a former SpaceX launch director. Among the new astronaut candidates is 39-year-old Anna Menon, a mother of two who flew to orbit in 2024 aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon as a private astronaut on a commercial, non-NASA flight. [...]

The other members of the 2025 astronaut class are:
- Army Chief Warrant Officer 3 Ben Bailey, 38, a graduate of the Naval Test Pilot School with more than 2,000 hours flying more than 30 different aircraft, including recent work with UH-60 Black Hawk and CH-47F Chinook helicopters.
- Lauren Edgar, 40, who holds a Ph.D. in geology from the California Institute of Technology, with experience supporting NASA's Mars exploration rovers and, more recently, serving as a deputy principal investigator with NASA's Artemis 3 moon landing mission.
- Air Force Maj. Adam Fuhrmann, 35, an Air Force Test Pilot School graduate with more than 2,100 hours flying F-16 and F-35 jets. He holds a master's degree in flight test engineering.
- Air Force Maj. Cameron Jones, 35, another graduate of Air Force Test Pilot School as well as the Air Force Weapons School with more than 1,600 hours flying high-performance aircraft, spending most of his time flying the F-22 Raptor.
- Yuri Kubo, 40, a former SpaceX launch director with a master's in electrical and computer engineering who also competed in ultimate frisbee contests.
- Rebecca Lawler, 38, a former Navy P-3 Orion pilot and experimental test pilot with more than 2,800 hours of flight time, including stints flying a NOAA hurricane hunter aircraft. She was a Naval Academy graduate and was a test pilot for United Airlines at the time of her selection.
- Imelda Muller, 34, a former undersea medical officer for the Navy with a medical degree from the University of Vermont's Robert Larner College of Medicine; she was completing her residency in anesthesia at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore at the time of her astronaut selection.
- Navy Lt. Cmdr. Erin Overcash, 34, a Naval Test Pilot School graduate and an experienced F/A-18 and F/A-18F Super Hornet pilot with 249 aircraft carrier landings. She also trained with the USA Rugby Women's National Team.
- Katherine Spies, 43, a former Marine Corps AH-1 attack helicopter pilot and a graduate of the Naval Test Pilot School with more than 2,000 hours flying time. She was director of flight test engineering for Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. at the time of her astronaut selection.

The Moon is rusting -- and it's Earth's fault. Nature: Scientists have found that oxygen particles blown from Earth to the Moon can turn lunar minerals into hematite, also known as rust. The discovery adds to researchers' growing understanding of the deep interconnection between Earth and the Moon -- and shows how the Moon keeps a geological record of those interactions, says Ziliang Jin, a planetary scientist at Macau University of Science and Technology in China. He and his colleagues reported their findings earlier this month in Geophysical Research Letters.

Most of the time, both Earth and the Moon are bathed in a stream of charged particles emanating from the Sun. But for around five days each month, Earth passes between the Sun and the Moon, blocking most of the flood of solar particles. During that time, the Moon is exposed mainly to particles that had been part of Earth's atmosphere before blowing into space -- a phenomenon known as Earth wind. That wind contains ions of various elements, including hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. When those charged particles hit the Moon, they can implant themselves into the upper layers of lunar soil and trigger chemical reactions.

"Astronomers have spotted a quasi-moon near Earth," reports CNN, "and the small space rock has likely been hanging out near our planet unseen by telescopes for about 60 years, according to new research." The newly discovered celestial object, named 2025 PN7, is a type of near-Earth asteroid that orbits the sun but sticks close to our planet. Like our world, 2025 PN7 takes one year to complete an orbit around the sun...

The newly found 2025 PN7 is just one of a handful of known quasi-moons with orbits near our planet, including Kamo'oalewa, which is also thought to be an ancient lunar fragment. Kamo'oalewa is one of the destinations of China's Tianwen-2 mission launched in May, which aims to collect and return samples from the space rock in 2027. The Pan-STARRS observatory located on the Haleakala volcano in Hawaii captured observations of 2025 PN7 on August 29. Archival data revealed that the object has been in an Earth-like orbit for decades.

The quasi-moon managed to escape the notice of astronomers for so long because it is small and faint, said Carlos de la Fuente Marcos, a researcher on the faculty of mathematical sciences at the Complutense University of Madrid who recently authored a paper about the space rock. The paper was published on September 2 in the journal Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society, which is for timely non-peer-reviewed astronomical observations. The space rock swings within 186,000 miles (299,337 kilometers) of us during its closest pass of our planet, de la Fuente Marcos said.... "It can only be detected by currently available telescopes when it gets close to our planet as it did this summer," de la Fuente Marcos explained. "Its visibility windows are few and far between. It is a challenging object...."

Astronomers are still trying to figure out 2025 PN7's size. About 98 feet (30 meters) across is a reasonable estimate, de la Fuente Marcos said. It also has the potential to be 62 feet (19 meters) in diameter, according to EarthSky. The space rock is currently the smallest-known quasi-moon to have orbited near Earth, de la Fuente Marcos said.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post: Finnish tech firm Bluefors, a maker of ultracold refrigerator systems critical for quantum computing, has purchased tens of thousands of liters of Helium-3 from the moon — spending "above $300 million" — through a commercial space company called Interlune. The agreement, which has not been previously reported, marks the largest purchase of a natural resource from space.

Interlune, a company founded by former executives from Blue Origin and an Apollo astronaut, has faced skepticism about its mission to become the first entity to mine the moon (which is legal thanks to a 2015 law that grants U.S. space companies the rights to mine on celestial bodies). But advances in its harvesting technology and the materialization of commercial agreements are gradually making this undertaking sound less like science fiction. Bluefors is the third customer to sign up, with an order of up to 10,000 liters of Helium-3 annually for delivery between 2028 and 2037...

Helium-3 is lighter than the Helium-4 gas featured at birthday parties. It's also much rarer on Earth. But moon rock samples from the Apollo days hint at its abundance there. Interlune has placed the market value at $20 million per kilogram (about 7,500 liters). "It's the only resource in the universe that's priced high enough to warrant going out to space today and bringing it back to Earth," said Rob Meyerson [CEO of Interlune and former president of Blue Origin]...

[H]eat, even in small doses, can cause qubits to produce errors. That's where Helium-3 comes in. Bluefors makes the cooling technology that allows the computer to operate — producing chandelier-type structures known as dilution refrigerators. Their fridges, used by quantum computer leader IBM, contain a mixture of Helium-3 and Helium-4 that pushes temperatures below 10 millikelvins (or minus-460 degrees Fahrenheit)... Existing quantum computers have been built with more than a thousand qubits, he said, but a commercial system or data center would need a million or more. That could require perhaps thousands of liters of Helium-3 per quantum computer. "They will need more Helium-3 than is available on planet Earth," said Gary Lai [a co-founder and chief technology officer of Interlune, who was previously the chief architect at Blue Origin]. Most Helium-3 on Earth, he said, comes from the decay of tritium (an isotope of hydrogen) in nuclear weapons stockpiles, but between 22,000 and 30,000 liters are made each year...

"We estimate there's more than a million metric tons of Helium-3 on the moon," Meyerson said. "And it's been accumulating there for 4 billion years." Now, they just need to get it.
Interlune CEO Meyerson tells the post "It's really all about establishing a resilient supply chain for this critical material" — adding that in the long-term he could also see Helium-3 being used for other purposes including fusion energy.

"Betelgeuse may have competition for the most exciting star about to go nova near Earth," writes Space.com.

"Astronomers have discovered the secret of a strange star system that has baffled them for years, finding it contains a dead star about to erupt after overfeeding on a stellar companion." The supernova explosion of this cosmic cannibal could be as bright as the moon, making it visible with the naked eye over Earth even in broad daylight. The system in question is the double star V Sagittae located around 10,000 light-years from Earth, containing a white dwarf stellar remnant and its victim companion star, which orbit each other roughly twice every Earth day. The new research and the revelation of this white dwarf's imminent catastrophic fate answer questions about V Sagittae that have lingered for 123 years...

White dwarfs represent the final stage of stars with masses around that of the sun, occurring when they run out of fuel for nuclear fusion... [W]hite dwarfs that have a stellar companion can get a second lease on life and a more conclusive and explosive end... [T]he stolen stellar material piles up on the surface of the white dwarf until it pushes this stellar remnant past the so-called Chandrasekhar limit of 1.4 solar masses. This is the mass limit that a stellar remnant has to exceed to trigger a supernova...

However, this team found something very different and extraordinary happening with the stellar material being stolen by the white dwarf in V Sagittae... This investigation revealed that there is a giant halo of gas comprised of material stolen from the companion star wrapped around both the cannibal white dwarf and its stellar victim... "The white dwarf cannot consume all the mass being transferred from its hot star twin, so it creates this bright cosmic ring," team member Pasi Hakala from the University of Turku said. "The speed at which this doomed stellar system is lurching wildly, likely due to the extreme brightness, is a frantic sign of its imminent, violent end."

"The matter accumulating on the white dwarf is likely to produce a nova outburst in the coming years, during which V Sagittae would become visible with the naked eye," Pablo Rodríguez-Gil from Spain's Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias said. "But when the two stars finally smash into each other and explode, this would be a supernova explosion so bright it'll be visible from Earth even in the daytime."
The research was conducted with the Very Large Telescope (four individual telescopes high in the mountains of Chile) — and published last week in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

After its six-year journey to Saturn's moon Titan, Dragonfly's rotorcraft lander "will fly like a large drone," explains its web page, spending three years sampling multiple landing sites to characterize Titan's habitability and look for "precursors of the origin of life." "However, the project has undergone multiple replans impacting cost and schedule, resulting in a life-cycle cost increase of nearly $1 billion and over 2 years of delays," according to an announcement from NASA's Inspector General.

From the Inspector General's report: The cost increase and schedule delay were largely the result of NASA directing [Johns Hopkins University] Applied Physics Laboratory to conduct four replans between June 2019 and July 2023 early in Dragonfly's development. Justifications for these replans included the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain issues, changes to accommodate a heavy-lift launch vehicle, projected funding challenges, and inflation."
But its higher-than-expected life-cycle cost over $3 billion "will continue to absorb an increasing proportion of the Planetary Science Division's total budget," meaning Dragonfly's increased cost (and "additional budget constraints") have "contributed to a gap of at least 12 years in New Frontiers [planetary science] mission launches, and will jeopardize future priorities outlined in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's (National Academies) decadal surveys."

Yet a NASA press release notes the mission "has cleared several key design, development and testing milestones and remains on track toward launch in July 2028." Its software-defined radio has been completed, and the part of the spectrometer which analyzes Titan's chemical components for "potentially biologically relevant" compounds (as well as structural and thermal testing of the lander's insulation).

"The mission is scheduled to launch in July 2028 on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch vehicle from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for spotting this news on the space/science blog "Behind the Black".

Somewhere in Houston, four research volunteers "will soon participate in NASA's year-long simulation of a Mars mission," NASA announced this week, saying it will provide "foundational data to inform human exploration of the Moon, Mars, and beyond."

The 378-day simulation will take place inside a 3D-printed, 1,700-square-foot habitat at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston — starting on October 19th and continuing until Halloween of 2026: Through a series of Earth-based missions called CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog), NASA aims to evaluate certain human health and performance factors ahead of future Mars missions. The crew will undergo realistic resource limitations, equipment failures, communication delays, isolation and confinement, and other stressors, along with simulated high-tempo extravehicular activities. These scenarios allow NASA to make informed trades between risks and interventions for long-duration exploration missions.

"As NASA gears up for crewed Artemis missions, CHAPEA and other ground analogs are helping to determine which capabilities could best support future crews in overcoming the human health and performance challenges of living and operating beyond Earth's resources — all before we send humans to Mars," said Sara Whiting, project scientist with NASA's Human Research Program at NASA Johnson. Crew members will carry out scientific research and operational tasks, including simulated Mars walks, growing a vegetable garden, robotic operations, and more. Technologies specifically designed for Mars and deep space exploration will also be tested, including a potable water dispenser and diagnostic medical equipment...

This mission, facilitated by NASA's Human Research Program, is the second one-year Mars surface simulation conducted through CHAPEA. The first mission concluded on July 6, 2024.

The mysterious X-37B space-plane — the U.S. military's orbital test vehicle — "serves partly as a platform for cutting-edge experiments," writes Space.com

And "one of these experiments is a potential alternative to GPS that makes use of quantum science as a tool for navigation: a quantum inertial sensor." This technology could revolutionize how spacecraft, airplanes, ships and submarines navigate in environments where GPS is unavailable or compromised. In space, especially beyond Earth's orbit, GPS signals become unreliable or simply vanish. The same applies underwater, where submarines cannot access GPS at all. And even on Earth, GPS signals can be jammed (blocked), spoofed (making a GPS receiver think it is in a different location) or disabled — for instance, during a conflict... Traditional inertial navigation systems, which use accelerometers and gyroscopes to measure a vehicle's acceleration and rotation, do provide independent navigation, as they can estimate position by tracking how the vehicle moves over time... Eventually though, without visual cues, small errors will accumulate and you will entirely lose your positioning...

At very low temperatures, atoms obey the rules of quantum mechanics: they behave like waves and can exist in multiple states simultaneously — two properties that lie at the heart of quantum inertial sensors. The quantum inertial sensor aboard the X-37B uses a technique called atom interferometry, where atoms are cooled to the temperature of near absolute zero, so they behave like waves. Using fine-tuned lasers, each atom is split into what's called a superposition state, similar to Schrödinger's cat, so that it simultaneously travels along two paths, which are then recombined.

Since the atom behaves like a wave in quantum mechanics, these two paths interfere with each other, creating a pattern similar to overlapping ripples on water. Encoded in this pattern is detailed information about how the atom's environment has affected its journey. In particular, the tiniest shifts in motion, like sensor rotations or accelerations, leave detectable marks on these atomic "waves". Compared to classical inertial navigation systems, quantum sensors offer orders of magnitude greater sensitivity. Because atoms are identical and do not change, unlike mechanical components or electronics, they are far less prone to drift or bias. The result is long duration and high accuracy navigation without the need for external references.

The upcoming X-37B mission will be the first time this level of quantum inertial navigation is tested in space.
The article points out that a quantum navigation system could be crucial "for future space exploration, such as to the Moon, Mars or even deep space," where autonomy is key and when signals from Earth are unavailable.

"While quantum computing and quantum communication often steal headlines, systems like quantum clocks and quantum sensors are likely to be the first to see widespread use."