Space
press releases.

Space25 Mar 2026

Gladstone Institutes expands research footprint with 105,000 square feet of new laboratory space

SAN FRANCISCO—Gladstone Institutes has secured more than 105,000 square feet of future laboratory space in a newly constructed building at 1450 Owens Street, empowering its scientists with the tools and environment to create medicines of the future. Located a block from Gladstone’s headquarters in San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood, the new space will be home to approximately 300 scientists across 20 labs, with state-of-the-art equipment and computational abilities, starting in early 2027. “We’re at a revolutionary moment in science ...

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Space23 Mar 2026

NASA’s EDGE mission taps Boise State as part of next-generation Earth observation effort

EDGE is one of two next-generation satellite missions announced in February. The mission will help NASA better understand changes to the Earth’s surface and will create detailed 3D maps of vegetation, as well as ice formations like glaciers and sea ice. It builds on the work of two existing NASA satellites, but will do it better and more precisely. This is particularly important for ecosystems in the semi-arid west, where measuring low-height vegetation such as shrubs and vegetation on steep slopes is challenging. Accurate measurement of vegetation ...

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Space23 Mar 2026

‘Space archaeology’ reveals first dynamic history of a giant spiral galaxy

Cambridge, MA (March 23, 2026) — A team of astronomers led by the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard and Smithsonian have for the first time used galactic archaeology, the study of detailed chemical fingerprints in deep space, to trace the history of a galaxy outside the Milky Way. The study, published today in the journal Nature Astronomy, demonstrates a new way to reconstruct the evolution of distant galaxies, and opens up a new field of astronomy, called “extragalactic archaeology.” “This is the first time that a chemical archaeology ...

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Space18 Mar 2026

Giant planets spin fast, brown dwarfs spin slow - and that difference traces back to birth

A Northwestern-led team measured the spin rates of six giant exoplanets and 25 brown dwarfs using Keck Observatory, finding a clear pattern: giant planets rotate at a larger fraction of their maximum possible speed than brown dwarfs, suggesting different formation histories.

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Space18 Mar 2026

The dark matter detector buried 6,800 feet underground just hit its coldest temperature

The SuperCDMS experiment at SNOLAB in Ontario has reached its operating temperature - hundreds of times colder than outer space - marking the transition from construction to active science as researchers prepare to search for lightweight dark matter particles.

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Space16 Mar 2026

An exoplanet 35 light-years away doesn't fit any known category - it may be a new type of world

Oxford-led research identifies L 98-59 d as a potential new class of exoplanet - one sustaining a permanent magma ocean that stores massive sulfur reserves and maintains a thick, hydrogen-sulfide-rich atmosphere. Published in Nature Astronomy, the finding suggests planetary diversity may be greater than current models allow.

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Space12 Mar 2026

Our Sun Escaped the Galactic Center with Thousands of Stellar Twins

Using Gaia satellite data, Japanese researchers built the largest catalog of solar 'twins' ever assembled and found a population peak at 4-6 billion years old, providing evidence that our Sun migrated outward from the galactic center en masse.

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Space11 Mar 2026

First Magnetar Birth Observed in a Superluminous Supernova's Light Curve

A chirp-like signal in the light curve of superluminous supernova SN 2024afav reveals Lense-Thirring precession around a newborn magnetar, confirming the long-theorized engine behind the universe's brightest stellar explosions. Published in Nature.

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Space11 Mar 2026

A Supernova's 'Chirp' Reveals a Magnetar Being Born Inside the Blast

Superluminous supernova SN 2024afav displayed a never-before-seen chirp pattern in its light curve, produced by a wobbling accretion disk around a newborn magnetar. The finding, published in Nature, is the first direct evidence that magnetars power these ultra-bright stellar explosions.

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Space11 Mar 2026

First Eccentric Orbit Found in a Black Hole-Neutron Star Merger

For the first time, researchers have found robust evidence that a black hole and neutron star merged from an oval orbit rather than the expected circular path, suggesting the pair was shaped by dense stellar environments rather than evolving in isolation.

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Space6 Mar 2026

Rice University wins $8.1 million to lead Space Force remote sensing center

Rice University will lead the U.S. Space Force's fourth Strategic Technology Institute, a $8.1 million center focused on advancing remote sensing technologies for space with partners from UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, Georgia Tech, and Aegis Aerospace.

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Space6 Mar 2026

Physicists prove that neutron star vibrations follow harmonic oscillator rules, even in Einstein's gravity

Researchers extended a Newtonian result to Einstein's general relativity, proving that the tidal vibrations of inspiraling neutron stars form a complete set of damped harmonic oscillators -- opening a path to reading neutron star interiors from gravitational wave data.

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Space5 Mar 2026

Chickpeas Grown in Simulated Moon Dirt -- With Help From Worms and Fungi

Scientists have grown and harvested chickpeas in mixtures of up to 75% simulated lunar soil by adding worm compost and symbiotic fungi, marking the first time this crop has been produced in such a medium.

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Space5 Mar 2026

128 New Gravitational-Wave Signals Reveal a Universe Ringing with Collisions

The LVK collaboration's latest catalog adds 128 gravitational-wave events from just nine months of observing, more than doubling the previous total and exposing an unexpectedly rich variety of black hole collisions.

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Space5 Mar 2026

LIGO's New Catalog Doubles Known Gravitational-Wave Detections to Over 300

The LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration has released its largest gravitational-wave catalog yet, adding 128 new detections that more than double the previous total and reveal an unexpectedly diverse population of colliding black holes.

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Space4 Mar 2026

New York space consortium funds five projects from rocket payloads to polymer testing in orbit

The New York Consortium for Space Technology Innovation and Development has selected five projects for its second round of defense-funded awards, ranging from a Cornell facility to test materials in simulated space environments to a Griffiss Institute program putting middle schoolers to work on rocket payloads.

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Space4 Mar 2026

At 100 Trillion Electron Volts, a Pulsar's Halo Reveals How Cosmic Rays Move Through the Galaxy

For the first time, physicists have measured the turbulent magnetic structure of space at sub-parsec scales by studying gamma rays above 100 TeV pouring from the Geminga pulsar. The finding aligns with turbulence laws derived on scales billions of times larger.

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Space3 Mar 2026

A 3D map of the early universe's hydrogen glow, built from half a petabyte of telescope data

By treating an entire region of sky as a single blurry source of light rather than cataloging individual galaxies, astronomers built the first large-scale 3D map of Lyman alpha emissions from the early universe. The technique captured structures too faint for conventional surveys to see.

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Space3 Mar 2026

A Desert Bacterium Survived Simulated Mars-Ejection Pressures. Now Scientists Ask What That Means.

Johns Hopkins scientists tested the desert bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans under pressures up to 2.4 gigapascals - equivalent to Mars-ejection forces - and found 60% survived, with gene expression showing active DNA repair. The PNAS Nexus study supports lithopanspermia theory and raises planetary protection concerns for Mars missions and its moons.

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Space3 Mar 2026

Ryugu Asteroid Particles Carry a 4.5-Billion-Year-Old Magnetic Memory

Paleomagnetic measurements of 28 particles from the asteroid Ryugu reveal magnetic signatures acquired during ancient water-driven mineral growth, offering a direct record of the solar nebula's magnetic field within the first 7 million years after solar system formation. The findings appear in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.

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Space3 Mar 2026

Alaska Fires Warm the Planet While Canada Fires Cool It - Permafrost Is Why

Fires across Alaska warm the planet through permafrost carbon release, while Canada fires produce net cooling via snowpack albedo, a 19-year Nature Geoscience analysis finds. That balance is expected to reverse as warming reduces snow cover and thaws deeper Arctic soils.

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Space3 Mar 2026

Chang'e-6 Moon Samples Reveal Far-Side Soil Is Sharper and Stronger Than Near-Side Regolith

Beihang University researchers used deep learning and X-ray micro-CT to characterize 349,000 individual particles from China's Chang'e-6 far-side samples without destroying them, finding irregularly shaped regolith with an internal friction angle of 47.96 degrees - significantly stiffer than near-side soil and presenting new engineering challenges for lunar base construction.

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Space3 Mar 2026

A New Optical Technique Breaks the Diffraction Limit Using Momentum Space - Without Post-Processing

Tsinghua researchers publish in eLight a far-field superresolution imaging method that achieves 2.1x better resolution than the diffraction limit without fluorescent labels or post-processing, using topology-optimized metalens designs that exploit momentum-space superoscillation instead of real-space approaches.

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Space26 Feb 2026

Apollo Samples Were Misleading: The Moon's Strong Magnetic Field Was Rare and Brief

Oxford University geoscientists analyzing Apollo samples found a tight link between high titanium content and strong magnetic signatures, revealing that the strong field was not sustained but occurred in brief pulses - and that Apollo sampling geography concealed this for decades.

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Space25 Feb 2026

Processed Sewage Can Weatherize Moon and Mars Simulant Soil Into Something Plants Might Grow In

A study in ACS Earth and Space Chemistry found that mixing processed sewage effluent from NASA's BLiSS system with simulated lunar and Martian regolith released key plant nutrients and physically weathered the sharp mineral particles - preliminary steps toward extraterrestrial crop growth.

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