Space
press releases.

Space28 Jan 2026

ICCUB astronomers lead the most ambitious study of runaway massive stars in the Milky Way

Researchers from the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) and the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC), in collaboration with the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC), have led the most extensive observational study to date of runaway massive stars, which includes an analysis of the rotation and binarity of these stars in our galaxy. This study, published today in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, sheds new light on how these stellar “runaways” are ejected into ...

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Space26 Jan 2026

Astronomers reveal new details about dark matter’s influence on Universe

Scientists have created the highest resolution map of the dark matter that threads through the Universe – showing its influence on the formation of stars, galaxies and planets. The research, including astronomers from Durham University, UK, tells us more about how this invisible substance helped pull ordinary matter into galaxies like our Milky Way and planets like Earth. The findings, using new data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (Webb), are published in the journal Nature Astronomy. The study was jointly ...

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Space23 Jan 2026

Watching forests grow from space

Forests are central to climate mitigation, yet tracking how fast they grow over decades remains difficult. A new satellite-based approach reconstructs forest canopy height changes across southern China from the 1980s onward. The analysis reveals sustained forest growth, clear differences between plantation and secondary forests, and the dominant role of management in shaping forest structure. The results show that long-term forest development can be monitored consistently from space. Forest canopy height reflects tree growth, biomass accumulation, and carbon storage potential. While ...

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Space23 Jan 2026

Research Article | Evaluation of ten satellite-based and reanalysis precipitation datasets on a daily basis for Czechia (2001–2021)

A new study published in Big Earth Data provides a comprehensive evaluation of the accuracy of widely used satellite-based and reanalysis precipitation datasets, offering critical guidance for hydrological, climate, and environmental applications in Central Europe. Citation Paluba, D., Bližňák, V., Müller, M., & Štych, P. (2025). Evaluation of ten satellite-based and reanalysis precipitation datasets on a daily basis for Czechia (2001–2021). Big Earth Data, 1–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/20964471.2025.2592444 Abstract This ...

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Space23 Jan 2026

Breakthrough in development of reliable satellite-based positioning for dense urban areas

Global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) are vital for positioning autonomous vehicles, buses, drones, and outdoor robots. Yet its accuracy often degrades in dense urban areas due to signal blockage and reflections. Now, researchers have developed a GNSS-only method that delivers stable, accurate positioning without relying on fragile carrier-phase ambiguity resolution. Tested across six challenging urban scenarios, the approach consistently outperformed existing methods, enabling safer and more reliable autonomous navigation. Accurately determining position is critical for the safety and reliability of autonomous vehicles and outdoor ...

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Space22 Jan 2026

Scientists devise way to track space junk as it falls to earth

Space debris—the thousands of pieces of human-made objects abandoned in Earth’s orbit—pose a risk to humans when they fall to the ground. To locate possible crash sites, a Johns Hopkins University scientist has helped to devise a way to track falling debris using existing networks of earthquake-detecting seismometers. The new tracking method generates more detailed information in near real-time than authorities have today—information that will help to quickly locate and retrieve the charred and sometimes toxic remains. “Re-entries are happening more frequently. Last year, we had multiple satellites entering our atmosphere ...

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Space22 Jan 2026

Tracking uncontrolled space debris reentry using sonic booms

Researchers present a novel way to track errant space debris as it falls to Earth in near-real-time, according to a new study. Their method uses ground-based seismic sensors. Over the last several years, the number of spent spacecraft and other debris reentering Earth’s atmosphere has grown exponentially. These uncontrolled reentries pose increasing risks to human life, infrastructure, and the environment. As Earth’s orbit grows increasingly crowded and reentries become more frequent – potentially involving spacecraft carrying toxic, flammable, or radioactive materials – these risks are expected to become more of ...

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Space22 Jan 2026

Theory-breaking extremely fast-growing black hole

An international research team has discovered a supermassive black hole growing rapidly while radiating bright X-rays and radio waves. This combination of features contradicts the current models of black hole growth, requiring astronomers to look for a new explanation. Supermassive black holes, millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun, sit in the centers of most galaxies. They grow by pulling in surrounding gas. As gas spirals inward, it can power a compact region of hot plasma known as a corona which emits X-rays. Some supermassive black holes also form a jet of outflowing material that emits strongly at radio wavelengths. But if gas falls ...

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Space21 Jan 2026

Massive cloud with metallic winds discovered orbiting mystery object

Sweeping winds of vaporized metals have been found in a massive cloud that dimmed the light of a star for nearly nine months. This discovery, made with the Gemini South telescope in Chile, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, partly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and operated by NSF NOIRLab, offers a rare glimpse into the chaotic and dynamic processes still shaping planetary systems long after their formation. In September 2024, a star 3000 light-years away suddenly became 40 times dimmer than usual, and remained so until May 2025. The star, J0705+0612, is similar to our Sun, so its ...

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Space21 Jan 2026

Triboelectric nanogenerators for future space missions

As spacecraft venture deeper into extreme environments (−270 °C to 1650 °C, 10-6 g, 5000 mSv), conventional solar, battery and nuclear sources reveal weight, radiation and eclipse limitations. Now researchers from Luleå University of Technology, Khalifa University and the University of Cambridge—led by Rayyan Ali Shaukat, Yarjan Abdul Samad and Yijun Shi—deliver the first panoramic review on triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) as lightweight, self-powered energy and sensing solutions for next-generation space systems. Why TENGs Matter • Energy everywhere – convert launch vibration, micrometeoroid impacts, ...

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Space19 Jan 2026

Polar weather on Jupiter and Saturn hints at the planets’ interior details

Over the years, passing spacecraft have observed mystifying weather patterns at the poles of Jupiter and Saturn. The two planets host very different types of polar vortices, which are huge atmospheric whirlpools that rotate over a planet’s polar region. On Saturn, a single massive polar vortex appears to cap the north pole in a curiously hexagonal shape, while on Jupiter, a central polar vortex is surrounded by eight smaller vortices, like a pan of swirling cinnamon rolls. Given that both planets are similar ...

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Space19 Jan 2026

Human nasal passages defend against the common cold and help determine how sick we get

When a rhinovirus, the most frequent cause of the common cold, infects the lining of our nasal passages, our cells work together to fight the virus by triggering an arsenal of antiviral defenses. In a paper publishing January 19 in the Cell Press journal Cell Press Blue, researchers demonstrate how the cells in our noses work together to defend us from the common cold and suggest that our body’s defense to rhinovirus—not the virus itself—typically predicts whether or not we catch a cold, as well as how bad our symptoms will be. “As the number one cause of common colds and a major cause of breathing problems in people with asthma and ...

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Space16 Jan 2026

Mysterious iron ‘bar’ discovered in famous nebula

A mysterious bar-shaped cloud of iron has been discovered inside the iconic Ring Nebula by a European team led by astronomers at UCL (University College London) and Cardiff University. The cloud of iron atoms, described for the first time in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, is in the shape of a bar or strip: it just fits inside the inner layer of the elliptically shaped nebula, familiar from many images including those obtained by the James Webb Space Telescope at infrared wavelengths1. The bar’s length is roughly 500 times that of Pluto’s orbit around the Sun and, according ...

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Space14 Jan 2026

Copenhagen researchers make the front page of Nature: Solving the mystery of the universe's ‘little red dots’

Since the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) went into operation, red dots in its images have puzzled researchers around the world. Now, researchers from the University of Copenhagen have explained these enigmatic findings, revealing the most violent forces in the universe concealed in a cocoon of ionized gas. The discovery is published in Nature today. Since December 2021, when the James Webb super telescope saw first light, some 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, researchers around the world have been scratching their heads over unexplained red dots among stars and galaxies in the images ...

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Space14 Jan 2026

‘Cosmic clock’ reveals Australian landscapes’ history and potential future

Curtin University researchers have demonstrated a new way to uncover the ancient history of Australia’s landscapes, which could offer crucial insights into how our environment responds to geological processes and climate change and even where deposits of valuable minerals may be found. The international team led by Curtin’s Timescales of Mineral Systems Group at the School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, in cooperation with the University of Göttingen and the University of Cologne, studied tiny crystals of zircon found ...

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Space13 Jan 2026

Giant Magellan Telescope names Daniel T. Jaffe as president

PASADENA, CA – January 13, 2026 – The GMTO Corporation, the international consortium building the Giant Magellan Telescope, today announced it has appointed Daniel T. Jaffe as president, succeeding Robert N. Shelton, who announced his retirement last year after guiding the observatory through a period of significant growth. “Dan brings decades of leadership in research, astronomy instrumentation, public-private partnerships, and academia,” said Taft Armandroff, board chair of the GMTO Corporation. “His deep understanding ...

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Space13 Jan 2026

New parameterization method for cislunar space cataloging enhances orbital awareness in Earth-Moon system

As lunar exploration intensifies, the cislunar space is experiencing increasing congestion. Traditional two-body Keplerian elements, which have long been the standard for Earth-orbiting objects, prove insufficient for accurately describing the complex orbits near the Earth–Moon Lagrange points due to the chaotic and non-integrable nature of three-body dynamics. This fundamental deficiency has hindered the development of an effective space situational awareness (SSA) framework for this strategically vital region. A research team from the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) ...

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Space13 Jan 2026

Dark matter may have begun much hotter than scientists thought

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (01/13/2026) — Researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and Universit´e Paris-Saclay have challenged a decades-old dark matter theory. Their new research shows that the Universe’s most mysterious material could have been “incredibly hot”–moving at nearly the speed of light–when it was first born. The study was recently published in Physical Review Letters, the premier journal of the American Physical Society. The research gives new clues about the origins of our Universe and opens up a broader range of possibilities for dark matter and how it ...

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Space12 Jan 2026

Astronomers surprised by mysterious shock wave around dead star

Gas and dust flowing from stars can, under the right conditions, clash with a star’s surroundings and create a shock wave. Now, astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) have imaged a beautiful shock wave around a dead star — a discovery that has left them puzzled. According to all known mechanisms, the small, dead star RXJ0528+2838 should not have such structure around it. This discovery, as enigmatic as it’s stunning, challenges our ...

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Space12 Jan 2026

‘Death by a thousand cuts’: Young galaxy ran out of fuel as black hole choked off supplies

Astronomers have spotted one of the oldest ‘dead’ galaxies yet identified, and found that a growing supermassive black hole can slowly starve a galaxy rather than tear it apart. The researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, used data from the James Webb Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), to study a galaxy in the early universe – about three billion years after the Big Bang. The galaxy, called GS-10578 but nicknamed ‘Pablo’s Galaxy’ after the astronomer who first observed it in detail, is massive for such ...

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Space8 Jan 2026

UC Irvine astronomers spot largest known stream of super-heated gas in the universe

UC Irvine astronomers found an unexpectedly large stream of super-heated gas at nearby galaxy. The team used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and other observatories. Project funding was provided by NASA and the National Science Foundation. Irvine, Calif., Jan. 8, 2026 —University of California, Irvine astronomers have announced the discovery of the largest-known stream of super-heated gas in the universe ejecting from a nearby galaxy called VV 340a. They describe the discovery in Science. The super-heated gas, detected by the researchers in data provided by NASA’s ...

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Space8 Jan 2026

Dark stars could help solve three pressing puzzles of the high-redshift universe

A recent study led by Colgate Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy Cosmin Ilie, in collaboration with Jillian Paulin ’23 at the University of Pennsylvania, Andreea Petric of the Space Telescope Science Institute, and Katherine Freese of the University of Texas at Austin, provides answers to three seemingly disparate, yet pressing, cosmic dawn puzzles. Specifically, the authors show how dark stars could help explain the unexpected discovery of “blue monster” galaxies, the numerous early overmassive black hole galaxies, and the “little red dots” in images ...

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Space7 Jan 2026

NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory spots record-breaking asteroid in pre-survey observations

As part of the NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory First Look event in June 2025, Rubin announced that it had observed thousands of asteroids cruising about our Solar System, about 1900 of which have been confirmed as never-before-seen [1]. Within the flurry, a team of astronomers has discovered 19 super- and ultra-fast-rotating asteroids. One of these is the fastest-spinning asteroid larger than 500 meters (0.3 miles) ever found. The study was led by Sarah Greenstreet, NSF NOIRLab assistant ...

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Space7 Jan 2026

We finally know how the most common types of planets are created

Thanks to the discovery of thousands of exoplanets to date, we know that planets bigger than Earth but smaller than Neptune orbit most stars. Oddly, our sun lacks such a planet. That’s been a source of frustration for planetary scientists, who can’t study them in as much detail as they’d like, leaving one big question: How did these planets form? Now we know the answer. An international team of astrophysicists from UCLA and elsewhere has witnessed four baby planets in the V1298 Tau ...

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Space6 Jan 2026

Scientists discover ‘platypus galaxies’ in the early universe

Scientists at the University of Missouri have identified a small group of unusual objects in the early universe. Using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), Haojing Yan and his team at Mizzou’s College of Arts and Science spotted these strange objects, which seem like one galactic thing but have the unmistakable fingerprints of something else entirely. These objects have “point-like” features that would normally place them in one of two categories: stars or quasars, which are the brilliant ...

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