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Robots often struggle to carry out tasks in places where they haven’t been trained, but a new AI model helps them clean up a mess or make a bed in unfamiliar settings

What methods can be employed to send a spacecraft to Uranus despite the former’s immense distance from Earth? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference hopes to address as a team of scientists investigated ways to cut the travel time to the second most distant planet from the Sun. This study has the potential to help scientists, engineers, and mission planners develop low-cost and novel techniques for deep space travel while conducting cutting-edge science.

How can nanosatellites help advance lunar exploration and settlement? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference hopes to address as a team of researchers from Grahaa Space in India investigated the pros, cons, and applications for using nanosatellites on the Moon. This study has the potential to help scientists, engineers, mission planners, and future lunar astronauts develop and test new technologies for advancing lunar exploration, and possibly beyond the Moon.

What are the best methods to explore Valles Marineris on Mars, which is the largest canyon in the solar system? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated how helicopters could be used to explore Valles Marineris, which could offer insights into Mars’ chaotic past. This study has the potential to help scientists and engineers develop new methods for studying Mars’s history and whether the Red Planet once had life as we know it.

Astronomers Observe Dark Matter Bridge in the Perseus Cluster

Space exploration not only allows us to look out into the universe but it also allows us to look back at Earth. ESA’s Biomass satellite will measure the amount of carbon in the world's forests, tracking how the carbon cycle absorbs and releases carbon over the seasonal cycles. It launched this week from the Kourou Spaceport in French Guiana atop a Vega-C rocket and safely reached its intended orbit. It has a synthetic aperture radar that can penetrate forest canopies like an infrared telescope can peer through dark dust clouds.

The James Webb Space Telescope has a number of science goals. One of them is to help understand the evolution of galaxies and their formation within the first billion years after the Big Bang. Astronomers have completed an initial Webb telescope survey that discovered 1,700 galaxy groups. Many of these groups date back to when the Universe was less than 1 billion years old. The survey spans 12 billion years of cosmic history, from these ancient formations to the present day.

Semaglutide, a drug commonly taken for weight loss, showed marked benefits for most patients in a trial for metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH)

Space-based solar power (SBSP) has long been the dream of many space enthusiasts and energy economists. However, the reality of economic constraints has long left any practice projects on the ground. There has been plenty of discussion about how to lower the cost of entry to build the kind of space-based solar power satellite described by John Mankins in his books and articles. However, even with the advent of lower costs to orbit thanks to reusable rockets, the economic case for SBSP is still not great simply due to the sheer amount of mass required to get into orbit. Unless we get that mass from somewhere else, with a smaller gravity well. Astrostrom, which means something like "Star current" in German, is an organization based in Switzerland that hopes to make space-based solar power a reality.

Astronomy has entered the age of gravitational waves. While there are plenty of differences between gravitational wave astronomy and typical waves of the electromagnetic spectrum, they share one similar feature: frequency. While we have detectors for a wide range of electromagnetic frequencies, gravitational wave detectors only focus on a narrow band of relatively low-frequency signals. That will change with the upgrade of the GEO600 gravitational wave detector located at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics.

Washing your clothing on high temperature cycles may not completely disinfect it, researchers have found, because washing machines don't necessarily sustain high enough temperatures

Every second counts when it comes to detecting and treating heart attacks. A new technology may be able to identify heart attacks faster and more accurately than traditional methods.

Researchers demonstrated extremely strong nonlinear light-matter coupling in a quantum circuit. Stronger coupling enables faster quantum readout and operations, ultimately improving the accuracy of quantum operations.

Researchers demonstrated extremely strong nonlinear light-matter coupling in a quantum circuit. Stronger coupling enables faster quantum readout and operations, ultimately improving the accuracy of quantum operations.

Aiming to address age-related cognitive decline, a growing global health challenge, a team of researchers has developed a VR-based smell-training system to help combat it. This innovative VR game activates memory pathways by incorporating olfactory stimulation in a virtual environment. This game-based method offers an engaging platform for maintaining cognitive function and reducing the risk of neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia in older adults.

In what could represent a milestone in ecological restoration, researchers have implemented a method capable of restoring peatlands at tens of thousands of oil and gas exploration sites in Western Canada. The project involves lowering the surface of these decommissioned sites, known as well pads, and transplanting native moss onto them to effectively recreate peatlands. This is the first time researchers have applied the method to scale on an entire well pad. The study found that the technique results in sufficient water for the growth of peatland moss across large portions of the study site.

An international team of scientists has moved beyond just 'scratching the surface,' to understand how microplastics move through and impact the global ocean. For the first time, scientists have mapped microplastic distribution from the surface to the deep sea at a global scale -- revealing not only where plastics accumulate, but how they infiltrate critical ocean systems. Researchers synthesized depth-profile data from 1,885 stations collected between 2014 and 2024 to map microplastic distribution patterns by size and polymer type, while also evaluating potential transport mechanisms.

A Peruvian farmer's case against energy giant RWE will be decided shortly. But it has already made history, says Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change lead author Friederike Otto

We should protect Earth's rivers and forests with laws. But it is another matter to recast them as actual life forms, as Robert Macfarlane's new book Is a River Alive? does

Several recent scientific findings, including signs of life on an exoplanet and 'de-extinction' of the dire wolf have caused a stir but when a claim seems too good to be true it probably is