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Universe Today — Natural Sciences
Universe Today

Space and Astronomy News from Universe Today

Copyright: © Copyright Cosmoquest

Latest Episodes:

Artist's impression of Chariklo and its rongs. (Credit: Lucie Maquet, Observatoire de Paris - PSL) — JWST Finds Dynamic Structural Evolution in Chariklo’s Rings Sep 27, 2026
Show notes

When we think of asteroids, we often think of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter that contains the majority of the known asteroids in our solar system. However, our solar system hosts several other populations of asteroids and icy rocks, including the Jupiter Trojan asteroids that orbit in Jupiter’s orbit, and the icy bodies and comets of the Kuiper Belt. But there’s one population of asteroids that often gets overlooked called Centaurs, primarily because their orbits are not in a fixed location and instead whose orbits cross the orbits of the outer planets.

Mars Perseverance rover - PIXL studies a rock (artist concept). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech — Carbon Rocks Deep Underground Could Hold the Evidence of Mars' Watery Past. Sep 26, 2026
Show notes

A new geochemical modeling study led by researchers at JAXA and the University of Tokyo addresses Mars' "missing" stores of carbonate rocks.

Artist's depiction of a planet in retrograde motion. Credit - ESO/L. Calçada — Astronomers Find a Sub-Neptune Orbiting Completely Backward Around a Red Dwarf Sep 25, 2026
Show notes

In our own solar system, all eight planets orbit our Sun in a nice, orderly fashion. None are more than 7° or so out of alignment with the equator, and all of them rotate in the same direction as the Sun itself. But that’s not the case for all solar systems, and a new paper published in Astronomy & Astrophysics from a team of researchers led by Yann Carteret, a PhD student at the University of Geneva (UNIGE), describes the first time we’ve ever found an exoplanet orbiting the opposite direction of its red dwarf parent star - and it has major implications for our understanding of planet formation theory.

The Perseverance rover captured the data used in this panorama of the “Margin Unit,” a geologic area that hugs the inner edge of Jezero Crater’s rim, between Oct. 8 and Oct. 16, 2023. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS — Perseverance Reveals How Complex Water Systems Shaped the Jezero Crater on Early Mars Sep 24, 2026
Show notes

A new study reveals that Jezero Crater’s enigmatic ‘Margin Unit’ was shaped by a complex sequence of ancient lakes, groundwater systems, and hydrothermal fluids.

Image of the new prototype payload adapter. Credit - Keystone-SDA — Swiss Engineers Just Designed a Better 'Shock Absorber' for Spacecraft Sep 24, 2026
Show notes

Rocket launches are some of the most violent travel methods man has ever created. They generate millions of pounds of thrust and convert that into intense g-forces. Humans must undergo serious training to withstand those experiences, but machines have to do so as well, but by design rather than training. If a delicate mirror or solder joint cracks before a multi-billion dollar satellite even begins its mission, the years of effort that went into its design and assembly could be lost. Now, researchers in Switzerland have come up with an ingenious way to make sure that is much less likely to happen.

A Dragon capsule approaching the ISS. Credit - NASA / Chris Cassidy — Stanford Engineers Teach Spacecraft to "Dream" Their Way to the Space Station Sep 24, 2026
Show notes

Docking with the ISS may seem simple. However, actually doing so is a showcase in how difficult orbital mechanics can be. It’s equivalent to traveling down a highway at 28,000 km/hr and parallel parking into an open garage on a multi-billion dollar laboratory traveling at the same speed. If you try to accelerate forward you actually drift up, and there’s no air friction to naturally slow you down. Oh, and if you hit the lab, everyone onboard both your craft and the station dies, and the resultant debris field could both wipe out dozens of satellites and even people on the ground. No pressure, obviously. For decades, aerospace engineers have been docking successfully using hard coded physics equations and human pilots to correct them. But now, a new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv from researchers at Stanford, is taking a shot at building an AI to perform a series of “mental simulations” that could fundamentally change how future spacecraft interact with each other.

The earliest stars in the Universe began forming some 100 million years after the Big Bang. They lived fast, died young, and left behind material that got recycled into the next generations of stars. Along the way, these also influenced the evolution of their galaxies. CREDIT: NASA/STScI/A. Schaller. — Strange Galaxies in the Early Universe Were Shaped by Weird Stars Sep 24, 2026
Show notes

Galaxies and their stars in the early Universe look a lot weirder than those we see today, and astronomers want to know why. A team of researchers at the University of Utah decided to survey certain stars in nearby galaxies as analogs of those that existed when the Universe was still in its infancy. The survey, called the "Treasury of Extremely Metal-Poor O Stars (TEMPOS), used the ultraviolet (UV) light streaming from those relatively close-by stars as detected by the Hubble Space Telescope's Cosmic Origins Spectrograph.

Astronaut John W. Young, commander of the Apollo 16 lunar landing mission, stands on the rim of Plum Crater while collecting lunar samples at Station 1 during the first Apollo 16 extravehicular activity (EVA-1) at the Descartes landing site. Credit: NASA via Wikipedia — New Lunar Crater Offers Keys To Moon’s Shallow Subsurface Sep 24, 2026
Show notes

Asteroids which strike the Moon and create new craters offer lunar scientists a window onto the workings of our natural satellite’s shallow subsurface.

Infographic showing Juice's flight past Earth with a dotted orange line. Credit: ESA — JUICE Mission to Swing by Earth on September 28 Sep 23, 2026
Show notes

The European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) will return to Earth on 28 September, with flight controllers guiding the spacecraft close to our home planet to alter its speed and direction en route to Jupiter.

A crescent Neptune as seen during Voyager 2's 1989 flyby. [Credit](https://www.flickr.com/photos/andrealuck/51935821827/): NASA/JPL/Voyager-ISS/Andrea Luck/[CC 4.0 license](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en) — Following Neptune Through Opposition 2026 Sep 23, 2026
Show notes

Never seen Neptune for yourself? Late September 2026 presents an ideal opportunity to cross the outermost ice giant off of your ‘life list,’ as the planet reaches opposition for 2026, rising opposite to the setting Sun and riding high to the south towards local midnight.

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