TYB
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twafGSmt9os
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
May 23, 2025
NGC 6366 vs 47 Ophiuchi
Most globular star clusters roam the halo of our Milky Way galaxy, but globular cluster NGC 6366 lies close to the galactic plane. About 12,000 light-years away toward the constellation Ophiuchus, the cluster's starlight is dimmed and reddened by the Milky Way's interstellar dust when viewed from planet Earth. As a result, the stars of NGC 6366 look almost golden in this telescopic scene, especially when seen next to relatively bright, bluish, and nearby star 47 Ophiuchi. Compared to the hundred thousand stars or so gravitationally bound in distant NGC 6366, 47 Oph itself is a binary star system a mere 100 light-years away. Still, the co-orbiting stars of 47 Oph are too close together to be individually distinguished in the image.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
JPL to Transition to Fully Onsite Work
May 22, 2025
In an email to employees, the director’s office announced that a transition to fully onsite work will occur this year.
Colleagues,
A deeply engaged and collaborative culture defines JPL’s legacy of excellence and innovation. To advance that culture as we position for the future, JPL will be implementing a full return to onsite work for all employees.
We all know there are both challenges and opportunities ahead. We are likely facing a very tough budget environment — this is a time to have all hands on deck and to do everything we can to ensure the best possible future for the Lab.
We weighed this decision carefully. As we return, we will focus on cultivating relationship-building, mentoring, spontaneous interactions, and real-time problem-solving — all of which drive our most innovative work and will prepare us to meet the demands of today’s dynamic environment.
We recognize that a full return to in-person work is a significant change for many. Therefore, we are allowing longer than our telework policy mandates for people to fully return onsite.
General telework employees will have until Monday, August 25, to fully return to their assigned work location, and remote telework employees — both in and outside of California — will have until Monday, October 27.
Note that for those who can, we encourage returning to fully onsite work sooner than the required dates. Although rare exceptions are possible (see below), employees who do not return by their required date will be considered to have resigned.
Although our existing telework policy will be decommissioned, we’re maintaining flexible work benefits including RDO Fridays for employees on the 9/80 workweek schedule, up to two weeks of remote work from anywhere in the U.S. annually, and incidental telework for non-recurring or unplanned events (e.g., medical appointments or inclement weather).
Exceptions to the return-onsite mandate will be extremely rare and need to be worked through managers and ultimately approved by both a Director for and a small committee of Lab leadership.
We may make time-limited exceptions for employees who intend to relocate or return fully onsite but require additional time to do so due to extenuating circumstances, such as being impacted by the recent fires.
On the week of June 2, we will provide the exception form to managers. On the week of June 23, we will ask fully remote employees to indicate by July 20 whether they intend to return to help us prepare for anticipated onsite presence and office space transitions.
I encourage you to review the resources available for employees on the Human Resources site, including FAQs, and to discuss specific concerns or support for transition needs with your manager.
Thank you in advance for your continued dedication to our mission, to NASA and to JPL.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/jpl-to-transition-to-fully-onsite-work/
NASA Supports Artemis Accords Signatories Advancing Exploration
May 22, 2025
The United States participated in an international Artemis Accords workshop May 21-22 to advance the safe and responsible exploration of the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
Hosted by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which was represented by the UAE Space Agency, the workshop took place at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre.
The Artemis Accords are a set of non-binding principles signed by nations for a peaceful and prosperous future in space for all of humanity to enjoy.
In October 2020, under the first Trump administration, the accords were created, and since then, 54 countries have joined with the United States in committing to transparent and responsible behavior in space.
“Following President Trump’s visit to the Middle East, the United States built upon the successful trip through engagement with a global coalition of nations to further implement the accords – practical guidelines for ensuring transparency, peaceful cooperation, and shared prosperity in space exploration,” said acting NASA Administrator Janet Petro.
“These accords represent a vital step toward uniting the world in the pursuit of exploration and scientific discovery beyond Earth.
NASA is proud to lead in the overall accords effort, advancing the principles as we push the boundaries of human presence in space – for the benefit of all.”
Participants from 30 countries joined the discussions and a tabletop exercise centered on defining challenges for operating in a complex environment.
As the Artemis Accords workshop concluded Thursday, participants reaffirmed their commitment to upholding the principles outlined in the accords and to continue identifying best practices and guidelines for safe and sustainable exploration.
The first workshop was hosted by Poland in 2023, followed by Canada in 2024.
Artemis Accords signatories have committed to sharing information about their activities to the United Nations of Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space and other appropriate channels. Transparency and communication are key to peaceful exploration.
The Artemis Accords signatories will gather for face-to-face discussions on the margins of the International Astronautical Congress in late September, where workshop recommendations and outcomes will be presented to the Artemis Accords principals.
NASA anticipates additional countries will sign in the coming weeks and months.
The Artemis Accords are grounded in the Outer Space Treaty and other agreements, including the Registration Convention and the Rescue and Return Agreement, as well as best practices for responsible behavior that NASA and its partners have supported, including the public release of scientific data.
https://www.nasa.gov/organizations/oiir/artemis-accords/nasa-supports-artemis-accords-signatories-advancing-exploration/
NASA Astronaut to Answer Questions from Students in Washington State
May 22, 2025
NASA astronaut and Spokane, Washington, native Anne McClain will participate in an event with students from the Mobius Discovery Center located in her hometown.
McClain will answer prerecorded questions submitted by students from aboard the International Space Station.
Watch the 20-minute Earth-to-space call on the NASA STEM YouTube Channel.
The event will take place at 1:25 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, May 27. Media interested in covering the event must RSVP no later than 5 p.m. EDT on Friday, May 23, to Karen Hudson at 509-321-7125 or via email at: mkhudson@mobiusspokane.org.
The Mobius Discovery Center will host the event for elementary, middle, and high school students from various schools across the region, nonprofit organizations, and the Kalispel Tribe.
This event is designed to foster imagination among students through exploration of hands-on exhibits and science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics learning opportunities while inspiring students to consider McClain’s career path.
For more than 24 years, astronauts have continuously lived and worked aboard the space station, testing technologies, performing science, and developing skills needed to explore farther from Earth.
Astronauts aboard the orbiting laboratory communicate with NASA’s Mission Control Center in Houston 24 hours a day through SCaN’s (Space Communications and Navigation) Near Space Network.
Important research and technology investigations taking place aboard the space station benefit people on Earth and lays the groundwork for other agency missions.
As part of NASA’s Artemis campaign, the agency will send astronauts to the Moon to prepare for future human exploration of Mars, inspiring Artemis Generation explorers, and ensuring the United States continues to lead in space exploration and discovery.
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-astronaut-to-answer-questions-from-students-in-washington-state/
https://www.youtube.com/@NASASTEM/live
OPERA Project Releases Level 3 Displacement Products
May 22, 2025
NASA’s Observational Products for End-Users from Remote Sensing Analysis (OPERA) project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California released the Level 3 Surface Displacement (DISP) product, which is derived from an interferometric time-series analysis of OPERA Level-2 Coregistered Single Look Complex from Sentinel-1 products (CSLC-S1s).
These products capture the displacement in the radar line-of-sight (i.e., motion towards or away from the radar) and provide information on anthropogenic and natural motion of Earth's surface, such as subsidence due to groundwater pumping, oil and gas extraction, and vertical and horizontal motion from volcanoes, tectonic faults, and landslides.
“This is a game changing product for looking at how the Earth's surface moves.
Every state in the U.S. has got land that's deforming or is changing, be it from landslides, earthquakes, volcanoes, sinkholes, hydrocarbon extraction, and so on,” said Dr. Gerald Bawden, Program Scientist for OPERA and the upcoming NASA-Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission.
“Satellite radar allows us to measure how the land surface changes by as little as a few millimeters, and every time the radar satellite passes over, we get another image and we're able to see how much land surface has changed from one time to the next.”
The OPERA project currently offers the DISP Sentinel-1 (DISP-S1) product and plans to provide a NISAR DISP (DISP-NI) product in the near future.
Each Sentinel-1 (S1) satellite carries a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) instrument that can map Earth’s landmasses once up to every 6 days when combined with data from the S1-A/B/C satellite constellation.
DISP-S1 covers much of North America, including the United States and all its Territories, parts of Canada within 200 kilometers of the U.S. border, and all mainland countries from the southern U.S. border down to and including Panama.
OPERA creates the DISP-S1 product as soon as the satellite data input becomes available. It is then distributed as frame-based granules on a fixed grid to enable easy time series analysis.
Each granule contains both data raster layers and product metadata stored in the Hierarchical Data Format version 5 (HDF5) format, with a 30-meter pixel spacing in East and North directions on a UTM coordinate system.
Until now, there were no free and accessible InSAR time-series displacement products available over North America.
The OPERA Surface Displacement products fill this gap by making satellite radar data more accessible to a broad range of users, including national and state government personnel, emergency responders, urban planners and civil engineers, water resources managers, and researchers in a variety of disciplines.
“The ultimate goal is to make these sophisticated Earth observation products accessible to anyone who needs them, regardless of technical expertise, to support better decision-making about our changing planet,” said OPERA Project Scientist Dr. Steven Chan.
The OPERA project is developing the DISP-S1 Level 3 product in segments focused on three geographic areas—the southwestern U.S., the northern U.S., and the Pacific Northwest and Alaska—all of which will be completed by the end of the year.
The product will be rolled out in two phases. During Phase 1, which runs from now through the end of 2025, the OPERA team will develop historical data between July 2016 and December 2024.
In Phase 2, the team will create any remaining historical data and all new products as the data become available.
About OPERA
The OPERA project is managed by JPL, with partners from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the University of Maryland College Park, the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and Southern Methodist University.
Every two years, the multi-agency Satellite Needs Working Group (SNWG) conducts a survey to identify gaps in the current suite of NASA datasets to meet U.S. federal agency needs.
Following the 2018 and 2022 surveys, OPERA was tasked to develop products that were among the top interagency needs. These products were dynamic surface water extent, surface disturbance, surface displacement, and vertical land motion.
Data Access
All OPERA products, including the Level 3 DISP-S1 products and their intermediate Coregistered Single-look Complex products, are accessible through the Alaska Satellite Facility Distributed Active Archive Center (ASF DAAC) and the NASA Earthdata Search portal.
The OPERA project website contains links to all available OPERA products as well.
https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/news/opera-project-releases-level-3-displacement-products
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/go/opera/
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/go/opera/products/disp-product-suite/
Preflight Flower
May 22, 2025
A NASA photographer took this picture of a flower called Borshchov’s tulip near the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on April 7, 2025, ahead of NASA astronaut Jonny Kim and cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky launching to the International Space Station.
The flower is unique to Kazakhstan, attracting many to study and appreciate its beauty.
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/preflight-flower/
NASA Curiosity Rover
Sol 4546: Martian Jenga
Mars Science Laboratory Mission Team Members
May 22, 2025
Have you ever played the game Jenga, where you remove one wooden block from a stack, gently place it on another part of the stack, then repeat over and over as you try to keep the stack from toppling over?
There are strategies to the game such as what blocks you can afford to remove, and where you can manage to place them without throwing the structure out of balance.
That is very much how planning felt today — but instead of wooden blocks, the objects the science team was moving around were science observations in the plan.
We had an unusual one-sol plan today so there were very restricted time windows in the plan in which to fit science observations and our next drive.
We are driving through an area with criss-crossing fracture sets (which we call boxwork structures) large enough to be seen from orbit.
Since they have only recently come within our view, there is no shortage of new observations to make of the fractures as we try to understand the processes that led to their formation.
If the fractures were caused by extensive fluid flow through the Martian crust, understanding them would be an important contribution toward tracing the history of Martian water.
To fit in all the desired observations — including APXS and MAHLI on a DRT-brushed target, multiple ChemCam RMI and Mastcam mosaics, and a ChemCam LIBS analysis
— in addition to environmental monitoring activities and a long drive, the team used every trick in its book to achieve a delicate balancing act of science, time, and power.
Some activities were trimmed to fit in smaller time windows, others were moved to less-constrained parts of the plan, and other activities were placed in parallel with each other to take advantage of Curiosity’s ability to multitask.
Once our planning Jenga game was over, the team had won — we had a complete and perfectly balanced plan! Who says you cannot teach an old dog (4,546-sols-old) new tricks?
https://science.nasa.gov/blog/sol-4546-martian-jenga/
Sols 4547-4548: Taking in the View After a Long Drive
May 22, 2025
Monday’s single-sol plan included a marathon 45-meter drive (about 148 feet), which put us in position for two full sols of imaging.
This means both sols have what we call “targeted” science blocks, in which we have images of the workspace down from the last plan and can carefully choose what we want to take a closer look at.
This always means a lot of good discussion amongst the geology and mineralogy theme group (GEO) about what deserves this closer look.
As an outsider on the environmental theme group (ENV), I don’t always grasp the complexities of these discussions, but it’s always interesting to see what GEO is up to and to learn new things about the geology of Mount Sharp.
GEO ended up picking “Big Bear Lake” as our contact science target, which is getting its typical treatment from APXS and MAHLI, as well as a LIBS observation from ChemCam.
Aside from that there was plenty of room for remote sensing. ChemCam is also taking a LIBS observation of “Volcan Mountains” and a long-distance mosaic of the Texoli butte.
Mastcam is also taking mosaics of a nearby trough, as well as two depressions known as “Sulphur Spring,” a more distant boxwork structure, and the very distant Mishe Mokwa butte.
All of ENV’s activities are remote sensing, and we managed to squeeze in a few of those too.
We have a couple dust monitoring observations, looking for dust devils and checking the amount of dust in the atmosphere. And since we’re still in the cloudy season we always try to make room for cloud observations.
Today that meant a suraphorizon movie looking for clouds just above the horizon to the south, and a phase function sky survey, which captures clouds all around the rover, to try to understand how these clouds scatter sunlight.
https://science.nasa.gov/blog/sols-4547-4548-taking-in-the-view-after-a-long-drive/
NASA and SpaceX Target Friday for Dragon Undocking
May 22, 2025
NASA and SpaceX now are targeting 12:05 p.m. EDT Friday, May 23, for the undocking of company’s 32nd commercial resupply services mission from the International Space Station.
Live coverage of Dragon spacecraft undocking and departure begins at 11:45 a.m. on NASA+. Mission teams will continue to review weather conditions off the coast of California ahead of Dragon’s departure from the orbital complex.
After re-entering Earth’s atmosphere, the spacecraft will splash down at approximately 1:45 a.m. on Sunday, May 25, off the coast of California. NASA will post updates on the agency’s space station blog. There is no livestream video of the splashdown.
https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/spacestation/2025/05/22/nasa-and-spacex-target-friday-for-dragon-undocking/
https://plus.nasa.gov/scheduled-video/nasas-spacex-32nd-commercial-resupply-services-undocking/
https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/astromaterials/percolating-clues-nasa-models-new-way-to-build-planetary-cores/
https://ares.jsc.nasa.gov/research/laboratories/experimental-petrology.html
Percolating Clues: NASA Models New Way to Build Planetary Cores
May 22, 2025
A new NASA study reveals a surprising way planetary cores may have formed—one that could reshape how scientists understand the early evolution of rocky planets like Mars.
Conducted by a team of early-career scientists and long-time researchers across the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES) Division at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, the study offers the first direct experimental and geochemical evidence that molten sulfide, rather than metal, could percolate through solid rock and form a core—even before a planet’s silicate mantle begins to melt.
For decades, scientists believed that forming a core required large-scale melting of a planetary body, followed by heavy metallic elements sinking to the center.
This study introduces a new scenario—especially relevant for planets forming farther from the Sun, where sulfur and oxygen are more abundant than iron. In these volatile-rich environments, sulfur behaves like road salt on an icy street—it lowers the melting point by reacting with metallic iron to form iron-sulfide so that it may migrate and combine into a core.
Until now, scientists didn’t know if sulfide could travel through solid rock under realistic planet formation conditions.
The study results gave researchers a way to directly observe this process using high-resolution 3D imagery—confirming long-standing models about how core formation can occur through percolation, in which dense liquid sulfide travels through microscopic cracks in solid rock.
“We could actually see in full 3D renderings how the sulfide melts were moving through the experimental sample, percolating in cracks between other minerals,” said Dr. Sam Crossley of the University of Arizona in Tucson, who led the project while a postdoctoral fellow with NASA Johnson’s ARES Division.
“It confirmed our hypothesis—that in a planetary setting, these dense melts would migrate to the center of a body and form a core, even before the surrounding rock began to melt.”
Recreating planetary formation conditions in the lab required not only experimental precision but also close collaboration among early-career scientists across ARES to develop new ways of observing and analyzing the results.
The high-temperature experiments were first conducted in the experimental petrology lab, after which the resulting samples—or “run products”—were brought to NASA Johnson’s X-ray computed tomography (XCT) lab for imaging.
X-ray scientist and study co-author Dr. Scott Eckley of Amentum at NASA Johnson used XCT to produce high-resolution 3D renderings—revealing melt pockets and flow pathways within the samples in microscopic detail.
These visualizations offered insight into the physical behavior of materials during early core formation without destroying the sample.
The 3D XCT visualizations initially confirmed that sulfide melts could percolate through solid rock under experimental conditions, but that alone could not confirm whether percolative core formation occurred over 4.5 billion years ago. For that, researchers turned to meteorites.
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“We took the next step and searched for forensic chemical evidence of sulfide percolation in meteorites,” Crossley said.
“By partially melting synthetic sulfides infused with trace platinum-group metals, we were able to reproduce the same unusual chemical patterns found in oxygen-rich meteorites—providing strong evidence that sulfide percolation occurred under those conditions in the early solar system.”
To understand the distribution of trace elements, study co-author Dr. Jake Setera, also of Amentum, developed a novel laser ablation technique to accurately measure platinum-group metals, which concentrate in sulfides and metals.
“Working on this project pushed us to be creative,” Setera said.
“To confirm what the 3D visualizations were showing us, we needed to develop an appropriate laser ablation method that could trace the platinum group-elements in these complex experimental samples.
It was exciting to see both data streams converge on the same story.” When paired with Setera’s geochemical analysis, the data provided powerful, independent lines of evidence that molten sulfide had migrated and coalesced within a solid planetary interior.
This dual confirmation marked the first direct demonstration of the process in a laboratory setting.
The study offers a new lens through which to interpret planetary geochemistry. Mars in particular shows signs of early core formation—but the timeline has puzzled scientists for years.
The new results suggest that Mars’ core may have formed at an earlier stage, thanks to its sulfur-rich composition—potentially without requiring the full-scale melting that Earth experienced.
This could help explain longstanding puzzles in Mars’ geochemical timeline and early differentiation.
The results also raise new questions about how scientists date core formation events using radiogenic isotopes, such as hafnium and tungsten.
If sulfur and oxygen are more abundant during a planet’s formation, certain elements may behave differently than expected—remaining in the mantle instead of the core and affecting the geochemical “clocks” used to estimate planetary timelines.
This research advances our understanding of how planetary interiors can form under different chemical conditions—offering new possibilities for interpreting the evolution of rocky bodies like Mars.
By combining experimental petrology, geochemical analysis, and 3D imaging, the team demonstrated how collaborative, multi-method approaches can uncover processes that were once only theoretical.
Crossley led the research during his time as a McKay Postdoctoral Fellow—a program that recognizes outstanding early-career scientists within five years of earning their doctorate.
Jointly offered by NASA’s ARES Division and the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, the fellowship supports innovative research in astromaterials science, including the origin and evolution of planetary bodies across the solar system.
As NASA prepares for future missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond, understanding how planetary interiors form is more important than ever.
Studies like this one help scientists interpret remote data from spacecraft, analyze returned samples, and build better models of how our solar system came to be.
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NASA’s Moffett Federal Airfield Hosts Boeing Digital Taxi Tests
May 22, 2025
New technology tested by an industry partner at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley could improve how commercial planes taxi to and from gates to runways, making operations safer and more efficient on the surfaces of airports.
Airport taxiways are busy. Planes come and go while support vehicles provide maintenance, carry fuel, transport luggage, and more.
Pilots must listen carefully to air traffic control when getting directions to the runway – and garbled communications and heavy workloads can cause issues that could lead to runway incursions or collisions.
Researchers at Boeing are working to address these issues by digitizing taxiway information and automating aircraft taxi functions.
The team traveled to NASA Ames to collaborate with researchers while testing their technology at the Moffett Federal Airfield and NASA’s FutureFlight Central, an air traffic control simulation facility.
To test these new technologies, Boeing brought a custom single-engine test plane to the airfield.
Working from FutureFlight Central, their researchers developed simulated taxiway instructions and deployed them to the test pilot’s digital tablet and the autonomous system.
Typically, taxiing requires verbal communication between an air traffic controller and a pilot. Boeing’s digital taxi release system displays visual turn-by-turn routes and directions directly on the pilot’s digital tablet.
“This project with Boeing lends credibility to the research being done across Ames,” said Adam Yingling, autonomy researcher for the Air Traffic Management-eXploration (ATM-X) program at NASA Ames.
“We have a unique capability with our proximity to Moffett and the work Ames researchers are doing to advance air traffic capabilities and technologies to support the future of our national airspace that opens the door to work alongside commercial operators like Boeing.”
The team’s autonomous taxiing tests allowed its aircraft to follow the air traffic control’s digital instructions to transit to the runway without additional pilot inputs.
As commercial air travel increases and airspace gets busier, pilots and air traffic controllers have to manage heavier workloads.
NASA is working with commercial partners to address those challenges through initiatives like its Air Traffic Management-eXploration project, which aims to transform air traffic management to accommodate new vehicles and air transportation options.
“In order to increase the safety and efficiency of our airspace operations, NASA research in collaboration with industry can demonstrate how specific functions can be automated to chart the course for enhancing traffic management on the airport surface,” said Shivanjli Sharma, ATM-X project manager at Ames.
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/ames/nasas-moffett-federal-airfield-hosts-boeing-digital-taxi-tests/
https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/armd/aosp/atm-x/
https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/nasas-dragonfly-mission-sets-sights-on-titans-mysteries/
NASA’s Dragonfly Mission Sets Sights on Titan’s Mysteries
May 22, 2025
When it descends through the thick golden haze on Saturn’s moon Titan, NASA’s Dragonfly rotorcraft will find eerily familiar terrain.
Dunes wrap around Titan’s equator. Clouds drift across its skies. Rain drizzles. Rivers flow, forming canyons, lakes and seas.
But not everything is as familiar as it seems. At minus 292 degrees Fahrenheit, the dune sands aren’t silicate grains but organic material.
The rivers, lakes and seas hold liquid methane and ethane, not water. Titan is a frigid world laden with organic molecules.
Yet Dragonfly, a car-sized rotorcraft set to launch no earlier than 2028, will explore this frigid world to potentially answer one of science’s biggest questions:
How did life begin? Seeking answers about life in a place where it likely can’t survive seems odd. But that’s precisely the point.
“Dragonfly isn’t a mission to detect life — it’s a mission to investigate the chemistry that came before biology here on Earth,” said Zibi Turtle, principal investigator for Dragonfly and a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.
“On Titan, we can explore the chemical processes that may have led to life on Earth without life complicating the picture.”
On Earth, life has reshaped nearly everything, burying its chemical forebears beneath eons of evolution. Even today’s microbes rely on a slew of reactions to keep squirming.
“You need to have gone from simple to complex chemistry before jumping to biology, but we don’t know all the steps,” Turtle said. “Titan allows us to uncover some of them.”
Titan is an untouched chemical laboratory where all the ingredients for known life — organics, liquid water and an energy source — have interacted in the past.
What Dragonfly uncovers will illuminate a past since erased on Earth and refine our understanding of habitability and whether the chemistry that sparked life here is a universal rule — or a wonderous cosmic fluke.
Before NASA’s Cassini-Huygens mission, researchers didn't know just how rich Titan is in organic molecules.
The mission’s data, combined with laboratory experiments, revealed a molecular smorgasbord — ethane, propane, acetylene, acetone, vinyl cyanide, benzene, cyanogen, and more.
These molecules fall to the surface, forming thick deposits on Titan’s ice bedrock. Scientists believe life-related chemistry could start there — if given some liquid water, such as from an asteroid impact.
Enter Selk crater, a 50-mile-wide impact site. It’s a key Dragonfly destination, not only because it’s covered in organics, but because it may have had liquid water for an extended time.
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The impact that formed Selk melted the icy bedrock, creating a temporary pool that could have remained liquid for hundreds to thousands of years under an insulating ice layer, like winter ponds on Earth.
If a natural antifreeze like ammonia were mixed in, the pool could have remained unfrozen even longer, blending water with organics and the impactor’s silicon, phosphorus, sulfur and iron to form a primordial soup.
“It’s essentially a long-running chemical experiment,” said Sarah Hörst, an atmospheric chemist at Johns Hopkins University and co-investigator on Dragonfly’s science team.
“That’s why Titan is exciting. It’s a natural version of our origin-of-life experiments — except it’s been running much longer and on a planetary scale.”
For decades, scientists have simulated Earth’s early conditions, mixing water with simple organics to create a “prebiotic soup” and jumpstarting reactions with an electrical shock. The problem is time. Most tests last weeks, maybe months or years.
The melt pools at Selk crater, however, possibly lasted tens of thousands of years. Still shorter than the hundreds of millions of years it took life to emerge on Earth, but potentially enough time for critical chemistry to occur.
“We don’t know if Earth life took so long because conditions had to stabilize or because the chemistry itself needed time,” Hörst said. “But models show that if you toss Titan’s organics into water, tens of thousands of years is plenty of time for chemistry to happen.”
Dragonfly will test that theory. Landing near Selk, it will fly from site to site, analyzing the surface chemistry to investigate the frozen remains of what could have been prebiotic chemistry in action.
Morgan Cable, a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and co-investigator on Dragonfly, is particularly excited about the Dragonfly Mass Spectrometer (DraMS) instrument.
Developed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with a key subsystem provided by the CNES (Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales), DraMS will search for indicators of complex chemistry.
“We’re not looking for exact molecules, but patterns that suggest complexity,” Cable said. On Earth, for example, amino acids — fundamental to proteins — appear in specific patterns.
A world without life would mainly manufacture the simplest amino acids and form fewer complex ones.
Generally, Titan isn’t regarded as habitable; it’s too cold for the chemistry of life as we know it to occur, and there’s is no liquid water on the surface, where the organics and likely energy sources exist.
Still, scientists have assumed that if a place has life’s ingredients and enough time, complex chemistry — and eventually life — should emerge.
If Titan proves otherwise, it may mean we’ve misunderstood something about life’s start and it may be rarer than we thought. “We won’t know how easy or difficult it is for these chemical steps to occur if we don’t go, so we need to go and look,” Cable said.
“That’s the fun thing about going to a world like Titan. We’re like detectives with our magnifying glasses, looking at everything and wondering what this is.”
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https://payloadspace.com/payload-talks-nasa-budget-with-rep-george-whitesides/
Payload Talks NASA Budget With Rep. George Whitesides
May 23, 2025
Amid the White House’s chaotic push to reorient space policy around the private sector, Rep. George Whitesides (D-CA) is at the center of the conversation.
The former CEO of Virgin Galactic and NASA chief of staff is starting his first term in the House with prominent positions in civil and national security space policymaking.
He is serving as vice-ranking member of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee and a member of the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee.
Payload caught up with Whitesides to talk about the fight for NASA’s budget, Jared Isaacman’s nomination to lead the space agency, and new commercial architectures for exploration.
While we wait for the full president’s budget, what’s happening behind-the-scenes to push back against the proposed cuts we’ve seen so far?
It’s just not going to be a NASA that looks like NASA today. Now, is that their intent? I guess so. But I don’t think that’s the intent of Congress, particularly for folks on the science committee [and] folks inside the Appropriations Committee.
How that translates, though, into an outcome at some point for FY26 is anybody’s guess right now. All we can do at this point is to highlight the practical impact of those cuts, which is a full-scale assault on our marquee space agency.
The budget does feel divorced from any evaluation of NASA’s various activities.
If you go back to the first Trump administration, you had a National Space Council led by a competent, experienced government worker.
You had a vice-president who was interested in space and who, to be honest, protected NASA from a lot of the insanity that we saw circulating in other agencies, and inside the White House. I hope that we can have that situation again.
I don’t know if we will. From what I can see, the vice-president is not particularly interested in space or NASA.
We don’t know the formulation or the personnel of the National Space Council, although I guess they have said that they are going to reconstitute it.
So I think there’s a lot of uncertainty right now around national space policy, both civil and military.
What can NASA do to make space policy debates more substantive?
That needs a Senate-confirmed leader. Without that, what happens is that people outside of the agency, who don’t know about the agency, and—frankly—don’t know much about science, are making decisions about this thing that we’ve spent 60-plus years building.
And that is super-dangerous. So it is really important that we get a Senate-confirmed administrator as quickly as possible, and I’m hopeful that we’re close to that.
You’ve endorsed President Trump’s nominee, Jared Isaacman, for that job. What does he bring to the agency?
Having somebody who has experience both in space and in aeronautics is rare in NASA’s history, and then to combine that with somebody who has deep experience leading large organizations is something that could be a good leadership set for the next administrator.
As you’ve seen from my public comments, I’m hopeful, and I think that there’s a lot of mischief that’s happening in this interim period where he’s not inside the A suite.
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Are you concerned about potential conflicts of interest with SpaceX?
I myself have divested or sold any individual stock that I own as a Congress member, and I think that that is the right move.
It’s important that people in leadership and government do what they can to take out the possibility of conflict of interest, or perceived conflict of interest.
One pivot we’re expecting in this administration is turning to public-private partnerships for Moon and Mars exploration. What’s your take on how to make those succeed?
At the end of the day, public-private partnerships work really well in general, as long as they’re structured properly and creating opportunities for the private sector to sell their goods to commercial sector customers.
It worked extremely well in the case of launch. We need to take lessons around what kind of partnerships work and what are the underlying assumptions—or minimum conditions that will make things work in the future.
For the time being, the Moon’s primary customer is going to be governments. And does that mean that it’s impossible to have other customers?
Not at all. But clearly, the government is going to be the main anchor customer, and so we have to be realistic about the partnerships that we set up. And if we are realistic, then I think we can have a lot of success.
The president is pushing a new missile defense scheme, Golden Dome—how do you look at that?
You know, we’re waiting on briefings to tell us what it actually is. It is purely this phrase that people love, but there’s no “there” there—yet.
Obviously the nation has invested billions of dollars over the years in missile defense. So in some ways, this is a rebranding effort.
Maybe the most novel proposal is for space based missile interceptors. Is there an appetite for that kind of architecture in Congress?
I have big concerns about space-based interceptors, for obvious reasons.
That doesn’t mean that I am dead-set against any implementation of them, but I think what we need to see from this administration is a more sophisticated analysis of how these systems interplay in a period of conflict, and also see evidence that they [the interceptors] can accomplish the mission that they’re asked to do.
From where you’re sitting, what else do we need to be paying attention to?
The cuts to NASA science are not getting enough attention…I don’t think anybody outside the community is thinking about it too much, because of everything else that’s going on.
We have to realize that cutting the guts out of our science agencies is basically like gutting the future of America. The United States is leading the world in space technology, and we can’t give that up.
What everyone needs to understand is that these things are interconnected, right? It is really one industry underlying it all, and so cutting big parts out of it on the civil side will have inevitable impacts on the military side.
And that kind of holistic thinking has so far not been very present coming out of the administration.
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Space Needle unveils North America's 1st Skyliner elevator in $100M modernization
Updated Fri, May 23rd 2025 at 7:03 AM
SEATTLE — The Space Needle's new Skyliner, the first elevator of its kind in North America, opened to the public on Friday.
The new Skyliner is a double deck, floor-to-ceiling glass elevator, "completely transforming the trip to the top" of the Space Needle.
The unveiling marks a significant milestone in a privately funded $100 million modernization project, which aims to honor the original design intent of the Seattle landmark, according to the Space Needle.
"Early concepts of the tower included double deck, spaceship-style elevators that zipped Guests to the top and back," wrote the Space Needle.
"In 1962, there wasn’t the time or technology to make those dreams a reality. Now, there is.
This privately funded $100 million modernization project will replace all three of the Space Needle’s elevator cabs, and elevator machines and top off the newly updated, all-glass experience at Seattle’s landmark."
The Space Needle continued to note that Otis, the world’s largest manufacturer of vertical transportation systems, is leading the project.
Otis built the original Space Needle elevators, as well as those at the Eiffel Tower.
https://komonews.com/news/local/space-needle-new-skyliner-first-elevator-north-america-seattle-landmark-double-deck-100-million-modernization-project-king-county-otis-eiffel-tower-vertical-transportation-systems
https://www.streetinsider.com/PRNewswire/READY+FOR+LAUNCH%3A+SEATTLES+SPACE+NEEDLE+DEBUTS+NEW%2C+DOUBLE+DECK+ELEVATOR/24843950.html
These plastic greenhouses are the only man-made structures visible from space! Know more about it
Updated: May 23, 2025, 18:50 IST
A long-held myth debunked
For years, it was widely believed that structures like the Great Wall of China or the Pyramid of Giza could be seen from space.
However, contrary to the beliefs, satellite imaging and astronaut observations have shown that these structures, although massive on the ground, blend into their natural surroundings from orbit.
What Can Be Seen from Space?
According to NASA and European space agencies, the only clearly visible human-made structure from space is not an ancient wonder, rather a modern agricultural complex, which is the greenhouse region near El Ejido, in Almería, southeastern Spain. According to the NASA Earth Observatory, these white plastic roofs reflect sunlight intensely, making the area shine like a mirror against the surrounding dry terrain.
The 'Sea of Plastic' in El Ejido
Known locally as Mar de Plástico, this area spans over 40,000 hectares in other words, 150+ square miles and is covered in white plastic greenhouses.
These structures have the ability of reflecting sunlight so strongly that the entire area appears almost like a bright patch from low Earth orbit.
A Space-Age Reflection
Pedro Duque, a spanish astronaut and former Minister of Science, confirmed in a 2007 interview “You can clearly see the greenhouses of Almería from the International Space Station.
They shine like a mirror.” NASA satellite imagery also verifies this.
From Desert to Farmland
In the 1950s, the El Ejido region was arid and largely barren. Resultantly, farmers began using plastic to conserve moisture and protect their crops from wind.
This later evolved into a vast system of greenhouses that now supply vegetables such as tomatoes and cucumbers across the European continent.
A Cooling Anomaly
Data from NASA’s MODIS instruments shows that while the surrounding areas warmed between 1983 and 2006, the greenhouse-covered region cooled by 0.3°C per decade which is a rare reversal in global warming trends due to the sunlight-reflective plastic being used.
Environmental and Social Questions
The success of the greenhouses has brought jobs and economic growth in the area.
However, it has also raised concerns about topics like plastic waste, groundwater use, and labour conditions, the pressing issues that still remain under scrutiny.
A real-world sci-fi scene
The El Ejido greenhouses were featured in the opening scene of Blade Runner 2049, which was chosen for their otherworldly appearance.
The plastic landscape, despite looking like special effects, is entirely real, and one of Earth’s most visible man-made sights from space.
https://www.wionews.com/photos/these-plastic-greenhouses-are-the-only-man-made-structures-visible-from-space-know-more-about-it-1747993261826/1747993261833
https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/moon-mars-and-beyond-india-europe-enter-new-era-of-space-cooperation-8488553
Moon, Mars And Beyond: India, Europe Enter New Era Of Space
May 23, 2025 18:50 pm IST
New Delhi:
Even as Indian and European space agencies continue prepare astronauts since a year for the Axiom-4 mission to the International Space Station (ISS), the two are forging new frontiers in space cooperation.
In a conversation with NDTV, Dr Josef Aschbacher, Director General of the European Space Agency (ESA), outlined the deepening collaboration between Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and European Space Agency (ESA) as both are cooperating in space exploration, human spaceflight and satellite launches.
A historic joint statement signed this month between ESA and ISRO marks a new chapter in bilateral space cooperation. ESA's annual budget is estimated to be about $7.91 billion compared to ISRO's budget of $1.6 billion.
A Legacy Of Collaboration
ESA and ISRO's partnership dates back to 1978, with informal ties stretching even earlier to 1971. Over the decades, the two agencies have worked together on Earth observation, ground station support and lunar missions like Chandrayaan.
Notably, Dr Aschbacher highlighted that ESA's ground stations were the first to receive data from Chandrayaan-3's historic soft landing near the Moon's South Pole in August 2023, even before Indian officials were informed.
India used a global network of stations to receive the telemetry data.
Human Spaceflight And The Axiom 4 Mission
The collaboration is now entering a new phase with human spaceflight. ESA and ISRO are jointly participating in the upcoming Axiom-4 mission, scheduled for June.
The mission will feature an Indian astronaut Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla flying alongside ESA project astronaut Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski, from Poland.
Both will conduct a record number of scientific experiments during a two-week stay aboard the ISS.
"This will be the most science-intensive Axiom mission to date," said Dr Aschbacher, expressing excitement about the joint experiment and the symbolic significance of the mission.
Toward A Shared Future In Space Stations
India's aims to build its own Bharatiya Antariksh Station (BAS) aligns with ESA's long-term vision for low Earth orbit infrastructure.
The newly signed statement of intent opens the door for ESA to contribute to BAS through cargo return services, shared equipment, and potentially even joint astronaut missions.
"There is a huge possibility of great cooperation," said Dr Aschbacher. "We are at the beginning of this process, but I am very committed to making it work for the benefit of both."
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Launch Partnerships And Technological Trust
ESA recently entrusted India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) with the launch of its Proba-3 mission, a dual-satellite formation flying experiment designed to study the Sun's corona by simulating an artificial solar eclipse.
The mission was launched with high precision, earning praise from Dr Aschbacher for ISRO's engineering excellence.
"Thank you, India, for a high performance launch," he said, noting that the mission's first eclipse observations are expected in the coming weeks.
Ariane 6 And The Competitive Launch Market
Reflecting on the retirement of Europe's heavy lift launcher - the Ariane 5 rocket - and the delayed debut of Ariane 6, Aschbacher acknowledged the challenges ESA faced during its "launcher crisis."
However, he expressed pride in Ariane 6's successful maiden flight and its potential to compete with SpaceX's Falcon 9.
He emphasised that while SpaceX offers low prices internationally, domestic pricing tells a different story.
ESA's strategy, he said, is to ensure Europe's guaranteed access to space while also capturing commercial opportunities-such as the deal with Amazon's Kuiper project.
Micro-Launchers And Indian Startups
ESA is also investing in micro-launchers through its European Launcher Challenge.
While ESA has not yet partnered with Indian start-ups, Aschbacher expressed openness to collaboration, especially with Indian companies currently developing suborbital and small-payload launchers.
"These start-ups could grow into medium and heavy launch providers," he said, hinting at future cooperation.
The Long View: Moon, Mars And Beyond
Looking ahead, both India and ESA have ambitious roadmaps - India aims to land an astronaut on the Moon by 2040, while ESA is exploring long-term lunar and Martian, human and robotic endeavours, opening up several opportunities for cooperation.
Dr Aschbacher likened this era of space exploration to the age of maritime discovery, calling the Moon "our eighth continent." He emphasised the importance of international cooperation, shared values and mutual benefit in achieving these goals.
A Message To Prime Minister Modi
When asked for a message for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Dr Aschbacher said, "I am really grateful for the excellent cooperation we have between India and ESA.
India is already a great space power, and your path to the future is very impressive. I look forward to exploring future opportunities together."
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Economic benefit from Space Command won’t be immediate, Huntsville leaders say
Updated: May. 22, 2025, 9:22 p.m.
It could take up to five years before Huntsville will fully benefit economically from U.S. Space Command should the headquarters be moved here, according to city officials.
Should the headquarters be moved to the Rocket City as members of Alabama’s congressional delegation expect, the city is prepared, Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle and City Urban and Economic Director Shane Davis told the City Council on Thursday night.
“If you remember when we were in the competition for it, it was set up as a six year project,” Battle said in response to question from District 4 City Councilman Bill Kling. “I think now we’re looking at a four-year project. It does have a ramp up period.”
Kling had asked Davis if the announcement could give the city an economic boost at a time when city departments have been asked to trim 1% of their budgets due to sales tax revenue coming in lower than projected so far this fiscal year.
“No one at city hall has a crystal ball,” Davis said. “That’s not a decision we get to make. Certainly, we put our best foot forward in the RFP (request for proposal) response about our community’s readiness for Space Command. We’ve been ready for five years.”
Should Huntsville be selected, Davis told Kling, “I don’t think you’ll see an immediate influx because that is a combative command.”
“So, you’re not going to move pieces of that, and there is preparation on Redstone Arsenal to actually relocate,” Davis said. “So, I think it would be three, four or five years when you’ll see that influx and impact on the economy.”
U.S. Rep. Dale Strong, R-Monrovia, said earlier this month that a relocation of Space Command could mean 1,700 direct jobs and an additional 3,000 spinoff jobs in north Alabama.
Kling said members of the congressional delegation told Huntsville city leaders during the Huntsville-Madison County Chamber’s trip to Washington D.C. recently that they expected an announcement by the end of this month.
Strong and U.S. Sens. Tommy Tuberville and Katie Britt said they expected an announcement soon after the Senate confirmed President Donald Trump’s nominee as Air Force secretary.
Should the announcement come, Davis said, “that type of news does create consumer confidence of what the future looks like in our community.”
“I would imagine if we did have such an announcement, the bond rating agencies would look fondly at the city of Huntsville for the future,” Kling added.
https://www.al.com/news/huntsville/2025/05/economic-benefit-from-space-command-wont-be-immediate-huntsville-leaders-say.html
Chinese rocket dumps fuel over US to paint colossal white streak in the sky
May 23, 2025
Skywatchers across the U.S. were treated to a startling sight on May 17 as a mysterious white plume tore through the sky during a surprise geomagnetic storm.
At first glance, you could be mistaken for thinking it was a strange version of STEVE — a rare atmospheric phenomenon that can accompany the northern lights. But skywatchers quickly realized it was something entirely different.
The culprit? A Chinese rocket launch. Roughly an hour earlier, Chinese company Landscape launched its Zhuque-2E methane-fueled rocket from Site 96 at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center (JSLC) in China.
It carried six satellites into orbit, including a radar spacecraft and a space science payload.
When the upper stage reached about 155 miles (250 kilometers) in altitude, it carried out a "fuel dump" according to astronomer Jonathan McDowell, whereby the ejected fuel froze into a ribbon of crystals which then reflected sunlight back to Earth, appearing as a distinct white streak in the sky.
"The aurora was rippling low on the northern horizon when suddenly a bright streak of light, reminiscent of a rocket re-entry, appeared high in the sky and flowed down to the horizon," photographer Mike Lewinski told Spaceweather.com.
Lewinski captured the entire event unfolding alongside stunning auroras in the skies above Crestone, Colorado.
The moderate (G2 class) geomagnetic storm came as quite a surprise, kicking off early Friday (May 16) after Earth caught the glancing blow of a coronal mass ejection (CME).
The CME was launched during a colossal filament eruption on May 12 from the sun's northern hemisphere. Initially expected to miss Earth, the "bird-wing" ejecta was wider than predicted, with some of the material striking Earth 4 days after it left the sun.
Aurora photographer Derick Wilson also captured the bright white streak above Farmington, New Mexico.
"The #aurora was visual but colorless… then the brightest sight I've ever seen in the night sky appeared overhead!" Wilson wrote in a post on X.
Photographer Tyler Schlitt captured the white plume from southern Kansas, U.S. Schlitt, like many, had originally thought STEVE had appeared. But soon learned it was something entirely different.
"Learning that it’s a rocket launch yet again from China is wild!
One year ago and a few day I saw the same thing and was unsure but that one seem more of a rocket dump this one fell extremely close," Schlitt wrote in an X post comment.
It's not the first time a rocket launch has left skywatchers scratching their heads.
SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets, for instance, have created dazzling spiral patterns that swirl across the sky — strange sights that often spark confusion and awe, especially for first-time viewers who might mistake them for something truly otherworldly.
https://www.space.com/stargazing/mysterious-white-streak-spotted-over-us-skies-during-surprise-aurora-storm-what-was-it-photos
Private Japanese moon probe snaps photo of lunar south pole ahead of June 5 landing
May 23, 2025
Japan's private Resilience lunar lander has given us a nice shot of the moon just two weeks before its historic touchdown attempt.
On Thursday morning (May 22), the Tokyo-based company ispace, which built and operates Resilience, shared a photo on X that the probe took of the moon's south polar region.
"Resilience snapped this photo of the moon's south pole from lunar orbit, capturing the rough terrain of the many geological features of the lunar surface (which some say look like cheese from afar!).
This image presents an optical illusion to some — although the image is filled with concave craters, from this orientation they may look like they are convex to the eye. What do you see: craters or bumps?" ispace wrote in the X post.
Resilience launched on Jan. 15 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that also carried another private moon lander: Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost.
Blue Ghost touched down on March 2, becoming just the second-ever commercial vehicle to soft-land successfully on the moon. (The first was Intuitive Machines' Odysseus spacecraft that touched down on the lunar surface in February of 2024.)
Resilience — ispace's second-ever moon lander — took a longer, looping, energy-efficient route to Earth's nearest neighbor, finally arriving in lunar orbit on May 6.
The Japanese lander is scheduled to touch down on June 5 in Mare Frigoris ("Sea of Cold"), a volcanic plain in the moon's northern hemisphere.
Success would be huge for ispace and for Japan; the nation has just one moon landing under its belt, that of the SLIM ("Smart Lander for Investigating Moon') spacecraft that landed in January 2024. (SLIM was operated by JAXA, Japan's national space agency.)
ispace came close to notching that milestone: Its first moon lander reached orbit successfully in March of 2023, but failed during its touchdown try a month later after getting confused by the rim of a crater.
Resilience is carrying five science and technology payloads to the moon, including a miniature rover named Tenacious.
The little wheeled robot, which was built by ispace's European subsidiary, will attempt to collect moon dirt under a contract that signed with NASA in 2020.
Tenacious is also carrying some art on its front bumper — a piece called "Moonhouse" by Sweden's Mikael Genberg.
https://www.space.com/astronomy/moon/private-japanese-moon-probe-snaps-photo-of-lunar-south-pole-ahead-of-june-5-landing
https://x.com/ispace_inc/status/1925511973418192983
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/search-for-life/could-deciphering-dolphin-language-help-us-communicate-with-et
Could deciphering dolphin language help us communicate with ET?
May 23, 2025
There are creatures here on Earth that may give us clues on getting "chat-time" with extraterrestrial intelligence — dolphins, which are famously social and smart.
Recently, the Coller Dolittle Challenge awarded the winner of its first $100,000 annual prize to accelerate progress toward interspecies two-way communication.
A prize of equal value will be awarded every year until a team deciphers the secret to interspecies communication.
This year's winning team of researchers has discovered that dolphin whistles could function like words — with mutually understood, context-specific meaning.
Crack the code
The winning team was led by Laela Sayigh from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The researchers are studying the resident bottlenose dolphin community offshore of Sarasota, Florida.
They were on the lookout for "non-signature" whistles, which comprise approximately 50% of the whistles produced by Sarasota dolphins.
Non-signature whistles differ from the more widely studied "signature" whistles, which are referential, name-like vocalizations.
Sayigh's team used non-invasive suction-cup hydrophones, which they placed on the dolphins during unique catch-and-release health assessments, as well as digital acoustic tags.
"Bottlenose dolphins have long fascinated animal communication researchers," Sayigh said in a statement. "Our work shows that these whistles could potentially function like words, shared by multiple dolphins."
Sayigh and her team can now use deep learning in an attempt to "crack the code" and analyze those whistles.
Zoologist's guide to the galaxy
But what does all this have to do with E.T.?
"My interests are very firmly here on Earth, in learning about how dolphins communicate with each other," Sayigh told Space.com "I do know that there are others in the animal communication world that are interested in this, however."
One of those researchers is Arik Kershenbaum, an associate professor and director of studies at Girton College, part of the University of Cambridge in England.
He's the author of "The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy: What Animals on Earth Reveal About Aliens — and Ourselves" (Viking, 2020).
Kershenbaum explained that the book is about life on Earth, because "that's all we have to look at."
He also contributed a white paper for a workshop at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute in California, titled "What Animal Studies Can Tell Us about Detecting Intelligent Messages from Outside Earth."
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Cross-species database
In that paper for the SETI Institute, Kershenbaum and colleagues concluded that animal communication research is the closest we are likely to get to studying extraterrestrial signals, until such signals are actually received.
"Many of the challenges facing SETI research are similar to those already addressed in the investigation of animal behavior, and the evolutionary origins of human language," they wrote.
"Indeed, the evolution of language on Earth may in fact have been driven and constrained by similar principles to those operating on life on other planets."
The researchers have proposed the establishment of a large cross-species database of communicative signals, made available to all SETI and animal behavior researchers.
In addition, they also proposed that tools, algorithms and software used to analyze these signals should be made publicly available for application to these data sets, "so that comparative studies can take full advantage of the expertise from the biological, mathematical, linguistic and astronomical communities."
Complex vocalizations
The topic of dolphin language interpretation, as well as the vocalizations of humpback whales and the field of non-human communications more broadly, is increasingly drawing the interest of SETI researchers and astrobiologists, explained Bill Diamond, president of the SETI Institute.
Humpback whales have very complex vocalizations, Diamond told Space.com, "where it seems clear that they are transmitting information and not simply making sounds associated with mating, feeding or dealing with threats.
They plan ahead and communicate complex instructions to one another."
Leading that look is SETI researcher Laurance Doyle, who's working on a project in partnership with the Alaska Whale Foundation to study the vocalizations of humpback whales.
Fundamental rules
For Diamond, the relevant research question is whether or not there are some fundamental mathematical rules associated with the transmission of information that would be universal — like the laws of physics and chemistry — within our known universe.
"If there's an underlying rule structure to the transmission of information, and we can decipher it," Diamond said, "we would firstly be able to recognize a detected SETI signal as containing information, and therefore intelligence.
And, possibly, we might even ultimately be able to translate it!"
According to Diamond, "there's definitely a connection between SETI/astrobiology and the study of non-human communication and non-human intelligence."
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Senate sets up early June vote on Isaacman nomination to lead NASA
May 23, 2025
WASHINGTON — The Senate is set to vote on confirming Jared Isaacman’s nomination to be NASA administrator in early June.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) filed cloture on Isaacman’s nomination May 22, a procedural move that would set up a vote on the nomination in early June.
The Senate is not in session the week of May 26 because of the Memorial Day holiday.
The nomination has been pending before the full Senate since the Senate Commerce Committee advanced the nomination April 30 on a 19-9 vote.
Isaacman had the support of the committee’s chairman, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and its ranking member, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), although most of the committee’s Democratic members voted against the nomination.
Since that committee vote, Isaacman has been meeting with other senators not on the committee, including those with a NASA presence in their states.
That include Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who announced May 6 he met with Isaacman, as did Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) on May 7.
One concern among senators, sources said, is the top-level “skinny” budget for fiscal year 2026 released by the Office of Management and Budget May 2, after Isaacman’s nomination advanced from the Commerce Committee.
That budget called for canceling the lunar Gateway and ending the Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System after Artemis 3, as well as curtailing use of the International Space Station and cutting space technology funding by half.
While many of the proposals in the budget, like winding down SLS and Orion, were expected, the scale of the cuts, including a nearly 25% overall reduction in NASA spending, still took many by surprise.
Isaacman, at his confirmation hearing and subsequent, said he had not been involved in discussions about the budget proposal and was not familiar with the administration’s plans.
Nonetheless, industry officials have been anxious to get Isaacman confirmed to provide leadership for NASA, believing he can more effectively advocate for the agency and address the uncertainty it faces today.
Isaacman would be the first of four positions at NASA that require Senate confirmation to be filled. The White House nominated Matthew Anderson, a retired Air Force colonel, on May 6 to be NASA’s deputy administrator.
The senate has not yet acted on that nomination. The administration also nominated Greg Autry to be the agency’s chief financial officer March 24, which is also pending in the Senate.
The White House has yet to nominate someone to be the agency’s inspector general, a post that has been vacant since late 2023.
https://spacenews.com/senate-sets-up-early-june-vote-on-isaacman-nomination-to-lead-nasa/
27th SecAF’s first letter to the force
May 22, 2025
ARLINGTON, Va. (AFNS) – To our Airmen and Guardians, our civilian employees, and their families,
I am both honored and excited to have been appointed the 27th Secretary of the Air Force. Honored because I am joining an amazing team comprised of the most talented, capable, and lethal air and space professionals the world has ever seen.
Excited because, together, we have a unique opportunity to make a lasting impact on our national security. The United States faces incredibly dynamic and complex threats that demand our immediate focus.
In this environment, the Department of the Air Force will play a central role in the President’s mission of defending the homeland, deterring all potential aggressors, and, when needed, winning decisively in conflict.
Our strategy to meet this challenge starts with you, our Airmen, Guardians, and civilians. The systems that we operate and develop are the most complex in our history, so we will ensure you have the resources and training needed to succeed.
We must innovate faster than our adversaries and deliver on our modernization promises. We have already begun the largest-ever transformation in both air and space in our nation’s history, extending across all mission areas.
The resulting programs must execute on schedule, within budget, and deliver capabilities that ensure air and space superiority for decades to come.
However, our adversaries are not sitting idle as we modernize our force. Increasing our readiness across the Department is critical. We must be prepared to fight and win today.
My wife Jean and I look forward to being a part of the Department of the Air Force team. Thank you for all your families do in service to our great nation. Peace through Strength.
Troy E. Meink
Secretary of the Air Force
https://www.spaceforce.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/4195767/27th-secafs-first-letter-to-the-force/