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TYB
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
September 18, 2025
Comet C/2025 R2 (SWAN)
A new visitor from the outer Solar System, comet C/2025 R2 (SWAN) also known as SWAN25B was only discovered late last week, on September 11. That's just day before the comet reached perihelion, its closest approach to the Sun. First spotted by Vladimir Bezugly in images from the SWAN instrument on the sun-staring SOHO spacecraft, the comet was surprisingly bright but understandably difficult to see against the Sun's glare. Still close to the Sun on the sky, the greenish coma and tail of C/2025 R2 (SWAN) are captured in this telescopic snapshot from September 17. Spica, alpha star of the constellation Virgo, shines just beyond the upper left edge of the frame while the comet is about 6.5 light-minutes from planet Earth. Near the western horizon after sunset and slightly easier to see in binoculars from the southern hemisphere, this comet SWAN will pass near Zubenelgenubi, alpha star of Libra, on October 2. C/2025 R2 (SWAN) is scheduled to make its closest approach to our fair planet around October 20.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
New Shepard NS-35 Launch
September 18, 2025
New Shepard NS-35 is targeting liftoff on Thursday, Sept. 18. The uncrewed payload mission will fly more than 40 scientific and research payloads to space.
The launch window opens at 8:00 AM CDT / 1300 UTC. Live webcast starts 15 minutes before liftoff at blueorigin.com/live.
-Launched-
Blue Origin successfully completed its 35th New Shepard flight and 15th payload mission from Launch Site One in West Texas.
The flight carried more than 40 payloads from students, NASA, research institutions, and commercial companies, bringing the total number of science payloads flown on New Shepard to more than 200.
https://www.blueorigin.com/missions/ns-35
https://www.blueorigin.com/news/new-shepard-ns-35-mission
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTsgDDolXOA
17 trillion!
Cygnus XL Cargo Craft Captured by Station Robotic Arm
September 18, 2025
At 7:24 a.m. EDT, NASA astronaut Jonny Kim, with assistance from NASA astronaut Zena Cardman, captured Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus XL spacecraft using the International Space Station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm.
Mission control at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston will use the Canadarm2 to position the spacecraft to its installation orientation. It then will guide Cygnus XL in for installation to the Unity module’s Earth-facing port.
NASA will provide coverage of the spacecraft’s installation at 9 a.m. on NASA+, Amazon Prime, and more. Learn how to watch NASA content through a variety of platforms, including social media.
NASA’s Northrop Grumman Commercial Resupply Services 23 mission launched at 6:11 p.m. on Sept. 14 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, carrying more than 11,000 pounds of scientific investigations and cargo to the orbiting laboratory.
https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/spacestation/2025/09/18/cygnus-xl-cargo-craft-captured-by-station-robotic-arm/
https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/spacestation/2025/09/18/robotic-arm-maneuvering-cygnus-for-station-installation/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNbNen3p0Qs
Arctic Sea Ice Reaches Annual Low
Sep 17, 2025
With the end of summer approaching in the Northern Hemisphere, the extent of sea ice in the Arctic shrank to its annual minimum on Sept. 10, according to NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
The total sea ice coverage was tied with 2008 for the 10th-lowest on record at 1.78 million square miles (4.60 million square kilometers).
In the Southern Hemisphere, where winter is ending, Antarctic ice is still accumulating but remains relatively low compared to ice levels recorded before 2016.
The areas of ice covering the oceans at the poles fluctuate through the seasons. Ice accumulates as seawater freezes during colder months and melts away during the warmer months.
But the ice never quite disappears entirely at the poles. In the Arctic Ocean, the area the ice covers typically reaches its yearly minimum in September.
Since scientists at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) began tracking sea ice at the poles in 1978, sea ice extent has generally been declining as global temperatures have risen.
“While this year’s Arctic sea ice area did not set a record low, it’s consistent with the downward trend,” said Nathan Kurtz, chief of the Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Arctic ice reached its lowest recorded extent in 2012. Ice scientist Walt Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder, attributes that record low to a combination of a warming atmosphere and unusual weather patterns.
This year, the annual decline in ice initially resembled the changes in 2012. Although the melting tapered off in early August, it wasn’t enough to change the year-over-year downward trend.
“For the past 19 years, the minimum ice coverage in the Arctic Ocean has fallen below the levels prior to 2007,” Meier said. “That continues in 2025.”
Antarctic sea ice nearing annual maximum
As ice in the Arctic reaches its annual minimum, sea ice around the Antarctic is approaching its annual maximum.
Until recently, ice in the ocean around the Southern pole has been more resilient than sea ice in the North, with maximum coverage increasing slightly in the years before 2015.
“This year looks lower than average,” Kurtz said. “But the Antarctic system as a whole is more complicated,” which makes predicting and understanding sea ice trends in the Antarctic more difficult.
It’s not yet clear whether lower ice coverage in the Antarctic will persist, Meier said. “For now, we’re keeping an eye on it” to see if the lower sea ice levels around the South Pole are here to stay or only part of a passing phase.
A history of tracking global ice
For nearly five decades, NASA and NOAA have relied on a variety of satellites to build a continuous sea ice record, beginning with the NASA Nimbus-7 satellite (1978–1987) and continuing with the Special Sensor Microwave/Imager and the Special Sensor Microwave Imager Sounder on Defense Meteorological Satellite Program satellites that began in 1987.
The Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer–for EOS on NASA’s Aqua satellite also contributed data from 2002 to 2011.
Scientists have extended data collection with the 2012 launch of the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 aboard a JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) satellite.
With the launch of ICESat-2 in 2018, NASA has added the continuous observation of ice thickness to its recording.
The ICESat-2 satellite measures ice height by recording the time it takes for laser light from the satellite to reflect from the surface and travel back to detectors on board.
“We’ve hit 47 years of continuous monitoring of the global sea ice extent from satellites,” said Angela Bliss, assistant chief of NASA’s Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory.
“This data record is one of the longest, most consistent satellite data records in existence, where every single day we have a look at the sea ice in the Arctic and the Antarctic.”
https://www.nasa.gov/earth/arctic-sea-ice-2025-low/
Show Me the Data
Sept. 17, 2025
NASA’s Earth observation data can be used in many ways, from forecasting and responding to severe storms and wildfires to maximizing agricultural production.
The key is continually making the data easier for people to find and use.
Recently, NASA took another giant leap forward in expanding access to its data by creating metadata pipelines for agency datasets included in the Data.nasa.gov, Data.gov, and Geoplatform.gov open science data portals as well as the National Geospatial Data Assets list.
The federal sites are hubs the public, scientists, and decision makers can use to search and download open science data to support industry, innovation, and research.
The first part of the metadata project specifically focuses on taking the metadata paired with NASA's publicly available data collections — which number more than 10,000, aggregating more than 1.8 billion science records — and tailoring the metadata for ingestion into Data.nasa.gov and Data.gov.
Metadata describe a dataset, providing essential details on its content, formatting, and retrieval, and are what the portals explore to locate files and provide information for search results and webpages.
Sometimes metadata for files are written, labeled, and organized in ways that are specific to the instrument or the home archive they’re stored in, which can create compatibility problems with outside portals that try to pull information from them.
This means NASA needed to develop a method for translating its metadata to be compatible with the requirements of federal portal systems and webpages.
This new metadata pipeline is being created by a team from NASA's Earth Science Data Systems (ESDS) program who are experts in metadata.
Doug Newman, science systems data lead for the Earth Science and Data Information System (ESDIS) project, is a key member of the team.
"In NASA Earth science we do have our own online catalog, called the Common Metadata Repository (CMR), that is particularly geared towards our NASA user community,” said Newman.
“CMR works great in this case, but people outside of our immediate community might not have the familiarity and specific knowledge required to get the data they need.
More general portals, such as Data.gov, are a natural place for them to go for government data, so it’s important that we have a presence there."
The job of engineering a system that could wrangle NASA’s proprietary metadata into versions compatible with the portals is being headed by Kaylin Bugbee, a data manager for the Office of the Chief Science Data Officer.
Bugbee works with NASA’s Science Discovery Engine (SDE), which is a search system within NASA for the agency’s open science data, software, and resources.
Bugbee and the SDE team have been using their expertise to create a workflow that gathers NASA's metadata, then maps the sometimes unique terms and other aspects to the versions used by Data.nasa.gov and Data.gov.
"We're in the process of testing out each step of the way and continuing to improve the metadata mapping so that it works well with the portals," said Bugbee.
The metadata project is also working with geospatial datasets. The project team has been identifying datasets containing geospatial data and packaging their metadata to specifically work with the more specialized Geoplatform.gov portal.
Additionally, a subset of those datasets and work involves NASA files that are designated as National Geospatial Data Assets (NGDA).
The NDGAs are prominent geospatial datasets that are used by multiple federal agencies for critical work and arranged into 15 different themes ranging from postal address to transportation.
Bugbee and her team have been developing a special metadata workflow that includes the ability to provide Geoplatform.gov visitors with an Earthdata Search link that takes them directly from the portal to NASA’s hundreds of NGDA-designated datasets.
The beauty of the new metadata workflow is that it not only draws from the preexisting metadata created for NASA archives, which saves the time and labor of manually preparing data for the portals, it also makes it clear what information to include for new, future, or updated datasets to be listed in the federal portals.
Initially, the team is focusing on preparing metadata for the popular Terra platform’s hundreds of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) products while it refines the workflow and delivery process to the federal portals.
After that, they’ll expand to the many other instruments and freely open products. Before long, the whole of NASA’s open data will be flowing through the new metadata pipeline to portals, and consequently, people and projects everywhere.
https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/news/feature-articles/show-me-data
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-tally-of-planets-outside-our-solar-system-reaches-6000/
https://science.nasa.gov/exoplanets/discoveries-dashboard/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAna9jBZRd8
NASA’s Tally of Planets Outside Our Solar System Reaches 6,000
Sept. 17, 2025
The milestone highlights the accelerating rate of discoveries, just over three decades since the first exoplanets were found.
The official number of exoplanets — planets outside our solar system — tracked by NASA has reached 6,000.
Confirmed planets are added to the count on a rolling basis by scientists from around the world, so no single planet is considered the 6,000th entry.
The number is monitored by NASA’s Exoplanet Science Institute (NExScI), based at Caltech’s IPAC in Pasadena, California.
There are more than 8,000 additional candidate planets awaiting confirmation, with NASA leading the world in searching for life in the universe.
See NASA’s Exoplanet Discoveries Dashboard
“This milestone represents decades of cosmic exploration driven by NASA space telescopes — exploration that has completely changed the way humanity views the night sky,” said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, acting director, Astrophysics Division, NASA Headquarters in Washington.
“Step by step, from discovery to characterization, NASA missions have built the foundation to answering a fundamental question: Are we alone?
Now, with our upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and Habitable Worlds Observatory, America will lead the next giant leap — studying worlds like our own around stars like our Sun.
This is American ingenuity, and a promise of discovery that unites us all.”
The milestone comes 30 years after the first exoplanet was discovered around a star similar to our Sun, in 1995. (Prior to that, a few planets had been identified around stars that had burned all their fuel and collapsed.)
Although researchers think there are billions of planets in the Milky Way galaxy, finding them remains a challenge.
In addition to discovering many individual planets with fascinating characteristics as the total number of known exoplanets climbs, scientists are able to see how the general planet population compares to the planets of our own solar system.
For example, while our solar system hosts an equal number of rocky and giant planets, rocky planets appear to be more common in the universe. Researchers have also found a range of planets entirely different from those in our solar system.
There are Jupiter-size planets that orbit closer to their parent star than Mercury orbits the Sun; planets that orbit two stars, no stars, and dead stars; planets covered in lava; some with the density of Styrofoam; and others with clouds made of gemstones.
“Each of the different types of planets we discover gives us information about the conditions under which planets can form and, ultimately, how common planets like Earth might be, and where we should be looking for them,” said Dawn Gelino, head of NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program (ExEP), located at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
“If we want to find out if we’re alone in the universe, all of this knowledge is essential.”
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Searching for other worlds
Fewer than 100 exoplanets have been directly imaged, because most planets are so faint they get lost in the light from their parent star.
The other four methods of planet detection are indirect. With the transit method, for instance, astronomers look for a star to dim for a short period as an orbiting planet passes in front of it.
To account for the possibility that something other than an exoplanet is responsible for a particular signal, most exoplanet candidates must be confirmed by follow-up observations, often using an additional telescope, and that takes time.
That’s why there is a long list of candidates in the NASA Exoplanet Archive (hosted by NExScI) waiting to be confirmed.
“We really need the whole community working together if we want to maximize our investments in these missions that are churning out exoplanets candidates,” said Aurora Kesseli, the deputy science lead for the NASA Exoplanet Archive at IPAC.
“A big part of what we do at NExScI is build tools that help the community go out and turn candidate planets into confirmed planets.”
The rate of exoplanet discoveries has accelerated in recent years (the database reached 5,000 confirmed exoplanets just three years ago), and this trend seems likely to continue.
Kesseli and her colleagues anticipate receiving thousands of additional exoplanet candidates from the ESA (European Space Agency) Gaia mission, which finds planets through a technique called astrometry, and NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which will discover thousands of new exoplanets primarily through a technique called gravitational microlensing.
Future exoplanets
At NASA, the future of exoplanet science will emphasize finding rocky planets similar to Earth and studying their atmospheres for biosignatures — any characteristic, element, molecule, substance, or feature that can be used as evidence of past or present life.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has already analyzed the chemistry of over 100 exoplanet atmospheres.
But studying the atmospheres of planets the size and temperature of Earth will require new technology. Specifically, scientists need better tools to block the glare of the star a planet orbits.
And in the case of an Earth-like planet, the glare would be significant: The Sun is about 10 billion times brighter than Earth — which would be more than enough to drown out our home planet’s light if viewed by a distant observer.
NASA has two main initiatives to try overcoming this hurdle. The Roman telescope will carry a technology demonstration instrument called the Roman Coronagraph that will test new technologies for blocking starlight and making faint planets visible.
At its peak performance, the coronagraph should be able to directly image a planet the size and temperature of Jupiter orbiting a star like our Sun, and at a similar distance from that star.
With its microlensing survey and coronagraphic observations, Roman will reveal new details about the diversity of planetary systems, showing how common solar systems like our own may be across the galaxy.
Additional advances in coronagraph technology will be needed to build a coronagraph that can detect a planet like Earth. NASA is working on a concept for such a mission, currently named the Habitable Worlds Observatory.
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NASA Mars Curiosity Rover
Curiosity Views Gale Crater's Rim, Homing in on Ancient River Channel
Sept. 17, 2025
NASA's Curiosity Mars rover captured this panorama under exceptionally clear conditions of Gale Crater's northern rim on Aug. 25, 2025, the 4,640th Martian day, or sol, of the mission.
Dust in the air is at its lowest during Martian winter, providing Curiosity its best views all the way across the yawning crater floor from the rover's perch in the foothills of Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) mountain roughly 22 miles (35 kilometers) from the crater rim.
The panorama was stitched together on Earth from 44 images captured by Curiosity's Mastcam instrument. The color in these images has been adjusted to match the lighting conditions as the human eye would see them on Earth.
Figure A is a cropped version focusing on Peace Vallis, an ancient river channel near the center of the panorama. Outside of Gale Crater on the upper right looms a mountain about 57 miles (91 kilometers) from Curiosity.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/pia26671-curiosity-views-gale-craters-rim-homing-in-on-ancient-river-channel/
Curiosity's ChemCam Views Summit and Cliffs Beyond Gale Crater
Sept. 17, 2025
NASA's Curiosity Mars rover captured this view of a mountain nearly 57 miles (91 kilometers) away and outside of Gale Crater, where Curiosity landed in 2012.
The rover is currently in the foothills of Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) mountain within the crater.
Estimated to be 8,202 feet (2,500 meters) tall, the mountain's summit just peeks over the crater rim in the panorama.
It has never been viewed with this much detail. Toward the lower left, dark rocky outcrops are visible.
Curiosity captured the view with its black-and-white Remote Micro Imager, or RMI.
Part of the rover's ChemCam instrument, RMI can be used like a small telescope to see distant features, creating a circular "spyglass" view.
Ten RMI images taken on Aug. 28, 2025 (the 4,643rd Martian day, or sol of the mission) were stitched together to create the mosaic.
Curiosity's ChemCam Views Ancient River Channel Peace Vallis
Sept. 17, 2025
NASA's Curiosity Mars rover used its ChemCam instrument to capture Peace Vallis, an ancient river channel descending Gale Crater's rim, on Sept. 1, 2025 (the 4,647th Martian day, or sol, of the mission).
The channel was about 19 miles (30 kilometers) from Curiosity as it explores the foothills of Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) mountain.
The dark features scattered just left of center within the channel are rocky outcrops. While Curiosity has taken pictures of Peace Vallis in the past, this is the first time details like these have been seen within it.
Water and sediment are believed to have flowed down Peace Vallis into Gale Crater billions of years ago, creating a fan of sediment across the crater floor.
Studying the crater's watery past is part of Curiosity's overall mission to understand where and how well the ancient Martian landscape could have supported microbial life, if any ever formed there.
ChemCam is equipped with the Remote Micro Imager, or RMI, a black-and-white camera that can be used like a small telescope to see distant features, creating a circular "spyglass" image.
Ten RMI images were stitched together on Earth into a mosaic to create the panorama seen here.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/pia26637-curiositys-chemcam-views-ancient-river-channel-peace-vallis/
https://nasawatch.com/congress/congress-expresses-concern-about-nasa-dod-relationship/
https://democrats-science.house.gov/imo/media/doc/letter_to_nasa_administrator_duffy_re_nasa_relationship_with_dod.pdf
Congress Expresses Concern About NASA/DoD Relationship
September 17, 2025
According to a press release “Today, Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) sent a letter to National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Acting Administrator Sean Duffy expressing her serious concern regarding NASA’s relationship with the Department of Defense (DoD).” More below.
“NASA is empowered by Congress to exercise civilian leadership over America’s space program for the peaceful purposes of research and exploration,” Ranking Member Lofgren wrote in her letter.
“The agency’s long and storied history in pursuit of these endeavors is a triumphant one that has inspired generations of Americans – and people all around the world – to dream of the stars and imagine the impossible.
As a result, NASA consistently ranks among the most popular agencies in the federal government here at home while serving as an immeasurable source of American soft power abroad.
The intangible qualities that make NASA a beacon of hope for the world are difficult to define, but they are a precious national asset all the same. Nothing should ever be allowed to jeopardize them.”
She continued, “It is my understanding that NASA’s relationship with the Department of Defense (DoD) continues to evolve. I have serious concerns about NASA’s developing relationship with the U.S. Air Force that will need to be addressed.
NASA must remain focused on its mission as a civil space agency and a scientific agency. It cannot permit unrelated priorities to distract it from its mission or impair its ability to achieve its ambitious objectives in space for the benefit of humanity here on Earth.
Just as importantly, it must avoid taking any action that could undermine the inimitable place NASA holds in the public imagination. I will not hesitate to make these points as I conduct oversight on this issue in the weeks and months to come.
In the meantime, I request that NASA immediately inform the Committee should it take any actions that will impact its ability to carry out its mission due to its relationship with DoD.”
Read the letter here:
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September 17th, 2025
The Honorable Sean Duffy
Acting Administrator
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
300 Hidden Figures Way, SW
Washington, D.C., 20546
Dear Acting Administrator Duffy,
NASA is the world’s premier civil space agency. Its mission is clear and was defined by law at the very beginning of the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, the original law by which NASA was created:
“The Congress hereby declares that it is the policy of the United States that activities in space should be devoted to peaceful purposes for the benefit of all mankind.
The Congress declares that the general welfare and security of the United States require that adequate provision be made for aeronautical and space activities.
The Congress further declares that such activities shall be the responsibility of, and shall be directed by, a civilian agency exercising control over aeronautical and space activities sponsored by the United States…”1
NASA is empowered by Congress to exercise civilian leadership over America’s space program for the peaceful purposes of research and exploration.
The agency’s long and storied history in pursuit of these endeavors is a triumphant one that has inspired generations of Americans – and people all around the world – to dream of the stars and imagine the impossible.
As a result, NASA consistently ranks among the most popular agencies in the federal government here at home2 while serving as an immeasurable source of American soft power abroad.3
The intangible qualities that make NASA a beacon of hope for the world are difficult to define, but they are a precious national asset all the same. Nothing should ever be allowed to jeopardize them.
As the Ranking Member of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, I have observed the Trump Administration’s attitude towards NASA with great alarm over the past eight months.
As codified in law, NASA is a multi-mission agency pursuing a balanced and robust set of core missions in science, aeronautics, human spaceflight, and exploration.
It is clear this administration does not value science and does not prioritize NASA’s indispensable scientific role. It is clear this administration does not understand what makes NASA unique and the importance of protecting it from politicization.
It is equally clear what this administration does prioritize and what values it holds.
It is my understanding that NASA’s relationship with the Department of Defense (DoD) continues to evolve. I have serious concerns about NASA’s developing relationship with the U.S. Air Force that will need to be addressed.
NASA must remain focused on its mission as a civil space agency and a scientific agency. It cannot permit unrelated priorities to distract it from its mission or impair its ability to achieve its ambitious objectives in space for the benefit of humanity here on Earth.
Just as importantly, it must avoid taking any action that could undermine the inimitable place NASA holds in the public imagination. I will not hesitate to make these points as I conduct oversight on this issue in the weeks and months to come.
In the meantime, I request that NASA immediately inform the Committee should it take any actions that will impact its ability to carry out its mission due to its relationship with DoD.
Pursuant to Rule X of the House of Representatives, the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology “shall review and study on a continuing basis laws, programs, and Government activities relating to nonmilitary research and development.”
The Committee possesses jurisdiction over the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, as well as “astronautical research and development, including resources, personnel, equipment, and facilities” and “outer space, including exploration and control thereof.”5
For any questions regarding this letter, please contact Josh Schneider with the Committee’s Minority staff at (202) 225-6375. Thank you for your attention to this important matter.
Sincerely,
Zoe Lofgren
Ranking Member
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
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NASA’s Hubble Sees White Dwarf Eating Piece of Pluto-Like Object
Sep 18, 2025
In our nearby stellar neighborhood, a burned-out star is snacking on a fragment of a Pluto-like object. With its unique ultraviolet capability, only NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope could identify that this meal is taking place.
The stellar remnant is a white dwarf about half the mass of our Sun, but that is densely packed into a body about the size of Earth.
Scientists think the dwarf’s immense gravity pulled in and tore apart an icy Pluto analog from the system’s own version of the Kuiper Belt, an icy ring of debris that encircles our solar system.
The findings were reported on September 18 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The researchers were able to determine this carnage by analyzing the chemical composition of the doomed object as its pieces fell onto the white dwarf. In particular, they detected “volatiles” — substances with low boiling points — including carbon, sulphur, nitrogen, and a high oxygen content that suggests the strong presence of water.
“We were surprised,” said Snehalata Sahu of the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom. Sahu led the data analysis of a Hubble survey of white dwarfs.
“We did not expect to find water or other icy content. This is because the comets and Kuiper Belt-like objects are thrown out of their planetary systems early, as their stars evolve into white dwarfs.
But here, we are detecting this very volatile-rich material. This is surprising for astronomers studying white dwarfs as well as exoplanets, planets outside our solar system."
Only with Hubble
Using Hubble’s Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, the team found that the fragments were composed of 64 percent water ice.
The fact that they detected so much ice meant that the pieces were part of a very massive object that formed far out in the star system’s icy Kuiper Belt analog.
Using Hubble data, scientists calculated that the object was bigger than typical comets and may be a fragment of an exo-Pluto.
They also detected a large fraction of nitrogen – the highest ever detected in white dwarf debris systems.
“We know that Pluto's surface is covered with nitrogen ices,” said Sahu. “We think that the white dwarf accreted fragments of the crust and mantle of a dwarf planet.”
Accretion of these volatile-rich objects by white dwarfs is very difficult to detect in visible light. These volatile elements can only be detected with Hubble’s unique ultraviolet light sensitivity. In optical light, the white dwarf would appear ordinary.
About 260 light-years away, the white dwarf is a relatively close cosmic neighbor. In the past, when it was a Sun-like star, it would have been expected to host planets and an analog to our Kuiper Belt.
Like seeing our Sun in future
Billions of years from now, when our Sun burns out and collapses to a white dwarf, Kuiper Belt objects will be pulled in by the stellar remnant’s immense gravity.
“These planetesimals will then be disrupted and accreted,” said Sahu. “If an alien observer looks into our solar system in the far future, they might see the same kind of remains we see today around this white dwarf.”
The team hopes to use NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to detect molecular features of volatiles such as water vapor and carbonates by observing this white dwarf in infrared light.
By further studying white dwarfs, scientists can better understand the frequency and composition of these volatile-rich accretion events.
Sahu is also following the recent discovery of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS. She is eager to learn its chemical composition, especially its fraction of water.
“These types of studies will help us learn more about planet formation. They can also help us understand how water is delivered to rocky planets,” said Sahu.
Boris Gänsicke, of the University of Warwick and a visitor at Spain’s Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, was the principal investigator of the Hubble program that led to this discovery. “We observed over 500 white dwarfs with Hubble.
We’ve already learned so much about the building blocks and fragments of planets, but I’ve been absolutely thrilled that we now identified a system that resembles the objects in the frigid outer edges of our solar system,” said Gänsicke.
“Measuring the composition of an exo-Pluto is an important contribution toward our understanding of the formation and evolution of these bodies.”
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/nasas-hubble-sees-white-dwarf-eating-piece-of-pluto-like-object/
https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/mnras/staf1424
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKCpmNbe480
Strange Tentacles Emerge from a Space Rock: A TikToker Reveals A Creepy Phenomenon
September 17, 2025
Tentacles emerging from a mysterious rock—a bizarre discovery in Panama has left social media buzzing with wild speculation.
A man known only as Kin claims to have found a strange organism growing inside a meteorite, and his series of videos have sent the internet into a frenzy.
According to report published in the DailyMail, Kin stumbled upon a small, silver-colored rock in a fiery crater on August 29, which he believes may contain an alien life form.
Since then, he’s shared several TikTok videos, each one more intriguing—and mysterious—than the last.
The footage shows the object sprouting what appears to be tentacle-like growths, adding fuel to the belief that this could be something out of this world.
Tentacles Emerge from the Rock
Kin’s first video on TikTok was nothing short of captivating. In it, the meteorite is shown burning leaves on contact, which alone was enough to get people talking.
But it didn’t stop there. Kin shared more footage, including one of the crater where he found the rock glowing at night.
“It shines at night,” Kin says in one of his updates, adding a mysterious layer to the story. As the days passed, things seemed to get stranger.
The rock appeared to sprout oily, tentacle-like structures that spread rapidly, eventually engulfing the rock entirely.
Naturally, this caught the attention of skeptics. Some viewers immediately dismissed the footage as a hoax, pointing out things like the shiny metallic sheen of the rock and the cuts in the video before the camera made direct contact with the organism.
One commenter on X (formerly Twitter) joked, “That metallic sheen smells like paint, and the camera cut before touching it is suspicious.
By the way, iron meteorites don’t do photosynthesis. It’s a potato.” It’s hard to ignore that the whole thing seems a little too neat, a little too perfect.
Is It Alien or Just a Fungus?
Some followers of Kin’s TikTok account began suggesting that the “alien organism” wasn’t alien at all but was actually a common fungus.
Specifically, they pointed to Clathrus archeri, or the Devil’s Fingers fungus, which has tentacle-like growths. However, this particular fungus usually has bright red tentacles and is far less covered in the tar-like substance seen in Kin’s videos.
The rapid, oily growth doesn’t exactly match what we know about the Devil’s Fingers, but it does raise the possibility that Kin’s discovery might not be as alien as it seems.
Kin himself isn’t buying into the fungus theory. He insists that what he found isn’t some ordinary plant or fungus but something entirely different—something far more mysterious.
As the videos gained traction, he revealed that the organism had grown to such an extent that it needed to be stored inside a large safe.
But even with this odd precaution, Kin’s critics remain unconvinced. Could it all be staged? Or is there something strange lurking inside that rock?
Theories on What It Could Be
Amid all the drama, there have been several theories about what Kin’s find could mean.
Some have even speculated that this could be evidence of panspermia, the hypothesis that life on Earth may have been seeded by microorganisms carried on meteorites from space.
If this were true, Kin’s discovery would be ground-breaking. But others dismiss this idea, pointing out the lack of concrete evidence and the fact that there’s no record of a meteorite impact in Panama during the time Kin made his discovery.
Despite the mounting doubts, the mystery persists. The videos keep coming, and with each new post, the growing organism seems to defy more explanations.
What’s clear is that Kin’s story has captivated a global audience, leaving everyone wondering whether they’re witnessing the emergence of extraterrestrial life or simply an elaborate hoax.
Whether or not we’ll ever get a definitive answer remains to be seen.
https://dailygalaxy.com/2025/09/strange-tentacles-emerge-fromspace-rock/
https://www.tiktok.com/@kinpanama
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BozHUyvUMKE