Raman spectroscopy uses scattered to identify a substance’s chemical ingredients and is one of the most widely used scientific methods in space exploration. It is used for lunar exploration to identify volcanic minerals, water ice, and space weathering, and has been limited to obtaining data from lunar orbiters. But how can Raman spectroscopy be conducted on the lunar surface to help us better understand our nearest celestial neighbor? This is what a recent study presented at the 56^th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference hopes to address as a team of NASA and academic researchers discussed the Raman Cube Rover (R³R), which would be delivered to the lunar surface via the private space company, Astrobotic.

For the study, the researchers discussed the development of the Raman Cube Rover with laboratory experiments and how it can contribute to future Artemis missions to the lunar surface. These experiments involved testing three optical configurations for collecting data, including collecting data using a spectrometer and optical fiber via direct contact from the laser beam to the sample and indirect contact using a mirror, and using scattered light combined with a long-distance microscope to collect the data. The researchers note how the Raman Cube Rover’s resolution has demonstrated an approximate distance of 30 meters (98 feet) compared to NASA Perseverance rover’s SuperCam that is limited to a distance of 7 meters (20 feet).

The study notes, “The R³R [Raman Cube Rover] telescope and relay light collection system holds promise to extend the standoff distance for measurements supporting Artemis science missions by collecting stimulated Raman back-scattered light close to the sample target with improved étendue [extent], and by controlling the divergence of the returned collimated light beam to the stationary lander.”

As noted, Raman spectroscopy is used in space exploration for identifying a substance’s chemical ingredients. This includes water and water ice, whose identification and extraction will be crucial for future crewed missions to the lunar surface in a process called in-situ resource utilization, or “living off the land” without relying on constant resupply from Earth. With future Artemis landing sites targeting the lunar south pole to exploit the region’s water ice content within the permanently shadowed regions (PSRs), Raman spectroscopy could prove an invaluable technique for the crew survival and mission success, as water ice can be used for drinking, bathing, hydration, fuel, and even creating oxygen through electrolysis.

An example of Raman spectroscopy being used on an active space mission is NASA’s Perseverance rover, which uses its SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals) instrument to analyze Martian rocks and regolith (often mistakenly called soil) for potential signs of present or ancient life. Along with the Moon and Mars, Raman spectroscopy has been proposed for studying and analyzing the surfaces and atmospheres of Jupiter’s Galilean moons and is currently being used to study the atmospheres of exoplanets for biosignatures. Some of the benefits of spectroscopy include its non-invasive attributes while still collecting crucial scientific data and can be used for in-situ analysis, as depicted with the NASA Perseverance rover and the proposed Raman Cube Rover for the Moon.

As humanity continues its expansion into out space with the participation of governments and private companies, the Raman Cube Rover could offer an intriguing opportunity to teach scientists about the lunar surface while identifying pockets of water ice that could be used for human missions with the upcoming Artemis program.

How will the Raman Cube Rover help enhance Raman spectroscopy on the lunar surface in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!

• As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

SpaceX’s Starship super-rocket got off to a great start today for its ninth flight test, but the second stage ran into a host of issues and made an uncontrolled re-entry.

The 400-foot-tall rocket’s first-stage booster, known as Super Heavy, rose from its Starbase launch pad in Texas just after 6:30 p.m. CT (2330 UTC) with all 33 methane-fueled engines blazing. Cheers erupted from SpaceX’s teams in Texas and at the company’s HQ in California.

But the second stage, known as Ship, wasn’t able to open its payload doors for what would have been Starship’s first-ever payload deployment. The plan had called for Ship to send a set of eight Starlink satellite simulators into space. Instead, the experiment was scrubbed.

Minutes later, the Starship team got worse news: As the Ship headed toward a planned splashdown in the Indian Ocean, it began spinning uncontrollably. SpaceX commentator Dan Huot said the second stage lost attitude control, apparently due to propellant leaks.

“Not looking great with a lot of our on-orbit objectives today,” he said. Ship broke up as it descended over a wide swath of open ocean that had been cleared for the splashdown.

Starship is considered the world’s most powerful rocket, with liftoff thrust of 16.7 million pounds. That’s more than twice the oomph achieved by the Saturn V rocket during the Apollo era’s heyday.

A version of Starship is slated for use as the landing system for NASA’s Artemis 3 mission, which would mark the first crewed moon landing since Apollo. SpaceX also aims to use Starship for missions to Mars. During today’s webcast, Huot said Starship flights to the Red Planet could begin as early as next year.

In order to meet that ambitious schedule, SpaceX has to demonstrate that Super Heavy and Ship can execute all the complex maneuvers that will be necessary — including controlled landings of both stages, and the ability to deploy payloads and refuel in space.

During the seventh and eighth flight tests, SpaceX successfully recovered the first stage at its launch pad, using an ingenious system that captured the autonomously controlled Super Heavy booster with a pair of giant mechanical arms known as “chopsticks.” But in both those cases, the second stage was lost during its flight in space.

The investigations into those mishaps, overseen by the Federal Aviation Administration, went on for months. In each case, SpaceX said it upgraded its hardware and operating procedures to address the failures.  Last week, the FAA gave the go-ahead for today’s test.

The objectives for today’s flight included a set of challenging maneuvers that were conducted by Super Heavy after stage separation — including a directional flip-over and a heightened angle of attack, both of which are aimed at making future missions more fuel-efficient. Super Heavy also tested its ability to make a controlled descent even in the event of a single-engine failure. Because of the extreme challenges involved, SpaceX made no plans to recover the booster but instead let it fall into the sea near Texas’ Gulf Coast.

All those tests appeared to go well, which was an impressive achievement — especially considering that this was the first Super Heavy booster to be flown more than once. (It was previously used in January for the seventh Starship flight test.)

The FAA said it was aware of the anomaly that occurred during today's flight and was "actively working with SpaceX on the event."

"There are no reports of public injury or damage to public property at this time," the FAA said in an emailed statement.

In a posting to his X social-media platform, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk signaled that he wouldn’t be deterred by today’s setbacks.

“Starship made it to the scheduled ship engine cutoff, so big improvement over last flight! Also, no significant loss of heat shield tiles during ascent,” Musk wrote. “Leaks caused loss of main tank pressure during the coast and re-entry phase. Lot of good data to review. Launch cadence for next three flights will be faster, at approximately one every three to four weeks.”

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Modern ground-based telescopes rely on adaptive optics (AO) to deliver clear images. By correcting for atmospheric distortion, they give us exceptional pictures of planets, stars, and other celestial objects. Now, a team at the National Solar Observatory is using AO to examine the Sun's corona in unprecedented detail.

The corona is the Sun's outermost layer, extending into space for millions of kilometres. Unexpectedly, it's hotter than the layer beneath it, the photosphere. Scientists call this the 'coronal heating problem'. The corona is dominated by the Sun's powerful magnetic fields and is the source of coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which can collide with Earth's magnetosphere, causing aurorae and geomagnetic storms.

Since the corona is dimmer than the Sun's surface, it's challenging to observe. It's visible during total solar eclipses when the Moon blocks the Sun's photosphere, and space-based coronagraphs like the one on the Parker Solar Probe accomplish the same thing by mimicking an eclipse.

Observing the Sun's corona from Earth is challenging because of atmospheric interference. Adaptive Optics uses computer-controlled, deformable mirrors to counteract the interference and produce clear images. Researchers from the National Academy of Science's National Solar Observatory (NSO) and the New Jersey Institute of Technology have developed an AO system for the 1.6-meter Goode Solar Telescope to observe the corona in precise detail and reveal its fine structure.

Their work is presented in a new paper titled "Observations of fine coronal structures with high-order solar adaptive optics." It's published in Nature Astronomy, and Dirk Schmidt, an Adaptive Optics Scientist at the NSO, is the lead author.

"Resolving fine structures in the Sun's corona may provide key insights into rapid eruptions and the heating of the corona," the authors write in their research article. They point out that while AO has been used on large telescopes for two decades, none have been able to view the corona. "Here we present observations with coronal adaptive optics reaching the diffraction limit of a 1.6-m telescope to reveal very fine coronal details," they write.

"These are by far the most detailed observations of this kind, showing features not previously observed, and it’s not quite clear what they are." - Vasyl Yurchyshyn, NJIT-Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research.

Solar prominences, loops, and rain are all made of plasma. Understanding them and other unsolved problems relies on seeing their fine detail. "How is plasma in the corona heated to millions of kelvins when the Sun's surface is only 6,000 K?" the authors ask. "How and when are eruptions triggered?"

Adaptive optics relies on wavefront sensors and their enabling technologies and algorithms. These are available for the photosphere but haven't been for the corona, until now.

"The turbulence in the air severely degrades images of objects in space, like our Sun, seen through our telescopes. But we can correct for that," said Dirk Schmidt, NSO Adaptive Optics Scientist, who led the development. "It is super exciting to build an instrument that shows us the Sun like never before," he said in a press release.

"This technological advancement is a game-changer, there is a lot to discover when you boost your resolution by a factor of 10." Dirk Schmidt, National Solar Observatory.

This video shows a dynamic prominence with a large-scale twist alongside raining coronal material.

Coronal rain is when strands of coronal plasma cool and fall back down to the surface. "Raindrops in the Sun’s corona can be narrower than 20 kilometers," said NSO Astronomer Thomas Schad. "These findings offer new invaluable observational insight that is vital to test computer models of coronal processes."

"These are by far the most detailed observations of this kind, showing features not previously observed, and it's not quite clear what they are," said study co-author Vasyl Yurchyshyn, a professor at the NJIT-Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research.

This video shows a dense and cool quiescent prominence with complex internal flows.

Another video shows a Twisted plasmoid in the post-flare coronal loop system resolved with adaptive optics and compared to SDO/AIA images.

The next video shows post-flare coronal rain. Since the rain is made of plasma, it follows magnetic field lines instead of straight lines. The video is made of the highest-resolution images ever captured.

Despite its omnipresence, there's still much scientists don't know about the Sun. The coronal heating problem is one of the things awaiting an explanation. They're hopeful that resolving the fine structure in the plasma will lead to an answer.

While solar telescopes have used AO in the past, there were limitations. They revealed the Sun's surface in detail, but not its corona. These systems reached a 1,000 km level of precision decades ago, but have stagnated since then.

"The new coronal adaptive optics system closes this decades-old gap and delivers images of coronal features at 63 kilometers resolution—the theoretical limit of the 1.6-meter Goode Solar Telescope," said Thomas Rimmele, NSO Chief Technologist who built the first operational adaptive optics for the Sun's surface, and motivated the development.

This new AO system is a huge step forward for solar scientists.

"This technological advancement is a game-changer; there is a lot to discover when you boost your resolution by a factor of 10," Schmidt said.

Study co-author Philip Goode, a research professor at NJIT-CSTR, says this system is transformative. The team is working toward implementing it on the National Science Foundation's Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii. Its 4-meter mirror makes it the largest solar telescope in the world.

"This transformative technology, which is likely to be adopted at observatories world-wide, is poised to reshape ground-based solar astronomy,” said Goode. "With coronal adaptive optics now in operation, this marks the beginning of a new era in solar physics, promising many more discoveries in the years and decades to come."

Press Release: 

• “Raindrops in the Sun’s corona”: New adaptive optics shows stunning details of our star’s atmosphere

Research: 

• Observations of fine coronal structures with high-order solar adaptive optics

NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars in the Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021. The area is thought to have once been a lake bed that held water billions of years ago, making it a prime location to study the planet’s geological history. Equipped with advanced instruments, Perseverance is tasked with analyzing Martian rocks, soil, and the atmosphere of the red planet. It’s also collecting rock samples for a future collect and return mission to bring them back to Earth for analysis.

A view of the Jezero Crater from the Perseverance Rover on Mars

(Credit : NASA)

It is equipped with a suite of 23 cameras, each serving a specific role in navigation, scientific analysis and engineering. Among them, Mastcam-Z is a powerful zoomable imaging system that captures high-resolution colour panoramas and 3D stereoscopic views of the Martian landscape. The SuperCam, mounted on the rover’s mast, not only takes detailed images but also uses lasers and spectroscopy to analyze the composition of rocks from a distance. Navigation and hazard avoidance are managed by cameras like Navcams and Hazcams, which help the rover safely traverse Mars’ rugged terrain. Finally the WATSON camera, located on the robotic arm, captures close-up images of rock textures and plays a key role in documenting sample collection and it is also often used to grab selfies of the rover.

Schematic showing cameras on the Perseverance Rover

(Credit : NASA)

On May 10th, Perseverance used the WATSON camera to grab a selfie to mark its 1,500th day on Mars. NASA got a surprise though with an unexpected guest star in the image..a towering dust devil swirling in the distance photobombed the shot. The rover was on Witch Hazel Hill, an area on the rim of Jezero Crater that it has been exploring for the last 5 months.

To create a full selfie, the rover moves its arm through a series of carefully planned positions, snapping dozens of individual images from different angles. These photos are then stitched together into a seamless composite, showing the rover as if someone else took the picture. The selfie recently released was made up of 59 separate photos and took about an hour to capture due to all the complex arm movements required.

The image not only shows the rover in fine health albeit covered in a fine layer of Martian dust but it also shows a fresh bore hole drilled for sample collection. Perhaps the real star of the show though, was the dust devil 5km away in the background! The dust devils on Mars are just like those seen on Earth; towering, swirling columns of dust and wind that form when sunlight heats the surface creating warm air to rise and spin. They can reach heights of several kilometres and move across the surface leaving tracks in the fine red powdery surface material. They look dramatic and perhaps even scary but they are generally harmless and often help clean solar panels by blowing off accumulated dust.

Source :

• Devil's in Details in Selfie Taken by NASA's Mars Perseverance Rover

Of the roughly 6,000 exoplanets we've discovered, a significant number are in the apparent habitable zones of their stars. Most are giant planets; either gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn, or ice giants like Uranus and Neptune. Could some of those have habitable exomoons?

No life could exist on our Solar System's giant planets. However, some of their moons have become prime targets in the search for life. It leads to a natural question: Could giant exoplanets in habitable zones around other stars have habitable moons?

Astronomers have detected only tantalizing hints of exomoons, even though their existence is virtually guaranteed. Theory shows that moon formation is a natural process. Finding exoplanets is difficult, even though we've become used to it, and finding their moons is even more difficult.

Researchers from Hungary and the Netherlands wanted to study how exomoons might form around distant, giant planets to gain insight into their existence. Their research is titled "Grand Theft Moons: Formation of habitable moons around giant planets," and it will be published in Astronomy and Astrophysics. The lead author is Zoltán Dencs from the HUN-REN Research Centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences.

"We aim to study moon formation around giant planets in a phase similar to the final assembly of planet formation," the authors write. "We search for conditions for forming the largest moons with the highest possibility in circumplanetary disks, and investigate whether the resulting moons can be habitable."

It starts with circumplanetary disks, the rotating collection of material that remains after a planet forms. The researchers used simulations to determine what fraction of that material can successfully form moons. In this case, the researchers focused on the most massive moons.

This ALMA image from 2019 shows the circumplanetary disk around exoplanet PDS 70c, the point-like source on the right side. This was the first time astronomers had seen one of these disks, and the discovery validated theories about planet and moon formation.

Image Credit: By ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/Benisty et al., CC BY 4.0

"We determined the fraction of the circumplanetary disk's mass converted into moons using numerical N-body simulations where moon embryos grow via embryo−satellitesimal collisions," the researchers write. They examined the disks around giant planets where 100 lunar embryos interact with 1000 satellitesimals. The planets were 461 known giant exoplanets from an exoplanet database.

A habitable zone for planets depends on the stellar irradiation coming from the star. With enough energy, liquid water can persist on a planet's surface, given the right atmospheric conditions and other factors. For moons, the formula is a bit different. In our Solar System, icy moons like Europa and Enceladus likely have liquid water under a frozen cap, but the heat comes from tidal flexing. The researchers included that heat in their simulations.

"To determine the habitability of the synthetic moons, we calculated the stellar irradiation and tidal heating flux on these moons based on their orbital and physical parameters," the authors write. "The global energy flux on the moons can be significantly influenced by tidal heating, which comes from the tidal energy dissipation of the planet−moon interactions," they explain.

As our solar system shows, tidal heating becomes more significant the further a moon is from its star.

This figure from the research shows the situation for a hypothetical moon experiencing tidal heating around the exoplanet HD 114386 b. The Conservative HZ is bounded by the Runaway Greenhouse line and the Maximum Greenhouse line.

Image Credit: Dencs et al. 2025, A&A

The team's simulations involved circumplanetary disks in the final phase of moon formation. For simplicity, they involved rocky bodies only and gas-free disks. "The disks consist of moon embryos embedded in a swarm of satellitesimals, and the only force considered in the calculation is gravity," they write. All objects—the star, the planet, the embryos, and the satellitesimals—interact gravitationally. The simulations allowed embryo-embryo or embryo-satellitesimal collisions, but not collisions between satellitesimals. They also included hot and cold disks, and other factors like the eccentricity and inclination of embryos and satellitesimals.

As bodies in the simulation reacted with one another, there were four different results.

In the first result, the objects combined and added their mass together. In the second, the planet accretes the object. In the third, the body is accreted by the star. In the fourth, the body is ejected from the system. Only the first result forms exomoons.

The simulation included two timescales: the number of planetary orbits around the star and the number of orbits for the proto-satellites in the circumplanetary disk. The first is stellar-centred (SC) and the second is planet-centred (PC).

The first question regards mass loss. Do the disks retain enough mass to form habitable moons? The researchers discovered that the entire circumplanetary disk loses mass over time. As some embryos become more massive, their perturbations dissipate mass from the disk, shrinking the overall embryo mass.

This figure from the research illustrates some of the simulation results. The total available embryo mass decreases as time goes on. The left panel shows the stellar-centred time scale, and the right panel shows the planet-centred timescale. They both show "The evolution of the moon embryos and the protosatellite disks of 10 Jupiter-mass host planets on a logarithmic timescale," researchers explain.

Image Credit: Dencs et al. 2025, A&A

The most significant mass loss is when the exomoons are in cold disks within 1 AU of the star, as panel A shows above. In that situation, the disk loses between 30% and 40% of its mass. Panel B shows that while embryos lose mass in the planet-centred simulation, it's not as extreme. They retain more than 90% of their initial mass.

The simulations provide much more detail, but the results show that exomoons should form and remain in circumplanetary disks around giant planets. This is despite mass loss, ejections, and embryos absorbed by the star or the planet.

As the stellar distance increases, the number of moons rises. However, their initial masses are smaller. As the mass of the exomoons rises, more of them are lost to stellar theft. "Due to these two factors, the highest moon formation efficiency is observed for the planet orbiting at two au stellar distance," the authors write.

Habitability is a separate question, and the simulations had some interesting results.

Beyond about one au, tidal heating becomes the primary heating source for habitable exomoons. The simulations also showed that beyond two au, the number of habitable exomoons decreases dramatically because the habitable zone shrinks. "The optimal distance for habitability is between 1−2 au stellar distances," the researchers explain.

They also found that the number of exomoons increases as stellar distance increases. However, their masses are too small, making them uninhabitable.

"We examined the habitability of putative Earth analog moons around 461 known giant exoplanets, selected by their mass," the researchers write in their conclusion. "Our simulations show that moons with masses between Mars and Earth could form around planets with masses about 10 times that of Jupiter, and many of these moons could be potentially habitable at 1−2 au stellar distances."

The study shows that when searching for habitability, we should expand our scope to include more than just rocky, habitable zone exoplanets. We should begin searching for habitable exomoons at greater distances from their stars. "These locations provide suitable targets for the discovery of habitable exomoons or exomoons in general," the authors write.

Jupiter's moon Europa is well beyond the stellar habitable zone, but because of tidal flexing, it could be habitable. The same is true for exomoons.

Image Credit: NASA

Astronomers haven't had much success detecting exomoons, though there are several candidates. However, we may be on the verge of an initial confirmation. A research team of astronomers used the JWST to examine exomoon candidates but hasn't published their results yet. The ESA's upcoming PLATO mission may also be able to detect some exomoons.

Even though we only have simulation results for now, it seems impossible that our Solar System is the only one with moons. Exoplanets must also exist. Prior to the launch of Kepler, we were anticipating a wealth of discoveries. Now, we're poised to learn much more about the exomoon population. Based on this research, we can expect some of these exomoons to be in habitable zones.

"We conclude that the circumstellar habitable zone can be extended to moons around giant planets," the authors write.

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Simulated image of the supermassive black hole in M87 seen at multiple frequencies.

Credit: EHT, D. Pesce, A. Chael

Astronomers with the Event Horizon Telescope have developed a new way to observe the radio sky at multiple frequencies, and it means we will soon be able to capture color images of supermassive black holes.

Color is an interesting thing. In physics, we can say the color of light is defined by its frequency or wavelength. The longer the wavelength, or the lower the frequency, the more toward the red end of the spectrum light is. Move toward the blue end, and the wavelengths get shorter and the frequencies higher. Each frequency or wavelength has its own unique color.

Of course, we don't see it that way. Our eyes see color with three different types of cones in our retina, sensitive to red, green, and blue light frequencies. Our minds then use this data to create a color image. Digital cameras work similarly. They have sensors that capture red, green, and blue light. Your computer screen then uses red, green, and blue pixels, which tricks our brain into seeing a color image.

While we can't see radio light, radio telescopes can see colors, known as bands. A detector can capture a narrow range of frequencies, known as a frequency band, which is similar to the way optical detectors capture colors. By observing the radio sky at different frequency bands, astronomers can create a "color" image.

But this is not without its problems. Most radio telescopes can only observe one band at a time. So astronomers have to observe an object multiple times at different bands to create a color image. For many objects, this is perfectly fine, but for fast-changing objects or objects with a small apparent size, it doesn't work. The image can change so quickly that you can't layer images together. Imagine if your phone camera took a tenth of a second to capture each color of an image. It would be fine for a landscape photo or selfie, but for an action shot the different images wouldn't line up.

This is where this new method comes in. The team used a method known as frequency phase transfer (FPT) to overcome atmospheric distortions of radio light. By observing the radio sky at the 3mm wavelength, the team can track how the atmosphere distorts light. This is similar to the way optical telescopes use a laser to track atmospheric changes. The team demonstrated how they can observe the sky at both a 3mm and 1mm wavelength at the same time and use that to correct and sharpen the image gathered by the 1mm wavelength. By correcting for atmospheric distortion in this way, radio astronomers could capture successive images at different radio bands, then correct them all to create a high-resolution color image.

This method is still in its early stages, and this latest study is just a demonstration of the technique. But it proves the method can work. So future projects such as the next-generation EHT (ngEHT) and the Black Hole Explorer (BHEX) will be able to build on this method. And that means we will be able to see black holes live and in color.

Reference: 

• Issaoun, Sara, et al. "First Frequency Phase Transfer from the 3 mm to the 1 mm Band on an Earth-sized Baseline." The Astronomical Journal 169.4 (2025): 229.

Twenty years ago, the US Congress instructed NASA to find 90% of near-Earth asteroids threatening Earth. They've made progress finding these asteroids that orbit the Sun and come to within 1.3 astronomical units of Earth. However, they may have to expand their search since astronomers are now finding asteroids co-orbiting Venus that could pose a threat.

New research tries to understand how many more may co-orbit Venus and how we can detect them. They can be hidden in the Sun's glare and resist our efforts to find them. It comes down to observability windows and how the asteroids' brightness changes.

The research is titled "The invisible threat: assessing the collisional hazard posed by the undiscovered Venus co-orbital asteroids," and has been submitted to the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. The lead author is Valerio Carruba, an assistant professor at São Paolo University in Brazil. The paper is currently available at arxiv.org.

"Twenty co-orbital asteroids of Venus are currently known," the authors write. "Co-orbital status protects these asteroids from close approaches to Venus, but it does not protect them from encountering Earth." Venus's co-orbital asteroids are considered potentially hazardous asteroids (PHA) if they have "a minimum diameter of about 140 meters and come within 0.05 astronomical units (au) of Earth's orbit," they explain.

The big question is, do these pose a collisional threat to Earth?

"We aim to assess the possible threat that the yet undetected population of Venus co-orbiters may pose to Earth, and to investigate their detectability from Earth and space observatories," the authors write.

Only one of the 20 known asteroids has an orbital eccentricity below 0.38. This makes sense since asteroids with wider orbits come closer to Earth and are easier to detect. So its detection is likely the result of an observational bias. Unfortunately, it also means there could be many more of them with minor orbital eccentricities that are very difficult to detect.

Most of the Solar System's asteroids are in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter. However, others are co-orbital with planets, like the Jupiter Trojans, which form two groups: one behind and one ahead of Jupiter. Astronomers are finding more asteroids co-orbiting with Venus, posing a threat to Earth. Image Credit: NASA/LPI

One problem in determining their danger is that co-orbitals have unpredictable orbits. "The co-orbital asteroids of Venus are highly chaotic, with Lyapunov times of the order of 150 years," the authors explain. The Lyapunov time refers to how long an object's orbit takes to become unpredictable because of chaotic dynamics.

This means that studying a single orbit of an object doesn't tell us much about what its orbit will evolve into in more than about 150 years. The authors write that a statistical study of 'clone' asteroids provides a clearer picture.

The researchers created a grid with different orbital inclinations and populated it with 26 cloned asteroids with different orbital characteristics. They then integrated them with the orbits of the Solar System's planets for 36,000 simulated years. Then they checked to see if any cloned asteroids had a close encounter with Earth.

"There is a range of orbits with eccentricity < 0.38, larger at lower inclinations, for which Venus' co-orbitals can pose a collisional hazard to Earth," the authors write.

Then they checked to see if they are observable from Earth with the upcoming Vera Rubin Observatory. They found that these objects are only observable periodically due to the Sun's glare. These observational windows mostly occur when the objects are near their closest approach to Earth.

The Vera Rubin Observatory will see first light in July 2025. Once it gets going, it will release a flood of data and discoveries and find more potentially hazardous objects, including those co-orbiting Venus.

Image Credit: Rubin Observatory/NSF/AURA.

"The combination of elevation constraints and solar elongation limitations restricts our observations to specific periods throughout the year," the authors write. Solar elongation means the angular distance between one of these asteroids and the Sun, as measured from Earth's perspective.

The study shows how difficult it can be to detect these dangerous asteroids from Earth. One solution might be to send a spacecraft to Venus' orbit. "However, observations conducted from Venus' orbit, positioned facing away from the Sun, may enhance the detection of these bodies," the researchers explain. Several missions have been proposed, including to the Sun-Earth or Sun-Venus L1 or L2 halo orbit.

We know there are asteroids out there with considerable chances to strike Earth. Some of them are large enough to destroy entire cities. Even a relatively small asteroid 150 meters in diameter can strike Earth with a force equal to hundreds of megatons of TNT. That's thousands of times more potent than the atomic bombs dropped in World War 2. "Among these, low-e Venus co-orbitals pose a unique challenge, because of the difficulties in detecting and following these objects from Earth," the authors write in their conclusion.

The Vera Rubin Observatory should detect many asteroids during its regular survey operations. However, finding potentially dangerous asteroids co-orbiting with Venus might take a special effort.

"While surveys like those from the Rubin Observatory may be able to detect some of these asteroids in the near future, we believe that only a dedicated observational campaign from a space-based mission near Venus could potentially map and discover all the still "invisible" PHA among Venus' co-orbital asteroids," the researchers conclude.

• A new study suggests that unseen geologic activity may lurk just below the thin crust of Venus.

We’re slowly unraveling the mysteries of Earth’s strange twin.

Our nearest neighbor is only slightly smaller than the Earth… but that’s just about the only thing the two planets have in common. Permanently shrouded in a thick atmosphere, the surface is subjected to a punishing atmospheric pressure more than 90 times that of Earth at sea level, and temperatures reaching 460 degrees Celsius. This has also made Venus difficult to explore, to say the least, with the late Soviet Union’s Venera missions lasting for just hours on the surface.

Certainly, exploring enigmatic Venus is hard. A reminder of this literally came home this month, when the failed Soviet Venus lander Kosmos-482 reentered on May 10^th over the Indian Ocean region, after more than half a century in Earth orbit.

Now, a recent NASA-funded study published in Nature: Communications suggests that the interior of Venus may be equally strange as well.

Earth has an active surface and crust, with tectonic plates crashing together and rising and sinking back into the interior in a process known as subduction. In contrast, we see that Venus has no surface fault lines suggesting individual plates, with the crust of Venus instead seeming to be fused in one single piece.

Contrasting interiors of Venus versus Earth.

Credit: JAXA.

NASA’s Magellan mission created a radar map of the surface of Venus in the 1990s. Venus, however, is not dormant, but features vast active structures called coronae. These are circular surface features, thought to be caused by plumes of hot material pushing against the surface. Think bubbling cheese, on a piping-hot pizza. Though modern Earth has no direct analog, geologic coronae are thought to have been a feature common on early Earth. Evidence for modern volcanic activity on the surface of Venus includes the Maat Mons and the Ozza Mons regions.

The Artemis Corona feature on Venus.

Credit: NASA/Magellan.

Another recent study out earlier this month lends support to the idea that these circular coronae are still actively reshaping the surface of Venus.

This then presents a mystery, as Venus seems to lack a tectonic plate cycle, but somehow still remains volcanically active. What researchers in the study propose is a mechanism of crust metamorphism, coupled with rock density and melting cycles. Researchers ran models and simulations of the interior of Venus and came up with a surprising result: this activity limits the crust-mantle boundary to a depth of 25-40 miles (40 to 65 kilometers) at most… a surprisingly thin result. For context, we know that Earth’s crust is on average 3 to 44 miles (5-70 kilometers) thick (that’s oceanic, versus continental).

Crustal density and thickness for Venus, versus various basalt compositions and thermal gradients used in the study.

Nature/Creative Commons

"We are currently working on understanding the composition of the Venusian highlands since they do show similarities to Earth's continental crust, which would give us some insight on the geological evolution of Venus," Julia Semprich (Open University, United Kingdom) told Universe Today. "Modeling the interior with our new crustal densities would also be an option."

"This is surprisingly thin, given the conditions of the planet,” says Justin Filiberto (NASA-JSC Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division) said in a recent press release. “It turns out that, according to our models, as the crust grows thicker, the bottom of it becomes so dense that it either breaks off and becomes part of the mantle or gets hot enough to melt.” This could, in turn drive a recycling of material in the interior, and drive volcanic activity.

Venus Exploration: What’s Next

What we really need are direct measurements of Venus, in a dedicated seismology mission along the lines of NASA’s Mars InSight. Next up in the mission pipeline for Venus are the European Space Agency’s Envision set to study the surface and atmosphere of the planet, and NASA’s VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy) and DAVINCI (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry and Imaging) missions, set for the early 2030s. As of writing this, the future of DAVINCI, VERITAS and much of NASA’s planetary science efforts is in doubt, thanks to proposed budget cuts.

"New missions will focus on high-resolution radar and emissivity maps allowing us to get better constraints on topography (and) crustal thickness as well as surface features and compositions," says Semprich. "The best way to answer the question whether Venus has plates would be to use seismometers to map the interior, and this seems not very likely in the near future."

For now, why Venus and Earth took two divergent paths remains a mystery. Venus transitioned from dusk into the dawn sky in early 2025, where it still dominates as the morning star.

Looking east on the morning of Saturday, May 24th.

Credit: Stellarium.

Certainly, our sister world doesn’t give up its secrets easily. A new series of missions could give us key insights, into the interior workings of our inner solar system neighbor.

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Sometimes, space enthusiasts blind themselves with techno-optimism about all the potential cool technological things we can do and the benefits they can offer humanity. We conveniently ignore that there are trade-offs: if one group gets to utilize the water available on the lunar surface, that means another group doesn't get to. Recognizing and attempting to come up with a plan to deal with those sorts of trade-offs is the intent of a new paper by Marissa Herron and Therese Jones of NASA's Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy, as well as Amanda Hernandez of BryceTech, a contractor based out of Virginia. 

The paper deals explicitly with trade-offs on the Moon, though most of the strategy could work elsewhere throughout the solar system. The Moon is probably the most important, though, as there has been a concerted push by NASA and other space agencies to set up a permanent presence there and start utilizing some of its resources. Reports like the 2022 National Cislunar Science and Technology Strategy and the 2020 Executive Order on Space Resources offer an impetus to utilize the Moon for humanity's benefit. However, ensuring it will be used for all humanity and not just a sliver of it is harder.

Lunar water is a good example of a relatively scarce resource that could be utilized in different ways. Some groups want to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen, using it to refuel rockets that can return larger samples of regolith and other materials off the surface. Other groups want to purify the water and use it for biological functions like drinking or showering. Who is responsible for determining who gets access to what resources and ensuring that they are equitably shared across competing interests is still up in the air, which the paper hopes to lay out.

Fraser talks about utilizing resources on the Moon.

The authors lay out a three-step framework. First, they want to map out the 63 objectives of NASA's Moon to Mars plan and figure out what, if any, requirements on lunar sites and resources are needed. They stress that collaboration from outside NASA, including other agencies and private organizations, is critical at this stage, despite the Moon to Mars architecture being a NASA-driven program.

The second step is a "Catalog". Essentially, it is a list of "concerns" - anything that could disrupt the use of a location or resource. The water use example from above is one such example - others abound, and aren't just limited to the surface. Orbits and Lagrange point locations are resources as well, and ensuring that they are fairly utilized is a key component of the framework.

The final step is the "Preservation" segment - essentially, it is the development of a plan to mitigate the concerns listed in the Catalog step. These mitigations could be the result of technological improvements like better solar collectors that could increase the overall power available at a specific location. Or they could be operational - they could mandate the joint use of a regolith collection machine by organizations that want to collect the water vs those that want to collect the iron for steel production. Finally, there could be policy practices, such as preserving historic sites like the Apollo landing sites or the final resting places of some of the recent lunar landers.

Fraser talks about the Lunar south pole, undoubtedly one of the more contested areas on the lunar surface because of its abundance of resources.

Both the Catalog and Preservation steps are intended to be repeated, with each being continuously updated. That would ensure that, if there are additional resources found somewhere unexpected, or another historic site comes into play for resource utilization, they are considered. The authors stress that the policy would not result in a static document, but a series of interconnected policy and operational priorities that would allow for the successful and harmonious exploitation of resources as we start to expand throughout the solar system. Given the conflict that has arisen on our home planet over those same resources, trying to plan ahead with all the knowledge that we have now on conflict resolution seems the right thing to do.

Learn More:

• M Herron, T Jones & A Hernandez - Benefits of a Proposed Process to Preserve Lunar Sites
• UT - Preserving Life's Blueprint Beyond the Earth
• UT - We've Entered a New Era: The Lunar Anthropocene
• UT - NASA Wants to Learn to Live Off the Land on the Moon

Our understanding of our Solar System is still evolving. As our telescopes have improved, they've brought the Solar System's deeper reaches into view. Pluto was disqualified as a planet because of it. Now, new research says another dwarf planet may reside at the edge of the Solar System. Its presence supports the Planet X hypothesis.

The ongoing effort to understand the distant Solar System led to the discovery of objects like Far Out in 2018. It's a trans-Neptunian object (TNO), one of thousands without names or numbers. TNOs are primordial objects, unaffected by the Sun at such great distances. They're significant because they can tell us how the Solar System's large planets migrated in the distant past.

Researchers have found another rare type of TNO called an ETNO, for Extreme trans-Neptunian Object. They're even more distant from the Sun. TNOs orbit the Sun at a greater distance than Neptune, with a semi-major axis of 30.1 astronomical units. ETNOs have perihelia greater than 70 astronomical units. The object's working name is 2017 OF201.

The discovery is presented in new research titled "Discovery of a dwarf planet candidate in an extremely wide orbit: 2017 OF201." The lead author is Sihao Cheng, an astrophysicist associated with the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and the Institute for Advanced Study.

2017 OF201 is notable for two reasons: its large size and its extremely wide orbit.

"It must have experienced close encounters with a giant planet, causing it to be ejected to a wide orbit." - Sihao Cheng, Perimeter Institute.

"We report the discovery of a dwarf planet candidate, 2017 OF201, currently located at a distance of 90.5 au," the authors write. "Its orbit is extremely wide and extends to the inner Oort cloud, with a semi-major axis of 838 au and a perihelion of 44.9 au precisely determined from 19 observations over seven years."

This image shows the current positions of Neptune, Pluto, and 2017 OF201.

Image Credit: Jiaxuan Li and Sihao Cheng

AT about 700 km in diameter, it qualifies as a dwarf planet. It's also the second-largest known object in the ETNO population. (For comparison, Pluto is 2,377 km.) Its presence suggests that what astronomers thought was empty space beyond Neptune in the Kuiper Belt isn't empty after all. "Its high eccentricity suggests that it is part of a broader, unseen population of similar objects totalling about 1 % of Earth's mass," the authors write.

"The object's aphelion—the farthest point on the orbit from the Sun—is more than 1600 times that of the Earth's orbit," lead author Cheng said in a press release. "Meanwhile, its perihelion—the closest point on its orbit to the Sun—is 44.5 times that of the Earth's orbit, similar to Pluto's orbit."

The new object's orbit stands apart from other ETNOs and disagrees with the idea that our Solar System has a ninth planet. "Notably, the orbit of 2017 OF201 lies well outside the clustering of longitude of perihelion observed in extreme trans-Neptunian objects, which has been proposed as dynamical evidence for a distant, undetected planet," the authors write.

In 2025, researchers computed the most likely orbit for Planet X based on the clustering of other ETNOs. However, 2017 OF201 doesn't conform to the clustering. "Many extreme TNOs have orbits that appear to cluster in specific orientations, but 2017 OF201 deviates from this," said co-author Jiaxuan Li.

"These results suggest that the existence of 2017 OF201 may be difficult to reconcile with this particular instantiation of the Planet X hypothesis," the authors explain.

This illustration shows the orbits of TNOs with extremely wide orbits. Curiously, the new TNO has a distinct orbit, making it an outlier. Planet X's most likely orbit, according to 2025 research, is shown in black.

Image Credit: Cheng et al. 2025.

At such an extreme distance from the Sun, the object takes about 25,000 years to complete one orbit. The last time 2017 OF201 was in the position it's in now, humans were hunter-gatherers, busy refining stone tools in the Upper Paleolithic period.

The authors think that its orbit tells a tale of gravitational interactions. "It must have experienced close encounters with a giant planet, causing it to be ejected to a wide orbit," says Yang. "There may have been more than one step in its migration. It's possible that this object was first ejected to the Oort cloud, the most distant region in our solar system, which is home to many comets, and then sent back," Cheng adds.

There's good reason to think that there are many more difficult-to-detect objects in the outer Solar System that qualify as dwarf planets. Finding this one took some good fortune because it's usually too far away to detect.

"2017 OF201 spends only 1% of its orbital time close enough to us to be detectable. The presence of this single object suggests that there could be another hundred or so other objects with similar orbit and size; they are just too far away to be detectable now," Cheng states. "Even though advances in telescopes have enabled us to explore distant parts of the universe, there is still a great deal to discover about our own solar system."

"The discovery of 2017 OF201 suggests a population behind it with hundreds of objects possessing similar properties, because the probability for 2017 OF201 to be close enough and detectable is only 0.5%, given its wide and eccentric orbit," the authors write. Based on its large size, they also think that the population's total mass is 1% of Earth's mass, not an insignificant amount.

Though its presence doesn't outright falsify the Planet X/Planet Nine hypothesis, it does pose a challenge. However, if the hypothesized planet does exist, it could spell doom for 2017 OF201. "Our N-body simulations suggest that the presence of the Planet X / Planet 9 that produces the clustering will cause ejection of 2017 OF201 in a short timescale around 0.1 Gyr," the authors write.

If that happens, the tiny dwarf planet will join the population of rogue planets that drift through the Milky Way.

Press Release: 

• An Extreme Cousin for Pluto? Possible Dwarf Planet Discovered at Solar System’s Edge

Research: 

• Discovery of a dwarf planet candidate in an extremely wide orbit: 2017 OF201