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Say cheese! NASA reveals stunning image of giant ‘cosmic smile’ created by warped spacetime

By WILIAM HUNTER, SENIOR SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY REPORTER

NASA has revealed a stunning image of a giant 'cosmic smile' created by the warping of spacetime.

This bizarre portrait was captured by NASA and the European Space Agency using the Hubble Space Telescope.

It shows the galaxy cluster SDSS J1038+4849, located 4.5 billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major.

Strangely, you can clearly make out two glowing orange eyes, a white button nose, and a broad sparkling smile stretching across a vast expanse of space.

NASA explains: 'In the case of this "happy face", the two eyes are very bright galaxies, and the misleading smile lines are actually arcs caused by an effect known as strong gravitational lensing.'

Galaxy clusters are some of the most massive objects in the universe, containing hundreds of individual galaxies, and exert such a powerful gravitational pull that it warps spacetime around them.

This effect, originally predicted by Albert Einstein, means that light from distant objects bends as it passes through an optical lens.

In some rare cases, that creates a brilliant circle known as an Einstein Ring that can look just like a glowing celestial grin.

NASA has revealed a stunning image of a giant 'cosmic smile' created by the warping of spacetime

According to Einstein's theory of relativity, objects with enough mass can warp and stretch the fabric of spacetime around them – like a bowling ball on a trampoline.

When light enters these warped regions, it follows the curve of spacetime so that it appears to bend.

While this happens on a small scale around smaller objects like planets and suns, the more massive the object, the more dramatically light is bent.

Around some of the most massive objects in the universe, that effect is so strong it can be seen through our telescopes as gravitational lensing.

Einstein rings, like the one that makes this cosmic smile, are a special case of gravitational lensing produced when a distant light source is perfectly aligned with a powerful gravitational lens and the observer.

This precise alignment allows the light to bend symmetrically around the massive source of gravity to appear as a ring-like structure.

Gravitational lensing doesn't always produce such perfect illusions, and the results vary depending on how the object, lens, and observer line up.

Just like glasses lenses, strong gravitational fields can warp or magnify passing light, even producing multiple images of a single object.

The gravitational pull of extremely massive objects, such as galaxy clusters like MACS0416 (pictured), warps and stretches spacetime around them 

Bent spacetime causes light to curve around massive objects, sometimes producing multiple distorted images of a distant object. In this image, the light of a distant supernova has been split into four images, in an effect known as an Einstein Cross

WHAT IS GRAVITATIONAL LENSING?

Gravitational lensing occurs when a massive galaxy or cluster of galaxies bend the light emitted from a more distant galaxy.

This forms a highly magnified, though much distorted image.

This is because massive objects bend the spacetime around them, making light travel in a different path.

This theory was first proposed by Einstein in his theory of General Relativity.

In 2014, for example, astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to look at the galaxy cluster MACS J1149.6+2223, located about five billion light-years from Earth.

With the additional mass of a huge galaxy embedded in the cluster, light coming from an exploding star known as Supernova Refsdal, about 9.3 billion light-years away, was warped and stretched.

Gravitational lensing created four identical copies of the supernova arranged around the galaxy, creating a structure known as an Einstein Cross.

Rings and lensing effects like these were critical in proving that Einstein's theories about spacetime were actually correct.

However, they are now helping astronomers to probe the most distant reaches of the universe.

One possibility astronomers are now exploring is using gravitational lensing to measure the mass of stars.

If they know where a distant bright object should appear, astronomers can look past the edge of a star and measure how much the light is being bent.

Scientists use gravitational lensing to look at light from extremely distant objects, such as Earendel (pictured), the most distant star ever observed at 12.9 billion light-years from Earth 

This method was first used in 2023 to measure the mass of a single, isolated white dwarf, revealing that it was 56 per cent as large as our sun.

Because gravitational lensing can amplify light from distant objects, it also allows space telescopes to see much further than they normally would be capable of.

In 2022, scientists used Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope to peer through a gravitational lens at a single star located 12.9 billion light-years away.

Known as Earendel, this is the most distant single star ever observed, and its light started travelling towards Earth when the universe was less than one billion years old.

EINSTEIN'S GENERAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY

Albert Einstein

In 1905, Albert Einstein determined that the laws of physics are the same for all non-accelerating observers, and that the speed of light in a vacuum was independent of the motion of all observers - known as the theory of special relativity.

This groundbreaking work introduced a new framework for all of physics, and proposed new concepts of space and time.

He then spent 10 years trying to include acceleration in the theory, finally publishing his theory of general relativity in 1915.

This determined that massive objects cause a distortion in space-time, which is felt as gravity.

At its simplest, it can be thought of as a giant rubber sheet with a bowling ball in the centre.

Pictured is the original historical documents related to Einstein's prediction of the existence of gravitational waves, shown at the Hebrew university in Jerusalem

As the ball warps the sheet, a planet bends the fabric of space-time, creating the force that we feel as gravity.

Any object that comes near to the body falls towards it because of the effect.

Einstein predicted that if two massive bodies came together it would create such a huge ripple in space time that it should be detectable on Earth.

It was most recently demonstrated in the hit film film Interstellar.

In a segment that saw the crew visit a planet which fell within the gravitational grasp of a huge black hole, the event caused time to slow down massively.

Crew members on the planet barely aged while those on the ship were decades older on their return.

NASA Sunspots Create Smiling Face in Space!

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Scientists say ancient black holes could hold the key to a hidden FIFTH dimension beyond our universe

By WILIAM HUNTER, SENIOR SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY REPORTER

Black holes are already some of the strangest objects in the universe, but scientists now say they could unlock an even more bizarre part of the cosmos.

A group of leading physicists say that ancient black holes could hold the key to a hidden fifth dimension, beyond our material universe.

In addition to the four familiar dimensions - height, width, depth, and time - scientists say that our universe might have a 'dark dimension'.

While this extra plane of reality is hidden from us, researchers say that tiny black holes left over from shortly after the Big Bang might be able to reach it.

Since these ultra-dense remnants, known as primordial black holes, are so small, their gravity could bleed through into the dark dimension.

That means hunting for primordial black holes could reveal some of the fundamental secrets of spacetime itself.

Scientists say that tiny primordial black holes (artist's impression) left over from shortly after the Big Bang could hold the key to a hidden 'dark dimension' 

The world we see and interact with exists within the four dimensions of spacetime, but some physicists believe the universe might be more complex.

To try and understand this, imagine drawing a person on a piece of paper.

From that figure's perspective, their entire universe has just three dimensions: length, width, and time.

Since they can't peel themselves off the flat page and take a look around, they can't move through the extra dimension of height, and it would be really hard for them to imagine how anyone could.

According to some theories, our universe is a bit like this: a four-dimensional sheet embedded within a bigger, five-dimensional cosmos.

Scientists call the 4D universe, which contains everything we can see, the 'brane', while the fifth-dimensional background is called the 'bulk'.

To make things even stranger, scientists say that this dimension is tiny, just a micron wide in our four dimensions - about one tenth the length of a red blood cell.

There isn't direct evidence that we are in a 'dark dimension' universe, but lots of theoretical physics concerning electromagnetism and gravity work better if the mathematics has an extra dimension.

However, things get weirder still when you throw tiny but enormously powerful sources of gravity, like primordial black holes, into the mix.

Normal black holes form when enormous stars, tens to hundreds of times the mass of our sun, run out of fuel and collapse, leaving behind an ultra-dense core of matter.

Primordial black holes, on the other hand, were formed by an entirely different process altogether.

Scientists believe that gravity from primordial black holes could bleed out of our four-dimensional reality into a hidden fifth dimension 

Some scientists think these black holes formed directly from the swirling soup of rapidly cooling matter that made up the universe shortly after the Big Bang.

Although primordial black holes haven't been directly observed, it's theorised that they could form part of the mass of dark matter - the invisible substance that makes up 27 per cent of the universe.

In their new paper, published in the journal Physical Review D, researchers from Lehman College in the US wanted to see what would happen to these black holes in a universe that had a fifth dimension.

Specifically, they wanted to answer the question of whether they would become four-dimensional or five-dimensional objects.

To do this, they calculated how big primordial black holes would become based on two theories about how they formed.

In the first scenario, these tiny black holes formed out of 'overdensities' of matter in the early universe that collapsed under their own weight as the cosmos cooled.

According to their calculations, these black holes were starting out behaving like four-dimensional objects.

However, because they would be so small, their four-dimensional configuration would soon become unstable, and they would collapse into a five-dimensional object.

In the second scenario, primordial black holes formed out of hypothetical structures known as cosmic strings.

According to some theories, these are ultra-thin one-dimensional 'scars' in the fabric of spacetime left over from the birth of the universe.

Primordial black holes may have formed directly out of matter in the early universe (illustrated). If so, they would be so small that they would have become five-dimensional by now 

Scientists also think that primordial black holes could have formed out of 'cosmic strings'. These small black holes would also be five-dimension according to the researchers' calculations. Pictured: A simulation of cosmic strings in the universe 

These flaws might have formed when spacetime underwent dramatic phase transitions as it cooled, similar to how cracks form in ice as water transitions from liquid to solid.

If loops of cosmic strings came together, they could have collapsed directly into black holes long before stars or other structures in the universe had a chance to form.

However, the researchers' calculations show that primordial black holes formed in this way would also be five-dimensional right from the start.

That means, if our universe does have a dark dimension, any primordial black holes that exist are so small that they will always be five-dimensional.

While that sounds far-fetched and highly theoretical, it does actually have observable consequences for the nature of the universe.

For example, the researchers point out that five-dimensional black holes would evaporate more slowly than their conventional four-dimensional counterparts.

According to their calculations, primordial black holes created by collapsing cosmic strings could have lifespans equivalent to the 13.8 billion-year age of the universe.

That means these black holes could still be around us today, whizzing about above our heads and, eventually, vanishing in puffs of particles.

The researchers even go so far as to suggest that this theory could explain the 'ghost particle' that slammed into the KM3NeT detector, located deep under the Mediterranean Sea, in 2023.

If a five-dimensional primordial black hole finally evaporated, it could trigger the release of such an energetic particle from an otherwise quiet patch of sky.

However, that suggestion goes well beyond what is currently provable with direct observation.

But it does offer a tantalising hint of what black holes might reveal about our universe, if there really is a dark dimension lurking just out of sight.

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'Swamp-like colors' on the moon: New NASA report reveals strange sights from Artemis II mission — Space photo of the week

Astronauts on NASA's Artemis II mission saw surprising "jaundiced yellow" and "swampy green" colors on the moon during their close lunar flyby, a new report reveals.

 By Brandon Specktor - Edited by Tia Ghose, Laura Mondragón

Quick facts

What color is the moon? Ask an Earthling, and you'll get a predictably monochromatic answer: white or gray.

But ask the four crewmembers of NASA's Artemis II mission — who spent nearly seven hours circling the moon from just 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) from the lunar surface this April — and you'll wonder if they're talking about the same dusty satellite we can see from Earth.

Yellow, brown, green, blue and tan features fan across vast volcanic plains and lurk at the edges of ominous craters, according to the crew's in-the-moment observations, which were shared this week in NASA's Artemis II Preliminary Lunar Science Report. The 130-page document catalogs everything crewmembers Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen saw during their historic close flyby of the moon on April 6, drawing from 814 gigabytes of photo, video and audio recordings taken from the Orion crew capsule.

This rainbow of lunar color represents distinct geological features that could inform future missions on where to land and where to explore as the world's space agencies race to set up a permanent presence on the moon.

One spot that particularly enthralled the astronauts (and is featured in the image above) is the Aristarchus Plateau — a broad, elevated region on the northwestern edge of the moon's nearside. The region hosts one of the moon's densest collections of ancient volcanic features, including swaths of dark lava deposits and colorful volcanic glasses.

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Koch, mission specialist for Artemis II, was shocked to see distinct yellow shades in the region; she likened the plateau to "a yellow snow-capped mountain," with sunlight-reflecting craters providing the bright "snow." She went on to call the region "a jaundiced cheek of the Moon."

"There are so many colors now," Glover, Artemis II's pilot, added while photographing the area. "There's also a green. I see brown, especially Aristarchus and north toward the north pole. … It kind of flows down from the north in brown streaks."

According to the report authors, these colorful hues "could be associated with orange (titanium-rich) and green (magnesium-rich) glass beads respectively," similar to volcanic glass beads collected by the Apollo 15 and 17 missions on separate parts of the moon.

"Chaos across the entire area"

Another colorful patch of the lunar surface that caught the crew's attention was Orientale Basin — a huge, young and multiringed impact crater that's about three times as wide as Massachusetts, according to NASA. Straddling the moon's near and far sides, this massive bull's-eye is rarely visible from Earth, but it dominated the crewmembers' field of view as they orbited around the side of the moon.

"It has just created chaos across that entire area," Wiseman, commander for the mission, said at the time.

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When flying over this sprawling basin, the crew noted gray, brown, tan and green below. The largest, outermost ring in the basin contained "almost swamp-like colors," Koch reported, while Glover spotted what looked like "dusted peaks" and "white on the very edges of [the mountains], the spines, the ridgebacks." Chains of craters parading away from the impact site looked "like bubbles rising from a team of scuba divers below," Koch added.

While these may sound like off-the-cuff observations, the Artemis II crew spent more than two years training to study and describe the moon's geology. Their regimen included visiting craters on Earth, taking lessons individually and in classrooms, conducting simulated flybys and, according to the report, bringing "self-selected reference materials" into the Orion capsule to read on the way to the moon.

Thanks to this training, the crew's observations provided a wealth of scientific information that no autonomous camera or orbiter could, the report said.

"The Artemis II mission demonstrated the exceptional value of human observation and cognition as scientific assets in planetary exploration," the report authors concluded. "Unlike cameras, which capture isolated moments and often narrow subsets of a scene, human observers continuously interpret their surroundings, integrating realtime visual perception with contextual understanding."

Or, to put that in Glover's more relatable words to mission control, "It's quite a wicked view.

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Exactly 59 years ago, a document entered into force that continues to govern human activities beyond Earth. Under its provisions, no country may claim sovereignty over the Moon; the placement of nuclear weapons in orbit is prohibited; and any damage caused by a satellite falling within another country’s territory must be compensated for by the state that launched it.

Signing of the Outer Space Treaty on January 27, 1967. Credit: CORBIS. Source: Getty Images

Explosion over the Pacific Ocean

A nuclear bomb has previously been detonated in space. The most powerful such explosion occurred in the summer of 1962, when no regulations governing outer space were yet in place.

On July 9, the United States launched a missile carrying a thermonuclear warhead from Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. The 1.4-megaton charge —  equivalent to 1.4 million metric tons of TNT — detonated at an altitude of approximately 400 km. The test was designated Starfish Prime.

The charged particles released by the explosion were trapped by Earth’s magnetic field. For several years, they orbited the planet, forming an artificial radiation belt. Each satellite passing through this region was exposed to an additional dose of radiation that its electronics and solar panels could not withstand. Within a few months, at least six satellites had failed. One of them was Telstar, the first commercial television relay satellite, which was launched into orbit the day after Starfish Prime.

An artificial aurora lasting approximately seven minutes following the Starfish Prime high-altitude nuclear test on July 9, 1962.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.

By that time, both the United States and the Soviet Union had already developed missiles capable of carrying a warhead beyond the atmosphere. One test demonstrated the vulnerability of near-Earth space; an actual conflict in orbit could have rendered it unusable for years. In October 1963, the UN General Assembly called on states not to deploy nuclear weapons in orbit.

General rules applicable to all countries

 The agreement that emerged from this concern bears a lengthy official title but is widely known as the Outer  Space Treaty. It was opened for signature on January 27, 1967, simultaneously in Washington, London, and Moscow, and entered into force on October 10 of that year. The provisions governing the Moon were established nearly two years before the Apollo 11 astronauts set foot on its surface. Today, more than 110 countries, including Ukraine, are parties to the treaty.

Seventeen concise articles establish several fundamental principles. All countries may explore outer space, and every nation should share in its benefits. The treaty designates astronauts as envoys of humanity and requires every state to assist them in the event of an accident. Nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction may not be placed in orbit or deployed beyond Earth. The Moon and other celestial bodies may be used solely for peaceful purposes; the establishment of military bases and fortifications, as well as the conduct of military maneuvers, is prohibited.

The first publicly released image of the debris cloud from the “Kosmos-1408” satellite, captured on November 15, 2021, shortly after its destruction by a Russian anti-satellite missile. The image was taken with a wide-angle telescope near Ouarzazate, Morocco. Credit: Kem Ki. Source: Numerica Corporation

This has led to the widespread belief that the treaty has completely demilitarized space. In reality, it prohibits only weapons of mass destruction and makes no mention of conventional weapons or military satellites. The launch of ballistic missiles is also permitted, as they leave the atmosphere only briefly and do not remain in orbit. When Russia destroyed its own malfunctioning satellite, “Kosmos-1408,” with a strike from Earth in November 2021, it did not formally violate any provisions of the treaty. However, more than 1,500 trackable pieces of debris ended up near the orbit of the International Space Station, forcing its crew to take shelter in the docked spacecraft.

A flag does not confer ownership rights

When the Apollo 11 astronauts planted the United States flag on the Moon’s surface in July 1969, the Moon did not thereby become American territory. The treaty expressly prohibits any state from claiming extraterrestrial space or a celestial body as its own. Such areas may not be appropriated through a declaration of sovereignty, use, or actual occupation.

Apollo 11 astronaut Edwin Aldrin salutes the U.S. flag at the landing site, known as Tranquility Base, on July 20, 1969. The lunar module is visible on the left. Credit: NASA

This provision also renders the “certificates” for plots on the Moon — which are sold online — meaningless. Sellers argue that the treaty applies only to governments and makes no reference to private individuals. However, no country recognizes such plots as property belonging to anyone; without that recognition, a stamped piece of paper has no legal force.

A substantially more complex issue concerns what may be extracted from the Moon. The treaty does not regulate the extraction of water, metals, or regolith — that is, the loose layer of dust and debris covering the surface. Proponents of mining argue that the same reasoning applies as it does on the high seas. Waters beyond the territorial waters controlled by individual countries are commonly regarded as neutral. They belong to no one; however, fish caught there become the property of the fisher.

The United Nations sought to address this issue as early as 1979 by adopting the Moon Treaty. The treaty designates the resources of Earth’s natural satellite as the common heritage of humanity, meaning that they may be extracted only in accordance with international rules. None of the leading spacefaring nations, including Ukraine, has acceded to the treaty.

Today, the “fisherman’s logic” is enshrined in the Artemis Accords, a set of non-binding principles proposed by the United States in 2020 in conjunction with its program to return humans to the Moon. Signatories agree that resources on any celestial body may be harvested, provided that doing so does not violate the Outer  Space Treaty, and that such activities do not constitute an appropriation of territory. Separately, the agreements provide for the open publication of scientific data, assistance to astronauts in the event of an accident, the protection of historic sites such as the Apollo landing sites, and the safe removal of space debris.

Flags of the countries that, as of September 2026, have joined the Artemis Accords, a set of nonbinding principles for the exploration of the Moon and other celestial bodies proposed by the United States in 2020. Credit: NASA

As of the end of September 2026, 76 countries had signed the agreement. Ukraine was the ninth country to join, in November 2020. Critics argue that the right to extract resources violates the prohibition on appropriation and primarily benefits the United States and commercial companies.

Who is liable for the costs when a satellite crashes?

Unlike the provisions concerning resources, this treaty provision has long been established in practice. Each country must supervise all space activities conducted by its citizens and companies. Accordingly, a private firm may not launch a spacecraft into orbit without government authorization and oversight. Damage caused by a space object is compensated by the so-called launching state — that is, the country that carried out or commissioned the launch, or provided its territory for the launch. Therefore, Ukraine will be responsible for the Ukrainian satellite, together with the country from which the rocket was launched.

This principle was put to the test in the winter of 1978. The Soviet reconnaissance satellite “Kosmos-954” was equipped with radar for tracking ships. Because its solar panels could not provide sufficient power, a nuclear reactor containing approximately 50 kg of highly enriched uranium operated aboard the satellite. Following a malfunction, the satellite fell out of orbit and crashed on January 24 in the uninhabited northern part of Canada, near Great Slave Lake. Radioactive debris was scattered across a strip approximately 600 km long — roughly the straight-line distance from Kyiv to Uzhhorod.

The team from the joint Canadian-American Operation Morning Light, which searched for radioactive debris from the Soviet satellite “Kosmos-954” in northern Canada in 1978. Credit: Operation Morning Light / Imperative Productions. Source: CBC

Canada invoiced the USSR for more than 6 million Canadian dollars to cover the costs of searching and cleaning up the area. Moscow paid half of this amount (3 million) in 1981 but never formally acknowledged liability. This remains the only instance in which a state has filed a claim under the 1972 Special Convention, which elaborates on the treaty’s provisions concerning compensation for damage.

Protecting other worlds

Another provision of the treaty addresses the contamination of other worlds. Countries must conduct the exploration of celestial bodies in a manner that avoids introducing bacteria and prevents harmful changes on Earth resulting from substances brought back from other worlds. Accordingly, Mars rovers are assembled in specialized clean rooms, and certain components are heated before launch to destroy any living organisms on their surfaces.

High Bay 1 Clean Room at the Spacecraft Assembly Facility, NASA JPL, Pasadena. Photo: NASA, JPL-Caltech

The objective is straightforward: if microorganisms are discovered on Mars or elsewhere, scientists must be able to determine with certainty that they were not transported there from Earth.

This requirement was most fully fulfilled at the conclusion of two missions to the giant planets. The Galileo spacecraft, which had been studying Jupiter since 1995, was deliberately directed into the planet’s atmosphere in September 2003. This measure eliminated the risk that it might one day collide with Europa, an icy moon. Beneath its surface, there is likely an ocean of liquid water in which life could theoretically exist.

The Galileo spacecraft near Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, beneath whose surface a liquid-water ocean is likely to exist. Artist’s concept. Source: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Univ. of Michigan

Fourteen years later, the same procedure was carried out with the Cassini spacecraft. During the mission, researchers discovered that jets of water were erupting from a subsurface ocean beneath the icy surface of Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons. Had Cassini run out of fuel, it would have become impossible to control, potentially resulting in a collision with Enceladus or neighboring Titan. Accordingly, on September 15, 2017, the spacecraft was directed into Saturn’s atmosphere, where it burned up.

An illustration depicting NASA’s Cassini spacecraft during one of its numerous flybys of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon.
Source: NASA

Rules requiring amendment

The treaty was drafted when only the USSR, the United States, and France possessed their own space-launch vehicles. Today, thousands of satellites orbit Earth, a substantial proportion of which were launched by private companies, and dozens of countries are planning lunar missions. The text makes no direct reference to resource extraction, space debris, or collisions involving a country’s own spacecraft.

These gaps are being addressed through separate agreements, around which two major coalitions have already formed. Seventy-six countries have joined the Artemis Accords, while China and Russia are developing their own proposal for an international research station on the Moon. Disputes over the rights to extracted resources are likely to become a practical concern as soon as the first minerals are mined there.

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New Study Shows That Earth and Mars Had Different Origins

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NASA targets mysterious hole on the moon in hunt for vast underground cave

• READ MORE: I saw unreleased UFO files at a secret meeting in the Tennessee mountains. We prayed after seeing what these 'humanoid beings' did... the world is not prepared

By STACY LIBERATORE, US SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR

A mysterious hole on the moon's surface could open into a vast underground world.

NASA has selected a project to investigate the opening, known as the Marius Hills Pit, and determine whether it leads to a cavern that could shelter future astronauts from radiation and extreme temperatures.

The project, known as the Geophysical Instruments for Marius Lunar Pit Investigation (GIMLI), will combine ground-penetrating radar, seismic sensors and a device to measure the the local gravitational field to see below the surface. 

Located in one of the moon's most volcanically varied regions, the pit is about as deep as a 10-story building is tall, with an opening roughly the size of an American football field.

It is one of about 300 pits identified on the lunar surface, some of which could provide entrances to caves formed by ancient volcanic activity. It was found by Japan's SELENE spacecraft in 2009.

The team, which announced the project on Monday, said it also plans 'to study more than the possible underground structure.'

The surrounding area has experienced a long history of volcanic activity, and the walls of MHP expose layers of regolith and lava flows that normally remain buried. 

Examining these layers could show how lava once moved across and beneath the lunar landscape and whether individual eruptions were separated by long intervals. 

NASA has selected a project to investigate a hole on the lunar surface, known as the Marius Hills Pit. The initiative will determine whether it leads to a cavern that could shelter future astronauts from radiation and extreme temperatures

NASA has tapped the Planetary Science Institute (PSI) to lead the investigation.

The American space agency said that if such a cavern exists beneath the lunar surface, it could one day protect astronauts from radiation and the dramatic temperature swings on the lunar surface.

Radiation levels on the lunar surface are roughly 2.6 times higher than on the International Space Station (ISS), which orbits about 250 miles above Earth's surface, and about 200 times higher than on Earth.

If astronauts were exposed to such levels, they would face serious health risks, including cancer, cell damage and acute radiation sickness.

Rather than relying only on observations from above, GIMLI will provide researchers with an opportunity to examine Marius Hills Pit directly from the lunar surface. 

PSI Associate Director and Senior Scientist Than Putzig said in a statement: 'It's long been a desire of mine to reintroduce intentional active-source seismic methods to planetary science, as it has essentially not been done since the Apollo astronauts conducted the first seismic surveys on the moon.

'Combining that method with ground-penetrating radar and gravity measurements makes it all the more exciting, as these methods together will allow us to get a much better understanding of subsurface properties, including the anticipated detection of a lava tube extending away from the Marius Hills Pit.'

Even if an underground cave is not found, lunar pits are valuable because their walls expose otherwise hidden geology.

Located in one of the moon's most volcanically varied regions, the pit is about as deep as a 10-story building is tall, with an opening roughly the size of an American football field

Any underground spaces connected to them could also preserve evidence of the volcanic processes that helped shape the moon. 

Gareth Morgan, PSI Senior Scientist and Deputy Principal Investigator on the GIMLI program, said: 'Confirming a substantial lava tube would give us an insight into how volcanism operated on the moon.

'Lava tubes are a common feature of basaltic volcanism on Earth, so identifying them on the moon means we could use knowledge of such terrestrial caves to better understand lunar history.' 

The project comes as NASA plans to land astronauts on the moon during the Artemis IV mission in 2028. 

When the crew reaches the moon, two astronauts will descend to the surface and spend approximately a week near the South Pole of the moon conducting new science before returning to lunar orbit to join their crew for the journey back to Earth

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A long, narrow cloud of water ice appears every morning near the Martian volcano Arsia Mons at a certain time of year. For years, scientists could not explain how it forms. Now they have managed to reproduce it in a computer model. To do so, they had to assume that water vapor freezes directly in the air, without the dust particles on which it usually condenses. Until now, such a process was considered impossible in the atmosphere of any planet.

The elongated cloud near Arsia Mons in an image taken by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter. Credit: ESA

The Cloud’s Morning Appearance

Every year during the dusty season, which falls in spring and summer in Mars’s southern hemisphere, a thin white streak of water ice appears on the leeward side of Arsia Mons. It forms daily at dawn. According to Gizmodo, the cloud stretches to 1,800 kilometers in just three hours before detaching from the mountain and disappearing.

This exceeds Ukraine’s extent from west to east, which is approximately 1,300 kilometers. On average, the streak grows by 600 kilometers every hour.

The Limits of Conventional Models

Regular images from the Mars Express orbiter have documented the cloud since 2018, according to ESA. Observations showed that it is an orographic cloud. These clouds form when air encounters elevated terrain and is forced upward, where it cools.

The Mars Express spacecraft. Image: ESA

On Earth, the mechanism behind their formation is well understood. Yet for years, models based on this knowledge failed to accurately reproduce the Martian cloud. The calculations were probably missing a physical process that had not previously been taken into account.

Ice Without Dust Particles

Clouds on Earth form through heterogeneous nucleation. Water vapor condenses on microscopic particles of dust, sea salt, and other dry substances. These particles are called condensation nuclei.

In theory, a cloud can also form without them. This process is called homogeneous nucleation. It requires extremely high humidity, so it is not considered a realistic mechanism for cloud formation under terrestrial conditions. Jorge Hernández-Bernal of Sorbonne University, the study’s lead author, explains that the vapor turns directly into ice particles—as though droplets of condensation were appearing in the middle of a room rather than on a windowpane.

When scientists added homogeneous nucleation to a weather model of Mars, the calculations reproduced the distinctive features of the cloud near Arsia Mons. The results were published on October 7 in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Geoscience. The authors describe them as the first evidence that water vapor in a planet’s atmosphere can freeze without condensation nuclei.

Supersaturated Martian Air

Air is described as supersaturated when it contains more water vapor than it can hold at a given temperature. Under ordinary conditions, ice forms on dust particles even at slight supersaturation. For homogeneous nucleation to occur on Mars, previous calculations suggested that the saturation level would need to be approximately 100,000 times higher.

The Martian atmosphere contains plenty of dust. Such extreme values were therefore considered unattainable, because the excess vapor should have condensed on particles long before that point.

However, both observations and models had already indicated that Martian air could be highly supersaturated with water vapor. Jorge Hernández-Bernal notes that such conditions had not previously been observed on Mars, but the new study provides compelling evidence that humidity there can indeed reach these extreme values.

A Wave Above the Volcano

According to the team’s explanation, wind flowing around Arsia Mons generates a powerful atmospheric wave because of the steep rise in the terrain. This wave rapidly lifts moist air to a high altitude. There, it cools abruptly, humidity rises sharply, and the vapor spontaneously freezes into cloud particles.

This hypothesis still needs to be confirmed. The authors note that the finding also has implications for certain clouds on Earth and possibly for the atmospheres of other planets.

• Posted in News, Science

New modelling of Mars’s most striking cloud

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