Feed aggregator
The Oldest Stars in the Galaxy Just Weighed In on One of Cosmology's Biggest Arguments
Astronomers have measured the ages of over a hundred and fifty thousand ancient stars scattered across our Galaxy, and found the oldest of them is just the age it should be if the standard picture of the universe is correct. That simple agreement quietly undermines one of the leading attempts to explain a stubborn mystery, and hints that the real answer to the Hubble tension may lie somewhere else entirely.
NASA Invites Media to Serbia Artemis Accords Signing Ceremony
The Republic of Serbia will sign the Artemis Accords at 5 p.m. EDT Thursday, July 16, during a ceremony at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
NASA Deputy Administrator Matt Anderson will host Serbia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Marko Đurić and U.S. State Department Assistant Secretary for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs Wesley Brooks for the ceremony.
This event is in person only. Media interested in attending must RSVP no later than 3 p.m. on July 16, to: hq-media@mail.nasa.gov. NASA’s media accreditation policy is online.
In 2020, during the first Trump Administration, the United States, led by NASA and the State Department, joined with seven other founding nations to establish the Artemis Accords, responding to the growing interest in lunar activities by both governments and private companies.
The accords introduced the first set of practical principles aimed at enhancing the safety, transparency, and coordination of civil space exploration on the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Serbia will be the 69th country to sign the Artemis Accords.
https://www.nasa.gov/artemis-accords
-end-
Camille Gallo / Elizabeth Shaw
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
camille.m.gallo@nasa.gov / elizabeth.a.shaw@nasa.gov
Experimental immune therapy shows promise against deadly childhood brain cancer
Several children who had aggressive recurrent brain tumors remained disease-free years after this treatment, according to an early-stage trial
"Rogue" Neptunes Are Detached But Not Alone
"Rogue" Neptune-size worlds might not roam the galaxy totally on their own, just very far away from their parent stars.
The post "Rogue" Neptunes Are Detached But Not Alone appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
NASA’s Hubble reveals a black hole hiding inside a massive star cluster in the Milky Way
Scientists have long suspected that this star cluster was a hotspot for a certain kind of black hole. But for decades, they had been unable to spot any
Artificial Intelligence is Easily Fooled in the Search for Life
AI is a powerful tool in scientific research. It can be used to find patterns in vast quantities of data. But it also generates false positives, as most of us know. This is an "Achilles Heel" according to researchers who tested a neural network's ability to detect life.
NASA Astronaut Anil Menon, Crewmates Arrive at Space Station
NASA astronaut Anil Menon, along with Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina, arrived safely at the International Space Station Tuesday, bringing the orbiting laboratory’s crew to 10 for about the next two weeks.
The trio launched aboard the Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft at 10:47 a.m. EDT (7:47 p.m. local time) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. After a three-hour, two-orbit journey, the spacecraft docked at 1:52 p.m. with the station’s Prichal module.
Following hatch opening, expected about 4 p.m., the new arrivals will be welcomed by the space station Expedition 74 crew: NASA astronauts Jessica Meir, Jack Hathaway, and Chris Williams; ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Sophie Adenot; and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, Sergei Mikaev, and Andrey Fedyaev.
NASA’s live coverage of hatch opening begins at 3:30 p.m. on NASA+, Amazon Prime, and YouTube. Learn how to watch NASA content through a variety of online platforms, including social media.
During his stay aboard the station, Menon will conduct scientific research and technology demonstrations aimed at advancing human space exploration and benefiting life on Earth. He will continue research to refine in-space production of semiconductor crystals to enable the large-scale manufacturing of components needed for high-performance computers, artificial intelligence, and improved medical devices. Menon also will perform ultrasound using augmented reality and artificial intelligence methods that could eliminate the need for medical support from Earth on future space missions. He will be a test subject helping researchers understand how blood flow is affected in space to protect future astronauts. He also will test bioprinting vascular constructs in microgravity to improve understanding of the aging process to advance therapeutic developments.
Expedition 75 is scheduled to begin on Sunday, July 26, following the departure of Williams, Kud-Sverchkov, and Mikaev, as they conclude an eight-month science mission aboard the orbital outpost.
Watch the change of command ceremony at 9:40 a.m. on Saturday, July 25, as station command transfers from Kud-Sverchkov to Meir, live on NASA+.
Learn more about International Space Station, crews, research, and operations at:
-end-
Joshua Finch / Jimi Russell
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov / james.j.russell@nasa.gov
Sandra Jones
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
sandra.p.jones@nasa.gov
Hubble Sees Crimson Cloud and Stars
Hubble Sees Crimson Cloud and Stars
Blue and white stars shine brilliantly against a crimson background of glowing gas in this July 3, 2026, image of stellar nursery LH 95 from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. LH 95 is a region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy that orbits the Milky Way. Low-mass infant stars live alongside massive blue giant stars in what is known as a stellar association, one of many in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, and N. Da Rio (The University of Virginia), G. De Marchi (European Space Agency – ESTEC), and D. Gouliermis (Universitat Heidelberg); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
Prepare for dangerous air pollution in the Northeast, thanks to Minnesota wildfires
Smoke from northern Minnesota and western Ontario wildfires is pouring over the Great Lakes, mid-Atlantic and Northeast, bringing record levels of hazardous air pollution to major cities
T. rex fossil named ‘Gus’ becomes the most expensive dinosaur sold at auction
This massive dinosaur skeleton sold for more than $50.1 million on Tuesday
NASA Jets Turn Red, White, and Blue
In honor of America’s 250th birthday, two of NASA’s most iconic aircraft got a fresh coat of red, white, and blue paint ahead of a flyover in Washington on July 4, 2026, with other NASA aircraft.
An F-15 and an F/A-18 from NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, recently were repainted in patriotic colors as a tribute to the past and a salute to the future.
The red, white, and blue commemorative paint and Freedom 250 logo will remain on these aircraft for at least the next year, so be sure to catch these at local air shows and events.
Follow along on social media and at https://www.nasa.gov/freedom250/ to learn more about where to spot the aircraft (dependent upon availability and flying schedules):
- July 23-24: EAA AirVenture, Oshkosh, Wisconsin
- Oct. 3-4: Pacific Airshow, Huntington Beach, California
- And more…
Check out more images here: https://www.nasa.gov/gallery/freedom-250/
NASA’s F-15, right, and F/A-18 aircraft are shown at International Aerospace Coatings Inc.’s facility in Spokane, Washington, on Thursday, July 2, 2026, with new red, white, and blue paint to celebrate America’s 250th birthday. The aircraft, from NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, participated in the Freedom 250 flyover in Washington on Saturday, July 4, 2026, with other NASA and military aircraft. NASA/Jim RossNASA/Jim Ross NASA’s F-15 aircraft is shown at International Aerospace Coatings Inc.’s facility in Spokane, Washington, on Thursday, July 2, 2026, with new red, white, and blue paint to celebrate America’s 250th birthday. The aircraft, from NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, participated in the Freedom 250 flyover in Washington on Saturday, July 4, 2026, with other NASA and military aircraft. NASA/Jim Ross NASA/Jim Ross NASA’s F-18 aircraft is shown at International Aerospace Coatings Inc.’s facility in Spokane, Washington, on Thursday, July 2, 2026, with new red, white, and blue paint to celebrate America’s 250th birthday. The aircraft, from NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, participated in the Freedom 250 flyover in Washington on Saturday, July 4, 2026, with other NASA and military aircraft. NASA/Jim RossNASA/Jim Ross Share Details Last Updated Jul 14, 2026 EditorDede DiniusContactTeresa Whitingteresa.whiting@nasa.gov Related Terms Explore More 3 min read NASA Study Points to Smoother Air Taxi Rides Article 1 day ago 3 min read A Day of Flight Testing at NASA Armstrong Article 2 weeks ago 6 min read NASA’s Newest Wind Tunnel Builds on Legacy of Innovation Article 2 weeks ago Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA
Armstrong Flight Research Center
Aeronautics
NASA Aircraft
Flight Research Innovation
To Measure a Black Hole’s Ultimate Spin, We Have to Go to Space
Despite their depiction as massive monsters that simply suck in everything, including light, astronomers know black holes actually spin. And they spin really, really quickly at that. Determining just how quickly is key to understanding how they impact their immediate vicinity, but also the galaxies that surround them. A new paper by Tegan Thomas of the University of Virginia and her colleagues, available in pre-print on arXiv, has some good news and bad news on that front. The bad news is we currently can’t determine how fast black holes are actually spinning. The good news is that, hopefully in the next few years, we will have a new tool that will allow us to.
Astronomers Find New Features Hiding in the Orion Nebula
A team of researchers used the world's largest single-dish telescope and an interferometer to uncover previously hidden structures within the Orion Nebula. The project produced the sharpest maps ever made of neutral hydrogen in Orion, the closest region of massive star formation. The findings expose the complex relationship of star-forming regions with their environment and suggest that the Orion Nebula has been shaped by multiple episodes of stellar feedback rather than a single expanding bubble.
Astronomers are Hunting Down the Elusive Population III Stars
It’s hard hunting down the oldest stars in the universe. These behemoths, known as Population (or Pop) III stars, are a missing link in cosmology between the primordial soup that was the early universe and the complex, “metal”-rich cosmos we’re familiar with today. But we’re slowly getting a better idea of where to look for them, and a new paper available in pre-print on arXiv from Alessandra Venditti of the University of Texas at Austin and her co-authors, highlights some of the recent advances and potential new surveying techniques that could eventually help us definitively find these massive, bright, early sparks in the universe.
An Ancient Stellar Passage Altered the Orbits of Comets We See Today
A recent study out of the Planetary Science Institute notes that the close passage of the star HD 7977 may have triggered a cascade, sending long-period comets sunward. What’s more, the same uptick in long-period comets may still be underway today. The study was recently presented at the American Astronomical Society Division on Dynamical Astronomy.
Did scientists just create synthetic life?
The SpudCell certainly resembles a living cell, but a key structure inside the cell falls short of the real thing
NASA’s Roman Telescope Will Spot Distant Black Holes That Shred Stars
Lee esta nota de prensa en español aquí.
How do black holes at the center of galaxies form and grow over time? To answer this question, scientists need to detect and study supermassive black holes at great distances, which existed much earlier in the universe’s history. New research suggests NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is on track to launch Aug. 30, 2026, will be able to detect these distant, ancient black holes that existed up to 11 billion years ago.
This artist’s concept portrays a Sun-like star being shredded by a supermassive black hole — a phenomenon known as a tidal disruption event. During these events, the region around a black hole can brighten and become visible across great distances. NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will be able to spot and study tidal disruption events that occurred early in the universe’s history. By characterizing an earlier population of supermassive black holes, astronomers can learn about their origins.NASA, Ralf Crawford (STScI)
Black holes are best studied by looking for the light emitted from their accretion disk — the matter that swirls around them before being consumed. Lighter supermassive black holes are challenging to observe because they tend to be less luminous due to less accretion. But occasionally, they shred and consume an entire star, brightening to outshine their entire host galaxy — known as a tidal disruption event (TDE). By characterizing that population of early supermassive black holes and how they evolve and grow for billions of years, Roman will provide clues to the ultimate origin of these behemoths.
“The Roman Space Telescope is going to be transformative for transient science,” said lead author Mitchell Karmen of the Johns Hopkins University, a graduate student and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. “Thanks to Roman’s high sensitivity, we can find multiple tidal disruption events out to greater distances and earlier cosmic times than ever before.”
A paper about this research published Tuesday in The Astrophysical Journal.
Shredding StarsRoman’s High-Latitude Time-Doman Survey, one of three core community surveys, is particularly well suited to find and study TDEs in the early universe. This survey will cover about 18 square degrees on the sky, an area equivalent to 90 full moons, at a regular cadence. By revisiting the same regions repeatedly, astronomers can find large numbers of transient events like TDEs.
Tidal disruption events are phenomena unique to lighter supermassive black holes. Heftier black holes weighing more than 1 billion Suns will swallow incoming stars whole. But lighter black holes of about 100,000 to 100 million Suns can shred a star before consuming it, creating a beacon that brightens over a couple of weeks before gradually fading away.
The rate of TDEs fluctuates over cosmic time. Previous work predicted that the rate of TDEs would decrease with increasing distance because most young black holes were too light to generate a TDE. However, this new research takes into account numerous factors that evolve over time, like the frequency of galaxy (and hence black hole) mergers as well as the number of stars within the core of each galaxy and how closely packed they are.
Karmen and his colleagues modeled these and other effects to predict how many tidal disruption events Roman could observe, as well as other observatories like the ground-based National Science Foundation-Department of Energy Vera C. Rubin Observatory and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. The team forecasts that astronomers will see the rate of TDEs increase as Roman probes greater distances and earlier times until “cosmic noon,” about 11 to 12 billion years ago when star formation peaked throughout the universe, before decreasing again.
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
This visualization shows the average number of tidal disruption events NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is predicted to detect in a year, based on simulations. Roman is expected to record about 100 such events in a year.Video: NASA, STScI. Visualization: Christian Nieves (STScI). Sound: Christian Nieves (STScI). Designer: Dani Player (STScI). Animation: Greg Bacon (STScI) Complementary ObservationsRoman will observe near-infrared wavelengths of light. Light from distant TDEs becomes stretched to longer wavelengths by the expansion of the universe, a phenomenon known as cosmological redshift. As a result, Roman is inherently optimized to detect TDEs whose light traveled anywhere from 8 billion to 11 billion years to reach us.
The Rubin Observatory also will scan large swaths of the sky and pick up many new TDEs. However, it will observe visible light, which limits it to closer TDEs than Roman.
The research by Karmen’s team finds that Rubin will detect thousands to tens of thousands of TDEs per year. While Roman is expected to find up to 100 TDEs per year, those black holes will be much more distant, within the realm of cosmic history that is most important for distinguishing among black hole origin scenarios.
“Just by counting the number of TDEs as a function of redshift, you can put meaningful constraints on the population of million-solar-mass black holes,” said co-author Suvi Gezari, an associate professor of astronomy at the University of Maryland. “Roman will be transformative in that it can probe tidal disruption events out to greater distances, so you can look at how the rate of TDEs evolves over time.”
Origins of supermassive black holesAstronomers have observed truly gargantuan black holes very early in the history of the universe — so early that theories struggle to explain how they could have become so large, so quickly. They must have started smaller and grown over time, but how much smaller?
One theory, known as “light seeds,” begins with black holes that are created from the deaths of massive stars. Such black holes might weigh up to a few hundred times our Sun. These black holes then would merge over time, as well as consume surrounding gas at an astonishing rate. In this scenario, every young galaxy would be expected to have a massive black hole at its center.
A second theory, known as “heavy seeds,” suggests that a black hole could be born with a much higher mass, up to a million times our Sun, through a process such as the direct collapse of a gas cloud. This process should be less common, though, which would result in supermassive black holes being much rarer in early galaxies.
“Tidal disruption events help us probe the population of light supermassive black holes, which can help us discriminate between these models,” Karmen said.
Ultimately, Roman’s tally of tidal disruption events will help researchers trace global effects that impact the black hole population over time.
Once Roman and Rubin begin regular science operations, the team looks forward to comparing their forecasts to the actual detections those observatories make.
“Just like Webb has transformed our understanding of distant, high-redshift galaxies, Roman is poised to transform our understanding of high-redshift transients,” Gezari said.
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is managed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with participation by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California; Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California; the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore; and a science team comprising scientists from various research institutions. The primary industrial partners are BAE Systems, Inc. in Boulder, Colorado; L3Harris Technologies in Melbourne, Florida; and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging in Thousand Oaks, California.
By Christine Pulliam
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
301-286-1940