Reuters
• Will Dunham
New data from a NASA rover show that Mars’ dust includes ultrafine particles, adding detail to a persistent environmental hazard. Dust moves through everyday winds, dust devils and storms at local, regional and global scales, making its behavior a factor that mission planners must address for future human exploration.
Space Exploration & Science Missions
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New data from a NASA rover show that Mars’ dust includes ultrafine particles, adding detail to a persistent environmental hazard. Dust moves through everyday winds, dust devils and storms at local, regional and global scales, making its behavior a factor that mission planners must address for future human exploration.
Radiation measurements aboard the uncrewed Orion spacecraft during NASA’s Artemis I mission found that cosmic radiation near the Moon exceeds levels in Earth orbit, though by less than scientists might have anticipated. The data add to the evidence needed to assess radiation exposure on future crewed lunar missions.
Astronomers using the Vera C. Rubin Observatory have identified a distant object beyond Neptune that may be a dwarf planet. If confirmed, it would be the sixth known dwarf planet in the solar system; the reports describe it as an object that had gone unnoticed despite being in plain sight.
NASA’s ultraviolet space telescope mission has cleared a major review, advancing a project that still faces uncertainty over its launch and communications. The available report does not identify the mission or specify the issues behind those uncertainties.
NASA’s systems engineering team has detailed the mission architecture for the Habitable Worlds Observatory, a planned effort aimed at finding Earth-like worlds beyond the solar system. The work comes as exoplanet research has advanced substantially since the first exoplanet was discovered in 1995.
The object, provisionally designated 2026 ED138, is among the first discoveries reported by Chile’s Vera C. Rubin Observatory. Its status as a dwarf planet remains uncertain, but the detection points to the observatory’s emerging role in identifying and studying distant objects in the solar system.
Four volunteers who spent more than a year living and working in a simulated Mars mission are due to leave their habitat on Saturday, Oct. Separately, analog astronaut Michaela Musilova led low-visibility underwater “spacewalks” to test astronaut safety and communications protocols—using terrestrial simulations to examine challenges crews may face during space missions.
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NASA launched the first test flight of its Saturn I rocket on Oct. 27, 1961. The successful flight marked an early milestone in the development of the launch vehicles that would ultimately enable the United States’ crewed lunar program, including the Saturn V.
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