Universe Today
• Matthew Williams
An international team led by Shandong University used observations from NASA’s Juno spacecraft to find that Jupiter’s magnetodisk is a wavy, rippling structure that rotates with the planet. The result challenges the previous understanding of how the giant planet’s magnetodisk behaves.
Space Exploration & Science Missions
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An international team led by Shandong University used observations from NASA’s Juno spacecraft to find that Jupiter’s magnetodisk is a wavy, rippling structure that rotates with the planet. The result challenges the previous understanding of how the giant planet’s magnetodisk behaves.
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The Martian Moons eXploration mission is scheduled to launch aboard an H3 rocket from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center at 04:41 JST on Oct. 20, 2026. MMX is designed to collect material from Mars’ moon Phobos and return it to Earth, a first for a mission to a Martian moon.
A proposed approach uses nanoscale gaps in gold to investigate chirality—the left- or right-handed forms of amino acids, which are building blocks of proteins. Because searching for biosignatures across the solar system requires distinguishing biological signatures from abiotic processes, the technique could offer a way to examine that distinction.
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Perseverance reached 28.10 miles (45.22 kilometers) on Oct. 11, surpassing the 28.06-mile (45.16-kilometer) record set by NASA’s Opportunity rover, which explored Mars from 2004 to 2018. The milestone makes Perseverance the farthest-driving vehicle on the surface of another world.
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A Falcon 9 is scheduled to launch the CRS-35 Dragon cargo mission from Cape Canaveral on Oct. 13, carrying thousands of pounds of supplies and science experiments to the International Space Station. The spacecraft is expected to arrive about 52 hours after launch with the final pair of iROSA solar arrays among its cargo.
Researchers analyzing archival observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope found a chemical signature suggesting the white dwarf HS 0209+0832 may host a second-generation planet. The finding, reported in Nature Astronomy, shows how existing space-telescope data can yield new evidence about planetary systems around stellar remnants.
NASA is seeking ideas to mitigate static electricity that could build up on astronauts and critical hardware during Moon missions. The agency says charged lunar explorers could act like “walking, high voltage capacitors,” posing a risk of accidental discharges to spacecraft and equipment.
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The Soviet Union launched Voskhod 1 on Oct. 12, 1964, carrying three cosmonauts on a roughly 24-hour mission. It was the first spaceflight with more than one person aboard and achieved several human-spaceflight firsts, including flying its crew without spacesuits.
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