Corey S. Powell

NASA's Europa Clipper, en route to the Jupiter system to investigate the icy moon Europa, conducted a critical test of its radar instrument during a flyby of Mars on March 1, 2025. During the testing, the instrument received echoes of its very-high-frequency radar signals that engineers processed to develop this image, called a radargram. The image was made using radar signals that bounced off Mars. What looks like a skyline is the outline of the topography. Features seen in the radargram include contributions from the topographic features both along and near the ground track (the path below the spacecraft as it passed overhead), such as impact craters, hills, and steep slopes. The 560-mile-long (900-kilometer-long) section of terrain profiled in this radargram is near Mars' equator. The bottom image, captured by NASA's Mars Odyssey Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS), shows the terrain Europa Clipper flew over while collecting the REASON data. The horizontal white line indicates the ground track flown by Europa Clipper.

During its Mars flyby, the Europa Clipper spacecraft also tested its powerful radar instrument.

It produced detailed radar soundings of surface & near-surface topography on Mars (top). Later, the instrument will map the ice of Jupiter's ocean moon Europa. 🧪🔭

www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-e...

I'm curious, are you referring back to the Tupolev Tu-119, or something else? (I don't know a lot on this topic & would love to learn more.)

NASA's Europa Clipper captured this infrared image of the heat radiation from Mars and its moons Phobos (closest to Mars) and Deimos (seen in upper left corner) on Feb. 28, 2025, as the spacecraft approached the Red Planet while en route to the Jupiter system to investigate the icy moon Europa. The mission flew by Mars the next day, using the planet's gravity to help shape its orbit.

En route to Jupiter, NASA's Europa Clipper captured this ethereal thermal (infrared) image of Mars and its two tiny moons.

We still don't know if they are captured asteroids, or the splattered remains of ancient impacts. 🔭🧪

photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA2...

I really don't understand your point. OK, you don't see value in this work. Others don't see value in sports, religion, reality TV, etc. Why crudely attack this tiny, meagerly funded effort to understand the universe as an impediment to saving the world?

Save mankind from what? The governments & corporations spending trillions on things that are creating our problems?

I can't imagine how you think that firing the handful of people who are exploring the greatest mysteries of the universe would make the world a better place.

In 2011, a sky survey captured a Type Ia supernova, SN 2011fe, in the Pinwheel Galaxy about 21 million light years away. (Credit: B. J. Fulton/Palomar Transient Factory)

A new analysis of >2000 supernovas bolsters the case that dark energy is even more puzzling that we thought. The universe-expanding energy seems to be slowly diminishing, saving us from a catastrophic "big rip." (Maybe) 🧪🔭

newscenter.lbl.gov/2025/07/21/s...

There's an automatic air of authority, sure, but it's also cover for something that people already want to believe.
"Harvard professor says AI is a sham" might produce anti-Harvard ridicule by the same people.

The left needs to put their hands on their heads.

You're out! We didn't say "pundit says."

Fairly often, it seems. K2-18 is another example. In a large system, it's not unlikely for the inner planets to transit but the outer ones to be tilted just enough that they miss passing in front of the star.

Orbits of the five known planets circling the red star L 98-59.

Astronomers are filling in the details of an intriguing planetary system around a nearby red dwarf star. L 98-59 has a likely lava-volcano world, ocean world, sub-Earth, and now a super-Earth in its (potential) habitable zone.

nouvelles.umontreal.ca/en/article/2...

After all the hostile commentary, I was startled to read the piece and see that the core message is "the things which men can do to make themselves more attractive are things which actually improve society."

It's frustrating when accounts with 100s of thousands or millions of followers amplify the crank-file letters

Yes--I didn’t know until now about Silver's involvement.

Absurd post on X: "New study suggests a potentially hostile interstellar alien spacecraft measuring nearly 7 miles long could be on a trajectory toward Earth."

Hubble Space Telescope images of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS are out! These were taken 5 hours ago. Plenty of cosmic rays peppering the images, but the comet's coma looks very nice and puffy.

I see grifters are lining up (especially Over There) to milk money out of "that interstellar comet might be an alien spaceship."

Here's the shocking secret: Comet 3I/ATLAS is a weird, fascinating, and (by all evidence) completely natural interstellar comet. 🧪🔭

skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-ne...

It is unclear, perhaps, in the sense that the reporter chose not to speak to anyone who could have informed him that it is completely impossible.

Quantum mechanics is one of the most successful theories in science — and makes much of modern life possible. Technologies ranging from computer chips to medical-imaging machines rely on the application of equations, first sketched out a century ago, that describe the behaviour of objects at the microscopic scale. But researchers still disagree widely on how best to describe the physical reality that lies behind the mathematics, as a Nature survey reveals.

At an event celebrating the 100th anniversary of quantum mechanics, physicists were polled on their view of quantum theory.

Their wildly divergent answers illustrate the difference between observation and interpretation. 🧪

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Whether the spacecraft, which has been soaring through space for 14 years now, would have enough fuel to even pull off such a stunt remains unclear. But Loeb argues it could "rejuvenate Juno’s mission and extend its scientific lifespan beyond" the potential intercept some eight months from now.

To my amazement, this news story appears to have been written by an actual human being. Just not necessarily a sentient one.

Well in that case maybe we can also send Dawn and ICE.

Couldn't we just, you know, use a transporter to beam Juno there?

“Okay, Houston. As I stand out here in the wonders of the unknown at Hadley, I sort of realize there's a fundamental truth to our nature.
Man must explore.
And this is exploration at its greatest.”
– David Scott #Apollo15 | July 30, 1971
contactlight.de

Purple coral with a brittle star, which lives on the deep seafloor. Photographer: Karen Gowlett-Holmes. Source: CSIRO

Extreme deep-sea organisms are closely related across the globe, indicating a previously unknown "superhighway" of migration via slow ocean currents.

Our planet is connected in all kinds of surprising ways. 🧪

www.csiro.au/en/news/All/...

I am a person in a film or television drama. When I come home to find my front door strangely unlocked, I walk upstairs directly toward a creaking sound and say, "Hello? Hello?"

Getting a name for a new centaur can be a long and mysterious process:

iauarchive.eso.org/public/theme...

The combined PUNCH images create the funky propeller effect.

Look closely in the background and you can see Orion at the bottom and Jupiter at middle left. The Sun's extended corona is faint enough that you can see the stars right through it. 🧪

NASA's new PUNCH mission is a constellation of 4 small satellites that collectively provide an unprecedented view of giant eruptions breaking free from the Sun.

This first-release video compresses about 6 days of observations. 🧪🔭

science.nasa.gov/blogs/punch/...

Not enough observations yet to tell if it's a boi

I'm ded

The orbit of Ammonite (red line) and the orbits of the other three sednoids (white lines). Ammonite was discovered close to its perihelion, at a distance of 71 astronomical units (71 times the average distance between the Sun and Earth). The yellow point shows its position as of July 2025. (Credit: NAOJ)

Perhaps the most intriguing discovery in the outer solar system: Ammonite, an ancient ~300-kilometer-wide chonk that loops up to 252 times as far from the Sun as Earth.

It orbits roughly where Planet 9 should be...likely meaning that Planet 9 doesn't exit. 🧪🔭

subarutelescope.org/en/results/2...

This wide view of the Uranian system with Webb’s NIRCam instrument features the planet Uranus as well as six of its 27 known moons (most of which are too small and faint to be seen in this short exposure). A handful of background objects, including many galaxies, are also seen.

Another object, 2015 OU194, is in a 3:4 resonance with Uranus, meaning it completes 3 orbits for every 4 of Uranus. The object is classified as a "centaur."

So yeah, there's a centaur waltzing around Uranus in 3:4 time. 🧪🔭

iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

A team of astronomers led by the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian has discovered a rare object far beyond Neptune, from a class known as trans-Neptunian objects, that is moving in rhythm with the giant planet. This image shows the orbits of all of the objects discovered in the Outer Solar System Origins Survey. The orbit of 2020 VN40 is the thickest one, tilted up and to the left from the orbits of most of the objects. The orbits of the giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are the white circles. Credit: Rosemary Pike, CfA

Lots of news just came out about strange, rhythmic goings-on in the outer regions of our solar system.

An object called 2020 VN40 moves in sync with Neptune (1 orbit for every 10 of Neptune), suggesting a large population of bodies in similar resonances. 🧪🔭

www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/astrono...