R-Selecting Tiny Probes To Shotgun Into Saturn’s Rings

August 16, 2026 by Tyler August 28 Comments

In ecology, there used to be a concept — now largely unfashionable — that species could be described as r- or K-selected, depending on how they treat their offspring. An elephant that has one calf every few years and devotes immense resources to them is adopting a K-selection strategy — much as NASA traditionally has to its flagship probes, like Cassini. A sea turtle who leaves hundreds of eggs in a clutch on the beach and leaves without saying “good luck”, content in the knowledge that one of them will probably make it to adulthood is engaging in an r-selected strategy, and it’s this strategy that [Dr. Michael Rubenstein] is proposing for a next-generation mission to Saturn as part of NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts Program for 2026. Entitled “Actively Steerable Femtosat Constellations for In-situ Exploration of Saturn’s Rings, Atmosphere, and Magnetosphere”

The concept is pretty simple: the rings are a horrifying mess of dust, debris, and ice bits of all sizes that represent almost certain death for a spacecraft. By launching 10,000 femtosatellites, those odds of almost certain death become an almost certainty that one or more will make it through with precious data. In the immortal words of Lord Farquhar, “Some of you may die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make.” With Cassini, NASA would never consider such a sacrifice. With itty-bity femtosatellites, it starts to make sense. We’ve been saying for years that the future of space is tiny, but these sacrificial probes would make even modern cubesats and picosatellites look big.

Thanks to [Richard HT] for the tip! His tip was to a podcast featuring [Dr. Rubenstein] with [Fraser Cain], which we’ve embedded below. It has a lot more details than NASA’s official blurb page.

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Machine Learning COFFIES “Hears” Sunspots Before We Can See Them

August 15, 2026 by Tyler August 12 Comments

In this age of neural net “AI”, even the most skeptical of Butlerians have to agree that these machine learning models can be very, very good at pattern recognition if nothing else. NASA is on the same page, and to take advantage of that pattern recognition, they’ve built a machine learning module called COFFIES, which stands for Consequence Of Fields and Flows in the Interior and Exterior of the Sun, because at NASA everything is an acronym, or at least a backronym. Like most such names, this one is at least vaguely descriptive: the model is trying to predict what’s going on in the material flows and magnetic fields deep within our local star, and using those inferences is able to predict active regions– that’s sunspots to us chickens — up to 12 hours before they visibly form.

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Watch Today’s Eclipse At Home

August 12, 2026 by Al Williams 6 Comments

In a few hours, there is a solar eclipse that will be visible with a track that goes from Spain up through Greenland. Too late to travel for it, but thanks to [jonty], you can find all the webcams that will have a view.

This may be ideal. No funny glasses. No looking at a projected image on a card. Of course, many, if not all, of these cameras aren’t looking directly at the sun, so it isn’t clear if you’ll be able to see the actual eclipse or just the effect it has on the surroundings.

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Even On The Red Planet, Hexagons Are The Bestagons

August 10, 2026 by Tyler August 19 Comments

Though their pure Platonic Forms may only exist in the world of ideas, certain regular shapes can’t help but keep falling out of natural processes– case in point, the six-sided solid we call a hexagon, which is indisputably the bestagon. Don’t take it up with us– start an argument with the God of War, because its his planet that’s showing off six sided features, dubbed “polygonal fractures” which NASA’s Curiosity rover is currently crushing under tread in Valle Grande. Now, you might look at the photos and say– well, that’s clearly a dried mudflat. Evidence of water! No brainier, let’s all get Nobel Prizes. Not so fast.

Nothing in nature is ever single-sourced or that simple; if you live somewhere you get dried mud, you may have seen such hexagonal features, but ask anyone from the land of the ice and snow and they’ll tell you that freeze-thaw or frost heave can bring a field of rigolith’s inner Catan board out as well. Sure, we usually call it “dirt” here on Earth, but it’s rigolith by any other name. So NASA isn’t jumping the gun, and their announcement conservatively says that they aren’t sure how the polygonal features formed. Which is both fair enough and very interesting, as figuring it out is going to give some clues into what was going on in this part of Mars in the geologically recent past, especially since this vast field of grid tiles stretches as far as the camera can see. The consensus is that Mars was once “warm and wet” but that’s a relative term– how warm, and how wet, are very much up for debate.

Speaking of crushing hexagons under Curiosity’s wheels– did anyone think said wheels would last this long? They were already tweaking the traction control to extend their life nine years ago. Between it’s plutonium power and ongoing software updates, its a fair bet that Curiosity will outlast the late, lamented Opportunity who currently holds the endurance record at 15 Earth-years.

NASA’s Just Prolonged Voyager 2’s Science Mission With A Big Bang

August 6, 2026 by Maya Posch 38 Comments

Letting go is hard, especially when it concerns an irreplaceable space probe like the two Voyagers. Fortunately JPL engineers have managed to pull off a ‘big bang’ switch on Voyager 2, involving two heaters and another device that was kept on to keep providing sufficient heat to the spacecraft to allow it to keep functioning. After all, while the vacuum of space isn’t cold, out in deep space you’re radiating away all your precious heat.

Unfortunately the official press release is exceedingly limited in details, but The Register was kind enough to nag a NASA spokesperson about it, and gave us some technical details. The short version is that these heaters don’t just keep the electronics within a happy operating range, they also keep the fuel lines warm and capable of providing fuel for attitude adjustments.

With this switch, apparently enough of the rapidly diminishing power from the RTG has been freed up that the Voyager 2 has just gained a whole extra year on its extended mission. The JPL team hopes to perform the same switch on the Voyager 1 spacecraft soon, giving it a similar boost to its expected lifespan, before both of them go quiet in the depths of space.

Thanks to [Mark Stevens] for the tip.

Detection Of A Four-Carbon Sugar In Interstellar Space

July 20, 2026 by Maya Posch 5 Comments

Although life tends to find a way, something first has to kickstart said lifeforms. Exactly how the first biological cells formed on Earth – and potentially on other worlds – remains an enduring mystery. Some theories point to the early Earth’s surface conditions as a viable laboratory for the self-assembly of the first viable membranes, RNA, DNA and associated molecular machinery, while seeding of the Earth’s primitive atmosphere by sugars and other precursors from asteroids and kin is required in other theories.

Recently [Izaskun Jiménez-Serra] et al. added to this debate with the reported detection of four-carbon sugars in the form of erythrulose in the interstellar medium. Using the 40 meter radio telescope at Yebes and the 30 meter radio telescope at Granada the signatures of this sugar was detected in a molecular cloud near the center of the Milky Way.

These sugars likely form on these interstellar dust grains from more basic two-carbon aldehydes and alcohols, with them providing conceivably a source of energy for early metabolic processes of developing lifeforms. This specific type of sugar is highly prevalent in Earth’s fruits, and thus its prevalence in interstellar space is at the very least an interesting coincidence, if not another puzzle piece in the overarching question of abiogenesis.

Launching Rockets Is Hard, Bringing Them Back Is Harder

July 20, 2026 by Tom Nardi 19 Comments

Since the first V2 rocket sailed above the Kármán line back in 1944 and right up until the modern era, the trajectory of most space-bound rockets was more or less the same: after expending their propellants they would either crash into some desolate steppe or plunge into the ocean. In either event, the rocket was disposable. The important bit up top might go on to explore the stars or send a human crew off on their mission, but the booster rocket that lifted the spacecraft out of the atmosphere was always going to be sacrificed for the cause.

But in the 1970s NASA had a wild idea: what if we didn’t smash a brand-new rocket valued at millions of dollars into the ocean every time we wanted to put something in orbit? Instead, they would build a hybrid space vehicle that blended the vertical takeoff and raw power of a rocket with the capabilities of an airplane, allowing it and whatever it was carrying to make a gentle runway landing at the end of its mission. As such, the Space Shuttle was born.

With the benefit of hindsight, we now know the Shuttle wasn’t quite the spaceflight revolution that NASA had hoped for. The age of reusable rockets didn’t truly begin until 2015, when SpaceX landed the first stage of their Falcon 9. To date they’ve repeated the feat nearly 600 times, all the while increasing the reliability and speed of their operations. Today the Falcon 9 is the most prolific launch vehicle in history, and nearly every other rocket in active development is being designed to include some element of reusability.

Most recently, China demonstrated that they could recover their Long March 10B rocket by gently bringing it down into what amounts to a giant butterfly net. While it might seem a bit quaint compared to rockets that land on their tails like something out of a 1950s sci-fi movie, the idea offers considerable promise.

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