This image tells the story of redemption for one lonely star. The young star MP Mus (PDS 66) was thought to be all alone in the Universe, surrounded by nothing but a featureless band of gas and dust called a protoplanetary disc. In most cases, the material inside a protoplanetary disc condenses to form new planets around the star, leaving large gaps where the gas and dust used to be. These features are seen in almost every disc – but not in MP Mus’s.

When astronomers first observed it with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), they saw a smooth,

Committee directs Air Force to study heavy-lift launch capacity, LOX-methane safety protocols

Varda Space Industries, a company developing spacecraft for microgravity life sciences and hypersonics research, has raised $187 million to expand the scope and cadence of its missions.