Berlin, Germany (SPX) Dec 03, 2025
An international team including astronomers from the University of Geneva and the National Centre of Competence in Research PlanetS has used the James Webb Space Telescope to study helium escaping from the atmosphere of the exoplanet WASP-107b. The analysis, published in Nature Astronomy, links this large-scale atmospheric escape to the evolution and present-day properties of the planet. A

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Dec 03, 2025
Billions of years ago, rainfall on Mars fed rivers that cut valleys, overtopped crater rims and carved canyons, with some flows likely reaching a northern ocean basin on the planet. Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have now organized these fluvial features into large drainage systems, producing the first global inventory of major Martian river basins and identifying 16 larg

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Dec 03, 2025
NASA's Perseverance rover identified light-colored rocks in Jezero crater that consist of white, aluminum-rich kaolinite clay. These rocks formed after prolonged exposure to water leached other minerals from parent rocks and sediments. The process required millions of years of rainfall in a humid environment. Perseverance's SuperCam and Mastcam-Z instruments analyzed the kaolinite fragment

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Dec 03, 2025
For the first time in the history of the International Space Station, all eight of its docking ports are occupied following the reinstallation of Northrop Grumman's Cygnus XL cargo spacecraft on the Earth-facing port of the Unity module. The visiting vehicles now attached are two SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, the Cygnus XL cargo ship, JAXA's HTV-X1 cargo vehicle, two Roscosmos Soyuz crew spacecraft,

Video: 00:01:01

Meet Envision. Europe’s next mission to Venus. Planned for launch in 2031.

Envision will study Venus from its core to its upper atmosphere to reveal more about the planet’s history, geological activity, and climate. It will help us understand why Earth’s closest neighbour – in distance as well as in physical characteristics – has evolved into such a hostile planet.

A mission like Envision takes years of planning, involving much teamwork between scientists and engineers. It’s as much a human as a technical endeavour. This video provides a peek behind the scenes at this process.

This short episode is the introduction