Set to launch on Dec. 22, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is the largest space observatory in history, and it has an equally gargantuan task: to collect infrared light from the distant corners of the cosmos, enabling scientists to probe the structures and origins of our universe and our place in it.

Many cosmic objects – including stars and planets, as well as the gas and dust from where they form – emit infrared light, sometimes called heat radiation. But so do most other warm objects, like toasters, humans, and electronics. That means Webb's four infrared instruments can detect their own infrared glow.

The 24^th SpaceX cargo resupply services mission, targeted to launch in late December from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, carries scientific research and technology demonstrations to the International Space Station. The experiments aboard include studies of bioprinting, crystallization of monoclonal antibodies, changes in immune function, plant gene expression changes, laundering clothes in space, processing alloys, and student citizen science projects.

Learn more about these scientific experiments riding aboard the Dragon spacecraft to the orbiting lab:

Bioprinting bandages

Bioprinting, a subcategory of 3D printing, uses viable cells and biological molecules to print tissue structures. A study from the German Space Agency, Bioprint FirstAid, demonstrates a portable, handheld bioprinter that uses a patient's own skin cells to create a tissue-forming patch to cover a wound and accelerate the healing process.

A clay mineral known as smectite could hold a substantial portion of the water missing from Mars, according to new research from Binghamton University, State University of New York.

Rivers and streams once flowed across the surface of Mars, etching channels still evident on the planet's surface today. Water in lakes once lapped ancient shores. But today, Mars' red sands appear bone-dry. Where did all that water go?

Some of that water is trapped in the planet's polar ice caps, which behave like stone due to Mars' frigid temperatures. The rest may have gone underground, locked inside clay minerals such as smectite.

New research from Binghamton University Geological Sciences and Environmental Studies Professor David Jenkins and former graduate student Brittany DePasquale provides information on how deep smectite could occur in the surface rocks of Mars. They found that iron-rich smectite, the least-stable form of smectite, can form to depths up to 30 km, much deeper than others might have predicted. In view of this rather robust stability for smectite, it appears that clay minerals are able to receive and store the missing water on Mars.

The largest parachute set to fly on Mars has completed its first successful high-altitude drop test, a critical milestone for ensuring the ExoMars mission is on track for launch in 2022. Both the first and second stage parachutes have now successfully flown this year.

A pair of high-altitude drop tests took place in Oregon on 21 November and 3 December as part of the ongoing parachute testing to ensure the safe delivery of the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover and Kazachok lander to the surface of Mars in June 2023.