The team behind NASA's InSight Mars lander has come up with an innovative way to boost the spacecraft's energy at a time when its power levels have been falling. The lander's robotic arm trickled sand near one solar panel, helping the wind to carry off some of the panel's dust. The result was a gain of about 30 watt-hours of energy per sol, or Martian day.

Mars is approaching aphelion, its farthest point from the Sun. That means less sunlight reaches the spacecraft's dust-covered solar panels, reducing their energy output. The team had planned for this before InSight's two-year mission extension. They've designed the mission to operate without science instruments for the next few months before resuming science operations later this year. During this period, InSight will reserve power for its heaters, computer, and other key components.

The power boost should delay the instruments being switched off by a few weeks, gaining precious time to collect additional science data. The team will try to clear a bit more dust from the same solar panel this Saturday, June 5, 2021.

SpaceX launched thousands of tiny sea creatures to the International Space Station on Thursday, along with a plaque-fighting toothpaste experiment and powerful solar panels.

The 7,300-pound (3,300-kilogram) shipment—which also includes fresh lemons, onions, avocados and cherry tomatoes for the station's seven astronauts—should arrive Saturday.

SpaceX's Falcon rocket blasted into the hazy afternoon sky from Kennedy Space Center. The first-stage booster was new for a change, landing on an offshore platform several minutes after liftoff so it can be recycled for a NASA astronaut flight this fall.

The Dragon cargo capsule—also brand new—is delivering the first of three sets of high-tech solar panels designed to bolster the space station's aging power grid. Astronauts will conduct two spacewalks later this month to help install the two roll-out panels alongside solar wings that have been in continuous operation for 20 years.

More power will be needed to accommodate the growing number of ticket-buying visitors, NASA's space station program manager, Joel Montalbano, said Wednesday.

The cargo includes samples of saliva and oral bacteria from dental patients that will be treated with toothpaste and mouthwash in an experiment aimed at keeping astronauts' teeth and gums healthy in space.

Researchers studying how bubbles form and function are sending a fully automated, self-contained experiment into space.

The study, led by Tengfei Luo, a professor in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Notre Dame, will be initiated by astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Using real-time results sent back to Earth for analysis, Luo and his team hope to gain a better fundamental understanding of how bubbles form, grow and detach from solid surfaces with different nanoscale features.

This information could improve diagnostic capabilities for life-threatening diseases including certain cancers.

"What we are looking at in parallel to the research taking place on the ISS is how to use these bubbles for cancer detection at early stages—when cancerous cells are still at very low concentrations," Luo said. "Our method is a potential method to increase sensitivity and improve early cancer detection."

In a 2020 study published in Advanced Materials Interfaces, Luo successfully used laser heating to generate bubbles in a solution containing biological molecules.