Space & Astronomy Baby Planet Caught in the Act: A landmark discovery in astronomy came from an international team that directly imaged a newborn exoplanet still in the process of formation. The planet, dubbed WISPIT 2b, is a gas giant roughly 5 million years old located around a young Sun-like star scitechdaily.com. Observations with ESO’s Very…
Read more
Space and Astronomy Baby Planet Still Glowing: In a landmark observation, astronomers directly imaged an infant planet still hot from its birth. The gas giant WISPIT 2b, roughly five Jupiters in mass and only ~5 million years old, was discovered orbiting within a multi-ring dust disk around a young star scitechdaily.com. Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very…
Read more
SpaceX launched over 5,000 pounds of cargo to the ISS on Aug. 24, 2025, aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, with the Dragon capsule autonomously docking on Aug. 25 during NASA’s 33rd commercial resupply mission. Starship’s 10th flight test was scrubbed on Aug. 24, 2025, 30 minutes before liftoff due to a ground systems issue, with…
Read more
Space & Astronomy Climate & Environment Medicine & Health Physics & Materials Science Technology & Innovation Sources: This report is based on science news and press releases from Aug. 11–12, 2025 (and surrounding dates) by reputable outlets and institutions, including Nature nature.com unr.edu, Scientific American scientificamerican.com, ScienceDaily sciencedaily.com sciencedaily.com, NASA science.nasa.gov, Reuters reuters.com, Euronews/AP euronews.com, university…
Read more
Biomass was selected in May 2013 as ESA’s seventh Earth Explorer mission to quantify forest carbon from space. The mission uses a P-band synthetic aperture radar at ~435 MHz (about 70 cm wavelength) with a 12-meter mesh reflector deployed in orbit to penetrate canopies and sense trunks. It employs fully polarimetric SAR (HH, HV, VH,…
Read more
The ESA Biomass satellite, launched on April 29, 2025, carries the first P-band synthetic aperture radar (435 MHz) to map the world’s forests in 3D and quantify their carbon content. The mission uses a 12-meter deployable antenna—the largest radar antenna ever flown—to enable detection of biomass changes as small as 10–20 tons per hectare. Biomass…
Read more
The EU Space Act was presented on 25 June 2025 and would impose EU-wide rules on launch licensing, debris-mitigation, end-of-life disposal, cybersecurity and environmental impact, with fines up to 2% of global turnover. If approved, most provisions would apply from 2030, including special traffic-coordination duties for mega (100+) and giga (1,000+) constellations. The debris crisis…
Read more
NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center issued a G2 (moderate) geomagnetic‑storm watch for the night of 25 June 2025. A negative-polarity coronal hole crossing the Sun’s central meridian is releasing plasma at roughly 500–800 km/s toward Earth. The fast solar wind could drive auroras as far south as Colorado, New York and Oregon and briefly disturb…
Read more
BIOMASS uses a fully polarimetric P-band SAR with a 70 cm wavelength to pierce through canopies and measure woody trunks where most forest carbon is stored. The 12-meter deployable reflector, shaped like an umbrella and built by L3Harris, directs radar pulses back to the sensor. The 1.25-tonne spacecraft was launched on 29 April 2025 aboard…
Read more
ICESat-2 (NASA) launched September 15, 2018 on a Delta II rocket and carries the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS), a photon-counting laser that operates from a ~481 km near-polar orbit (92°) with ground tracks repeating every 91 days to map ice sheets, sea-ice freeboard, glacier height, and forest canopy. CryoSat-2 (ESA) launched April 8,…
Read more
