NASA 8 June 2025 - 18 September 2025

NASA has confirmed over 6,000 exoplanets, just three years after reaching the 5,000 mark in 2022. Most discoveries came from the Kepler and TESS missions. No true Earth twin has been found. The upcoming Roman Space Telescope is expected to add thousands more to the tally.

NASA’s Perseverance rover found a mudstone rock in Mars’ Jezero Crater with mineral patterns and organic compounds that scientists call a “potential biosignature.” The minerals, vivianite and greigite, often form from microbes on Earth, but NASA says this is not proof of life. The sample was collected in July 2024 and analyzed for a year before publication. Further study on Earth is needed, but the Mars Sample Return mission faces funding uncertainty.

3I/ATLAS, discovered July 1, 2025 by the ATLAS telescope in Chile, is the third confirmed interstellar object and the largest observed, with a nucleus about 5–6 km across. SPHEREx and JWST detected a coma dominated by CO₂, with a CO₂-to-H₂O ratio of 8:1 and evidence of water ice. The coma extends at least 348,000 km from the nucleus. Perihelion is expected October 29, 2025, at 1.4 AU.