MTG-S1, launched July 1, 2025 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 carrying Sentinel-4, will provide continuous 3D atmospheric profiles from geostationary orbit and hourly high‑resolution air‑quality data. MethaneSAT, funded by Jeff Bezos and the Environmental Defense Fund and launched in March 2024, stopped responding in June 2025 and is considered irrecoverable, despite revealing methane leaks up…
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The Vera C. Rubin Observatory released its first images from Cerro Pachón, Chile, featuring galaxies and the Trifid Nebula, and will generate 10 million alerts per night with the world’s largest digital camera. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope directly imaged a Saturn-mass exoplanet orbiting the star TWA 7. MTG-S1, a 1.8-ton satellite carrying the Sentinel-4…
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NASA’s SWOT satellite, launched in 2022, has revealed over 100,000 previously unknown seafloor features, more than doubling the number of known seamounts from 44,000 to over 100,000. ESA’s Biomass satellite, equipped with a pioneering P-band radar, enables direct measurement of above-ground biomass and was scheduled to launch in April 2025. Muon Space and Earth Fire…
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In a Nature study, cancer cells were shown to siphon mitochondria from nearby nerve cells via microscopic tubes, a mechanism called mitochondrial hijacking that promotes metastasis. A separate Science News report described tumor DNA detectable in blood years before diagnosis, boosting early cancer screening prospects. An in vivo “exercise in a pill” approach in mice…
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SpaceX’s Starship suffered a further explosion during a static-fire test at Starbase, Texas, as the company has now completed nine Starship test flights with a record launch cadence in 2024–2025. SpaceX’s Axiom-4 mission docked with the International Space Station, marking India’s return to human spaceflight after 41 years as Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla became the…
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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,…
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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…
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On June 25 at 08:31 CEST, SpaceX Crew Dragon “Grace” launched from Pad 39A with four astronauts on Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4). Peggy Whitson (USA) commands Ax-4 and is on her fifth spaceflight, with a U.S. orbital record of 675 days. Shubhanshu Shukla (India) is Pilot for Ax-4, becoming the first Indian in space since…
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A shallow Ml 2.7 earthquake struck at 12:22 p.m. PDT on June 24, 2025, about 2 km northeast of Sherman Oaks, with a focal depth of ~5 km. Shaking was light (MMI IV), and the USGS Did You Feel It? page logged about 12 responses within the first 13 minutes. No injuries or structural damage…
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A coronal-hole high-speed stream traveling at about 750 km/s is slamming Earth’s magnetosphere and has prompted NOAA to issue a G2 (Moderate) geomagnetic-storm watch for 24–25 June 2025. The storm could push aurora visibility as far south as Illinois, Ohio, and New York on the night of 24–25 June 2025. The disturbance already produced vivid…
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