ESA’s Hera spacecraft has completed the first of two major braking burns, a 93-minute firing of three thrusters to slow its approach to Didymos and Dimorphos. The European Space Agency confirmed the next day that the maneuver stayed within expected parameters. A second burn is scheduled for October 22; together, the operations should bring Hera … Read more
NASA and France’s CNES space agency have delivered something hydrologists have wanted for decades: a direct, month-by-month accounting of how much water the world’s rivers gain and lose over a full year. During its first observation cycle, running from October 2023 to September 2024, the SWOT satellite logged a swing of roughly 313 cubic kilometers … Read more
NASA has released the first full global inventory from its Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite, and the numbers are stark: 47% of the planet’s continental freshwater basins have lost significant volume compared with a 2015 baseline. The mission, developed with France’s CNES, covers rivers wider than 100 meters, lakes and reservoirs across all … Read more
NASA’s Perseverance rover has rewritten its own record book again. On 12 October 2026 the six-wheeled explorer completed the longest self-planned drive of a single Martian day in its mission, days after its odometer overtook every other vehicle humanity has operated on another world. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the run beat the rover’s previous … Read more
NASA and the US Department of Energy have locked in a decade-long partnership to put fission reactors in space, signing a memorandum of understanding titled Accelerating American Leadership in Space Nuclear Power and Propulsion. The document was signed on 8 October at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s “Science: A New Golden … Read more