The aging brain may be far more capable of growth and improvement than scientists once believed. A large three-year study from researchers at The University of Texas at Dallas’ Center for BrainHealth (CBH) is challenging a long-standing assumption about aging. The findings suggest that mental sharpness is not destined to decline over time and that [...]
Some people from Oceania harbor thousands of genetic variants inherited from the Denisovans — a mysterious group of extinct humans — that are still active in their immune systems today, a new study finds.
The findings, published June 11 in the journal Science, come from the largest-ever map of Denisovan-inherited DNA ever created. The discovery shows that Denisovan DNA "is not just a remnant of ancient liaisons; it continues to influence our biology today," study co-author Serena Tucci, an assistant professor of anthropology and head of the Human Evolutionary Genomics Laboratory at Yale University, said in a statement.
Experiments revealed 3,127 variants inherited from Denisovans that still function in the immune systems of modern-day people; some of these variants switch genes that turn the immune response on or off, according to the new research.
However, because many of the immune system genes identified also affect other bodily functions, it is unclear exactly how these genes benefited survival, study first author Patrick Reilly, an evolutionary genomics researcher at Yale, told Live Science.
Previous research has already found that some modern-day people in Oceania — a region that includes New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Fiji — have some Denisovan DNA. For example, people from Papua New Guinea are known to carry up to 5% Denisovan DNA in their genomes thanks to prehistoric trysts with the enigmatic group of humans who lived in Asia and disappeared around 30,000 years ago. This is among the highest proportion in the world, with modern-day East Asians typically carrying only around 0.1% Denisovan DNA.
Previous research has also shown that modern-day Tibetans carry a Denisovan version of the EPAS1 gene that supports their adaptation to living at high altitudes. People living in the highlands and lowlands of Papua New Guinea have different Denisovan gene variants depending on their local environments.
Yet Oceanians are vastly underrepresented in genomic databases. Sequencing the genomes of Oceanians can give a glimpse into the lives of the Denisovans and is essential for closing gaps in health disparities in Pacific Islanders as a whole, Reilly said.
To fill this gap, Tucci and her team sequenced the genomes of 177 Oceanians from 12 populations and compared them to 1,284 previously published genomes from populations worldwide. Then, they compared these segments to the known Denisovan genome and three Neanderthal genomes.
Combined, the team built a catalog containing three times more Denisovan genetic sequences inherited from Denisovans than were previously identified, over 70% of which were unique to Oceanians.
Natural selection increased the frequency of some of these variants in people from Near Oceania, which includes New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands in the Pacific Ocean, including genes linked to bone development, metabolism and fertility.
The team also ran experiments to assess whether any of the Densiovan DNA was changing how genes behaved in these populations, Reilly said.
This revealed that Denisovan genetic variants can switch various immune system genes on or off, although the exact immune functions that were targeted varied among the Oceanic populations studied.
Early migrants to Oceania at least 42,000 years ago benefited from Denisovan genes when they entered their new environment and encountered new disease-causing pathogens, Reilly said.
"This is consistent with multiple independent instances of local adaptation in response to novel immune environments and pathogens during human dispersal into the Pacific," the authors wrote in the study.
Although the researchers don't know exactly why natural selection acted on these genes, the findings highlight the major role pathogens played in shaping the way humans and our extinct relatives evolved, Reilly said.
The research is an "outstanding effort to try to understand the biological implications" of the enduring Denisovan genetic variants, Mathilde André, an evolutionary geneticist at the Pasteur Institute in France who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email.
The tripling of known Denisovan-inherited genetic sequences, most of which are unique to Oceanians, highlights the need to sequence the genomes from previously unrepresented populations to capture the diversity of Denisovan DNA, André said.
See how much you know about early humans with our human evolution quiz!
NASA has selected eight new companies and will acquire new data products from six existing Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition contract holders to expand the range of commercial satellite data available to researchers, civil agencies, and decision-makers. Such measurements supplement NASA’s Earth satellites by contributing high-resolution and frequent observations to enhance the agency’s set of data.
Leveraging commercial data demonstrates NASA’s commitment to strong public-private partnerships, allowing the agency to expand scientific insight while reducing costs and accelerating the delivery of data to researchers and decision-makers.
Collectively, NASA and commercial Earth observations provide insight into our home planet – benefitting Americans, providing environmental intelligence, strengthening disaster response, and improving public safety.
The Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition Program On-Ramp 2 Multiple Award contract is a firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity multiple-award contract. The original maximum contract value was $476 million, with a performance period that began in 2023 and continues through Nov. 15, 2028.
Contract awardees are:
The agency’s Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition mission works to execute a cost-effective way to augment and complement the suite of Earth observations captured by NASA and its partners by identifying, evaluating, and acquiring commercial satellite data.
For more information about NASA’s Commercial Satellite Acquisition program, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/csda
-end-
Liz Vlock
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
elizabeth.a.vlock@nasa.gov
The post NASA Awards Contract for Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition appeared first on NASA Science.
NASA has selected eight new companies and will acquire new data products from six existing Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition contract holders to expand the range of commercial satellite data available to researchers, civil agencies, and decision-makers. Such measurements supplement NASA’s Earth satellites by contributing high-resolution and frequent observations to enhance the agency’s set of data.
Leveraging commercial data demonstrates NASA’s commitment to strong public-private partnerships, allowing the agency to expand scientific insight while reducing costs and accelerating the delivery of data to researchers and decision-makers.
Collectively, NASA and commercial Earth observations provide insight into our home planet – benefitting Americans, providing environmental intelligence, strengthening disaster response, and improving public safety.
The Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition Program On-Ramp 2 Multiple Award contract is a firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity multiple-award contract. The original maximum contract value was $476 million, with a performance period that began in 2023 and continues through Nov. 15, 2028.
Contract awardees are:
The agency’s Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition mission works to execute a cost-effective way to augment and complement the suite of Earth observations captured by NASA and its partners by identifying, evaluating, and acquiring commercial satellite data.
For more information about NASA’s Commercial Satellite Acquisition program, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/csda
-end-
Liz Vlock
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
elizabeth.a.vlock@nasa.gov
Almost 20 years ago, Google pitched Android as the more open alternative to Apple's walled garden. Last year, Google announced it would begin erecting its own walls through developer verification. The company has issued an update on its plans, affirming that the verification system will begin rolling out in select countries later this year. We're also learning which app stores are participating in verification and the timeline for key features like the recently revealed "advanced flow" for bypassing verification.
Google has claimed that developer verification is a necessary change to smartphone software distribution, pointing to the increased prevalence of scams that trick Android users into installing malware apps. Google's solution requires verifying the identities of developers outside the Play Store just like it does for devs publishing on its platform. This has proven to be a contentious change for myriad reasons.
In the new blog post, Google's Matthew Forsythe confirms that the developer verification system is slated to come online on September 30 of this year. The initial deployment will be limited to countries with a high level of app scams: Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand.
© Ryan Whitwam
Almost 20 years ago, Google pitched Android as the more open alternative to Apple's walled garden. Last year, Google announced it would begin erecting its own walls through developer verification. The company has issued an update on its plans, affirming that the verification system will begin rolling out in select countries later this year. We're also learning which app stores are participating in verification and the timeline for key features like the recently revealed "advanced flow" for bypassing verification.
Google has claimed that developer verification is a necessary change to smartphone software distribution, pointing to the increased prevalence of scams that trick Android users into installing malware apps. Google's solution requires verifying the identities of developers outside the Play Store just like it does for devs publishing on its platform. This has proven to be a contentious change for myriad reasons.
In the new blog post, Google's Matthew Forsythe confirms that the developer verification system is slated to come online on September 30 of this year. The initial deployment will be limited to countries with a high level of app scams: Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand.
© Ryan Whitwam
Helios, a US-based quantum computer, demonstrated 99.9975% fidelity in one-qubit operations, while maintaining 99.921% for two-qubit operations. This is the highest fidelity for any commercial quantum computer in the industry, paving the way for a future with fault-tolerant quantum computers.
Considered to be the next frontier of computing, the race to build reliable quantum computers is on. Research institutes and national laboratories in countries like the US, UK and China are engaged in building the necessary support for quantum computer startups to build the future of computing.
The superior computing capacities of quantum computers arise from quantum bits or qubits, which can store multiple values between 0 and 1 at once. However, the same qubits are also easily disturbed, introducing errors into computations.
Scientists are therefore working to develop fault-tolerant computers that deliver high fidelity, i.e., a measure of how close the quantum operation is to the value of the expected operation.
Quantinuum’s Helios is a 98-qubit quantum computer with 50 logical qubits. Built using trapped-ion qubits, the system also integrates photonics, allowing data transfer at the speed of light through the microscopic optical channels.
This system design has dual benefits. It helps reduce risks to quantum computing data while significantly decreasing its power consumption. Helios’ power consumption is as little as 40 kW, even though it is equipped with the world’s fastest GPUs.
In a recent paper, Quantinuum confirmed record fidelity for its one-qubit and two-qubit operations, reaching a record of sorts when it comes to two-qubit fidelity in the quantum computing industry. Helios is the company’s most reliable quantum computer to date and is available for commercial usage as a cloud-based service.
Yet, Quantinuum has a long way to go before quantum computers like Helios and its successors become mainstream, and it is working with the Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) to develop fault-tolerant computers.
As a premier engineering laboratory in the US, SNL has been tasked with assessing opportunities and threats for technologies such as quantum computing. For over two decades, the national laboratory has leveraged its expertise and engineering capacities to build and share quantum devices on various platforms.
SNL’s partnership with Quantinuum too is part of a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement, which was formed after Sandia researchers developed technologies in integrated photonics for trapped-ion quantum computers.
Although Quantinuum is headquartered in Colorado, its research and development campus is in New Mexico, near SNL. The National Laboratory continues to help Quantinuum design and test new components that will be incorporated into future versions of the quantum computer.
For instance, SNL researchers developed a new benchmarking methodology that can measure the performance of mid-circuit measurements, non-destructive readout operations that help in correcting quantum computing errors.
“We evaluate every aspect of quantum computer performance with our commercial partners to accelerate the advent of quantum supercomputing,” said Robin Blume-Kohout, a researcher at SNL who was involved in the work.
By working with different companies and helping them solve issues will help quantum computers tackle unsolved scientific problems, Blume-Kohout added.
The research findings were published in Nature.
From space-surviving tardigrades to ghostly deep-sea fish, these creatures make Earth’s impossible places look alive.Divergent Technologies has unveiled a new industrial metal 3D printer and announced a major manufacturing expansion in Southern California, moves that the company says will significantly increase production capacity for defense and commercial customers.
The California-based manufacturer introduced the Monolith One, a large-format metal additive manufacturing system developed specifically for high-volume production. At the same time, the company revealed plans for a new 430,000-square-foot facility in Long Beach, California, where dozens of the machines will support future manufacturing programs.
Unlike many metal 3D printers designed primarily for prototyping, Monolith One targets continuous industrial manufacturing. The machine stands more than eight meters tall and incorporates 12 high-powered lasers that deliver a combined 24 kilowatts of output.
Divergent designed the system over a 28-month period using lessons learned from more than a decade of additive manufacturing operations. The company developed the printer exclusively for use within its own manufacturing ecosystem rather than for commercial sale.
The machine supports a wide range of industrial alloys, including aluminum, steel, titanium, and nickel-based materials. It also offers a larger build chamber than many existing systems, allowing engineers to manufacture bigger and more complex structures in a single print.
According to Divergent, the printer can roughly double production throughput compared with current-generation equipment. The system also incorporates automated powder handling, thermal management controls, and optical monitoring technologies designed to improve consistency and reduce downtime.
Chief Technology Officer Brian Erhartic said the company built the printer specifically to improve manufacturing efficiency and quality. He added that integrating the machine directly into Divergent’s production platform helped unlock higher performance across multiple stages of manufacturing.
Divergent currently operates six Monolith One printers at its headquarters in Torrance, California. The company plans to install an additional 64 systems at its new Long Beach facility over the next two years.
Once fully operational, the site will support production of tens of thousands of munition airframes annually. It will also have the capacity to manufacture hundreds of thousands of critical metal components for aerospace and defense programs.
The expansion comes as defense contractors seek faster production methods and more resilient domestic supply chains. Traditional manufacturing processes often require lengthy lead times for complex hardware, particularly in aerospace applications.
Divergent says its software-driven manufacturing approach reduces those timelines from months to weeks or even days in some cases. The company supplies structures and components for several major defense and aerospace organizations, including Lockheed Martin, RTX, and CoAspire.
Chief Executive Officer Lukas Czinger said the new printer reflects years of operational experience gained from delivering production hardware to both defense and commercial customers. He noted that the company manufactures the systems domestically and sources key components through a U.S.-based supply chain.
As production ramps up at the Long Beach facility, Divergent expects the new manufacturing capacity to support growing demand for mission-critical hardware while strengthening domestic industrial capabilities.
Even small asteroids lead complex lives. During its flyby of the asteroid Donaldjohanson last year, NASA’s Lucy spacecraft revealed the asteroid to be a wobbly, peanut-shaped body that has undergone a lot of activity in its relatively short history. Formed as fragments coalesced after a violent collision 155 million years ago, the asteroid was transformed by the small but inexorable force of the Sun’s radiation, all while retaining signs of the brief presence of liquid water in its distant past.
Zooming through the main asteroid belt toward one of the Jupiter Trojan asteroid groups, the Lucy spacecraft collected the first close-up images and other data at Donaldjohanson on April 20, 2025, as it passed 650 miles away from the asteroid. The data revealed that, instead of spinning simply around one axis like most other asteroids and planets, Donaldjohanson has a more complicated two-axis rotation. Scientists also saw Donaldjohanson’s peanut shape and the craters and ridges on its surface.
Lucy’s encounter with the asteroid was planned as a dress rehearsal for the spacecraft and mission team before its primary asteroid encounters, which begin with Lucy’s flyby of the Trojan asteroid Eurybates on Aug. 12, 2027. The instruments performed as expected, and, as a bonus, scientists got a rare opportunity to study a previously unexplored asteroid up close and to compare it to two asteroids with similar compositions but different histories: Bennu, the target of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx sample-return mission, and Ryugu, the site of JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Hayabusa2 sample-return mission.
Here’s what Lucy’s science team has learned so far from Lucy’s encounter with Donaldjohanson, as reported on June 18 in the journal Science.
With Earth-based telescopes, observers saw fluctuations in the light Donaldjohanson reflects, regular patterns of peaks and valleys, typical of an elongated object rotating once every 10.5 Earth days. But Lucy’s data revealed another pattern: Donaldjohanson appears to be rotating like a wobbly top. Paper authors reported that the asteroid rotates end-over-end once every 10.5 Earth days, and wobbles back and forth around its long axis once every 26.5 days.
While the Earth-based observations hinted at Donaldjohanson’s elongated shape, the Lucy flyby revealed a “bilobate” structure: two lobes connected by a neck, like a peanut. These lobes are likely two fragments from an asteroid collision that gently came together afterward by their mutual gravity.
Donaldjohanson likely rotated at least 10 times faster when it formed, having slowed to its current rate in the last 20 to 60 million years, the team estimates. As it slowed, the balance between the centrifugal force pushing things apart and gravity pulling things together changed and loose rocky material slid down slopes creating the worn-down appearance of many craters, as the flyby images showed.
The paper’s authors say that the asteroid’s slowing rotation is likely caused by a subtle consequence of solar heating known as the YORP effect. Each part of the asteroid’s Sun-warmed surface radiates heat away as infrared light, and that radiation imparts a tiny recoil force to the surface. Because the asteroid’s shape isn’t symmetric, this results in a net torque, or twist, that can change the asteroid’s rotation. Thus, YORP can slow asteroid spins down or speed them up, as in the case of Bennu (once every four hours) and Ryugu (once about every seven hours), which both likely used to rotate much slower than they do today.
As it passed by Donaldjohanson at 30,000 mph, Lucy recorded the signatures of iron-rich clay minerals on the surface. These clays must have formed in the distant past with the help of liquid water. However, the exposure must have been brief, Lucy scientists concluded, because iron in clays tends to be replaced with other elements, such as magnesium, as water lingers.
Indeed, scientists saw magnesium-rich clays at Bennu and Ryugu, which suggested prolonged water exposure, perhaps lasting millions of years, when they were still part of larger asteroids.
This difference in water exposure history, and other characteristics, may mean that the parent bodies of these asteroids formed at different times or in different regions of the solar system before relocating to the main belt.
Donaldjohanson is thought to be made from rocky remnants of a larger, carbon- and water-rich asteroid that collided with another object in the main asteroid belt. Bennu and Ryugu are thought to have formed in the same way and in the same region.
But Donaldjohanson is different. At 155 million years old, it is much younger than Bennu and Ryugu, which formed 1 to 2 billion years ago. Donaldjohanson also has remained in the asteroid belt since birth, while its wandering cousins migrated into orbits around the Sun that bring them close to Earth’s orbit about once a year (which made them perfect close targets for sample return missions).
“It’s helpful for scientists to compare Donaldjohanson with asteroids like Bennu and Ryugu, which are seemingly similar asteroids, because every subtle difference is another clue to our origin story,” said Simone Marchi, Lucy deputy principal investigator and lead author of the study at the Boulder, Colorado, office of the Southwest Research Institute.
“Once we start learning more about the Trojans, a completely different population of space rocks with very different histories, our understanding of solar system formation is destined to be challenged,” said Marchi.
Named after a fossilized skeleton of a human ancestor discovered in Ethiopia in 1974, NASA’s Lucy will be the first mission to explore Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids, a population of well-preserved space rocks that formed early in our solar system’s history and could help scientists understand how the planets formed and moved around before settling in their current configuration.
Download story graphics from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio.
Lucy’s principal investigator is based out of the Boulder, Colorado, branch of Southwest Research Institute, headquartered in San Antonio. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provides overall mission management, systems engineering, and safety and mission assurance. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft. Lucy is the 13th mission in NASA’s Discovery Program. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Discovery Program for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
For more information on NASA’s Lucy mission, visit:
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
and
Katherine Kretke
Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colo.
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
Headquarters, Washington
240-285-5155 / 240-419-1732
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
Sarah Frazier
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
202-853-7191
sarah.frazier@nasa.gov
Zooming through the main asteroid belt toward one of the Jupiter Trojan asteroid groups, the Lucy spacecraft collected the first close-up images and other data at Donaldjohanson on April 20, 2025, as it passed 650 miles away from the asteroid. The data revealed that, instead of spinning simply around one axis like most other asteroids and planets, Donaldjohanson has a more complicated two-axis rotation. Scientists also saw Donaldjohanson’s peanut shape and the craters and ridges on its surface.
The post NASA’s Lucy Reveals Wobbling, Peanut-Shaped Asteroid appeared first on NASA Science.
Even small asteroids lead complex lives. During its flyby of the asteroid Donaldjohanson last year, NASA’s Lucy spacecraft revealed the asteroid to be a wobbly, peanut-shaped body that has undergone a lot of activity in its relatively short history. Formed as fragments coalesced after a violent collision 155 million years ago, the asteroid was transformed by the small but inexorable force of the Sun’s radiation, all while retaining signs of the brief presence of liquid water in its distant past.
Zooming through the main asteroid belt toward one of the Jupiter Trojan asteroid groups, the Lucy spacecraft collected the first close-up images and other data at Donaldjohanson on April 20, 2025, as it passed 650 miles away from the asteroid. The data revealed that, instead of spinning simply around one axis like most other asteroids and planets, Donaldjohanson has a more complicated two-axis rotation. Scientists also saw Donaldjohanson’s peanut shape and the craters and ridges on its surface.
Lucy’s encounter with the asteroid was planned as a dress rehearsal for the spacecraft and mission team before its primary asteroid encounters, which begin with Lucy’s flyby of the Trojan asteroid Eurybates on Aug. 12, 2027. The instruments performed as expected, and, as a bonus, scientists got a rare opportunity to study a previously unexplored asteroid up close and to compare it to two asteroids with similar compositions but different histories: Bennu, the target of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx sample-return mission, and Ryugu, the site of JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Hayabusa2 sample-return mission.
Here’s what Lucy’s science team has learned so far from Lucy’s encounter with Donaldjohanson, as reported on June 18 in the journal Science.
With Earth-based telescopes, observers saw fluctuations in the light Donaldjohanson reflects, regular patterns of peaks and valleys, typical of an elongated object rotating once every 10.5 Earth days. But Lucy’s data revealed another pattern: Donaldjohanson appears to be rotating like a wobbly top. Paper authors reported that the asteroid rotates end-over-end once every 10.5 Earth days, and wobbles back and forth around its long axis once every 26.5 days.
While the Earth-based observations hinted at Donaldjohanson’s elongated shape, the Lucy flyby revealed a “bilobate” structure: two lobes connected by a neck, like a peanut. These lobes are likely two fragments from an asteroid collision that gently came together afterward by their mutual gravity.
Donaldjohanson likely rotated at least 10 times faster when it formed, having slowed to its current rate in the last 20 to 60 million years, the team estimates. As it slowed, the balance between the centrifugal force pushing things apart and gravity pulling things together changed and loose rocky material slid down slopes creating the worn-down appearance of many craters, as the flyby images showed.
The paper’s authors say that the asteroid’s slowing rotation is likely caused by a subtle consequence of solar heating known as the YORP effect. Each part of the asteroid’s Sun-warmed surface radiates heat away as infrared light, and that radiation imparts a tiny recoil force to the surface. Because the asteroid’s shape isn’t symmetric, this results in a net torque, or twist, that can change the asteroid’s rotation. Thus, YORP can slow asteroid spins down or speed them up, as in the case of Bennu (once every four hours) and Ryugu (once about every seven hours), which both likely used to rotate much slower than they do today.
As it passed by Donaldjohanson at 30,000 mph, Lucy recorded the signatures of iron-rich clay minerals on the surface. These clays must have formed in the distant past with the help of liquid water. However, the exposure must have been brief, Lucy scientists concluded, because iron in clays tends to be replaced with other elements, such as magnesium, as water lingers.
Indeed, scientists saw magnesium-rich clays at Bennu and Ryugu, which suggested prolonged water exposure, perhaps lasting millions of years, when they were still part of larger asteroids.
This difference in water exposure history, and other characteristics, may mean that the parent bodies of these asteroids formed at different times or in different regions of the solar system before relocating to the main belt.
Donaldjohanson is thought to be made from rocky remnants of a larger, carbon- and water-rich asteroid that collided with another object in the main asteroid belt. Bennu and Ryugu are thought to have formed in the same way and in the same region.
But Donaldjohanson is different. At 155 million years old, it is much younger than Bennu and Ryugu, which formed 1 to 2 billion years ago. Donaldjohanson also has remained in the asteroid belt since birth, while its wandering cousins migrated into orbits around the Sun that bring them close to Earth’s orbit about once a year (which made them perfect close targets for sample return missions).
“It’s helpful for scientists to compare Donaldjohanson with asteroids like Bennu and Ryugu, which are seemingly similar asteroids, because every subtle difference is another clue to our origin story,” said Simone Marchi, Lucy deputy principal investigator and lead author of the study at the Boulder, Colorado, office of the Southwest Research Institute.
“Once we start learning more about the Trojans, a completely different population of space rocks with very different histories, our understanding of solar system formation is destined to be challenged,” said Marchi.
Named after a fossilized skeleton of a human ancestor discovered in Ethiopia in 1974, NASA’s Lucy will be the first mission to explore Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids, a population of well-preserved space rocks that formed early in our solar system’s history and could help scientists understand how the planets formed and moved around before settling in their current configuration.
Download story graphics from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio.
Lucy’s principal investigator is based out of the Boulder, Colorado, branch of Southwest Research Institute, headquartered in San Antonio. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provides overall mission management, systems engineering, and safety and mission assurance. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft. Lucy is the 13th mission in NASA’s Discovery Program. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Discovery Program for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
For more information on NASA’s Lucy mission, visit:
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
and
Katherine Kretke
Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colo.
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
Headquarters, Washington
240-285-5155 / 240-419-1732
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
Sarah Frazier
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
202-853-7191
sarah.frazier@nasa.gov
Zooming through the main asteroid belt toward one of the Jupiter Trojan asteroid groups, the Lucy spacecraft collected the first close-up images and other data at Donaldjohanson on April 20, 2025, as it passed 650 miles away from the asteroid. The data revealed that, instead of spinning simply around one axis like most other asteroids and planets, Donaldjohanson has a more complicated two-axis rotation. Scientists also saw Donaldjohanson’s peanut shape and the craters and ridges on its surface.
A businessman with ties to Chinese military contractors was among the overseas investors who acquired stakes in SpaceX while it was still a private company. An entity linked to the Qatari royal family also took a stake.
The new details come from a private investor list obtained by ProPublica that sheds light on a particularly delicate issue for Elon Musk’s rocket company: which people in countries like China bought into the company, and how. SpaceX built its business off sensitive US government work like making spy satellites for the Pentagon. While there is no ban on Chinese investment in US military contractors, such investment is heavily regulated.
In a sign of its sensitivity to the concerns, SpaceX barred investors from China and Hong Kong from buying shares in its initial public offering last week due to “regulatory and compliance risks,” Bloomberg reported. The US government alleges that China has a strategy of using investments in sensitive industries for espionage and to get access to cutting-edge technology.
© Spencer Platt/Getty Images
A new class of ultrathin polymer membranes, dubbed Polymers of Locked Intrinsic Microporosity (PLIMs), has been developed through a global research collaboration.
These membranes can separate complex hydrocarbon mixtures (like crude oil), potentially transforming the energy-intensive refining process.
Every single day, standard crude oil refining uses the thermal distillation method. This process boils oil to separate it into useful fractions like gasoline, plastics, and jet fuel. It works well, but it carries an environmental price tag. It consumes a high amount of energy.
Now, a team of international researchers has created a workaround that could take the heat out of the equation entirely.
The Polymers of Locked Intrinsic Microporosity (PLIMs) are ultrathin membranes that can filter out complex hydrocarbon mixtures at a microscopic level without needing a heat source.
“Membranes can, in principle, do the same job as distillation or evaporation, using far less energy,” explained Andrew Livingston, Professor of Chemical Engineering and Vice President Research and Innovation at Queen Mary University of London, and CEO of Exactmer.
“The problem has been finding materials that are both fast and selective when exposed to real hydrocarbon mixtures,” the lead researcher added.
The study introduces a novel fabrication method that injects a crosslinking agent during membrane formation to create highly efficient separating layers. It combines two features that have eluded scientists for decades: extreme molecular selectivity and incredibly fast transport speeds.
Membranes promise a cleaner, low-energy alternative to massive boilers. In this concept, rather than boiling the liquid, it is run through a molecular sieve that catches specific molecules based on their size.
In practice, organic liquids like crude oil ruined everything.
The team focused on highly porous polymers, materials possessing an internal structure like a sub-nanometer sponge. However, these materials have a flaw. When exposed to harsh hydrocarbons, it swells. As the polymer expands, the tiny pores dilate, allowing larger molecules to slip through. The filter becomes useless.
To fix this, the team altered the fabrication process and introduced an in situ crosslinking agent directly into the polymer film during its formation.
“The key was stabilizing the structure before the polymer had a chance to swell,” said Dr Zhiwei Jiang. “This preserves the tiny pores that make molecular separation possible, while still allowing hydrocarbons to flow through very quickly.”
When the researchers tested the membranes against real Arabian Extra Light crude oil, the results defied standard expectations. The PLIM system successfully stripped out 99.8% of heavy hydrocarbons (those with more than 15 carbon atoms). It also slashed corrosive sulfur compounds by 93%.
This is a massive victory for refineries, as sulfur frequently degrades downstream equipment and catalysts.
The membrane performed just as well on lighter refinery streams, such as virgin naphtha. It sorted out smaller molecules destined for fuel upgrading from heavier components used to manufacture everyday plastics. It did all this while operating at flow rates comparable to those of commercial water desalination systems.
Moreover, this team designed the material with mass manufacturing in mind from day one.
Using standard roll-to-roll processing, PLIM sheets were manufactured over a meter wide. These sheets were wrapped into spiral-wound modules, the exact shape used in existing industrial filtration plants worldwide.
The membranes also proved they have stamina, running continuously for 30 days without a drop in performance.
The results were published in the journal Science on June 18.
With mass immigration we are witnessing a clash of sexual civilisations, says Bettina Arndt: two incompatible systems of rules about men, women and desire are colliding and the consequences are playing out in courtrooms.
The post The Clash of Sexual Civilisations appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
A businessman with ties to Chinese military contractors was among the overseas investors who acquired stakes in SpaceX while it was still a private company. An entity linked to the Qatari royal family also took a stake.
The new details come from a private investor list obtained by ProPublica that sheds light on a particularly delicate issue for Elon Musk’s rocket company: which people in countries like China bought into the company, and how. SpaceX built its business off sensitive US government work like making spy satellites for the Pentagon. While there is no ban on Chinese investment in US military contractors, such investment is heavily regulated.
In a sign of its sensitivity to the concerns, SpaceX barred investors from China and Hong Kong from buying shares in its initial public offering last week due to “regulatory and compliance risks,” Bloomberg reported. The US government alleges that China has a strategy of using investments in sensitive industries for espionage and to get access to cutting-edge technology.
© Spencer Platt/Getty Images
SpaceX launched the latest batch of spy satellites for the U.S. government early Friday morning (June 19).
A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base on Friday, at 4:50 a.m. EDT (0850 GMT; 1:50 a.m. local California time).
The launch kicked off a mission for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) called NROL-179.
The NRO operates the United States' fleet of spy satellites. NROL-179 was the 14th mission dedicated to building out a new part of that fleet — a network the NRO calls its "proliferated architecture."
"To stay ahead of the competition and ensure it can continue to operate in a heightened threat environment, the NRO is modernizing its architecture in space and on the ground — delivering more capability faster with increased resilience," agency officials wrote in the NROL-179 press kit.
"A greater number of satellites — large and small, government and commercial, in multiple orbits — will deliver an order of magnitude more signals and images than is available today," they added.
SpaceX and Northrop Grumman build the "proliferated architecture" satellites. Information about the spacecraft is hard to come by; the NRO has not released details about their activities or orbits.
All of these satellites have reached orbit atop Falcon 9s flying out of Vandenberg, on California's central coast, with the first such mission launching in May 2024.
To plan, the Falcon 9's first stage returned to Earth a little less than eight minutes after liftoff on Friday, touching down at Vandenberg's Landing Zone 4. It was the third flight for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description.
NROL-179 was the 71st Falcon 9 mission of 2026. Fifty-seven of the rocket's launches this year to date have been devoted to building out SpaceX's Starlink broadband megaconstellation in low Earth orbit.
Editor's note: This story was updated on June 19 with news of successful launch.
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