Space Stories: A Swift End, ESA Considers New Approach, and a Real 3-Body System

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Artist’s rendering of the Swift space telescope in orbit. (NASA)

Here are some recent space-related stories of interest.

—LiveScience: “NASA’s Swift Observatory Ends 22-year Mission to Study the Most Powerful Explosions Since the Big Bang“

A pioneering NASA space telescope is no more. In sad news for Swifties everywhere, the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory has officially ended its mission after more than 20 years of tracking the most powerful explosions in the universe since the Big Bang. According to a NASA announcement, the Swift team shut down the telescope’s science operations Tuesday (Oct. 20) after the observatory fell too low in its orbit to continue taking reliable measurements of the cosmos. In the coming weeks, Swift will drop even further, eventually passing a point of no return and taking a fiery plunge through Earth’s atmosphere.

—EuroNews: “Europe Weighs €10bn Plan to Launch Its Own Astronauts Ahead of Rome Space Summit“

Europe wants to stop depending on others to send its own astronauts into space. The next key date for deciding how to do that is 15 December in Rome, when the member countries of the European Space Agency (ESA) will meet to discuss the future of space exploration. On the table are multi-billion-euro investments, new technologies and one strategic issue: ensuring that Europe can reach Earth orbit with its own means, without relying exclusively on services provided by foreign companies. The summit, officially the Intermediate Ministerial Meeting 2026, comes at a time of transformation in the sector. Member states will have to assess proposals to strengthen Europe’s role in low Earth orbit, prepare for the post-International Space Station era and build the continent’s presence on the Moon, while also looking towards Mars. The aim is not to abandon international cooperation, but to take part in it with greater autonomy

—South China Morning Post: “Chinese Astronomers Find Real 3-body System. It Is Not What Liu Cixin Thinks“

In author and computer engineer Liu Cixin’s science fiction hit The Three-Body Problem, three suns throw a doomed world into chaos. Chinese astronomers say they have found a real three-star system that is far better behaved. Using FAST, the world’s biggest single-dish radio telescope in southwestern China, the researchers found two dead stars and a “living” one locked in a steady cosmic dance about 7,000 light years from Earth. One of the dead stars is a pulsar that spins more than 300 times a second, about as fast as the blades of a kitchen blender. It whirls around its partner, a white dwarf – the dim, burnt-out core of a smaller star – every eight days.

Note: Here is the podcast version of this post.

Sci-Fi Stories: Red Rising Coming to the Silver Screen, a New Alien Movie, and Andy Weir’s Quantum Anomaly

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: Penguin Random House.

Here are a few sci-fi stories of interest.

—Comic Book Resources: “Game of Thrones Meets Star Wars In Paramount’s New Space Opera Based on a Book“

Paramount Pictures will soon be bringing the space opera adventures of a celebrated 2014 novel to life, combining the best elements of Game of Thrones and Star Wars in a much-anticipated Red Rising adaptation. Over the years, we’ve seen some incredible adaptations of some of the most thrilling and surprising sci-fi novels in history, including the likes of Dune, Blade Runner, Project Hail Mary, Annihilation, and many more. Red Rising will soon be joining them as a brand-new sci-fi adaptation…Red Rising is set in a dystopian future in which humans have colonized Mars, and follows 16-year-old Darrow, who belongs to a caste of citizens known as Reds, while society is ruled by the mentally and physically superior Golds. The Reds are enslaved, mining helium-3 for the Golds, who stress that their efforts will help terraform the planet for future generations. After his wife Eo is hanged and his own death is faked, however, Darrow infiltrates the Golds to bring them down from within.

—Deadline: “Aaron Guzikowski Tapped To Pen New ‘Alien’ Movie For 20th, Scott Free“

Aaron Guzikowski, creator of the Scott Free-produced HBO Max sci-fi series Raised by Wolves, is scripting a new Alien movie for 20th Century Studios, Deadline can confirm. Not much else is known about the project at this stage, including whether it would follow up the most recent installment, 2024’s Alien: Romulus. It’s described as being in very early development. Scott and Michael Pruss will produce for Scott Free, with, J.R. Young overseeing for the studio.

—Fandom Wire: “Andy Weir’s 2026 Sci-Fi Series Has a Premise So Wild, It Puts Project Hail Mary to Shame“

The Martian and Project Hail Mary author Andy Weir is back with a bang (rather an implosion) with a premise so wild that it puts Project Hail Mary to shame. Not literally, but an upcoming audiobook, on which Weir serves as an executive producer, has a highly intriguing premise where the rules of survival are spread across time. The audiobook recently appeared on Audible, with the first teaser trailer launched recently. Written by Benjamin Percy and executive produced by Andy Weir, Exoplanet follows three members of a spaceship who encounter a quantum anomaly. Crash-landing on the same hostile planet but separated between three different time periods, the trio attempts to communicate across centuries in order to escape the hostile planet.

Space Stories: Japanese Spacecraft Leaves for Mars, Extreme Exoplanet Weather, and Ghostly Green Stars

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: JAXA

Here are some recent space-related stories of interest.

—Sky & Telescope: “Japan Launches the Martian Moons Exploration Mission“

A two-stage, H3-24L rocket lit up the predawn skies over Tanegashima Space Center on the southern tip of Japan early on Tuesday, October 20th (3:41 p.m. EDT on October 19th), carrying a mission headed for the Red Planet: the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Martian Moons eXploration (MMX)…The mission is complex, set to explore the moons of Mars with a series of flybys past Deimos before rendezvous with and landing on Phobos. If all goes well, MMX will collect and return a sample from Phobos and return it to Earth. The agency’s goal is nothing less than to understand the potato-shaped moons’ origins.

—SciTechDaily: “NASA’s James Webb Telescope Reveals a Giant Alien Planet That’s Not Quite Round“

One side of WASP-17b’s atmosphere extends farther into space than the other, giving this intensely hot giant planet an uneven outline. Astronomers have now mapped that distortion with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), finding a pattern consistent with predictions of how heat and powerful winds shape a world with permanent day and night sides. WASP-17b is a hot Jupiter, a giant planet that orbits close to its star, about 1,300 light-years from Earth. The study, co-led by Cornell University in the United States and the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, was published in Nature Astronomy. It marks the first application of a method called transmission strings, developed at Bristol by astrophysicists Dr. David Grant and Dr. Hannah Wakeford.

—ScienceDaily: “Astronomers Discover a Ghostly Green Star Unlike Any Known Before“

Astronomers at the University of Warwick have discovered that white dwarf stars can display a surprising variety of colors, including green, pink, purple, yellow, and cyan. Among their findings is the first known star that would appear genuinely green to the human eye. For most stars, color is closely tied to temperature. Cooler stars appear orange, stars like our Sun look white, and the hottest stars shine pale blue. The relationship is similar to heating a piece of iron, which changes from red to orange and eventually white as its temperature rises.

Note: Here is the podcast version of this post.

Space Stories: Cargo Heading to ISS, Martian Nuclear Reactors, and a Cannibal Star

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: NASA

Here are some recent space-related stories of interest.

—NASA: “NASA’s SpaceX 35th Commercial Resupply Mission Overview”

NASA and SpaceX are targeting no earlier than Tuesday, Oct. 13 to launch scientific investigations, supplies, and equipment to the International Space Station. Loaded with more than 6,300 pounds of supplies, the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft will lift off aboard the company’s Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Following its arrival to the orbital complex, Dragon will autonomously dock to the space-facing port of the space station’s Harmony module.

—Ideastream: “NASA Glenn is Designing the First U.S. Nuclear Reactor in Space in More Than 60 Years“

Scientists at NASA Glenn in Cleveland are rushing to meet a two-year deadline for launching a small nuclear reactor to power the next Mars mission — the first time the U.S. has launched a nuclear reactor into space in 60 years. The mission to send three mini-helicopters to Mars will use a new nuclear electric propulsion system. NASA Glenn is designing both the reactor and the propulsion system. NASA Glenn nuclear engineer Lindsay Kaldon feels confident both will be ready in time for a federally imposed deadline of 2028. “It’s accomplishable — if that’s a word,” Kaldon said. “It’s something we can do.”

—Science Daily: “MIT Astronomers Catch a Star in a Feast That Could Last Billions of Years“

Astronomers have discovered an unusual star system about 300 light-years from Earth where a small star is gradually consuming a nearby brown dwarf. Instead of swallowing its companion in one dramatic event, the star is steadily pulling material from it, creating a cosmic feeding process that could continue for billions of years…The system, designated ZTF J0440+2325, lies within our Milky Way galaxy approximately 300 light-years away. It is the first observed example of a low-mass star steadily drawing material from another low-mass object.

Note: Here is the podcast version of this post.

Study Findings: Volatile Depletion in Rocky Planets as a Chemical Fingerprint of Hybrid Accretion

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): The Curiosity Mars rover on the Martian surface. (NASA)

Nature Astronomy abstract of study findings:

Volatile depletion in rocky planets relative to their host stars is commonplace in both the Solar System and exoplanetary systems, yet the connections between planet formation and composition remain elusive. Here we model devolatilization during pebble accretion in combination with collisional growth from volatile-depleted planetesimals to explore the formation pathways of Earth and Mars. Using Bayesian inference, we found that bulk silicate Earth is best reproduced by ≳75% contribution from two protoplanets formed via pebble accretion, supplemented by up to ~25% material from planetesimals that are compositionally akin to the asteroid Vesta. Using instead a planetesimal volatile-depletion curve that is not observed among known meteorite parent bodies would allow the planetesimal contribution to reach %. In comparison, bulk silicate Mars reflects 27 ± 5% pebble-accreted material and 73 ± 5% Vesta-like planetesimals. We identified volatile depletion as a chemical fingerprint of hybrid accretion, in which both pebble accretion and collisional assembly contribute to terrestrial planet growth. By quantitatively linking formation pathways to volatile budgets, our findings demonstrate how planetary accretion histories can be inferred from elemental signatures, with broad implications for interpreting the chemical diversity of rocky exoplanets.

Citation:  Wang, H.S., Johansen, A., Xu, Z. et al. Volatile depletion in rocky planets as a chemical fingerprint of hybrid accretion. Nat Astron (2026).

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-026-02984-6

Study-related stories:

University of Copenhagen Global Institute – “New Study Rekindles Contested Question: Earth and Mars Had Different Origins”

Quantum Zeitgeist– “Volatile Loss Reveals How Rocky Planets Grow”