Space

No one could accuse the European Space Agency and its various contractors of moving swiftly when it comes to the development of reusable rockets. However, it appears that Europe is finally making some credible progress.

This week, the France-based ArianeGroup aerospace company announced that it had completed the integration of the Themis vehicle, a prototype rocket that will test various landing technologies, on a launch pad in Sweden. Low-altitude hop tests, a precursor for developing a rocket's first stage that can vertically land after an orbital launch, could start late this year or early next.

"This milestone marks the beginning of the 'combined tests,' during which the interface between Themis and the launch pad's mechanical, electrical, and fluid systems will be thoroughly trialed, with the aim of completing a test under cryogenic conditions," the company said.

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, with a substantial contribution from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR), has unveiled new, detailed images of the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy M87. These reveal a dynamic environment with changing polarization patterns near the black hole. For the first time in EHT data, scientists have also detected signatures of extended jet emission near the jet base, where it connects to the ring around the black hole.

There’s a new, fairly bright comet in the sky, and it was just discovered on Friday, September 12, 2025. The Solar Wind Anisotropies (SWAN) instrument on the SOHO spacecraft detected it. And it’s relatively bright (as comets go), shining at around magnitude 7.4. That’s not bright enough to see with the eye. But it’s bright enough to detect using binoculars, or a camera with a 200-mm lens.

That news article is a bit light on details, so here's a link to a PDF of the paper itself: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20250001217/downloads/Hurowitz%20et%20al%20LPSC.pdf

Poppy seeds and leopard spots co-occur with organic carbon in ferric-iron poor mudstones but are absent in ferric iron-rich mudstones and conglomerates that lack organic matter (Fig. 1C). These relationships indicate the vivianite and greigite in these features formed by reaction between organic matter, oxidized iron, and sulfate; geological context and petrography indicate these reactions occurred at low temperatures. On Earth, such organic matter mediated mineral forming reactions are often driven by, or are closely associated with, microbial respiration of organic matter [e.g., 5], and models of the reaction chemistry that formed these features are consistent with microbially mediated process [6]. These properties mark poppy seeds and leopard spots as potential biosignatures. Analysis of the core sample collected from this unit using high-sensitivity instrumentation on Earth will enable tests to assess the biogenicity of the minerals, organics, and textures it contains.

A University of Southampton spokesperson said the study found the star is “burning unusually bright as the super-dense white dwarf is gorging on its larger twin in a feeding frenzy”.

“Experts think the stars are locked in an extraterrestrial tango as they orbit each other every 12.3 hours, gradually pulling each other closer.

Soon, there will be three new ways to study the Sun’s influence across the solar system with the launch of a trio of NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) spacecraft. Expected to launch no earlier than Tuesday, Sept. 23, the missions include NASA’s IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe), NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory, and NOAA’s SWFO-L1 (Space Weather Follow On-Lagrange 1) spacecraft.