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Enceladus may naturally separate and concentrate chemicals from its hidden ocean as droplets slowly freeze and shatter on their way into space. The process could explain Cassini’s puzzling ice-grain chemistry while giving future spacecraft a powerful advantage in searching for organic compounds and clues to life.
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Scientists may have solved why the length of Earth’s day changes by a few milliseconds over decades. Subtle shifts in the inner core appear to tug on the mantle, revealing a surprisingly dynamic world thousands of kilometers beneath our feet.
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NASA and SpaceX could launch four astronauts to the International Space Station on October 1, with the Dragon spacecraft reaching orbiting outpost less than nine hours after liftoff. Crew-13 will join Expedition 75 after teams complete a final round of intensive launch-readiness checks.
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Measurements of ancient light from the cosmic microwave background suggest that the universe is remarkably flat. But that does not prove it is infinite, because the observable cosmos could be only a small patch of a much larger curved universe. Space could even be flat while wrapping around on itself in exotic ways.
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CosmoCube will use the far side of the Moon as a shield from Earth’s radio noise to search for a faint signal from the universe before the first stars existed. The suitcase-sized satellite could reveal how the cosmic dark ages ended and how dark matter helped build the first galaxies.
