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NASA will launch its Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, in 2023 to get a closer view of the Moon’s South Pole and evaluate the concentration of water as well as other potential resources on its surface. The space agency is undertaking the mission to understand if it is possible for human life to sustain there, by using locally available resources. The VIPER mobile robot, NASA said, is the first resource mapping mission on any other celestial body. 

NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services  (CLPS) will be providing the launch vehicle and lander for what’s going to be a 100-day mission. Similar to a golf cart, VIPER measures 5 feet by 5 feet and weighs 430 kilograms, said the agency. On its website, NASA said that the Moon rover will directly analyse the water ice on the surface and sub-surface of the celestial body. The VIPER will also evaluate the same at varying depths and temperatures within four main soil environments on the moon.  

The Lunar rover will transmit the data to Earth which will then be utilised in the creation of resource maps. It will also help scientists determine the location and concentration of frozen water on the Moon and varied forms such as ice crystals or molecules chemically bound to other materials. NASA said that VIPER’s findings will inform “future landing sites under the Artemis program by helping to determine locations where water and other resources can be harvested” to sustain humans over extended stays.

The agency added that the findings could be a game-changer, especially because it’s not possible to bring everything to the Moon, Mars, and beyond for long-term exploration. It will use the data that VIPER collects to determine where the water ice is most likely to be found and the easiest to access. This is going to be a critical step forward in NASA’s Artemis programme to establish a sustainable human presence on the surface of the Moon by 2028, the agency said.

NASA said satellites orbiting the Moon as part of the past missions have helped us understand that there is water ice on its surface. However, in order to use it one day, they have to learn more about it — up close and personal. “VIPER will roam the Moon using its three instruments and a 3.28-foot (1m) drill to detect and analyze various lunar soil environments at a range of depths and temperatures,” the agency said. “The rover will venture into permanently shadowed craters, some of the coldest spots in the solar system, where water ice reserves have endured for billions of years.”

There are challenges, too, of extreme temperature conditions, dynamic lighting, and complex terrain. The near real-time driving of the rover will also pose new engineering and design challenges to the team.

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Hubble Uncovers Multi-Age Stars in Ancient Cluster, Reshaping Galaxy Origins

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July 19, 2025

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Hubble Uncovers Multi-Age Stars in Ancient Cluster, Reshaping Galaxy Origins

Astronomers call ancient star clusters like NGC 1786 “time capsules” for their galaxy, preserving some of its oldest stars. A new image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope offers an unprecedented close-up of this dense cluster 160,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Hubble’s data show that NGC 1786 contains stars of different ages – a surprising find, since such clusters were once thought to hold a single stellar generation. This multi-age discovery is reshaping our view of how galaxies built their first stars, and suggests more complex early history.

Mixed-Age Stars in a Galactic Time Capsule

According to the official source, this Hubble image shows the globular cluster NGC 1786, a ball of densely packed stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud about 160,000 light-years from Earth. Astronomers captured this picture as part of a program comparing ancient clusters in nearby dwarf galaxies (like the LMC) with clusters in our own Milky Way. The surprising discovery is that NGC 1786 hosts stars of multiple ages. In fact, astronomers expected all stars in such a cluster to form at the same time, so finding multiple stellar generations was unexpected. This suggests even ancient clusters in other galaxies have more complex, layered histories than scientists expected.

Clues to Galaxy Evolution

For astronomers, the discovery provides clues to galaxy formation. Each globular cluster is like a snapshot of its galaxy’s past, so finding multiple stellar generations implies the Large Magellanic Cloud built its stars in stages rather than all at once. By comparing NGC 1786 to clusters in the Milky Way, researchers can retrace how both galaxies assembled their oldest stars. As one NASA scientist notes, this study “can tell us more not only about how the LMC was originally formed, but the Milky Way Galaxy, too”. Overall, the discovery supports a picture of gradual galactic growth through multiple waves of star formation and mergers, rather than a single early burst.

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sPHENIX at RHIC Delivers First Results, Sets Stage for Quark–Gluon Plasma Studies

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July 19, 2025

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sPHENIX at RHIC Delivers First Results, Sets Stage for Quark–Gluon Plasma Studies

Brookhaven’s sPHENIX detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) has reported its first physics measurements of gold-ion collisions. Designed for heavy-ion experiments, sPHENIX recorded precision counts of thousands of charged particles and their energies from head-on gold–gold impacts. These early results confirm the detector’s performance and pave the way for its main mission: exploring the quark–gluon plasma (QGP), the hot, dense state of matter thought to have filled the universe microseconds after the Big Bang. By verifying basic collision properties, the experiment lays the foundation for deeper QGP studies.

Probing the Quark–Gluon Plasma

According to two papers, the quark–gluon plasma is an exotic state of matter made of free quarks and gluons that existed microseconds after the Big Bang. Colliding heavy nuclei at RHIC (200 GeV per nucleon) creates a tiny fireball where nuclear matter “melts” into this plasma. sPHENIX was built to probe these extreme conditions. It is essentially an upgrade of Brookhaven’s earlier PHENIX detector.

sPHENIX found that head-on (central) Au+Au collisions produce about ten times more charged particles and energy than glancing (peripheral) collisions. This matches earlier RHIC results and confirms the detector is performing as designed. With this baseline established, researchers will pursue the QGP’s rarest probes – fully reconstructed jets – to study how quarks and gluons lose energy in the plasma.

Implications and Next Steps

RHIC’s final 2025 run of gold-ion collisions will exploit every detector’s capabilities. At the same time, CERN’s LHC collides lead nuclei at much higher energy, and its ALICE/ATLAS/CMS experiments have observed similar QGP effects like jet quenching. The two colliders probe complementary regimes, so sPHENIX’s precise RHIC measurements will enrich the global picture of the plasma.

Next, sPHENIX will treat energetic jets as a microscope on the QGP. By comparing energy loss in heavy-quark vs. light-quark jets, scientists can test whether the plasma is a smooth fluid or contains clumps. As one co-spokesperson notes, the first measurements “establish the basis” for sPHENIX’s QGP program and herald “the start of a very exciting chapter” of discovery.

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Chandra Spots Distant Baby Planet Losing Its Atmosphere Under Intense X-ray Assault

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July 19, 2025

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Chandra Spots Distant Baby Planet Losing Its Atmosphere Under Intense X-ray Assault

Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have discovered a Jupiter-sized exoplanet that is being fried by the radiation from its parent star. The study determined that the star plan is getting extended so fast that it must be evaporating, losing more than 10 times the mass of Jupiter every billion years. This baby world is only 8 million years old, located some 330 light-years from Earth, and orbits perilously close to its host star, at a distance of 8.2 million miles. The powerful X-rays it is bombarded with are slowly blowing away the planet’s atmosphere, and it’s at risk of being stripped bare and turned into a rocky core in a billion years or so.

X-ray Radiation From Host Star Is Rapidly Stripping Baby Exoplanet TOI 1227 b’s Atmosphere

As per a NASA statement, the planet’s mass—roughly 17 times that of Earth—is not enough to resist the high-energy onslaught from its parent star, which, despite being cooler and less massive than our Sun, emits stronger X-rays. By analysing Chandra observations alongside computer models, Attila Varga of the Rochester Institute of Technology and colleagues concluded that the exoplanet sheds the equivalent of Earth’s atmosphere every 200 years or so. “It’s almost incomprehensible what’s happening to this planet,” Varga stated.

X-rays are vital for the study of the evolution of planets in systems far away from our own, say co-authors Joel Kastner. The radiation not only heats TOI 1227 b’s atmosphere but also inflates it, making it more vulnerable to escape. Over time, this process will cause the planet to lose more than 10% of its mass, equal to two Earths. “The future for this baby planet doesn’t look great,” mentioned Alexander Binks of Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen.

To determine the planet’s age, researchers analysed the motion of its host star relative to other populations of stars and then used models of its brightness. TOI 1227 b is a rare object among planets with an age less than 50 million years since it is hosted by a low-mass star and has a long orbital period of 28 days. But the planet is already past its expiration date.

The team’s findings, which shed light on the impact of high-energy environments on young planets, have been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal and are available in preprint on arXiv.

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