Sara Seager, an MIT planetary scientist, is building the first probe to enter Venus's atmosphere in 40 years to search for signs of life in its sulfuric acid clouds. The mission challenges decades of scientific consensus that dismissed Venus as uninhabitable, prompted by the 2020 detection of phosphine—a potential biosignature—in Venus's upper atmosphere where conditions are surprisingly Earth-like.
NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, launching in 2026 to orbit at the Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2, will use advanced optics and direct imaging to discover hidden exoplanets and study dark energy and dark matter. The mission employs Wind River technologies and collaborates with ESA and other partners to operate autonomous, precision-controlled systems in the harsh deep space environment.
Scientists have experimentally created hexagonal close-packed (hcp) ice, a exotic form of superionic ice, by subjecting water to extreme pressures up to 2.3 million atmospheres and temperatures exceeding 2,600 kelvins. This state of matter, previously only theorized, features oxygen atoms in a rigid crystal lattice while hydrogen nuclei move freely like liquid particles. The discovery is significant because superionic ice is believed to exist in the interiors of ice giant planets like Uranus and Neptune, where it may influence their magnetic field generation.