94 stories from 14 sources
The week in Science
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NASA paired nearly $600 million in repeatable commercial lunar landings with 41 technology projects for power, dust, habitats, and other lunar and Martian needs. Artemis II also demonstrated laser communications capable of transmitting 4K video from lunar distance.
Proposed reforms would give political appointees a larger role in federal research grants, including space research, moving funding decisions beyond conventional peer review. Critics warned that the change could redirect major funding streams and weaken scientific independence.
Webb observations suggested a hydrogen-rich atmosphere around the lava planet 55 Cancri e, while helium escaping from LHS 1140b showed that another rocky planet in the habitable zone retains an atmosphere. Together, the findings broadened the range of rocky worlds worth targeting for atmospheric studies.
A new thermodynamics framework extended black-hole theory to growth and mergers while identifying potentially measurable signals. JWST observations then traced gas feeding a supermassive black hole and supported a cycle linking jets, cooling gas, and renewed fuel.
Long-term warming experiments showed that microbes can release carbon from previously stable soil, adding a positive feedback to warming. A separate model identified sea-level-driven phosphate delivery and ocean carbon burial as a cooling feedback over geologic timescales.
Two reports drew attention to the uneven and fragmented state of European wetlands, including overlooked ecosystem patches and differing restoration needs.
A newly discovered orange-lipped monkey species in the Democratic Republic of the Congo appeared on successive days, first as a discovery and then in follow-up coverage.
Day’s Recap