As space agencies and private companies look toward sustained human presence on the moon, a fundamental challenge centers on how to build strong, durable infrastructure without hauling every material from Earth. New research from Rice University points to an unexpected solution — transforming one of the moon’s most stubborn obstacles, its abrasive dust, into a valuable building resource.

The interplanetary comet 3I/ATLAS is remarkably rich in a specific type of water that contains deuterium, meaning it came from somewhere colder and with lower levels of radiation than our early solar system

The harsh environmental conditions and the vast distance for transportation present significant challenges to ensuring a stable resource supply for human activities on Mars. Utilizing in-situ Martian air as the working medium for energy transfer and material conversion, coupled with advanced thermodynamic cycles and chemical processes, could offer an innovative path to build sustainable energy station on Mars. This perspective highlights the key role of Martian atmosphere in multimodal resource conversion. Researchers propose a design framework for future in-situ Martian energy systems, analyze the implementation pathways and current status of resource conversion, and demonstrate its potential to reduce rocket payload costs through thermodynamic analysis. Finally, they summarize the future challenges and directions in the field of multimodal resource conversion on Mars.

Inside living cells, proteins are constantly moving, interacting and organising into complex structures. In many cases, they gather into dense assemblies where space is limited and motion becomes constrained. Understanding how proteins behave in such crowded environments is essential for explaining key biological processes, from cellular organisation to the formation of protein aggregates linked to disease. Using neutron scattering at the Institut Laue - Langevin, combined with computer simulations, researchers studied how a particular type of protein, behaves inside dense assemblies formed by the proteins themselves. They found that the motion of these proteins is not uniform: proteins move more slowly in the dense centre of the assemblies and more freely near the edges. This shows that how proteins organise themselves directly affects how they move, an effect that is important for understanding how biological systems function.

A web tool designed to spark reminiscence could help people with dementia and their caregivers feel more connected to each other and less impacted by feelings of pre-death grief, according to a clinical trial co-led by USC and Weill Cornell Medicine published in JAMA Network Open.

With features such as photo albums, autobiographical questions, and journaling prompts, the Living Memory Home for Dementia Care Pairs (LMH-4-DCP) website is a customizable virtual space that facilitates collaborative and interactive reminiscence therapy for both dementia patients and caregivers, said lead author Francesca Falzarano, assistant professor at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology.

An origami-inspired reflectarray antenna developed by researchers at Institute of Science Tokyo enables CubeSats to achieve high antenna gain while fitting within the tight size constraints of small satellites. Weighing just 64 grams, it folds compactly inside a 3U CubeSat for launch and expands in space. Such designs could support higher data-rate communications, expanding the capabilities of future CubeSat missions, including deep-space and lunar exploration.

Prominences are cool plasma structures extending several thousand kilometers in the Sun’s hot corona. Some persist for weeks. For prominences to form and remain stable, they need a constant replenishment of plasma. A new study in the journal Nature Astronomy provides insights into their “supply logistics.” The Sun’s magnetic field is crucial. It lifts plasma from deeper layers into the prominences and directs the inflow through the corona. For the first time, the new computer simulations take into account processes in all involved layers of the Sun - including those below the surface.

The National Center for Radiation Research in Oncology – OncoRay is receiving around 1.1 million euros in funding from the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space under the program “Nuclear Safety and Radiation Research” for the joint project MEDABIS-PRO. The funding will be provided for a period of four years, shared between the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) and the Carl Gustav Carus Faculty of Medicine at TUD Dresden University of Technology.

- New observations: Astronomers have used the James Webb Space Telescope to study the atmosphere of a massive Jupiter-analogue.

- Evidence for clouds:  Surprisingly, the observations indicate the presence of water-ice clouds – previous models had been too simple!

- Part of a larger search: Observations and analysis provide a test run for certain challenges of observing a “second Earth”