SAN ANTONIO — July 15, 2026 — A Southwest Research Institute-led study has proposed a connection between a specific collision in the main asteroid belt and an inner-solar-system-wide bombardment episode that may have had measurable biological and geological consequences on Earth. The research suggests that the catastrophic breakup of the Eulalia parent body could be linked to an impact shower that struck the terrestrial planets about 800 million years ago.

A team of astronomers have discovered a third planet orbiting the star Beta Pictoris. The new planet, Beta Pictoris d, is 100 times fainter than Beta Pictoris b — the first planet discovered in the same system — and is among the lightest exoplanets ever to be imaged from the ground. After spotting the planet using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), the team found it had been hiding in archive observations spanning more than a decade.

Researchers from LunaSCOPE, Brown University’s NASA-funded lunar science collaboration, have mapped the thickness of the loose dirt and rock layer that could help or hinder lunar explorers, depending on the task at hand.

A team of crew members aboard a commercial spaceflight acquired the first diagnostic X-rays during an orbital flight.

The cost of reaching orbit is now falling faster than that of steamship freight during the 1800s, a shift that economists say will once again transform global commerce.

In 1960, sending a single kilogram into orbit cost $87,000. Today the average cost is on average under $4,000. By 2040, it could cost as little as $300 per kilogram, according to a study.

Astronomers are closer to solving the mystery of how supermassive black holes feed themselves thanks to new images from the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST. The images provide the clearest view ever seen of gaseous filaments connecting a galaxy’s hot atmosphere to the rotating disk of gas that feeds its central supermassive black hole.