As humanity enters the era of long‑term crewed deep‑space exploration, understanding the brain’s adaptive mechanisms to extreme environments such as microgravity and radiation has become a critical issue in space medicine. Previous studies using magnetic resonance imaging have revealed structural brain plasticity after spaceflight, including ventricular expansion and changes in grey matter volume. However, knowledge of dynamic changes at the neurophysiological level remains limited, and most existing evidence comes from group‑level analyses of long‑duration missions (e.g., six months), leaving the specific neurofunctional impact of short‑duration missions on individuals unclear. Conventional neuroimaging equipment is bulky and cannot be used in orbit. In contrast, electroencephalography (EEG) is portable, low‑cost, and repeatable, and has shown sensitivity in neurological conditions such as concussion, but its application in the extreme spaceflight environment has not been reported. Therefore, validating the feasibility of portable EEG technology for monitoring individual brain function before and after short‑duration spaceflight holds significant practical value for building future in‑orbit brain health assessment systems in deep‑space exploration.

In May 2024, auroras were observed at unusually low latitudes across the globe, lighting up skies that rarely see such displays. Inside Earth’s magnetosphere, the region of space surrounding our planet and dominated by its intrinsic magnetic field, something significant was finally being observed. It started with a large sunspot firing a rapid series of powerful solar eruptions. Clouds of magnetized plasma merged as they traveled through space and impacted Earth's magnetosphere. No geomagnetic storm this powerful had ever been measured in the Earth’s ring current region, a belt of charged particles in space near our planet. Two sources of ring current ions are known: solar wind and Earth's ionosphere, the electrically charged upper layer of the atmosphere. For decades, scientists have debated how much each source contributes to the ring current. During most storms, both contribute. However, during a storm driven by a dense solar wind, some scientists expected solar wind ions to continue to play a notable role. Yet the first direct measurements of ring current composition from a super geomagnetic storm revealed that solar wind ion contributions were minimal, and the level of Earth-origin ion dominance had never been observed before. The findings, published in Science Advances, suggest that understanding how much Earth's ionosphere contributes to the ring current may be essential to accurately predict the severity of super geomagnetic storms. The dominance of ionospheric ions, which are far heavier than solar wind particles, may have intensified the magnetic disturbance and concentrated the ring current peak unusually close to Earth. The researchers also make a case for a proposed Japanese multi-satellite mission to understand exactly how ion supply processes work.

Researchers from the University of Oxford have uncovered evidence that Mars once hosted enormous, Earth-like magmatic systems deep beneath its surface – despite the planet lacking the plate tectonics long thought necessary for this kind of geological complexity. The findings, published today (26 June) in Nature Astronomy, reveal fascinating new possibilities for how rocky planets become habitable.

Researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of East Anglia have shown that carefully shaped light can reveal important chiral effects in free space, without the complex materials or extreme focusing conditions that scientists once thought were necessary. The finding could help improve optical sensing, imaging, communication and future quantum technologies. 

The Center for Advanced Turbomachinery and Energy Research has been named an official university research center at the University of Central Florida. Led by Pegasus Professor Jayanta Kapat, CATER is known for its decades-long history with industry, partnering with companies such as Siemens Energy and ATG on avaiation, space propoulsion and power generation projects and research.

New cloud radar data from the ESA-JAXA EarthCARE space mission is being assimilated into the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF)’s global forecasting system for the first time.

An international collaboration has discovered two of the lowest-density giant planets ever detected: rare ‘super-puff’ planets with densities lower than candy floss. The study -led by the University of Oxford, in collaboration with Université Côte d’Azur/Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur and the University of Birmingham - has been published today (26 June) in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

A physics team led by the University of Iowa has described a “super expanded” magnetic cloud created by a coronal mass ejection on the sun. The team tracked the cloud as it approached Earth. The new information could lead to better predictions of future, super expanded magnetic clouds that could lead to satellite and telecommunications disruptions on Earth.