The Center for Myokine Convergence Research at Korea University College of Medicine (Director: Professor Hyeon Soo Kim, Department of Anatomy, Korea University College of Medicine) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with MFC to jointly develop therapeutics for muscle loss in astronauts.

In 1972, a series of solar proton events occurred between the Apollo 16 and 17 missions. Had they coincided, astronauts would have been exposed to deadly particle radiation with very little warning and no shielding. As we return to the Moon, understanding these volatile events is increasingly urgent. 

Guided by a medieval Japanese poet and tree-ring analysis of buried cypress trees, researchers have achieved world-leading precision in carbon-14 measurements, finding evidence supporting the occurrence of a solar proton event dated to winter 1200 CE–spring 1201 CE. This research helps fill gaps in our knowledge of extreme space weather and its relation to solar cycles. 

Deep underground in a Canadian mine, scientists have cooled a massive refrigerator to nearly 1,000 times colder than outer space, a key milestone in the search for dark matter. The achievement enables Texas A&M-designed detectors at the core of the Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (SuperCDMS) experiment at SNOLAB in Ontario to reach the extreme sensitivity needed to spot interactions from elusive “light dark matter."

The Paranal solar ESPRESSO Telescope (PoET), installed at the European Southern Observatory's (ESO's) Paranal site in Chile, has made its first observations. The telescope will work with ESO's ESPRESSO instrument to study the Sun in detail. Described as a solar telescope for planet hunters, PoET aims to understand how the variation in the light from stars like the Sun can mask the presence of planets orbiting them, helping us in our search for worlds outside the Solar System.

Researchers at the Geodynamics Research Center (GRC), Ehime University, measured P- and S-wave velocities of a lunar orthopyroxene under high-pressure and high-temperature conditions equivalent to those in the Moon’s interior. Comparison of laboratory data with seismic models from NASA’s Apollo missions revealed the lunar upper mantle (at depths of 40–740 km) likely contains more iron than previously thought. This new finding has wide implications for the formation and evolution history of the Earth-Moon system.