University of Texas at Dallas researchers are developing a material to protect spacecraft in low Earth orbit (LEO) from harsh environments that can damage vehicles in space, such as satellites, shortening their lifespans.

The research project is supported by a two-year, $1 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

A team led by a University of Maryland astronomer detected large complex organic molecules in ices outside of the Milky Way for the first time, offering a glimpse into the chemistry of the early universe.

A new study from the School of Physics and Astronomy at Tel Aviv University reveals that most massive stars formed in the early universe were born as binary systems, similar to the massive stars in our own galaxy.

Evaluation of the impact of the most recent €10-million Europlanet project funded by the European Commission (EC) has been featured as a case study in the journal Nature Astronomy, published today. 

Rocks store information from long ago. For instance, their composition can reveal the environmental conditions during their formation. This makes them extremely important in climate research. This led a research team at the University of Göttingen and the GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences to investigate the following: do “cherts” – sedimentary rocks that form when silica-rich sediment mud is buried hundreds of meters deep – reveal anything about the climate of the past? The study found that oxygen isotopes in cherts do not show clear indicators about the early climate. However, they do record how much heat was released from the hot interior of the Earth to their location on the seafloor. This is crucial for understanding the early Earth: the findings allow researchers to understand the conditions on the Earth's surface up to 3.5 billion years ago. The research was published in the journal Geology.