Yesterday, a groundbreaking ceremony for the CTAO’s southern array facility took place at the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO’s) Paranal site in Chile, marking the beginning of construction of the telescope foundations. The CTAO, or Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory, will be the world’s largest and most powerful gamma-ray observatory, providing new insights into the high-energy Universe. Its southern array will be the first gamma-ray observatory to be built in Chile.

To advance global collaboration in lunar science, the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at The University of Hong Kong (DEPS-HKU) and the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IGG-CAS) jointly hosted the International Lunar Sample Research Symposium 2025 from 21 to 24 November. The event attracted 230 participants from China, the USA, France, the UK, Japan, India, and other regions around the world.

DAEJEON, SOUTH KOREA – A joint research team from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and the Unmanned Exploration Laboratory (UEL) has developed a transformative wheel capable of navigating the Moon’s most extreme terrains, including steep lunar pits and lava tubes.DAEJEON, SOUTH KOREA – A joint research team from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and the Unmanned Exploration Laboratory (UEL) has developed a transformative wheel capable of navigating the Moon’s most extreme terrains, including steep lunar pits and lava tubes.

More than a decade ago, data from the Cassini Mission to Saturn suggested that the planet's largest moon, Titan, had a vast ocean of liquid water below its frozen surface. In a new study, UW researchers teamed up with NASA scientists to show that the interior is likely composed of slushy layers instead.

The gravitational wave is a prediction of the general theory of relativity that can be detected by measuring the relative distance between two test masses (TM) along the geodesics. The TM is fixed by the cage and vent mechanism to avoid collision with the spacecraft cavity during launch. Once the drag-free spacecraft reaches its target orbit, the TM must be released by the grabbing positioning and release mechanism (GPRM) to the cage center of the inertial sensor in a limited amount of time. The capture of the TM by means of the electrostatic suspensions is crucial for the mission. However, the GPRM inevitably generates large release errors and the low electrostatic force makes the TM capture control a difficult task. Moreover, the experimental results of the LISA Pathfinder mission have shown that the TM release velocities were well higher than the ones expected. The previous robust sliding mode controller needs to be optimized.