Active NASA Probe Faces Funding Shutdown

🛸 New Horizons faces instrument shutdown

🪐 Saturn's south pole gets a decagon

🌌 120 molecules near Milky Way's heart

☄️ Comets may deliver planetary water

✨ Hubble captures cosmic superbubble

Southwest Research Institute's Alan Stern leads NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) New Horizons mission, now facing shutdown of two heliospheric instruments due to withheld funding from the agency's heliophysics division.

The spacecraft, currently 66 times Earth's distance from the Sun, uses PEPSSI (Pluto Energetic Particle Spectrometer Science Investigation) and SWAP (Solar Wind Around Pluto) to directly measure interstellar pickup ions—capability Voyager missions lack.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman indicated the agency is reviewing the decision, as the spacecraft could operate until 2050 and potentially cross the heliopause into interstellar space.

University of the Basque Country researcher Agustín Sánchez-Lavega led a team that discovered a 10-sided atmospheric wave encircling Saturn's south pole, marking the first large regular-sided jet pattern observed in the southern hemisphere.

HST (Hubble Space Telescope) OPAL (Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy) program observations confirmed the decagon extends through multiple atmospheric layers, with different wavelengths probing different altitudes revealing slight positional shifts.

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center co-author Amy Simon notes the feature appears to be strengthening, offering scientists a rare opportunity to watch a giant atmospheric pattern develop in real time.

Center for Astrobiology researcher David San Andrés led a team studying molecular cloud G+0.633-0.0604, located just 32 light-years from the famous molecule-rich cloud G+0.693 near the Milky Way's central black hole.

Spectroscopic surveys detected over 120 molecular species containing all six biogenic elements, including ethanolamine and glycolamide's second-ever detections, plus three cyanomethanimine variants linked to adenine formation.

The researchers conclude G+0.633 represents the first confirmed astrochemical twin of G+0.693, suggesting life-building-block molecules form reliably wherever similar shock-dominated physical conditions exist.

Lund University astronomer Aline Novais led research detecting potential exocomet activity around PDS 70, a five-million-year-old star system located approximately 370 light-years from Earth with two confirmed gas giants.

Analysis of 2018 observations revealed sodium gas moving several kilometers per second relative to the star, appearing and disappearing over several nights—a pattern consistent with cometary sublimation events.

According to co-author Jens Hoeijmakers, the upcoming ELT (Extremely Large Telescope) in Chile will enable detection of additional planets and clearer understanding of volatile transport mechanisms.

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center researchers used HST to survey nebula LHA 120-N44 in the LMC (Large Magellanic Cloud), our Milky Way's largest satellite galaxy located just 160,000 light-years away.

Hubble's observing program cataloged nearly half a million stars, identifying 30,000 pre-main-sequence stars within the superbubble structure spanning roughly 210 by 140 light-years across.

The observations open new windows into star formation in low-metallicity environments, according to NASA, helping astronomers understand timescales from cold gas cloud collapse to nuclear fusion ignition.