🚀 Does Dark Matter Power the Milky Way?

🌌 Dark Matter Powers Galaxy Heart

💥 Runaway Star's Supernova Link

🏛️ US House Deep Space Plan

☄️ NASA Tracks Bright Comet

🌕 Blue Origin Lander Testing

An international team led by the Institute of Astrophysics La Plata proposes a dense core of fermionic dark matter, not a supermassive black hole, powers the Milky Way's galactic center.

The model explains S-star orbits and the Keplerian decline in the galaxy's outer halo, a slowdown observed by ESA's GAIA DR3 mission, by predicting a more compact halo tail.

This unified framework, according to lead author Valentina Crespi, explains the galactic core and outer halo as manifestations of the same substance, even mimicking the Event Horizon Telescope's shadow image.

Astronomers from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy used new observations to pinpoint the progenitor system responsible for the supernova remnant IC 443, also known as the Jellyfish Nebula.

Using the Very Large Telescope's MUSE instrument, they identified a runaway G-type star whose trajectory and velocity of 800 km/s trace back to the remnant's geometric center 30,000 years ago.

This discovery, as noted by the research team, confirms IC 443 resulted from a core-collapse supernova, providing a direct link between a specific stellar type and its explosive, nebula-forming aftermath.

The U.S. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology passed a NASA reauthorization act amendment, establishing a framework for a commercial program providing deep space transportation services to the Moon.

The legislation allows NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) to procure operational services for cargo and crew, potentially enabling end-to-end Starship lunar missions or New Glenn launches of Orion after Artemis V.

According to the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, this provides NASA flexibility to create more robust, affordable, and sustainable transportation systems, mirroring the successful commercial cargo and crew program for the ISS.

Scientists using NASA's SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) mission observed interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS dramatically brightening months after its solar flyby.

The space telescope's spectrometer detected an erupting coma of subsurface water ice, carbon dioxide, and organic molecules, ejecting large BB-size chunks of material too massive for solar radiation pressure to move.

According to study lead Carey Lisse, this eruption exposed pristine, carbon-rich material locked in ice for billions of years, offering a rare glimpse into the chemistry of another star system.

Blue Origin delivered its Blue Moon MK1 Lunar Lander engineering test article to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston for a critical series of environmental and mission simulations.

The lander will undergo full mission testing inside the 90-foot-tall Chamber A, where it will be exposed to a vacuum and temperatures from -58 to 86 degrees Fahrenheit.

This testing, according to CEO Dave Limp, is a crucial step to prove the MK1 can maintain thermal equilibrium, advancing Blue Origin's goal of providing a landing system for Artemis V.