Hubble Discovers Ancient Galaxy Merged with Milky Way

🌌 Milky Way's ancient galactic meal revealed

🏢 L3Harris CEO ousted over conduct

🚀 Japan greenlights Mars sample mission

💎 Perseverance finds corundum on Mars

🌲 Ancient trees predict solar storms

Davide Massari and colleagues at the Astrophysics and Space Science Observatory of Bologna studied globular clusters to trace the Milky Way's earliest formation history using NASA's (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) Hubble Space Telescope observations.

Hubble analyzed 39 globular clusters within the galaxy's inner 20,000 light-years, revealing a dwarf galaxy merger 11.8 billion years ago that contributed roughly 500 million solar masses of stars to the young Milky Way.

The discovery extends knowledge of galactic assembly 1.8 billion years further back than previous studies, according to the team's Nature Astronomy publication, demonstrating external galaxies shaped early Milky Way evolution.

L3Harris Technologies board terminated CEO Chris Kubasik following an independent investigation into conduct violations unrelated to financial reporting, appointing Sam Mehta as new president and chief executive officer effective immediately.

Kubasik's separation agreement allows retention of nearly 384,000 stock options while forfeiting 2026 bonus eligibility; shares dropped over four percent following the announcement of his departure from the defense contractor.

The leadership change comes seven months after the Defense Department committed one billion dollars in convertible preferred equity to L3Harris's missile solutions business, with the planned IPO now delayed until mid-2027.

JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) announced final approval for its Mars sample return mission, developed in collaboration with NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) to retrieve Martian surface materials for Earth-based laboratory analysis.

The spacecraft will launch late 2026 using advanced ion propulsion technology proven on Hayabusa2, targeting ancient lake bed sediments to collect approximately 500 grams of material from multiple Martian surface locations.

Japanese officials expect sample return by early 2030s, stating laboratory analysis will provide far more detailed geological and astrobiological information than remote sensing instruments aboard current rovers and orbiters can achieve.

Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers and international collaborators used NASA's Perseverance rover SuperCam instrument to identify corundum on Mars for the first time while traversing the Jezero crater rim region.

SuperCam's time-resolved luminescence spectroscopy detected Cr3+ peaks at 692.7 and 694.1 nanometers with millisecond lifetimes in plagioclase-rich float rocks, confirming chromium-bearing corundum through characteristic R-line emission signatures.

The discovery indicates Mars experienced aluminum-rich, silicon-depleted metamorphic or magmatic processes, with researchers favoring impact-induced metamorphism given the mineral's location near shocked ejecta deposits on the crater rim.

Fusa Miyake discovered extreme solar activity signatures in Japanese cedar tree rings from Yakushima Island, finding carbon-14 spikes roughly twenty times larger than normal solar variation between AD 774 and 775.

University of Groningen researchers analyzed eight high-resolution carbon-14 records spanning AD 1 to 970, identifying four intermediate solar events occurring approximately every 200 years that exceed the 1859 Carrington event intensity.

Benjamin Pope at Macquarie University warns intermediate events could synchronously disable manufacturing capabilities across China, the United States, and Europe, according to the 2026 study published by the research team.