NASA Images Falcon 9 Moon Crater

🌑 Falcon 9 leaves fresh Moon crater

🛰️ NASA updates Swift boost mission

🌌 Hidden stars reveal massive galaxies

🕳️ Dark stars echo in gravitational waves

📡 Black hole jets fade faster than thought

NASA's LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) team imaged a new lunar crater formed when a SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage from the Firefly Blue Ghost 1 mission impacted the Moon on August 5.

LRO's Narrow-Angle Camera, resolving features as small as three feet, measured the crater at sixty feet wide and less than ten feet deep based on shadow length analysis.

Korea's Danuri orbiter validated NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies impact prediction to within 0.6 miles, demonstrating improved planetary defense tracking capabilities for future debris monitoring.

NASA and Katalyst Space announced their LINK spacecraft cannot boost the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory due to ongoing attitude control issues, though rendezvous and proximity operations will still be attempted.

LINK launched July 3 aboard a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket from Kwajalein Atoll; Swift, operational since 2004, faces atmospheric reentry later this year without intervention.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman stated the high-risk mission advanced U.S. satellite servicing capabilities despite the setback, with lessons informing future commercial spacecraft operations and rapid-response missions.

Leiden University astronomers led an international team using JWST to study nine massive early galaxies that had already completed their main star formation period.

Combining JWST's deep spectra with Very Large Telescope observations, researchers detected hidden populations of small stars, finding one galaxy potentially four times more massive than previous estimates suggested.

Professor Mariska Kriek noted the findings imply far more planets may have existed in the early universe, since small stars frequently host planetary systems around them.

Colgate University researchers Sohan Ghodla and Cosmin Ilie investigated whether supermassive black holes formed over thirteen billion years ago could contribute to gravitational-wave backgrounds detected by PTAs (Pulsar Timing Arrays).

Their Physical Review D study found supermassive Dark Star remnants at densities around 10⁻³ per cubic megaparsec could dominantly contribute to nanohertz gravitational-wave signals measured today.

Ilie stated PTA observations may constrain populations existing at redshifts greater than ten, providing an unexpected window into the birth of the first supermassive black holes.

University of Cape Town and IDIA researchers examined fourteen candidate remnant radio galaxies in the XMM-LSS field, confirming twelve as genuine remnants whose central black hole jets have switched off.

Combining MeerKAT MIGHTEE and uGMRT superMIGHTEE surveys across 144 MHz to 1.5 GHz, spectral modeling revealed total ages of 8–42 million years with a twelve-million-year median.

The study found higher-redshift remnants fade faster due to cosmic microwave background interactions, previewing faint populations expected from future Square Kilometre Array deep surveys.