🚀New Delays for NASA’s Moon Plans

RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences researcher Keiya Hirashima led an international team creating the first Milky Way simulation resolving over 100 billion individual stars across 10,000 years of evolution.

The team integrated a deep learning surrogate model trained on supernova dynamics with N-body/smoothed-particle hydrodynamics code, achieving 2.78 hours computation time per 1 million simulated years using Fugaku's 148,896 nodes and 7.1 million CPU cores.

This AI-accelerated approach delivers 100-times higher resolution than state-of-the-art models while running 113-times faster than conventional methods, reducing billion-year galaxy evolution simulations from 36 years to 115 days, according to findings published at SC '25.

SpaceX's internal development schedule reveals targeting June 2026 for its first orbital refueling demonstration and June 2027 for an uncrewed lunar landing, contradicting NASA's 2027 Artemis 3 timeline.

The Starship lunar lander requires up to 12 in-orbit cryogenic fuel transfers to accumulate sufficient propellant for moon landing and return operations, critical capabilities SpaceX has yet to demonstrate with its fully-reusable launch system.

SpaceX projects September 2028 as the earliest crewed lunar mission attempt, extending Artemis program intervals beyond two years between flights compared to Apollo's 4.5-month cadence during 1968-1972, according to the obtained document.

Carnegie Institution researchers Robert Hazen, Michael Wong, and Anirudh Prabhu led a multidisciplinary team combining advanced chemistry with artificial intelligence to detect Earth's earliest life signatures in ancient rocks.

The team analyzed over 400 samples using mass spectrometry and random forest machine learning models, achieving 90 percent accuracy distinguishing biological from non-biological carbon in sediments spanning meteorites to 3.3-billion-year-old formations.

This method extends detectable biomolecular evidence by roughly 1.6 billion years beyond previous limits and pushes photosynthesis's chemical record back 800 million years to 2.5 billion years ago, according to findings published in PNAS.

University of Cologne astrophysicist Simon Dannhauer led an international team that solved the mystery of the 'Diamond Ring' structure in star-forming region Cygnus X, a ring-shaped formation of gas and dust with unusual flat geometry.

Computer simulations on the RAMSES supercomputer and SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy) flying observatory measurements revealed the 20-light-year diameter ring expands at 1.3 kilometers per second, remnants of a burst bubble from a 16-solar-mass star.

The research published in Astronomy & Astrophysics demonstrates how individual massive stars shape cloud complexes and influence subsequent star formation, according to co-author Dr. Nicola Schneider, revealing the bubble's 400,000-year evolutionary stage.

Washington University in St. Louis physicist Henric Krawczynski led an international collaboration using the balloon-borne XL-Calibur telescope during a July 2024 Sweden-to-Canada flight to measure X-ray polarization from black hole Cygnus X-1, located 7,000 light-years from Earth.

The telescope achieved the most precise measurement yet of hard X-ray polarization from Cygnus X-1, capturing electromagnetic field vibration directions to determine the geometry of superheated material orbiting the black hole's event horizon.

These polarization measurements will refine computer simulations of black hole accretion physics and complement NASA's IXPE satellite data, potentially resolving longstanding black hole mysteries within years, according to findings published in The Astrophysical Journal.