Thursday, September 18, 2025

RFK Jr. announces move to decertify organ procurement organization

Kaia Hubbard
Thu, September 18, 2025

Washington — Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced on Thursday new action to reform the nation's organ transplant system, as well as a move to decertify an organ procurement organization.

"Every American should feel safe becoming an organ donor and giving the gift of life, yet decades of ignored patient safety concerns have driven more and more Americans off the donor list," Kennedy said. "Today, under President Trump's leadership, we are taking bold action and historic action to restore trust in the organ procurement process."

Transplant experts said last year there had been a spike in people revoking organ donor registrations, after a report that a Kentucky man who'd been declared dead woke up just as a team was preparing to remove his organs. Since then, there have been more reports of attempts to remove organs from patients who had mistakenly been declared dead.

Kennedy said at a news conference that "we are acting because of years of documented patient safety data failures and repeated violations of federal requirements, and we intend this decision to serve as a clear warning."

The secretary said the Life Alliance Organ Recovery Agency, a division of the University of Miami Health System, "has a long record of deficiencies directly tied to patient harm."

"Unlike the Biden administration, which ignored these problems and failed to act, the Trump administration is setting a new standard that patient safety comes first," Kennedy said.

Kennedy said along with the decertification, HHS is reforming the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network and "investing in new ways to encourage organ donation."

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks during a press conference on the steps of the United States Department of Agriculture on July 14, 2025 in Washington, D.C. / Credit: Michael M. Santiago / Getty ImagesMore

In July, HHS announced a plan to begin reforming the organ transplant system, citing a federal investigation that "revealed disturbing practices by a major organ procurement organization."

Kennedy said in a statement at the time that the investigation, conducted by the Health Resources and Services Administration under HHS, showed "that hospitals allowed the organ procurement process to begin when patients showed signs of life," calling it "horrifying" and pledging to hold accountable organ procurement organizations that coordinate access to transplants.

HHS said the investigation examined 351 cases where organ donation was "authorized, but ultimately not completed," finding that nearly 30% showed "concerning features," like neurological signs in patients that the agency said are incompatible with organ donation. And at least 28 patients "may not have been deceased at the time organ procurement was initiated."

More than 100,000 people are on the national transplant waiting list, and 13 people die every day waiting for a transplant, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration. There are 55 organ procurement organizations nationwide that serve specific geographic regions.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith and House Oversight Subcommittee Chairman David Schweikert wrote a letter to Life Alliance Organ Recovery Center in July demanding documents about reports that claim the organization "knowingly and deliberately engaged in a Medicare fraud scheme." The letter also cites reporting from The New York Times on a case involving the organization in which, the lawmakers said, "clinicians sedated a patient, withdrew life support, and waited for death before removing the organs of a patient who was crying and biting on his breathing tube which one Life Alliance employee interpreted as the patient not wanting to die."

"Patient safety lapses have long been a recurring issue for your organization and others like it, reflecting a history of ongoing concerns rather than isolated incidents," the chairmen wrote.

CBS News has reached out to Life Alliance Organ Recovery Agency for comment.

The Association of Organ Procurement Organizations, of which Life Alliance is a member, pledged in a statement "that we and our members will keep saving lives nationwide" and "will continue to support the team at Life Alliance to ensure South Florida organ donors, transplant patients and their families have access to organ donation and transplantation services."

"As advocates for the patients and donor families we serve, OPOs are committed to and invested in the ongoing improvement of our nation's organ donation and transplantation system," the group said. "Patient safety is the top priority for everyone involved in this lifesaving work and it guides our actions every day."

Kennedy has been pushing major changes to the nation's health care systems since he was sworn in earlier this year. And he has faced criticism in recent weeks over his leadership of the department amid a number of departures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On Wednesday, Susan Monarez, who was ousted as CDC director by Kennedy less than a month after she was confirmed, testified before a Senate committee that she faced pressure from the secretary to change the childhood vaccine schedule, regardless of whether there was scientific evidence to support doing so.

Kennedy testified before a different Senate committee earlier this month, where he defended the CDC shake-up, saying changes at the health agency were "absolutely necessary." The secretary denied pressuring the former director to preapprove upcoming vaccine recommendations, and accused her of lying about why she was fired.

RFK Jr. announces plans to shut down Florida organ transplant group citing safety issues

Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy,

USA TODAY
Thu, September 18, 2025

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced on Sept. 18 that a Florida organization responsible for coordinating organ donations in the U.S. was being shut down for "unsafe practices," calling the action a historical first.

"For the first time in the history, HHS will de-certify an organ procurement organization mid-cycle," he said. "We are acting because of years of documented patient safety data failures and repeated violations of federal requirements."

Kennedy said he intended this decision to "serve as a clear warning."

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services, testifies about the health care agenda for the Trump administration in front of the Senate Committee on Finance in Washington, D.C., on September 4, 2025.

U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., speaks with Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Senator Roger Marshall (R-KS) ahead of a roundtable event as part of the "Make America Healthy Again" (MAHA) agenda, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on July 15, 2025.

Robert Kennedy Jr. speaks at a press conference upon his arrival at Miami International Airport on Feb. 19, 1996, after visiting Cuba with his brother Michael (L) and a delegation of US environmental and energy experts.

He said the organization, Life Alliance Oregon Recovery Agency, based in Miami, has a long "record of deficiencies directly tied to patient harm."

RFK, MAHA say how they'll confront chronic diseases in kids. Why are some disappointed?

"It had a 65% staffing shortage consistently across the years and may have caused as many as eight missed working recoveries each week. Roughly one life lost each day," said Kennedy.

An investigation uncovered years of "unsafe practices, poor training, chronic underperformance, understaffing, and paperwork errors," according to the HHS.

The action is part of a reform initiative announced in July after a federal investigation found at least 28 instances in a Kentucky-based federally funded Organ Protection Organization called the Network of Hope where the process of procuring organs for donation was initiated from people who may not have been dead.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., left, and Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Mehmet Oz at the White House in Washington, DC, on July 30, 2025.

The investigation also found that 73 patients showed neurological signs incompatible with donation at these organizations.

That organization, which is one of 55-federally funded organizations nationwide, is now undergoing an HHS directed "Corrective Action Plan" following a "serious patient safety event."

"The incident was an adverse event that required immediate action. While serious, it does not reflect a pattern of persistent noncompliance," HHS Spokesperson Emily Hillard told USA TODAY.

The plan, Hillard said, requires the organization "to correct deficiencies, strengthen safeguards, and prevent recurrence."

The action reflects HHS’s responsibility to act quickly when patient safety is at risk, while reserving "decertification for the most severe and sustained failures," according to a statement released by the HHS.

The organ donation system, as this decertification shows, is in need of reform and updating, said Arthur Caplan, founding head of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

But reform should be handled with care, he said.

"Transplantation relies on altruism from both the living and the deceased to obtain life-saving organs and tissues. That altruism in turn requires trust," said Caplan. "In improving organ availability it is vitally important to do nothing that damages trust which is the fuel that provides treatments to those in organ failure."

Nearly 100,000 Americans are currently on transplant waitlists, and an average of 13 patients die each day waiting for an organ even as more than 28,000 donated organs go unmatched each year, according to the HHS

Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy is a White House Correspondent for USA TODAY. You can follow her on X @SwapnaVenugopal

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: RFK Jr. moves to close Florida-based organ transplant group

Opinion

An organ donor saved my life. But fear of unlikely botched donations hurts others.

Kaitlyn Wells
Thu, September 18, 2025

THE CONVERSATION

Scroll back up to restore default view.

As someone who is alive today because of an organ donation, I was alarmed by the news that Donate Life America, a nonprofit that oversees a national registry of organ donors, saw a 700% increase in donor registration withdrawals since July.

That startling drop in donors followed reporting by The New York Times offering horrifying details of how in extremely rare instances, teams rushed to secure organs from patients who still showed a flicker of life. A federal investigation found that at least 28 patients might not have been dead when organ procurement began. Thankfully, the surgeries weren’t completed.

I'm not here to fault The Times' reporting. But I am here to say that the reaction to vacate the registry is the wrong move. (Full disclosure: I work at Wirecutter, a product review site run by The New York Times Co.)

The reporting spotlights the differences between brain death and “donation after circulatory death.” In the latter case, surgeons stop life support with the family’s consent and recover the organs after the heart permanently stops beating. Typically, the patients noted in the federal investigation and The Times reporting qualified for circulatory death.

Yet donation after circulatory death isn’t the problem. In fact, the first human organ transplants included circulatory death donors. Rather, the cases described were rife with worrisome consent practices, subpar neurologic assessments and poor communication among teams. Still, some people have abandoned their desires to donate their organs after they die. It’s a personal choice and I respect it.

Opinion: Organ transplant investigations expose grisly stories of patient abuse

More than 103,000 people are on the national transplant waiting list, according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN). Every eight minutes, someone joins the registry. And an estimated 13 people die every day waiting for an organ transplant.
I always wanted to donate my organs. Then an organ donor saved my life.

In 2024, more than 24,000 people ‒ including 9,700 brain death and 7,200 circulatory death donors ‒ saved lives with the ultimate gift, says OPTN. If it weren’t for these generous souls and their families, many of the 48,000 transplant recipients wouldn’t be here.

That could have been me.

Author Kaitlyn Wells received a double-lung transplant after suffering from respiratory distress syndrome.

In 2024, I spent nearly 10 months in an intensive care unit for acute respiratory distress syndrome, a life-threatening lung injury that prevents the lungs from filling up with oxygen. The disease destroyed my lungs and sent me into heart failure. As expected, it led to damage in my brain, kidneys and stomach. (And just recently, I learned a kidney transplant may be in my future.)

Opinion alerts: Get columns from your favorite columnists + expert analysis on top issues, delivered straight to your device through the USA TODAY app. Don't have the app? Download it for free from your app store.

Like countless others, the news stories poked at my former anxiety about being a registered organ donor. I always knew I wanted to donate my organs. Yet, I feared medical staff would focus on procurement to help another, rather than try to save my life.

But while hospitalized, I saw the compassion and tears that hospital staff shed for deceased organ donors during honor walks. I felt the joy radiate from them when lives were saved thanks to the donors’ sacrifices. I signed the consent forms understanding my new, perfect set of pinkish lungs may be donated by someone who suffered either circulatory death or brain death. I witnessed firsthand the care and tenacity of the doctors, nurses and therapists who worked tirelessly to save me.

And I’m confident emergency medical staff did everything humanly possible to revive the woman from Florida whose lungs now breathe for me. (Fortunately for me, she was not one of the 950 people who recently removed themselves from Florida’s registry.)

How to become an organ donor: We can and should make it easier for everyone to become an organ donor | Opinion
Patients can wait years for a lifesaving donation

I know that in no way do reputable programs rush to throw any viable organ into the next terminally ill patient. Circulatory death donors are treated with dignity and respect, and only become donors after families choose a natural death.

While there are more than 173 million Americans on donor lists, only 3 in 1,000 people are eligible candidates when they die. If everyone on the registry died tomorrow, that means just 519,000 people would become candidates.

The seemingly serendipitous moment is the coalescence of case severity, blood type, body size, organ status, timing, tissue type and a million other things. Wait times for patients can be a week for a living liver donor, to a median of over 720 days for a high-priority heart transplant.

I waited 206 days.

Yes, attempting to prematurely remove organs, even for seemingly noble reasons, is inexcusable. What happened to those 28 patients is a beyond-the-pale anomaly.

Legislation like the Uniform Determination of Death Act and regulatory bodies like the Health Resources and Services Administration work to keep the process safe. Share your reservations and end-of-life care preferences with the people you trust. Seek out transplant recipients and living donors by contacting your local transplant hospital to learn what being an organ donor truly means.

Rather than let fear halt generosity, join or keep your name on the donor registry list. A larger donor registry gives everyone on the waiting list a better chance at a future. And what we truly should be afraid of is a world without altruism and compassion – not one where we save human lives through organ donation.

Kaitlyn Wells

Kaitlyn Wells is a double lung transplant recipient who has written about the disparities of organ and bone marrow donation within communities of color. She has a memoir in progress about adverse drug reactions and organ transplants. She works at Wirecutter, a product review site run by The New York Times Co.

You can read diverse opinions from our USA TODAY columnists and other writers on the Opinion front page, on X, formerly Twitter, @usatodayopinion and in our Opinion newsletter.

PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY

Denmark’s record-setting arms purchase raises eyebrows and anxiety

Rafi Schwartz, The Week US
Wed, September 17, 2025

Is Denmark’s limiting a recent arms purchase to European retailers broadcasting a story to Russia, Washington or both?. | Credit: Bertrand Guay / AFP / Getty Images

The world of international arms deals received a jolt on Wednesday, as Denmark announced it would purchase an estimated $9 billion in cutting-edge military systems, marking the largest weapons purchase ever for the Scandinavian nation. More surprising than the massive buy, however, was who Denmark had chosen to supply the influx of arms: fellow European nations, and conspicuously not the United States.

A ‘threat to Europe and Denmark for years to come’

There has been a “need for big and bold decisions” when it comes to Denmark’s “combat power” and ability to secure the country's citizens, said Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen on X last week, previewing this week’s purchase announcement. There is “no doubt” that Russia — currently in year three of its attempted full-scale invasion of Ukraine — will be a “threat to Europe and Denmark for years to come,” said Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen to the press on Wednesday. Denmark this past year boosted its military budget to “address acute shortcomings” following Russia’s Ukraine assault, Reuters said.

Danish officials have “publicly” joined the “longstanding concerns of their NATO allies” over Russian aggression in the icy waters to the country’s north, said CNN. Many officials also expect that, if and when the Ukraine conflict ends, Russia will next “divert resources” and use its “warfighting experience to pose a much greater threat in the Arctic region.” But even with the threat of Russian military action looming, the answer to why Denmark is rapidly developing its military capacities is more “likely to be found in Washington, D.C., than in Moscow or Beijing.”

‘Increasingly risky’ to depend on American support

While the European Union has recently increased its push for countries to “spend defense euros on the continent” that will, in turn, “strengthen the local arms industry and build a credible military deterrent,” Denmark’s intra-EU purchase also comes at a time when “dependence on U.S. suppliers is seen as increasingly risky,” said DefenseNews. In part, that stems from President Donald Trump’s longstanding aim to annex Greenland from the Danish government, a move many Danes “still see as their most pressing — and worrying — diplomatic challenge,” CNN said. Limiting its new arms purchase to European contractors is then “likely act of protest” on the part of Denmark in a situation where, one western diplomat told the network, an American supplier would have “almost certainly” won the bid in years past.

Danish officials, meanwhile, insist that American firms were “not being passed over for political reasons,” said Germany’s Table media, nor has Denmark suggested publicly that it won’t make future American arms purchases. “The decision to go with more than one or two suppliers enables shorter delivery times,” said Denmark’s Lt. Gen. Per Pugholm Olsen, who heads the military’s Acquisition and Logistics Organization. Olden’s comments echo those of Prime Minister Frederikson from this past February, when Denmark first began ramping up its air defenses.

“If we can’t get the best equipment, buy the next best," Frederiksen said. "There’s only one thing that counts now and that is speed.”

Denmark eyes buying long-range precision weapons for first time

DPA
Wed, September 17, 2025

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen speaks to media representatives during a press conference. Philipp von Ditfurth/dpa

NATO member Denmark is planning to acquire long-range precision weapons for the first time as a deterrent against Russia.

Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen and Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen made the announcement on Wednesday but did not provide details as to the type, cost or timeline.

Frederiksen described the move as "a paradigm shift in Danish defence policy." The aim, she said, is to ensure a credible deterrence against attacks on Denmark and NATO as a whole.

According to the prime minister, intelligence assessments indicate there is no immediate risk of a military attack on Denmark, even if Russia poses a real threat to NATO generally.

Against the backdrop of Russia's long war against Ukraine, Denmark has been significantly ramping up its defence capabilities for some time.

Officials will now examine the market for precision weapons and decide the best option for Denmark's needs.

FASCIST U$A

Immigration judge orders Mahmoud Khalil deported to Syria or Algeria

Erica Orden
Wed, September 17, 2025
POLITICO US

An immigration judge in Louisiana has ordered pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident of the U.S., deported to Syria or Algeria for failing to disclose certain information on his green card application, according to documents filed in federal court Wednesday by his lawyers.

Khalil’s lawyers suggested in a filing that they intend to appeal the deportation order, but expressed concern that the appeal process will likely be swift and unfavorable.

The order from the immigration judge, Jamee Comans, came despite a separate order in Khalil’s federal case in New Jersey blocking his deportation while that court considers Khalil’s legal argument that his detention and deportation are unlawful retaliation for his Palestinian advocacy.

Khalil’s March 8 arrest and subsequent detention in Louisiana was part of the Trump administration’s aggressive crackdown on foreign-born pro-Palestinian academics who were studying or working in the U.S. legally. Khalil, a former Columbia graduate student who helped organize campus protests, was arrested at his Manhattan residence and put into deportation proceedings. He has not been charged with a crime.

In a letter to the New Jersey federal judge, Michael Farbiarz, Khalil’s lawyers said they have 30 days from Sept. 12, the date of the immigration judge’s ruling, to appeal her decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals. The lawyers said they expect that process to be “swift” and that an appeal of the BIA decision, which would go to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, is unlikely to be successful, since, they wrote, the appeals court “almost never” grants stays of removal to noncitizens.

“As a result,” they wrote, “the only meaningful impediment to Petitioner’s physical removal from the United States would be this Court’s important order prohibiting removal during the pendency of his federal habeas case.” And, they wrote, “nothing would preserve his lawful permanent resident status.”

In a statement, Khalil, a Palestinian originally from Syria, accused the Trump administration of using “fascist tactics.”

“It is no surprise that the Trump administration continues to retaliate against me for my exercise of free speech. Their latest attempt, through a kangaroo immigration court, exposes their true colors once again,” Khalil said.

For more than three months earlier this year, Khalil was held in detention in Louisiana after the Trump administration arrested him, invoking a rarely used provision of immigration law that allows the government to deport any noncitizen — even a legal resident — if the secretary of State determines that the person’s continued presence harms U.S. foreign policy interests.

In June, Farbiarz, a Biden appointee, blocked the Trump administration from deporting Khalil on foreign policy grounds. Days later, the judge ordered Khalil’s release after determining that he was not a flight risk or danger to the community.

That allowed him to return to New York, where he was reunited with his wife, a U.S. citizen, and his newborn son, who was born during his detention.

The Trump administration, however, has continued to seek Khalil’s deportation via another rationale it tacked on after his arrest in Manhattan: that when he applied for a green card, he failed to disclose all his past employment and membership in certain organizations.

Is Elon Musk Already Giving Up on Tesla's Robotaxis?

Jeremy Bowman,

The Motley Fool
Thu, September 18, 2025

Key Points

Tesla CEO Elon Musk sees Optimus representing 80% of Tesla's value in the future.

The response to the June robotaxi launch in Austin has been mixed.

The robotaxi market is huge, but competition is heating up.

Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) CEO Elon Musk spent years hyping the company's robotaxis, leading up to the autonomous electric vehicles' launch in Austin, Texas, in June.

Musk said a robotaxi network would make Tesla the most valuable company in the world, and described fleets of autonomous Teslas gradually taking over the world. He unveiled the autonomous "Cybercab" at a splashy event last October, and he's proposed that individual Tesla owners would be able to cash in on the emerging technology, renting out their vehicles as autonomous ridesharing vehicles when they're not using them. Tesla backers like Ark Invest's Cathie Wood have argued that robotaxis would send the company's valuation to $5 trillion.

However, since Tesla's launch of a small robotaxi fleet in Austin, which expanded from an initial number of 10 to 20 in June to 30 by late August, Musk has been rather quiet about the new business.

He also made a statement earlier this month that suggests he's more focused on Tesla's next big thing, implying that the hype around robotaxis could be a thing of the past. In a post on his social media platform X, Musk said that "80% of Tesla's value will be Optimus," referring to the company's autonomous robot that's still in development.

It's unclear what timeline Musk has in mind for that, but based on that post, he clearly thinks that Optimus will one day dwarf the value of both Tesla's core EV business and the emerging robotaxi business.

Image source: Tesla.

Promises, promises

Even Tesla bulls know by now that Musk's statements are best taken with a grain of salt. It's hard to know if the quote above about Optimus was based on any real forecasting or just on his enthusiasm and confidence in the new technology.

Though it frustrates Musk's critics, part of his talent as a CEO is to perform a sort of sleight-of-hand where he distracts investors from current problems with the company by making promises about the future. Similarly, the bull case for Tesla seems to be constantly changing. At the start of the year, Musk's alliance with President Donald Trump drove the stock to double in price in just a few months before it pulled back on subsequent backlash against Musk and Tesla over Musk's apparent falling out with Trump.

Over the last week, Tesla stock has been rallying again despite reports that its market share in EVs has fallen to its lowest point in the U.S. since 2017, at 38% of total EV sales, showing it may be losing the market it once defined.

Musk's promises around robotics and his recent purchase of $1 billion worth of stock seem to have overcome any doubts (for now) and helped fuel recent gains. Tesla also received permission from Nevada to test its robotaxis in that state.

What's next for Tesla's robotaxis

Musk did promote the robotaxi launch in the company's July earnings call, and noted that it's seeking regulatory clearance in the Bay Area, Arizona, Florida, and Nevada.

He also predicted that Tesla would offer autonomous ride-hailing to half the U.S. population by the end of the year. However, now that it's already September, it seems unlikely that it will happen.

The robotaxi went live in the Bay Area on Sept. 4, though rides will come with a safety driver present, meaning they aren't fully autonomous. Tesla does not yet have the permit to operate autonomous vehicles without a driver.

For now, the market opportunity for robotaxis is massive, but Tesla is far from the only competitor here. Alphabet's Waymo remains the leader here, and other deep-pocketed operators are getting in the mix as Amazon's Zoox just launched in Las Vegas.

At this point, it's too soon to judge the impact the robotaxi will have, but it will almost certainly take longer to move the revenue needle than Musk has forecast. Meanwhile, statements like the one above on Optimus may help pump the stock, but they ultimately do a disservice to investors.

Currently, Tesla trades at a sky-high price-to-earnings ratio close to 200, and analysts expect both revenue and profits to fall this year.

Musk may have more bold predictions up his sleeve, but at some point, Tesla is going to have to back them up with real business results. At its current valuation and trajectory, the risk/reward in Tesla stock doesn't seem worth it.

Senior Yale Professor on Tesla (TSLA): ‘This is the Biggest Meme Stock We’ve Ever Seen’

Fahad Saleem
Wed, September 17, 2025
INSIDER MONKEY

Jeff Sonnenfeld, Yale School of Management senior associate dean, said in a recent program on CNBC that investors are relying too much on the capabilities of Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk. He called TSLA a meme stock and highlighted its high valuation.

“This is the biggest meme stock we’ve ever seen. Even at its peak, Amazon was nowhere near this level. The PE on this, well above 200, is just crazy. When you’ve got stocks like Nvidia, the price-earnings ratio is around 25 or 30, and Apple is maybe 35 or 36, Microsoft around the same. I mean, this is way out of line to be at a 220 PE. It’s crazy, and they’ve, I think, put a little too much emphasis on the magic wand of Musk.”

Senior Yale Professor on Tesla (TSLA): “This is the Biggest Meme Stock We’ve Ever Seen’
Photo by Tesla Fans Schweiz on Unsplash

Tesla’s EV sales are falling all over the world as the company faces challenges from competitors. Tesla’s global sales in the second quarter fell 14% year over year. Even if Elon Musk increases his focus to fix the company’s problems, it would take a lot of effort to come out of the demand crisis. For example, in California, the largest U.S. market for electric vehicle adoption and sales, Tesla sales fell about 12% year over year in 2024, causing its market share to drop from 60.1% in 2023 to 52.5% in 2024. Was it because Californians are buying fewer EVs? No. Californians purchased more than 2 million electric cars during the year, almost double when compared to the past two years.

Baron Focused Growth Fund stated the following regarding Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) in its second quarter 2025 investor letter:

“Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) designs, manufactures, and sells electric vehicles (EVs), solar products, and energy storage solutions, while also developing advanced real-world AI technologies. Despite ongoing macroeconomic challenges and regulatory complexities, shares climbed after Tesla completed a limited commercial rollout of its highly anticipated robotaxi business in Austin—following more than a decade of development and billions of dollars in investment. This milestone signals a potentially transformative shift in the automotive industry and opens up a sizable new market beyond the company’s core operations. Investor sentiment also improved after Elon Musk stepped back from government-related engagements, boosting confidence in Tesla’s near-term execution. Tesla introduced a refreshed Model Y globally, featuring design and performance upgrades, and outlined plans to unveil new mass-market models starting next quarter. Meanwhile, the company is progressing toward scaling production of its humanoid robot, adding another dimension to its long-term growth story.”

Elon Musk under fire after sidestepping federal regulations to advance controversial project: 'Blatant disregard for democratic institutions'

Daniel Gala
Thu, September 18, 2025

TCD

Elon Musk under fire after sidestepping federal regulations to advance controversial project: 'Blatant disregard for democratic institutions'

Elon Musk is at it again.

This time, the divisive billionaire has deployed his army of well-funded lobbyists in an aggressive attempt to push politicians in Texas to award a massive flood-prevention contract to Musk's own The Boring Company, ProPublic reported in mid-September.

The intensive campaign has come despite concerns that The Boring Company's proposal does not adequately fit the project's needs and doubts raised by the company's lengthy history of failed projects.

What's happening?

In 2017, Hurricane Harvey caused devastating flooding across Houston. In the years since, experts have explored ways to prevent the catastrophe from happening again.

The potential solution that has gained the most momentum would involve a series of massive underground pipes, 30 to 40 feet in diameter, which would whisk excess water away from the city before releasing it into the ocean, according to a previous ProPublica report. The proposed project has been estimated to cost as much as $760 million.

Unsurprisingly, Musk has smelled an opportunity, with the Musk-run The Boring Company aggressively lobbying state and local lawmakers with an alternative vision that would involve only two pipes measuring just 12 feet in diameter.

While The Boring Company and its allies have attempted to pitch the company's proposal as an innovative, cost-saving solution, experts have criticized the company's plan as insufficient to protect Houston from disastrous floods.

"If you build a smaller tunnel, okay, it'll be cheaper, but it can carry less water," said Larry Dunbar, a longtime water-resources engineer in the Houston area, per ProPublica. "So what have you saved? Have you reduced the flooding upstream by an inch? And are you going to spend multimillions of dollars doing that? Well, maybe that's not worth it."

Like Musk himself, The Boring Company has a long history of overpromising and underdelivering.

Despite proposals to dig hundreds of miles of tunnels in cities including Chicago, Dubai, Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles, Nashville, Washington D.C., and San José, the company has only broken ground on a single project located in Las Vegas, according to an August report by Bloomberg.

Even there, the company has only completed eight out of the 68 city-approved miles of tunnels, with only four of those miles being operational, per Bloomberg. And, despite lavish promises of superfast, revolutionary "hyperloop" transport, those travelling in the completed tunnels do so in standard Tesla EVs.

"Nearly a decade after Elon Musk launched Boring Co. with promises of ultra-fast hyperloop-powered transportation, the tunneling venture has little to show," reporter Arvelisse Bonilla Ramos wrote in Bloomberg.

The company's track record of disregarding environmental regulations and worker-safety rules also has raised concerns. A commissioner for Harris County — where Houston is located — argued that The Boring Company should not be involved in the flood-mitigation project given Musk's "blatant disregard for democratic institutions and environmental protections," according to ProPublica's mid-September report.

However, these monumental and well-documented failures have not stopped Musk and his band of acolytes from pushing for The Boring Company to be the contractor of choice for the new flood-mitigation tunnels in Houston.
Why is it important?

As rising global temperatures cause extreme weather events like hurricanes to become more severe, cities around the world are racing to improve their infrastructure in the hopes of mitigating the devastation caused by natural disasters.

However, The Boring Company's push to take over the Houston-area tunnel project has exposed the risk that opportunistic companies and individuals will see these projects as a chance to line their own pockets with public funds while doing little, if anything, to make conditions safer for residents.

With human lives, homes, food supplies, and livelihoods on the line, the end result could be far more costly than even the millions — if not billions — in wasted tax dollars.
What's being done about it?

By exposing the efforts of Musk, The Boring Company, and their cronies to capitalize on well-intentioned and important projects, journalistic outlets like ProPublica, Bloomberg, and others have helped to bring transparency to the otherwise opaque, behind-the-scenes processes by which such decisions are often made.

However, without pushback from the public, and in particular voters, no amount of journalistic truth-telling or fact-finding will make a difference.

In order to push for more effective policies, you can use your voice, contact your elected representatives, and vote for candidates who will do what is best for all of their constituents, not just billionaires.

SPACE/COSMOS

Northrop Grumman cargo ship reaches space station after software fix

William Harwood
Thu, September 18, 2025
CBS
Running a day late because of software issues, Northrop Grumman's Cygnus XL cargo ship caught up with the International Space Station early Thursday and then stood by while the lab's robot arm latched on to a grapple fixture to wrap up a successful, if extended, rendezvous.

The capture came after Northrop Grumman engineers adjusted the sensitivity of the main engine fault detection software that prematurely triggered shutdowns during two rendezvous thruster firings Tuesday.

Northrop Grumman's Cygnus XL cargo ship is seen on final approach to the International Space Station early Thursday. / Credit: NASA

As it turned out, the main engine was healthy all along and once the software was adjusted, the spacecraft was able to press ahead with the rendezvous, pulling up to a point just below the station so robot arm operator Jonny Kim, assisted by Zena Cardman, could capture the ship.

"A big congratulations to the NASA and Cygnus teams for a successful Cygnus launch, rendezvous and capture," Kim radioed mission control. "Adapting and overcoming unforeseen challenges is something we do at NASA, and I'm very proud to be a part of this team."

Unlike SpaceX's cargo Dragon and Russian Progress freighters, which carry out autonomous dockings at their respective ports, the Cygnus was designed to be captured by the station's arm and pulled in for berthing.

After locking onto the Cygnus XL at 7:24 a.m. EDT, Kim handed off arm operations to flight controllers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston so the ship could be pulled in for berthing at the Earth-facing port of the central Unity module.

Astronaut Jonny Kim, operating the space station's robot arm from a work station inside the lab, latched onto the Cygnus XL cargo ship to wrap up an extended rendezvous. / Credit: NASA

Northrop Grumman names its cargo ships after notable figures in the space community. The Cygnus XL was named in honor of shuttle pilot William "Willie" McCool, who lost his life in the 2003 Columbia disaster.

Space station astronaut Mike Fincke, a member of the 1996 astronaut class along with McCool, said he was "a gifted pilot, a devoted crewmate and a man of deep humility, his life continues to inspire us."

"To see a ship bearing his name safely arrive at the station is a reminder that his courage and kindness are still circling our beautiful planet Earth," he said.

On board: more than 5 tons of needed spare parts, research material and crew supplies, including holiday treats for the station crew.

"The (Cygnus) is packed with consumables, like nitrogen, oxygen, food and toilet parts, and it has a large number of spare parts that are required for systems like, for example, our urine processor," said Dina Contella, deputy manager of the space station program at the Johnson Space Center

"We're stocking up on these items since we were short over the past year, and we'd like to have a good reserve for the future," she said.

That shortfall was caused, in part, by damage an earlier Cygnus suffered during shipment from a subcontractor in Europe to Cape Canaveral, Florida. That vehicle is still grounded pending analysis and repairs.

Sunday's launch of the Cygnus XL marked the maiden flight of an upgraded version of the cargo ship, which is about 5 feet longer than the original, allowing it to carry about 2,600 pounds of additional cargo.

NASA pays for cargo delivery flights using Cygnus and Dragon spacecraft. To date, SpaceX has successfully carried out 32 Dragon resupply missions while Northrop Grumman has executed 21 successful flights, including the current mission.

Bill Spetch, operations integration manager for the space station, said the resupply flights "and especially this great capability that Cygnus brings and the amount of cargo that it brings to us, is critical for us to ke

Northrop Grumman's 'Cygnus XL' cargo spacecraft suffers thruster issue on way to the International Space Station

Mike Wall
Tue, September 16, 2025
SPACE.COM

Northrop Grumman’s 21st Cygnus cargo craft, with its prominent cymbal-shaped UltraFlex solar arrays, is pictured in the grips of the Canadarm2 robotic arm shortly after its capture on Aug. 6, 2024. | Credit: NASAMore

The debut mission of Northrop Grumman's new jumbo cargo spacecraft didn't go off without a hitch.

The company's first "Cygnus XL" freighter suffered a thruster issue in orbit early Tuesday morning (Sept. 16), two days after launching toward the International Space Station (ISS) atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

As a result, "the Cygnus XL will not arrive to the space station on Wednesday, Sept. 17, as originally planned, with a new arrival date and time under review," NASA officials announced in an update on Tuesday afternoon.

The Cygnus XL's "main engine stopped earlier than planned during two burns designed to raise the orbit of the spacecraft for rendezvous with the space station, where it will deliver 11,000 pounds of scientific investigations and cargo to the orbiting laboratory for NASA," agency officials added in the update. "All other Cygnus XL systems are performing normally."

Cygnus XL is the latest version of Virginia-based Northrop Grumman's Cygnus freighter. Previous iterations hauled about 8,500 pounds (3,856 kg) to the ISS.

The current mission is known as NG-23, because it was supposed to be the 23rd cargo effort that Northrop Grumman flies to the ISS for NASA. But the 22nd was canceled after the Cygnus was damaged during transport to the launch site.

Cygnus is one of three freighters that resupply the ISS, along with SpaceX's Dragon capsule and Russia's Progress vehicle.

Cygnus and Progress are expendable, while Dragon is reusable. The NG-23 Cygnus XL — named S.S. William "Willie" McCool, after one of the astronauts who died in the 2003 Columbia space shuttle disaster — is slated to stay attached to the ISS until March 2026, when it will depart to burn up in Earth's atmosphere

We've officially found 6,000 exoplanets, NASA says: 'We're entering the next great chapter of exploration''

Monisha Ravisetti

Wed, September 17, 2025

SPACE.COM

An artist's illustration of the exoplanets NASA has found. | Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

It might sound hard to believe, but NASA's exoplanet count just reached 6,000 — and that's with only about 30 years of hunting worlds beyond our solar system. In fact, only three years ago, that figure was at 5,000. At least at face value, the rate of discovery appears to be exponential — which is good, because, theoretically, there should be billions more worlds out there for us to locate.

"We're entering the next great chapter of exploration — worlds beyond our imagination," a narrator says in a NASA video about the milestone. "To look for planets that could support life, to find our cosmic neighbors and to remind us the universe still holds worlds waiting to be found."

The news was announced on Wednesday (Sept. 17), which is serendipitously close to the anniversary of when scientists confirmed the existence of the first exoplanet around a sun-like star: 51 Pegasi b. Discovered on Oct. 6, 1995 by astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, 51 Pegasi b is a gas giant 0.64 times as massive as Jupiter that sits approximately 50 light-years from where you're sitting. (To be clear, the very first exoplanet discovery fell in 1992, but that one was around a spinning neutron star, or pulsar. And pulsars are pretty wild. 51 Pegasi b was the first more "normal" exoplanet to be identified.) The right thing to do would be to end this paragraph with the 6,000 exoplanet discovery counterpart to 51 Pegasi b, but that's unfortunately not possible.

This brings us to the complexity of NASA's announcement. "Confirmed planets are added to the count on a rolling basis by scientists from around the world, so no single planet is considered the 6,000th entry," the agency said in a statement. "There are more than 8,000 additional candidate planets awaiting confirmation."

In fact, as of writing this article, we're technically at 6,007 exoplanets in NASA's alien world tally. The "new discovery" featured by NASA is the heftily named KMT-2023-BLG-1896L b, a Neptune-like world with a mass equal to about 16.35 Earths. NASA is also responsible for the bulk of those exoplanet finds, with its TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) count being at 693 and now-retired Kepler Space Telescope having found over 2,600.

And even though it can be written with just a few keystrokes, each member of that 6,007-strong club represents an entire world comparable to the planets of our solar system, which scientists have been scrutinizing for centuries.

There are 2,035 Neptune-like worlds in that count, in reference to exoplanets with similar sizes to our solar system's very own Neptune and Uranus. These tend to have "hydrogen and helium-dominated atmospheres with cores of rock and heavier metals," according to NASA. ("Metals" doesn't necessarily mean metallic elements. Somewhat confusingly, in astronomy, that just refers to elements heavier than hydrogen and helium).

There are 1,984 gas giants (think Jupiter relatives) and 1,761 super-Earths in the court — the latter group is not to be confused with Earth 2.0 candidates. Super-Earths simply refer to exoplanets that are a little larger than Earth but still lighter than planets like Neptune and Uranus.

NASA's exoplanet count further includes 700 "terrestrial planets," or rocky worlds, and maybe most fascinatingly, seven of "unknown" types.

Indeed, breaking those categories down even further would require stretching your brain to a place where you can imagine a two-faced world half-covered in lava, an orb made of diamond that can regrow its atmosphere, one zipping through space at over 1 million mph (1.6 million kph) and the physical embodiment of hell.

"Each of the different types of planets we discover gives us information about the conditions under which planets can form and, ultimately, how common planets like Earth might be, and where we should be looking for them," Dawn Gelino, head of NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program, located at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said in a statement. "If we want to find out if we’re alone in the universe, all of this knowledge is essential."

Still, in the agency's video about the milestone, an existential aspect of exoplanet-hunting is mentioned. "There's one we haven't found — a planet just like ours."

At least, not yet."

Massive asteroid bigger than a skyscraper heading toward Earth at 24,000 mph

Emma Bussey
Wed, September 17, 2025
FOX NEWS

Massive asteroid bigger than a skyscraper heading toward Earth at 24,000 mph
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A massive asteroid nearly the size of a New York skyscraper will make a close approach, or pass, by Earth in the early hours of Sept. 18, according to scientists.

They say the asteroid, officially dubbed "2025 FA22," is set to race past the planet at more than 24,000 mph, and will do so again in 2089 and 2173.

The asteroid measures between 427 and 951 feet across, similar in size to a large skyscraper.

UFO Mania Grips Small Town After Mysterious Glowing Object Sighting Goes Viral

NASA announced that a skyscraper-sized asteroid would be passing "relatively close" to Earth on Tuesday.

Nasa and the European Space Agency (ESA) have confirmed it poses no immediate threat because updated measurements have ruled out a collision and the asteroid has now been taken off the risk table.

"Impacts on this scale are rare, but the consequences would be catastrophic," ESA researchers said, with the pass Thursday morning offering a rare opportunity to study a skyscraper-sized asteroid up close.

Astronomers first detected 2025 FA22 in March using a special telescope in Hawaii. It was then added to ESA’s watch list of possible dangerous asteroids.

Harvard Physicist Says Mysterious Interstellar Object Could Be Nuclear-powered Spaceship

Bennu could collide with Earth in the late 2100's.

Because of its size and speed, if 2025 FA22 did strike Earth, it could crush a major city and other areas, setting off fires and tsunamis.

People won’t be able to see 2025 FA22, but astronomers with strong telescopes or binoculars could spot it as a faint dot against the stars around 3:40 a.m. ET Sept. 18.

Meteorite Fragment That Slammed Through Homeowner's Roof Is Billions Of Years Old, Predates Earth: Professor

Asteroid moonlet Dimorphos as seen by the DART spacecraft 11 seconds before impact in this image taken by DART’s on board DRACO imager from a distance of 68 kilometers, and released Sept. 26, 2022.

Asteroids are rocky formations of the solar system from billions of years ago that are seen orbiting the sun and can be different sizes.

NASA estimates more than 1.3 million asteroids are in the solar system, with over 30,000 classified as near-Earth objects.

NASA's Asteroid Watch always monitors asteroids that could come within 4.6 million miles of Earth.

Any object larger than 492 feet passing within 4.6 million miles of Earth earns a "potentially hazardous" label.

Fox News Digital has reached out to NASA for comment.

Original article source: Massive asteroid bigger than a skyscraper heading toward Earth at 24,000 mph

Something Weird Is Going on With the Sun, Scientists Find

Sharon Adarlo
Wed, September 17, 2025

FUTURISM

The Sun — usually so predictable — is exhibiting some surprising behavior and that has scientists very intrigued.

Astronomers had predicted that our host star was entering a period of relative quiet back in 2008, but NASA scientists have published a new study in The Astrophysical Journal Letters that found that the Sun has instead defied expectations by becoming more active, with increased sunspots and solar flares.

"All signs were pointing to the Sun going into a prolonged phase of low activity," said the study lead author and NASA physicist Jamie Jasinski in a statement about the paper. "So it was a surprise to see that trend reversed. The Sun is slowly waking up."

Back in the 1980s, scientists had noticed the Sun's surface was steadily quieting down until approximately the 2008 financial crash.

That was the year that the celestial ball of plasma notched its "weakest on record" solar activity — which prompted scientists to predict that this relative state of quietude would keep on extending.

But like a tame camp fire that suddenly crackles into flames and sparks, the Sun abruptly reversed course during the Obama administration with "various plasma and magnetic field parameters" jumping up and the number of sunspots outstripping predictions.

The Sun has long been known to go through periodic cycles of activity every 11 years, called a solar cycle, when it becomes more active — eventually reaching a "solar maximum," in astronomy parlance — before powering down to a "solar minimum."

The 11-year period is part of a longer cycle, dubbed the Extended Solar Cycle or Hale cycle, that averages around 22 years, and in which the Sun's magnetic poles reverse.

But the Sun also goes through longer spans of quiet, such as from 1645 to 1715, and 1790 to 1830, when sunspots basically disappeared. Given the Sun's long quieting period since the 1980s, scientists had anticipated that was due to happen again — but instead, it seems to be flaring back up.

"We don’t really know why the Sun went through a 40-year minimum starting in 1790,"said Jasinski. "The longer-term trends are a lot less predictable and are something we don’t completely understand yet."

Why should anybody on Earth care? Increased solar activity impacts our planet by messing up radio communications, power grids, and navigation systems.

And with the United States and China competing in exploring space, monitoring solar activity is important to make sure space travel is safe from any surprising solar conditions that can damage spacecraft and harm astronauts.

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Plus, it's just cool. Ultimately, the Sun is what keeps all life on our planet going, instead of being a frozen husk in space — so its riddles are a matter of existential curiosity.

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Strange blobs found inside Mars could be remnants of something ancient, astronomers say

Vishwam Sankaran
Wed, September 17, 2025

THE INDEPENDENT

Strange blobs found inside Mars by Nasa’s InSight lander may be remnants of the ancient “embryo” that eventually developed into the planet we see today, according to a new study.

The findings, published in the journal Science, may change what we know about the formation of rocky planets like Mars, Venus and the Earth.

The first four planets from the Sun are often depicted in textbooks as having smooth, layered interiors, with crust, mantle and core stacked like a millionaire’s shortbread.

However, seismic anomalies detected on Mars by the InSight mission reveal that the mantle is far from smooth and contains rough lumps of ancient fragments up to 4km wide, preserving the planet’s violent early history like geological fossils.

The solar system’s rocky planets formed about 4.5 billion years ago when dust and rock orbiting the young Sun clumped together under gravity.

As Mars took shape, it was struck by giant objects the size of entire planets in cataclysmic collisions similar to the kind thought to have formed our Moon.

“These colossal impacts unleashed enough energy to melt large parts of the young planet into vast magma oceans,” Constantinos Charalambous, an author of the study from Imperial College London, said. “As those magma oceans cooled and crystallised, they left behind compositionally distinct chunks of material, and we believe it’s these we’re now detecting deep inside Mars.”

Cutaway view of Mars in artist’s concept shows debris from ancient impacts scattered through planet’s mantle (Nasa)

These cataclysmic collisions mixed fragments of the planet's crust and mantle from its “embryo” with debris from the impacting objects.

Then, as Mars cooled, these diverse chunks were trapped in a sluggishly churning mantle, “like ingredients folded into a Rocky Road brownie mix”, the study said. However, the mixing of these “ingredients” was too weak to fully smooth things out.

Unlike the Earth, where plate tectonics constantly recycle the crust and mantle, the interior of Mars is sealed up beneath a stagnant outer crust, preserving a geological time capsule.

Watch an asteroid the size of the Washington Monument zoom past Earth live on Sept. 18 (video)
Space

“The fact that we can still detect its traces after four and a half billion years shows just how sluggishly Mars’s interior has been churning ever since,” Dr Charalambous said.

Astronomers uncovered these lumps by analysing data from eight marsquakes detected by the InSight lander, including two triggered by recent meteorite impacts that left almost 150m-wide craters on the planet.

The lander is equipped with instruments to detect seismic waves on Mars travelling through the mantle.

The researchers found that seismic waves of higher frequencies took longer to reach the lander sensors from the impact site. This revealed that the interior was chunky rather than smooth.

“These signals showed clear signs of interference as they travelled through Mars’s deep interior,” Dr Charalambous said.

“That’s consistent with a mantle full of structures of different compositional origins – leftovers from Mars's early days.”

The latest findings, the study notes, have implications for our understanding of the histories of other rocky planets as well.

Yes, NASA announced evidence of "life on Mars." Here's what to know about the recent discovery

"Clearest sign yet" of life on the Red Planet.

Jacqueline Kehoe•
Updated Tue, September 16, 2025

NASA just hinted at an answer to David Bowie's question: Is there life on Mars? Thanks to a recent discovery, the answer is probably "yes." Or, at the very least, perhaps there was life on Mars.

The space agency's Perseverance rover has been playing detective on the Red Planet, and it's uncovered something that has scientists practically bouncing off the walls. A rock sample called "Sapphire Canyon" contains the clearest evidence yet that tiny Martian microbes once called Mars home.

The rock that showcases life on Mars

Meet Cheyava Falls — not your typical Mars rock. This arrowhead-shaped rock (the "Sapphire Canyon" sample was carved from it) has been hanging out in an ancient river valley, minding its own business for over 3 billion years. But when Perseverance came knocking in July 2024, this rock became the center of astronomical attention.

What makes Cheyava Falls so remarkable? It's covered in what scientists lovingly call "leopard spots" and "poppy seeds" — tiny black markings that could be the fossilized calling cards of ancient Martian bacteria. Think of them as really, really old graffiti that says "Mars microbes were here!"

Here's where it gets really fascinating: Perseverance didn't just snap a quick photo and call it a day. The rover went full CSI on this rock, using fancy instruments with names like SHERLOC (yes, after that Sherlock) to detect organic compounds, the building blocks of life as we know it.

The evidence is stacking up like a cosmic mystery novel. The rock shows signs of rusty red mud mixed with organic matter, white veins proving water once flowed through it, and those telltale leopard spots containing iron and phosphate. On Earth, when we see similar patterns, they're often the result of microbes having a feast on organic matter billions of years ago.

Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy put it perfectly: after a year of scientists trying to find any other explanation, they keep coming back to the same thrilling possibility — that this could be life, Jim, but not as we know it.

The "life on Mars" plot twist

Of course, science loves a good plot twist. The researchers aren't ready to throw a "We Found Aliens!" party just yet. They're carefully considering whether these features could have formed through purely chemical processes without any biological help. It's like being a detective who's 90% sure they've solved the case but needs just a little more evidence before taking it to a judge.

The ultimate goal? Getting these samples back to Earth where scientists can analyze them with equipment that makes Perseverance's instruments look like a magnifying glass. Unfortunately, budget constraints might make this cosmic delivery service a bit complicated.

Whether or not these leopard spots turn out to be ancient Martian life, we're living through an incredible moment in human history. We're literally reaching across millions of miles of space to ask one of our most profound questions: Are we alone in the universe?

As scientist Nicky Fox noted, we're one step closer to answering that age-old question. And even if we're still not sure about life on Mars, the fact that we're seriously investigating leopard-spotted rocks on another planet is pretty amazing in itself.

Yahoo CreatorJacqueline KehoeJacqueline is a travel, nature, and science writer based in Wisconsin. Follow her work on Yahoo Creators—or find it in the wild at publications like National Geographic, Smithsonian, Travel + Leisure, and more.

'We're really on a different trajectory': How NASA's Artemis moon missions aim to prepare us for Mars

Elizabeth Howell
Tue, September 16, 2025

Artistic depiction of NASA astronauts at the lunar south pole carrying out early work to establish an Artemis Base Camp. . | Credit: NASA

As NASA prepares to put astronauts on the moon in the next few years, the agency is thinking about "how to live and operate away from the Earth, on other planets" — especially Mars.

Those comments were delivered during a virtual Artemis 4 landing site science workshop on Sept. 10 by Jacob Bleacher, chief exploration scientist at NASA. Bleacher, a planetary geologist by training, has a mandate from NASA for "technology and architecture development to enable human exploration of the moon and Mars," his agency biography states.

Bleacher said the greater Artemis program will eventually be aiming for far longer stays on the moon than the short two- or three-day Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s achieved. "We have learned from going to the moon in the past with Apollo, but we're really on a different trajectory here," he said. "We want to begin to learn how to live away from the Earth."

The workshop was meant to ask scientists and other community participants for "science figures of merit" to help "evaluate and prioritize candidate landing sites with the highest science potential," the agency added. Some of the factors being considered include learning about evolution of planets, the processes that influence lunar regolith or dust, as well as objectives in fields like sun science or physical sciences.

NASA didn't conduct the workshop in isolation. Over the last decade, scientists have gained a better understanding of the South Pole-Aitken basin in which Artemis astronauts will land. That science was said to be one of the highest priorities of both the 2013 and 2023 planetary decadal surveys, which are essentially agreements by that community about which space missions to prioritize for science objectives, among other documents.

Artemis 4 is officially slated to launch no earlier than 2028, although that is pending progress of other missions of the Artemis program. (For perspective, NASA has not yet launched any astronauts on the program, although one crew — for the moon-circling Artemis 2 mission — is readying for a launch as soon as April 2026.)

Artemis 4 astronauts will spend six days on the moon's surface, return lunar soil samples to Earth, collect data using astronaut observations and mission instruments, and execute up to four extravehicular activities (moonwalks) ranging as far as 1.2 miles (2 km) from the mission's lander, NASA materials state.

Picking an exact landing site will take some time, although NASA will place the mission in the south pole region of the moon where ice and other critical minerals may be available for astronauts to use for future excursions.

And part of what Bleacher would like to see is not only infrastructure for longer lunar missions, but incentive for commercial industry to work alongside the agency for the long haul. He emphasized that the expense and complication of lunar missions means NASA will continue to seek partners, meaning both U.S. commercial partners and international agencies.

"What we're trying to understand is, what do we — NASA, the United States government — need to put in place that welcomes and encourages that partnership so that we really can develop that longer term presence on the moon, maybe even permanent presence on the moon? And what really drives the development of that lunar economy? Who wants to be there, who wants to be working there, and what can we provide to get that foothold?"

As the name implies, Artemis 4 will be the fourth mission of the larger Artemis program, including dozens of other nations working together under the Artemis Accords, that seeks to put astronaut boots on the moon again while establishing an American-led framework for deep space exploration.

An uncrewed mission called Artemis 1 flew around the moon and back again in 2022. Four astronauts aim to do the same next year aboard Artemis 2: NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.

The next mission would be Artemis 3, currently aiming for a moon landing. NASA's official schedule has a target date of 2027, but that is pending readiness of SpaceX's Starship Human Landing System (HLS) to carry humans for a landing. Artemis 4 would be the next mission after that.

Artemis 2 astronauts will double as human science experiments on their trip around the moon

Josh Dinner
Wed, September 17, 2025

SPACE.COM

The crew of NASA's Artemis 2 mission speak to members of the media on July 30, 2025 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. | Credit: Space.com / Brett Tingley

Artemis 2 astronauts will be studied for how sleep, stress and radiation shape human health in deep space during their moon mission next year.

The second installment of NASA's Artemis program to return to the moon and establish a sustained human presence in deep space is set to be the first crewed flight test of its Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. The four-person crew is tasked with putting the vessel through its paces in the cislunar environment, and performing several science experiments during their mission.

Some of that research involves the astronauts themselves, who will turn into a quartet of biomedical subjects to help NASA gather in-flight data on the human body beyond low Earth orbit for the first time in more than 50 years. As they have with hundreds of physiological tests conducted aboard the International Space Station (ISS), NASA will add the research to its growing understanding of the biological repercussions of life in microgravity, according to a recent release.

Standard measures

One of the experiments the Artemis 2 astronauts will undertake will see them join a long-running NASA effort to build a comprehensive understanding of how spaceflight affects human health. Samples of blood, urine and saliva are being collected in the months before launch, and the astronauts will undergo regular checks during their 10-day mission and follow-ups after their return.

NASA hopes to use the samples to track changes in cardiovascular health, nutrition, immunity and stress across multiple stages of training, flight and recovery.
ARCHeR: Sleep and stress tracking

The Artemis Research for Crew Health and Readiness (ARCHeR) project will investigate how crew performance might be affected by time spent as such a far distance from Earth while inside Orion's confined space, combined with the astronauts' demanding schedule.

Each Artemis 2 astronaut will wear wrist sensors to log movement and sleep throughout the mission. Pre- and post-mission evaluations will be compared to in-flight data to better understand how the deep space mission influences the crew's alertness, stress and ability to work together cohesively.
Immune system monitoring

Samples provided by the crew before, during and after their mission will also be used to study their immune systems. In this case, immune system markers in their saliva samples will help researchers evaluate how the body reacts to space radiation.

To save space and power aboard Orion during their mission, the crew is foregoing refrigeration of their in-flight saliva samples, and will instead make their deposits on specially designed dab papers, which will absorb the samples for simpler storage. Once they return, scientists will test the papers for dormant viruses triggered by the microgravity environment — a phenomenon seen aboard the ISS, where stress has been documented as a trigger to reactivate illnesses like chickenpox and shingles.

The crew of NASA's Artemis 2 mission. From left: mission specialist Christina Koch, pilot Victor Glover, commander Reid Wiseman, and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen. | Credit: NASA/Josh Valcarcel

AVATAR organ-on-a-chip study

Artemis 2 astronauts will also be accompanied by thumb-sized "avatars" of themselves, in the form of blood samples grown to simulate bone marrow on organ-on-a-chip devices.

These chips will ride inside Orion as it passes through the Van Allen belts — zones of charged particles between the Earth and moon — testing how marrow responds to deep space radiation and microgravity. Results will be compared to ISS experiments to see if the chip technology can accurately predict how tissues react outside Earth's radiation-hardened magnetosphere.

An organ chip for conducting bone marrow experiments in space.

| Credit: Emulate

Radiation

During Artemis 1, Orion carried 5,600 passive and 34 active radiation sensors. For Artemis 2, the spacecraft has been reduced to a modest six active sensors inside the cabin. Additionally, astronauts will wear personal dosimeters.

The devices will measure the consistent radiation exposure experienced throughout the mission, and detect sudden spikes from things like solar storms. If readings reach dangerous levels, astronauts can construct a makeshift radiation shield inside Orion, fortifying themselves between the spacecraft's heatshield and water storage canisters, both of which are better at absorbing penetrating radiation than other onboard materials.

Researchers uncover how galaxies and their black holes grew 12.9 billion light years ago

Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe

image:
A massive galaxy transitioning to a quiescent phase (left) while hosting an active supermassive black hole at its center (artist’s conception, right).
view more
Credit: Kavli IPMU

An international of researchers including the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU, WPI) have used the James Webb Space Telescope to uncover 12 black holes from 12.9 billion years ago, shedding light on how black holes and galaxies evolved in the early universe, reports a new study in Nature Astronomy.

Since the release of its first data in 2022, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has made it possible for researchers to study extremely distant galaxies, reshaping our understanding of the formation and evolution of the first galaxies in the universe.

At the center of a galaxy is a supermassive blackhole weighing between a hundred-thousand to several hundred billion times the mass of the Sun. When a black hole shines brightly, it is called a quasar because it is emitting the energy of matter falling into the black hole. Quasars allow researchers to identify galaxies in the vast night sky, which they study to learn about how galaxies have evolved into the shapes and behavior we see today.

Observations of galaxies close to the Earth have shown a strong link between the mass of the galaxy and its central black hole, indicating that the two grow in tandem and influence each other over cosmic time—a process known as co-evolution. However, it is unclear how this relationship between the two, whose sizes differ by orders of magnitude, has been shaped. The only way to know for sure is to study galaxies far in the distant universe when the universe was young.

A team, led by Kavli IPMU Visiting Associate Scientist and Waseda University Waseda Institute for Advanced Study Lecturer Masafusa Onoue, who was a Kavli IPMU Project Researcher and Kavli IPMU-KIAA Kavli astrophysics fellow at the time of the study, Professor John Silverman, and Wuhan University Professor Xuheng Ding, and including the University of Tokyo School of Science, Ehime University, Ritsumeikan University, and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, studied quasars J2236+0032 and J1512+4422 using JWST’s Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec). These quasars had been discovered through the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program (HSC-SSP), a wide-field imaging survey at the Subaru Telescope, and were among the targets followed up in JWST’s first year of science operations.

It turns out the parent galaxies had already grown to massive sizes, roughly 40-60 billion solar masses, hundreds of millions of years ago and were now in a phase where star formation activity was rapidly ceasing. Researchers say the change in properties could have been triggered by intense radiation emitted by the central black holes earlier. J2236+0032 and J1512+4422 are among the farthest known such galaxies.

Their results (Figure 1) took the researchers by surprise.

“It was totally unexpected to find such mature galaxies in the Universe less than a billion years after the Big Bang. What is even more remarkable is that these ‘dying’ galaxies still host active supermassive black holes,” said Onoue.

Previous research had suggested that the activity of these massive black holes suppresses the growth of their host galaxies, accelerating their transition from star formation to quiescence.

The team’s findings provide valuable evidence that the activity of supermassive black holes may have played a significant role in the evolutionary process of the earliest and fastest-growing galaxies in the early universe. This discovery captures that process in action, providing a new clue to understanding the complex growth history of galaxies and black holes in the early Universe. It is also a uniquely Japanese achievement, made possible by combining the Subaru Telescope’s powerful survey capability with JWST’s exceptional sensitivity.

Building on this discovery, the research team is continuing detailed analyses of the JWST data and planning future observations to further investigate the mysterious relationship between galaxies and black holes.

Details of this study were published in Nature Astronomy on August 11, 2025.

Journal

Nature Astronomy

DOI

10.1038/s41550-025-02628-1

Article Title

A post-starburst pathway for the formation of massive galaxies and black holes at z > 6

James Webb Space Telescope(JWST)

Credit

NASA/Chris Gunn

Subaru Telescope on top of Maunakea

Credit

Sebastian Egner/NAOJ

Can Hayabusa2 touchdown? New study reveals space mission’s target asteroid is tinier and faster than thought

ESO

Artist’s impression of Hayabusa2 touching down on asteroid 1998 KY26 — image:
An artist's impression of Japan’s Hayabusa2 space mission touching down on the surface of the asteroid 1998 KY26. New observations with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have revealed that 1998 KY26 is just 11 m wide, almost three times smaller than previously thought, and is spinning once every 5 minutes, which is much faster than expected. The image above shows an updated size comparison between the asteroid and spacecraft.
view more
Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser. Asteroid: T. Santana-Ros et al. Hayabusa2 model: SuperTKG (CC-BY-SA).

Astronomers have used observatories around the world, including the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), to study the asteroid 1998 KY26, revealing it to be almost three times smaller and spinning much faster than previously thought. The asteroid is the 2031 target for Japan’s Hayabusa2 extended mission. The new observations offer key information for the mission’s operations at the asteroid, just six years out from the spacecraft’s encounter with 1998 KY26.

“We found that the reality of the object is completely different from what it was previously described as,” says astronomer Toni Santana-Ros, a researcher from the University of Alicante, Spain, who led a study on 1998 KY26 published today in Nature Communications. The new observations, combined with previous radar data, have revealed that the asteroid is just 11 metres wide, meaning it could easily fit inside the dome of the VLT unit telescope used to observe it. It is also spinning about twice as fast as previously thought: “One day on this asteroid lasts only five minutes!" he says. Previous data indicated that the asteroid was around 30 metres in diameter and completed a rotation in 10 minutes or so.

"The smaller size and faster rotation now measured will make Hayabusa2’s visit even more interesting, but also even more challenging,” says co-author Olivier Hainaut, an astronomer at ESO in Germany. This is because a touchdown manoeuvre, where the spacecraft ‘kisses’ the asteroid, will be more difficult to perform than anticipated.

1998 KY26 is set to be the final target asteroid for the Japanese Aerospace eXploration Agency (JAXA)'s Hayabusa2 spacecraft. In its original mission, Hayabusa2 explored the 900-metre-diameter asteroid 162173 Ryugu in 2018, returning asteroid samples to Earth in 2020. With fuel remaining, the spacecraft was sent on an extended mission until 2031, when it’s set to encounter 1998 KY26, aiming to learn more about the smallest asteroids. This will be the first time a space mission encounters a tiny asteroid — all previous missions visited asteroids with diameters in the hundreds or even thousands of metres.

Santana-Ros and his team observed 1998 KY26 from the ground to support the preparation of the mission. Because the asteroid is very small and, hence, very faint, studying it required waiting for a close encounter with Earth and using large telescopes, like ESO’s VLT in Chile’s Atacama Desert.

The observations revealed that the asteroid has a bright surface and likely consists of a solid chunk of rock, which may have originated from a piece of a planet or another asteroid. However, the team could not completely rule out the possibility that the asteroid is made up of rubble piles loosely sticking together. “We have never seen a ten-metre-size asteroid in situ, so we don't really know what to expect and how it will look,” says Santana-Ros, who is also affiliated with the University of Barcelona.

“The amazing story here is that we found that the size of the asteroid is comparable to the size of the spacecraft that is going to visit it! And we were able to characterise such a small object using our telescopes, which means that we can do it for other objects in the future,” says Santana-Ros. “Our methods could have an impact on the plans for future near-Earth asteroid exploration or even asteroid mining.”

“Moreover, we now know we can characterise even the smallest hazardous asteroids that could impact Earth, such as the one that hit near Chelyabinsk, in Russia in 2013, which was barely larger than KY26,” concludes Hainaut.

More information

This research was presented in a paper titled “Hayabusa2♯ mission target 1998 KY26 preview: decametre size, high albedo and rotating twice as fast” to appear in Nature Communications (doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-63697-4).

The team is composed of T. Santana-Ros (Departamento de Física, Ingeniería de Sistemas y Teoría de la Señal, Universidad de Alicante, and Institut de Ciències del Cosmos (ICCUB), Universitat de Barcelona (IEEC-UB), Spain), P. Bartczak (Instituto Universitario de Física Aplicada a las Ciencias y a las Tecnologías, Universidad de Alicante, Spain and Astronomical Observatory Institute, Faculty of Physics and Astronomy, A. Mickiewicz University, Poland [AOI AMU]), K. Muinonen (Department of Physics, University of Helsinki, Finland [Physics UH]), A. Rożek (Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, Royal Observatory Edinburgh, UK [IfA UoE]), T. Müller (Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik, Germany), M. Hirabayashi (Georgia Institute of Technology, United States), D. Farnocchia (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, USA [JPL]), D. Oszkiewicz (AOI AMU), M. Micheli (ESA ESRIN / PDO / NEO Coordination Centre, Italy), R. E. Cannon (IfA UoE), M. Brozovic (JPL), O. Hainaut (European Southern Observatory, Germany), A. K. Virkki [Physics UH], L. A. M. Benner (JPL), A. Cabrera-Lavers (GRANTECAN and Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Spain), C. E. Martínez-Vázquez (International Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab, USA), K. Vivas (Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory/NSF NOIRLab, Chile).

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) enables scientists worldwide to discover the secrets of the Universe for the benefit of all. We design, build and operate world-class observatories on the ground — which astronomers use to tackle exciting questions and spread the fascination of astronomy — and promote international collaboration for astronomy. Established as an intergovernmental organisation in 1962, today ESO is supported by 16 Member States (Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom), along with the host state of Chile and with Australia as a Strategic Partner. ESO’s headquarters and its visitor centre and planetarium, the ESO Supernova, are located close to Munich in Germany, while the Chilean Atacama Desert, a marvellous place with unique conditions to observe the sky, hosts our telescopes. ESO operates three observing sites: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope and its Very Large Telescope Interferometer, as well as survey telescopes such as VISTA. Also at Paranal ESO will host and operate the Cherenkov Telescope Array South, the world’s largest and most sensitive gamma-ray observatory. Together with international partners, ESO operates ALMA on Chajnantor, a facility that observes the skies in the millimetre and submillimetre range. At Cerro Armazones, near Paranal, we are building “the world’s biggest eye on the sky” — ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope. From our offices in Santiago, Chile we support our operations in the country and engage with Chilean partners and society.

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Journal

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-025-63697-4

A mission to a distant asteroid just got an

unexpected surprise

Elisha Sauers
Thu, September 18, 2025
MASHABLE

Japan's Hayabusa 2 mission to asteroid 1998 KY26 might have unexpected challenges following new data on the rock's size, spin, and structure. - ESO / M. Kornmesser / T. Santana-Ros et al. / SuperTKG illustration

Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not

A distant asteroid that a Japanese spacecraft is en route to visit could be a much harder target to reach than previously thought, according to new telescope data.

The asteroid, known as 1998 KY26, is about one-third the size of earlier estimates and spins about twice as fast in space as predicted, with each rotation taking just over five minutes. At about 36 feet wide, the asteroid is roughly the length of a school bus. It also reflects more sunlight than expected. Together these traits will likely make touching down on its surface more difficult.

The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, expects its spacecraft to rendezvous with the asteroid in July 2031. The destination is part of an extended mission, called Hayabusa 2, following the spacecraft's successful return of samples from another asteroid, Ryugu, in 2020.

Astronomers had a rare chance to study the little asteroid with several telescopes during its close approach to Earth last summer, which provided the new measurements. The results are now published in Nature Communications.

"The smaller size and faster rotation now measured will make Hayabusa2’s visit even more interesting," said co-author Olivier Hainaut, a European Southern Observatory astronomer, in a statement, "but also even more challenging."

The new findings suggest the asteroid could either be a single solid rock or a "rubble pile" loosely held together by weak forces.

Astronomers believe asteroids are the rocky leftovers from the formation of the solar system about 4.6 billion years ago. Most of that ancient material orbits far from Earth. But occasionally pieces get nudged into the inner solar system, which is why NASA and other organizations try to track them.

To better understand these objects, JAXA has visited asteroids Itokawa and Ryugu. NASA performed its own sample collection from asteroid Bennu through the OSIRIS-Rex mission, which successfully dropped off the specimen in a Utah desert in 2023. Another NASA mission, Psyche, is on its way to a metal-rich asteroid in 2029

About 20 years ago, NASA and the University of Arizona considered 1998 KY26 among potential targets for OSIRIS-Rex, Dante Lauretta, the mission's principal investigator, told Mashable. It was eventually ruled out, he said, because the team already knew it was on the small side and unlikely to host the loose material needed for a sampling operation.

Regarding the newly published insight into the asteroid, Lauretta doubted the new measurements would significantly alter JAXA's extended mission.

"I don’t think this will change the Conops," Lauretta said, referring to the mission's goals and strategies, "the operational challenges are similar."

But according to the new paper, a smaller, faster, and brighter target will have an impact. Firing a metal projectile at the asteroid to make a crater, for instance, might not work as well because of its size. The brightness of the asteroid could "blind" navigation sensors. Its quick spin also may make it harder for instruments that need to stare at one spot for a long time.

"Importantly, these factors have been identified six years ahead of the rendezvous," the authors wrote, allowing mission planners time to consider their options.
JAXA intentionally selected tiny asteroids for the extended Hayabusa 2 mission because none have been studied up close before.

JAXA selected 1998 KY26 out of more than 350 candidates. Those candidates were all of the known celestial objects within reach of the spacecraft, which had about half of its xenon fuel left. The team then narrowed the list to the most scientifically interesting candidates.

The Japanese space agency settled on two asteroids — the other being 2001 AV43 — for the extra 11-year extension. The Hayabusa 2 spacecraft should reach 2001 AV43 first in November 2029.

The team intentionally picked tiny asteroids because none have been studied up close before — prior missions have only explored larger asteroids. Getting to know these small bodies and how they work is just as important, researchers say, because asteroids of this scale hit Earth more often than the dinosaur-killing ones.

And despite their small size, little space rocks can still have catastrophic consequences. An undetected meteor exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013, for example, causing an airburst and shockwave that affected six cities. That rock was just 60 feet across, according to NASA.

This is one of the main reasons why scientists believe robotic missions to study asteroids are so crucial.

Exoplanets are not water worlds

ETH Zurich

Exoplanet K2-18b — image:
Illustration of exoplanet K2-18b. The planet is thought to have a thick gas envelope and no global ocean.
view more
Credit: ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser, CC BY 4.0

An exoplanet orbiting a dwarf star 124 light-years from Earth made headlines around the world in April 2025. Researchers at the University of Cambridge reported that planet K2-18b could be a marine world with a deep, global ocean teeming with life. However, a study now shows that so-called sub-Neptunes such as K2-18b are highly unlikely to be worlds dominated by water and that conditions there are far from conducive to life. “Water on planets is much more limited than previously believed,” notes Caroline Dorn, professor of exoplanets at ETH Zurich.

The study was conducted under the leadership of ETH Zurich, in collaboration with researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg and the University of California in Los Angeles. K2-18b is larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune, placing it in a class of planets that do not exist in our solar system. However, observations show that they are common in outer space. Some of these sub-Neptunes were probably formed far away from their central star, beyond the so-called snow line where water freezes into ice and later migrates inwards.

Until now, it had been assumed that some of these planets were able to accumulate particularly large amounts of water during their formation and now harbour deep, global oceans beneath a hydrogen-rich atmosphere. Experts refer to these as Hycean planets: a combination of “hydrogen” and “ocean”.

Factoring in the chemistry

“Our calculations show that this scenario is not possible,” says Dorn. This is because a fundamental vulnerability of previous studies was that they ignored any chemical coupling between the atmosphere and the interior of the planet. “We have now factored in the interactions between the planet’s interior and its atmosphere,” explains Aaron Werlen, a researcher on Dorn’s team and lead author of the study which was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The researchers assume that, in an early stage of their formation, the sub-Neptunes went through a phase in which they were covered by a deep, hot magma ocean. A shell of hydrogen gas ensured that this phase was maintained for millions of years.

“In our study, we investigated how the chemical interactions between magma oceans and atmospheres affect the water content of young sub-Neptune exoplanets,” says Werlen.

To do this, the researchers used an existing model that describes planetary evolution over a specific period of time. They combined this with a new model that calculates the chemical processes that take place between the gas in the atmosphere, and the metals and silicates in the magma.

Water disappearing into the interior

The researchers calculated the chemical equilibrium state of 26 different components for a total of 248 model planets. The computer simulations showed that the chemical processes destroy most H2O water molecules. Hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O) attach themselves to metallic compounds, and these largely disappear into the planet’s core.

Even though the accuracy of such calculations has some limitations, the researchers are convinced by the results. “We focus on the major trends and can clearly see in the simulations that the planets have much less water than they originally accumulated,” explains Werlen. “The water that actually remains on the surface as H2O is limited to a few per cent at most.”

In an earlier publication, Dorn’s group was already able to show how most of a planet’s water is hidden in the interior. “In the current study, we analysed how much water there is in total on these sub-Neptunes,” explains the researcher, “According to the calculations, there are no distant worlds with massive layers of water where water makes up around 50 percent of the planet’s mass, as was previously thought. Hycean worlds with 10-90 percent water are therefore very unlikely.”

This makes the search for extra-terrestrial life more difficult than hoped for. Conditions conducive to life, with sufficient liquid water on the surface, are likely to exist only on smaller planets, which will probably be observable only with observatories even better than the James Webb Space Telescope.

Earth not a special case

Dorn finds the role of our Earth particularly exciting in light of the new calculations which show that most distant planets have similar water content to our planet. “The Earth may not be as extraordinary as we think. In our study, at least, it appears to be a typical planet,” she says.

The researchers were also surprised by a seemingly paradoxical difference: the planets with the most water-rich atmospheres are not those that have accumulated the most ice beyond the snow line, but rather planets that formed within the snow line. On these planets, the water did not come from ice crystals, but was produced chemically when hydrogen in the planetary atmosphere reacted with oxygen from the silicates in the magma ocean to form H2O molecules.

“These findings challenge the classic link between ice-rich formation and water-rich atmospheres. Instead, they highlight the dominant role of the equilibrium between magma ocean and atmosphere in shaping planetary composition,” concludes Werlen. This will have far-reaching implications for theories of planetary formation and the interpretation of exoplanetary atmospheres in the age of the James Webb Telescope.

Journal

The Astrophysical Journal Letters

DOI

10.3847/2041-8213/adff73

Article Title

Sub-Neptunes Are Drier Than They Seem: Rethinking the Origins of Water-Rich Worlds

Article Publication Date

18-Sep-2025

Colossal collisions in space send shockwaves through the universe: Gravitational waves break records with new observations

Gravitational waves shake the fabric of the universe when black holes collide. Today we measure these events and use them to understand the cosmos. New gravitational waves may challenge fundamental understanding f black holes, gravity, and the universe.

University of Copenhagen

Now University of Copenhagen researchers and their international collaborators have published a treasure trove of new gravitational waves that may challenge our fundamental understanding of black holes, gravity, and the universe itself. Among them the strongest signal and the largest collision ever recorded.

For millions upon millions of years, they orbited each other, bound by gravity. The distance between them grew shorter until, in a fraction of a second, they collided with velocity nearing the speed of light.

When the most compact and heavy objects in existence—black holes—merge, the forces involved are so immense that they ripple through the universe, sending waves that distort space and time.

"These are waves in spacetime itself—like ripples in water—that travel at the speed of light. They don’t move through space; they are waves of space: a rhythmic stretching and compression of the very structure of the universe," explains Jose Maria Ezquiaga from the Niels Bohr Institute, who leads NBI’s LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA group and contributed to the new scientific publications and observations.

Exactly ten years ago, Einstein’s prediction of gravitational waves was confirmed with the first measurement. Now, an almost identical black hole collision has provided gravitational wave researchers with a stronger and clearer signal than ever before: The measurement reveals two black holes, each having around 30 times the mass of the Sun.

"The properties of this merger are a type we know well from previous measurements. What makes this discovery truly exceptional is the very strong signal. It opens entirely new possibilities for testing our fundamental understanding of gravity and the nature of black holes," says Jose Maria Ezquiaga.

Already, the observation has confirmed—at more than 99% certainty—a longstanding theory by the renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, which states that a black hole formed from merging black holes must have a larger area than the combined area of its progenitors. Because gravitational waves fade quickly after a merger, it has previously been difficult to confirm the theory through observations. But the strength and clarity of the new record signal has made it possible.

The spacetime disturbances caused by gravitational waves are extremely small. To detect them, researchers must measure changes that are 700 trillion times smaller than the thickness of a human hair.

The reason the signal from GW250114 - the name given to the collision - was so strong is largely due to the advancements in measurement equipment made by the LVK collaboration. This development continues and promises a bright future for the field.

The strongest measurement vs. the biggest clash

The record-breaking measurement is part of a massive package of gravitational wave observations now released by the research coalition. Not only does it double the number of gravitational wave measurements available for study, but thanks to several remarkable observations, it marks a significant leap forward for the field.

GW250114 is not the only record among the group’s new observations. They also include a measurement of the merger of two black holes weighing approximately 100 and 140 solar masses, forming a black hole of at least 225 solar masses: the largest black hole merger ever observed.

Until now, researchers have seen that binary systems—where black holes orbit each other—typically have masses up to 50 solar masses. Beyond this, the number of observations drops significantly.

GW231123, the name of this collision, breaks that pattern. The resulting black hole may weigh up to 260 solar masses, placing it outside the normal classification of “stellar” black holes formed from stars, and instead into the range known as intermediate-mass black holes—between 150 and 100,000 solar masses. This size is extremely rare and puzzling to scientists.

"The observation challenges our understanding of how black holes form. Black holes of such large mass shouldn’t arise through ordinary stellar collapse. One possibility is that the two black holes in this system were themselves formed by previous mergers of smaller black holes, but in truth, we don’t know. It’s also possible that the signal was distorted as it traveled through the universe," says Jose Maria Ezquiaga.

In addition to their extreme masses, both black holes rotate at unusually high speeds, making the observation even more remarkable. The downside, however, is that this signal is very short and weak compared to GW250114, which makes analysis and interpretations much harder.

A research field driving innovation

Einstein predicted gravitational waves nearly 100 years ago as an inevitable aspect of his famous theory of relativity. Ten years ago, the theory became empirical reality when the first gravitational waves were measured. Now, the decade is marked by a wealth of new observations, including these two spectacular ones. Both studies are milestones that demonstrate we can not only hear the universe’s deepest resonances—we can begin to decode its structure.

As often happens in physics, the fundamental research driving these discoveries can also lead to new technologies. Already, the extremely sensitive instruments used to measure gravitational waves have led to new types of lasers and optical systems in quantum computers and atomic clocks, and AI techniques are used to reduce noise and much more.

The development is expected to continue. Future waves of observations are anticipated to eventually include all gravitational wave signals from black hole collisions that the universe has to offer. This will be achieved by expanding the LVK collaboration with a new observatory in India and through planned new instruments.

"We expect this research field to be crucial for our fundamental understanding of the universe. We’ve only just reached the end of the beginning," says Jose Ezquiaga.

The research article on the observation GW231123 has not yet passed peer review but is expected to do so very soon. The article on the first mentioned observation, GW250114, can be read in the journal Physical Review Letters.

For more information about the observations read LVK's press release here

*

Facts: How do the measurements work?

When researchers measure an event that has emitted gravitational waves, it happens by the observatories in the USA, Europe, and Asia detecting the same shift in the time it takes highly precise lasers to traverse a distance. Gravitational waves stretch space and time leave a signal by passing through the detectors and making the sets of lasers go out of phase – so their waves are no longer in sync.

By comparing data from the three stations, the location in space and the distance can be calculated.

While orbiting each other, black holes disturb spacetime with powerful gravitational waves. In this part of the measurement, researchers have ample data to work with and good opportunities to assess the properties of the binary e.g. the mass and area. After the merger, the signal starts to fade. This is the so-called ringdown phase, when the new black hole vibrates like a bell that has been struck.

It is due to the unusually strong and clear signal that the mass and area in the subsequent phase could also be calculated, thereby confirming Hawking’s theory.

Facts: About LVK

The LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration includes more than 1,000 researchers from three gravitational wave observatories in the USA, Italy, and Japan.

The LVK collaboration will, in the coming years, improve their detectors and build a new one in India—LIGO India—which will make it easier to locate gravitational wave signals.

In the longer term, the Cosmic Explorer is planned with 40 km long arms, and Europe’s Einstein Telescope with over 10 km long underground facilities. These will be able to detect the earliest black hole mergers and provide insight into the origin of the universe.

Facts: Innovations from gravitational wave research

LIGO’s technological advancements since the 1980s have led to several groundbreaking innovations:

Laser stabilization: A new method for stabilizing lasers, called the Pound–Drever–Hall technique. It is now widely used, including in atomic clocks and quantum computers.

Mirror coatings: LIGO has developed advanced mirror coatings that almost perfectly reflect laser light, which is crucial for precise measurements.

Quantum squeezing: Using so-called "quantum squeezing," LIGO has improved sensitivity and reduced noise, which is otherwise limited by quantum mechanical laws.

Artificial intelligence: New AI methods developed in the research field can remove unwanted noise and further enhance signal processing.

Journal

Physical Review Letters

DOI

10.1103/kw5g-d732

Article Title

GW250114: Testing Hawking’s Area Law and the Kerr Nature of Black Holes

Article Publication Date

18-Sep-2025

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment

Thursday, September 18, 2025

Researchers uncover how galaxies and their black holes grew 12.9 billion light years ago

Journal

DOI

Article Title

James Webb Space Telescope(JWST)

Credit

Subaru Telescope on top of Maunakea

Credit

Can Hayabusa2 touchdown? New study reveals space mission’s target asteroid is tinier and faster than thought

More information

Links

Journal

DOI

Exoplanets are not water worlds

Factoring in the chemistry

Water disappearing into the interior

Earth not a special case

Journal

DOI

Article Title

Article Publication Date

Colossal collisions in space send shockwaves through the universe: Gravitational waves break records with new observations

The strongest measurement vs. the biggest clash

A research field driving innovation

*

Facts: How do the measurements work?

Facts: About LVK

Facts: Innovations from gravitational wave research

Journal

DOI

Article Title

Article Publication Date

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