SPACE/COSMOS
NASA's Psyche spacecraft to race past Mars in hunt for clues about how Earth was formed
The crucial manoeuvre scheduled for Friday will use the gravity of Mars to shift Psyche onto the right path, a faster and cheaper method NASA scientists say could help unlock clues about the birth of Earth.
NASA’s Psyche spacecraft will fly close to Mars on Friday in a crucial manoeuvre that could bring scientists closer to understanding the birth of Eart
The flyby will use Mars’s gravity to send the spacecraft towards Psyche, a rare metal-rich asteroid that may reveal clues about how rocky planets formed.
It will race past Mars at around 19,848kph, passing close within 4,500 kilometres of the planet’s surface.
NASA will use the close approach to harness Mars’s gravity and place the spacecraft on the correct path towards the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
"The Mars gravity assist helps us to actually go faster, and also it changes the plane,” said Don Han, Psyche Navigation Team Lead at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“For instance, Earth orbits around the sun and Psyche's orbit is about three degrees different... So you can make a plane change to get in line with the psyche asteroid, right? And that's very expensive if you want to do it by rocket," Han added.
As the spacecraft approaches Mars, its cameras are already capturing images of the planet, which currently appears as a crescent shape.
After the flyby, Mars will appear almost full sphere in the spacecraft’s rear-view images.
Scientists will use the changing views to test and fine-tune the spacecraft’s instruments.
All of Psyche’s science instruments will be switched on during the Mars flyby, according to NASA.
The space agency’s two Mars rovers, along with several American and European orbiters already around the planet, will also carry out observations at the same time so scientists can compare the data collected by the different missions.
Psyche was launched in 2023 and is now about halfway through its long journey, which is expected to take about seven years.
The spacecraft is expected to reach the asteroid in 2029, when it will spend two years orbiting and studying the object.
Scientists believe the asteroid may be the exposed metal core of an early planet that lost its outer layers billions of years ago during violent collisions in the young solar system.
Clues about how the Earth was formed
Researchers hope studying Psyche up close could reveal what lies deep inside Earth and explain more about how planets formed 4.6 billion years ago.
"No spacecraft has ever flown to this kind of asteroid before, something that's really a big lump of metal,” said Libby Jackson, Head of Space at the Science Museum.
“I'm really excited to find out what the scientists learn about the asteroid. Is it what they think it is? Perhaps a planetesimal formed from the earliest days of the solar system. Perhaps it's something completely different,” Jackson added.
“I'm certain that whatever it is will tell us more about the evolution of planets in our solar system and the Earth”.
While the asteroid belt contains millions of rocky and icy objects, only a small number are thought to be rich in metal like Psyche.
According to NASA, the asteroid measures about 280 kilometres across at its widest point and stretches around 232 kilometres in length. Its surface area covers roughly 165,800 square kilometres.
The distance between Earth and Psyche constantly changes because both orbit the Sun at different speeds. At its closest, the asteroid is less than 186 million miles from Earth, while at its farthest, it is more than 372 million miles away.
Discovered in 1852, Psyche has fascinated astronomers for more than 170 years because of its unusual mix of rock and metal. It is also believed to be among the oldest objects ever observed in the solar system.
L3Harris finalises design of deep space power source
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The company's Next-Generation Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (Next Gen RTG) cleared its critical design review (CDR) on 2 April, paving the way for a new era of outer solar system exploration.
The space community has relied mainly on photovoltaic power systems, a technology that was originally developed for the purpose of space applications and has found many terrestrial uses. However, these systems pose severe limitations for missions to places like the outer solar system. The available solar energy reduces with the square of the distance from the sun. For example, on Saturn the solar power density is a hundred times lower than on Earth.
Radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) convert heat from the radioactive decay of plutonium-238 into electricity. They have been in use for 60 years. Early versions continue to supply power to NASA's twin Voyager probes, which were launched in 1977 and are now travelling in interstellar space.
The Next Gen RTG is an evolution of the general-purpose heat source RTGs that supplied power to NASA's Cassini Saturn orbiter and, more recently, New Horizons probe, which carried out a Pluto flyby in 2015 and is now exploring the Kuiper Belt, a distant, doughnut-shaped region of icy debris and dwarf planets that extends just beyond the orbit of Neptune.
Unlike the L3Harris-built Multi-Mission RTGs currently powering NASA's Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers, the Next Gen RTGs are optimised for spacecraft operating in the vacuum of space rather than on the surface of a planet. The vacuum-optimised design allows for more efficient heat rejection and power generation in the deep space environment where missions like the Uranus orbiter will operate. As a result, the Next Gen RTG offers a higher power output at about the same weight as the Multi-Mission RTG. With the capability to generate about 250 watts of power at the beginning of its life, each Next Gen RTG will provide reliable, long-duration power for spacecraft exploring the outer reaches of the solar system.
The US Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory (INL) contracted L3Harris in 2021 to re-establish the key technologies from the heritage system and update the design in response to growing interest in new deep space missions. The contract is expected to end in 2027 with a production readiness review to verify that the next-generation system can be built using the materials and components that have been re-established.
"We are proving we can do it again," said Leo Gard, Space Propulsion & Power Systems Programme Manager at L3Harris. "While we didn't build the original generators, we've successfully reconstructed incomplete documentation and identified modern equivalents for obsolete components through creative problem-solving."
"Passing the CDR is an important milestone because it validates that our design meets all the technical requirements and can be manufactured," added Bill Sack, General Manager, RocketWorks and Power Systems at L3Harris. "It also demonstrates we've successfully re-established this critical capability after years of limited production."
He added: "The Next Gen RTG represents a significant leap forward in efficiency. We're delivering more power in the same mass envelope, which is critical when every kilogram matters for deep space missions."
As prime contractor on the Next Gen RTG programme, L3Harris is responsible for the main structure and overall system integration. Teledyne Energy Systems Inc of Hunt Valley, Maryland, makes the thermoelectric couples that convert heat to electricity, while BAE Systems Space and Mission Systems in Boulder, Colorado, is responsible for insulation.
Flight units could power NASA deep space probes starting in the early 2030s, including a proposed Uranus orbiter that would use two Next Gen RTGs for power and for keeping its temperature-sensitive components warm enough to operate in the frigid environment of the outer solar system. This dual-purpose capability makes RTGs indispensable for such missions.
L3Harris said that, beyond the Uranus orbiter, these power systems could enable: extended missions to Neptune and its moon, Triton; Kuiper Belt object explorers that can go beyond the range of the New Horizons spacecraft; long-duration missions to the outer planets' moons; and interstellar precursor missions that push even farther than the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2.
The Most Chemically Primitive Galaxy In The Early Universe: Clues To The Mysterious Origins Of Ultra-Faint Dwarfs
(Background) An image of the massive galaxy cluster MACS J0416, captured by the James Webb Space Telescope's (JWST) Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). (Inset) A three-color composite image of LAP1-B in "velocity space," created from JWST Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) data. Because this galaxy contains very few stars and is extremely faint, it is invisible in the standard background camera image (NIRCam). However, high-sensitivity spectroscopic observations successfully captured the faint light (emission lines) emitted by hydrogen and oxygen gas. In this inset, the horizontal axis represents the motion (velocity) of the gas, while the vertical axis shows its spatial extent, visualizing the distribution of different elements (Blue: Hydrogen Lyα; Green: Oxygen [OIII]; Red: Hydrogen Hα). For visual clarity in comparing the element distributions, the Lyα emission is shown with a velocity offset of 200 km/s.
May 16, 2026
By Eurasia Review
An international team led by Associate Professor Kimihiko Nakajima of Kanazawa University has captured a rare look at the early universe. Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST *1) and the power of a gravitational lensing (* 2) in space, the team achieved a definitive characterization of LAP1-B, an ultra-faint galaxy from 13 billion years ago.
Expanding upon initial detections, this new study utilized deep JWST spectroscopy to reveal a record-breaking low oxygen abundance (* 3) — merely 1/240th that of the Sun. This chemically primitive state, coupled with an elevated carbon-to-oxygen ratio and a dominant dark matter halo, suggests that LAP1-B is the long-sought “ancestor” of the mysterious fossil galaxies found near our Milky Way today, providing a historic window into the earliest, most primitive stages of galaxy assembly.
The Quest for the Universe’s First Ingredients:
Just after the Big Bang, the universe was simple, containing only light elements like hydrogen and helium. The heavier elements necessary for life, such as oxygen and carbon, did not yet exist; they were forged much later inside the hearts of the very first stars. For decades, astronomers have tried to find the moment these “first-generation stars” (* 4) began scattering the seeds of life across the cosmos. However, the earliest galaxies hosting such young, primordial stars have remained so small and faint that seeing their chemical makeup was considered nearly impossible — until now.
A Record-Breaking Discovery:
The research team focused on a tiny, ultra-faint galaxy named LAP1-B. Its light was magnified 100 times by a phenomenon called “gravitational lensing,” where the gravity of a massive galaxy cluster acts like a giant telescope lens. By staring at this spot for over 30 hours with the JWST and conducted deep spectroscopy (* 5), the team determined that the galaxy’s oxygen abundance is roughly 1/240th that of the Sun.
“I was instantly thrilled by the extreme lack of oxygen revealed in the data,” says Associate Professor Nakajima, the research team leader. “Finding a galaxy in such a primitive state is astonishing. It’s a chemical signature that clearly indicates a primordial galaxy caught in the moments shortly after its formation.”
The Fingerprints of the First Stars:
Beyond its primitive nature, the galaxy exhibited a high carbon-to-oxygen abundance ratio (Figure 3). This unique chemical fingerprint — the specific ratio of elements — aligns closely with theoretical predictions for the material dispersed by the explosions of the universe’s first-generation stars.
“Usually, we act like ‘cosmic archaeologists,’ trying to guess the past by looking at old stars in our own neighborhood. But now, we can analyze the gas directly from the original scene 13 billion years ago,” emphasizes Nakajima. “We are witnessing the moment when a galaxy first inherited the chemical building blocks created by the universe’s earliest stars.”
Solving the Mystery of “Cosmic Fossils”:
The team also discovered that LAP1-B is incredibly lightweight — less than 3,300 times that of the Sun — implying that most of the galaxy consists of invisible dark matter (* 6). This feature, together with its unique chemical makeup (Figure 3), makes it a near-perfect match for the “Ultra-Faint Dwarf galaxies (UFDs)” (* 7) found near our Milky Way today.
“UFDs are not only the faintest galaxies; they are composed of ancient stars over 12 billion years old and are often described as ‘fossils of the universe,'” explains Professor Masami Ouchi (NAOJ/University of Tokyo), a member of the research team. “Astronomers suspected they might be the remains of the universe’s earliest galaxies because they lack heavy elements, but astronomers never had a direct link – until we found LAP1-B.”
Professor Ouchi continues: “It is a profound surprise to find that LAP1-B looks exactly like the ‘ancestor’ we had only imagined in theories. This helps us solve the mystery of why these cosmic fossils have survived in their current form to the present day.”
A Historic Step Forward:
This discovery establishes a new way to map the birth of elements and the formation of the universe’s oldest structures. Moving forward, the team will use the JWST to search for even more primitive objects, aiming to find the very first galaxies ever formed.
Associate Professor Nakajima concludes: “We hope this discovery marks a historic step in understanding how the elements that make up our own bodies were first born and accumulated across the Universe.”
World leader in Earth observation made in Europe: Small satellites from Finland see everything
EU governments are eager to work with ICEYE. The Finnish space company sells mini satellites that help allied nations safeguard their sovereignty. That’s because when it comes to Earth observation and military reconnaissance, the high-resolution radar eyes in space are second to none.
Two young innovators from Poland and Finland have built one of the world’s best satellite systems. The radar sensors of ICEYE monitor oil spills, hurricanes and forest fires from an altitude of 600 km. The nanosatellites detect illegal loggers, collect data on flooding, and keep an eye on the movements of military equipment
Even through cloud cover and in the middle of the night, the small satellites deliver ultra-precise detailed images. They identify aircraft types at hostile airports. The eyes of ICEYE track suspicious ship movements across vast stretches of ocean.
The fourth generation of satellites currently in orbit (weight: 200 kg) improves the resolution from 25 cm to 16 cm. “And that's not the end of it”, says Damon Ollomon, one of the vice presidents of ICEYE, in an interview with Euronews.
The ICEYE team in Helsinki is particularly proud of its rapid response time. “We can deliver images within two hours, and we aim to reduce that to less than ten minutes”, said Ollomon.
ICEYE currently operates a constellation of more than 70 satellites in Earth orbit. “We produce 25 satellites a year and are now increasing this to 50 per year”, says Ollomon.
ICEYE was founded in 2014, and start-up capital was provided by the EU. The company has subsidiaries in Poland, Spain, Germany, and Greece, among others, and employs around 1,000 people from 70 countries. Last year, ICEYE achieved a turnover of EUR 250 million.
In an interview with Euronews, Pekka Laurila, one of the founders of ICEYE, offered a piece of advice to the EU: “Take risks and put ambitious plans into action immediately – not 10 years from now. Europe has resources. So at the very least, we should aim to become the best in the world. Take this seriously!”
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