SPACE/COSMOS
Europlanet Prize for Public Engagement 2026 awarded to CosmoAmautas
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Gabriela Calistro Rivera accepting the Europlanet Prize for Public Engagement 2026 on behalf of CosmoAmautas.
view moreCredit: Europlanet
The 2026 Europlanet Prize for Public Engagement has been awarded to CosmoAmautas, a Peruvian non-profit association that uses planetary science and astronomy as a gateway to spark curiosity and bring scientific opportunities to children and young students across Peru.
Dr Gabriela Calistro Rivera received the prize on behalf of CosmoAmautas at the recent Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC2026) in The Hague and gave a public lecture about the work of the association. The prize is accompanied by a cash award of 1000 Euros.
Thibaut Roger, presenting the prize on behalf of Europlanet, said: “We are proud to honour CosmoAmautas through the Europlanet Prize for Public Engagement. This dynamic and innovative association has demonstrated how rural schools can be supported to become places where planetary science and astronomy are not only explained, but actively and sustainably practised, for example through the search for exoplanets using real data.”
Since 2021, CosmoAmautas has trained over 200 teachers across 21 out of 24 regions of Peru, supported more than 80 Astroclubs, and reached over 10,000 students through participating teachers. With a focus on inquiry-based learning, the team of researchers and educators has developed a range of resources, adapted to schools with limited infrastructure and linked to the Peruvian curriculum, that can be delivered to teachers through experiment boxes, printed guides and online materials. Activities covered include measuring the Earth’s rotation and dimensions, investigations with scale models of the Solar System and analysis of space mission data. Gender equality and inclusion are key values of the association and programmes are integrated with Andean ancestral astronomical traditions, showing that observing and interpreting the sky are deeply rooted in Peru’s cultural history.
The CosmoAmautas team is composed of Peruvian students and astronomy professionals living in Peru and all around the globe and working across all fields of astronomy and planetary sciences. In order to reach underserved communities, the initiatives developed by the team have occurred mainly online, but future plans include in-person events that will be partially supported by the Europlanet prize funding.
On receiving the prize, Gabriela Calistro Rivera said: “It is a great honour to receive the Europlanet Prize for Public Engagement on behalf of CosmoAmautas. ‘Amauta’ means teacher in the quechua language, and our programme is based on the principle that when a teacher is empowered, the future of an entire community can be transformed. This award recognises not only the CosmoAmautas team, but also our community of teachers and students across Peru. This is a great incentive to continue our efforts in bringing scientific education and access to astronomy to more regions and students in our country.”
Gabriela Calistro Rivera, on behalf of CosmoAmautas, accepting the Europlanet Prize for Public Engagement 2026 from Thibaut Roger, Chair of the Europlanet Outreach Working Group.
Credit
Europlanet
"Mom says a pink flight jacket is ok"
Women astronauts reframe STEMM, one post at a time. New Paper in JCOM
Why can’t a flight jacket be pink or purple? That was the question a 6-year-old girl asked her mother, Kellie Gerardi, an astronaut, researcher and science communicator. When Gerardi later appeared on a TV interview wearing a bright pink flight jacket, her daughter pointed to her mom on the TV screen, smiling with delight. This exchange — which appeared in a post on Gerardi’s Instagram account — was a personal moment, skillfully presented through the language and visuals of social media. But it also conveys a clear message: femininity and scientific credibility are not mutually exclusive.
The video is one of 194 posts analysed in a new study published in the Journal of Science Communication (JCOM), which examined the Instagram activity of three women astronauts and science influencers: Kellie Gerardi, Shawna Pandya and Norah Patten. The research was conducted by Karen Shalev and Shannon Pappas, both graduate students, and Jocelyn Steinke, professor of communication at the University of Connecticut. It shows that science communication on social media involves more than explaining facts and concepts. Personal experiences, the communicator’s identity and platform-specific tools — from music and hashtags to humour and references to popular culture — all contribute to shaping the message.
“Our major finding was that these three science influencers were strategic in the way they framed messages on Instagram, not only to communicate scientific information, and hopefully to foster public interest and engagement in STEMM, but also to build their own personal brands and expand their audiences on Instagram,” Steinke explains.
What to look at, how to interpret it and where to focus
The study examined posts published on the influencers’ three Instagram accounts between 24 June and 24 November 2024, following the announcement of an upcoming Virgin Galactic research mission featuring Gerardi, Pandya, and Patten as an all-women, international crew. The researchers analysed all components of the posts, including photographs, videos, written text, audio, hashtags and emojis.
Their aim was to investigate three aspects of communication: what topics the influencers selected, how they framed them, and which communication tactics they used to attract attention. In other words, the researchers considered what influencers’ encouraged audiences to think about, how they guided audiences to interpret them, and where they directed audiences’ attention.
The analysis identified six broad topics, seven message frames and five types of communication tactics. Some of the topics the women selected focused on their research and training, explained scientific phenomena, and showed experiments conducted in microgravity. At the same time, they shared the personal journeys that had led them to STEMM — science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine — and spoke about the people who had encouraged them, the challenges they had faced and aspects of their everyday lives.
Gerardi, for example, has spoken publicly about motherhood, infertility and her experiences with in vitro fertilisation. Patten shared photographs from her first visit to the Kennedy Space Center with her father and brother when she was 15, while Pandya recalled experiences and mentors who contributed to her path to becoming an astronaut. These posts allow audiences to see not only the scientific work, but also the people carrying out this work and the rarely linear paths that brought them there.
“We can see that there’s definitely a strategic attempt here not only to share knowledge about STEMM and STEMM careers, but also to provide that insider perspective and to connect with audiences more personally, trying to foster authenticity, connection and engagement with very broad and diverse audiences,” Steinke says. “By sharing their experiences with their audiences, they can indeed serve as influential role models for future generations and inspire girls to consider potentially being an astronaut in the future.”
Science on in the language of Instagram
The posts analysed in the study adopt the forms and conventions of social media: short videos, photo carousels, text overlaid on images, hashtags, emojis, trending music and references to popular culture.
Taylor Swift, David Bowie and Charli xcx all are featured in some of the posts. Gerardi jokingly refers to herself as a “bratstronaut,” while footage of parabolic flights is accompanied by songs about space or weightlessness. The women also use humour, wordplay and immediately recognisable visual elements, including flight suits, models, clothes decorated with stars and planets, and footage recorded during training.
According to the authors, these elements are more than decorative additions. They help adapt the content to the platform, attract attention and connect science with forms of expression that are already familiar to Instagram users.
The personal dimension can also help challenge traditional ideas about the people who work in science. In their posts, the three women present themselves simultaneously as astronauts, researchers, doctors, mothers, daughters and women interested in fashion or music. By making these different identities visible, they show that there is no single way to look or behave in order to be credible in STEMM.
Useful insights
This is a qualitative analysis of messages shared by three highly visible STEMM figures on a single platform and over a limited period.The study did not establish whether every communication choice was consciously planned by the women, nor whether they manage their accounts with professional assistance. It also did not examine how audiences interpreted the posts or which content attracted the most attention and engagement.
Although future research should address these important issues, the influencers’ combined following of more than 1.5 million Instagram users at the time the study was conducted, highlights the potential reach of their content. The study findings about the science communication practices of three popular science influencers on Instagram also offer useful insights for the training of scientists and science communicators. Communicating strategically means considering not only what information to convey, but also how to present it, which parts of one’s experience to share, and how to adapt a message to the context in which audiences will encounter it.
“Women in STEMM are using social media as a way of gaining visibility and voice, advancing their goals as science communicators, changing perspectives on the role and contributions of women in STEMM, and inspiring younger generations to consider STEMM careers as a future option,” Steinke concludes.
Journal
Journal of Science Communication
Method of Research
Case study
Article Title
Framing science on social media: strategic science communication practices of women astronaut science influencers on Instagram
Article Publication Date
1-Oct-2026
Life on Saturn’s moon would be possible
image:
The microorganism Methanothermococcus okinawensis, whose ability to survive on Saturn's moon Enceladus the researchers have tested.
view moreCredit: Chiara Morawetz & Reinhard Rachel (University of Regensburg)
Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus might be more supportive of life than was previously thought. An LMU study reveals that microorganisms could survive in its hidden ocean.
From a human perspective, Enceladus is anything but a comfortable place to live: Icy cold, hardly any oxygen, and – below its icy crust - a global subsurface ocean whose water is as corrosive as pipe cleaner. Despite this, Saturn’s moon is one of the few places in our solar system where the conditions for life to emerge could be present. A new study supervised by William Orsi, who is Professor of Geomicrobiology at LMU, now presents experiments showing in specific detail that certain microorganisms could survive there and how they are able to do so.
Orsi’s team recreated the conditions thought to exist on the seafloor of Enceladus in the laboratory and discovered that hydrogen-consuming, methane-producing archaea seem to be able to adapt to this environment previously considered to be deadly for anaerobe archaea.
This evidence could only be produced thanks to collaboration between different disciplines, including geomicrobiology, biochemistry, geochemistry, and planetary science. The study, which involved scientists from LMU as well as the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the University of Regensburg, and Freie Universität Berlin, was recently published in the science journal Science Advances.
“Enceladus is considered to be one of the most promising places to search for extraterrestrial life,” says Dr. Vanessa Helmbrecht, lead author of the study. “Our experiments show that its unique geochemistry could create conditions that are even more favorable for microbial life than we had previously thought.”
Simulating an extraterrestrial ocean floor
Beneath Enceladus’ thick ice shell lies an ocean of liquid water and a solid core. Data from NASA’s Cassini mission revealed that the moon’s water-rich plumes that regularly shoot up from the ice contain molecular hydrogen, methane, and dissolved minerals – this provides strong evidence of hydrothermal activity on the seabed, and water-rock geochemical reactions, where the rocky core meets the ocean.
The researchers used a special anoxic chamber to create similar deep-sea conditions with a very low level of oxygen– a kind of “Enceladus simulant.” The oxygen concentration was extremely low – roughly 10,000 times lower than the level of oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere. Under these conditions, the researchers used carbonate salts to simulate a hypersaline liquid that replicated both the moon’s alkaline soda ocean and its rocky ocean floor.
They then introduced Methanothermococcus okinawensis, a methane-producing archaeon that normally lives near deep-sea hydrothermal vents on Earth. The metabolic pathway used to by this organism to conserve energy requires only H2 and CO2 gases, and is considered to be one of the most ancestral metabolisms still retained by life on Earth today.
The results were striking: While the organism failed to grow in a conventional laboratory medium at a pH of 10 or 11, in the Enceladus simulant it continued to grow, producing methane using hydrogen generated by water-rock reactions.
How microbes overcome carbon scarcity
One of the biggest challenges for life to potentially exist on Enceladus is the extremely low concentration of carbon dioxide caused by the ocean’s high pH. The team was able to demonstrate that Methanothermococcus okinawensis could adjust to these conditions and use its unique metabolism to scavenge the tiny amounts of available CO₂ to continue growing.
“Our findings suggest that the chemistry of Enceladus itself can help overcome this major barrier to life,” says William Orsi. “The interaction between the rock and water not only produces hydrogen as a source of energy, but also creates conditions that allow microbes to keep accessing carbon, even though CO₂ is extremely scarce.”
Broader implications for the search for life in space
The findings expand the range of conditions under which scientists consider Enceladus to be potentially able to sustain life.
“Our study doesn’t prove that life exists on Enceladus,” says Orsi,“ but it does show that key geochemical features of its environment can support one of life’s most ancient metabolisms. This strengthens the scientific case for future missions to retrieve samples from the moon’s ocean-derived plumes.”
ESA has recently announced plans to do exactly that with its next major flagship space mission “L4”, currently foreseen to launch in 2042.
Journal
Science Advances
Article Title
Enceladus-like geochemistry fuels methanogenesis under extreme CO2 limitation
Article Publication Date
25-Oct-2026
The microorganism Methanothermococcus okinawensis, whose ability to survive on Saturn's moon Enceladus the researchers have tested
The microorganism Methanothermococcus okinawensis, whose ability to survive on Saturn's moon Enceladus the researchers have tested.
Credit
Copyright: Chiara Morawetz & Reinhard Rachel (University of Regensburg)
Following ancient rain toward the origins of life on Mars
Ancient rain on Mars may have left a trail of formaldehyde across the planet. Following it could help future missions identify where to search for clues to the origins of life there
image:
Modeled global distribution of annual atmospheric formaldehyde (H₂CO) delivery to the surface of early Mars, overlaid on present-day topography with rover landing sites. Darker colors indicate higher delivery.
view moreCredit: Shungo Koyama et al.
The Mars we know today is a cold, dry world of dust and rocks. However, around 3.8-3.6 billion years ago, it may have looked very different. Geological and mineral evidence suggests that, in its distant past, the planet experienced periods warm and wet enough for water to exist on its surface, potentially forming rivers, lakes, and even an ocean in the northern hemisphere.
Earlier research has also shown that formaldehyde (H₂CO) could have been produced in the atmosphere of warm early Mars. The importance of this substance is that once delivered to water, formaldehyde can serve as a starting material for chemical reactions that produce sugars, amino acids, and other complex organic molecules - compounds important to ultimately start life. Yet one major question remained unanswered: where on Mars would this formaldehyde have actually reached the surface?
To answer this question, a research team led by scientists from Tohoku University, the Earth-Life Science Institute, and the Institute of Science Tokyo created a global map showing where atmospheric H₂CO may have been delivered across the planet during its early history.
To build this visualization, the researchers simulated warm conditions around 3.8-3.6 billion years ago and examined how temperature, water vapor, pressure, and UV light affected the formation of H₂CO. Their research showed that water vapor was especially important for Martian formaldehyde production. UV light broke apart water molecules, releasing reactive hydrogen needed to form H₂CO in the atmosphere, while rainfall carried the formaldehyde down to the surface. As a result, water-rich regions were predicted to receive more formaldehyde than drier areas.
Because water influenced both the formation of H₂CO and its delivery to the surface, the researchers suggest that the Martian water cycle may have determined where this prebiotic molecule could accumulate. The map they created shows where these predicted hotspots lie in relation to the landing sites of Mars missions.
"By comparing our map with findings from rovers, we can begin to test whether places that received more H₂CO were also more favorable for early life-related chemistry," said Dr. Koyama. "If future observations confirm this relationship, our map could help identify promising targets for future Mars missions."
Some areas of Mars stood out clearly on the map. For example, the model predicted that mountainous regions such as Tharsis and Elysium received about ten times more H₂CO than the global average. However, these estimates show how much H₂CO may have reached the surface in the past, not how much remains there today.
This study may provide guidance toward potential landing sites for future Mars missions, which may help us better understand how organic chemistry developed on the planet billions of years ago, bringing us one step closer to unraveling the mysteries surrounding the origins of life there.
The findings were published in The Planetary Science Journal on September 30, 2026.
Journal
The Planetary Science Journal
Article Title
Global distribution of atmospheric formaldehyde deposition correlated with water vapor on a warm early Mars
Study links 90+-day spaceflights to higher rates of hip fractures in astronauts
Findings in Mayo Clinic Proceedings open up a new area of research to safeguard astronauts’ skeletal health ahead of planned long-duration space missions
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A study in Mayo Clinic Proceedings has found that astronauts who have been in space for more than 90 days had a higher rate of hip fractures when they returned to Earth compared to astronauts on shorter spaceflights and non-astronauts. The findings underscore the need for expanded assessment of long-term skeletal health in astronauts. This figure shows the classification of fracture counts and events. NSF = No-Spaceflight, NLD-SF = Non-Long-Duration Spaceflight, LD-SF = Long-Duration Spaceflight.
view moreCredit: Mayo Clinic Proceedings / Taylor et al.
October 1, 2026 – New research has found that the rate of hip fractures in astronauts back on Earth was greater in the time period after an astronaut has been in space for more than 90 days than in the time period following shorter spaceflights or in non-astronauts. The findings of the study in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, published by Elsevier, underscore the need for expanded assessment of long-term skeletal health in astronauts.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is planning multiple missions with durations of longer than six months in space, including commercial low Earth orbit activity, completing Artemis IV’s first human mission to the lunar south pole in 2028, and enabling sustainable surface capabilities for the moon in preparation for Mars. Increased human participation and time spent in extraterrestrial exploration could negatively affect the long-term skeletal health of astronauts selected for their physical fitness and optimal health.
Muscle and bone loss due to the microgravity environment of space is a common physiologic phenomenon among astronauts that suggests a risk for fragility due to an adaptive response to disuse.
Jean D. Sibonga, PhD, lead investigator of the study “Increased Rates of Hip Fractures Associated With Longer Spaceflight Durations” at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, noted that humans do not feel the effects of bone loss. After returning from space and feeling stable or recovered, they may resume physically demanding activities despite underlying skeletal changes caused by prolonged disuse. A better understanding of bone health after spaceflight could help astronauts, patients, and clinicians assess long-term health concerns, determine appropriate care, and reduce the risk of injury.
Co-author of the accompanying editorial “Bone Loss in Astronauts” Matthew T. Drake, MD, PhD, Endocrinology and Metabolic Bone Disease Service, Hospital for Special Surgery, New York, notes, “While data to date on bone loss associated with space flight are consistent, a major limitation is accuracy, as astronaut cohort sample sizes are small and spaceflights are rare.”
To overcome this statistical limitation, investigators surveyed a cohort of US-based astronauts for all fractures reported during annual clinical exams and analyzed these data using Bayesian probabilistic modeling. While they did not find a higher incidence rate for all fractures, the incidence rate for hip fractures in astronauts was increased after a long-duration spaceflight of more than 90 days.
This increased rate occurred at a younger age than would be expected in a non-astronaut terrestrial population, and at a greater hip fracture rate than the rate before a long-duration mission, or with no spaceflight exposure at all.
“Taken together, the finding of hip fracture occurrence at an age earlier than expected after long-duration spaceflight is clinical evidence that spaceflight-induced bone loss can lead to real long-term fracture consequences, which should be addressed accordingly,” says Moshe Gertzulin, MD, Endocrinology and Metabolic Bone Disease Service, Hospital for Special Surgery, New York, co-author of the accompanying editorial.
Dr. Sibonga emphasized the need to expand NASA’s current bone surveillance program beyond dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry measurements of bone mineral density to better evaluate astronauts’ long-term fracture risk. NASA has recently begun ordering quantitative computed tomography scans before and after spaceflight, which can provide more detailed information about different areas of the bone and whether astronauts have fully recovered. Without that insight, astronauts could risk placing too much strain on bones that have not yet regained their preflight condition.
To mitigate these risks, the investigators advocate for prophylactic countermeasures that would preserve the baseline, pre-flight skeletal health of the astronaut. A fuller characterization of spaceflight-induced changes to bone mass, density, structure, and microarchitecture will determine which interventions—whether drugs, exercise, or dietary adjustments—are most beneficial for long-term skeletal health in astronauts.
Journal
Mayo Clinic Proceedings
Method of Research
Data/statistical analysis
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
Increased Rates of Hip Fractures Associated With Longer Spaceflight Durations
Article Publication Date
1-Oct-2026
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