It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
CSIS critical minerals expert Gracelin Baskaran. (Image courtesy of MINING.COM.)
China’s decision to weaponize rare earth exports has accelerated the international cooperation that could ultimately weaken its grip on the sector, according to the head of the critical minerals security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The export restrictions extended beyond the US to Japan, the European Union, Australia and South Korea, prompting governments to coordinate investments in mining, processing and manufacturing outside China, Gracelin Baskaran told MINING.COM anchor Devan Murugan on Top of Mine.
She pointed to a February meeting convened by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio that brought together representatives from 55 countries for what she called the largest State Department ministerial focused solely on critical minerals. Malaysia has also become the first country outside China to separate heavy rare earths, with more projects expected to follow.
“China certainly retains leverage now, but that leverage will only go down,” Baskaran said.
China still controls about 90% of global heavy rare earth separation and produces roughly 93% of the world’s permanent magnets, leaving governments racing to build alternative supply chains. Baskaran said Beijing’s restrictions have encouraged unprecedented collaboration among allies, making long-term diversification more likely even if China remains dominant in the near term.
Two chokepoints
The United States faces two major challenges despite being a significant rare earth producer.
Baskaran said US deposits are dominated by light rare earths, forcing Washington to secure heavy rare earth supplies through partnerships with projects in countries including Brazil, Angola and Australia. At the same time, the US is attempting to develop mines, separation facilities and magnet manufacturing simultaneously after China banned exports of rare earth processing technology in 2023, requiring domestic producers to develop expertise while constructing new plants.
“We are flying the plane as we build it,” Baskaran said.
Rather than seeking complete independence from China, Baskaran argued the objective should be resilience. She said reducing China’s share of heavy rare earth separation from about 90% to roughly half would leave the US and its allies far less vulnerable to future export restrictions. That thinking underpins a G7 agreement reached in France last month under which members aim to source no more than 60% of their rare earths from any single non-G7 country by 2030.
The Pentagon has already backed that strategy by taking a 49% equity stake in a planned Saudi Arabian rare earth refinery while supporting domestic processing through MP Materials (NYSE: MP) and projects being advanced by Lynas (ASX: LYC) and Alkane Resources (ASX: ALK). Baskaran said the remaining gaps are securing sufficient heavy rare earth feedstock and expanding magnet manufacturing, warning that neither mines nor processing plants are viable without the other.
Japan’s lesson
Japan offers the clearest example of how long diversification can take.
China halted rare earth exports to Japan during a 2010 territorial dispute, forcing Tokyo to rethink its supply chains. Since then, Japan has acquired a 50% stake in Namibia’s Lofdal rare earth project, financed Lynas’s Malaysian separation facility and begun piloting deep-sea rare earth mining this year. Even so, it remains China’s largest importer of permanent magnets.
The experience illustrates that rebuilding integrated supply chains takes years rather than political cycles. Baskaran said China’s dominance stems from controlling every stage of the value chain, not simply mining or processing, meaning companies pursuing only one segment risk being left behind.
“A mine without a processing facility is a stranded asset,” Baskaran said. “A processing facility without a manufacturer to buy that is a stranded asset.”
Friday, July 24, 2026
BAN DEEP SEA MINING
Japan finds heavy rare earths dominate seabed deposit
Japan said on Friday that medium and heavy rare earth elements accounted for about 54% of the rare earth content in deep-sea mud recovered off a remote Pacific island, bolstering its push to secure domestic supplies of critical minerals as China tightens export controls.
The government-backed mining vessel Chikyu recovered about 50 tonnes of mud during a month-long mission completed in February near Minamitori Island, about 1,900 km southeast of Tokyo.
The expedition marked the world’s first successful continuous recovery of rare earth-bearing seabed mud from a depth of about 6 km.
“The trial is expected to verify the feasibility of domestic rare earth production,” Kazushige Kikuchi, project manager at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, told Reuters. A comprehensive assessment of the project’s commercial potential is due by March 2028.
Cut China reliance
The project could help Japan reduce its dependence on China for strategic minerals used in defence equipment, electric vehicles and advanced technologies. Beijing imposed export controls on some heavy rare earths and related magnets in April 2025 before tightening restrictions on shipments to Japan in January and twice more the following month.
Japan’s government did not disclose the size of the rare earth deposit or the concentration of material in the recovered mud. Officials said the limited duration and geographic scope of the sampling program provided insufficient data for a broader resource estimate.
Analysis identified yttrium, used in aerospace, energy and semiconductor applications; gadolinium, used in magnetic resonance imaging and other high-tech products; and dysprosium, an essential component in high-performance magnets for electric vehicles.
In 2024, researchers from the University of Tokyo and the Nippon Foundation had already identified over 200 million tonnes of manganese nodules rich in battery metals in the Pacific Ocean, highlighting vast resource potential at depths around 5,500 meters.
A separate survey by the University of Tokyo and the Nippon Foundation estimated the seabed nodules contain approximately 610,000 tonnes of cobalt—enough for 75 years of Japan’s consumption—and 740,000 tonnes of nickel, covering 11 years of domestic demand.
Commercial test
Japan plans a new month-long mining trial in the same waters beginning in February 2027, targeting production of 350 tonnes of mud a day.
The material will be dewatered on Minamitori Island, about 1,900 km southeast of Tokyo, before being shipped to the mainland for separation, refining and smelting tests.
The pilot program is designed to determine whether the offshore resource can support commercial rare earth production and reduce Japan’s dependence on imported supplies.
Saturday, July 18, 2026
The Blue Ridge Mountain mine powering the world’s digital economy
One of the most abundant minerals in the Earth’s crust, quartz is essential for manufacturing core components of smartphones and computers. Most of the world’s supply comes from a single mining district in the Appalachian Mountains of the southeast United States, which has become an unlikely linchpin of the global tech economy.
Issued on: 18/07/2026 - RFI
A sample of a Spruce Pine pegmatite displayed in Appalachian State University's rock garden. The mines at Spruce Pine produce the world's purest known natural quartz.
In a valley in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, some 800 metres above sea level, lie a few square kilometres that feed the global computer chip industry.
The Spruce Pine mining district is estimated to supply more than 80 percent of the world’s ultra-pure quartz, a key material for making the semiconductors on which computers and other complex electronic devices depend. They are also essential for solar panels.
“We’re seeing the development of the components industry, and with it the need for materials of extremely high purity,” says geographer Laurent Carroué, director of research at the French Institute of Geopolitics (IFG) at Paris VIII University.
Spruce Pine produces some of the purest quartz in the world. Some 380 million years ago, major tectonic shifts occurred that generated intense heat deep below the surface of the Earth, creating silicon-rich magma that eventually cooled and crystallised. In this area, the process took place without water – and therefore without the trace impurities it can introduce.
This “truly rare phenomenon”, as Carroué describes it, created quartz deposits that are 99.999 percent pure.
Extremely heat-resistant, high-purity quartz is used to make crucibles in which semiconductor-grade silicon is melted at temperatures of more than 1,400C. The refined silicon then crystallises and can be sliced into thin “wafers” that form the basis of microchips or solar cells. Strategic supply
The size and purity of Spruce Pine’s deposits make them highly sought after by chipmakers and solar developers in the US and beyond.
A handful of private companies currently have mining rights, including Belgian group Sibelco and French-Norwegian venture The Quartz Corp. While The Quartz Corp announced last month it was closing its Spruce Pine plant indefinitely due to “persistent losses” in the solar industry, Sibelco doubled its production capacity between 2023-25 and is planning to invest another $500 million in expanding by 2027.
As Carroué points out, these operations are by nature “non-transferable and non-relocatable”.
Quartz can also be found in other countries including Russia, Brazil and China, though the cost of extracting it is much higher. Europe has a supply in Norway, though production remains a fraction of Spruce Pine’s output.
Earlier this year, researchers identified a new source of high-purity quartz in Chinese-controlled Tibet, with deposits of almost as high a grade as found at Spruce Pine. State-run media hailed the discovery as an opportunity to end China’s dependence on imports from the US.
China produces the bulk of the world’s rare earth minerals and according to Carroué, the sector “has become a point of contention with Washington, prompting the United States to start rehabilitating previously abandoned mines in the American West”.
Seeking substitutes
In September 2024, a natural disaster highlighted the risks of relying on a single source.
Hurricane Helene smashed into the southeastern United States, causing flooding from the Atlantic Coast to the Appalachians. Landslides felled trees, cut power and closed roads, forcing Spruce Pine’s mines to halt production.
While the disruption was short-lived, a prolonged closure would no doubt lead to scarcity and higher prices on global markets – especially as rapidly developing artificial intelligence continues to demand more and higher-performing chips.
If manufacturers are to diversify their quartz supply, Carroué says, it would mean “accepting minerals that are initially less pure, and financing heavy infrastructure” to refine them.
In the longer term, lab-grown synthetic quartz could provide an alternative. However, it is significantly more expensive than mining natural deposits.
In that case, the world’s supplies of this critical material will no longer depend on geographical fortune, but on political and financial commitment.
BAN DEEP SEA MINING
US proposes lease of seabed mining blocks off American Samoa coast
The U.S. Interior Department has proposed a lease of more than 31 million acres off the coast of American Samoa for seabed mining, part of President Donald Trump’s broader push to boost U.S. critical minerals production.
The waters around the Pacific Ocean territory are estimated to contain large amounts of potato-shaped rocks known as polymetallic nodules filled with the building blocks for electric vehicles, weaponry and electronics.
The department’s Marine Mineral Administration (MMA) said on Thursday it aims to lease two blocks, one of 16.3 million acres and the other 15.1 million acres, in federal waters off the eastern coast of Tau, one of the territory’s seven islands.
The MMA is proposing the auction for November 19 at BOEM’s offices in Camarillo, California. It will be closed to the public but livestreamed on MMA’s website. Minimum bids are $3 million.
Royalty rates would be 2% of the value of mineral production for the first five years and 5% thereafter.
Pulaali’i Nikolao Pula, American Samoa’s governor and an opponent of deep-sea mining, will have 60 days to respond to the proposed lease. The MMA will need to give a final notice of the lease sale in October.
Supporters of deep-sea mining say it would lessen the need for mining operations on land, which are often unpopular with host communities. Detractors say more research is needed to determine how the practice could affect ecosystems.
Matt Giacona, acting MMA director, said the proposed lease “is an important step toward building a secure domestic critical minerals supply chain.”
Oceana, a marine conservation organization, said the proposed lease “is yet another instance of this administration not only disregarding long-term damage to the environment but ignoring both science and the will of the people.”
(Reporting by Ernest Scheyder; Editing by David Gregorio)
Thursday, July 16, 2026
Deep-sea creatures’ epic migrations between hydrothermal vents
Combined migration and biochemical data reveal the stories of tiny creatures’ surprising journeys in one of the world’s most inhospitable environments
Hydrothermal vents on the bottom of the ocean host a broad range of rare and unusual ecosystems. They can be spread very far apart, and yet there will often be overlap in the creatures which inhabit them. Researchers, including those from the University of Tokyo, answer a long-standing question in this field about how creatures migrate between hydrothermal vents. Their process involves inspecting the chemical nature of limpet shells to reconstruct their likely journeys, yielding some surprising results.
People in Japan and around the world often enjoy a nice soak in natural hot springs, pools of water heated by underground geothermal processes. But did you know similar activity drives another kind of hot spring under the sea, hydrothermal vents? Although you probably wouldn’t appreciate a dip in one of these; if the freezing cold water surrounding them doesn’t kill you, the boiling hot water coming out of them certainly would, and there’s also the bone-crushing pressure thousands of meters down to contend with. Some lucky people do visit these, but they stay in the comfort of a pressurized deep-sea submersible. Incredibly though, these hostile environments can be teeming with life — fish, crustaceans, gastropods and more.
These ecosystems, in contrast to every one that exists up here on the surface, do not depend on the sun for their primary source of energy; it’s all chemical. And, even though vents, or collections of vents, can be hundreds of kilometers apart, there may be present a lot of identical or closely related creatures around them. This raises a question, though: How do creatures, some of which are not free swimmers and can be incredibly tiny, migrate between these sites? Such a question is not trivial, as knowing can improve our understanding of evolution, biodiversity, and how human activity can have knock-on effects on ecosystems. Assistant Professor Takuya Yahagi and Associate Professor Yasunori Kano from the University of Tokyo’s Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, and their team, set out to answer questions about migrating vent-dwelling creatures.
“Our previous studies, including larval culture experiments and population genetic analyses, suggested that plankton-feeding larvae of hydrothermal vent animals disperse in surface waters, where they can feed on phytoplankton and be transported by strong currents over long distances. However, directly observing or tracking these microscopic larvae in the open ocean is extremely difficult,” said Yahagi. “We collected animals from vents in the west Pacific using research vessels. The limpets we analyzed still retained their tiny larval shells. Like growth rings in a tree, these shells preserve chemical clues about the environment in which they grew. By measuring chemical signatures recorded in the larval shells, we estimated the temperatures of environments they probably lived in and reconstructed their early life histories.”
The researchers found that limpets collected from hydrothermal vents had explored the sunlit upper ocean during their larval stage, based on chemical signatures preserved in their shells. This discovery helps explain how animals living at isolated vent sites can spread over hundreds or thousands of kilometers. It also shows that conditions in surface waters, such as currents, temperature, and food availability, may play an important role in shaping deep-sea vent ecosystems. The team previously proposed that newly hatched larvae swim upward and disperse near the ocean's surface. In this study, they showed that every limpet from deep-sea hydrothermal vents that they analyzed had undertaken this journey before either settling back to its birthplace or establishing itself at a new vent site.
“There were two major challenges, though,” said Yahagi. “The first was finding suitable specimens. We needed animals that had retained tiny larval shells, and such specimens are not commonly collected from deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Fortunately, Professor Kano obtained suitable specimens during research cruises. The second challenge was analyzing the larval shells themselves. These shells are less than 1 millimeter in size and only about 10 micrometers thick. We had to analyze them very carefully while avoiding contamination from shells formed after settlement. Advances in analytical technology allowed us to obtain reliable chemical records from these tiny shells.”
The larval duration remains unknown for most hydrothermal vent species, but experiments suggest at least one species may spend more than a year near the surface before settling back down. This journey is highly risky as larvae can be eaten by any number of predators or get carried away by currents, never to reach a suitable vent habitat. The researchers suspect that only a small fraction successfully completes the journey, which may even explain why many vent animals are known to produce large numbers of eggs. The high productivity of hydrothermal vents, supported by bacteria that derive energy from chemicals rather than sunlight, provides the resources needed for this strategy.
As currents are largely responsible for relocating larvae, and as those currents are influenced by temperature patterns in different regions and layers of the ocean, there is a possibility that climate change could affect larval dispersal and connectivity among vent populations, although direct evidence is still lacking. The team suggests that although larval ecology is highly species-specific, the three limpet species examined in this study may be relatively resilient due to their large numbers of offspring and capability of long-distance dispersal via surface waters. As a result, their responses to environmental change or disturbance may not be representative of other hydrothermal vent ecologies. So, comparable studies across a wider range of vent-dwelling species will be needed before the ecological impacts of activities such as deep-sea mining can be properly assessed. Understanding how different vent species recover from disturbance, and how they maintain connectivity between isolated habitats, remains an important area for future research too.
“One of our next goals is to determine how widespread this behavior is among hydrothermal vent animals. In this study, we examined species living at depths of no deeper than around 2,000 meters, but hydrothermal vents occur as deep as 5,000 meters, so we are interested in whether animals from even greater depths also migrate to the sunlit upper ocean during their larval stage,” said Kano. “We also want to reconstruct environmental temperature estimates at finer scales across different parts of the larval shell. In the present study, we obtained only a single temperature estimate for each larval shell, but higher-resolution measurements could reveal more detailed aspects of larval behavior. Although this is technically very challenging, it may allow us to trace not only the ascent to surface waters but also the return journey, including the descent into the deep sea and the search for a suitable hydrothermal vent where the larvae eventually settle, feed, reproduce and repeat the cycle again.”
Takuya Yahagi, Kentaro Tanaka, Tomihiko Higuchi, Kotaro Shirai, Naoto Takahata, Yuji Sano, Shigeaki Kojima, Yasunori Kano. “Gastropod shells record larval migration from deep-sea hydrothermal vents to the euphotic zone”, Science Advances, www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adx7045, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adx7045
Funding:
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (15J08646, 18J01945, 19K15893, 22K14934, 15H04412, 18H02494, 19KK0385, 19H03028 and 22H02681). The University of Tokyo Ocean Alliance funded by The Nippon Foundation (OAI-17-8).
Research Contact:
Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, The University of Tokyo, 5-1-5, Kashiwanoha, Kashiwa-shi, Chiba 277-8564 JAPAN https://www.aori.u-tokyo.ac.jp/english/
About The University of Tokyo:
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An artist impression of a red dwarf with a white dwarf binary companion peeking out from behind. The diameters of the two stars are shown to scale. Credit: Mark A. Garlick / University of Warwick
Researchers at University of Warwick and University of Colorado Boulder have directly observed, for the first time, four white dwarfs stars orbiting in double star systems in our nearby region of space. These stellar binaries are all located within 65 light-years of Earth, and one of them is the ninth closest white dwarf to our Sun.
The four systems all have red dwarf star companions, larger and brighter stars, making it look like these were single star systems. The new results, published in MNRAS, have identified that each of these nearby red dwarfs stars were hosting a hidden white dwarf companion star.
First author, Dr Mairi O’Brien, Research Fellow, University of Warwick said: “Nearby isolated white dwarfs are usually easy to find, but we couldn't see these four stars directly in visible wavelengths because their red dwarf companions were drowning out their light. It's a reminder that even in our own cosmic neighbourhood, we can still find surprises if we look in the right way, at the right wavelengths.”
Astronomers have performed detailed surveys of the local neighbourhood of stars for decades, but white dwarfs like these have been notoriously hard to find. These four nearby systems were of interest because they showed a substantial radial wobble, a phenomenon in which a star subtly wobbles backwards and forwards, indicating a massive companion object is orbiting.
Using the Hubble Space Telescope's ultraviolet spectrograph data the team then obtained detailed observations from the four systems. White dwarfs usually stand out in ultraviolet observations, but red dwarfs complicate things due to their intense flaring that can often mimic a white dwarf signal. The researchers deployed custom calibration techniques to officially confirm the presence of the four white dwarf stars.
One system, G 203-47, has proven particularly enigmatic. Despite being only 25 light-years away, it has taken 27 years after its initial radial wobble observation to find the companion white dwarf. It is now officially the ninth closest white dwarf to the Sun.
G 203-47 is also unusual because its red dwarf rotates once every 100+ days but orbits its white dwarf every 14.9 days. Normally, gravitational forces would tidally lock them in sync, like the Moon and Earth, where the same face always points toward each other. Instead, the red dwarf rotates far too slowly for that to happen.
Coauthor Dr David Wilson, Research Associate, University of Colorado Boulder, said: "What's fascinating is that G 203-47 shouldn't be rotating this slowly if it formed the same way as similar systems. This suggests that these binaries have had very different evolutionary histories. Some underwent violent, prolonged interactions early on that locked them tidally. Others, like G 203-47, experienced gentler, briefer encounters that left them in this unusual state.”
These four new white dwarfs have allowed researchers to update the local white dwarf census within 20 parsecs (65 light-years). Crucially, population models had previously predicted roughly 4 to 5 closely orbiting white dwarf-red dwarf pairs should exist, and the team found exactly 4, comparable to the theoretical work.
Professor Pier-Emmanuel Tremblay, Astronomy and Astrophysics Group, University of Warwick said: “Only about 30 per cent of red dwarfs within 20 parsecs have been systematically surveyed for hidden white dwarf companions. We think there could be as many as 9 or 10 additional binary systems in our local stellar environment that we haven’t found yet. If we put more targeted effort into observing red dwarfs, perhaps we will find more surprises like this.”
ENDS
Notes to Editors
The paper, ‘Direct detections of white dwarfs in four WD+dM post-common envelope binaries within 20 pc’ is published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS). DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stag1195
For more information please contact:
Matt Higgs, PhD | Media & Communications Officer (Warwick Press Office)
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An image of elliptical galaxy NGC4696 located at the center of the Centaurus Cluster taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. This image shows dusty filaments surrounding the center of the galaxy.
Astronomers are closer to solving the mystery of how supermassive black holes feed themselves thanks to new images from the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST.
The images provide the clearest view ever seen of gaseous filaments connecting a galaxy’s hot atmosphere to the rotating disk of gas that feeds its central supermassive black hole.
Michigan State University helped an international team, led by the Université de Montréal, perform the observations and interpret the data, finding answers to a question that has stumped scientists for decades. The results were reported in the July 14 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
“JWST observations are offering us thousands of new facts and measurements, and I can report it’s a lot to absorb,” said Megan Donahue, MSU University Distinguished Professor of physics and astronomy. “We are all working together to solve the astrophysics questions about how these black holes get their fuel and how they interact with their host galaxy.”
Self-regulating black holes
Nearly every large galaxy in the universe has a supermassive black hole, or SMBH, at its center millions or even billions of times more massive than the sun. When these black holes are actively pulling in surrounding material, they switch on like cosmic engines, blasting powerful jets of energy outward that can sculpt the entire galaxy around them, slowing down the birth of new stars and influencing how the galaxy grows over time. Astronomers call these types of black holes active galactic nuclei, or AGN.
But if an AGN’s jets heat up the surrounding gas, it should, in principle, shut off the black hole's food supply. So how does it keep feeding and growing?
The leading hypothesis is that the gas eventually cools back down, condenses into long thin streamers called filaments, and falls back toward the galaxy's center in a self-regulating process.
To test this hypothesis, the team pointed JWST at galaxy NGC 4696, the central galaxy of the Centaurus Cluster, a dense group of galaxies located about 145 million light-years from Earth and one of the best laboratories for studying AGN mechanisms.
With nearly eight hours of observing time using JWST's NIRSpec instrument, the team produced detailed maps of the gas's motion deep inside the black hole's sphere of influence, at a resolution sharp enough to pick out features roughly 30 light-years — a tiny slice of a galaxy hundreds of thousands of light-years wide.
These maps showed that the S-shaped swirl is actually a spinning disk of gas wrapped around the SMBH, nearly 800 light-years across, with material whipping around at up to 600 kilometers per second. And critically, that disk appears physically connected to one of the large infalling filaments stretching outward into the galaxy. The observations showed gas flowing along the filament and pouring into the disk that feeds the SMBH.
Closing the loop
The study helps astronomers paint a better picture of the full feeding cycle of a SMBH. Jets from the black hole pump energy into the galaxy's surrounding gas. That gas eventually cools, becomes unstable, and collapses into long filaments, some only a few hundred light-years wide but stretching thousands of light-years long. Magnetic forces slow the gas’s rotation as it falls, steering it inward. It accumulates into a spinning disk around the black hole. The disk feeds the black hole. The black hole fires its jets. And the cycle begins again.
To test whether this explanation holds up, the team also ran state-of-the-art computer simulations of the system. The simulated gas behaved in a way that closely matched what JWST observed, lending strong independent support to the proposed picture.
“It’s been really exciting to participate in this project,” MSU Physics and Astronomy Professor Mark Voit said. “Calculations done by our Michigan State group predict that magnetic fields should help feed the universe’s biggest black holes by channeling cool gas toward them, and it’s amazing to see that happening in these JWST images.”
JWST reveals how black holes are fed: kiloparsec-scale multiphase filaments feed sub-kiloparsec circumnuclear disks
Article Publication Date
14-Jul-2026
A close-up of the center of galaxy NGC4696 around its supermassive black hole. The background greyscale imaging comes from the Hubble Space Telescope. The overlaid coloured map shows the distribution of gas falling into the black hole as traced by the Paschen α line using the James Webb Space Telescope NIRSpec instrument. An S-shaped swirl can be seen in the gas.
Credit
NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/J. Hlavacek-Larrondo, et al. 2026
Sugar In Interstellar Space
Composite image from the Galactic Center. Green and yellow: 8 µm and 24 µm emission observed with Spitzer (Churchwell et al. 2009; Carey et al. 2009). Red: 20 cm emission imaged with MeerKAT (Heywood et al. 2019, 2022) and the Green Bank Telescope (GBT; Law et al. 2008). Image adapted from Henshaw et al. (2023; doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2203.11223) and Longmore et al. (2026; 10.48550/arXiv.2602.20340). Credits: Ashley Barnes/Izaskun Jiménez-Serra/Juan García de la Concepción
Sugars are key biomolecules in living organisms, as they form the backbone of DNA and RNA and play a fundamental role in metabolic processes. In theories of the origin of life, sugars are also essential for the synthesis of the first nucleic acids. Despite their importance, one of the major questions in origin-of-life research is how the first sugars formed on Earth, since laboratory experiments show that they do not form in enough quantities under prebiotic conditions. Sugars such as ribose and glucose have previously been detected in meteorite and asteroid samples, suggesting that some of these molecules may have originated in the primordial molecular cloud from which our Solar System formed. However, until now, no sugar had ever been directly detected in the interstellar medium.
An international team led by CAB researcher Izaskun Jiménez-Serra has now identified the first sugar in interstellar space: erythrulose. This molecule is the only possible four-carbon ketose, and on Earth it is commonly found in raspberries and sunless tanning products. Erythrulose was detected toward the molecular cloud G+0.693−0.027, located near the centre of our Galaxy, the Milky Way. The discovery was made possible by ultra-sensitive, broadband spectroscopic surveys carried out with the 40-m Yebes radio telescope and the 30-m telescope of the Institute for Radio Astronomy in the Millimeter Range (IRAM).
The team identified 12 spectral lines matching the laboratory spectrum of erythrulose measured at the University of the Basque Country. The study also shows that this sugar is at least eight times more abundant than similar three-carbon sugars, none of which were detected in the same region. “This finding was unexpected, as the prevailing view in astrochemistry is that interstellar molecules grow in size through the sequential addition of carbon atoms”, says Izaskun Jimenez Serra (CAB), leading author of this work.
Working in collaboration with chemists from the University of Extremadura and Radboud University (the Netherlands), the CAB team discovered that erythrulose can form within interstellar ices from simpler two-carbon alcohols and aldehydes.
Based on the abundance of erythrulose measured in the G+0.693−0.027 molecular cloud, the researchers estimate that between 0.5 and 50 million tonnes of this sugar could have reached Earth’s surface during the Late Heavy Bombardment, which occurred approximately 4.1 to 3.8 billion years ago. The presence of erythrulose in interstellar space therefore provides an alternative source of sugars that may have contributed to the emergence of the first metabolic and replication processes on the early Earth.
“The detection of erythrulose is very exciting because it opens up the possibility of discovering in space other sugars such as ribose, which is part of RNA, and other important molecules for the origin of life,” says Carlos Briones, co-author of the study.
Sugar in interstellar space
A recent study led by the Centro de Astrobiología (CAB, CSIC-INTA) reports the first detection of a sugar in the interstellar medium
Figure. Composite image from the Galactic Center. Green and yellow: 8 µm and 24 µm emission observed with Spitzer (Churchwell et al. 2009; Carey et al. 2009). Red: 20 cm emission imaged with MeerKAT (Heywood et al. 2019, 2022) and the Green Bank Telescope (GBT; Law et al. 2008). Image adapted from Henshaw et al. (2023; doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2203.11223) and Longmore et al. (2026; 10.48550/arXiv.2602.20340).
Credit: Credits: Ashley Barnes/Izaskun Jiménez-Serra/Juan García de la Concepción
Sugars are key biomolecules in living organisms, as they form the backbone of DNA and RNA and play a fundamental role in metabolic processes. In theories of the origin of life, sugars are also essential for the synthesis of the first nucleic acids. Despite their importance, one of the major questions in origin-of-life research is how the first sugars formed on Earth, since laboratory experiments show that they do not form in enough quantities under prebiotic conditions. Sugars such as ribose and glucose have previously been detected in meteorite and asteroid samples, suggesting that some of these molecules may have originated in the primordial molecular cloud from which our Solar System formed. However, until now, no sugar had ever been directly detected in the interstellar medium.
An international team led by CAB researcher Izaskun Jiménez-Serra has now identified the first sugar in interstellar space: erythrulose. This molecule is the only possible four-carbon ketose, and on Earth it is commonly found in raspberries and sunless tanning products. Erythrulose was detected toward the molecular cloud G+0.693−0.027, located near the centre of our Galaxy, the Milky Way. The discovery was made possible by ultra-sensitive, broadband spectroscopic surveys carried out with the 40-m Yebes radio telescope and the 30-m telescope of the Institute for Radio Astronomy in the Millimeter Range (IRAM).
The team identified 12 spectral lines matching the laboratory spectrum of erythrulose measured at the University of the Basque Country. The study also shows that this sugar is at least eight times more abundant than similar three-carbon sugars, none of which were detected in the same region. “This finding was unexpected, as the prevailing view in astrochemistry is that interstellar molecules grow in size through the sequential addition of carbon atoms”, says Izaskun Jimenez Serra (CAB), leading author of this work.
Working in collaboration with chemists from the University of Extremadura and Radboud University (the Netherlands), the CAB team discovered that erythrulose can form within interstellar ices from simpler two-carbon alcohols and aldehydes.
Based on the abundance of erythrulose measured in the G+0.693−0.027 molecular cloud, the researchers estimate that between 0.5 and 50 million tonnes of this sugar could have reached Earth's surface during the Late Heavy Bombardment, which occurred approximately 4.1 to 3.8 billion years ago. The presence of erythrulose in interstellar space therefore provides an alternative source of sugars that may have contributed to the emergence of the first metabolic and replication processes on the early Earth.
"The detection of erythrulose is very exciting because it opens up the possibility of discovering in space other sugars such as ribose, which is part of RNA, and other important molecules for the origin of life," says Carlos Briones, co-author of the study.
Representative preflight, in-flight, and postflight hand radiographs. Radiographs of the hand were acquired (A) preflight by a crewmember, (B) in-flight on day 1 after launch (L+1) by a crewmember, and (C) postflight by a non-crew operator using the same imaging protocol.
Credit: Radiological Society of North America (RSNA)
OAK BROOK, Ill. – A team of crew members aboard a commercial spaceflight acquired the first diagnostic X-rays during an orbital flight. Results of the mission were published today in Radiology, a journal of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).
“It’s been a dream for aerospace medicine to have more than one imaging modality for diagnosing illnesses and injuries in space,” said Sheyna Gifford, M.D., lead researcher and an assistant professor of aerospace medicine at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. “X-rays are fast, easy and diagnostically valuable.”
For more than four decades, ultrasound has been the only reliable medical imaging modality used in spaceflight. As spaceflight missions increase in duration and distance, increasing the risk of adverse medical events, the limitations of ultrasound have become less acceptable. Ultrasound imaging requires substantial operator training and relies on a sound wave transmitting medium.
“Traditional X-ray machines are very large, produce a lot of radiation, and have a tendency to produce a blurred image if there’s movement,” Dr. Gifford said. “Because everything in space is constantly moving, the conceit has been that obtaining a diagnostic image in orbit was too technically challenging.”
The availability of small, portable X-ray machines offered Dr. Gifford’s team the opportunity to test in-orbit X-ray capabilities. In 2022, the flight crew, with minimal medical training, took a portable X-ray machine on a parabolic flight and successfully obtained a digital X-ray of a hand in microgravity.
Dr. Gifford’s team partnered with the commercial company SpaceX to investigate the feasibility of using a commercial off-the-shelf portable radiography system on Fram2, a 3.5-day polar orbital flight.
“Portable X-ray machines are in use everywhere — at the Kentucky Derby, on the sidelines of the Super Bowl and around the globe in low-resource areas — because they can run on solar power and can be operated by individuals with no medical expertise,” she said. “We believed an off-the-shelf portable system would stand a very good chance of surviving prelaunch testing and be operational in space by crew members with minimal training.”
In the prospective study, anatomic and equipment X-rays were obtained both preflight and inflight by crew members using an X-ray system featuring an ultraportable wireless digital X-ray generator. All images were evaluated by independent radiologists.
“A spaceflight-ready radiography system would have profound implications not only for crew health but also for mission-critical nonmedical tasks,” Dr. Gifford said. “For sustained human presence in space, X-rays are critical not just for crew members but also for other mission components like electronics and spacesuits. The only way to look inside these objects without taking them apart is to X-ray them.”
Prior to the Fram2 spaceflight, three crew members received four hours of training on the portable radiography system. SpaceX personnel also conducted impact and compatibility testing on the system for the spacecraft. The crew acquired preflight images, including X-rays of a hand, forearm, abdomen, pelvis and chest.
The Fram2 mission launched on March 31, 2025, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, entering into a 90-degree orbit at 425 to 450 kilometers above sea level. The mission duration was 3 days and 14 hours, and the spacecraft returned to Earth on April 4, 2025. The X-ray generator sustained superficial structural damage during landing and recovery. However, internal hardware components and X-ray output were unaffected.
Inflight images acquired without ground support included X-rays of a phantom object used to calibrate the system, and a smartwatch, hand, forearm, abdomen, pelvis and chest. These inflight images were immediately transmitted to an onboard computer and reviewed by the crew. Upon returning to Earth, postflight X-rays replicating the preflight and inflight images were also acquired.
All X-rays were evaluated by three independent radiologists for overall image quality, spatial resolution, contrast resolution and positioning. The researchers found no differences in the overall image quality, contrast resolution or spatial resolution between the preflight and inflight X-rays. The inflight image quality achieved a diagnostic level for all X-rays, despite the decreased scores for the positioning of the central body X-rays, including the images of the chest, pelvis and abdomen.
“By acquiring the first human and equipment X-rays in space, our study demonstrates the feasibility of in-orbit radiography and expanded diagnostic capabilities for crew health and hardware evaluation,” Dr. Gifford said. “Acquiring a diagnostically useful X-rays in space is something that anyone can do. Three very talented nonmedical people with four hours of training in one of the harshest environments did it right and did it well.”
Crew members strongly agreed that the X-ray system was easy to use and the imaging protocols were easy to follow. They suggested improvements for the radiography system, including mechanisms to securely mount and clamp the X-ray detector and generator. The estimated radiation exposure for crew members was no greater than that associated with standard clinical imaging on Earth.
Dr. Gifford said more prospective studies are needed to establish guidelines for examination indications, image interpretation and imaging baselines.
“It's my hope that we can further reduce the size of portable imaging systems and improve its ruggedness and usability so they can be included in future missions,” she said.
Other space-related applications for portable X-ray systems include imaging malfunctioning satellites in orbit and equipping lunar rovers to analyze the moon’s surface.
“Disseminating autonomous miniature X-ray systems around the globe could also change the game in public health,” she added. “The sky is not the limit when it comes to X-rays in space and here on Earth.”
Representative preflight, in-flight, and postflight chest radiographs. Radiographs of the chest were acquired(A) preflight by a crewmember,(B, C) in-flight on day 3 after launch (L+3) by a crewmember, and(D) postflight by a non-crew operator using the same imaging protocol.
Credit
Radiological Society of North America (RSNA)
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“SpaceXray: Feasibility and Diagnostic Capabilities of On-Orbit Medical Radiography.” Collaborating with Dr. Gifford were Michael Pohlen, M.D., Adam S. Wang, Ph.D., David J. Lerner, M.D., Anna Wadhwa, M.S., Michael Cairnie, B.S., Jeanne Walter, B.S., Karim S. Karim, Ph.D., Steven Tilley II, Ph.D., Amol Karnick, M.Eng., Marissa A. Rosenberg, Ph.D., and Lonnie G. Petersen, M.D., Ph.D.
Radiology is edited by Suhny Abbara, M.D., FACR, MSCCT, Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, Florida, and owned and published by the Radiological Society of North America, Inc. (https://pubs.rsna.org/journal/radiology)
RSNA is an association of radiologists, radiation oncologists, medical physicists and related scientists promoting excellence in patient care and healthcare delivery through education, research and technologic innovation. The Society is based in Oak Brook, Illinois. (RSNA.org)
For patient-friendly information on X-rays, visit RadiologyInfo.org.
Journal
Radiology
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
SpaceXray: Feasibility and Diagnostic Capabilities of On-Orbit Medical Radiography
Article Publication Date
14-Jul-2026
Space launch costs could fall more than 90% by 2040, transforming the marketplace of space
The expense of launching goods into space will plummet over the next few years, with the cost of reaching orbit forecast to more than halve between now and the end of the decade, and fall around 93% by 2040, according to new Cambridge-led research.
The cost of sending a kilogram of payload into low Earth orbit, an average of $3,868 last year, is set to fall more than 58% to just $1,569 by 2030, and could reach as little as 273 US dollars per kilo by 2040, the study suggests.*
Researchers analysed the economics of the space industry using the largest global dataset of rocket launches yet assembled, covering more than 4,400 launches between 1960 and 2025, to project future trends.**
They show that the cost of reaching space is falling faster than the expense of steamship freight did during the 19th-century transport revolution, and even faster than solar photovoltaics: a benchmark for rapidly affordable “transformative technologies”.
Economists behind the report say that tumbling launch costs could see new industries emerge to create a space marketplace, from zero‑gravity research and orbital tourism to factories exporting fibre-optic cables and 3D-bioprinted organs back to Earth.
“Space is no longer a science-fiction fantasy or a purely scientific pursuit, it is becoming a marketplace,” said Dr Alessio Terzi from Cambridge’s Bennett School of Public Policy, who led the study published in the journal PNAS Nexus.
“As launch costs fall and commercial activity expands, we are entering an era where spacefaring is like any other economy, driven by incentives, trade and investment, and economists should be paying more attention.”
However, researchers caution that profit-maximising corporate monopolies combined with geopolitical tensions could drive up prices and delay the next stage of the space age, as nations focus on developing and using their own launch technologies.
They note that the space launch market is already dominated by one firm, SpaceX, which accounts for roughly 80% of total annual payload sent into orbit globally. A recent working paper co-authored by Terzi shows this dominance of a frontier economy by SpaceX is equivalent to the East India Company’s hold on maritime trade in the 1820s.
The space sector has surged since 2020, thanks to the boom in satellite technologies, with the amount of payload launched into orbit growing by 31% a year, compared with average annual growth of 4% between 2000 and 2019.
About 4,900 tonnes were launched into orbit in 2025, and the space economy was worth over $600 billion in 2024, equivalent to Sweden’s GDP.
Terzi and his colleague Dr Francesco Nicoli from the Politecnico Institute of Turin forecast this will almost double by 2030, when humanity will have the joint capacity to send 9,100 tonnes a year to low Earth orbit.
“SpaceX alone could achieve this with eighty flights of its new superheavy rocket Starship, which will be fully reusable,” said Terzi. He thinks the figure could hit 32,000 tonnes a year by 2040.
Their research found that every doubling of cumulative payload cut the average cost of sending a kilo into orbit by 21.2%. The economists compare the trend to steamship freight during the globalised Industrial Revolution of the 1800s, when costs fell by about 15.5% for each doubling of cargo volumes such as wheat and cotton.
“The cost of space launch technology is now falling faster than during one of history’s greatest transport revolutions,” said Terzi.
“Steamships cut costs through explosive growth in global trade. Space technology, by contrast, has achieved even steeper declines at a far smaller scale. This suggests there is plenty of scope for further cost reductions and the industry may now be on the cusp of a comparable economic boom.”
According to estimates in the latest study, the cost of reaching orbit fell 96% between 1960 and 2025. The Space Race drove costs down from over $87,000 per kilo into orbit in 1960 to around $20,000 per kilo by the early 1970s, where it stalled following the end of the Apollo project and phase-out of its Saturn V rocket.
Launch costs remained stable right up until the early 1990s, when the end of the Cold War saw big commercial interests injected into space, and costs once again began to slide.
In fact, Terzi and Nicoli compared space launch costs before and after 1989, and found that they fell over two-and-a-half times faster once the Berlin Wall came down, compared to the Cold War era of government investment in space.***
“State-led competition during the Cold War did not foster cost efficiency on the same scale as the ensuing era of international space cooperation and private sector involvement,” said Nicoli.
Researchers point out that the relationship between distance and cost works differently in space. Escaping our planet requires large amounts of energy, but once spacecraft reach orbit the gravitational pull is a fiftieth of that at sea level, and there isn’t that much difference in energy needs between, say, the Moon, or Mars.
“Rapidly falling launch costs could open the way to space colonisation and commercial activity far beyond low Earth orbit,” said Terzi. “Ever cheaper launch costs could open up possibilities around solar power production in orbit, asteroid mining, and a self-sustaining economy producing fuel, food and infrastructure in orbit or on the Moon.”
“Major polluting industries currently devastating the biosphere could even be offshored to sit outside the Earth’s atmosphere.”
Notes:
* The cost would fall by about 92.9% (roughly 93%) from last year's average of US$3,868/kg to US$273/kg in 2040. Low Earth orbit is between 160 km and 2,000 km of altitude.
**The standardised dataset of rocket launches from 1960 to 2025 covers sixteen geographical entities including all the major spacefaring nations: US, Russia, China, India, Europe, and Japan. It includes over 330 different rocket configurations and 4,405 launches.
*** In 2022, some 78% of satellites orbiting the Earth were primarily commercial, with just 8% government operated, and 7% military.
****Costs of space launch decreased by roughly 44% with each doubling of payload between 1989 and 2025, compared to a 17% decrease in costs with each doubling of payload between 1960 and 1989.
In 1960, sending a single kilogram into orbit cost $87,000. Today the average cost is on average under $4,000. By 2040, it could cost as little as $300 per kilogram, according to a study.
Alessio Terzi and Francesco Nicoli present a comprehensive dataset of rocket launch costs: more than 4,400 launches spanning all major spacefaring nations. By standardizing costs across six decades of launches and calculating the cost per kilogram to orbit for each mission, the authors trace a pattern of technological learning that rivals the fastest cost declines ever recorded in any industry. For every doubling of cumulative payload sent to orbit, the average cost of a kilogram has fallen by 21.2%—a learning rate comparable to solar panels in their early adoption phase. If that relationship holds, average launch costs will reach $1,600 per kilogram by 2030 and $300 by 2040.
In the near term, SpaceX's Starship could push costs below $1,000 per kilogram, but whether the vehicle can deliver those cost reductions will depend on how quickly launch cadence can be scaled up.
According to the authors, three forces could slow or reverse the space launch cost trajectory: the worsening problem of space debris, which raises costs and risks for all operators; geopolitical fragmentation of launch markets, as nations pursue independent access to orbit; and the growing concentration of Western commercial launch capacity in a single provider.
Journal
PNAS Nexus
Article Title
From Sputnik to Starship: Estimating the experience curve of space launch technology
Article Publication Date
14-Jul-2026
A data-driven tool for finding mineral biosignatures on other worlds
A technique for judging whether a common mineral was formed through biological activity could aid the search for ancient life on Earth and Mars. Apatite is a ubiquitous phosphate mineral found in terrestrial and extraterrestrial environments. It is a major component of teeth and bones, but it also occurs in igneous rocks and sedimentary phosphorites. Robert M. Hazen and colleagues developed a method to distinguish biologically formed apatite from abiotic apatite using Raman spectroscopy, an analytical technique incorporated into several recent Mars missions. Determining the origin of a sample involves assessing multiple independently varying features of a Raman spectrum, including band positions, widths, and relative intensities, the type of multivariate analysis well suited to machine learning. The authors compiled 331 Raman spectra of apatite from biotic and abiotic sources and trained a random forest classifier to identify the most diagnostic features. The intensity of the carbonate band and the width of the dominant phosphate band, reflecting chemical composition and crystal structure, respectively, emerged as the strongest indicators of origin. The resulting model distinguished biotic from abiotic apatite with classification accuracy exceeding 96%. According to the authors, minerals such as apatite can preserve evidence of biological activity over long geological timescales and the approach could thus help future planetary missions identify minerals that retain records of ancient life on rocky worlds.
Journal
PNAS Nexus
Article Title
Mineral biosignature identification from Raman spectroscopy using machine learning
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