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)
Monday, December 01, 2025
Hong Kong leader announces 'independent committee' to probe fire
Hong Kong (AFP) – Hong Kong's leader announced Tuesday the creation of a judge-led "independent committee" to investigate the devastating fire at an apartment complex that killed 151 people last week.
Authorities have said the blaze, which was the city's worst fire in decades, spread quickly via netting used on exterior scaffolding that fell short of fire-resistance standards and failed to stop flames from spreading.
"I will establish an independent committee to conduct comprehensive and in-depth review to reform the building work system and prevent similar tragedies from occurring in the future," the city's leader John Lee told a news conference in English, adding that the committee would be led by a judge.
Hong Kong has a legal mechanism to set up "commissions of inquiry", which in the past were usually led by judges to undertake complex fact-finding exercises -- a practice left over from British colonial rule.
Lee used a different term, "independent committee", on Tuesday.
Lee told AFP that authorities had identified several failures, and that reforms would be needed in safety, supervision, construction and maintenance standards.
"We must act seriously to ensure that all these loopholes are plugged so that those who are responsible will be accountable. The shortcomings will be addressed. The bottlenecks will be addressed," he said.
"We will reform the whole building renovation system to ensure that such things will not happen again."
Hong Kong's anti-corruption watchdog and police, running a joint investigation, have arrested a total of 14 people, 13 of them on suspicion of manslaughter over the blaze.
"The responsible culprits tried to mix up substandard net with qualified nets so as to cheat inspection and law enforcement agencies," Lee said, calling the suspects "evil".
The city has seen a massive outpouring of grief as well as calls for accountability, but local media reported the arrests of several people who were calling for answers.
Miles Kwan, a 24-year-old student, was reportedly arrested by police for "seditious intent" after handing out flyers demanding government accountability.
An online petition containing Kwan's four demands, which included calls for an independent probe, gathered more than 10,000 signatures in less than a day before its contents were wiped.
Two other people, including former district councillor Kenneth Cheung, were also taken in by police, according to local media reports.
Asked about the arrests, Lee told AFP that "I will not tolerate any crimes, particularly crimes that exploit the tragedy that we have been facing now".
The world's deadliest residential building fire since 1980 broke out on Wednesday at the high-rises of Wang Fuk Court in the city's northern Tai Po district.
Police completed searches in five of the seven affected towers on Monday, finding the remains of victims in apartments, hallways and stairs.
Some families of victims returned to Wang Fuk Court on Monday to begin traditional funeral rites, which are expected to continue.
“The last Fleet was lost to me for want of Frigates; God forbid this should.” Lord Horatio Nelson, letter to Viscount Castlereagh, Oct. 5, 1805
By Emma Salisbury
(FPRI) — The US Navy is hitting the reset button on its next round of small surface combatants. In a surprise announcement on social media, Secretary of the Navy John Phelan revealed that the service is stepping back from its Constellation-class frigate program to pursue ships that can be built faster. Under a new dealwith Fincantieri Marinette Marine, the Wisconsin shipyard will finish the first two frigates in the lineup, USS Constellation (FFG-62) and USS Congress (FFG-63). But the four ships that were supposed to follow? Those are getting cut before construction even begins. The Constellation class will follow in the footsteps of the Zumwalt class, cut mid-program and leaving a couple of orphan ships to sheepishly join the fleet.
The Constellation program has been sinking expensively for some time, so cancelling it is probably a good idea. However, the US Navy still has a requirement for 73 small surface combatants. It is reportedly in the middle of a fleet design review to assess how the service will develop these—but given the problems with Constellation and the other recent small surface combatant program, the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), one would be forgiven for thinking that whatever comes next will struggle to be much better.
The United States is at a point where it hasn’t designed and built a good surface escort ship since the Arleigh Burke, at a time when its navy needs more and fast. The US Navy decommissioned the last of its previous frigate class in 2015 and is already retiring some of its LCS fleet after considerable operational problems. With no obvious small surface combatant to fill this gap on the horizon, America needs to figure out a new plan before the US Navy suffers from the same want of frigates as plagued Nelson. Franken-FREMM
What began as a promising leap forward for the US Navy slowly took on the shape of yet another cautionary tale in American shipbuilding. The Constellation-class frigate was supposed to be a smart, streamlined answer to the US Navy’s need for a reliable small surface combatant—fast to build, packed with modern systems, and rooted in a proven European design. Its name echoed that of the original USS Constellation, the first ship ever commissioned in the U.S. Navy, and the program carried a similar sense of optimism: a vessel built for the complex maritime threats of the 21st century, balancing adaptability, stealth, and cutting-edge technology. But somewhere between that elegant vision and the stacks of revised design documents now crowding shipyard floors, the program began to list heavily to one side.
The idea behind the Constellation class was deceptively simple. Rather than reinventing the wheel—a habit that had often cost the US Navy dearly in time, money, and credibility—the service selected the FREMM, a highly regarded European frigate already in production. This was supposed to be the antidote to decades of acquisition headaches. Start with a proven design, add only what’s absolutely necessary to meet American requirements, and deliver the first ship in a reasonable timeframe. By tapping Fincantieri Marinette Marine in Wisconsin to build the ships, the US Navy would also strengthen a domestic industrial base hungry for stable work. On paper, the plan was a model of restraint and common sense.
In reality, that restraint didn’t last long. The US Navy began its modifications to the original design and the changes snowballed. Today, the number of alterations sits at more than 500. Commonality with the FREMM has dropped from the intended 85 percent to a mere 15 percent. The ship is now 23 feet longer, 500 tons heavier, and years behind its original schedule. A program designed to avoid the pitfalls of its predecessors had, instead, tripped headfirst into familiar ones.
The program’s turbulence has been driven less by technology or a lack of shipbuilding capacity than by chronic indecision, which is especially striking given the origins of the program. When the FFG(X) effort kicked off in 2017, the US Navy was trying to learn from the bruising experience of the LCS, a much-hyped vessel whose two variants were plagued by mechanical issues, overruns, and unmet expectations. Eager to avoid that fate, the service adopted a “parent design strategy”—in this case, leaning heavily on the FREMM to sidestep expensive development cycles. But as design reviews unfolded, the service kept adding “just one more” improvement. Metrics meant to track progress failed to flag growing complexity. And with pressure mounting to begin construction, work on the lead ship started before the design was anywhere near stable, the shipbuilding equivalent of laying a house’s foundation while still rearranging the blueprints.
Predictably, the consequences spiralled outward: components didn’t fit, systems interfered with each other, and the ship’s weight crept upward in increments that eventually reached more than 10 percent, a particularly dangerous margin for a vessel that needs both speed and upgrade capacity over its lifetime. That weight increase forced the US Navy to consider shedding propulsion capability just to keep the ship within survivable limits—a compromise that could reduce top speed and operational flexibility. The irony is painful: the US Navy pursued additional capability only to risk undermining the ship’s performance in ways reminiscent of the very problems they tried to escape after the LCS era.
The Constellation class was supposed to be a triumph of disciplined design and pragmatic acquisition. Instead, it has become a lesson in how quickly good intentions can be swamped by shifting requirements and institutional habits. The FREMM was chosen because it worked. The Navy believed it could take that reliability, add a handful of American enhancements, and field a frigate suited for modern maritime competition. What it got instead was a ship that barely resembles its parent with a construction timeline drifting steadily into decades. And now, it will only have two of them.
Where Now?
The vision behind FFG(X) wasn’t wrong. The US Navy genuinely needs a capable, cost-effective frigate to fill the widening gap between small patrol ships and large destroyers. It needs a vessel that can operate independently or as part of a larger group, armed with the sensors, weapons, and endurance demanded by a more contested and technologically sophisticated ocean. But visions require discipline to become reality, and discipline is what the Constellation-class program has lacked.
The question now is what next? The options depend on what Phelan and his team saw as the real problem with Constellation. If he disagrees with the concept of buying a design and wants an American-designed small surface combatant, that process will need to be completed swiftly and efficiently so that shipyards can start churning them out. However, given the US Navy’s poor record on designing its own ships over the past couple of decades, the smart money would be on this path leading to another long-overdue design plagued by cost overruns and operational problems. More budget, more time, and more little crappy ships.
If Phelan wants a frigate that works, cheaply and quickly, then the best option is to buy off the shelf again, but to stop the US Navy messing with the design beyond what is absolutely necessary for American requirements. Whether that involves going back to the 15 percent commonality version of the FREMM or picking another of the several decent frigates that exist (the British Type 26, the Spanish F110, or the South Korean FFX, to name only a few) as the parent design, the basic premise of the Constellation program can be resuscitated if design discipline can be held.
For once, the problem is not shipbuilding capacity. The core issue is whether the US Navy can be prevented from shooting itself in the foot for a third time. America’s ability to get the small surface combatants it needs depends solely on the US Navy’s willingness to pick a design and leave it alone long enough for a shipyard to actually build it. This should not be such a difficult task to accomplish.
About the author: Dr. Emma Salisbury is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s National Security Program, an Associate Fellow at the Royal Navy Strategic Studies Centre, and a Contributing Editor at War on the Rocks.
Published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute
Founded in 1955, FPRI (http://www.fpri.org/) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization devoted to bringing the insights of scholarship to bear on the development of policies that advance U.S. national interests and seeks to add perspective to events by fitting them into the larger historical and cultural context of international politics.
The Fugitive Oligarch, The Cryptocurrency, And A ‘Wild’ Kremlin-Blessed Sanctions Evasion Scheme – Analysis
The Russian State Financial Network Behind A7A5: The A7A5 stablecoin is backed by a network of Russian state-owned banks, with Promsvyazbank (controlled by former spy chief Mikhail Fradkov's son) holding ruble reserves for the token. The scheme involves sanctioned entities including crypto exchanges Garantex and Grinex, and appears designed to facilitate cross-border payments while circumventing international sanctions. Graphic: RFE/RL Graphics, Source: Media reports
What do a fugitive Moldovan tycoon and a Kyrgyz-based cryptocurrency have to do with Russia’s efforts to evade Western war sanctions and build an entirely new financial system separate from the West?
Russian President Vladimir Putin provided a clue in early September when he attended a virtual ribbon-cutting ceremony for the opening of a financial services company’s new branch in the Pacific port city of Vladivostok.
It’s not the type of event Putin typically attends. Newly launched battleships? Yes. Kremlin medal-award ceremonies? Yes. Branch openings? Not so much.
But the company, A7 LLC, is not your typical financial services firm.
Its top executives include Ilan Shor, a fugitive oligarch implicated in what’s been called the “theft of the century”: a scandal involving more than $1 billion stolen from Moldova, one of the poorest countries in Europe. His co-executive heads Russia’s eighth-largest bank, closely tied to Russia’s military-industrial complex — and happens to be the son of a former Russian prime minister and former intelligence director.
In short speeches to Putin via video link, the two boasted of how much money their company had handled in the 11 months since A7’s establishment: more than 7 trillion rubles ($12.4 billion).
If true, that’s a lot of money: as much as 12 percent of the foreign trade of all Russian businesses taken together, according to one calculation.
And then there’s the cryptocurrency A7 launched in January.
Called A7A5, the coin recorded $41.2 billion in total transfers by July; by August, it was up to $51.2 billion. As of November, A7A5 — which is the world’s first ruble-pegged stablecoin — had reported some $79 billion in volume since its launch, according to Chainanalysis, a New York-based firm that has done extensive research on A7.
“That is a phenomenal amount of money. That is enormous, for an organization that didn’t exist a year ago,” said Elise Thomas, an Australian researcher and author of multiple reports by the Center for Information Resilience, a London-based NGO that focuses on rights abuses and war crimes. “That’s wild. The scale of it is really significant.”
“The personal involvement of Putin in opening their Vladivostok office, that shocked me as well, that he was sort of willing to personally put his face in connection with the opening of A7,” she said in an interview.
With a thread running from Moldova to the glittery skyscrapers of Moscow’s Federation Tower to Kyrgyzstan, whose leaders want the small Central Asian country to be a mecca for crypto innovation, A7A5, Western and Moldovan officials say, is key to the Kremlin’s efforts to blunt Western sanctions imposed following Moscow’s 2022 all-out invasion of Ukraine.
“The A7A5 token…is a unique sanctions evasion tool,” said Andrew Fierman, head of national security intelligence at Chainanalysis.
And not just sanctions evasion. The Kremlin’s wider goal is to build a parallel financial system, experts say, outside the existing networks where Western banks and the US dollar dominate.
“It’s a big deal because of who Ilan Shor is, and the fact this is designed…to try to operate outside of the reach and influence of the US-dollar denominated, traditional financial systems,” said Carole House, who has served as White House national security council adviser for cybersecurity policy.
“It’s wild to see that kind of support coming directly from the government, but also not surprising given the objectives they want, to offset the impact of sanctions,” she said.
The efforts have not gone totally unnoticed in the West.
On October 23, the European Union announced sanctions against A7A5, A7, and related companies, calling the cryptocurrency “a prominent tool for financing activities supporting [Russia’s ] war of aggression.”
Neither A7 nor A7A5 responded to e-mails sent by RFE/RL seeking comment. Shor did not respond to an interview request. A Central Asian Mecca For Crypto
Since at least 2021, the government in Bishkek has tried to turn Kyrgyzstan into a cryptocurrency hub, seeking to attract investors, miners, and exchanges. As of 2025, it reported at least 13 crypto exchanges registered, and it has laid the groundwork for a national cryptocurrency called USDKG.
Corporate registry documents obtained by RFE/RL from the Kyrgyz Justice Ministry show that the issuer of the A7A5 stablecoin is a Kyrgyz company called Old Vector, which was first registered in December 2024. The documents also show that the company providing the coin to Old Vector is A7-Kyrgyzstan LLC.
Between January and July, the registered headquarters for Old Vector was a small, ramshackle house surrounded by newer, more upscale buildings and single-family homes.
In July, when RFE/RL reporters visited the house, which is set back from the dirt road behind a rusting blue metal fence and concrete blocks, two young boys who answered the door said they were unaware of any company that was registered at their address.A next-door neighbor said there was no company by that name at that address.
About a month later, Old Vector’s corporate headquarters moved to a different address on the outskirts of Bishkek, a multistory building called South Park made up mainly of apartments.
A7 itself has registered a number of interrelated companies in Bishkek, according to Justice Ministry documents obtained by RFE/RL.
A7-Kyrgyzstan, which was registered on January 17, is housed on the upper floors of a complex that used to be a major shopping center. RFE/RL reporters tried to access the floor where the offices were reported to be, but security guards blocked them from entering.
Another Shor-related entity called Evrazia has also registered trademarks for several similarly named companies in Bishkek. Established in Moscow as a nonprofit organization, Evrazia has been implicated in a range of activities aimed at destabilizing elections in Moldova. The European Union hit Evrazia with sanctions in October 2024.
Though launched in January, A7A5 itself did not begin trading publicly until February, when it appeared on a Moscow cryptocurrency exchange called Garantex.
“Garantex had drawn scrutiny for years from Western law enforcement, which alleged it served as a conduit for funds used in money laundering, ransomware, computer hacking, and sanctions violations. The exchange was popular because, among other things, it allowed an easy way to exchange cryptocurrencies for more popular stablecoins like USDT, which is pegged to the dollar, making it easier to cash out for less volatile currencies.
In 2022, the US Treasury Department hit Garantex with financial sanctions. But it wasn’t until three years later that the exchange shuttered operations after two of Garantex’s principal operators were indicted by a US grand jury for money laundering.US authorities seized several Garantex websites. German and Finnish agencies confiscated servers hosting Garantex’s operations. More than $26 million in cryptocurrencies that officials said was used for money laundering was also seized by the US Secret Service.
In the weeks immediately preceding and following the March 2025 seizure, analysts said billions of A7A5 coins were shifted away from Garantex to a new exchange called Grinex, which was first registered in Kyrgyzstan the previous December. The vast majority of A7A5’s transactions now occur on Grinex and a smaller exchange called Meer.kg.
The connection between Grinex and A7 is unclear. A Kyrgyz man named in Justice Ministry filings as the founder of Grinex refused to comment to RFE/RL on whether his company is related to the crypto exchange of the same name.
US financial investigators, however, say Grinex was created specifically to help traders whose funds were frozen when Garantex was shut down recoup their money — using A7A5. A Tug-Of-War In Chisinau
Moldova has been at the center of a tug-of-war between Europe and Russia for years.
The 2020 election of Maia Sandu, a Western-trained economist who worked at the World Bank, tilted the scales to the West. Shor wants to tip the scales back toward Russia.
In 2014, Moldova was roiled by a massive bank fraud that resulted in more than $1 billion being siphoned out of the country — nearly one-eighth of its gross domestic product (GDP). Authorities accused Shor of being the mastermind of the “theft of the century” and he fled the country in 2019, splitting his time between Israel, then Moscow. He was sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison in 2023 by a Chisinau court; his eponymous political party has been banned.
Over at least three election campaigns, Moldovan and Western officials say Shor has repeatedly sought to buy votes, spread disinformation, and even recruited and trained young Moldovans to stoke unrest and provoke police. Among the schemes officials say they uncovered involved money transfers to Moldovans using bank cards issued by Promsvyazbank, the state-owned Russian bank that Shor has partnered with.
Shor worked with “Russian individuals to create a political alliance to control Moldova’s parliament, which would then support several pieces of legislation in the interests of the Russian Federation,” the US Treasury Department said in October 2022, when he was first sanctioned.
In the run-up to last year’s presidential election, Moldovan authorities accused Shor of orchestrating a scheme that funneled more than $15 million from Russian banks to the accounts of more than 130,000 Moldovan citizens.
The scheme included sending pre-loaded bank cards, using the Russian “Mir” card payment system, to people who could travel to the breakaway Transdniester region to withdraw cash. Officially part of Moldova, Transdniester operates in a legal twilight zone, with close economic ties to Moscow.
Moldova’s prime minister later said Russian agents spent nearly $220 million in total trying to influence the 2024 vote, which Sandu won with about 55 percent of ballots cast. A simultaneous referendum asking Moldovans about joining the European Union passed but was far closer than predicted.
Days before September’s parliamentary elections, Moldovan authorities said they had uncovered another destabilization campaign and conducted raids at scores of locations around the country, arresting more than 70 people. Some of those arrested had allegedly traveled to Bosnian and Serbian camps for training to confront and provoke police. The campaign, Moldovan authorities said, used “the Shor group’s network and external resources.”
“The sanctions evasion and the [Moldovan] political interference, I don’t think they are directly connected,” Thomas said. “I think the sanctions evasion is the main game at the moment. Having said that, obviously, Shor has significant personal stakes in Moldova and probably cares about it a lot at a personal level.”
“What Shor’s doing, it’s not just a Moldovan problem,” said one Moldovan official who spoke on condition that he not be named. “He provides Russia with a service, to evade sanctions, and he makes money off of it.”
Promsvyazbank did not respond to messages seeking comment. ‘An Infrastructure Resilient To Any External Influences’
Since around 2022, much of Russia’s banking system has been isolated from Western financial networks, in response to the Ukraine war. The banking sector has been cut off from SWIFT, the messaging system that is essential for global banking operations, while Visa and Mastercard have cut off Russia from their payment systems and Western banks have frozen Russian government accounts.
As a result, Russian authorities have tried to build a parallel financial system. Other countries have signaled support for the effort, including China, Brazil, India, and other major economies.
“The development of the A7A5 token appears to be the next logical step in Russia’s efforts to develop alternative payment systems to circumvent sanctions,” Fierman said.
As Putin watched at the September 4 event in Vladivostok, Shor appeared nervous, shifting from side to side as he described the goals of the “financial hub” called the Far Eastern International Financial and Settlement Center.
“To date, in 10 months of operation, we have conducted more than 7.5 trillion rubles worth of transactions,” he said. “Today, given that more than 50 percent of all our settlements are made to Asian countries, we have decided to open a financial hub here.”
Standing alongside Shor was his co-executive: Pyotr Fradkov, who has headed the Moscow-based Promsvyazbank since 2018. His father is Mikhail Fradkov, Putin’s prime minister from 2004-2007 and director of the Foreign Intelligence Service for nine years after that.
Known as PSB, Promsvyazbank was nationalized by the Russian government that same year amid a banking crisis and repurposed to serve Russia’s growing military industrial sector. In 2022, PSB was hit by Treasury sanctions, as was Pyotr Fradkov.
Promsvyazbank holds 49 percent of A7. The rubles the A7A5 coin is pegged to, making it a stablecoin, are deposits held by the bank.
A7 is housed in the gleaming new modern skyscrapers of Moscow’s Federation Tower — the same location Garantex was registered at, along with several companies alleged to be tied to notorious ransomware schemes.
A7 is also making its own push to become a “brick-and-mortar” company by opening up branches for customers to make deposits, withdraw cash, trade cryptocurrencies, and make cross-border payments. Aside from Moscow and Vladivostok, the company says it is setting up branches in cities abroad such as Harare, Zimbabwe, and Lagos, Nigeria.
That same month, the European Union targeted A7 for the first time, saying it was “linked to efforts to influence the presidential elections and the 2024 constitutional referendum on EU accession.”
Around the same time, the number of A7A5 coins in circulation surged by more than 240 percent, according to Elliptic, an analytics firm, with over $1 billion in daily transfers of A7A5.
Chinese companies and individuals are reported to be the largest user of A7 payment platforms to date, according to corporate marketing documents published online and highlighted by the Center for Information Resilience.
Western authorities are struggling to keep up.
In mid-August, about three weeks before Shor and Fradkov appeared in the video conference with Putin, US and British authorities hit A7 and more than a half dozen interrelated companies, including Grinex and Old Vector, with more sanctions.
A month later, however, A7A5’s total market capitalization — essentially, the value of all the coins in circulation — skyrocketed by nearly 250 percent, making it the largest stablecoin not pegged to the US dollar.
“We have already proven that a national digital currency can be not only an alternative to the dollar but also a driver of global change,” A7A5 said in a triumphant post to Telegram.
In a post to Telegram, A7A5 mocked the announcement.
“What will this change? Nothing!” the company said. “Because from the very beginning, we built an infrastructure that was resilient to any external influences and restrictions.”
Senior International Correspondent Mike Eckel reported from Chisinau and Prague. RFE/RL Kygyz Service Correspondent Ernist Nurmatov reported from Bishkek.
RFE RL
RFE/RL journalists report the news in 21 countries where a free press is banned by the government or not fully established.
ALASKA
Pebble Mine, Halted By EPA Order, Gets Support From National Development Groups
Kaskanak Creek in the Bristol Bay’s Kvichak watershed is seen from the air on Sept. 27, 2011. The Kvichak watershed would be damaged by the Pebble mine project, the Environmental Protection Agency has determined. (Photo provided by Environmental Protection Agency)
(Alaska Beacon) — Developers’ efforts to overturn the cancellation of a vast gold and copper mine planned for southwest Alaska are getting a boost from national mining and pro-business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
On Nov. 24 and Nov. 25, the Chamber and the National Mining Association filed separatefriend-of-the-court briefs in the lawsuit brought by the developers of the proposed Pebble Mine against the Environmental Protection Agency, which vetoed the mine.
Neither group has intervened in the case against the EPA, but the briefs represent the groups’ support for the proposed mine and offer legal arguments that Judge Sharon Gleason could consider as she debates whether to move the project forward.
In 2023, the EPA invoked a rarely used “veto” clause of the Clean Water Act to say that there was no way that the proposed Pebble Mine could be developed without significant harm to the environment. The large mineral deposit is located at the headwaters of Bristol Bay, the most abundant sockeye salmon fishery in the world.
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case directly, which has left the issue in front of Judge Sharon Gleason in the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska.
Another lawsuit filed by the state claims that if the veto is upheld, the federal government will owe Alaska $700 billion, the state’s estimate for the value of the mine if built as planned. That case has been put on hold until the District Court rules.
In July, the administration of President Donald Trump indicated that it might try to settle the suit and withdraw the veto. If that occurs, it could come before Jan. 2, when the EPA is slated to file a written response to the plaintiffs’ motions for summary judgment.
If the EPA continues to fight the case, the last written arguments are scheduled to be finished by the end of February. Any oral argument would take place afterward.
If the federal government drops the case, it doesn’t mean a free path for Pebble: Several environmental organizations, fishing groups, tribal organizations and Bristol Bay locals have also intervened in the case and intend to fight in court.
The Alaska Legislature is also expected to consider a bill that would block both Pebble and any successor projects that might emerge.
In its brief, the National Mining Association — joined by the American Exploration and Mining Association and the Alaska Miners Association — call the EPA’s veto “overly broad” and say that if it is upheld, the act “will almost certainly chill investment in domestic mining activities” because other proposed mines could also be subject to a veto.
The Chamber of Commerce, which has backed the Pebble Mine project since at least 2022, said that if the veto is upheld, it has the potential of encouraging other vetoes, which would “disrupt important industries in which many of the Chamber’s members participate.”
Alaska Beacon
Alaska Beacon is an independent, nonpartisan news organization focused on connecting Alaskans to their state government. Alaska, like many states, has seen a decline in the coverage of state news. We aim to reverse that.
Tehran Chokes As World’s Most Polluted City, A Deadly Price For Regime Neglect – OpEd
While millions of Iranians gasp for breath, the clerical regime has turned the nation’s cities into toxic death traps. In recent days, Tehran has earned the disgraceful title of the world’s most polluted city, surpassing even New Delhi, forcing the shutdown of schools and businesses across 14 provinces. The regime’s own media outlets describe the capital as being “lost in smog” and “trapped in a cage of pollution,” a grim acknowledgment of a crisis that is spiraling out of control.
This environmental catastrophe is not a natural disaster or an unfortunate byproduct of development. It is a crime, meticulously engineered by the corrupt ruling theocracy under Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The poisoned air choking Iran’s citizens is the direct result of systemic corruption, criminal negligence, and a conscious policy that prioritizes the enrichment of regime mafias and the funding of terrorism over the lives and health of the Iranian people. The deadly toll of a man-made catastrophe
The human cost of the regime’s policies is staggering. According to the regime’s own Deputy Health Minister, 58,000 Iranians die prematurely from air pollution-related illnesses every year—a figure more than double the fatalities from road accidents.
This is a public health emergency by any measure. Official reports reveal that air pollution is responsible for:24% of all lung cancer deaths in the country.
28% of all fatal strokes.
30% of deaths from heart attacks.
In total, an astonishing 15% of all deaths in Iran are attributable to the toxic air, a rate significantly higher than the global average. This slow-motion massacre also carries a devastating economic price tag. The World Bank estimates that pollution costs the Iranian economy over $23 billion annually, wiping out nearly 5% of the nation’s GDP through healthcare costs and lost productivity. An engineered crisis: regime mafias and criminal neglect
The regime publicly blames factors like the “dilapidated vehicle fleet,” but fails to mention that this fleet is the product of a corrupt automotive mafia controlled by Khamenei and the IRGC. These entities intentionally produce substandard vehicles that consume over 10 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers, double the rate of standard foreign cars, to maximize their profits at the expense of public health.
Even more sinister is the regime’s reliance on burning mazut, a highly toxic fuel oil banned in much of the world. In a nation sitting on vast natural gas reserves, the regime has allowed its refinery infrastructure to decay and now forces power plants to burn this poison. This year alone, officials admit to distributing nearly 300 million liters of mazut, deliberately prioritizing power plants near major cities like Tehran, Isfahan, and Karaj. The regime’s claims of using “low-sulfur” mazut are a transparent deception; the supply is grossly insufficient, and the Ministry of Oil has been granted a legal waiver to continue violating standards until early 2027, effectively sanctioning the poisoning of its own people.
This crisis persists not because of a lack of solutions, but, as one state-affiliated expert admitted, a “lack of political will.” The “Clean Air Act,” on the books since 2017, remains completely unimplemented. This deliberate inaction is the regime’s core policy. A clear choice: terror and repression over people’s lives
While Iranians choke on poisoned air, Khamenei plows billions of dollars into his true priorities: the machinery of domestic repression, the illicit nuclear program, ballistic missile development, and funding terrorist proxies across the Middle East. The regime has the resources to fix this crisis but chooses not to. Other countries like China and South Korea have made significant strides in curbing air pollution through political will and investment, proving it is a solvable problem.
Under the presidency of Masoud Pezeshkian, who has been in office for over a year, the situation has only deteriorated. The number of “unhealthy” days in Tehran this year has increased by a staggering 40% compared to the same period last year. This demonstrates that no faction within the despotic regime offers a solution; they are all complicit in this crime against the Iranian people.
The toxic smog engulfing Iran’s cities is a physical manifestation of the regime’s corrupt and destructive nature. For the people of Iran, the fight for clean air is inseparable from the fight for freedom. The air will only become breathable when the nation is cleansed of this murderous theocracy.
The term “New Space Economy” (NSE) has become one of the most prominent buzzwords of the past decade. It refers to the disruptive, commercially driven transformation now taking place in the space sector. This is in sharp contrast to the traditional, government-led “Old Space” era. Several forces are driving the rise of this concept. First, there is the technological maturation, especially breakthroughs in small, low-cost satellite systems and reusable rocket technology. Second, the influx of private capital, with venture investors pouring significant funds into space startups. Third, the emergence of innovative business models, including satellite internet, space tourism, and dedicated small-satellite launch services.
With SpaceX completing the first commercial spacewalk in human history, China unveiling its first space-tourism program at the 27th China International Hi-Tech Fair (CHTF), and the EU advancing its multibillion-euro IRIS² constellation, the NSE has evolved from a frontier-tech concept into a central force reshaping global industry. At its core, it seeks to build a commercially oriented, market-driven economic system that integrates aerospace manufacturing, space-based services, resource development, and digital technologies. This encompasses the entire value chain from upstream materials and key component R&D, to midstream rocket launches and satellite-constellation deployment, to downstream applications such as satellite communications, space tourism, space-based computing, and deep-space resource exploration. Its fundamental vision is to make space more accessible, diversify market participation, and promote shared use of resources, that is, transforming space from an exclusive realm of exploration into a shared economic domain for humanity and injecting fresh momentum into global economic growth.
How then, will the size of NSE be in the future?
Current estimates for the market size over the next decade come primarily from forecasts by major analytical institutions such as Morgan Stanley and Bank of America. They project that the global space economy, including launch services, satellite manufacturing, ground equipment, and application services, could reach USD 1 trillion to as much as USD 3 trillion by the mid-2030s or by 2040. As for the revenue already being generated today, estimates as of late 2024 indicate that the global NSE, counting both government budgets and commercial activities, has reached USD 550–600 billion.
China’s NSE started relatively late. Successful private rocket launches remain very few, and the industry is still far from achieving economically viable reusability with powered return and landing. Therefore, if one measures the NSE strictly by distinguishing commercial activity from government-led programs, China’s actual commercial output is close to zero, indicating that it is still in its early developmental stage.
In this trillion-dollar blue-ocean race, how will the future unfold?
The openness of space has become the key determinant of both the quality of NSE’s development and global competitiveness. Its breadth and depth will directly define the boundaries and potential heights of the industry. ANBOUND’s founder Kung Chan notes that the space long encircled by missiles and fighter jets, protected jointly by air force and defense systems, is in fact a vast emerging market. Once this space is opened to broader participation, it will immediately generate substantial economic benefits. The essence of space openness lies in breaking the traditional aerospace sector’s technological, market, and resource barriers. Unlike the conventional “application–approval–exclusive use” model of closed airspace management, the explosive growth of the NSE will depend heavily on China’s institutional efforts to open its “high frontier” in space. It is only through such openness that can really bring the scale effects and innovation momentum.
According to data from the International Telecommunication Union, low-Earth orbit can accommodate only about 60,000 satellites, yet the number of low-orbit satellites already planned globally exceeds 100,000. This sharp mismatch between the scarcity of orbital resources and the explosive growth in demand can only be resolved through a scientifically designed and orderly mechanism for space openness. From a regulatory perspective, the United States has made the most notable institutional adjustments. To advance space openness, the U.S. has streamlined approval processes and allowed private companies to conduct routine test flights within designated airspace. This has accelerated the iteration of key technologies such as reusable rockets, and this is one of the main reasons that the U.S. has taken the lead in the NSE.
The opening of space is a prerequisite for the NSE to break through developmental bottlenecks and achieve large-scale growth. According to Kung Chan, opening the sky at a higher dimension is essentially an expansion and extension of a nation’s “high frontier”. The concept of the high frontier was proposed in the 1970s by American space expert and strategist Gerard K. O’Neill, who believed that the ultimate solution to humanity’s resource and environmental challenges lay beyond Earth, specifically, in harnessing extraterrestrial resources and building large, self-sustaining space settlements like the O’Neill Cylinders. These would allow human civilization to extend beyond Earth’s gravity and into the domain of the high frontier. His vision later inspired strategic entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk, whose continued efforts have gradually brought aspects of this concept closer to reality.
In building China’s own high frontier, space openness must balance both security and development. In its active participation in an orderly opening of space, it is equally essential for China to ensure that security considerations are integrated alongside developmental goals.
As the pioneer of the NSE, the U.S. owes its leading position largely to the ecological advantages created by open access to air and space. Through legislation such as the Commercial Space Launch Act and the Space Resource Exploration and Utilization Act, the U.S. has built a flexible and orderly regulatory environment that allows private companies to participate in core areas, including rocket launches, space station operations, and even deep-space resource extraction. This forms a virtuous cycle in which the government provides the platform and enterprises drive innovation. NASA has accelerated SpaceX’s breakthrough in reusable rocket technology by opening access to launch-site airspace and technical documentation. This in turn has enabled the U.S. to secure first-mover advantage in low-Earth-orbit satellite constellations. Today, the Starlink program alone accounts for around 70% of all low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, creating a substantial barrier in orbital resource allocation. On the other hand, what deserves even closer attention is the deep integration of U.S. space openness with military applications. Through the Starshield program, Starlink satellites now provide military communication and Earth-observation services, demonstrating significant operational value during the Russia–Ukraine conflict. This has further strengthened American strategic advantage in the competition for space and airspace dominance.
Europe, on the other hand, emphasizes regional collaborative openness, aiming to build an integrated airspace ecosystem. The European Union has invested over EUR 10 billion to launch the IRIS² program, planning to deploy 290 low- and medium-Earth-orbit satellites. The main objective of this is to break down national airspace barriers through unified airspace management and coordination mechanisms, thereby creating a communications network that covers Europe and potentially the world. This, in fact, is aiming to challenge the U.S. monopoly in low-orbit satellite communications. The UK-based company OneWeb, by sharing airspace resources with multiple European countries, has nearly completed the deployment of 660 low-Earth-orbit satellites, providing communication services to multiple government agencies. Meanwhile, Japan is focusing on both military and civilian needs. In its fiscal 2025 defense budget, it allocated JPY 283.3 billion for low-orbit satellite constellations. By taking a leading role in airspace resource planning, Japan plans to achieve breakthroughs in low-orbit internet, remote sensing, and other areas, enhancing its influence and strategic voice in the competition for airspace.
The German Federal Ministry of Defense recently released its space strategy, which focuses on three areas of action. These are identifying space-related hazards and threats, promoting international cooperation and maintaining the order of outer space, and establishing deterrence while strengthening defensive capabilities. The strategy notes that space is no longer used solely for peaceful research but is increasingly becoming a stage for conflict, strategic competition, and global power projection. As socio-economic activities such as communications, navigation, Earth observation, and time calibration become ever more dependent on space-based services, space security has emerged as an essential political task.
Germany’s space strategy aims to ensure that the country maintains capabilities for both civilian and military space operations during peacetime, crises, and wartime. It is a key measure for safeguarding national interests and reinforcing Germany’s position as a “responsible actor in space”. Close cooperation with NATO allies and international partners is considered a central pillar of the strategy. Speaking at a press conference, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius emphasized that Germany will not pursue aggressive actions in space, but must possess the capability to conduct defensive countermeasures to protect its satellites. According to the Ministry of Defense, by 2030 the department plans to allocate EUR 35 billion from the defense budget for aerospace and space security.
Compared with the U.S. and Europe, China faces several challenges in the field of space strategy. First, the efficiency of dynamic space management needs improvement. Currently, China’s airspace approval process is still dominated by authorization, and its mechanisms for dynamic adjustment lack flexibility, making it difficult to meet the high-frequency and large-scale launch demands of commercial space activities. Second, the depth of international space cooperation is still wanting. The deployment and services of China’s satellite constellations are concentrated mainly within the country and in the regions participating in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In this regard, China’s influence in global airspace resource allocation and rule-making needs to be strengthened. Third, coordination between the military and civilian space sectors is not yet fully developed. Responsibilities in space operations remain somewhat separated between the military and civilian spheres, and resource utilization efficiency needs further optimization. These issues, to some extent, constrain the large-scale development of China’s emerging space economy and do not fully match the country’s status as a major spacefaring nation, and more works need to be done to resolve them. Final analysis conclusion:
The New Space Economy is entering a crucial phase of rapid expansion, and competition for global airspace and orbital resources has become increasingly intense. In 2024 alone, global commercial space investment reached USD 58 billion, three times the level in 2019, with about 80% directed toward sectors closely tied to greater airspace access, including low-Earth-orbit satellite constellations and reusable launch vehicles. As new business models emerge, from space tourism and space-based computing to deep-space resource exploration, the strategic importance of airspace and orbital resources will only become more pronounced, turning them into a “strategic high ground” that nations are striving to secure. For China, broadening access to airspace while balancing the imperatives of national security is no longer a matter of choice. It has become a necessity that is closely related to the nation’s competitiveness in its space industry and the country’s long-term strategic security.
He Yan is a researcher at ANBOUND, an independent think tank.
Anbound
Anbound Consulting (Anbound) is an independent Think Tank with the headquarter based in Beijing. Established in 1993, Anbound specializes in public policy research, and enjoys a professional reputation in the areas of strategic forecasting, policy solutions and risk analysis. Anbound's research findings are widely recognized and create a deep interest within public media, academics and experts who are also providing consulting service to the State Council of China.
Helium leak on the exoplanet WASP-107b
An international team including UNIGE observed with the JWST huge clouds of helium escaping from the exoplanet Wasp-107b.
Artist's view of WASP-107b. The planet’s low density and the intense irradiation from its star allow helium to escape the planet and form an asymmetric extended and diffuse envelope around it. Infrared observations with the JWST satellite have enable to observe this phenomenon.
An international team, including astronomers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the National Centre of Competence in Research PlanetS, has observed giant clouds of helium escaping from the exoplanet WASP-107b. Obtained with the James Webb Space Telescope, these observations were modeled using tools developed at UNIGE. Their analysis, published in the journal Nature Astronomy, provides valuable clues for understanding this atmospheric escape phenomenon, which influences the evolution of exoplanets and shapes some of their characteristics.
Sometimes a planet’s atmosphere escapes into space. This is the case for Earth, which irreversibly loses a little over 3 kg of matter (mainly hydrogen) every second. This process, called ‘‘atmospheric escape’’, is of particular interest to astronomers for the study of exoplanets located very close to their star, which, heated to extreme temperatures, are precisely subject to this phenomenon. It plays a major role in their evolution.
Thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope, an international team including scientists from the Observatory of the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and McGill, Chicago, and Montreal universities has succeeded in observing large streams of helium gas escaping from WASP-107b. This exoplanet is located more than 210 light-years from our solar system. This is the first time this chemical element has been identified with the JWST on an exoplanet, allowing for a detailed description of the phenomenon.
Super-puff exoplanets
Discovered in 2017, WASP-107b is located seven times closer to its star than Mercury, the closest planet to our Sun. Its density is very low because it is the size of Jupiter but has only one-tenth of its mass, placing it among the so-called ‘‘super-puff’’, a category of exoplanets with extremely low densities.
The vast helium flow was detected in the extension of its atmosphere, called the ‘‘exosphere’’. This cloud partially blocks the star’s light even before the planet passes in front of it. ‘‘Our atmospheric escape models confirm the presence of helium flows, both ahead and behind the planet, extending in the direction of its orbital motion to nearly ten times the planet’s radius,’’ explains Yann Carteret, a doctoral student in the Department of Astronomy at the Faculty of Science of the University of Geneva and co-author of the study.
Valuable clues
In addition to helium, astronomers were able to confirm the presence of water and traces of chemical mixtures (including carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and ammonia) in the planet’s atmosphere, while noting the absence of methane, which the JWST is capable of detecting. These are valuable clues for reconstructing the history of WASP-107b’s formation and migration: the planet formed far from its current orbit, then moved closer to its star, which would explain its bloated atmosphere and loss of gas.
The study on WASP-107b is a key reference for better understanding the evolution and dynamics of these distant worlds. “Observing and modeling atmospheric escape is a major research area at the UNIGE Department of Astronomy because it is thought to be responsible for some of the characteristics observed in the exoplanet population,” explains Vincent Bourrier, senior lecturer and research fellow in the Department of Astronomy at the UNIGE Faculty of Science and co-author of the study.
“On Earth, atmospheric escape is too weak to drastically influence our planet. But it would be responsible for the absence of water on our close neighbor, Venus. It is therefore essential to fully understand the mechanisms at work in this phenomenon, which could erode the atmosphere of certain rocky exoplanets,” he concludes.
Continuous helium absorption from both the leading and trailing tails of WASP-107 b
Article Publication Date
1-Dec-2025
Newly discovered star opens 'laboratory' for solving cosmic dust mystery
Building on the University of Arizona's leadership in interferometry, a Steward Observatory-led team of astronomers probe mysterious "hot dust" around stars that has vexed astronomers for decades.
Exozodiacal dust, depicted in this artist's illustration as a glowing white haze above the horizon of a hypothetical habitable planet orbiting another star, was found to exist in such large quantities in the Kappa Tucanae star system that it has astronomers puzzled over its origin.
Seventy light-years from Earth, a star called KappaTucanae A harbors one of astronomy's most perplexing mysteries: dust so hot it glows at more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, existing impossibly close to its host star, where it should have been vaporized or swiftly blown away. Now, astronomers with the University of Arizona have discovered something that could finally help solve this cosmic puzzle: a companion star swinging through the region where this enigmatic dust persists.
The discovery, published in the Astronomical Journal and led by Thomas Stuber, a postdoctoral research associate at the U of A's Steward Observatory, represents the highest-contrast detection of a stellar companion ever achieved with the European Southern Observatory's MATISSE instrument. It provides scientists with their first natural "laboratory" for understanding hot exozodiacal dust, a phenomenon that complicates humanity's quest to find potentially habitable Earth-like planets around other stars.
Hot exozodiacal dust presents a fundamental challenge to scientists’ understanding of planetary systems. These microscopic particles, as fine as smoke from a fire, orbit so close to their stars that the combination of high temperature and intense radiation pressure should cause them to disappear almost instantly.
"If we see dust in such large amounts, it needs to be replaced rapidly, or there needs to be some sort of mechanism that extends the lifetime of the dust," Stuber said.
The mystery deepens when considering that this dust exists around some of the very same stars around which astronomers hope to find Earth-like planets. NASA's upcoming Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), planned for launch in the 2040s, will use advanced coronagraphs to block starlight and reveal faint exoplanets. But hot dust creates what researchers call "coronagraphic leakage"—scattered light that could mask the signals from potentially habitable worlds. Understanding its origin and composition will be necessary in steering exoplanet research in the decades ahead.
Using a technique called interferometry, which combines light from multiple telescopes to achieve the resolution of a single, much larger telescope, Stuber's team made repeated observations of Kappa Tucanae A between 2022 and 2024. Having led exozodiacal dust research around the world for over a decade before coming together for this project, the international team expected to study the dust's behavior over time. Instead, the researchers discovered something entirely unexpected: a stellar companion locked in a highly eccentric orbit that brings it within 0.3 astronomical units of the primary star—closer than any planet in our solar system gets to the sun.
This discovery transforms Kappa Tucanae A from a puzzling system into a complex stellar laboratory, according to Stuber. The companion star follows an extremely elliptical path, swinging far out into the system before diving back through the dust-rich inner region.
"There's basically no way that this companion is not somehow connected to that dust production," notes Steward Observatory Associate Astronomer Steve Ertel, a co-author on the paper. "It has to be dynamically interacting with the dust."
This breakthrough builds on decades of technological leadership at Steward Observatory in interferometry. The observatory's Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer (LBTI), funded by NASA and built on Mount Graham, revolutionized the search for warm exozodiacal dust, the less extreme sibling of hot dust, with its unprecedented stability and sensitivity.
The LBTI's unique capabilities propelled Steward to international prominence in the study of exozodiacal dust, attracting major NASA, NSF and philanthropic funding and positioning the observatory at the forefront of exoplanet research. Now, that expertise is being leveraged for the next generation of instruments, including a new European nulling interferometer that will be 50 times more sensitive than previous observations.
The lineage runs deep: Denis Defrère, who leads the European instrument development, was previously trained at Steward as a postdoctoral researcher, where he helped build the LBTI.
"Steward has established itself as the global leader to this kind of research, which is really critical for exo-Earth imaging," said Ertel, who obtained a NASA grant to study exozodiacal dust with this new instrument.
The Kappa Tucanae A discovery offers multiple avenues for future research. By studying how the stellar companion interacts with the dust, astronomers hope to understand the origin, composition, grain size and distribution of hot dust more broadly. The findings could reveal whether magnetic fields trap charged dust particles, as described by Steward researchers George Rieke and András Gáspár, whether cometary material constantly replenishes the supply, as studied by Steward researcher Virginie Faramaz-Gorka, also a co-author on the paper, or whether entirely different physics govern these extreme environments.
The discovery also points toward the possibility that other hot dust systems may harbor similar stellar companions. Steward researchers now hope to revisit previously observed stars, searching for companions that may have been missed.
As NASA's Habitable Worlds Observatory approaches reality, discoveries like this one provide the foundational knowledge needed to navigate the complex research ahead.
"Considering the Kappa Tucanae A system was observed many times before, we did not even expect to find this companion star," Stuber said. "This makes it even more exciting to now have this unique system that opens up new pathways to explore the enigmatic hot exozodiacal dust."
Three of the four Auxiliary Telescopes of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer in Chile that were used in this study are visible in this photo. Sandwiched between the orange glow of the sunset and the colorful center of the Milky Way is the whitish zodiacal light that results when fine, smoke-like particles distributed among the planets in the solar system scatter sunlight.
Interferometric Detection and Orbit Modeling of the Subcomponent in the Hot-dust System κ Tuc A: A Low-mass Star on an Eccentric Orbit in a Hierarchical-quintuple System
What time is it on Mars? NIST physicists have the answer
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
Ask someone on Earth for the time and they can give you an exact answer, thanks to our planet’s intricate timekeeping system, built with atomic clocks, GPS satellites and high-speed telecommunications networks.
However, Einstein showed us that clocks don’t tick at the same rate across the universe. Clocks will run slightly faster or slower depending on the strength of gravity in their environment, making it tricky to synchronize our watches here on Earth, let alone across the vast solar system. If humans want to establish a long-term presence on the red planet, scientists need to know: What time is it on Mars?
Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have calculated a precise answer for the first time. On average, clocks on Mars will tick 477 microseconds (millionths of a second) faster than on Earth per day. However, Mars’ eccentric orbit and the gravity from its celestial neighbors can increase or decrease this amount by as much as 226 microseconds a day over the course of the Martian year. These findings, just published in The Astronomical Journal, follow a 2024 paper in which NIST physicists developed a plan for precise timekeeping on the Moon.
Knowing how clocks will tick on Mars is a steppingstone for future space missions, said NIST physicist Bijunath Patla. As NASA plans Mars exploration missions, understanding time on our planetary neighbor will help synchronize navigation and communication across our solar system.
“The time is just right for the Moon and Mars,” Patla said. “This is the closest we have been to realizing the science fiction vision of expanding across the solar system.”
Mars Time Zone
Martian days and years are longer than those on Earth. The planet’s day, or full rotation on its axis, is 40 minutes longer than Earth’s, and it takes 687 days to complete its orbit around the Sun, compared with Earth’s 365 days. But scientists needed to know how fast or slow each second passes on Mars compared with Earth.
If you were to land on the surface of Mars with an atomic clock, it would still tick the same way it would on Earth. But if you compare the Mars clock with one on Earth, they will be out of sync. The challenge is to determine how much Mars’ time is offset from Earth’s, almost like calculating a time-zone difference.
That was much trickier than NIST physicists had expected. Einstein’s theory of relativity states that the strength of gravity affects the passage of time. Clocks tick slower where gravity is stronger, and faster where gravity is weaker. The velocity of a planet’s orbit will also cause clocks to tick slower or faster.
NIST chose a point on the Martian surface to act as a reference, sort of like sea level at the equator on Earth. Thanks to years of data collected from Mars missions, Patla and fellow NIST physicist Neil Ashby could estimate gravity on the surface of the planet, which is five times weaker than Earth’s.
But they needed to figure in more than just Mars’ gravity. Our solar system has other massive bodies that pull on each other. The Sun alone accounts for more than 99% of the mass in our solar system. Mars’ position in the solar system — its distance from the Sun, its neighbors like Earth, the Moon, Jupiter and Saturn — pulls it into a more eccentric, elongated orbit. The Earth’s and Moon’s orbits are relatively constant; time on the Moon is consistently 56 microseconds faster than time on Earth.
“But for Mars, that’s not the case. Its distance from the Sun and its eccentric orbit make the variations in time larger. A three-body problem is extremely complicated. Now we’re dealing with four: the Sun, Earth, the Moon and Mars,” Patla explained. “The heavy lifting was more challenging than I initially thought.”
After taking all these effects into consideration — Martian surface gravity, Mars’ eccentric orbit, the effect of the Sun, the Earth and the Moon on Mars — Patla and Ashby arrived at their answer.
Paving the Way for Solar System Internet
Maybe 477 millionths of a second doesn’t sound like a lot — it’s about a thousandth of the time it takes to blink. But accounting for tiny time differences is key to developing communications networks. 5G networks, for example, need to be accurate to within a tenth of a microsecond.
Right now, communications between Earth and Mars are delayed anywhere from four to 24 minutes (sometimes more). It’s almost like pre-telegram communications, Patla explained: People delivered handwritten letters to a ship, which crossed the ocean, and then waited weeks or months for another ship to deliver the reply.
Having a framework for timing between planets paves the way toward creating synchronized networks across vast distances.
“The time is just right for the Moon and Mars. This is the closest we have been to realizing the science fiction vision of expanding across the solar system.” — Bijunath Patla, NIST physicist
“If you get synchronization, it will be almost like real-time communication without any loss of information. You don’t have to wait to see what happens,” Patla said.
Those networks are a long way from reality; so are long-term human and robotic Mars missions, Ashby pointed out. Studying these issues helps scientists prepare for all the variables they will encounter.
“It may be decades before the surface of Mars is covered by the tracks of wandering rovers, but it is useful now to study the issues involved in establishing navigation systems on other planets and moons,” Ashby said. “Like current global navigation systems like GPS, these systems will depend on accurate clocks, and the effects on clock rates can be analyzed with the help of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.”
There is also scientific value to this knowledge, Patla added. Understanding how clocks will tick on far-flung planets is new information and builds on Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity.
“It's good to know for the first time what is happening on Mars timewise. Nobody knew that before. It improves our knowledge of the theory itself, the theory of how clocks tick and relativity,” he said. “The passage of time is fundamental to the theory of relativity: how you realize it, how you calculate it, and what influences it. These may seem like simple concepts, but they can be quite complicated to calculate.”
Paper: Neil Ashby and Bijunath R. Patla. A Comparative Study of Time on Mars with Lunar and Terrestrial Clocks. The Astronomical Journal. Published online Dec. 1, 2025. DOI: 10.3847/1538-3881/ae0c16
Billions of years ago, it rained on Mars. The water collected in valleys and rivers, filled and spilled over the rims of craters, and was funneled into canyons, perhaps even making its way to a large Martian ocean.
On Earth, the areas around large river systems are among the most ecologically diverse regions on the planet — think of the Amazon River basin with its tens of thousands of known species. Researchers think that similar systems on Mars could have been potential cradles for life when the water was flowing.
A new study published in PNAS from researchers at The University of Texas at Austin is the first to define large river drainage systems on the red planet. They outlined 16 large-scale river basins where life would have been most likely to thrive on the neighboring planet.
“We’ve known for a long time that there were rivers on Mars,” said co-author Timothy A. Goudge, an assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the UT Jackson School of Geosciences. “But we really didn’t know the extent to which the rivers were organized in large drainage systems at the global scale.”
Goudge and postdoctoral fellow Abdallah S. Zaki brought together previously published individual datasets of Mars’ valley networks, lakes and rivers, then outlined the combined drainage systems to determine their total area. They identified 19 big clusters of valley networks, streams, lakes, canyons and sediment deposits, 16 of which connected together into watersheds of 100,000 square kilometers or larger. This is the threshold for what is considered a large drainage basin on Earth. Their work is the first time a systematic, planet-wide identification of large river basins has been conducted on Mars.
“We did the simplest thing that could be done. We just mapped them and pieced them together,” said Zaki, who led the research.
On Earth, large watersheds spanning at least 100,000 square kilometers are much more common than on Mars; there are 91. The Amazon River basin system, the largest on the planet, is about 6.2 million square kilometers. Texas’ Colorado River basin system just barely qualifies as large at 103,300 square kilometers.
Where these large river basins sit, life follows. As a general rule, the larger the river, the more nutrients are transported throughout the system. That’s why some of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet exist in the largest drainage basins. The most sprawling of these watersheds, such as the Indus River basin, are often considered the cradles of human civilization.
On Earth, tectonic activity has built mountains, valleys and other diverse topography that directs water where to flow and connects it to other systems. This varying topography is part of what makes a large drainage system. Because Mars lacks tectonic activity, it has fewer large drainage systems, the researchers said.
Nevertheless, although the large drainage systems only make up 5% of the planet’s ancient terrain, the researchers found that they represent about 42% of the total material eroded by rivers on Mars.
Since sediment contains nutrients, these are the best spots to look for signs of past life, Zaki said; although more work needs to be done to pinpoint exactly where the sediment ended up.
“The longer the distance, the more you have water interacting with rocks, so there’s a higher chance of chemical reactions that could be translated into signs of life,” he said.
By and large, Mars is covered by what the researchers describe as a mosaic of smaller drainage systems. While each one represented a potentially habitable environment, the researchers said that the 16 large drainage areas could be the most worthwhile areas of future study for Mars’ habitability.
“It’s a really important thing to think about for future missions and where you might go to look for life,” Goudge said.
Department Chair Danny Stockli said this research is another example of the impactful work coming out of the Jackson School.
“Tim Goudge and his team continue to be leaders in the field, making groundbreaking contributions to the understanding of Mars’ planetary surface and hydrologic processes,” he said.
This study was also co-authored by David Mohrig, professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.
The valley networks, lakes and rivers that make up the Paraná Valles drainage system on Mars.
Purdue University research into rocks that stood out as light-colored dots on the reddish-orange surface of Mars shows that areas of the small planet could have once supported wet oases with humid climates and heavy rainfall comparable to tropical climates on Earth.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Rocks that stood out as light-colored dots on the reddish-orange surface of Mars now are the latest evidence that areas of the small planet may have once supported wet oases with humid climates and heavy rainfall comparable to tropical climates on Earth.
The rocks discovered by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover are white, aluminum-rich kaolinite clay, which forms on Earth after rocks and sediment are leached of all other minerals by millions of years of a wet, rainy climate.
These findings were published Monday (Dec. 1) in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Communications Earth & Environment by lead author Adrian Broz, a Purdue University postdoctoral research associate in the lab of Briony Horgan, a long-term planner on NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover mission and professor of planetary science in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences in Purdue’s College of Science.
“Elsewhere on Mars, rocks like these are probably some of the most important outcrops we’ve seen from orbit because they are just so hard to form,” Horgan said. “You need so much water that we think these could be evidence of an ancient warmer and wetter climate where there was rain falling for millions of years.”
Broz said tropical climates like rainforests are the most common environments to find kaolinite clay on Earth.
“So when you see kaolinite on a place like Mars, where it’s barren, cold and with certainly no liquid water at the surface, it tells us that there was once a lot more water than there is today,” said Broz, a postdoctoral collaborator on the Perseverance rover.
The kaolinite fragments, which range from pebbles to boulders, are the latest small pieces to the larger debate regarding Mars’ climate billions of years ago. Initial examinations by the Mars rover’s SuperCam and Mastcam-Z instruments were used to compare the kaolinite to similar rocks found on Earth. The Martian fragments could offer significant insight into not only the planet’s past environmental stages, but also how Mars came to its current barren state.
Horgan said kaolinite also carries its own mystery. There is no major outcropping nearby where the light-colored rocks could have originated despite being scattered throughout the mission path Perseverance has followed since landing at the Jezero crater in February 2021. The crater used to contain a lake about twice the size of Lake Tahoe.
“They’re clearly recording an incredible water event, but where did they come from?” Horgan said. “Maybe they were washed into Jezero’s lake by the river that formed the delta, or maybe they were thrown into Jezero by an impact and they’re just scattered there. We’re not totally sure.”
Satellite imagery has spotted large outcroppings of kaolinite in other areas of Mars.
“But until we can actually get to these large outcroppings with the rover, these small rocks are our only on-the-ground evidence for how these rocks could have formed,” Horgan said. “And right now the evidence in these rocks really points toward these kinds of ancient warmer and wetter environments.”
Broz compared the Martian kaolinite samples examined by Perseverance with rock samples found in locations near San Diego, California, and in South Africa. The rocks from the two planets were a close match.
Aside from a rain-heavy tropical climate, Broz said kaolinite on Earth also forms in a hydrothermal system when hot water is leaching the rock. But that process creates a different chemical signature in the rock than leaching at lower temperatures by rain over thousands to millions of years. He said datasets from three different sites were used to compare the hydrothermal leaching scenario to the Mars rocks.
Rocks on Mars like the kaolinite are a similar time capsule, potentially holding information from billions of years ago about the history of environmental conditions on the planet.
“All life uses water,” Broz said. “So when we think about the possibility of these rocks on Mars representing a rainfall-driven environment, that is a really incredible, habitable place where life could have thrived if it were ever on Mars.”
A deeper understanding of space weather also helps distinguish between natural and human-made disturbances. Solar storms also appear as auroras. Aurora over Luosto in Northern Finland, 21 November 2025. Photo: Otto Kärhä / University of Oulu
A strong geomagnetic storm in spring 2024 brought the northern lights unusually far south, as the auroral oval expanded well beyond its typical position. "I am surprised at how sparse the measurement network is, even though we know that the impacts of space weather can vary greatly from one area to another," says Doctoral Researcher Otto Kärhä from the University of Oulu, Finland.
"For safety reasons, it is important to expand measurement instrumentation also in southern Finland and across Arctic sea regions—areas where the network is currently sparse or non-existent—in order to better understand how disturbances are distributed," Kärhä continues. He will defend his doctoral thesis on 28 November 2025.
Space weather refers to the interaction between the solar wind and various solar eruptions with Earth’s magnetic field. The most intense space weather events can generate large-scale disturbances in the geomagnetic field, known as magnetic storms. These disturbances may interfere with power transmission, communication systems, and navigation. “The regional nature of space weather can be compared to ordinary weather—such as differences in temperature or cloud cover,” Kärhä explains.
Geomagnetic storms are monitored using magnetometers, which are primarily installed within the auroral zone, where the strongest field variations usually occur. Station networks can detect disturbances and provide information on how the most intense variations distribute across different latitudes. Local disturbance data is especially important for assessing space-weather-related risks to infrastructures and technologies. However, the current network is considered too sparse in Fennoscandia.
In his dissertation, Kärhä examines how large momentary differences in geomagnetic storm-time variations can become between stations—that is, how local disturbances truly are. In addition to the 2024 storm, earlier cases were studied. During a storm recorded in Fennoscandia in October 1977, the disturbance in the northward magnetic field component differed by over 500 nanoteslas between stations only 170 km apart. During the so-called Halloween superstorm in October 2003, the difference reached 1,200 nanoteslas over 160 km. The strongest variation was detected on Earth’s night side.
"Subsurface conductivity structures also guide the flow of currents and create areas with higher disturbance risk," Kärhä notes. "Future magnetic storms cannot be predicted precisely, but their probability increases as the solar cycle declines over the coming years. A deeper understanding of space weather is vital for global safety."
"This dissertation shows that the magnitude of space-weather-induced geomagnetic disturbances can vary significantly within just a few tens of kilometres. Natural geomagnetic disturbances may resemble human-made interference, and distinguishing between them is increasingly important in the current geopolitical climate," emphasises dissertation supervisor Professor Eija Tanskanen, Director of the Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory at the University of Oulu.
The study utilised both modern digital measurements and extensive historical material originally recorded on 35 millimetre film in the 1970s. The dissertation presents a digitisation method through which nearly 40 kilometres of magnetic field variation film records can be converted into digital data for future research use.
Doctoral Researcher Otto Kärhä is digitising old recordings of past solar storms. The old magnetic recordings are very accurate, recording changes in solar storm intensity several times a minute. Photo: Tuula Lampela
Credit
Photo: Tuula Lampela
Roadmap for reducing, reusing, and recycling in space
Primary sources of space debris include fragmentation events (65%), such as collisions, explosions from residual propellant, and spontaneous disintegration; decommissioned spacecraft and rocket bodies (30%); and mission-related objects (5%) unintentionally or deliberately released during operations. The rise in fragmentation has triggered a self-reinforcing cycle of collisions, posing escalating risks to orbital sustainability.
Every time a rocket is launched, tons of valuable materials are lost, and huge amounts of greenhouse gases and ozone-depleting chemicals are released into the atmosphere. Publishing December 1 in the Cell Press journal Chem Circularity, sustainability and space scientists discuss how the principles of reducing, reusing, and recycling could be applied to satellites and spacecraft—from design and manufacturing to in-orbit repair and end-of-life repurposing.
“As space activity accelerates, from mega-constellations of satellites to future lunar and Mars missions, we must make sure exploration doesn’t repeat the mistakes made on Earth,” says senior author and chemical engineer Jin Xuan of the University of Surrey. “A truly sustainable space future starts with technologies, materials and systems working together.”
On top of the environmental impact of launching spacecraft, even more materials are lost when spacecraft and satellites are decommissioned, since they are rarely recycled or repurposed. Instead, most satellites are moved to “graveyard orbits” or end up as orbital debris that could interfere with satellite function.
These practices are unsustainable, the authors say, especially with the recent acceleration in private space launches. They argue that a shift toward a circular space economy—where materials and systems are designed for reuse, repair, and recycling—is needed to guarantee the long-term sustainability of the space sector and say that lessons from the personal electronics and automotive industries could offer valuable insights.
“Our motivation was to bring the conversation about circularity into the space domain, where it’s long overdue,” says Xuan. “Circular economy thinking is transforming materials and manufacturing on Earth, but it’s rarely applied to satellites, rockets, or space habitats.”
Building a circular space economy starts with applying the 3 Rs—reduce, reuse, and recycle—the authors say. To reduce waste, the space sector should increase the durability and repairability of spacecraft and satellites, they say. And to reduce the number of launches needed, the authors say space stations should be repurposed as hubs for refueling and repairing spacecraft or manufacturing satellite components.
To enable spacecraft and space stations to be reused or recycled, the space sector should invest in soft-landing systems, such as parachutes and airbags, the authors say. They note, however, that because spacecraft and satellites often experience substantial wear-and-tear due to the harsh conditions in space, any components that might be reused would need to pass rigorous safety tests.
The authors also call for efforts to recover orbital debris—for example, by using nets or robotic arms—so that their materials can be recycled and to prevent collisions that would further contribute to orbital debris.
Data analysis and digital technologies, including AI systems, will be essential for developing more sustainable space practices, the authors say. For example, analyzing spacecraft-generated data could inform design practices and help minimize waste. Also, simulation models could reduce the need for costly and resource-intensive physical tests, and AI systems could prevent spacecraft and satellites from colliding with orbital debris.
Because creating a circular space economy would be a fundamental transition in how the space sector operates, the authors say that it will be necessary to consider the whole system at once, rather than focusing on individual components and processes.
“We need innovation at every level, from materials that can be reused or recycled in orbit and modular spacecraft that can be upgraded instead of discarded, to data systems that track how hardware ages in space,” says Xuan.
“But just as importantly, we need international collaboration and policy frameworks to encourage reuse and recovery beyond Earth. The next phase is about connecting chemistry, design, and governance to turn sustainability into the default model for space.”
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This research was supported by funding from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, and the Surrey-Adelaide Partnership Fund.
Chem Circularity (@cp-chemcircularity.bsky.social) is a Cell Press journal focused on cutting-edge research in pursuit of sustainable and circular systems across disciplines, with an emphasis on reduction, redesign, reuse, and recycling. The journal publishes insights and innovations to ensure responsible production and consumption of the chemicals and materials that underpin our world. Visit https://www.cell.com/chem-circularity/home. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com.
This schematic categorizes the principal chemical elements used across the major functional components of spacecrafts into five material domains: main structural materials, ignition and firing equipment, electronic systems and components, energy storage systems, and outer protective coatings. Each domain is color coded and spatially mapped onto simplified rocket and satellite models to reflect functional segmentation. Elements that are critically important, for either their high usage or unique functional roles, are annotated with corner triangles indicating their sustainability level (top left) and global reserves (bottom right); red, orange, and green denote high, medium, and low, respectively.
The 20-meter telescope in Onsala, Sweden, will celebrate 50 years of operation in May 2026. The parabolic mirror, 20 meters across, is protected from the weather by a round, white dome with triangular segments. The new camera is placed behind the centre of the dish.
The world’s biggest and most iconic radio telescopes are joining forces with a bold aim – to make new images of black holes and their surroundings, in detail and in new colours. In Sweden, Chalmers University of Technology has just received a 13 million SEK grant to build a new, three-band camera for the country’s flagship radio telescope, the 20-metre telescope at Onsala Space Observatory. Private grants and donations are of essential importance to Chalmers’ long-term strategy to reach academic quality at the highest European level.
“This grant opens up exciting possibilities. Our new three-band camera will be a very different instrument than the Hasselblad cameras that took pictures on the Moon, but for us the goal is the same. We want to develop world-leading technology to image and understand phenomena in space”, says John Conway, director of the Onsala Space Observatory, and professor of radio astronomy at Chalmers.
Radio telescopes study the universe by detecting invisible light known as radio waves. By connecting antennas together in large networks, radio astronomers can make sharper images than it's possible to achieve with other kinds of telescope.
New cameras are now being built or planned at many of the world’s leading radio telescopes, and new possibilities are opening up, according to John Conway.
“Each of the new three-band cameras aims to be the best in the world. But they are all based on a new innovative technology that corrects for the way the Earth’s atmosphere distorts radio signals from far out in space”, says John Conway.
The new method is known as frequency phase transfer, or FPT, and was first proposed by astronomers Maria Rioja and Richard Dodson in Australia, following earlier work in Japan and Germany. Radio signals measured at high frequencies can be corrected for disturbances in Earth’s atmosphere, they suggested, as long as signals from the same source are also measured at lower frequencies at the same time – just what a three-band camera provides. The method has since been developed and implemented with great success by scientists and engineers at the Korean VLBI Network in South Korea.
“Thanks to this pioneering work, we now know that high-quality observations are possible even from sites with less than optimal weather conditions - something that once seemed out of reach. Now, with cameras specially built for this purpose, our telescopes will work together to help us explore black holes, the early universe, the lives of stars, and fast-changing cosmic events in greater detail than before," says Anton Zensus, director at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany.
Sara Wallin, CEO of the Chalmers University of Technology Foundation, sees private research grants as an important part of the funding needed for competitive universities that deliver top-quality research.
“This grant from the Hasselblad Foundation will contribute to real progress in astronomy research. The joint effort between the Hasselblad foundation, Chalmers and Onsala Space Observatory is a clear example of how targeted investments in top-tier research and innovative technology development can make a big difference”, she says.
“We are proud of our long-standing collaboration with Onsala Space Observatory. The foundation was laid when Victor and Erna Hasselblad donated land to the observatory. Just as the Hasselblad camera once made it possible to see the Moon in a new way, the three-band camera contributes to exploring the universe with new precision. We look forward to following the results that this technology will enable”, says Kalle Sanner, CEO of the Hasselblad Foundation in Sweden.
One of the camera’s key components has been developed by Onsala Space Observatory’s GARD scientists. Made of metal, this dichroic reflects longer radio waves and lets through shorter waves. The honeycomb pattern helps the camera measure polarized light.
Credit
(Photo: Chalmers/Anna-Lena Lundqvist)
Captions:
The 20-meter telescope in Onsala, Sweden, will celebrate 50 years of operation in May 2026. The parabolic mirror, 20 meters across, is protected from the weather by a round, white dome with triangular segments. The new camera is placed behind the centre of the dish. (Photo: Chalmers/Anna-Lena Lundqvist)
One of the camera’s key components has been developed by Onsala Space Observatory’s GARD scientists. Made of metal, this dichroic reflects longer radio waves and lets through shorter waves. The honeycomb pattern helps the camera measure polarized light. (Photo: Chalmers/Anna-Lena Lundqvist)
For more information, please contact:
Robert Cumming, astronomer and communicator, Onsala Space Observatory, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, robert.cumming@chalmers.se, +46704933114, +46317725500
John Conway, director, Onsala Space Observatory, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, john.conway@chalmers.se
Method of Research
News article
Irish astrophysicists join satellite mission to study the hidden lives of stars
A team of astrophysicists from Ireland's Maynooth University, led by Dr Emma Whelan, will use information gathered by the Mauve telescope to study how stars and planets form
Ireland's Maynooth University has joined an international space science mission with the successful launch of Mauve, a small ultraviolet telescope developed by UK-based company Blue Skies Space.
The satellite, which was launched aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Transporter-15 on 28 November 2025, marks the beginning of a three-year mission to study how stars behave and how their activity influences the habitability of distant exoplanets.
With funding from Research Ireland, Maynooth University became a member of the Mauve Science Programme in August 2025. A research team from the Department of Physics, led by Dr Emma Whelan, will use Mauve to investigate how stars and planets form, focusing on a class of young stars known as Herbig Ae/Be stars.
Herbig Ae/Be stars are in a critical stage of development before they begin hydrogen fusion and become main sequence stars, like our Sun. Dr Whelan’s team will study their brightness over long periods to identify variability and search for signs of early planet formation.
"I am very excited to be embarking on this adventure with Mauve and eagerly anticipate the research opportunities it will bring,” Dr Whelan said. “Until now, my work has primarily relied on ground-based eight-metre-class telescopes, so Mauve represents an exciting new direction for me. Its monitoring capabilities will provide a fresh window on star formation and offer valuable new insights.”
The group plans to build light curves for a large sample of these stars, tracking how their brightness changes daily for up to three months. Comparing this data to observations of less massive stars may provide key insights into whether larger young stars form and develop planets in the same way as Sun-like stars.
The importance of the Mauve Space Programme is not only in its scientific goals but also in how it represents a new, faster, and more collaborative approach to doing space science. Designed and built in under three years, Mauve is a small, suitcase-sized satellite, weighing around 18kg, and equipped with a 13 cm telescope that observes in ultraviolet and visible light (200–700 nm).
Its compact design and commercial access model allow research institutions worldwide to subscribe to the science programme, gaining direct access to space-based data without relying on highly competitive national telescope allocations.
Along with Maynooth University, other research institutions that have subscribed to the Mauve Science Programme include Boston University, Columbia University, INAF’s Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, Kyoto University, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Konkoly Observatory in Hungary, Rice University and Vanderbilt University in the US and Western University in Canada.
Speaking about the launch, Professor Giovanna Tinetti, Chief Scientist and Co-founder of Blue Skies Space said: “Mauve will open a new window on stellar activity that has previously been largely hidden from view. By observing stars in ultraviolet light, wavelengths that can’t be studied from Earth, we’ll gain a much deeper understanding of how stars behave and how their flares may impact the environment of orbiting exoplanets. Traditional ground-based telescopes just can’t capture this information, so a satellite like Mauve is crucial for furthering our knowledge.”
“Our vision is to make space science data as accessible as possible,” said Dr Marcell Tessenyi, CEO and Co-founder of Blue Skies Space. “Mauve will undergo commissioning before delivering datasets to scientists in early 2026 and serve as a springboard to launch a fleet of satellites addressing the global demand for space science data.”
Method of Research
Observational study
Close brush with two hot stars millions of years ago left a mark just beyond our solar system
Nearly 4.5 million years ago, two large, hot stars brushed tantalizingly close to Earth’s sun. They left behind a trace in the clouds of gas and dust that swirl just beyond our solar system—almost like the scent of perfume after someone has left the room.
That’s one finding from new research led by Michael Shull, an astrophysicist at the University of Colorado Boulder, and published Nov. 24 in The Astrophysical Journal.
The study sheds new light on the details of Earth’s neighborhood in space.
Earth’s solar system is surrounded by what scientists call the “local interstellar clouds.” These wispy clumps of gas and dust are made up mostly of hydrogen and helium atoms and stretch about 30 light-years, or roughly 175 trillion miles, from end to end.
Zoom past that and our sun exists in a region of the galaxy known as the “local hot bubble,” where gas and dust are relatively scarce.
Shull noted that understanding these features is important because they may have influenced the evolution of life on Earth over millions of years.
“The fact that the sun is inside this set of clouds that can shield us from that ionizing radiation may be an important piece of what makes Earth habitable today,” said Shull, professor emeritus in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at CU Boulder.
In the new research, he and his colleagues used a series of equations, or models, to catalogue the forces that have shaped our corner of the galaxy over time.
The group examined two stars in particular: Epsilon and Beta Canis Majoris.
Today, these stars sit in the front and rear legs of the constellation Canis Major, or the “Great Dog.” Based on the team’s calculations, they likely charged past our sun around 4.4 million years ago at a distance of 30 to 35 light-years, a close brush in cosmic terms.
In the process, those stars, which are much hotter than the sun, emitted powerful ultraviolet radiation. That radiation “ionized” the local clouds, stripping electrons from the hydrogen and helium atoms and leaving them with a positive charge—a mark that scientists can still see today.
“If you think back 4.4 million years, these two stars would have been anywhere from four to six times brighter than Sirius is today, far and away the brightest stars in the sky,” Shull said.
Jigsaw puzzle
The research drills down on a mystery that has confounded scientists for decades.
When researchers first began peering at the region of space beyond our solar system decades ago, including with the Hubble Space Telescope, they discovered something strange: Around 20% of the hydrogen atoms and 40% of the helium atoms in the local clouds had been ionized—the amount of ionized helium, in particular, seemed unusually high.
In the current study, Shull and his colleagues set out to inventory the celestial phenomena that may have contributed to that ionization.
The team wound back time to simulate what Earth’s neighborhood was like millions of years ago—a difficult task, in part because the sun is barreling through the local gas in the galaxy at a speed of 58,000 miles per hour.
“It’s kind of a jigsaw puzzle where all the different pieces are moving,” Shull said. “The sun is moving. Stars are racing away from us. The clouds are drifting away.”
The group reports that at least six sources may have helped to ionize the clouds around our solar system. They include three small white dwarf stars. The hot bubble itself may also have played a role.
Shull explained that this void in space was likely created by10 to 20 stars going supernova—a bit like blowing bubbles into a glass of milk. Those explosions heated up gas within the hot bubble. These hot gases continue to churn out ultraviolet and X-ray radiation today, which bakes the clouds around Earth’s solar system.
Feeling the heat
Epsilon and Beta Canis Majoris likely contributed just as much to the ionization of the sun’s local clouds as from the hot gas in the local bubble.
These stars, which today sit more than 400 light-years from Earth, are B-stars, which tend to live fast and hard. Epsilon and Beta Canis Majoris will only burn for 20 million years at most. They are about 13 times more massive than our sun and blaze at about 38,000 and 45,000 degrees Fahrenheit—making the sun, at roughly 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, look chilly in comparison.
Shull noted that the ionization of the local clouds will likely disappear over millions of years as those positively charged atoms pick up stray electrons in space.
Epsilon and Beta Canis Majoris themselves don’t have much time. Shull estimates that these stars will likely spend the last of their fuel and go supernova in the next few million years.
They won’t pose any danger to Earth, Shull said, but will produce an impressive light show—if anyone is around to see it.
“A supernova blowing up that close will light up the sky,” he said. “It’ll be very, very bright but far enough away that it won’t be lethal.”
Co-authors of the new study include Rachel Curran at the University of North Carolina; Michael Topping at the University of Arizona; and Jonathan Slavin at the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Ionization Sources of the Local Interstellar Clouds: Two B Stars, Three White Dwarfs, and the Local Hot Bubble
New SwRI laboratory to study the origins of planetary systems
The Nebular Origins of the Universe Research Laboratory will connect pre-planetary evolution to planetary formation to understand the chemical origins of planetary systems
Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has created a new space science laboratory, the Nebular Origins of the Universe Research (NOUR) Laboratory. Led by SwRI Senior Research Scientist Dr. Danna Qasim, the NOUR laboratory aims to bridge pre-planetary and planetary science to create a better understanding of the origins of our universe.
SAN ANTONIO — December 1, 2025 — Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has created a new space science laboratory to enhance our understanding of the origins of planetary systems. SwRI’s Nebular Origins of the Universe Research (NOUR) Laboratory is led by SwRI Senior Research Scientist Dr. Danna Qasim.
The laboratory will trace the chemical origins of planetary systems. Qasim is establishing a robust astrochemistry program within SwRI’s Space Science Division, connecting early cosmic chemistry to planetary evolution. The SwRI lab will give particular focus on the chemistry of interstellar clouds, vast regions of ice, gas and dust between stars representing a largely unexplored area of astrochemistry.
“We are examining the chemistry of ice, gas and dust that have existed since before our solar system formed, connecting the dots to determine how materials in those clouds ultimately evolve into planets,” Qasim said. “By simulating the physio-chemical conditions of these pre-planetary environments, we can fill key data gaps, providing insights that future NASA missions need to accomplish their goals.”
In 2022, the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine Decadal Survey Origins, Worlds, and Life defined several priority science questions related to the solar systems’ early history, planetary evolution and the search for life. The survey called on NASA and other agencies to pursue missions designed to answer these questions.
“The decadal survey emphasizes understanding the origins of our solar system,” Qasim said. “And in our new lab, there is a focus on laboratory experiments, with the long-term vision of growing into a program that integrates laboratory studies, theory, observations and mission data to understand the origins of planetary systems.”
Many planned space missions depend on comprehensive understanding of the origins of volatiles and organic compounds. These programs include NASA’s Moon to Mars Architecture, an in-progress roadmap for long-term exploration of the lunar surface and a manned mission to Mars, and the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission, which will perform a comprehensive study of Mercury.
The laboratory will start with two main vacuum chambers. One chamber will be dedicated to the study of dark interstellar cloud chemistry where complex organic molecules are formed, and the other will simulate stellar irradiation of interstellar ices, studying how biologically relevant molecules form. The NOUR laboratory will also include a liquid chromatography-mass spectrometer (LC-MS) for analyzing these molecules.
“The irradiation of these ices will produce even more complex molecules – such as components of DNA and RNA. To analyze these very complex species, we will utilize LC-MS. We also plan to investigate sample-returned materials, such as materials from the moon, asteroids, comets and Mars, with the LC-MS,” Qasim said. “By understanding the chemical inventory of pre-planetary environments, we will be able to help trace the origins of potential biosignatures and determine whether they could have been inherited from earlier cosmic stages.”
SwRI scientists will soon begin experiments themed on sulfur and phosphorous, elements critical to life. These experiments are designed to understand how they were incorporated into the building blocks of planets. Both apparatuses will be completed in late 2026.
From the Lab: ESA's Solar Orbiter reveals sun's south pole for first time
The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter spacecraft has achieved a groundbreaking milestone by capturing the first-ever detailed images of the sun's south pole earlier this year. This unprecedented view offers scientists a crucial new perspective on our closest star.
Issued on: 28/11/2025 - RFI
Unlike previous observations from Earth or other space missions that view the sun from the ecliptic plane - the flat disc in which planets orbit—Solar Orbiter positioned itself at an angle of 17° below the solar equator. This unique vantage point enabled the probe to peer directly at a region of the sun that has remained largely hidden from scientific scrutiny.
The historic images were captured by three of Solar Orbiter's 10 scientific instruments: the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI), the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI), and the Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE) instrument.
According to Milan Maksimovic, principal investigator of the Radio and Plasma Waves (RPW) instrument on Solar Orbiter, "these images are important in order to study the circulation of matter around the poles, which is very important for some models whose purpose is to look at the deep interior of the sun to do helioseismology."
The RPW instrument, developed by a consortium including Paris Observatory's Laboratory for Instrumentation and Research in Astrophysics (LIRA), consists of three components: electric antennae, a magnetic antenna, and a sophisticated main electronic box containing complex receivers.
Maksimovic, who serves as director of LIRA, noted that his laboratory had full responsibility for developing and testing the main electronic box in LIRA's vacuum chamber facility.
The RPW instrument measures electric and magnetic waves in solar plasma, as well as radio emissions produced by the sun, providing crucial data to complement the visual observations.
Solar Orbiter's mission continues to push the boundaries of solar science, offering insights that will help researchers better understand the sun's behaviour and its effects on the solar system.
France's first woman in space in 25 years counts down to trip to the ISS
French astronaut Sophie Adenot is preparing for her first mission to the International Space Station in February 2026, a trip that will make her the first Frenchwoman in space since 2001. During her eight-month stay, she will conduct nearly 200 scientific experiments in microgravity.
"The countdown has officially begun, everything is going perfectly."
Adenot was all smiles as she greeted journalists in Toulouse on Monday to discuss the Epsilon mission to the International Space Station (ISS), scheduled for next February, in one of her last public appearances before her departure.
To prepare herself, she says can rely on the experience of former astronauts, whom she consults whenever necessary.
"We have everything we need to stay calm because our training is designed by engineers who have been familiar with the ISS operations for over 20 years," she explained.
"But I’m human," she went on. "At some point, this serenity will be challenged, but I don’t know when or how. That’s a source of curiosity, in a way." Medical research
If all goes to plan, on 15 February she will take her place aboard a SpaceX rocket on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, in the United States, which will take her to the ISS.
Hundreds of scientific experiments are planned for the 240-day mission, around 10 of which were developed by France through the National Centre for Space Studies (CNES).
Her mission will serve three purposes: to improve scientific and medical knowledge, to prepare for the future of space missions and to involve young people.
Adenot admits that the experiments in the field of health are the ones that most pique her curiosity. "I am intrigued and interested in this type of experiment, because they could have a direct and concrete impact on our everyday lives."
Adenot will be analysing the effects of weightlessness on astronauts' organs using medical imaging. Since CT scanner or MRI machines are too bulky to be taken aboard the ISS, she'll be using ultrasound.
For 40 years, CNES has used its expertise in ultrasound analysis in space, with astronaut Thomas Pesquet employing it during his two previous missions aboard the ISS.
The ultrasound device that Adenot will be testing, called EchoFinder, is revolutionary. It will allow for autonomous ultrasound scans, without prior medical training or ground assistance.
"The idea is to place virtual spheres representing the probe’s position into virtual cubes representing the ideal probe position. When we manage to place our spheres into our cubes, it turns green, which means we have found the ideal probe position," he told RFI.
The experiment will help prepare for future space missions to the Moon and Mars, "where communication delays, sometimes of just a few minutes, will make any real-time guidance from Earth impossible," Thevenon says.
Back on the ground, the technology could also help improve access for patients in remote areas, where ultrasounds are not necessarily available due to a lack of technical expertise.
"We can also imagine a version for submarines, which are confined environments quite similar to those of the International Space Station," he added. Human 'guinea pigs'
For eight months, Adenot will become a kind of guinea pig to make it possible to observe physiological phenomena that are unobservable on Earth due to gravity.
This will be the case with PhysioTool, a scientific experiment designed to measure several physiological parameters, including cardiovascular ones, using sensors.
Marc-Antoine Custaud, a researcher at the University of Angers and sponsor of this study explains that in the absence of gravity, blood circulation slows down.
"This is what we call cardiovascular deconditioning," he explains. "Our goal is to understand how the cardiovascular system becomes unadapted to gravity, what needs to be done to make it adapt to microgravity, and how to readjust it upon returning to Earth."
His team wants to understand how micro-organisms associate with each other and settle on the surfaces of the ISS.
"The goal is to develop innovative surfaces with coatings that limit or prevent bacterial growth," he tells RFI.
These new antibacterial coatings would offer several advantages: they would limit the use of toxic bactericides on board and allow astronauts to save time, a precious resource on board the ISS.
The research could be useful on Earth too. "I'm thinking of door handles, handrails in the subway or on buses and hospitals. We're starting to have some pretty serious leads on concrete applications within a few years," Rouquette says.
During her mission, Adenot will also conduct an educational experiment called ChlorISS, in partnership with 4,500 French schools.
The idea is to simultaneously germinate Arabidopsis thaliana and Brassica rapa japonica ("Minuza") seeds in microgravity, both on the ISS and on Earth, in order to observe the effects of gravity and light on the growth of these two plants.
Marie Fesuick, who is in charge of the ChlorISS experiment, says it will last 10 days.
"Every day, Adenot will photograph the progress of germination, then she will send the photos to schools. Students will be able to compare these photos with the observations they make in their classrooms and observe any differences," she explains.
Involving young people with experiments on the ISS has become an integral part of space missions.
In 2021, during his second mission, Pesquet conducted a similar experiment with the "blob", a yellow single-celled creature, neither animal nor plant.
"We hope to inspire some young people, to spark vocations, not necessarily in space, but in science in general," explains Fesuick.
Adenot agrees: "It's important that young people identify with [these] career paths. I will be as generous as possible in sharing my experience with them, as much as time allows." A new spacesuit
She will also have the opportunity to test a new space suit, known as the "EuroSuit".
In development since 2023, it is designed to be worn by the astronaut inside the spacecraft during take-off and docking phases, and in case of emergency.
It was developed as part of a partnership between CNES, the French start-up Spartan Space, the Institute of Space Medicine and Physiology and the innovation branch of the Decathlon sporting goods company.
According to Decathlon, the suit can be "donned or doffed in less than two minutes and completely autonomously".
Adenot will test the prototype during her mission to validate its ergonomics in microgravity conditions, in conjunction with further tests on the ground.
She has a packed schedule between now and the launch date. She still has to undergo several tests to collect baseline medical data. "We'll take them aboard the ISS and then compare them with the data I collect when I return to Earth," she explains.
And she still needs to familiarise herself with handling the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, which will take her to the ISS.
"We rehearse the standard procedures and emergency procedures extensively, to be prepared for any eventuality."
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