When the Sun was just a baby four billion years ago, it went through violent outbursts of intense radiation, spewing scorching, high-energy clouds and particles across the solar system. These growing pains helped seed life on early Earth by igniting chemical reactions that kept Earth warm and wet. Yet, these solar tantrums also may have prevented life from emerging on other worlds by stripping them of atmospheres and zapping nourishing chemicals....

Myocarditis is a rare but serious condition that causes inflammation of the heart muscle. It can weaken the heart and affect the heart’s electrical system, which keeps the heart pumping regularly. It is most often the result of an infection and/or inflammation caused by a virus. “In June of this year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices reported a likely link between mRNA COVID-19 vaccination and myocarditis, particularly in people younger than 39....

Researchers have just completed the longest-ever study tracking temperatures in Jupiter’s upper troposphere. This is the layer of the atmosphere where the giant planet’s weather occurs and where its signature colorful striped clouds form. The study was conducted over four decades by fusing together data from NASA spacecraft and ground-based telescope observations. It found unexpected patterns in how temperatures of Jupiter’s belts and zones change over time. According to scientists, the study represents a major step toward a better understanding of what drives weather at our solar system’s largest planet and eventually being able to forecast it....

The call for more astronauts comes at a time when the agency is preparing to send the first woman and next man to the Moon with the Artemis program. Exploring the Moon during this decade will help prepare humanity for its next giant leap – sending astronauts to Mars. U.S. citizens may submit applications to #BeAnAstronaut here. “America is closer than any other time in history since the Apollo program to returning astronauts to the Moon....

Orion exited the gravitational sphere of influence of the Moon Tuesday, November 22, at 9:49 p.m. CST at a lunar altitude of 39,993 miles (64,362 km). The spacecraft will reach its farthest distance from the Moon on Friday, November 25. This will happen just before performing the next major burn to enter the orbit. The distant retrograde orbit insertion burn is the second in a pair of maneuvers required to propel Orion into the highly stable orbit that requires minimal fuel consumption while traveling around the Moon....

The explosion of knowledge of planets orbiting other stars, called exoplanets, and the results of decades of research on signatures of life – what scientists call biosignatures – have encouraged NASA to address, in a scientifically rigorous way, whether humanity is alone. Beyond searching for evidence of just microbial life, NASA now is exploring ways to search for life advanced enough to create technology. Technosignatures are signs or signals, which if observed, would allow us to infer the existence of technological life elsewhere in the universe....

The contract extends the agreement between NASA and SAO through September 30, 2024, followed by two three-year options that would extend the contract through September 30, 2030. The total potential value of the contract extension is $563.5 million. This contract covers the continued operation of the Chandra X-ray Center (CXC) in Cambridge, which conducts key aspects of Chandra’s observation, operations, and research program. Core functions of the CXC include system engineering, ground system development and maintenance, mission operations, science, and operations planning, science research and dissemination, and outreach support....

Here is the latest… Pebbles in Bit Carousel On Monday, January 17, the WATSON camera imaged the bit carousel and its pebbles – and also took images underneath the rover to establish just what was down there before any recovery strategies were applied. Later that same Martian day, we rotated the bit carousel about 75 degrees before returning it back to its original position. WATSON imaging showed the two upper pebbles were ejected during the process....

How does the rover study rocks up-close? The Mars2020 Perseverance rover is equipped with several instruments that help it investigate the surface of Mars. The PIXL and SHERLOC spectrometers both sit on the Robotic Arm. In addition to measuring spectra and taking images of the Martian surface, the Robotic Arm is also equipped with a drill. The drill cuts out samples from the interior of the rock to collect them....

In the not-too-distant future, astronauts destined to be the first people to walk on Mars will leave Earth aboard an Orion spacecraft. Carried aloft by the tremendous power of a Space Launch System rocket, our explorers will begin their Journey to Mars from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, carrying the spirit of humanity with them to the Red Planet. The first future human mission to Mars and those that follow will require the ingenuity and dedication of an entire generation....

This new view of Pluto’s crescent — taken by New Horizons’ wide-angle Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC) on July 14 and downlinked to Earth on September 13 — offers an oblique look across Plutonian landscapes with dramatic backlighting from the sun. It spectacularly highlights Pluto’s varied terrains and extended atmosphere. The scene measures 780 miles (1,250 kilometers) across. “This image really makes you feel you are there, at Pluto, surveying the landscape for yourself,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado....

Last December 24, NASA’s InSight lander recorded a magnitude 4 marsquake. However, scientists only learned the cause of that quake later: a meteoroid impact estimated to be one of the biggest seen on Mars since NASA began exploring the cosmos. Furthermore, the meteoroid strike excavated boulder-size chunks of ice buried closer to the Martian equator than ever found before – a discovery with implications for NASA’s future plans to send astronaut explorers to the Red Planet....

NASA’s Webb Space Telescope Delivers Deepest Image of Universe Yet NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has delivered the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe so far. Affectionately known as Webb’s First Deep Field, this is galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 and it is teeming with thousands of galaxies – including the smallest, faintest objects ever observed. Webb’s image is approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length, a tiny sliver of the vast universe....

A launch Saturday would lead to docking Sunday, November 27, for the Dragon to deliver important research, crew supplies and hardware to the crew aboard the orbiting laboratory. Docking coverage will begin at 6 a.m. with the spacecraft planned to arrive at the space station around 7:30 a.m. Just 10 minutes before the 3:54 p.m. EST liftoff, the countdown continued. Fueling of the Falcon 9 second stage had already begun....

NASA and SpaceX now are targeting no earlier than 10:05 a.m. EDT Thursday, October 13, for Crew-4 undocking from the International Space Station (ISS) aboard the Dragon Freedom crew ship. That will kick off the return trip to Earth completing a nearly six-month science mission in orbit. Splashdown is targeted nearly 8 hours later at 5:43 p.m. on Thursday off the coast of Florida. Mission teams continue to monitor a cold front passing over Florida with the potential to bring high winds and rainy weather near the splashdown zones off the Atlantic and Gulf coasts....

Researchers at North Carolina State University have come up with a technique to embed needle-like carbon nanofibers in an elastic membrane, creating a flexible “bed of nails” on the nanoscale that opens the door to development of new drug-delivery systems. The research community is interested in finding new ways to deliver precise doses of drugs to specific targets, such as regions of the brain. One idea is to create balloons embedded with nanoscale spikes that are coated with the relevant drug....

From the Moon’s past, to earth’s future Impact flashes are referred to as ‘transient lunar phenomena’, because although common, they are fleeting occurrences, lasting just fractions of a second. This makes them difficult to study, and because the objects that cause them are too small to see, impossible to predict. For this reason, scientists are studying lunar flashes with great interest, not only for what they can tell us about the Moon and its history, but also about Earth and its future....

Auditory and visual hallucinations — perceptions of hearing or seeing something without observing external sensory stimuli — are central symptoms of psychotic disorders and are thought by some to be caused by excessive dopamine in the brain. However, evaluating the dopamine hypothesis of psychosis is particularly challenging, as hallucinatory experiences often rely on self-reporting, an ability that model organisms like mice lack. As a result, understanding how best to effectively treat psychotic disorders remains limited....

Using measurements of changes in neural activity in neurons of the inferior temporal cortex of mature nonhuman primates as they observed novel and familiar stimuli, neuroscientists have observed signs of synaptic plasticity emerging in a living brain while it accomplishes the feat of beholding and recognizing stimuli. From the first project David Sheinberg took on as a graduate student in 1989, his work to understand the brain’s visual system has been influenced by a model proposed in 1982 at Brown by Elie Bienenstock, Leon Cooper, and Paul Munro (BCM)....

An international team of researchers led by Silke Britzen from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, studied high-resolution radio observations of the source between 2009 and 2018, before and after the neutrino event. The team proposes that the enhanced neutrino activity during an earlier neutrino flare and the single neutrino could have been generated by a cosmic collision within TXS 0506+056. The clash of jet material close to a supermassive black hole seems to have produced the neutrinos....