6 Unexpected Ways UC San Diego Researchers are Studying Space

• NASA announced plans in March to establish a permanent base on the Moon through a strategic series of events and documents titled “Ignition.” • The initiative signals a shift toward long-term lunar habitation rather than short-term exploration missions.

• Fifty years after the NASA Viking 1 lander touched down on Mars, scientists continue to debate whether the mission discovered evidence of extraterrestrial life. • A recent analysis suggests that Viking 1 likely found autotrophic microbial life, estimating a density of approximately 1,000 cells per gram of soil.

• A new report emphasizes the need for more studies applying multiple Event Attribution (EEA) approaches to the same climate event to improve the reliability of findings. • The text advocates for operational EEA programs to implement periodic peer reviews to increase confidence in attribution results and identify gaps in current research.

• NASA has issued Amendment 64 for the A.15 Biosphere research area, which seeks to fund foundational knowledge on interactions within terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. • The initiative focuses on understanding complex biological systems and their environmental drivers to improve Earth science modeling.

• NASA is preparing to launch the first of six new airborne science campaigns starting this summer. • These missions will utilize aircraft to study Earth's systems, environment, and climate patterns.

• Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are investigating the origin of "little red dots," mysterious objects appearing frequently in surveys of the early universe. • Researchers discovered that these red dots are often paired with "little blue companions," providing a new clue to their nature.

• Researchers at the Southwest Research Institute discovered that a massive asteroid shattered near Jupiter's gravitational gateway approximately 800 million years ago. • The fragmentation event released a vast amount of rocky debris that likely bombarded Earth, the Moon, and Mars for an estimated 150 million years.

• NASA is utilizing the SPHEREx mission to conduct an all-sky spectral survey of the galaxy to better understand the origins of the universe. • The mission aims to collect extensive data on over 450 million galaxies and 100 million stars located within the Milky Way.

• Scientists have identified a potentially habitable planet located 48 light-years away that possesses three critical requirements for life: a rocky composition, an atmosphere, and a suitable temperature. • This discovery is being highlighted as one of the closest approximations humans have found to a planet capable of supporting biological life.

• NASA's Psyche spacecraft successfully completed a flyby of Mars, capturing a significant trove of data and a time-lapse video of the encounter. • Mission scientists used the flyby to calibrate instruments under dynamic conditions and study the physics of planetary magnetism.

• Astronomers have discovered an atmosphere containing helium on LHS 1140b, a rocky planet located 48 light-years away. • The planet is situated within its star's habitable zone, suggesting the potential for liquid water to exist on its surface.

• Scientists using Earth's largest particle accelerator have observed a specific phenomenon within a hot, dense particle "soup" that mimics the conditions of the cosmos immediately following the Big Bang. • The discovery is the result of a decades-long quest to understand the fundamental state of matter that existed during the universe's earliest moments.