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A community gathering in Ireland last fall turned into a public health incident when 48 children developed aggressive skin and soft-tissue infections linked to a bouncy castle contaminated with a hypervirulent, multidrug-resistant strain of MRSA, according to an investigation published this week in the journal Eurosurveillance.
12 Sept 2026Researchers have used mass spectrometry-based proteomics to analyze the composition of glues and adhesives in ancient Egyptian artifacts without damaging the objects, revealing unexpected plant-derived proteins, according to a new study in Science Advances.
12 Sept 2026NASA has reaffirmed its commitment to sharing all scientific data, Moon rock samples, and discoveries from the Artemis program with the global research community, a principle now upheld by all 71 signatory countries of the Artemis Accords. The agency recently concluded a two-part virtual workshop series focused on putting that open-science pledge into practice.
12 Sept 2026United Launch Alliance, the joint rocket venture owned by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, is facing growing financial difficulties that could finally compel its owners to sell the company, according to industry analysts, as nearly every other US rocket company has embraced reusability and diversification strategies.
12 Sept 2026The European Space Agency is moving 'full steam ahead' with its Envision mission to Venus after NASA determined it would be unable to fulfill its commitment to provide a US-built radar instrument, the mission's project scientist has confirmed. The orbiter, set to launch on an Ariane 6 rocket, will map the planet's surface at 10 times higher resolution than the last NASA radar mission to Venus in the 1990s, giving scientists an unprecedented view of the world hidden beneath thick clouds of sulfuric acid.
11 Sept 2026· 2 sourcesLess than two weeks after President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing the United States Space Academy, NASA has convened the first meeting of the Presidential Commission on the academy and issued a Request for Information to governors interested in hosting the institution.
11 Sept 2026The commander and pilot of NASA's Artemis II mission, Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover, have been named the first astronauts to join the space agency's emeritus program five months after splashing down from the Moon. The new status allows them to continue supporting Johnson Space Center in Houston while pursuing outside opportunities.
10 Sept 2026· 2 sourcesElon Musk's The Boring Company has closed a $3 billion Series D round at a $23 billion valuation, led by the United Arab Emirates, while French startup The Exploration Company this week announced a $450 million Series C – the largest ever for a European space company. The dual fundraises highlight a widening gap in scale between US and European private infrastructure ventures, though both signal strong investor appetite for long-shot transport and space projects.
10 Sept 2026· 2 sourcesNASA has awarded a Launch Services (NLS) II contract to Relativity Space Inc., adding the company's Terran R launch service to its roster of available vehicles for future agency missions. The indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract, which runs through December 2032, now includes Terran R alongside other providers.
10 Sept 2026NASA's Curiosity rover has now spent 5,000 Martian days (sols) on Mars, a milestone the mission marked during its ongoing traverse through the foothills of Mount Sharp in Gale Crater. The achievement underscores the longevity of a rover originally designed for a two-year primary mission.
9 Sept 2026European space startup The Exploration Company (TEC) has raised $450 million in what it calls the largest-ever Series C round by a European space company, betting that a growing queue of orbital payloads and sovereignty concerns will create demand for a non-SpaceX alternative.
9 Sept 2026Stoke Space announced Tuesday a $1 billion Series E funding round, co-led by Point72 Ventures and Spark Capital, bringing its total capital raised to $2.3 billion. The company also revealed plans for a larger Block 2 version of its Nova rocket capable of lifting 15 metric tons to low-Earth orbit in a fully reusable configuration, as it targets its first orbital launch next year.
8 Sept 2026· 2 sourcesThe UK government has corralled £7.8 billion of cross-departmental spending into a new space strategy intended to boost economic growth and national security through to 2030, covering orbital collision warnings, low Earth orbit communications, military intelligence, launch capabilities, and space science.
8 Sept 2026Stoke Space Technologies has completed the initial closing of a $1 billion Series E funding round to develop fully reusable rockets, challenging SpaceX’s dominance in low-cost launch. The company plans to use the capital to scale production, increase flight frequency, and fund a second-generation vehicle capable of carrying 15 metric tons to low-Earth orbit by 2029.
8 Sept 2026German launch startup Isar Aerospace has successfully placed its Spectrum rocket into low-Earth orbit, becoming the first company in Europe to launch a fully commercial orbital vehicle. The milestone flight, which lifted off Saturday evening from Andøya Spaceport in northern Norway, deployed payloads and marked a dramatic turnaround from a failed test launch in March.
6 Sept 2026· 4 sourcesNew research led by USDA scientists has found that levels of omega-3 fatty acids in farmed salmon have dropped considerably, potentially making official dietary advice—including the agency's own recommendation to eat at least eight ounces of fish per week—outdated and insufficient.
6 Sept 2026· 2 sourcesGermany's Isar Aerospace launched its Spectrum rocket into orbit from the Andoya spaceport in Norway on Saturday, becoming the first privately developed rocket to reach orbit from continental Europe and bolstering Europe's drive to secure independent access to space.
6 Sept 2026· 3 sourcesThe BepiColombo spacecraft has separated from its Mercury Transfer Module, beginning its final glide into orbit around Mercury after nearly eight years in space. Controllers confirmed the successful jettison on September 3, with the spacecraft now relying on its own solar panels for power ahead of orbit insertion scheduled for November 21.
5 Sept 2026The European Space Agency's BepiColombo mission has cleared a major milestone this week, entering the final stretch of an eight-year interplanetary voyage to Mercury. The nearly $2 billion robotic science mission, launched in 2018, is now travelling at the correct speed for Mercury's gravity to capture it into orbit later this year, ending a long spiral toward the Sun.
5 Sept 2026The coroner of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, has confirmed that a six-week-old baby girl died from measles in August, directly countering recent statements by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that questioned the number of measles deaths in the United States.
5 Sept 2026In a breakthrough blending history and genetics, scientists have extracted and sequenced sheeppox virus DNA preserved in the animal skins used to make medieval parchment, allowing them to reconstruct how the deadly pathogen evolved over millennia, according to a new paper published in the journal Science Advances.
5 Sept 2026· 2 sourcesResearchers announced Friday the completion of a map of every neuron in the brain of a male fruit fly, providing a new tool for neurobiology and refining techniques that could eventually be applied to more complex nervous systems, including vertebrates.
5 Sept 2026· 2 sourcesNASA's Earth Observatory has released a satellite image showing three tropical cyclones—Lowell, Karina, and Marie—simultaneously churning in the Pacific Ocean, west of Central America, as observed on September 1, 2026.
4 Sept 2026A pig kidney transplanted into a US man has functioned for a record 271 days before failing, his doctors at Mass General Brigham have announced. The organ was removed and, after a short period of dialysis, a human donor kidney became available, allowing the patient to receive a conventional transplant.
4 Sept 2026· 2 sourcesAn outbreak of diarrhea affecting more than 150 non-human primates at a research center has yielded a treasure trove of immunological data, advancing efforts to develop a vaccine against the Shigella bacteria, according to a study published in Science Translational Medicine.
4 Sept 2026The 2026 Ig Nobel Prizes have been announced, recognizing scientific achievements ranging from the design of a splash-free urinal to the use of mosquito proboscises for "necroprinting" tiny nozzles, along with studies on the decomposition rates of buried cotton underwear and the aerodynamics of a healthy nose-blow.
4 Sept 2026· 2 sourcesNASA has decided to use a simplified spacesuit variant — the 'Sortie Suit' — for its first crewed lunar surface missions, aiming to accelerate the Artemis program's timeline for landing astronauts at the Moon's south pole as early as 2028. The decision, made at the direction of Artemis Program Manager Jeremy Parsons during an internal meeting this week, involves working with contractor Axiom Space to develop the new suit.
3 Sept 2026· 2 sourcesA NASA sounding rocket that flew five detectors through a high-altitude radio-disrupting cloud has provided the first simultaneous multi-point view inside these mysterious layers, known as sporadic E. The findings, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, reveal unexpected complexity in the metallic veils that form from vaporized meteor dust and can interfere with GPS, air traffic control, and long-distance radio communications.
3 Sept 2026Toyohiro Akiyama, the first Japanese citizen to travel to space and the first journalist to file reports from orbit, has died at age 84 from lower gastrointestinal bleeding, according to Japanese news agencies.
3 Sept 2026· 2 sourcesGlobal heating is now on track to hit at least 1.8°C even under the most optimistic scenario, according to a new report from the UN Environment Programme, confirming that the world will overshoot the Paris Agreement's 1.5°C goal in the next few years.
2 Sept 2026· 2 sourcesNASA has awarded Blue Origin a contract to develop the Mars Telecommunications Network, a next-generation communications system designed to provide high-bandwidth, reliable data relay and navigation services for current and future Mars missions. The firm-fixed-price contract, valued at up to $700 million, requires delivery of a telecommunications orbiter by December 31, 2028, with the network expected to be operational at Mars by 2030.
2 Sept 2026A nonprofit organization, the Fermi Explorer Mission, has announced plans to launch a spacecraft to Alpha Centauri by the end of 2029, using a novel trajectory discovered by an AI system developed by Physical Superintelligence (PSI), a new AI physics research lab that launched today with $58 million in funding. The mission aims to complete the journey within 80,000 years at a cost of just $15 million.
2 Sept 2026The European Space Agency's Cluster mission is drawing to a close as the final two satellites of the quartet, Samba and Tango, are set to reenter Earth's atmosphere. Samba reentered on August 31, losing contact at 21:26 UTC and destroying itself at 21:39:38 UTC. Tango is expected to follow tonight at 21:30:31 UTC, ending a mission that began in 2000 and was originally designed for two years.
2 Sept 2026After a highly scrutinized decision to fly the Artemis II Orion capsule with its existing heat shield, NASA has confirmed the shield performed successfully during the spacecraft's reentry following a lunar mission, according to post-splashdown assessments.
2 Sept 2026· 2 sourcesA single flash of energy spotted by the world's most sensitive dark matter detector has been described as the 'most compelling hint reported to date' by an international team of physicists, though researchers caution that confirmation is needed before the elusive substance can be claimed as discovered.
2 Sept 2026A private group led by mathematician and physicist Philip Johnston has announced plans to launch a mission to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system to Earth, with the goal of making it the 'cheapest possible' interstellar probe.
2 Sept 2026For the first time in more than 30 years, NASA has no firm plans to send any new landers or rovers to Mars. Instead, the agency's near-term focus is on aerial drones, with the SkyFall mission—a fleet of three helicopters—set to launch as soon as late 2028 alongside the Space Reactor-1 "Freedom" mission, which will demonstrate nuclear electric propulsion in deep space.
1 Sept 2026· 3 sourcesA growing body of research suggests that engineered microbes could help feed crops by providing nitrogen directly, potentially reducing the need for synthetic fertilizer — a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Startup Switch Bioworks is developing a novel genetic switch that allows microbes to establish healthy colonies before shifting into nitrogen-producing mode.
1 Sept 2026A new study using fossilized corals from the Galápagos Islands has found that El Niño events today are stronger than at any time in the past 1,000 years, providing some of the strongest evidence yet that global warming is intensifying the planet’s largest year-to-year climate variation.
1 Sept 2026· 2 sourcesNASA's Roman Space Telescope is now in the commissioning phase of its three-month journey from Earth to Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2 (L2), where engineers will methodically turn on, adjust, and calibrate the observatory's systems before science operations can begin.
31 Aug 2026NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, a $4.3 billion observatory featuring a 300-megapixel camera and a refurbished spy mirror, launched Sunday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, beginning a mission to unravel the Universe's most enigmatic forces. The telescope's vast field of view—100 times wider than Hubble's—will complement the James Webb Space Telescope's deep-field studies, marking only the second NASA-led astrophysics mission to launch this century after Webb's 2021 debut.
31 Aug 2026· 3 sourcesNASA launched the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope overnight, a mission designed to peer back across 11 billion years of cosmic history and test whether the leading model of dark energy — the mysterious force accelerating the universe's expansion — is fundamentally wrong. Recent data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) and the Dark Energy Survey have raised tantalising hints that dark energy may not be constant, but weakening over time, a finding that would require astrophysicists to rewrite their understanding of the cosmos.
31 Aug 2026President Donald Trump unexpectedly dialed into NASA's post-launch news conference for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on Sunday morning at Kennedy Space Center, interrupting the standard briefing to congratulate the mission team.
31 Aug 2026· 2 sourcesNASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched successfully aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Aug. 30, 2026, beginning a three-month, one-million-mile journey to the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point. The observatory will survey billions of galaxies from its vantage beyond the Moon, with scientists hoping its data will illuminate dark energy and reveal exoplanets directly.
31 Aug 2026· 2 sourcesA recent Al Jazeera article poses the question of whether 'super coral' and cooling the sea can protect reefs from climate change, though the provided text does not include the article's content or findings.
29 Aug 2026A world-first clinical trial led by Australian researchers has found that taking statins — a common cholesterol-lowering medication — can reduce the risk of a heart attack or stroke in otherwise healthy people aged over 70, with a low risk of serious side effects.
29 Aug 2026· 2 sourcesA world-first clinical trial has found that a widely used cholesterol-lowering medication significantly reduces the risk of a major cardiovascular event in people who have previously had a heart attack, according to researchers.
29 Aug 2026· 3 sourcesPresident Donald Trump signed an executive order on Friday establishing the United States Space Academy, a new national institution intended to educate and train engineers, operators, and service members for the growing space sector. The academy will be located at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, and a presidential commission chaired by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman will deliver recommendations within 120 days.
29 Aug 2026· 5 sources