AI advances robot navigation on the International Space Station
Reports and Proceedings
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 9-Dec-2025 00:11 ET (9-Dec-2025 05:11 GMT/UTC)
The RISTRETTO project, dedicated to observing Proxima b –the closest exoplanet to the Solar System — is reaching a new milestone: several key components of this high-precision spectrograph have been prototyped and successfully tested by the workshops of the Department of Astronomy at the University of Geneva (UNIGE). In addition, comprehensive simulations of the instrument indicate that RISTRETTO will be able to detect Proxima b, along with potential signs of oxygen or water in its atmosphere — a planet similar in size and temperature to Earth. These findings are detailed in two studies published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A U.S. Naval Research Laboratory’s (NRL) space robotics team received the Best Paper Award in Orbital Robotics at the 2025 International Conference on Space Robotics (iSpaRo) in Sendai, Japan, on Dec. 3. The recognition spotlights NRL’s leadership in autonomous space systems and artificial intelligence–enabled operations.
There is an important and unresolved tension in cosmology regarding the rate at which the universe is expanding, and resolving this could reveal new physics. Astronomers constantly seek new ways to measure this expansion in case there may be unknown errors in data from conventional markers such as supernovae. Recently, researchers including those from the University of Tokyo measured the expansion of the universe using novel techniques and new data from the latest telescopes. Their method exploits the way light from extremely distant objects takes multiple pathways to get to us. Differences in these pathways help improve models on what happens at the largest cosmological scales, including expansion.