The International Space Station (ISS) National Laboratory highlighted the rapid growth of space-based R&D in its annual report, released today by the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space® (CASIS®). Over the past fiscal year, the ISS National Lab sponsored more than 100 payloads delivered to the orbiting laboratory—the second-highest annual total to date. Also this year, ISS National Lab-related results were published in 51 peer-reviewed articles—the most ever in a year—underscoring the vital role of the ISS National Lab in advancing scientific discovery and innovation.

A UVA study uses satellite data to show that air pollution from industrial swine farms in Eastern North Carolina disproportionately affects marginalized communities.

Astronomers and engineers at CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, developed the specialised system, CRACO, for their ASKAP radio telescope to rapidly detect mysterious fast radio bursts and other space phenomena.  The new technology has now been put to the test by researchers led by the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy (ICRAR) in Western Australia.

The organic material found in a few areas on the surface of dwarf planet Ceres is probably of exogenic origin. Impacting asteroids from the outer asteroid belt may have brought it with them. In the journal AGU Advances, a group of researchers led by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany presents the most comprehensive analysis to date of this mysterious material and its geological context. To this end, the team for the first time used artificial intelligence to analyse observational data from NASA's Dawn spacecraft. According to the study, the dwarf planet's unique cryovolcanism, in which salty brine rises from the body’s interior to the surface, is not responsible for the organic deposits discovered so far. These new findings help to understand where and how habitable conditions could have arisen in the Solar System.