During a total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, scientists and tens of thousands of volunteer observers were stationed throughout the Moon’s shadow to learn more about our Sun and its effects on Earth. At a press briefing on Tuesday, Dec. 10, scientists attending the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington, D.C., reported some early results from a few NASA-funded experiments.

A new study conducted by D-Hygea Lab of the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering of the Politecnico di Milano, in collaboration with the Regional Emergency Agency (AREU), has analysed the impact of heat waves on the cardiovascular health of Milan residents. The results show that in 18 highly vulnerable districts, home to 23% of the city’s population, the risk of cardiovascular emergencies increases by 22% during days of extreme heat compared to normal days. In contrast, in 20 low vulnerability districts, the increased risk is not significant

Thanks for a powerful antioxidant, Deinococcus radiodurans can withstand radiation doses 28,000 times greater than what would kill a human. In a new study, scientists discovered how the antioxidant works. Finding could drive the development of designer antioxidants to shield astronauts from cosmic radiation.

Encountering Neptune in 1989, NASA's Voyager mission completed humankind's first close-up exploration of the four giant outer planets of our solar system. Collectively, since their launch in 1977, the twin Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft discovered that Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune were far more complex than scientists had imagined. There was a lot more to be learned.

A NASA Hubble Space Telescope observation program called OPAL (Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy) obtains long-term baseline observations of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune in order to understand their atmospheric dynamics and evolution.

In a paper appearing in the journal Nature, an international team including University of Liège astronomers report the detection of 138 new decameter rocky bodies in the main asteroid belt. The space rocks range in size from that of a bus to a few hundred meters wide, and are the smallest asteroids within the main belt that have been detected to date. This discovery was made possible by an innovative analysis of archival infrared images initially devoted to the study of the TRAPPIST-1 exoplanetary system collected by the world’s most powerful observatory — the NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). This discovery has important implications for the understanding of the asteroid population of the main belt and the Earth planetary defense against dangerous asteroids.