NASA’s Roman Space Telescope has passed its main checkout and moved into science commissioning, with its wide field camera beating its optical requirement. Science operations are expected by early 2027.
Webb has caught methane glowing, rather than absorbing light, on a brown dwarf six times the mass of Jupiter in the young cluster IC 348. Something is heating its upper air or lighting it from outside.
A full rehearsal on flight-like computers shows NASA’s Dragonfly rotorcraft can pick a landing site on a simulated Titan and touch down without human help. Tests on the real spacecraft come next.
Carbon monoxide high in the atmospheres of Uranus and Neptune points to very different amounts of deep oxygen, hinting that the two ice giants were built from material gathered in different parts of the young Solar System.
