Chandrayaan-2 finds strong evidence for ice in ‘doubly-shadowed’ lunar craters BENGALURU: Scientists working with India’s Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft have discovered strong evidence of ice buried beneath the floor of the Moon’s south pole region in “doubly-shadowed” craters, a finding that could prove critical for future human missions to the lunar surface.The discovery, published this week in…
Every drop of blood in your body is doing something ancient. It is carrying oxygen, fighting infections, clotting wounds, and patrolling for threats, a set of tasks so fundamental to animal life that nearly every creature with a backbone does some version of the same thing. But where did blood cells come from in the…
The US space agency NASA has sped up the efforts to construct the Artemis Era Moon Base with the objective of developing an enduring manned habitat at the moon’s south pole. This comes after NASA unveiled new lunar rover deals, cargo landers, robotic missions, and even the building of facilities meant to aid astronauts who…
Indian conservationists Parveen Shaikh and Barkha Subba have won the prestigious Whitley Awards 2026, widely known as the ‘Green Oscars’, for their efforts to protect endangered species and fragile ecosystems in India. The award, presented by the UK-based Whitley Fund for Nature, honours grassroots conservation leaders from the Global South. Shaikh was recognised for saving…
The capacity of solar panels fitted on campervans and off-grid vans is normally expected to be lower compared to what is advertised under real-world circumstances. However, some users of these vehicles have recorded cases where the capacity of solar panels exceeds their usual capacity due to unusually favourable weather. The reasons why some solar panels…
Chinese researchers have unveiled a breakthrough experimental therapy that could one day protect humans from the deadly effects of nuclear radiation exposure. The study, published in the journal Cell Death and Differentiation, showed that mice exposed to harmful levels of ionising radiation survived at dramatically higher rates after scientists disabled a key protein pathway linked…
In cities filled with concrete, glass and rising temperatures, Spanish botanist Ignacio Solano sees something different in the empty walls around him. Through massive vertical gardens covered in thousands of plants, Solano is helping transform ordinary buildings into living ecosystems that cool the air, reduce pollution and support biodiversity. His work, spread across Europe and…
For a long time, astronomers treated the early universe as a place where galaxies were still finding their footing, small systems forming stars rapidly, while the larger cosmic structures familiar today had not yet settled into existence. Galaxy clusters, the sprawling cities of the cosmos, were thought to become influential much later. Yet fresh observations…
In the mid-1960s, inside a research laboratory run by DuPont, Stephanie Kwolek was searching for something fairly practical. The company wanted lightweight yet durable fibres that could eventually replace steel in vehicle tyres and reduce fuel consumption. Synthetic materials were already common in industry by then, but the challenge was finding one that could survive…
A technology that could propel crewed missions to Mars and robotic spacecraft throughout the solar system was recently put to the test at NASA‘s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. The result was a milestone that engineers and space scientists have been working toward for decades, and one that brings the prospect of humans setting…