NASA

NASA shows the real appearance of the Earth according to gravity… and it is deformed

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This July, NASA has made public on its website an interactive and updated image in the way that gravity would give our planet and the result has not left anyone indifferent. The simulation not only moves away from the idealized myth of the perfect, blue sphere, but also goes far beyond what we learned in school about the sphere flattened by the poles. According to this three-dimensional representation from the US space agency, the Earth’s shape has giant lumps and dips and is not uniform at all. And we owe it all to gravity. The geoid. What this NASA simulation shows is an irregular structure with enormous elevations and depressions, similar to a “potato”which is called geoid. This concept is a 3D mathematical model which serves as a reference surface to measure the elevations of the surface of our planet and the intensity of the forces of gravity according to the variations in the Earth’s mass. NASA defines it as an equipotential surface of the Earth’s gravitational field and, therefore, the reference of zero lift. The secret is in the water… To better understand this geoid, we must imagine the effect that gravity would have on the oceans and the enormous masses of earth water if the wind, waves, tides and currents did not exist. That is, if water, which covers 71% of our surfacewas completely still – something only possible in a simulation like this. …and also in gravity. Our planet is a very rugged celestial body whose mass is unevenly distributed. Those variations in density in the Earth’s mantle, such as mountain ranges on one side or valleys and places like the anomaly of the Indian Ocean “hole” in the other, they affect natural forces. They do it by producing changes in the gravitational field attracting water with greater or lesser intensity and causing those prominences and basins that NASA now shows us. Iceland and India, the two extremes. In order to show these differences on the surface, the scientists who designed this image of the geoid have exaggerated its vertical scale. between 7,000 and 10,000 times relative to zero elevationas explained by Heraldo USA. They do it this way because the variations are not appreciated in reality, since they only reach a few tens of meters on a planet whose radius exceeds 6,300 kilometers. The American media reports that, in this way, they have been able to verify that the point with the highest elevation is in Iceland, where the surface would rise more than 80 meters above the zero level. At the other extreme, southern India would sink about 106 meters below the same reference. More than 15 years of data collected by satellite. The development of this fascinating model has been possible thanks to the observation work that 19 space satellites have carried out over 15 years. Among them, according to the NASA website, are the Grace space mission from NASA or GOCE European satellite. Image | POT In Xataka | The paradox of artificial gravity: Einstein told us how to do it, engineering tells us it is almost impossible

The fire in Madrid forces the evacuation of an essential facility for NASA

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The advance of the fire through the southwest of Madrid has placed the focus on Robledo de Chavela, one of the municipalities affected by the emergency. There is also a communications complex that is part of the NASA Deep Space Networkused to maintain contact with missions located at enormous distances from Earth. The teams work to protect facilities whose importance is not always evident from the outside. What happens there affects a space infrastructure of international scope. The clearest warning came from the Government delegate in Madrid, Francisco Martín, which ensured that the installation “she is in a critical situation” and that the troops were doing “the impossible to protect her.” The fire was also going through its “peak moment”, with the head of the fire beyond the capacity to extinguish, according to the Community of Madrid. The approximately 90 workers at the complex have been evacuated and there is no longer any personnel inside the facility, so it is not yet possible to confirm whether the flames have penetrated the facilities or caused damage. Xataka has contacted the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, JPL, and the Ministry of the Interior. From the center they have told us that They are coordinating with NASA headquarters and that they hope to have information soon. Interior had not responded at the time of writing this article. One of NASA’s three doors to deep space The threatened facility is the Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex, known by its English acronym, MDSCC. Located in Robledo de Chavela, it belongs to the National Institute of Aerospace Technology and operates in collaboration with NASA. The facility has six large satellite dishesamong them one 70 meters in diameter and several 34 meters. They are all part of the Deep Space Networkthe international infrastructure used by the US agency to maintain communications with ships exploring the Solar System. Madrid is one of the three pieces that support the global coverage of this network. The others are located in Goldstone, California, and Canberra, Australia, strategically placed so that the Earth’s rotation does not interrupt contact with the ships for too long. When a mission disappears below the horizon of Robledo de Chavela, it may enter the field of vision of one of the other two centers. This relay makes it possible to maintain practically continuous communications and distribute the tasks of monitoring, transmitting orders and receiving scientific data. The scale of that activity is measured across the Deep Space Network, not by independent facilities. According to NASA, lto network serves more than 40 missions and a specialized team distributes the antenna time between the three complexes according to the visibility of each ship and the objectives of tracking, science and data return. These missions do not constitute, therefore, an exclusive portfolio of the Madrid station. The agency itself describes these antennas as an “indispensable link” with vehicles that venture beyond Earth. A recent example allows us to better measure this role. On June 23, New Horizons controllers confirmed that the ship had woken up normally after 321 days of hibernation. At that time it was about 9.5 billion kilometers from Earth, so the signal took approximately 8 hours and 52 minutes to arrive. Confirmation reached the mission operations center in Maryland through the Deep Space Network station located near Madrid. For now there is no official confirmation of damage, but it is not possible to rule it out either. Those responsible for the complex will not be able to check the status of the buildings, equipment and antennas until they can return to the premises. NASA has DSN Nowa tool that normally allows you to check which network antennas are active and which ships they communicate with. The page is currently out of service for updating work, a circumstance that does not allow conclusions to be drawn about the operational status of the Madrid station. Images | POT In Xataka | If you live in Madrid and want to see the total eclipse on August 12, write down these 52 towns

NASA is looking for four people who want to live a year on Mars without leaving Earth

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Space travel can leave no room for improvisation. Especially if the destination is a place as inhospitable and unexplored as Mars. Or even the Moon. Therefore, before the first astronauts set foot on the red planet and a new batch of humans walk on our satellite, NASA has decided to carry out a dress rehearsal here on Earth. Of course, it will not be done with astronauts, but with a group of volunteers willing to spend a year in a simulated environment of both the confinement conditions of the trip and the subsistence with limited resources that will mean staying at a base in either of these two places. The mission is expected to begin in 2027, no earlier than August, so the search for volunteers is still underway. Two missions in one. The mission, named by NASA as Moon and Mars Exploration Analogis a mix of two other previous missions: HERA and CHAPEA. Both consist of the use of facilities that simulate the extreme conditions of a trip to Mars or the Moon. CHAPEA’s facilities are larger (158 m2), as they simulate what the installed base would be in either of these two locations. HERA, on the other hand, consists of a smaller environment (60 m2), which simulates the confinement conditions of space travel. Therefore, what will be done is to dock the vehicle, based on HERA, to a larger, but isolated environment, in which there is everything from private accommodation for the crew to a common work space, including a recreation room, cultivation area, medical room, food preparation area, airlock and two bathrooms. They are not astronauts, but almost. NASA has announced that it is looking for volunteers, possibly because its astronauts are busy with other tasks. However, not just anyone can apply. To start, they must be US citizens or green card holders, between 30 and 55 years old, with a good command of English and a height that does not exceed 1.88 meters. On the other hand, they must have a degree in engineering, biological sciences, physical sciences or mathematics. Basically, just like astronauts. In fact, it is preferable that they have these qualifications at an advanced level. Finally, they should not have special dietary needsnor require help to sleep. Furthermore, in relation to sleep, they should not be sleepwalkers either. Of course, added to all this is that they will have to pass a series of tests, both physical and psychological. Come on, they’re not astronauts, but almost. Training for a fake trip to Mars. The four selected volunteers will have a pre- and post-mission phase dedicated to data collection. Additionally, before embarking on this year-long simulation, they will have to train and prepare for what will come next. In total, all this will last two months. All simulations. For one year, these temporary astronauts will live and work in isolation and confinement while simulating both interplanetary travel and operations on the planetary surface, including spacewalk simulations. It is expected that the results will be useful for missions as imminent as those of the Artemis programbut also for future even more exotic trips, including the long-awaited Martian colonization. Image | Magnificent | POT In Xataka | We knew there was water on the Moon, but not why some craters were empty. Finally we have the answer

NASA has managed to make a satellite “understand” what it sees, without sending a single photo to Earth

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The role of satellites is simple. They take data, send it to Earth and, once here, it is analyzed. So far, that is being viable. However, the process is getting complicated. There are more and more satellites (Hello, Elon Musk), which means more information flowing to Earth. There are not enough people, energy or time to analyze so much information. For this reason, NASA and the startup LoftOrbital have developed NAVI-Orbital, software for satellite observation that is capable of describing what it sees and even searching for what it is ordered to do. A model of vision and language. NAVI-Orbital works with Gemma 3a series of vision and language models belonging to Google DeepMind. As their name suggests, they are capable of processing both images and text, so that, with proper training, they can describe images and respond to simple text commands. Before, a multitude of complex computer commands had to be used for a satellite to follow orders and even then the results had to be analyzed by humans. Now, all you have to do is ask him to obey and analyze the results. Find what you ask for. A clear example of what NAVI-Orbital can do is search for objects, buildings or geographical features. If you know what a river is, you can search and display all the rivers in a given area. You can also locate all bridges or roads. But, in turn, it can identify anomalies in those places. For example, you may find rivers about to overflow or roads where there has been an accident. much faster. Most artificial intelligence algorithms send information to data centerswhere the result is processed and returned. In this case, however, what is known as edge AI is used. That is to say, the entire model runs directly on the same device that captures the data. The satellite in this case. Civil or military applications. In April, the first tests were carried out with the YAM-9 satellite, which already has the new software incorporated, with very good results. It was the first time that a satellite managed to describe what it “sees.” That’s why NASA and LoftOrbital are already excited about their applications. They consider that satellite constellations with NAVI-Orbital could be used to monitor the planet for civil or defense applications. They can search for oil spills, for example, but also study possible military attacks. The difference with what we have so far with any of these purposes is that nothing has to be analyzed. That is, you don’t put a satellite to take photos of the sea and then here on Earth a team of people or a computer algorithm analyzes them for oil spills. It is the satellite itself that saves sending thousands of photos without spills and directly analyzes what it sees. The result is much faster, cheaper and more efficient. It may even be the future of satellite observation, although it is still too early. We will have to see how these models that have already begun to undergo the first tests evolve. Image | LoftOrbital In Xataka | Ukraine’s military has a problem almost as important as Russia: Starlink belongs to Elon Musk

China is preparing to be the only power with its own space station, but NASA does not want to make it easy for it

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The International Space Station (ISS) He is not in his best days. The increasingly frequent leaks in the Russian module and the failures of systems that increasingly require more maintenance have led NASA to set a date for its deorbitation. It will possibly be in 2030 or 2031. When that happens, the largest space station in Earth orbit will be the Chinese Tiangong. Even if it remained as it is today, it would be a step forward in the space race between the Asian country and Western agencies. However, by that time Tiangong will be even larger, as China has recently announced its plan to double the size of its facilities. Three modules and a large observatory. Currently, the Chinese space station It has three moduleswhich were assembled in orbit between 2021 and 2022. However, they are falling short for all the missions and experiments that are beginning to be carried out. For this reason, the installation of three others has been planned: a 20-ton multifunctional module coupled to the main module and two experimental modules. In total, Tiangong would go from 90 tons to 180 tons. But that’s not all. Even before the installation of the first of these modules, the Xuntian observatory will be launched, which will also be closely linked to the space station. More sky than Hubble. Xuntian will have a 2-meter main mirror, slightly smaller than Hubble’s. However, it also includes a 2,500-megapixel camera with sensors that cover a much larger area of ​​the sky. Specifically, the Chinese observatory has a field of view 300 times biggerwhich will allow it to map 40% of the sky in the 10 years that it is expected to remain active. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily better than Hubble. Hubble is more precise in the details, but it will carry out very interesting work in much larger spaces of sky. The relationship with Tiangong. Although Xuntian will not be directly in Tiangong, they are closely related, since it will be placed in a very close orbit, so that it can dock with the Chinese space station when it needs to be repaired, upgraded or refueled. More ports. Docking the observatory will be possible because the new Tiangong modules will also include new spaceports. Thus, more ships can be docked simultaneously, improving the volume of work at the space station and making its arrivals and departures more flexible. Besides, in case of emergencyit will be easier to have a ship ready to protect itself or leave the facilities. Xuntian’s field of view is 300 times larger than Hubble’s The International Space Station comes to an end. All this occurs while the International Space Station prepares for his retirement. It is expected to be in 2030 or 2031 when it will join the deorbitation vehicle developed by SpaceX that will be responsible for removing it from its orbit in a controlled manner. NASA right now has its vision much more focused on the lunar bases. However, they must also think about how this station will be replaced when its days end. Initially, NASA had planned for private companies to take charge this time. However, this same year the strategy changed and proposed the construction of a main government module in which various private companies could be attached. Axiom or Blue Origin are the ones that, at the moment, best fit the requirements of this project. The reason for this plot twist has been, in fact, China’s progress in its particular space race. The United States does not want to lose its leadership due to the retirement of the ISS, but to do so it needs to maneuver quickly. The problem is that sometimes hasty decisions can lead to wrong moves. We will have to wait to see what happens with all this in the end. Images | Shujianyang | 中国科学院长春光学精密机械与物理研究所 In Xataka | Western scientists have been debating the origin of Kamo’oalewa for years. China went looking for him

We thought “cotton candy planets” was a metaphor. NASA just found two that take it to the limit

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In a very distant planetary system, about 1,113 light years from Earth, intuition asks us for a very reasonable thing: if a planet is almost the size of Jupiter, it should also resemble Jupiter in its mass. NASA’s TESS mission just showed that the universe doesn’t always play by those rules. From your data, scientists have identified two giant worlds around the star TOI-791 that seem made to break that expectation: they take up a lot of space, but concentrate very little matter. The discovery has its own names: TOI-791 by TOI-791 c. They are two “super-puff” planets, a term used to describe giant worlds with extremely low densities, comparable in this case to that of cotton candy. Scientists calculate that they are the most “bloated” planets found so far, a striking label but supported by a very specific comparison: their size is close to that of Jupiter, while their mass represents only a small fraction of that of the largest planet in the Solar System. The key piece of this story is TESSNASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. We are not talking about a telescope designed to obtain direct images of these worlds, but rather a space observatory prepared to monitor large areas of the sky looking for indirect signalss. According to technical information, its payload is concentrated in a single instrument: a set of four wide-field optical cameras. These cameras work together with their covers, mount, sun shield and data management unit to track stars for long periods. Two giant planets that weigh almost nothing The important thing is that TESS did not see those planets the way we see an image of Jupiter or Saturn. What it detected were repeated small drops in the brightness of TOI-791, the Sun-like star that hosts this system. This pattern appears when, from our perspective, a planet passes in front of its star and blocks a minimal part of its light. From these transits, and how they repeat over time, scientists can reconstruct the presence of worlds that are too far away to be shown as a conventional photograph. There’s an understandable trap here: we see the NASA illustration and our brain fills in the scene as if we were looking at a photo. But that is not what has happened. The agency clarifies that no direct image of TOI-791 by TOI-791 cand that its appearance in the visual pieces is an artistic interpretation. The image serves to bring us closer to the discovery and compare it with known planets, but it is not the observation itself: the observation is in the signals measured by TESS when these worlds pass in front of their star. The TESS spacecraft and its payload, prepared before launch The rarity appears very clearly when the figures come in. TOI-791 b is almost the same size as Jupiter, but contains only 3.0% of its mass. TOI-791 c goes even one step further: it is larger than Jupiter, although it barely reaches 5.9% of its mass. That combination is what makes these worlds so strange. We are not dealing with small planets with little matter, but with giants that take up a lot of space and yet concentrate a surprisingly low amount of mass. There is also a question of patience. TOI-791 b takes 139 days to complete one revolution around its star, and TOI-791 c needs 232 days. For a telescope that searches for planets through transits, that means waiting a long time to see the same signal repeat and confirm that we are not facing a coincidence. The accumulation of data was decisive here: from its high orbit around the Earth, TESS gathered 1,122 days of observations of this system over seven years. The image compares the size of the two “super-puff” planets with some worlds in our Solar System To arrive at their masses, scientists took advantage of a very useful detail: these two planets do not move as if the other did not exist. TOI-791 b and TOI-791 c follow an orbital pattern that causes them to be gravitationally attracted to each other. That push and pull slightly changes the timing of its transits across the star from our perspective. By measuring these small temporal variations, the team was able to estimate how much mass each planet contains and confirm their status as low-density “super-puff” planets. The confusion comes not only from the fact that they are huge worlds with very little mass, but also from the fact that they fit poorly with what was expected to be found. Jon Jenkins of NASA Ames sums it up this way: “They represent a puzzle “We must solve how giant planets like Jupiter and super-puffs form.” George Dransfield, lead author of the study at the University of Oxford, also emphasizes that their extremely low densities make them fascinating targets for studying the evolution of planetary systems. The metaphor, in fact, was the gateway to the problem. What comes next is trying to read those worlds in more detail. NASA notes that scientists want to study the chemical composition of their atmospheres, how their rotation can affect their shape and to what extent the star’s inclination fits with the orbits of the planets. It also remains to be understood how they moved within the system during its development, whether their orbits were shaped by interactions with other planets and, ultimately, how such low-density worlds can form. Cotton candy was the image; The challenge is to explain the recipe. Images | POT In Xataka | Experts warn: NASA launch facilities are too old to travel to the Moon

NASA wanted to keep a key antenna active. A culture of “personal heroism” ended up achieving the opposite

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There are infrastructures that seem made to escape the problems of the Earth. The Deep Space Network from NASA is one of them: a network of giant antennas designed to communicate with probes and ships that travel far beyond our immediate environment. But even a system designed to talk to deep space depends on something much closer: trained people, clear procedures and decisions made under pressure. What a space agency investigation has just pointed out is not only a costly breakdown, but a weakness that is difficult to ignore in a network that we take for granted. The Goldstone Incident. The episode occurred on the DSS-14 antenna, a 70 meter facility located in the Goldstone complexin California. NASA published a version with redacted parts of the final report on the incident recorded on September 16, 2025, which left the antenna out of service since then. The damage occurred when the structure rotated beyond its limits and stressed cables and hoses, including those for the fire suppression system. The consequence was a flooding of the base with more than 750,000 liters of water containing glycol and estimated damages between 4.1 and 4.6 million dollars. The incident chain. The report does not allow each step to be reconstructed with complete clarity, because the public version hides almost all the details of the six critical events identified by NASA. The failure did not appear suddenly. First there was a hydraulic limit system that stopped working at an unspecified time, then an anomaly on September 15 during a communication with Juno and then maintenance and diagnostic tasks. In this process, the antenna was taken several times to its rotation limits, until the safety margin ended up disappearing. The weak point. If this story is surprising, it is because it takes place in a place where we tend to imagine everything measured, written and reviewed down to the last detail. But the NASA investigation describes something much more earthly: insufficient training, procedures that were not up to par, and too much reliance on undocumented routines within the facility. In a network like the DSN, designed to maintain communications with very distant missions, this changes the reading of the incident. It was not just an antenna that turned too much, but an organization that, at that particular point, had left too much room for the informal. Misunderstood heroism. The report also points out a work culture based on what he calls “personal heroism,” an expression to describe teams willing to do what is necessary to keep the antenna going. On paper it sounds like a compromise, but research presents it as part of the problem. That drive led some people to take on tasks outside their qualifications, work long hours until they accumulated fatigue, and skip tests that could delay their return to operations. The conclusion is harsh: having agreed to leave the antenna in a failed state would probably have prevented the outcome. Specific duties. The report includes 20 recommendations, with one especially clear idea: NASA needs to encourage technical rigor over “personal heroism.” From there, internal correction measures come in, such as reinforcing training and reviewing procedures. Additionally, the agency is looking for similar scenarios beyond the Deep Space Network itself. Deep Space Network. DSS-14 is not just any antenna within the Deep Space Network. It is one of the three 70-meter antennas in the network, the largest category within a system made up of 14 antennas distributed between California, Australia and Spain. In early 2026, it looked like the antenna would return to service in May, before being taken out of operation in August for a major upgrade scheduled until October 2028. NASA, however, now maintains that it will remain out of service, although the DSN will remain operational thanks to the other antennas in the network. Images | POT In Xataka | Voyager 1 will reach a light-day distance in November, but this will be its last major record

NASA and video games use it more than a century after its discovery

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It had rained heavily that morning of October 16, 1943, so when it cleared Sir William Rowan Hamilton He finished his whiskey (no whiskey, that’s why it was Irish) and asked his fragile wife if they would go out for a walk around Dublin. He had been working on a mathematical problem involving complex numbers for years without success, and decided it was a good idea to get some air. That’s what he did. They walked, talked about their children’s future and as they crossed Broom Bridge Sir William’s light bulb suddenly went on. “Helen!” he exclaimed, “I don’t need to multiply triplets: I can use quadruples!” Helen didn’t know anything, of course, but at that moment quaternions were born, an extension of real numbers that more than a century or a half later are critical for NASA’s space missions and also for the video game industry. Good for Sir William. Worthy successor to Sir Isaac Newton Sir William Rowan Hamilton (Dublin, 1805-1865) stood out since childhood. At the age of thirteen he already spoke several European languages, but also Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit and Malay. When he was 8 years old, his fame was already notable, and the tour of the American calculus prodigy, Zerah Colburn, gave him the opportunity to prove his brilliance. That 9-year-old American boy crushed him on a mental arithmetic test, and that showed little Hamilton the way. He would continue studying languages, but what he wanted to do was dedicate himself to mathematics. In 1823 that young man achieved first place among 100 candidates in the Trinity College exams. The prestigious Irish university soon discovered the brilliance of Hamilton, who already in his student days wrote part of his treatise on optics, the well-known “Theory of Ray Systems“. That was key so that in 1827 he ended up occupying the position of Royal Astronomer of Ireland, a well-paid chair that was unheard of for it to end up in the hands of an undergraduate. Not only that: it gave Hamilton the opportunity to research freely, something he would not have been able to do in a hypothetical position as a professor at Trinity College. His work in the field of optics would end up mixing with that of dynamics and algebra in the 1830s. His work with several colleagues led him to pursue a very special objective: to try to generalize complex numbers in order to represent rotations and movements of vectors in space. three-dimensional. If he succeeded, he would have a very powerful tool to formulate the basic laws of physics and describe the movement of rigid bodies in space. In 1833 he presented a paper to the Royal Irish Academy in which he defined addition and maltiplication operations on pairs of real numbers. He was the first mathematician to treat complex numbers as ordered pairs (Gauss had done so before, but without publishing his discoveries) and his vision was closely related to physics. To try to advance in that field, Hamilton tried to study what he called the “Triplet Theory”, hypercomplex numbers referred to three-dimensional space in the same way that complex numbers referred to two-dimensional space. It was that that led him to the discovery of the quaternions. The triplets did not have the common properties of complex numbers when trying to multiply them and his obsession with the problem was such that even his children ended up asking him the same thing every morning: “Well dad, can you multiply triplets now?”, to which he replied: “no, for now I can only add and subtract them.” And then came that ride. Hamilton would describe that happy moment of sudden discovery in a letter to one of his sons fifteen years after it occurred: “Tomorrow will be the fifteenth birthday of the quaternions. They came into life, or into the light, fully grown, on October 16, 1843, when I was walking with Mrs. Hamilton towards Dublin, and we arrived at Broughman’s Bridge. That is, then and there, I closed the galvanic circuit of thought and the sparks that fell were the fundamental equations between i, j, k; exactly as I have used them ever since. I took out, at that moment, a pocket notebook, which still exists, and made a note, on which, at that very moment, I felt that it would possibly be valuable to extend my work for at least the ten (or it could be fifteen) years to come. It is fair to say that this happened because I felt, at that moment, that a problem had been solved, an intellectual desire relieved, a desire that had haunted me for at least the previous fifteen years. I could not resist the impulse to take my knife and engrave on a stone of Brougham Bridge the fundamental formula with the symbols i, j, k: i2=j2=k2=ijk=−1 which contained the solution to the Problem, which has since survived as an inscription. Hamilton called a quadruple with those multiplication rules a quaternion, and he dedicated the rest of his life to studying them, developing them, and teaching them to students and academics. Quaternions in space, quaternions in video games The study of quaternions has led to many other mathematical discoveries, but their application has been amazing more than a century and a half after that walk. In fact, quaternions are used in flight computers or in simulation studies in which large changes in angle are involved when monitoring the altitude of the spacecraft. The use of quaternions eliminate problems like Euler singularity and allows the use of only four parameters, in addition to being ideal for digital error control. In fact the so-called unitary quaternions allow counting with a mathematical notation to represent the orientations and rotations of objects in three dimensions, and therefore are widely used in robotics or navigation satellite orbital mechanics and are used in NASA missions for decades. That same ability to represent rotations in space is key for the development of 3D video games … Read more

NASA has left women out of Artemis III. The Princess of Asturias has taken the opportunity to reward one of her astronauts

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NASA astronaut Christina Koch has been awarded with the Princess of Asturias Award for Concord 2026, as announced this Wednesday, June 17. The jury wanted to highlight his figure as an inspiring reference for new generations. It’s no wonder, well this crew member of Artemis II He became a mass idol, especially for girls, during the time of his mission to the Moon, but also before and after. The most curious thing is that this news comes just a week after NASA announced the Artemis III crew in which, contrary to expectations, there is no woman. With this, the Princess of Asturias Award jury makes clear what it seems that NASA has failed to see. That including women in their new lunar project transcends far beyond the mission. A woman who breaks records. Christina Koch has reached a great peak of fame by becoming one of the four crew members of Artemis II. However, she had already broken records before becoming the first woman to travel to lunar orbit. She is also the woman who has spent the most time in space, with a stay of 328 consecutive days on the International Space Station. Additionally, along with Jessica Meir, he was part of the first all-female spacewalk. A true reference. As a child, Koch had a poster in her room with the famous Earthrise image, taken by the Apollo 8 astronauts. Every night she looked at it before going to sleep and wished she could travel beyond Earth and see what those astronauts had managed to observe. For this reason, before her trip to the Moon as a member of Artemis II, she declared that it was an honor for her to “take all the girls in the world to the Moon.” With that inspiring phrase He made a great statement of intent. I wanted to show that dreams come true and, above all, become a reference beyond the typical male photos of astronauts walking on the Moon. The case of Cassius. In Spain, Casio holds a competition from time to time for boys and girls, in which they must present drawings of scientists that inspire them. The winners become part of this brand’s special collection of calculators focused on the role of women in science. The schools freely choose the scientists they want to present; but, logically, current events play an important role. For this reason, this year there have been many children who have chosen to Koch to be part of his drawings. NASA doesn’t know. After the absolute masculinization of the astronaut crews of the Apollo program, NASA had decided to compensate with the Artemis program and include more women in its crew. Koch was the first, but the idea was to maintain this inclusivity until the end, so that even the next person to step on the Moon would be a woman. However, on June 9 there was a big turn of events when it was announced to the crew that they will be traveling aboard Artemis III. Neither the four official astronauts nor the reserve astronaut are women. The advertisement led to a wave of criticismwhich forced NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman to intervene and ensure that the people considered most qualified and available for this specific mission have been selected. Even so, there are those who consider that this could be more related to Donald Trump’s order to federal agencies to eliminate Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs and references. We will have to wait for Artemis IV to see who finally steps on the Moon. At least Christina Koch has seen her work recognized with the Princess of Asturias Award and, above all, with the love of all those girls who, as she promised, have accompanied her on her trip to the Moon. Image | NASA/Bill Ingalls In Xataka | How many times have we gone to the Moon and why have only 11 military aviators and one geologist set foot on it in all of history?

NASA has a plan to solve one of the biggest mysteries in the cosmos and only one thing is missing: money

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Since the first confirmed discovery of an exoplanet in 1992, there have already been discovered more than 6,000 planets beyond the Solar System. Although there are many of them, and they have very specific characteristics, there is something that unites them all. Which can have a radius smaller or larger than 1.8 times the radius of the Earth, but never that. It is like a border that can be crossed or not, but that is never stepped on. The exoplanets that are below that limit are the super earths and those who are above subneptunes. It is not known what causes this gap, but there are two hypotheses. To confirm which of them is the good one, NASA has designed a mission. The problem is that he still hasn’t gotten funding for it. In search of young planets. The two hypotheses that exist about the origin of this gap are related to the origin of exoplanets. Therefore, the best way to unravel the mystery is to analyze young planets. The problem is that this is not easy. Of the 6,000 exoplanets that have been discovered to date, only 20 were younger than 50 million years. The objective of the Early eVolution Explorer (EVE) mission is to launch a ship loaded with probes specialized in detecting exoplanets around young stars. If the star is young, the planets around it must be young too, since the planet always forms after its star. Very different exoplanets. Super-Earths are rocky planets, with a radius less than 1.8 times that of Earth. They are closer to their star than the sub-Neptunes, which are also larger, with dimensions above the prohibited radius. On the other hand, sub-Neptunes have a less rocky, more spongy appearance. The first hypothesis. As we have anticipated, there are two hypotheses about the forbidden radius of exoplanets. The first points to the same origin. Supposedly, all exoplanets were born with a rocky core that dragged clouds of hydrogen and helium around it for millions of years. The difference between them would be that the super-Earths, being closer to their star, would receive more radiation, so the gas layer would end up being destroyed. The sub-Neptunes could preserve it, hence that spongy appearance. The second. As for the second hypothesis, it points to the possibility of planets clinging to water during their formation or not. Super-Earths are located between their star and what is known as the snow line. This is a line above which water can freeze. In this case, not only does it not freeze, but the water receives so much heat from its star that it ends up evaporating. If water is in the form of vapor, it cannot join the “pieces of the nascent planet.” That leaves them only made of dry rock. On the other hand, the sub-Neptunes are further from the snow line. Water can freeze, so it becomes bricks that can be incorporated into the planet in formation. It is bigger, because it not only has rock, it also has water. Furthermore, that water condensed around it gives it the cottony appearance that makes it different from a rocky planet. Artist’s concept of an aquatic world The handicap of young stars. We have already seen that to unravel the mystery of the forbidden radium we must study young planets. We have also understood that the best way to do this is to look around at young stars. The problem is that these have such intense activity that fluctuations in their brightness can occur. associated with flaresnot an exoplanet orbiting it. In short, many false positives can occur. Three sensors. To solve this problem, EVE would be equipped with three sensors. The first analyzes light in the near ultraviolet, the second in the visible light range and the third in the near infrared. The first is used to detect bursts from the star itself, since these emit great radiation at that frequency of the spectrum. Regarding the second, it is the type of light that is normally used to detect transiting planets, the most used tool for the detection of exoplanets. Finally, young stars emit a lot of light in the near infrared. For all this, if a peak is detected in the near ultraviolet we will know that it is due to the activity of the star itself. If we see fluctuations in visible light we will understand that there may be a planet orbiting the star; But, to be sure, we must compare the data with the light emitted at all times by the star itself. That’s what near infrared is for. The forbidden radio. By studying young exoplanets, we can know how their formation was and understand which of the two hypotheses is the good one. With this, in passing, we will understand why the radius of 1.8 radii of the Earth is prohibited. 30 star cluster fields, 30 days. The EVE project has been planned to analyze 30 fields of young star clusters for 30 days each. Thus, more than 20,000 young stars could be analyzed and, with them, possible exoplanets of recent formation could be found. At the moment, it cannot be done, because the project does not have financing, much less a launch date. But NASA has everything tied up. You just need that little push to unravel the mystery. Image| Superearth on the cover and aquatic world in the text. Credit: NASA In Xataka | Hubble made us believe that this exoplanet was impossible. James Webb just explained why we were wrong

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