Every elephant carries about 1,000 whiskers on its trunk, and a new study found they are essential for sensing the world. With thick skin and poor eyesight, elephants rely on these hairs for many daily tasks. The animals cannot regrow lost whiskers, so each one is a permanent sensory

Archaeologists have uncovered a baseball-size ankle bone near Córdoba that may be the first direct archaeological evidence of Hannibal’s war elephants. Tucked in rubble with Carthaginian coins from the third century B.C., the 2,200-year-old specimen was found alongside catapult ammunition, a detail Dr. Fernando Quesada Sanz of

Home Reef, a mid-ocean volcano in the Tonga archipelago, expanded its land area during its latest eruptive phase. Volcanic activity ramped up in December 2025, the newest episode in a series of eruptions that began in 2022 and was still underway in mid-February 2026. Satellites tracked the changes: images from

Scientists at the University of Rochester have made aluminum tubes that trap air bubbles and remain buoyant even when damaged. The tubes are narrow—about one-fifth of an inch in diameter—but stacked into rafts they could form floating platforms or devices to harvest energy from ocean waves, a team

Alfred Blumstein, an engineer who applied mathematical models and systems theory to the study of criminal behavior, died on Jan. 13 at his home in Canton, Mass. He was 95. Carnegie Mellon University, where he taught and conducted research from 1969 to 2016, announced his death. Trained in operations research,

NASA is targeting Thursday, Feb. 19, as the tanking day for a second wet dress rehearsal ahead of the agency’s Artemis II test flight. Over the weekend, teams replaced a filter in ground support equipment that was suspected of reducing the flow of liquid hydrogen during a Feb. 12

The DGCE SIG seminar will be held virtually on 26 February 2026 at 4:00pm ET / 1:00pm PT. Tucker Jones will speak on "Illuminating the Galactic Baryon Cycle at Cosmic Noon." He will describe how the formation of galaxies is regulated by large-scale inflows and outflows of

Kristopher Bedka has spent most of his professional career analyzing atmospheric processes and prediction using satellite-, airborne-, and ground-based observations and models. He is a Research Physical Scientist in the Science Directorate at NASA Langley Research Center. His work has focused on development, validation, and application of automated satellite-based convective

Engineers are reviewing data after a Feb. 12 confidence test in which operators partially filled the SLS core stage liquid hydrogen tank to assess newly replaced seals in the area used to fill the rocket with propellant. Teams encountered an issue with ground support equipment that reduced the flow of

Live arrival coverage of the SpaceX Crew-12 mission is underway on Amazon Prime and the agency’s YouTube channel as astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev make their way to the International Space Station. The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft

Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, Sophie Adenot and Andrey Fedyaev arrived at the International Space Station as the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft docked with the orbiting complex at 3:15 p.m. EST. After Dragon linked up to the space-facing port of the station’s Harmony module, the crew aboard Dragon

NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev entered the International Space Station after opening the hatches at 5:14 p.m. EST between the space station and the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. Meir, Hathaway, Adenot, and Fedyaev now join Expedition 74, alongside

The thermal infrared capabilities of an imager on the Terra satellite have been shut off and will no longer collect data, more than 25 years after the instrument captured its first image of Earth from space. Terra, launched in December 1999 with a design life of six years, has long

An ecologist, a volcanologist, and a chemist joined scientists from NASA and the Universidad de Costa Rica this past summer in Rincón de la Vieja National Park to test whether an uncrewed aircraft system could sample volcanic gases and help predict how rising carbon dioxide will affect vegetation. The effort,

Managers continue targeting no earlier than 5:15 a.m. EST on Friday, Feb. 13, for the launch of Crew-12 aboard a SpaceX Dragon to the International Space Station. Astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev remain in Florida ahead of a

Julie Ziffer is a professor of Physics at the University of Southern Maine and is on temporary assignment as a Program Officer for the Planetary Science Division within the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. For the PDCO, she leads the Yearly Opportunities for Research in Planetary Defense

If you had been standing on Comet 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresák as it moved toward the sun in 2017, the length of a day would have shortened dramatically over weeks, the rotation would have stopped, and then the nucleus would have begun turning the other way. David Jewitt of the University of

NASA and SpaceX teams completed the final major review—the Launch Readiness Review—for the Crew-12 mission and polled “go” to enter the launch countdown, pending weather along the ascent corridor. Liftoff remains targeted for no earlier than 5:15 a.m. EST Friday, Feb. 13, aboard a SpaceX Dragon

NASA completed the first flight test of a scale-model wing designed to improve laminar flow, reducing drag and lowering fuel costs for future commercial aircraft. The flight took place Jan. 29 at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, using one of the agency’s F-15B research jets.

Dr. Matthew Brown is an aerosol and atmospheric instrumentation scientist in the NASA Langley Aerosol Research Group (LARGE). He specializes in designing, developing and deploying instruments that measure particle microphysical properties for high-altitude research aircraft operating in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS). He joined the group as a

From left, Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, NASA astronauts Jack Hathaway and Jessica Meir, and ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot pose next to their mission insignia in the Astronaut Crew Quarters at the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday, Feb. 9, 2026. NASA’

Harvard, long a leader in global university rankings, recently fell to third in the Leiden Ranking while eight of the top 10 spots went to Chinese institutions. Other measures, such as the Nature Index and the University Ranking by Academic Performance, also show growing Chinese representation in upper tiers. It’

January 2026 brought sweltering conditions to much of Australia, with an area-averaged mean temperature 1.90°C (3.42°F) above the 1961–1990 average. The Bureau of Meteorology said this made it the fourth-warmest January since observations began in 1910. A late-month heatwave from January 26 to 30 was

NASA and NRO will jointly host the Spacecraft Anomalies and Failures (SCAF) Workshop March 24–26, 2026. The event brings together government, industry, academia, allies, and international partners to share analysis, trends, and lessons learned from anomalies and failures to prevent them from reoccurring. The three-day workshop will be held

A team of Finnish scientists spent most of 2021 in Tsaobis Nature Park in Namibia, following chacma baboon families from dusk till dawn. They frequently watched adolescent baboons try to steal their mother’s attention while a sibling, often younger, was being groomed. Some threw tantrums; some wedged between mother