Science & Earth

Three Expedition 74 crewmembers remain aboard the International Space Station after NASA's SpaceX Crew-11 returned to Earth following a 167-day mission; Crew-12 is planned to launch in mid-February.

A KAUST-led satellite tracking study of 17 female green and hawksbill turtles in the Red Sea found individuals travel from about 21.6 miles up to 312 miles between nesting beaches and feeding grounds, and researchers identified six distinct foraging areas spanning Saudi and Egyptian waters.

The Virtual Telescope Project will stream a final public view of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS on Jan. 16, 2026 at 21:00 UTC; the object is too faint for the unaided eye and requires large amateur telescopes to observe.

A SpaceX Crew-11 Dragon returned early from the International Space Station on Jan. 15 for a reported medical evacuation and splashed down off San Diego; witnesses in California filmed a bright re-entry and some reported sonic booms.

NOAA reported record high tides at 31 Pacific Coast gauges in early January 2026, and researchers reported record global ocean heat content for 2025.

National Weather Service offices across Florida have issued cold-weather warnings as a strong cold front brings the coldest air of the season for some areas and raises model-based snow chances across the U.S. Southeast.

Researchers extracted DNA from naturally mummified cheetahs found in caves near Arar, northern Saudi Arabia, with remains dated between about 100 and 4,000 years ago. Genetic analysis links older specimens to West African cheetah lineages and suggests the finds could inform future conservation planning.

Researchers report Halafian pottery from about 6200–5500 BC often shows flower motifs with petal counts following a doubling sequence (4, 8, 16, 32, sometimes 64); some specialists caution the patterns could reflect simple symmetry rather than a formal mathematical system.

Astronomers using the WEAVE instrument detected a large, bar-shaped cloud of ionized iron atoms inside the Ring Nebula about 2,283 light‑years away; its origin is unclear, with researchers suggesting it formed during the nebula’s creation or could be debris from a destroyed rocky planet, and they plan further observations.

An Oxfam analysis reports that the richest 1% exhausted their 2026 per-person CO2 budget in about 10 days, and the richest 0.1% did so in roughly three days; the report links these emissions to high-consumption lifestyles and investment holdings.

Crawler-transporter 2 moved toward the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center on Jan. 9 and is slated to carry the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft to Launch Complex 39B ahead of the Artemis II mission, which is planned to send four crew members around the Moon and back no later than April 2026.

A Hubble image captures a protostar and other young stellar objects in the star-forming region NGC 1333 in the Perseus molecular cloud, about 950 light-years away. The image shows a reflection nebula and features identified as a protoplanetary disk and its shadow within the surrounding envelope.

Scientists reconstructed a complete genome of a 14,400‑year‑old woolly rhinoceros from muscle tissue found in the stomach of a mummified wolf pup discovered in northeastern Siberia; the work was published in Genome Biology and Evolution.

Hubble's image of the Lupus 3 cloud, about 500 light-years away in Scorpius, shows T Tauri stars and wisps of gas in an active star-forming region.

Researchers excavated seven mummified cheetahs and the bones of 54 others from caves near Arar in northern Saudi Arabia, with remains dated between about 130 and 1,800 years old.

Stanford researchers report that a 3-nanometer silver treatment diffused into LLZO solid electrolyte surfaces and made them about five times more resistant to cracking; so far the experiments used small samples rather than full commercial battery cells.

Computer simulations published in ACS Central Science found that frozen hydrogen cyanide crystals can have reactive surfaces that convert HCN into hydrogen isocyanide, a change that the researchers report could help form more complex prebiotic molecules.

A new paper by Abraham 'Avi' Loeb and Toni Scarmato reports that the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS has a rotation period of 7.1 hours after perihelion, based on jet position angle analysis and photometric time series, and that the jet's periodic wobble did not change during perihelion.

A long-term experiment across 76 Central American plots found that adequate soil nitrogen can double tropical forest regrowth during the first decade of recovery; the study was published January 13 in Nature Communications.

Four astronauts returned to Earth after a controlled medical evacuation from the International Space Station, and NASA said the affected crew member was stable; all were taken to a nearby hospital for further tests.

Researchers combined satellite measurements and models of ice flow to produce a new, higher-resolution map of Antarctica's bed, reporting tens of thousands of previously undiscovered hills and ridges and a long channel in the Maud Subglacial Basin.

Researchers used Ice Flow Perturbation Analysis with satellite ice-surface data and ice-thickness observations to produce the most detailed map yet of Antarctica's subglacial topography, revealing mesoscale valleys and steep-sided channels and indicating where future geophysical surveys could focus.

Crew-11 is scheduled to undock from the ISS on Jan. 14 at 5:05 p.m. EST and is reported to spend about 11 hours in transit before a splashdown off Southern California at 3:40 a.m. EST.

Astronomers are using China's FAST radio telescope to reobserve 100 candidate narrowband signals flagged by SETI@home; the team expects many may prove to be local radio interference and analysis is ongoing.

Recent reviews and expert critiques have challenged several high-profile studies reporting microplastics in human tissues, leaving the extent of microplastics in people uncertain.

Kaiser Permanente has agreed to a $46 million settlement in a lawsuit alleging that patient data from its websites was shared with third parties; the settlement is pending court approval and claims must be filed by March 12, 2026.

A study published in Science used swarms of very small (about magnitude 0) earthquakes to map the Mendocino Triple Junction and found a complex, five-piece geometry that includes a buried Pioneer fragment and may represent an unaccounted seismic hazard.

A surge of solar energy could produce auroras across parts of the northern U.S. late Jan. 16 into early Jan. 17, and NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center forecasts a minor (G1) geomagnetic storm.

Four astronauts splashed down off the coast of California after leaving the International Space Station about a month early because of a medical issue; NASA said the affected crew member was in stable condition.

SpaceX's Crew Dragon Endeavor splashed down off the California coast in the early hours of Jan. 15, returning four crew members; NASA called the shortened, 167-day mission a success.