Space, in brief

A craft circling Mars picked up a possible signal of hydrogen chloride gas leaking from cracks near a huge volcano. [3] On Earth, this gas escapes from vents over magma. [1]

The study came out in the journal Science Advances on 4 November. [1] Its authors read the gas as a sign of hot magma under the surface. [3]

No eruption has ever been seen on Mars. [2] Co-author Daniel Mege says the findings suggest it kept volcanic heat until recently, 'and possibly still does'. [2]

Mege says warm, wet cracks could shelter microbes from the harsh surface, if such systems are active. [1] But life would need stable conditions for millions of years, he cautioned. [3]

Geologists call gases like this magmatic gases, because they come from hot magma underground. [1]

At Alba Mons, ice blocks the cracks in winter, at as low as -120 C. [2] The team thinks gas builds up, then escapes when that ice goes in early summer. [2]

A shaken fizzy drink holds its gas until the cap comes off, then it all rushes out.

Olson says 'the link remains a hypothesis'. [3] Other volcanic gases, such as sulphur, were not present when hydrogen chloride was first seen, he said. [3]

Why scientists first work out what they would see if nothing were there

You see something odd in your data

You write down the dull explanation first: the null hypothesis, which says nothing special is going on

You work out what you would see if that dull explanation were true: your baseline

You measure how far the real data sits from that baseline

Only a gap the dull explanation cannot cover counts as a sign of something

Scientists do not prove the exciting idea directly.

The usual yearly pattern is the baseline. The spike counts as a clue only because it does not fit that pattern.

The team knew hydrogen chloride normally peaks in northern winter, so a spike in early summer stood out against that pattern.

The model is the dull explanation made real: if it can reproduce what a far planet shows, no life is needed to explain that planet.

FLIP works out what a star's glare alone would look like, takes that away, and anything left over may be a planet.

All 1.9 million signals came from humans, so a signal counts only after human sources are ruled out.

A gap shows only that the dull explanation failed. It does not prove your favourite idea, and a poor baseline can make a gap that is not real.

Each of them compares one reading with an idea of normal: the team at Alba Mons, the people modelling a dead Earth, and anyone reading a medical test result.

Scientists studying Mars have a strong clue and no proof: a gas appears in one place at one time of year, and a co-author calls the link to magma a hypothesis. [3]

The word life pulls attention, so a gas near a volcano reads as a story about living things, though nobody has found any.

Colin Wilson, its project scientist at the European Space Agency, says this may prove the craft's greatest success. [2]

Whether magma still sits under Alba Mons.

The team reads the gas as a sign of it, and no eruption has ever been seen on Mars. [2][3]

When in the Martian year the gas really spikes.

NASASpaceflight and Space.com say early northern summer. [1][2] Live Science quotes co-author Kevin Olson on measurements from the start of northern winter. [3] We could not read the paper itself to settle it.

NASA's Swift telescope fell back to Earth on 4 November at 12:39 UTC, over North Sumatra in Indonesia. [4]

The US Space Force had predicted a window of 11:42 to 13:42 UTC earlier that day. [4] Swift came down near the middle of it. [4]

NASA expected most of it to burn up, though some parts may have survived. [4] No damage or injuries have been reported. [6]

The telescope weighed about 1,450 kg and cost $500 million. [5][9]

It watched gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the universe. [5] Over its life it saw about 2,000 of them, and more than 1,400 exploding stars. [4][7]

NASA paid Katalyst Space $30 million to push it higher, but the rescue craft lost control and fell in September. [4][8]

Swift usually swung to a blast within about a minute, and alerted observatories worldwide. [4][5] Scientific American says the gap it leaves is unlikely to be filled soon. [7]

It had to swing round fast, before the afterglow of each blast faded. [5]

Space engineers call this orbital decay: drag from thin air slows a craft until it falls. [6]

Swift had no engine to fight the drag, and a busy Sun swelled the upper air. [4] That made more drag than NASA expected, and it hastened Swift's fall. [4]

A bike slows when you stop pedalling, and a strong headwind stops it sooner.

The time and place come from US Space Force tracking, which NASA later confirmed. [4] Few sensors cover those regions, which likely delayed the news, Scientific American says. [7]

Swift was built for 2 years of work and kept going for nearly 22. [4]

They lose the telescope that alerted observatories worldwide to each new blast. [4]

How much of Swift reached the ground.

AP says it was not immediately known how much burned up. [8]

Data from NASA's Swift telescope has gone into about 7,000 scientific papers, and scientists can keep studying it for years after its fall.

Elon Musk, who runs SpaceX, spent almost $450 million backing Republicans in the US midterm elections, the BBC reports. [11]

Much of his political focus seemed to be on Texas, home of SpaceX's headquarters and its Starship rockets. [11][10]

In Texas, Democrat James Talarico won the Senate seat and Democrat Gina Hinojosa won the governor's race. [10]

Musk's first post about the result read: 'Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now'. [10]

Data centres are big buildings full of computers that run AI. [11] Hinojosa won support from rural Texans who do not want them nearby. [10]

SpaceX plans a major expansion in Louisiana from as early as next year. [10] Ars Technica says that state could one day become its headquarters. [10]

SpaceX has gained an estimated $10 billion in new US government contracts since Trump was elected, the BBC says. [11]

Democrats could now investigate Musk's role in cutting Starlink service to Ukraine. [10] US Senator Ed Markey said tech chiefs will need 'new forests' for all the legal orders to appear. [11]

Yet NASA and the US Space Force need SpaceX more than it needs them, Ars Technica argues. [10] Taking its contracts away would hurt the space station and the Moon programme. [10]

Investors call this political risk, and Ars Technica says Musk's is now priced into SpaceX shares. [10]

The shares were down about 5% on Monday, before the vote, while wider markets rose. [10] They were down 3.4% on Wednesday morning, the BBC says. [11]

A shop worth a lot under a friendly landlord can be worth less when that landlord might leave.

The BBC counts almost $450 million of Musk's spending. [11] Ars Technica, citing the New York Times, says $474 million. [10]

Ars Technica's reading of Musk rests on its writer's own view and 2 people close to his thinking. [10]

Public opposition to data centres on the ground is one reason orbit might one day make sense for them, Ars Technica says. [10]

Musk's politics are now part of what the company's shares are worth, Ars Technica says. [10]

What Democrats will actually do about SpaceX.

Ars Technica says whether they investigate Musk or bargain with him is the main open question. [10]

SpaceX plans to wind down its Falcon 9 rocket within the next few years, Scientific American reports. [13]

Falcon 9 made 85% of US launches in 2025. [13]

SpaceX wants to move to Starship, its giant rocket built to be fully reusable. [13]

Some companies have been unable to book future Falcon 9 flights, the Wall Street Journal reported. [13]

The US Space Force now says Falcon flights are planned through its 2032 budget year. [13] It adds that up to 6 others will soon be able to fly them. [13]

Blue Origin's New Glenn blew up on its pad on 28 May. [13] ULA's Vulcan was grounded after a February fault with its boosters. [13]

Starship's next test, Flight 15, is slated for mid-November. [13] ULA says Vulcan flies again that same month. [13]

NASA books most of its trips through SpaceX, yet is only a fraction of SpaceX's launch business. [13] Start-ups could fail if rides get dearer, Weinzierl says. [13]

Harvard researcher Matthew Weinzierl suggests the US government could pay to license Falcon 9 and keep it flying. [13]

Business strategists call this supplier power: SpaceX has so far rebuffed Space Force requests for more launches, Politico reported. [13]

A buyer with choices can walk away, but New Glenn and Vulcan are grounded. [13] So the Space Force says it is 'talking through all scenarios'. [13]

When one shop on your street sells bread, it can shut early and you still come back.

SpaceX did not respond to Scientific American's questions. [13]

But NASA and the US Space Force still depend on SpaceX, which plans to wind down the rocket they use. [13]

If launch prices rise, some may never get off the ground, says Harvard's Matthew Weinzierl. [13]

Whether Falcon 9 flights for the US military end in 2028 or go on to 2032.

Scientific American says Space Force contracts run through 2028. [13] The Space Force speaks of flights planned through its 2032 budget year, and the article does not explain the gap. [13]

A study finds NASA's Artemis II launch in April could have caused GPS errors of several metres. [14]

Artemis II carried 4 astronauts around the Moon. [15]

The team, at National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan, used ground receivers built to track shifting tectonic plates. [14]

It found the biggest disturbance yet from any rocket, up to 10 times what SpaceX's Starship tests caused. [14] Starship is twice as powerful. [14]

The ionosphere is the electrically charged layer of air above about 50 km. [14] GPS signals must pass through it to reach the ground. [14]

2 holes stretched about 5,000 km across America, like giant contrails. [14] The stronger one came from upper-stage burns at about 185 km, inside the layer. [14]

A couple of metres is 'enough to cause an autonomous car to change lanes', co-author Charles Lin said. [14] Drones could be hit too, he said. [14]

Lin expects these effects to grow as more missions go to the Moon and Mars. [14]

Scientists call this space weather: changes in the upper air that disturb signals, here made by a rocket. [14]

The rocket's shock wave and burns changed how many free electrons sat on the signal's path. [14] That made signals arrive faster or slower, so receivers misjudged where they were. [14]

If roadworks slow your friend, you might guess from the late arrival that they live further away.

The study is a preprint, posted online ahead of full publication. [14] The article names no car or drone that actually went wrong. [14]

How much rocket launches will disturb GPS as Moon flights grow.

Charles Lin expects these effects to become much more significant, and the article gives no figure for how much. [14]

President Trump issued 'The American Declaration of Freedom in Space' on 3 November, election day in the US. [15][16]

It calls space the 'province of all humans'. [15] It also says Americans may develop and settle the solar system under US laws. [15]

It says the commercial space industry helps ensure 'American space superiority for all eternity'. [15]

It repeats NASA's aims: a Moon landing by 2028 and, later, astronauts to Mars. [15]

It adds no new money, no new programmes and no orders to any agency, Space.com reports. [15]

A December 2025 order had already restated the 2028 date, and called for a Moon outpost's first parts by 2030. [15]

The same week he declared 'Anti-Communism Week', the Guardian noted. [16]

'The nation that leads in space will shape the future of humanity,' the declaration says. [15]

In space law, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty guarantees free exploration and bars any nation from claiming a planet. [15]

The declaration's language on freedom echoes that treaty, Space.com says. [15] It gives no agency any instruction, Space.com adds. [15]

A school can say the field is for everyone, and that gives nobody a right to fence off a corner.

Starfish Space, a company that builds craft to reach other satellites, says it has lost contact with Otter 24C. [17]

That ends a $15 million NASA mission called SSPICY, one month after launch. [17]

Otter launched on a SpaceX shared ride on 1 October. [17] Its job was to approach dead US satellites and inspect them. [17]

Otter's body, the basic frame with its power and radio, came from another company, Astro Digital. [17]

It is Starfish's second failure traced to someone else's hardware. [17] In 2023 a ride left its first craft spinning at 330 degrees a second. [17]

Starfish got that first craft back under control after 6 weeks. [17]

Starfish says it may finish some of the goals on other missions, and is fixing the Astro Digital body. [17]

Payload, a space news site, calls this NASA's first try at funding commercial inspection of space junk. [17] After Swift's failed rescue, it is NASA's second such loss running. [17]

Engineers call the system that reacts to faults fault protection, and on Otter that system failed. [17]

During start-up checks, Otter's fault protection made an error and turned off its radio. [17] With the radio off, Starfish could not reconnect. [17]

A phone that locks itself and needs a code sent to that same phone stays locked.

Starfish's older craft, Otter Pup 2, shared pictures last week from a pass 33 m from another satellite. [17]

The mission ended before any inspection was reported, and NASA and Starfish are exploring whether other missions can do the work. [17]

Astronomers have written software that helps the James Webb Space Telescope see planets closer to their stars. [18]

The study, in the journal Nature, is led by Rodrigo Ferrer-Chavez of Northwestern University. [18]

A big planet can be more than 10,000 times fainter than its star. [18] Its light gets lost in the glare. [18]

Webb uses a mask called a coronagraph to block most of a star's light. [18] A little still leaks through. [18]

The software, called FLIP, was 2 to 15 times more sensitive than the usual methods on 3 star systems. [18]

It also caught the giant planet 51 Eridani b at wavelengths where Webb had not seen it. [18]

The aim is to make NASA's next big telescope, the Habitable Worlds Observatory, easier to build. [18] It is planned for the 2040s. [18]

Astronomers use a reference star for this: they image a similar star and subtract its glare from the picture. [18]

The usual way images a similar star, but Webb's 6.5-metre mirror flexes between shots. [18] FLIP instead simulates the telescope itself to work out the glare. [18]

Rubbing a friend out of a holiday photo works best if the empty shot was taken at the same moment.

Dimitri Mawet of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, not part of the study, calls it 'a significant result'. [18] Earth-sized worlds would still need a telescope 100 to 1,000 times steadier. [18]

FLIP works out what a star's glare alone would look like, takes that away, and anything left over may be a planet.

Whether Webb's new software can ease the design of NASA's next telescope.

Dimitri Mawet says it could plausibly ease part of the stability needed, and the telescope is not due until the 2040s. [18]

New software for the James Webb Space Telescope was 2 to 15 times more sensitive than the usual methods on 3 star systems, and it caught a giant planet at wavelengths where Webb had not seen it.

2 astronauts began a spacewalk outside the International Space Station at 13:36 UTC on Thursday 5 November. [31] They finished at 20:35 UTC, after 6 hours and 59 minutes. [32]

They are NASA's Anil Menon and Joshua Kutryk of the Canadian Space Agency. [19]

They fitted and unfolded the 8th and last roll-out solar panel, called an iROSA. [32]

It was their second spacewalk in a week. [19] On 29 October they fitted the 7th, on the 100th US spacewalk from the station. [19]

The job began in 2021 and took 18 spacewalks. [32] It takes the station's power from 160 kW to about 215 kW, about 30% more. [19]

5 other astronauts share the station with them. [19]

The station is scheduled to retire around 2030. [25]

A University of Washington team has built a computer model of Earth as it would be with no life. [20]

The lead author is Samantha Gilbert-Janizek, and the work is in The Planetary Science Journal. [20]

It runs from 50 million years to 5 billion years after Earth formed. [20] It matches 19 key measurements of Earth before industry. [20]

Those include carbon dioxide and water in the air, surface temperature and the mass of the oceans. [20]

It predicts a planet can stay fit for life for a long time without any life on it. [20]

NASA's planned Habitable Worlds Observatory will look for life on rocky worlds around Sun-like stars. [20] The team's tool will help judge how likely it is that a reading means life. [20]

Scientists call this a false positive: a sign that looks like life with no life behind it. [20]

If the lifeless model can reproduce what a planet shows, that suggests nobody lives there. [20]

A smoke alarm beeps when you burn toast, so a beep alone does not prove a fire.

The model assumes plate tectonics, the slow shifting of Earth's crust, ran for almost all of its history. [20] That is widely believed, but other ideas exist. [20]

The model is the dull explanation made real: if it can reproduce what a far planet shows, no life is needed to explain that planet.

The SETI Institute, which listens for alien signals, has shared early results from a new search. [21] It is its largest yet with the Allen Telescope Array. [21]

It listens at the point in the sky directly opposite the Sun, which shifts as Earth orbits. [21]

The test run went from 30 August 2024 to 25 August 2026. [21]

It picked up about 1.9 million radio signals in 17 hours of listening. [21] All of them came from human sources. [21]

Another 121 nights have been recorded and not yet shared. [21] The full search will take 4 years. [21]

Co-author Sofia Sheikh says the puzzle is not only where to point a telescope but when someone might transmit. [21]

Game theorists call this a Schelling point: a choice two sides both reach without talking. [21]

Aliens at that spot would see Earth pass across the Sun once a year. [21] So both sides could pick the same place and time to look. [21]

2 friends who lose each other in a town may both head for the clock tower.

The plan assumes aliens hunt planets the way human astronomers do. [21] The test run found no alien signal. [21]

All 1.9 million signals came from humans, so a signal counts only after human sources are ruled out.

What SETI's other 121 nights of recordings hold.

They have not been shared yet. [21]

2 scientists say giant crashes may have helped young rocky planets keep their air, not lose it. [22]

They are Darius Modirrousta-Galian of Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Jun Korenaga of Yale, writing in Nature Astronomy. [22]

Scientists had thought the heat of such crashes drove early air away. [22]

The most common planets found around other stars are super-Earths, big rocky worlds, and sub-Neptunes, which keep puffy air. [22] Our solar system has neither. [22]

The work suggests sub-Neptunes grew through bigger crashes and held their air. [22] Super-Earths missed those crashes and lost theirs to starlight. [22]

Why nature makes both kinds in such numbers is 'a fundamental puzzle', Modirrousta-Galian said. [22]

Planetary scientists call a planet's grip on its air gravitational binding. [22]

A crash adds heat and mass, but part of the heat goes deep where it cannot drive air away. [22] All the new mass adds to the planet's grip. [22]

A heavier anchor holds a boat in place even when the wind picks up.