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Adobe Inc. (ADBE) Is a Trending Stock: Facts to Know Before Betting on It  Yahoo Finance

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1. Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license  Digital Foundry
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Astronomers have long known that neutron stars, the crushed cores left behind after massive stars explode, should be scattered throughout the Milky Way galaxy. However, most of them are effectively invisible. A new study published in Astronomy and Astrophysics suggests NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope could spot them anyway.

Using detailed simulations of the Milky Way and Roman’s future observations, researchers showed the flagship observatory may be able to identify and characterize dozens of isolated neutron stars through a subtle effect called gravitational microlensing.

“Most neutron stars are relatively dim and on their own,” said Zofia Kaczmarek of Heidelberg University in Germany, who led the study. “They are incredibly hard to spot without some sort of help.”

Finding what’s invisible

Neutron stars pack more mass than the Sun into a sphere about the size of a city. Studying them helps us understand how stars live, die, and spread heavy elements throughout the universe. They also provide a chance to study what happens under the most extreme conditions (pressures and densities) imaginable.

Yet, unless they are pulsars that beam in radio wavelengths or glow in X-rays, they can remain hidden from even the most powerful telescopes.

Roman can search for them in a different way. When a massive object like a neutron star moves in front of a distant background star, its intense gravity warps spacetime and deflects the background star’s light. This microlensing effect briefly makes the background star brighter and appear offset from its true position in the sky.

While many telescopes can detect the temporary brightening, Roman can measure both the brightening (photometry) and the tiny positional shift (astrometry) of the lensed star with exceptional precision.

Because neutron stars are relatively massive, they produce a larger astrometric signal than lighter objects, allowing missions like Roman to not only detect them, but also weigh them in some cases, something that is nearly impossible with photometry alone.

“What’s really cool about using microlensing is that you can get direct mass measurements,” said paper co-author Peter McGill of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. “Photometry tells us that something passed in front of the star, but it’s the amount the star’s position shifts that tells us how massive that object is. By measuring that tiny deflection on the sky, we can directly weigh something that is otherwise unseen.”

Roman’s measurements could help astronomers determine whether there is a true gap between the masses of neutron stars and black holes and how fast neutron stars are moving.

Scientists are particularly interested in understanding the powerful “kicks” neutron stars receive when they are born in supernova explosions. These kicks can send them racing through the galaxy at hundreds of miles per second.

Huge surveys, high chance of payoff

The research team will utilize Roman’s future Galactic Bulge Time Domain Survey, which will monitor millions of stars at a time in vast images of the sky, taken at a high frequency.

“We’re going to get to work as soon as the data start coming in,” said McGill. “Even in the first months after commissioning, we expect to start identifying promising events.”

Even a relatively small number of confirmed detections could significantly improve models of stellar explosions and extreme matter.

“We don’t know the mass distribution of neutron stars, black holes, or where one ends and the other begins with any certainty,” McGill said. “Roman will really be a breakthrough in that.”

Although only a few thousand neutron stars have been detected so far, mostly as pulsars, scientists estimate there could be tens of millions to hundreds of millions in the Milky Way. Additionally, to date, researchers have only been able to measure the masses of neutron stars in binary pairings.

“We’re seeing a small sample that’s not representative of the big picture,” Kaczmarek said. “Even a single mass measurement would be very powerful. If we found just one isolated neutron star, it would already be incredibly stimulating to our research.”

Looking ahead

The study also highlights a creative use of the mission’s capabilities. While Roman’s survey is designed primarily to find exoplanets using photometric microlensing, its powerful astrometric capabilities open the door to entirely new discoveries with astrometric microlensing.

“This wasn’t part of the original plan,” said McGill. “But it turns out Roman’s astrometric capability is really good at detecting neutron stars and black holes, so we can add a whole new kind of science to Roman’s surveys.”

If the predictions hold true, the mission could provide the first large sample of isolated neutron stars discovered through their gravity alone, revealing a hidden population that has remained out of reach until now. Roman is expected to transform the study of microlensing and the hidden populations of objects in our galaxy, from rogue exoplanets to stellar remnants like neutron stars.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is managed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with participation by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California; Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California; the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore; and a science team comprising scientists from various research institutions. The primary industrial partners are BAE Systems Inc. in Boulder, Colorado; L3Harris Technologies in Rochester, New York; and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging in Thousand Oaks, California.

To learn more about Roman visit:

https://nasa.gov/roman

By Hannah Braun
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
hbraun@stsci.edu

Media contacts:

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
301-286-1940

Christine Pulliam
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
cpulliam@stsci.edu

As NASA looks to explore the Moon, Mars, and beyond, researchers must develop materials capable of withstanding the extreme temperatures found in space and on other planets and their moons. In frigid conditions, rubber can shatter like glass, circuit boards may fail, and electrical connections can freeze and fracture. 

Gaining a deeper understanding of how materials respond to these temperature extremes is critical — especially as NASA looks to build its Moon Base at the lunar South Pole, where surface temperatures swing dramatically from blistering heat during the day to bitter cold at night. Researchers developed a ground-breaking method for testing how materials hold up in the extreme cold of space. Engineers at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland invented the Lunar Environment Structural Test Rig (LESTR), a machine that can test materials, electronics, and other flight hardware at temperatures as low as 40 Kelvin, or about –388 degrees Fahrenheit. 

“Just as no building ever gets built without knowing exactly how the construction materials behave, no space mission is complete without a robust structural design that hinges on knowing how the materials used within it behave,” said Ariel Dimston, technical lead for LESTR at NASA Glenn. 

Traditionally, NASA has used a process that involves super-cold liquids — called liquid cryogens — to test how materials respond to extreme cold. These liquids, like nitrogen, hydrogen, and helium, are some of the coldest materials on Earth and are stored in specialized tanks. Engineers use them to chill materials during testing and collect data to see how they perform.    

“What makes LESTR special is that the entire rig operates in a completely dry vacuum: no liquid nitrogen, no liquid helium, no liquid anything,” Dimston said. “This is the first mechanical test rig that escapes from all of the challenges involved with cryogenic fluids.” 

LESTR takes a new approach by using a high-powered refrigerator, called a cryocooler, to remove heat without using any liquid at all. This creates the first “dry” cryogenic test environment within the mechanical testing industry. This new test rig is safer and more affordable than traditional methods and allows scientists to test materials at a much wider range of temperatures, Dimston said. 

“By leaving behind the liquid cryogen, you no longer need specialized handling equipment such as dewers, wet heaters, nor valves,” Dimston said. “You no longer require oxygen displacement sensors and other safety systems that add time, complexity, and cost to the process since without these cryogens they are no longer needed.” 

Dimston and his team are working with NASA programs and projects to put materials through their paces using the new apparatus. The team has been testing yarns that may someday be woven into fabrics used for next-generation spacesuits and is looking to develop advanced materials for rover tires, including a new metal that can return to its original shape after being bent, stretched, heated, and cooled. This shape memory alloy technology could help future rovers travel across the uneven, rocky surfaces of the Moon and Mars without the risk of flat tires.

NASA researchers spent more than two years designing and building the first version of the technology — LESTR 1 — and are currently building its twin, LESTR 2. In a partnership with Fort Wayne Metals, NASA delivered LESTR 1 to the company’s facility in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where experts there will use it to test shape memory alloy material for the extreme temperatures present on the Moon. 

“We are working to develop a next-generation shape memory alloy that is capable of functioning at temperatures down to 40 Kelvin, one of the coldest regions we could go to with rover capability,” said Dr. Santo Padula II, principal investigator for LESTR at NASA Glenn. “With this rig, we can test how shape memory alloys will behave in the coldest areas of the Moon and Mars. That will be a very big day for us: to be able to see what its properties look like at such low temperatures — something we’ve never seen before.” 

Beyond LESTR, NASA Glenn has other world-class ground test facilities that mimic environments like the vacuum of space, the microgravity aboard the International Space Station, the sulfuric pressure cooker that is Venus, or the terrain of the Moon and Mars.  

Glenn leads the agency in both advanced materials testing and in-space cryogenic fluid management, playing a vital role in developing technologies for future space exploration.  

For more information on Glenn’s new test rig, visit LESTR’s web page.  

Shivelyuch (also called Shiveluch), the most northerly active volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula, is one of the most active volcanoes in the world. On a near-daily basis, satellites detect new signs of activity within its horseshoe-shaped caldera, including thermal anomalies, hot avalanches and debris flows, and ash deposits that darken the surrounding landscape.

The Landsat 9 satellite captured this image of the towering volcano—one of the largest and tallest on the peninsula—on April 23, 2026, a day when fresh activity left its mark on the snowy, late-spring landscape. A multi-lobed plug of viscous lava called a lava dome—appearing as a dark patch in the caldera—has been actively growing in recent months, according to reports from the Kamchatka Volcanic Eruption Response Team (KVERT). Dome-building lava is typically extruded slowly and piles up into lobed, sloped, or spine-like shapes akin to those that form when toothpaste is squeezed from a tube.

On Shivelyuch, lava domes cycle through periods of growth and collapse, frequently producing explosive bursts of ash and launching avalanches of hot ash and soil called pyroclastic flows when they collapse. Debris slides through structures that Alina Shevchenko, a volcanologist with the GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences, called “avalanche chutes” and “lahar channels” radiating outward from the caldera. Collapses can trigger events geologists call “block-and-ash flows,” which typically contain coarse, blocky chunks of cooled volcanic rock along with powdery volcanic ash and soil.

Such flows often produce thick, insulating deposits that retain heat for long periods, sometimes even months or years, melting snow in the winter months. As seen in the Landsat images above, this activity leaves dark channels and exposed patches that contrast with the surrounding snow cover.

Satellites have regularly detected thermal anomalies within the caldera and near the growing lava dome in recent months, as well as warm land surface temperatures along the network of channels. On the day the image was acquired, KVERT reported that the “explosive-extrusive eruption” of the volcano continued, accompanied by “powerful gas-steam activity.”

An unusually large eruption and flank collapse in April 2023 sent massive pyroclastic flows barreling tens of kilometers down the mountain, destroying vast swaths of forest and leaving large deposits and flow channels near the foot of the mountain that are still visible today. “It’s quite possible that those deposits still retain some heat from that event,” said Janine Krippner, a geologist based in New Zealand. Krippner noted that when she did field research on Shivelyuch block-and-ash flows in 2015, she could still feel the heat within deposits that were five years old.

“Shivelyuch is an incredible volcano that has collapsed over and over again, on several scales, ranging from enormous flank collapses to more modest dome-collapse events,” Krippner said. “It goes through cycles of collapse but then builds itself up again and again through constant volcanic activity,” she added. “It should really be on a motivational poster.”

NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Adam Voiland.

References & Resources

• Global Volcanism Program (2026) Sheveluch. Accessed May 5, 2026.
• Grishin, S.Y., et al. (2025) Impact of the Major Eruption of the Shiveluch Volcano (April 2023, Kamchatka) on Ecosystems: The Extent of Forest Burial and Damage Based on Satellite Data. Izvestiya, Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics, 61, 1129–1136.
• Krippner, J.B., et al. (2018) Parametric analysis of lava dome-collapse events and pyroclastic deposits at Shiveluch volcano, Kamchatka, using visible and infrared satellite data. Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, 354, 115-129. 
• Krippner, J.B., et al. (2018) Exceptionally large block-and-ash flows: a detailed study of the 2005 and 2010 eruption deposits of Shiveluch volcano. EarthArXiv preprint.
• NASA Earth Observatory (2023, April 12) Kamchatka Erupts. Accessed May 5, 2026.
• NASA Earth Observatory (2011, January 25) Activity at Shiveluch Volcano. Accessed May 5, 2026.
• Shevchenko, A., et al. (2021) Constructive and Destructive Processes During the 2018–2019 Eruption Episode at Shiveluch Volcano, Kamchatka, Studied From Satellite and Aerial Data. Frontiers in Earth Science Volcanology, 9, 680051.
• Zharinov, N.A. & Demyanchuk, Y.V. (2024) The April 11, 2023 Catastrophic Explosive Eruption of Sheveluch Volcano, Kamchatka. Journal of Volcanology and Seismology, 18, 1–9.

Thirty-eight science educators representing seven school districts across Virginia’s Tidewater region joined forces with community organizations, such as the Elizabeth River Project, to deepen their instructional practice through a dynamic collaboration between NASA eClips and the GLOBE (Global Learning and Observation to Benefit the Environment) Program. Together, these groups are cultivating a regional STEM ecosystem that connects classrooms, community science, and NASA resources in meaningful and lasting ways.

As part of NASA’s Science Activation Program, NASA eClips engages educators and learners with standards-aligned resources grounded in authentic NASA science. Complementing this work, the GLOBE Program empowers participants to contribute to citizen science through environmental data collection and analysis. The partnership between these two programs creates a powerful bridge between content knowledge and real-world application – bringing Earth Systems science to life for both educators and learners.

Educators gathered for a three-hour professional learning experience on March 7 or April 18, 2026  at the National Institute of Aerospace in Hampton, Virginia. Through hands-on investigations, participants explored how land cover influences surface temperature, how clouds impact atmospheric conditions, and how soil plays a critical role in environmental systems. These experiences were anchored in NASA eClips resources and GLOBE protocols, offering practical strategies for teaching key Virginia Science Standards of Learning related to weather, climate, land covering, and Earth’s energy budget.

Participants calibrated and used scientific instruments such as infrared thermometers and multi-day minimum/maximum thermometers, gaining confidence in collecting accurate environmental data. They examined the urban heat island effect, engaged in interactive activities including an energetic cloud dance and a cloud opacity demonstration, and learned how to contribute observations through practice of using the GLOBE Observer app. These immersive experiences not only strengthened content knowledge but also modeled how authentic science practices can be integrated into classroom instruction.

This initiative builds on two years of intentional collaboration among the NASA eClips Educators from the National Institute of Aerospace’s Center for Integrative STEM Education (NIA-CISE); GLOBE scientists from NASA Langley Research Center; and regional school divisions and community organizations that laid the foundation for a sustainable regional STEM ecosystem. Support from the Coastal Virginia STEM Hub, funded through the Virginia General Assembly, has been instrumental in expanding access to these opportunities. Grant funding provided educator stipends and enabled the purchase of essential equipment, including weather instrument shelters and soil kits. In a powerful example of cross-sector collaboration, the instrument shelters were constructed by Career and Technical Education (CTE) students in Hampton City Schools and Norfolk Public Schools using GLOBE specifications, further connecting students to the scientific process while supporting their peers’ learning.

As participating school divisions and community organizations integrate NASA eClips and GLOBE resources into their curricula and outreach efforts, they are ensuring that all learners have access to authentic, data-driven science experiences. Together, this network of educators, students, and partners is not only enhancing science education, but also building a connected, collaborative STEM ecosystem where learning extends beyond the classroom and into the community. 

NASA eClips, led by NIA-CISE, is supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number NNX16AB91A and is part of NASA’s Science Activation Portfolio. Learn more about how Science Activation connects NASA science experts, real content, and experiences with community leaders to do science in ways that activate minds and promote deeper understanding of our world and beyond: https://science.nasa.gov/learn/about-science-activation/

Description

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover used its Mastcam-Z camera system to capture this 360-degree panorama of a region nicknamed “Crocodile Bridge” on Jezero Crater’s rim. The panorama is made up of 980 images, 971 of which were taken on Dec. 18, 2025, the 1,717th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. An additional nine were taken on Jan. 25, 2026, Sol 1,754. This natural-color view has been processed to show the landscape as the human eye would see it.

Jezero Crater’s rim and the regions around it hold some of the oldest rocks anywhere in the solar system; they serve as time capsules of the Red Planet’s early history, when its crust and atmosphere were still forming. No terrain this ancient exists on Earth, where tectonic plates constantly recycle the surface. (Mars lacks tectonic plates, allowing some of this very old material to be preserved.)

“Crocodile Bridge” represents a transition into an area nicknamed “Lac de Charmes,” which Perseverance will explore for several months later this year.

[Full-resolution image versions of figures A through E can be downloaded at the bottom of this page.]

Figure A is the natural-color view panorama.

Figure B is the same panorama in an enhanced-color view, which brings out subtle details.

Figure C is an anaglyph (3D) version of the natural-color view of the panorama.

Figure D is an anaglyph red-color view of the enhanced version of the panorama.

Figure E is an anaglyph blue-color view of the enhanced version of the panorama.

Managed for NASA by Caltech, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover on behalf of the agency’s Science Mission Directorate as part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio.

Arizona State University leads the operations of the Mastcam-Z instrument, working in collaboration with Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, on the design, fabrication, testing, and operation of the cameras, and in collaboration with the Niels Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen on the design, fabrication, and testing of the calibration targets.

To learn more about Perseverance, visit:

science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance

Leaders from Coinbase, M13, and Mignano Law Group talk about how M&A is an early-stage strategy at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026. Register to hear this live.

Three days left to lock in 50% off a second ticket to Disrupt 2026. Buy one TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 ticket, and get a second ticket at 50% off. Gain more visibility in the tech industry. Offer ends May 8 at 11:59 p.m. PT.

Samsung crossed the $1 trillion valuation mark after shares surged on AI-driven chip demand, making it only the second Asian company after TSMC to hit the milestone.

A new survey found that kids find it easy to bypass age checks, despite a rise in age verification laws around the world.

The new Paper Pure is lighter and faster than the reMarkable 2, which is going to be retired six years since its launch.