An APL study applies a novel method to Parker Solar Probe WISPR images to quantitatively describe and better understand the evolution of substructures within coronal mass ejections.

Centimeter-sized stones returned from the small near-Earth asteroid Bennu by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission exhibit impact craters up to a few millimeters wide, implying that impact fragments and impact-processed rocks are retained despite the microgravity environment. To understand how, APL scientists combined physical analysis of Bennu samples, laboratory experiments of impacts into simulant rocks, and 3D numerical simulations of disruptive impacts into boulders. They found that the majority of impact fragments eject toward and penetrate the asteroid’s weak, porous surface, leading to their retention. This impact-driven mechanism of regolith production likely occurs on other small asteroids with highly porous surfaces.

A new APL-led James Webb Space Telescope analysis method extracts the first nightside spectrum of WASP-17b, revealing a ~1000 K nightside atmosphere and evidence of transport-driven chemistry.

This APL-led study reanalyzes James Webb Space Telescope data and finds no statistically significant biosignatures on K2-18b, sharpening standards for life detection beyond Earth.

An APL-led study using multi-mission observations from the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission and Solar Orbiter sheds light on the formation of foreshock compressive structures, advancing our understanding of collisionless shocks and transient phenomena in space.

An APL-led team used data from the James Webb Space Telescope to improve the measurements of the orbit of asteroid 2024 YR4, reducing the odds of a lunar impact in 2032 from 4% to zero. 

Mastcam-Z multispectral image mosaics from NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover reveal a striking diversity of rocks swept into Jezero crater by powerful ancient floods. Carried from beyond the crater’s rim, these rocks hold clues to Mars’ deep past and the story behind the samples Perseverance is collecting.

A new Parker Solar Probe study reveals strong preferential heating and acceleration of solar wind ions below the Sun’s Alfvén surface, highlighting this boundary as a key region for ion energization.

This APL-led study reports the discovery of low-frequency (10 mHz) oscillations in the ionosphere and auroral bead structuring, both of which are linked to a plasma instability around substorm onsets.

A new study uses the unique viewpoints enabled by the APL-led dual-spacecraft STEREO mission to reconstruct the fundamental properties of 1,000+ coronal mass ejections.

A new study reveals that higher pickup-ion temperatures measured by the APL-built New Horizons spacecraft arise from higher solar wind speed and shock heating, which could boost production of energetic neutral atoms (ENAs).

The APL-built Suprathermal Ion Spectrograph (SIS) instrument on Solar Orbiter has shown that small solar flares accelerate ions in just minutes, surprisingly much faster than the hours needed in shock-associated events.