Microgravity-Induced Gut Dysbiosis and its Consequences for Brain Health - Microgravity Science and Technology

Astronauts face multiple physiological challenges during spaceflight, including exposure to microgravity, ionizing radiation, altered circadian rhythms, and psychological stress due to confinement. Among these hazards, microgravity is a significant disruptor of gastrointestinal homeostasis. This review synthesizes evidence from human spaceflight missions, ground-based analogue studies, and preclinical models to characterize microgravity-induced gut dysbiosis and its downstream effects on central nervous system function via the gut–brain axis. Consistent findings across studies include shifts in the Firmicutes-to-Bacteroidetes ratio, depletion of beneficial commensal bacteria (notably Akkermansia muciniphila, Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, and Bifidobacterium species), and enrichment of potentially pathogenic taxa. These compositional changes correlate with reduced production of short-chain fatty acids and other neuroprotective metabolites, compromised intestinal barrier integrity, and systemic low-grade inflammation. Through immune, neuroendocrine, and vagal pathways, these peripheral perturbations propagate to the central nervous system, contributing to neuroinflammation, blood–brain barrier dysfunction, and altered neurotransmitter metabolism. We critically evaluate the mechanistic pathways linking microbial changes to neurocognitive outcomes, address methodological limitations and confounding factors in current research, and propose candidate countermeasures and priorities for future evidence based. Understanding these gut–brain interactions are essential for developing interventions to protect astronaut cognitive performance and psychological well-being during long-duration space exploration.

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Instrumentation, Databases, and Data Utilisation in Solar–Terrestrial Physics: An Overview of the Current Status and Recommendations for the Future - Surveys in Geophysics

Solar–terrestrial physics, the science of interactions between the Sun and the Earth’s environment, is increasingly envisioned as a complex system consisting of regions of very different nature but strongly coupled to each other via multiple physical processes. Over time, a tremendous amount of observational data have been collected on the various solar–terrestrial physics subsystems: the Sun, the solar wind, Earth’s magnetosphere, ionosphere, and neutral atmosphere. Despite the quantity of data, measurements of the near-Earth and solar environments remain sparse with respect to the size of the solar–terrestrial system, implying that multiple datasets often need to be combined to gain insights into the physics at play. Besides, increasingly sophisticated numerical models have been built to elucidate the physics of those subsystems, and ongoing efforts aim at improving the interfacing of such models to get a system-level understanding. The solar–terrestrial physics community is facing the challenge of bringing together its various subcommunities whose combined data and expertise are needed to advance the science. While databases for observations and models exist, they are often catering for only part of the community and may not always follow the same standards and practice in terms of data access. Moreover, database and instrument maintenance requires continuity in funding and human power, posing an additional challenge. In this paper, we review some of the existing initiatives tackling the data challenge as well as emerging new data processing methods. We also discuss some of the current issues related to the production and management of observational data and propose ideas—such as mutualising resources in the form of ‘supersites’ and ensuring continuity in the measurements to overcome those challenges.

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Jodrell Bank's Lovell telescope faces axe in science cuts, BBC understands

Astronomers warn it would tear the heart out of UK science, and leave a generation untrained.

bbc.co.uk

The Wide Field Imager (WFI) Instruments for the Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) - Solar Physics

We describe the design, hardware, and calibration performance of the Wide-Field Imager (WFI) instruments for the Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission. The WFI instruments are a trio of visible-light heliospheric imagers that, together, view the outer corona and solar wind from under 3.5∘ to over 47∘ from the Sun, via sunlight that is Thomson-scattered from free electrons. In flight, the WFIs are arranged so that their collective fields of view form an approximately symmetric trefoil on the sky, comprising three circular-truncated square fields spaced 120° apart in position angle. The WFIs work with the NFI instrument, described elsewhere, to implement the full PUNCH field spanning all solar position angles, at elongations from 1.5° to 47° from disk center. WFI is implemented using dioptric (lens) optics and deep multi-stage baffles that attenuate solar, planetary, and lunar stray light sufficiently for ground processing to reveal the faint signal for the primary science. WFI measures both total brightness (tB) and polarized brightness (pB), via an on-board polarizing filter wheel (PFW) and charge-coupled device (CCD) camera that share a common design with those of the NFI instrument.

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NASA’s MAVEN Illuminates New Understanding of Auroras at Mars - NASA Science

NASA MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) mission scientists have uncovered a key puzzle piece in understanding certain types of auroras on Mars,

science.nasa.gov

Shared cloud interactions unveil a candidate binary-system supernova pair with no known analogue - Nature Communications

Most stars are found in binaries, but no surviving pair of supernova remnants from the same stellar system has been found. Here, the authors show that progenitors of supernova remnants IC 443 and G189.6+3.3 may be a binary system.

go.nature.com

Viking: 50 Years on Mars - NASA Science

Only 10 years before the Viking mission launched, Mars was still just a mottled orange ball when viewed through even the best Earthbound telescopes, with few

science.nasa.gov

Magnetic, thermal and rotational evolution of isolated neutron stars - Living Reviews in Computational Astrophysics

The strong magnetic fields of neutron stars are closely linked to their observed thermal, spectral, and timing properties, such as the distribution of spin periods and their derivatives. To understand the evolution of astrophysical observables over time, it is essential to develop robust theoretical frameworks and numerical models that solve the coupled thermal and magnetic field evolution equations, incorporating detailed microphysics such as thermal and electrical conductivities and neutrino emission rates. These efforts are key to uncovering how the strength and geometry of magnetic fields change with age, ultimately shedding light on the diverse phenomenology of neutron stars. In this review, we outline the fundamental theory underlying magneto-thermal evolution models, with an emphasis on numerical methods and a comprehensive set of benchmark tests intended to guide current and future code development. We revisit established results from axisymmetric simulations, highlight recent progress in fully three-dimensional models, and offer a perspective on the anticipated developments in this rapidly evolving field.

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