NASA picked a Planetary Science Institute team to test whether the Moon's Marius Hills pit opens into a lava tube, with a commercial lander and rover. PSI says such a cave could one day shelter astronauts from radiation and extreme temperature swings.
Perspective Coverage
3 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 30%
- Operator
- Operator 57%
- Investor
- Investor 13%
Reality
- Evidence60
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives70
- Confidence65
NASA selects three PRISM payloads to scout ice, lava tubes and hazards for Moon Base
NASA selected three PRISM science payloads to fly on commercial CLPS landers and survey lunar ice, a possible lava tube and surface hazards for Moon Base. Their findings are meant to shape where and how crews live at an outpost NASA is already planning.
Reality
- Evidence45
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives65
- Confidence50
Mark Sykes's FOIA tally finds NASA research funding lost 30% of its value since 2011
Planetary scientist Mark Sykes rebuilt 15 years of NASA research and analysis spending from FOIA data and found it flat, down 30% in real value since FY2011. He says the shortfall is costing NASA scientists and ideas, a claim his dollar figures support only indirectly.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives45
- Confidence50
Chang'e-7 launches Aug. 24 with an orbiter, a rover and a six-legged hopper meant to jump into permanently dark craters. What it measures will constrain where anyone builds a base.
Reality
- Evidence62
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+18
- Incentives40
- Confidence60
Ariel's giant fractures point to a past ocean more than 170 km deep
Tidal modelling published in Icarus says Uranus's moon Ariel needed a past ocean, possibly more than 170 km deep, to form its giant fractures. How deep depends on how eccentric Ariel's orbit once was, and surface maps alone cannot tell the two apart.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+25
- Incentives60
- Confidence50
A Planetary Science Institute team scored early Earth for both impact sterilization and impact-built hydrothermal systems. The habitability optimum falls at 4.33 billion years ago, roughly 130 million years before LUCA.
Reality
- Evidence64
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+18
- Incentives45
- Confidence62
Reprocessing 35 years of Pluto occultations turns up a 16 percent pressure drop in the lower atmosphere
Amanda Sickafoose's team ran every Pluto stellar occultation from 1988 to 2023 through one analysis, so a change in the record could not be an artifact of who processed it. The 2022 and 2023 data show pressure falling.
Reality
- Evidence62
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+18
- Incentives35
- Confidence55