Penulis: Agus S

Rolls Royce has been selected to develop and build the UK’s first small nuclear power stations.

It is hoped small modular reactors (SMRs) will help meet the UK’s growing electricity demands, be faster to develop than full size reactors and create thousands of skilled jobs.

Alongside £2.5bn for these SMRs, the government has also announced £14.2bn to build a new larger scale reactor, Sizewell C in Suffolk.

SMRs, sometimes called “mini nukes”, work on the same principle as large reactors, using a nuclear reaction to generate heat that produces electricity.

Inside one or more large reactor vessels, atoms of nuclear fuel are split, releasing a large amount of heat. That is used to heat water, which drives a turbine. Essentially, reactors are giant nuclear kettles.

SMRs will be a fraction of the size and have up to a third of the generating output of a typical large reactor.

The modular element means they will be built to order in factories – as a kit of parts – then transported and fitted together, like a flat-packed power station.

The aim is to save time and money

The government wants a secure, reliable, affordable and low carbon energy system.

In 2024, nuclear accounted for 14% of the UK’s electricity generation, according to provisional government figures. The aim is to boost that.

Along with 30 other countries, the UK has signed a global pledge to triple nuclear capacity by 2050.

But no new nuclear power station has been built since Sizewell B began operating in 1995. And most of those in operation are due to be retired by the end of the decade.

The SMR industry is in its infancy and, around the world, about 80 different designs are being investigated.

Only China and Russia have small reactors up and running.

The UK government is convinced that, with investment, SMRs will create thousands of jobs and boost manufacturing.

Initially though, both government and private investment will be needed to turn the designs into a commercially viable reality.

In the US, companies including Google, Microsoft and Amazon, with their power-hungry data centres, have signed a deal to use the reactors when they become available.

In 2011, the Conservative government identified eight sites for “new nuclear” (larger reactors), at Bradwell, Hartlepool, Heysham, Hinkley Point, Oldbury, Sellafield, Sizewell and Wylfa.

Then, in February 2025, the prime minister said he would cut planning red tape to make it easier for developers to build smaller nuclear reactors on additional sites across the country.

Certain criteria would have to be met, Sir Keir Starmer said. No sites would be approved close to airports, military sites or pipelines. Locations valuable for nature or at risk of flooding would also be ruled out.

Great British Nuclear, a public body with statutory powers to push through the government’s nuclear plans, ran a competition to find a firm that would develop and build SMRs in the UK.

It aims to select and announce a location by the end of 2025, with the first SMR operational by the mid 2030s.

Preferred locations are likely to include old industrial sites, such as former nuclear plants, or old coal mines close to the grid.

Rolls Royce beat two American consortiums in the competition, Holtec, GE Hitachi. A Canadian company, Westinghouse pulled out.

The financial controversy around the new large reactor being built at Hinkley Point C in Somerset is a perfect example of what the UK is trying to move away from. It is running a decade late and has overspent by billions of pounds.

SMRs promise to be quicker, easier and cheaper to build.

But while they will eventually be built to order, cost savings don’t kick in until designs have been finalised and modules are reliably rolling off factory lines.

So the first SMRs will probably be very expensive to build.

The cost of dealing with nuclear waste also has to be factored in. Sellafield, in Cumbria, currently deals with most of the country’s waste, but it is running out of space and costs are spiralling.

In 2024, leading nuclear scientists on a government advisory committee recommended any new nuclear power station design should include clear plans for managing waste, to avoid the “costly mistake of the past”.

Taxpayers today are still paying for Sellafield to deal with nuclear waste from the 1950s.

Nuclear industry experts the BBC has spoken to are convinced that SMRs – and more nuclear power – will eventually reduce the cost of our electricity supply.

Public attitudes to nuclear power appear to be linked to those prices. A government survey in 2024 suggested that 78% of people would find an energy infrastructure project more acceptable if they were offered discounts on their bills.

Although the government has announced discounts on electricity bills for households close to upgraded pylons, there has been no such announcement yet relating to homes near SMRs.

The International Atomic Energy Agency says nuclear power plants are among “the safest and most secure facilities in the world”.

Nuclear power’s reputation is tarnished though by high profile disasters, where radioactive material has been released into the environment – including in Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986 and Fukushima in Japan, in 2011.

Dr Simon Middleburgh, a nuclear scientist from Bangor University, whose research focuses on developing new nuclear materials, describes the smaller reactors that are being considered for the UK as “incredibly safe”.

“The UK’s ONR (Office for Nuclear Regulation) is treated as a sort of gold standard internationally in terms of the regulatory environment,” he told BBC News.

Some experts do have concerns about nuclear waste. Scientists from the government advisory group recently said the issue of how radioactive waste from SMRs that are in the design stage “appears, with some exceptions… to have been largely ignored or at least downplayed”.

The number and location of SMRs is also a security issue.

With more reactors spread over a larger area, potentially built on industrial sites and closer to people, Dr Ross Peel, a researcher in civil nuclear security from Kings College London, says the security burden will be higher.

Security at nuclear power stations is provided by armed police – the Civil Nuclear Constabulary. Dr Peel says the fact that existing nuclear sites generally have “miles of empty land around them” means that anyone in the vicinity arouses suspicion. If officers spot anyone they could just “look through the binoculars and ask ‘what are you doing?’,” he said.

“In urban or industrial environments, suddenly you’re trying to do security in a very different [way].”

As government investment is announced, what is Sizewell C and what will it mean for the area?

New heating systems will “significantly cut energy use and emissions”, a council says.

What do local colleges say about the prospects for locals of employment and training at Sizewell C?

Ros Atkins looks at the reasons behind the government’s investment in nuclear power, and how its plan fits into the UK’s energy mix.

Sir Keir Starmer says the development of Sizewell C on the Suffolk coastline will create 10,000 jobs over the next decade.

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The planet Uranus and its five biggest moons may not be the dead sterile worlds that scientists have long thought.

Instead, they may have oceans, and the moons may even be capable of supporting life, scientists say.

Much of what we know about them was gathered by Nasa’s Voyager 2 spacecraft which visited nearly 40 years ago.

But a new analysis shows that Voyager’s visit coincided with a powerful solar storm, which led to a misleading idea of what the Uranian system is really like.

Uranus is a beautiful, icy ringed world in the outer reaches of our solar system. It is among the coldest of all the planets. It is also tilted on its side compared to all the other worlds – as if it had been knocked over – making it arguably the weirdest.

We got our first close-up look at it in 1986, when Voyager 2 flew past and sent back sensational pictures of the planet and its five major moons.

But what amazed scientists even more was the data Voyager 2 sent back indicating that the Uranian system was even weirder than they thought.

The measurements from the spacecraft’s instruments indicated that the planets and moons were inactive, unlike the other moons in the outer solar system. They also showed that Uranus’s protective magnetic field was strangely distorted. It was squashed and pushed away from the Sun.

A planet’s magnetic field traps any gases and other material coming off the planet and its moons. These might be from oceans or geological activity. Voyager 2 found none, suggesting that Uranus and its five largest moons were sterile and inactive.

This came as an enormous surprise because it was unlike the solar system’s other planets and their moons.

But the new analysis has solved the decades-long mystery. It shows that Voyager 2 flew past on a bad day.

The new research shows that just as Voyager 2 flew past Uranus, the Sun was raging, creating a powerful solar wind that might have blown the material away and temporarily distorted the magnetic field.

So, for 40 years we have had an incorrect view of what Uranus and its five largest moons are normally like, according to Dr William Dunn of University College London.

“These results suggest that the Uranian system could be much more exciting than previously thought. There could be moons there that could have the conditions that are necessary for life, they might have oceans below the surface that could be teeming with fish!”.

Linda Spilker was a young scientist working on the Voyager programme when the Uranus data came in. She is now still serving as the project scientist for the Voyager missions. She said that she was delighted to hear about the new results, which have been published in the Journal Nature Astronomy.

“The results are fascinating, and I am really excited to see that there is potential for life in the Uranian system,” she told BBC News.

“I’m also so pleased that so much is being done with the Voyager data. It’s amazing that scientists are looking back at the data we collected in 1986 and finding new results and new discoveries”.

Dr Affelia Wibisono of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, who is independent of the research team, described the results as “very exciting”.

“It shows how important it is to look back at old data, because sometimes, hiding behind them is something new to be discovered, which can help us design the next generation of space exploration missions”.

Which is exactly what Nasa is doing, partly as a result of the new research.

It has been nearly 40 years since Voyager 2 last flew past the icy world and its moons. Nasa has plans to launch a new mission, the Uranus Orbiter and Probe, to go back for a closer look in 10 years’ time.

According to Nasa’s Dr Jamie Jasinski, whose idea it was to re-examine the Voyager 2 data, the mission will need to take his results into account when designing its instruments and planning the scientific survey.

“Some of the instruments for the future spacecraft are very much being designed with ideas from what we learned from Voyager 2 when it flew past the system when it was experiencing an abnormal event. So we need to rethink how exactly we are going to design the instruments on the new mission so that we can best capture the science we need to make discoveries”.

Nasa’s Uranus probe is expected to arrive by 2045, which is when scientists hope to find out whether these far-flung icy moons, once thought of as being dead worlds, might have the possibility of being home to life.

A Nasa exhibit lets you hear the Sun’s raw power, turning solar data into an unforgettable soundscape.

Scientists are analysing the smells of space – from the aroma onboard space stations to planets hundreds of light years away – to learn about the makeup of the Universe.

Researchers in the US and Japan are competing to explain the existence of the planets, stars and galaxies.

The infrastructure of humanity’s journey into space may only be decades old, but some of it has already been lost. Now, “space archaeologists” are scrambling to save what’s left.

Astronomers have spotted around a dozen of these weird, rare blasts. Could they be signs of a special kind of black hole?

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On Christmas Eve, an autonomous spacecraft flew past the Sun, closer than any human-made object before it. Swooping through the atmosphere, Nasa’s Parker Solar Probe was on a mission to discover more about the Sun, including how it affects space weather on Earth.

This was a landmark moment for humanity – but one without any human directly involved, as the spacecraft carried out its pre-programmed tasks by itself as it flew past the sun, with no communication with Earth at all.

Robotic probes have been sent across the solar system for the last six decades, reaching destinations impossible for humans. During its 10-day flyby, the Parker Solar Probe experienced temperatures of 1000C.

But the success of these autonomous spacecraft – coupled with the rise of new advanced artificial intelligence – raises the question of what role humans might play in future space exploration.

Some scientists question whether human astronauts are going to be needed at all.

“Robots are developing fast, and the case for sending humans is getting weaker all the time,” says Lord Martin Rees, the UK’s Astronomer Royal. “I don’t think any taxpayer’s money should be used to send humans into space.”

He also points to the risk to humans.

“The only case for sending humans [there] is as an adventure, an experience for wealthy people, and that should be funded privately,” he argues.

Andrew Coates, a physicist from University College London, agrees. “For serious space exploration, I much prefer robotics,” he says. “[They] go much further and do more things.”

They are also cheaper than humans, he argues. “And as AI progresses, the robots can be cleverer and cleverer.”

But what does that mean for future generations of budding astronauts – and surely there are certain functions that humans can do in space but which robots, however advanced, never could?

Robotic spacecraft have visited every planet in the solar system, as well as many asteroids and comets, but humans have only gone to two destinations: Earth’s orbit and the Moon.

In all, about 700 people have been to space, since the earliest in 1961, when Yuri Gagarin from the then-Soviet Union became the first cosmic explorer. Most of those have been into orbit (circling the Earth) or suborbit (short vertical hops into space lasting minutes, on vehicles like the US company Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket).

“Prestige will always be a reason that we have humans in space,” says Dr Kelly Weinersmith, a biologist at Rice University, Texas and co-author of A City on Mars. “It seems to have been agreed upon as a great way to show that your political system is effective and your people are brilliant.”

But aside from an innate desire to explore, or a sense of prestige, humans also carry out research and experiments in Earth’s orbit, such as on the International Space Station, and use these to advance science.

Robots can contribute to that scientific research, with the ability to travel to locations inhospitable to humans, where they can use instruments to study and probe the atmospheres and surfaces.

“Humans are more versatile and we get stuff done faster than a robot, but we’re really hard and expensive to keep alive in space,” says Dr Weinersmith.

In her 2024 Booker Prize-winning novel Orbital, author Samantha Harvey puts it more lyrically: “A robot has no need for hydration, nutrients, excretion, sleep… It wants and asks for nothing.”

But there are downsides. Many robots are slow and methodical – for example on Mars, the rovers (remote-controlled motor vehicles) trundle along at barely 0.1mph.

“AI can beat human beings at chess, but does that mean they’ll be able to beat human beings in exploring environments?” asks Dr Ian Crawford, a planetary scientist at the University of London. “I just don’t think we know.”

He does, however, believe that AI algorithms might enable rovers to be “more efficient”.

Technology can play a part in complementing human space travel by freeing up astronauts from certain tasks to allow them to focus on more important research.

“[AI could be used to] automate tedious tasks,” explains Dr Kiri Wagstaff, a computer and planetary scientist in the US who previously worked at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. “On the surface of a planet, humans get tired and lose focus, but machines won’t.”

The challenge is that vast amounts of power are needed to operate systems like large language models (LLM), which can understand and generate human language by processing vast amounts of text data. “We are not at the point of being able to run an LLM on a Mars rover,” says Dr Wagstaff.

“The rovers’ processors run at about a tenth [of the speed] that your smartphone has” – meaning they are unable to cope with the intense demands of running an LLM.

Complex humanoid machines with robotic arms and limbs are another form of technology that could take on basic tasks and functions in space, particularly as they more closely mimic the physical capabilities of humans.

Nasa’s Valkyrie robot was built by the Johnson Space Center to compete in a 2013 robotics challenge trial. Weighing 300lb and standing at 6ft2in, it looks not unlike a Star Wars Stormtrooper, but it is one of an increasing number of human-like machines with superhuman abilities.

Long before the Valkyrie was created, Nasa’s Robonaut was the first humanoid robot designed for use in space, taking on tasks that were otherwise performed by humans.

Its specially designed hands meant it could use the same tools as astronauts and carry out complex, delicate tasks like grasping objects or flicking switches, that were too challenging for other robotic systems.

A later model of the Robonaut was flown to the International Space Station on the space shuttle Discovery in 2011, where it helped with maintenance and assembly.

“If we need to change a component or clean a solar panel, we could do that robotically,” says Dr Shaun Azimi, lead of the dexterous robotics team at Nasa’s Johnson Space Center in Texas. “We see robots as a way to secure these habitats when humans aren’t around.”

He argues that robots could be useful, not to replace human explorers but to work alongside them.

Some robots are already working on other planets without humans, sometimes even making decisions on their own. Nasa’s Curiosity rover, for example, is exploring a region called Gale Crater on Mars and autonomously performs some of its science without human input.

“You can direct the rover to take pictures of a scene, look for rocks that might fit science priorities for the mission, and then autonomously fire its laser at that target,” says Dr Wagstaff.

“It can get a reading of a particular rock and send it back to Earth while the humans are still asleep.”

But the capabilities of rovers like Curiosity are limited by their slow pace. And there is something else they cannot compete with too. That is, humans have the added bonus of inspiring people back on Earth in a way that machines cannot.

“Inspiration is something that is intangible,” argues Prof Coates.

Leroy Chiao, a retired Nasa astronaut who went on three flights to space in the 1990s and 2000s on Nasa’s Space Shuttle and to the International Space Station, agrees. “Humans relate when humans are doing something.

“The general public is excited about robotic missions. But I would expect the first human on Mars to be even bigger than the first Moon landing.”

Humans have not travelled further than Earth’s orbit since December 1972, when the last Apollo mission visited the Moon. Nasa is hoping to return humans there this decade with its Artemis programme.

The next crewed mission will see four astronauts fly around the Moon in 2026. A further mission, scheduled for 2027, will see Nasa astronauts land on the Moon’s surface.

The Chinese space agency, meanwhile, also wants to send astronauts to the Moon.

Elsewhere Elon Musk, CEO of the US company SpaceX, has his own plans related to space. He has said that his long-term plan is to create a colony on Mars, where humans could land.

His idea is to use Starship, a vast new vehicle that his company is developing, to transport up to 100 people there at a time, with the aim for there to be a million people on Mars in 20 years.

“Musk is arguing we need to move to Mars because that could be a backup for humanity if something catastrophic happens on Earth,” explains Dr Weinersmith. “If you buy that argument, then sending humans into space is necessary.”

However, there are large unknowns about living on Mars, including myriad technical challenges that she says remain unsolved.

“Maybe babies can’t develop in that environment,” she says. “There [are] ethical questions [like this] that we don’t have the answers to.

“I think we should be slowing down.”

Lord Rees has a vision of his own, though, in which human and robotic exploration might merge to the point that humans themselves are part-machine to cope with extreme environments. “I can imagine they will use all of the techniques of genetic modification, cyborg add-ons, and so on, to cope with very hostile environments,” he says.

“We may have a new species that will be happy to live on Mars.”

Until then, however, humans are likely to continue their small steps into the cosmos, on a path long trodden by robotic explorers before them.

Top image credit: NASA

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Never before seen pictures will help scientists learn how the Sun’s activity changes from stormy to quiet periods

A Nasa exhibit lets you hear the Sun’s raw power, turning solar data into an unforgettable soundscape.

The space agency has published its budget request to Congress which would see funding for science projects cut by nearly a half.

Shubhanshu Shukla will be only the second Indian to travel to space and the first-ever to visit ISS.

Nasa pair Butch and Suni tell the BBC they feared being unable to get home when they failed to dock on the ISS.

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Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s space company has blasted its first rocket into orbit in a bid to challenge the dominance of Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

The New Glenn rocket launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 02:02 local time (07:02 GMT).

It firmly pits the world’s two richest men against each other in a commercial space race, vying to fly bigger and more powerful rockets.

Both want to populate the skies with more satellites, run private space stations, and provide transport for regular trips by people to the Moon.

“Congratulations on reaching orbit on the first attempt!” Musk wrote in a post to Bezos on X.

Dave Limp, CEO of Bezos’s space company Blue Origin, said he was “incredibly proud”.

“We’ll learn a lot from today and try again at our next launch this spring,” he added.

Bezos’s team overcame technical barriers that caused delays earlier this week when ice formation halted a launch.

Blue Origin’s employees and crowds gathered near Cape Canaveral cheered as the 98 meters-high rocket hurtled into orbit.

But the company failed to land New Glenn’s main rocket engine, or booster, onto a platform in the Atlantic Ocean.

It had hoped that the booster would be reusable for future launches but after about 20 minutes of flight, the company confirmed it had lost the engine.

Bezos’s company Blue Origin has struggled to match the pace set by SpaceX. But this launch will be seen as a major step forward for the business.

The New Glenn rocket was named after John Glenn, the first American astronaut to orbit Earth more than 60 years ago.

The rocket is more powerful than SpaceX’s most commonly used rocket, the Falcon 9. It can also carry more satellites, and Bezos wants to use it as part of his Project Kuiper, which aims to deploy thousands of low-earth satellites to provide broadband services.

That project would compete directly with Musk’s Starlink service.

Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin 25 years ago, claiming he wanted “millions of people working and living in space.”

For years the venture has sent a smaller, reusable rocket called New Shepard to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere. It has carried passengers and payloads, including Bezos himself in 2021.

But Blue Origin has been dramatically outperformed by SpaceX, which launched its rockets 134 times last year.

And SpaceX’s new generation of rocket, called Starship, is more powerful still. The company hopes to launch it in its seventh test flight later today.

Some experts say a successful New Glenn rocket will create real competition between the two companies and could drive down the costs of space operations.

“What you are going to see are these two companies challenge each other to make even greater strides,” suggests Dr Simeon Barber at the Open University in the UK.

Governments have historically spent billions on building rockets and sending missions into space.

But US space agency NASA is increasingly moving away from relying only on public money and has issued huge contracts to private companies to provide rockets and other space services.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has already received billions of dollars worth of space contracts.

His close relationship with the next US president, Donald Trump, could strengthen his company further.

The museum is opening its first exhibition dedicated to space exploration, with many items on show.

Giant tyre firms are testing tyres that can survive conditions on the Moon and Mars.

The spacecraft, which launched in 1972 on a mission to Venus, circled Earth for over five decades.

The US singer says she feels “bruised” after weeks of online backlash – what’s sparked the change?

Jared Isaacman, who has worked with Elon Musk, won approval from a key committee and is expected to clear a full Senate vote.

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The latest test of Space X’s giant Starship rocket has failed, minutes after launch.

Officials at Elon Musk’s company said the upper stage was lost after problems developed after lift-off from Texas on Thursday.

But the Super Heavy booster managed to return to its launchpad as planned, prompting an eruption of applause from ground control teams.

The mission came hours after the first flight of the Blue Origin New Glenn rocket system, backed by Amazon boss Jeff Bezos.

The two tech billionaires both want to dominate the space vehicle market.

“Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent burn. Teams will continue to review data from today’s flight test to better understand root cause,” SpaceX posted on X.

“With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will help us improve Starship’s reliability.”

Unverified footage shared on social media shows what appears to be the rocket breaking up in flames.

And footage showed orange balls of light flying across the sky over the Haitian capital of Port-Au-Prince, leaving a trail of smoke behind.

“Success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed!” Mr Musk posted on X, sharing a video showing a fiery trail streaking though the sky.

He also said “improved versions” of the ship and booster were “already waiting for launch”.

“Preliminary indication is that we had an oxygen/fuel leak in the cavity above the ship engine firewall that was large enough to build pressure in excess of the vent capacity,” Musk said a short while later, adding that “nothing so far suggests pushing next launch past next month”.

Footage of the launch clocked up 7.2m views, according to a SpaceX livestream.

The Starship system had lifted off from Boca Chica, Texas, at 17:38 EST (22:38 GMT) in the company’s seventh test mission.

The Starship upper stage separated from its Super Heavy booster nearly four minutes into flight as planned.

But then SpaceX communications manager Dan Huot reported on a live stream that mission teams had lost contact with the ship.

The Super Heavy booster managed to return to its launchpad roughly seven minutes after lift-off as planned, prompting an eruption of applause from ground control teams.

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it was aware “an anomaly occurred” during the SpaceX mission.

“The FAA briefly slowed and diverted aircraft around the area where space vehicle debris was falling. Normal operations have resumed,” it said in a statement.

It comes a day after a SpaceX rocket blasted off from Florida carrying two privately constructed lunar landers and a micro rover to the Moon.

The uncrewed Falcon 9 launched from the Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday.

And Bezos’ Blue Origin company successfully launched a rocket into orbit for the first time.

It was a huge step forward for Bezos and his company that has spent years getting to the point of sending a rocket into orbit.

People from Haiti, Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela who had temporary permission to stay in the country are receiving emails telling them to go.

California senator Alex Padilla was pushed out of the news conference by authorities after he interrupted Noem.

The US defense secretary appeared to acknowledge incidental plans also exist for Panama, but avoided giving direct confirmation.

US Senator Alex Padilla was put in handcuffs after interrupting Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem during a news update on the Los Angeles ICE raids.

The appointees have “committed to demanding definitive safety and efficacy data”, the vaccine sceptic said.

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The chemical building blocks of life have been found in the grainy dust of an asteroid called Bennu, an analysis reveals.

Samples of the space rock, which were scooped up by a Nasa spacecraft and brought to Earth, contain a rich array of minerals and thousands of organic compounds.

These include amino acids, which are the molecules that make up proteins, as well as nucleobases – the fundamental components of DNA.

This doesn’t mean there was ever life on Bennu, but it supports the theory that asteroids delivered these vital ingredients to Earth when they crashed into our planet billions of years ago.

Scientists think those same compounds could also have been brought to other worlds in our Solar System.

“What we’ve learned from it is amazing,” said Prof Sara Russell, a cosmic mineralogist from the Natural History Museum in London.

“It’s telling us about our own origins, and it enables us to answer these really, really big questions about where life began. And who doesn’t want to know about how life started?”

The findings are published in two papers in the journals Nature and Nature Astronomy.

Grabbing a bit of Bennu has been one of the most audacious missions Nasa has ever attempted.

A spacecraft called Osiris Rex unfurled a robotic arm to collect some of the 500m-wide space rock, before packing it into a capsule and returning it to Earth in 2023.

About 120g of black dust was collected and shared with scientists around the world. This might not sound like much material, but it’s proved to be a treasure trove.

“Every grain is telling us something new about Bennu,” said Prof Russell, who’s been studying the tiny specks.

About a teaspoonful of the asteroid was sent to scientists in the UK.

The new research has shown that the space rock is packed full of nitrogen and carbon-rich compounds.

These include 14 of the 20 amino acids that life on Earth uses to build proteins and all four of the ring-shaped molecules that make up DNA – adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine.

The study has also found an array of minerals and salts, suggesting water was once present on the asteroid. Ammonia, which is important for biochemical reactions, was discovered in the sample too.

Some of these compounds have been seen in space rocks that have fallen to Earth, but others haven’t been detected until now.

“It’s just incredible how rich it is. It’s full of these minerals that we haven’t seen before in meteorites and the combination of them that we haven’t seen before. It’s been such an exciting thing to study,” said Prof Russell.

This latest study adds to growing evidence that asteroids brought water and organic material to Earth.

“The early Solar System was really turbulent and there were millions of asteroids like Bennu flying about,” explained Dr Ashley King, from the Natural History Museum.

The idea is that these bombarded the young Earth, seeding our planet with ingredients that gave us the oceans and made life possible.

But Earth wasn’t the only world getting hit by space rocks. Asteroids would have been colliding with other planets too.

“Earth is unique, in that it’s the only place where we have found life so far, but we know asteroids were delivering those ingredients, the carbon and the water, throughout the Solar System,” said Dr King.

“And one of the big things that we’re trying to understand now is, if you have the right conditions, why do we have life here on Earth – and could we potentially find it elsewhere in our Solar System?”

It’s a key question that scientists will continue to try and answer.

They have decades of research ahead on the dust brought back from Bennu, and parts of our cosmic neighbourhood still to explore.

Never before seen pictures will help scientists learn how the Sun’s activity changes from stormy to quiet periods

A multi-billion pound project to build a nuclear power station could get the go-ahead on Wednesday.

The space agency has published its budget request to Congress which would see funding for science projects cut by nearly a half.

A new Oxford study confirms the tremors felt across the globe were caused by tsunamis in Greenland.

A public health warning is issued as 190,000 people are expected at open farm events across the UK.

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Scientists say subtle differences in the colour of seawater will enable them to count tiny – but critically important – Antarctic marine creatures, from Space.

The target of the new research effort is Antarctic krill, which are just a couple of inches long and one of the most abundant and important animals on the planet.

Marine wildlife – including whales, penguins, seals and seabirds – all feed on these diminutive creatures.

However, conservation scientists are concerned that fishing and climate change could be having a negative impact on them and say we need new ways to monitor the creatures.

“Antarctic krill are the superheroes of the Southern Ocean,” said Rod Downie, chief polar adviser at the wildlife charity WWF-UK.

“They are tiny, unsung heroes that sustain incredible marine life, but climate change and unsustainable fishing are putting them at risk.”

Researchers from the University of Strathclyde, WWF and the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) are developing a new way to use satellites to work out how many krill are in the ocean around Antarctica.

The key is in subtle differences in how much light seawater absorbs – depending on how many krill are swimming in it.

Dr Cait McCarry, from the University of Strathclyde, has just returned from a trip to Antarctica, where she caught krill in order to measure this effect.

“We start with seawater, then we add in a krill and take a measurement [of how much light the water absorbs],” she explained. “Then we add another krill and take another measurement.”

This analysis of exactly how the density of krill alters the colour of the ocean will, researchers say, allow them to take snapshots of the krill population from satellites – monitoring the population from Space.

Krill are food for some of the largest animals on the planet – including giant whales that migrate thousands of kilometres, to Antarctica, to feed on them.

They are also the foundation of a healthy ocean – part of a virtuous cycle: Whales eat krill, krill eat microscopic plants that live in sea ice, and those plants absorb planet-warming carbon as they grow. When whales poop (in vast quantities), that fertilises the planet-cooling marine plants.

However, as the ocean temperatures rise with global warming, conservation scientists are concerned that this cycle could be disrupted, and that krill could be vulnerable.

Mr Downie said: “We urgently need to better manage the fishery and protect krill habitats within a network of marine protected areas.

“[This project could] give us a new tool to help monitor and safeguard this vital species.”

The innovative collection created by Blackburn College students will be auctioned off for charity.

The BBC looks at the latest innovation and technology as workboats try to decarbonise.

The protected seahorses breed and raise their young in seagrass near Weymouth’s peninsula.

Customers need stronger protections against scammers capitalising on green energy schemes, says Scotland’s consumer body.

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After nine months in space, Nasa astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have finally arrived back on Earth.

Their SpaceX capsule made a fast and fiery re-entry through the Earth’s atmosphere, before four parachutes opened to take them to a gentle splashdown off the coast of Florida.

A pod of dolphins circled the craft.

After a recovery ship lifted it out of the water, the astronauts beamed and waved as they were helped out of the hatch, along with fellow crew members astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.

“The crew’s doing great,” Steve Stich, manager, Nasa’s Commercial Crew Program, said at a news conference.

It brings to an end a mission that was supposed to last for just eight days.

It was dramatically extended after the spacecraft Butch and Suni had used to travel to the International Space Station suffered technical problems.

“It is awesome to have crew 9 home, just a beautiful landing,” said Joel Montalbano, deputy associate administrator, Nasa’s Space Operations Mission Directorate.

Thanking the astronauts for their resilience and flexibility, he said SpaceX had been a “great partner”.

The journey home took 17 hours.

The astronauts were helped on to a stretcher, which is standard practice after spending so long in the weightless environment.

They will be checked over by a medical team, and then reunited with their families.

“The big thing will be seeing friends and family and the people who they were expecting to spend Christmas with,” said Helen Sharman, Britain’s first astronaut.

“All of those family celebrations, the birthdays and the other events that they thought they were going to be part of – now, suddenly they can perhaps catch up on a bit of lost time.”

The saga of Butch and Suni began in June 2024.

They were taking part in the first crewed test flight of the Starliner spacecraft, developed by aerospace company Boeing.

But the capsule suffered several technical problems during its journey to the space station, and it was deemed too risky to take the astronauts home.

Starliner returned safely to Earth empty in early September, but it meant the pair needed a new ride for their return.

So Nasa opted for the next scheduled flight: a SpaceX capsule that arrived at the ISS in late September.

It flew with two astronauts instead of four, leaving two seats spare for Butch and Suni’s return.

The only catch was this had a planned six-month mission, extending the astronauts stay until now.

The Nasa pair embraced their longer-than-expected stay in space.

They carried out an array of experiments on board the orbiting lab and conducted spacewalks, with Suni breaking the record for the woman who spent the most hours outside of the space station. And at Christmas, the team dressed in Santa hats and reindeer antlers – sending a festive message for a Christmas that they had originally planned to spend at home.

And despite the astronauts being described as “stranded” they never really were.

Throughout their mission there have always been spacecraft attached to the space station to get them – and the rest of those onboard – home if there was an emergency.

Now the astronauts have arrived home, they will soon be taken to the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas, where they will be checked over by medical experts.

Long-duration missions in space take a toll on the body, astronauts lose bone density and suffer muscle loss. Blood circulation is also affected, and fluid shifts can also impact eyesight.

It can take a long time for the body to return to normal, so the pair will be given an extensive exercise regime as their bodies re-adapt to living with gravity.

British astronaut Tim Peake said it could take a while to re-adjust.

“Your body feels great, it feels like a holiday,” he told the BBC.

“Your heart is having an easy time, your muscles and bones are having an easy time. You’re floating around the space station in this wonderful zero gravity environment.

“But you must keep up the exercise regime. Because you’re staying fit in space, not for space itself, but for when you return back to the punishing gravity environment of Earth. Those first two or three days back on Earth can be really punishing.”

In interviews while onboard, Butch and Suni have said they were well prepared for their longer than expected stay – but there were things they were looking forward to when they got home.

Speaking to CBS last month, Suni Williams said: “I’m looking forward to seeing my family, my dogs and jumping in the ocean. That will be really nice – to be back on Earth and feel Earth.”

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There are some scientific discoveries that do much more than advance our knowledge: they create a shift in our psyche as they show us the scale of the Universe and our place in it.

One such moment was when space craft sent back images of the Earth for the first time. Another is the discovery of life on another world, a moment that has inched a little closer today with the news that signs of a gas, which on Earth is produced by simple marine organisms, has been found on a planet called K2-18b.

Now, the prospect of really finding alien life – meaning we are not alone in the Universe – is not far away, according to the scientist leading the team that made the detection.

“This is basically as big as it gets in terms of fundamental questions, and we may be on the verge of answering that question,” says Prof Nikku Madhusudhan of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University.

But all of this prompts even more questions, including, if they do find life on another world, how will this change us as a species?

Our ancestors have long created stories of beings that might dwell in the skies. In the early 20th Century, astronomers thought they could see straight line features on the Martian surface, raising speculation that one of our nearest planets might be home to an advanced civilisation: an idea that spawned a wealth of pulp science fiction culture involving flying saucers and little green aliens.

It was during an era when western governments generated fear of the spread of communism, so visitors from outer space were more often than not portrayed as menaces, bringing peril rather than hope.

But decades on, what has been described as “the strongest evidence yet” of life on another world has come, not from Mars or Venus, but from a planet hundreds of trillions of miles away orbiting a distant star.

Part of the challenge when it comes to researching the existence of alien life is knowing where to look.

Until relatively recently, the focus for Nasa’s search for life was Mars, but that began to change in 1992 with the discovery of the first planet orbiting another star outside of our solar system.

Although astronomers had suspected that there were other worlds around distant stars there had been no proof until that point. Since then, nearly 6,000 planets outside our solar system have been discovered.

Many are so-called gas giants, like Jupiter and Saturn in our solar system. Others are either too hot or too cold to support liquid water, thought to be essential for life.

But many are in what astronomers call “The Goldilocks Zone” where the distance is “just right” to support life. Prof Madhusudhan believes there could be thousands in our galaxy.

As these so-called exoplanets were being discovered, scientists began to develop instruments to analyse the chemical composition of their atmospheres. Their ambition was breathtaking, some would say audacious.

The idea was to capture the tiny amount of starlight glancing through the atmospheres of these faraway worlds and study them for chemical fingerprints of molecules, which on Earth can only be produced by living organisms, so-called biosignatures.

And they succeeded in developing such instruments for ground and space-based telescopes.

Nasa’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which detected the gas on the planet called K2-18b in this week’s discovery, is the most powerful space telescope ever built and its launch in 2021 generated excitement that the search for life was at long last within humanity’s grasp.

But JWST has its limits – it can’t detect faraway planets as small as ours or as close to their parent stars, because of the glare. So, Nasa is planning the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), scheduled for the 2030s, which will be able to spot and sample the atmospheres of planets similar to our own. (This is possible using what is effectively a high-tech sunshield that minimises light from the star which a planet orbits.)

Also coming online later this decade is the European Southern Observatory (ESO)’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), which will be on the ground, looking up at the crystal-clear skies of the Chilean desert.

It has the largest mirror of any instrument built, 39-metres in diameter, and so can see vastly more detail at planetary atmospheres than its predecessors.

Prof Madhusudan, however, hopes to have enough data within two years to demonstrate categorically that he really has discovered the biosignatures around K2-18b. But even if he does achieve his aim, this won’t lead to mass celebrations about the discovery of life on another world.

Instead, it will be the start of another robust scientific debate about whether the biosignature could be produced by non-living means.

Eventually though, as more data is gathered from more atmospheres and as chemists fail in finding alternative explanations for biosignatures, the scientific consensus will slowly and gradually shift towards the probability that life does exist on other worlds, according to Prof Catherine Heymans, from Edinburgh University, who is Scotland’s Astronomer Royal.

“With more time on telescopes, astronomers will get a clearer vision of the chemical compositions of these atmospheres. You won’t know that it’s definitely life. But I think the more data that’s built up, and that if you see this in multiple different systems, not just this one particular planet, it gives us more confidence”.

The world wide web emerged in a series of incremental technological breakthroughs that didn’t necessarily feel of enormous consequence at the time.

In similar fashion, it may dawn on people that possibly the most enormous scientific, cultural and social transformation in the whole of human history has happened, but that the moment the balance was tipped in terms of there being other life out there was not fully recognised at the time.

A much more definitive discovery would be to discover life in our own solar system using robotic space craft containing portable laboratories. Any off-world bug could be analysed, possibly even brought back to Earth, providing prima facie evidence to at least significantly limit any scientific push back that may ensue.

The scientific case for the possibility of life or past life in our own solar system has increased in recent years following data sent back by various spacecraft, so several missions to search for signs of it are on their way.

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) ExoMars rover, planned for launch in 2028, will drill below the surface of Mars to search for signs of past and possibly present life. Given the extreme conditions on Mars, however, the discovery of fossilised past life is the more likely outcome.

China’s Tianwen-3 mission, also planned for launch in 2028 is designed to collect samples and bring them back to Earth by 2031. Nasa and ESA each have spacecraft on their way to the icy moons of Jupiter to see if there may be water, possibly vast oceans, under their icy surfaces.

But the spacecraft are not designed to find life itself. Instead, these missions lay the ground for future missions which will, according to Prof Michele Dougherty of Imperial College, London.

“It is a long, slow process,” she says. “The next decision to make would be a lander, which moon it goes to, and where we should be landing.

“You don’t want to land where the ice crust is so thick that there is no way you can get underneath the surface. And so, it’s a long, slow burn, but it’s pretty exciting en route”.

Nasa is also sending a spacecraft called Dragonfly to land on one of the moons of Saturn, Titan in 2034. It is an exotic world with what are thought to be lakes and clouds made from carbon-rich chemicals which give the planet an eerie orange haze, bringing The Beatles‘ song, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds to mind: a world with “marmalade skies”.

Along with water these chemicals are thought to be a necessary ingredient for life.

Prof Dougherty is one of the leading planetary scientists in her field. Does she think there is life on one of the icy Moons of Jupiter or Saturn?

“I’d be very surprised if there wasn’t,” she says, beaming with delight.

“Three things are required: a heat source, liquid water and organic (carbon-based) chemicals. If we have those three ingredients, the chances that life is able to form rises really steeply.

If simple life forms are found to exist that is no guarantee that more complex life forms are out there.

Prof Madhusudhan believes that, if confirmed, simple life should be “pretty common” in the galaxy. “But going from that simple life to complex life is a big step, and that is an open question. How that step happens? What are the conditions that govern that? We don’t know that. And then going from there to intelligent life is another big step.”

Dr Robert Massey, who is the deputy executive director of the Royal Astronomical Society, agrees that the emergence of intelligent life on another world is much less likely than simple life.

“When we see the emergence of life on Earth, it was so complex. It took such a long time for multi-cellular life to emerge and then evolve into diverse life forms.

“The big question is whether there was something about the Earth that made that evolution possible. Do we need exactly the same conditions, our size, our oceans and land masses for that to happen on other worlds or will that happen regardless?”

He believes that the discovery of even simple alien life would be the latest chapter in the diminution of humanity’s place in the cosmos.

As he puts it, centuries ago, we believed we were at the centre of the Universe and with each discovery in astronomy we have found ourselves “more displaced” from that point. “I think the discovery of life elsewhere it would further reduce our specialness,” he says.

Prof Dougherty, on the other hand, believes that such a discovery in our own solar system would be good for science, and good for the soul.

“The discovery of even simple life will allow us a better understanding about how we might have evolved way back those millions of aeons ago when we first evolved. And so, for me, it’s helping us find our place in the Universe.

“If we know there is life, elsewhere in our solar system and potentially beyond, [this] would somehow be comforting to me, knowing that we’re a fabric of something larger will make us bigger”.

Never before have scientists searched so hard for life on other worlds and never before have they had such incredible tools to do this with. And many working in the field believe that it is a matter of when, rather than if, they discover life on other worlds. And rather than bringing fear, the discovery of alien life will bring hope, according to Prof Madhusudhan.

“When we would look at the sky, we would see not just physical objects, stars and planets, we would see a living sky. The societal ramifications of that are immense. It will be a huge transformational change in the way we look at ourselves in the cosmic scene.

“It will fundamentally change the human psyche in how we view ourselves and each other, and any barriers, linguistic, political, geographical, will dissolve, as we realise we are all one. And that will bring us closer,” he continues.

“It will be another step in our evolution”.

Top picture credit: Getty Images

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Part of a Soviet-era spacecraft is likely to have re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere after being stuck in orbit for more than half a century, the European Space Agency said.

Kosmos 482, which launched in 1972 on a mission to Venus, never made it out of Earth’s orbit and instead broke into four pieces that have been circling the planet for more than five decades.

The EU Space Surveillance and Tracking centre (SST) said one fragment – believed to be the lander – “most likely” re-entered the atmosphere at about 06:16 GMT (07:16 BST) on Saturday.

It is unclear whether the object fell to the ground or burned up in the atmosphere.

It is also unclear exactly where the object re-entered the atmosphere.

While there is much experts do not know about the object’s re-entry, 70% of Earth is covered by sea so it is unlikely to have caused significant damage.

“It’s much more likely that you win the lottery than that you get impacted by this piece of space debris,” Stijn Lemmens, a senior analyst at the European Space Agency, said.

Kosmos 482’s lander capsule was built to survive the extreme heat and pressure of Venus’s atmosphere, meaning it had a robust heat shield and durable structure.

This is why experts think it may have survived an uncontrolled descent through Earth’s atmosphere.

However, Kosmos 482’s parachute system, originally intended to slow the lander’s descent towards Venus, is likely to have degraded after more than 50 years in space.

Mr Lemmens explained that the “re-entry of human-made objects into Earth’s atmosphere occurs quite frequently”. He said it happens weekly for bigger spacecraft and daily for smaller ones.

Objects typically burn up in the earth’s atmosphere before they reach the ground.

China’s Long March 5B booster re-entered over the Indian Ocean in 2022, and the Tiangong-1 space station mostly burned up over the Pacific in 2018.

Kosmos 482 is now being closely tracked by international space agencies.

Mr Lemmens said that future spacecraft “should be designed in such a way that they can take themselves out of orbit safely, preferably by doing controlled re-entries”.

This would allow for precise predictions of landing locations, reducing the risk of any debris impacting populated areas and protecting people and property while “managing the environmental impact of space debris”.

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