Global Pulse

分类： science

  • Artemis crew returning to Earth with ‘all the good stuff’ from Moon discoveries

    Artemis crew returning to Earth with ‘all the good stuff’ from Moon discoveries

    In a historic live virtual press conference from deep space, the four-person Artemis II crew aboard NASA’s Orion capsule spoke with reporters Wednesday, just days ahead of their scheduled return to Earth following a groundbreaking lunar flyby mission. This marked the first public update from the crew since they completed their pass around the Moon’s far side, a journey that pushed them farther from Earth than any humans in recorded history.

    On Monday, the Orion spacecraft officially claimed a new spaceflight record at 1:56 p.m. EDT, surpassing the 248,655-mile distance mark set by the Apollo 13 mission in 1970. Unlike Apollo-era landing missions, Artemis II was designed solely to conduct a full flyby of the Moon’s far side — the hemisphere permanently turned away from Earth. While robotic satellites have mapped this region before, this mission marked the first time human astronauts have directly observed sections of its rugged terrain, including massive impact craters and ancient lava plains with their own eyes.

    Speaking from the capsule as the crew made their return journey, mission pilot Victor Glover shared that the team is holding a wealth of new content and scientific data that has yet to be released to the public. “We have to get back. There’s so much data that you’ve already seen, but all the good stuff is coming back with us,” Glover said. “There’s so many more pictures, so many more stories.” Glover added that the full magnitude of their historic journey has yet to fully sink in for the crew, and that the experience will stay with him for the rest of his life. “I’m going to be thinking about and talking about all of these things for the rest of my life,” he noted.

    During the conference, reporters asked the crew about the 40-minute period of communication blackout when Orion traveled behind the Moon, cutting off all contact with mission control on Earth. Commander Reid Wiseman explained that the window was far from unproductive: the crew used the time to complete high-priority lunar observation work for NASA’s geology team. Still, the team carved out a small moment to pause and reflect on their unique position, sharing maple cookies that crew member Jeremy Hansen brought along for the trip.

    For different crew members, the mission’s most meaningful moments varied widely. Glover described seeing a lunar eclipse from beyond the Moon’s far side as the “greatest gift” of the entire journey. For Wiseman, the emotional pinnacle came when the crew formally named a previously unlabeled lunar crater after his late wife Carroll, who passed away from cancer in 2020. “I think when Jeremy spelled Carol’s name …. I think for me that is when I was overwhelmed with emotion and I looked over and Christina was crying,” Wiseman recalled. “Just for me personally, that was kind of the pinnacle moment of the mission for me.”

    When asked by BBC News Science Editor Rebecca Morelle what part of spaceflight the crew will miss most after returning, mission specialist Christina Koch highlighted the close bond the team has formed during the flight. “I will miss the camaraderie,” she said. When pressed on what she will not miss, Koch said there was nothing that felt like an unacceptable tradeoff for the chance to push human exploration forward. “We can’t explore deeper unless we are doing a few things that are inconvenient, unless we’re making a few sacrifices, unless we’re taking a few risks. And those things are all worth it,” she explained.

    The crew added that their primary source of public reaction to the mission has been updates from family members back on Earth, who Wiseman joked are “obviously all biased” in their support of the team. In the coming days, the crew will conduct routine system checks and final scientific experiments before their high-stakes re-entry. Orion is scheduled to slam through Earth’s atmosphere at nearly 25,000 mph, relying on its heatshield to withstand extreme temperatures before deploying parachutes for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego. The landing, set for approximately 8 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time Friday (00:00 GMT Saturday), will test the capsule’s new heatshield and recovery systems ahead of future planned Artemis landing missions to the lunar surface. Following the lunar flyby, former U.S. President Donald Trump spoke with the crew to congratulate them on their historic achievement, saying “Today, you’ve made history and made all America really proud, incredibly proud.”

  • Finland’s plan to bury spent nuclear waste carries risk to future generations

    Finland’s plan to bury spent nuclear waste carries risk to future generations

    Deep beneath the forested shores of Olkiluoto Island off Finland’s west coast, a decades-long global quest to solve one of nuclear energy’s most intractable problems is about to reach a historic milestone. After 19 years of construction, the Onkalo spent nuclear fuel repository — named for the Finnish word for “cave” — is poised to become the world’s first operational permanent underground facility for isolating dangerous radioactive waste from the biosphere for hundreds of thousands of years.

    Descending in an elevator that drops 430 meters (1,411 feet) in mere seconds, visitors enter a sprawling network of man-carved tunnels cut into 1.9-billion-year-old bedrock. This remote site, located just 15 kilometers from the small inland town of Eurajoki and near three of Finland’s five operating nuclear reactors, was selected for its unique geological characteristics. Geologist Tuomas Pere, navigating the tunnel labyrinth, explains that the site’s migmatite-gneiss bedrock offers exceptional stability and extremely low earthquake risk. Most critically, its isolation from population centers creates a natural buffer that makes long-term storage far safer than above-ground temporary facilities.

    The 1 billion euro ($1.2 billion) project, overseen by Finnish nuclear waste management firm Posiva, is expected to receive its operating license from national regulators within months. Once operational, the facility will follow a rigorous disposal process: spent radioactive fuel rods will first be sealed in leak-resistant copper canisters at an on-site encapsulation plant using unmanned machinery. The canisters will then be transported deep into the tunnel network, placed in individual boreholes, and surrounded by layers of water-absorbing bentonite clay designed to act as an additional protective buffer. In total, Onkalo will hold 6,500 tons of spent nuclear fuel generated by Finland’s domestic reactors, operating continuously until the 2120s, when the entire facility will be permanently sealed off from the surface.

    Posiva communications manager Pasi Tuohimaa frames the facility as the final missing link in making nuclear power a truly sustainable energy source. “For decades, Finnish nuclear companies have been setting aside funds specifically for this project, so the entire cost is covered by the industry, not taxpayers,” he notes. Experts estimate that it will take hundreds of thousands of years for the waste’s radioactivity to decay back to natural background levels — a timeline that far outlasts almost all of humanity’s oldest constructed monuments.

    Globally, the need for a permanent solution is urgent. According to 2022 data from the International Atomic Energy Agency, nearly 400,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel has been generated worldwide since the 1950s. Two-thirds of this waste remains in temporary above-ground storage, either in water-filled pools at reactor sites or in dry cask storage facilities, while only one-third has been recycled through a complex separation process. No other permanent underground commercial repository is currently operational around the world. Sweden broke ground on its own permanent facility in Forsmark last year, but it is not expected to open until the late 2030s, while France’s Cigéo project has faced widespread public opposition and has not yet begun construction.

    Despite the milestone, experts warn that long-term geologic disposal still carries unavoidable uncertainties. Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the U.S.-based Union of Concerned Scientists, notes that while geologic disposal is widely considered the “least bad option” for nuclear waste, unanswered questions remain. “The copper canisters that hold the waste will eventually corrode, and the scientific community does not have a consensus on how quickly that process will occur,” Lyman explains. “The hope is that corrosion will proceed so slowly that most radioactivity will have decayed to safe levels before any breach can occur, but that remains an open question.”

    Lyman adds that leaving large stockpiles of spent nuclear fuel above ground carries far greater risks, including vulnerability to sabotage and nuclear proliferation. Over time, the most radioactive components of spent fuel decay, leaving plutonium more accessible to bad actors seeking to build nuclear weapons, especially if reprocessing infrastructure exists. Any risks from a geologic repository, he says, will primarily fall to far future generations, a challenge that has spawned a unique field of research called nuclear semiotics, which focuses on creating warning messages that can be understood by humans 10,000 years or more from now.

    To address this need, Austrian artist and researcher Martin Kunze, leading a long-term information preservation project for the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency, has developed a system called the “nuclear message.” Critical information about the repository will be inscribed on large, durable ceramic plates protected by a hardened glazed surface. Kunze proposes burying hundreds of these plates both around the repository site and within the foundations of local settlements to ensure that the warning is not lost to future civilizations, even as languages, cultures, and landscapes change over millennia.

    Finnish officials frame the Onkalo project as a reflection of the country’s consistent, long-term approach to nuclear waste policy. A 1994 national law required all radioactive waste generated in Finland to be disposed of within the country’s borders, a commitment environment minister Sari Multala says Finland has upheld unlike many other nations. “When the law passed, some waste was still being exported, but we made the decision to take responsibility for our own waste, and we have stuck to that commitment,” Multala says. She did not rule out the possibility of accepting limited amounts of nuclear waste from other countries in the future, provided that all international regulatory requirements are met.

    The project marks a turning point for global nuclear energy, offering a real-world test of whether permanent geologic isolation can solve the nuclear waste problem that has stalled nuclear expansion in many countries for decades.

  • Watch: BBC asks Artemis II crew a question in space

    Watch: BBC asks Artemis II crew a question in space

    In a groundbreaking moment connecting space exploration and terrestrial journalism, the four-member crew of NASA’s Artemis II mission has fielded a question from the British Broadcasting Corporation while positioned inside their deep-space capsule, marking a rare interaction between a major media outlet and astronauts ahead of their mission’s conclusion.

  • Experts stress collaboration in global wheat research

    Experts stress collaboration in global wheat research

    Against a backdrop of growing global pressure on food systems driven by climate change and shifting ecological conditions, agricultural scientists from China and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) gathered in late March 2026 to reaffirm the critical role of international collaboration in advancing wheat innovation and sustainable farming. The high-level China-CIMMYT wheat symposium took place as a flagship event during CIMMYT’s annual Visitors’ Week at the Norman E. Borlaug Experimental Station in Ciudad Obregon, Sonora, Mexico, drawing dozens of leading researchers to map the future of global wheat breeding.

  • Guizhou’s ancient glacial kamenitzas offer otherworldly views

    Guizhou’s ancient glacial kamenitzas offer otherworldly views

    Tucked away in the karst landscapes of Anlong county, in China’s mountainous Guizhou province, a rare geological formation shaped by prehistoric ice offers visitors a view that feels straight out of another world. Aerial imagery captured on April 1 reveals the sprawling field of kamenitzas — more commonly called giant’s kettles — that dot the terrain, their unusual shapes drawing the eye of both casual travelers and earth science experts alike.

    These unique hollow rock formations are not the product of ordinary erosion. Geologists confirm they were carved over thousands of years by the powerful swirling action of glacial meltwater at the end of the last ice age. Most giant’s kettles follow a consistent, distinctive shape: narrow and tapered at the opening, they widen into rounded, bowl-like cavities deeper down, a structural signature that serves as tangible, on-the-ground evidence of large-scale ancient glacial activity across the Guizhou region.

    Unlike many other prehistoric geological sites that have been damaged by human development or climate shifts, this Anlong county giant’s kettle field remains almost entirely undisturbed. It retains its original natural state, with clear deep blue water pooling in the cavities of the formations to create a striking visual contrast against the surrounding rock. In recent years, the site has grown in popularity among outdoor recreation communities, emerging as a top destination for cross-country hikers, landscape photographers, and geology enthusiasts eager to explore a well-preserved piece of Earth’s glacial history up close.

  • NASA moon mission breaks distance record

    NASA moon mission breaks distance record

    More than 56 years after the Apollo 13 mission set a long-standing cosmic milestone, NASA’s Artemis II crew has rewritten human space exploration history by breaking the record for the farthest distance humanity has ever traveled from our home planet.

    The four-person crew — mission commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch (all from NASA), and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — officially surpassed Apollo 13’s 400,171-kilometer benchmark at 1:57 pm Eastern Time on Monday (early Tuesday Beijing time). By 7:02 pm the same day, the Orion capsule carrying the astronauts reached its maximum distance from Earth: 406,771 kilometers, a new high-water mark for human spaceflight.

    Launched on April 1 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the 10-day mission kicked off with 25 hours of orbital operations around Earth, before the Orion spacecraft departed for its lunar trajectory on Thursday evening. Early Monday, the craft entered the lunar sphere of influence, the point where the moon’s gravitational pull becomes stronger than Earth’s, setting the stage for its close lunar flyby.

    During its approach, the Artemis II capsule came within just 6,550 kilometers of the lunar surface, marking its closest pass of the moon. The mission’s dedicated lunar observation window stretched nearly seven hours, giving the crew a unique, up-close chance to map and study lunar terrain — including portions of the moon’s far side that are permanently hidden from Earth view and have rarely been seen directly by human observers.

    At approximately 6:44 pm Monday, Orion passed behind the moon from Earth’s perspective, triggering an expected 40-minute communications blackout between the crew and mission control on Earth. The blackout occurs because the solid lunar body blocks radio signals between the spacecraft and ground-based communication networks, a known part of the mission profile that the team prepared for in advance.

    Like the 1970 Apollo 13 mission, Artemis II follows a free-return trajectory around the moon, a path that uses gravitational forces to propel the craft back toward Earth without requiring major additional engine burns. For Apollo 13, this trajectory was an emergency measure: an on-board oxygen tank rupture forced the crew to abort their planned lunar landing and use the free-return path to return safely home. Unlike Apollo 13, however, Artemis II’s mission never included a lunar landing attempt; it was planned from the start as a 10-day demonstration flight to test systems for future lunar missions.

    After breaking the distance record, the crew completed their lunar observation activities and have officially begun the journey back to Earth. Orion is scheduled to exit the lunar sphere of influence at approximately 1:25 pm Eastern Time on Tuesday, and the mission is on track to conclude on Friday with a planned splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

    Beyond making new history, the core goal of the Artemis II mission is to test and validate the full suite of technologies and operational capabilities required for future deep space exploration. Key objectives include verifying the performance of Orion’s life-support systems, testing deep space communication and navigation protocols, and letting the crew practice operational procedures that will be critical for upcoming Artemis missions that will include lunar surface landings and the construction of a long-term lunar outpost.

  • Artemis and ISS astronauts share celestial call

    Artemis and ISS astronauts share celestial call

    In a rare and historic cross-orbit exchange between two groups of humanity’s space explorers, the four astronauts of NASA’s Artemis II mission — currently streaking back to Earth after completing the first crewed lunar flyby in more than half a century — connected live for a lighthearted, reflective conversation with the crew of the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday.

    The cross-space call marked a special moment for both teams, coming just one day after the Artemis II crew checked off a string of landmark milestones: breaking the all-time record for the farthest humans have ever traveled from Earth, executing the first close lunar pass by a crewed mission since NASA’s Apollo program in the 1970s, and capturing more than six hours of high-resolution, firsthand observations of the Moon’s cratered surface. For the Artemis team, the chat with ISS colleagues was a long-awaited chance to swap perspectives on life off our home planet.

    “We have been waiting for this like you can’t imagine,” Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman opened the conversation. Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, a first-time space traveler making the journey around the Moon as part of NASA’s international partnership on the Artemis program, added: “It’s fun to be up in space with you at the same time!”

    Leading the question from the ISS side was Crew-12 commander Jessica Meir, who pressed the Artemis crew on how seeing Earth from the Moon’s neighborhood transformed their view of our planet. At roughly 240,000 miles from Earth, the Artemis II crew’s vantage point is around 1,000 times farther out than the ISS’s low-Earth orbit, creating a dramatically different view of the pale blue planet set against the infinite black of deep space.

    “Every astronaut that comes to space remarks on how seeing Earth from orbit changes your perspective,” Meir noted. “We really wanted to hear what that felt like, how different that felt now from your new perspective around the Moon?”

    Artemis astronaut Christina Koch — who previously made history alongside Meir as part of the first all-female spacewalk in ISS history — shared that the contrast between Earth and the surrounding blackness of deep space created an unforgettable impression. “It truly emphasized how alike we are, how the same thing keeps every single person on planet Earth alive,” Koch explained.

    Beyond the big reflective questions, the conversation turned to the shared practical realities of living and working in space. All three American Artemis II crew members are veteran ISS astronauts, and both teams agreed that every lesson they learned on the low-Earth orbit outpost — from large-scale operational procedures to the small, everyday tricks for surviving in microgravity — prepared the Artemis team for this historic lunar voyage.

    “Basically every single thing that we learned on ISS is up here,” Koch said. “And then, of course, there’s the funny and practical, how to eat, how to do silly things with water, how to flip around. We’re bringing that with us too.”

    Wiseman shared a lighthearted anecdote that highlighted Hansen’s first-time experience in space, as the crew prepared to fire their engines to leave Earth orbit and set course for the Moon. As the craft aligned for the burn, the view of Earth grew rapidly larger in the capsule’s window, prompting a moment of playful panic from Hansen.

    “Jeremy turns around to us and goes, ‘I’m not sure. I think we’re going to run right into it!’” Wiseman recalled. “We were all dyin’ laughin’.”

    Following the successful lunar flyby, the Artemis II crew is now on the final leg of their 10-day test mission, which is designed to validate all of the Orion capsule’s critical systems ahead of future crewed lunar landings as part of NASA’s Artemis program. The mission is scheduled to conclude with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean late Friday.

  • Artemis II crew snaps historic Earthset photo on way home

    Artemis II crew snaps historic Earthset photo on way home

    Almost six decades after the Apollo 8 mission gave the world its iconic Earthrise photograph, humanity has a new, breathtaking celestial keepsake from its latest journey around the Moon: the Artemis II four-person crew has captured the first-ever Earthset image taken from lunar space, a milestone that caps a historic mission that has already rewritten space exploration records.

  • 3,413 meters: China sets new record in global hot water ice drilling

    3,413 meters: China sets new record in global hot water ice drilling

    In a landmark milestone for polar scientific research, China has set a new world record for hot water ice drilling, reaching a depth of 3,413 meters during its first experimental deep drilling mission in Antarctica, China’s Ministry of Natural Resources announced on Tuesday. The achievement shatters the previous international benchmark of 2,540 meters, opening new doors for unexplored polar research.

    The successful mission was completed on February 5 by China’s 42nd Antarctic Expedition Team, which carried out the test at the Qilin Subglacial Lake, a massive buried Antarctic body of water first named by Chinese researchers in 2022. Located in Princess Elizabeth Land, within the inland ice sheet of East Antarctica, the subglacial lake sits roughly 120 kilometers from China’s Taishan Antarctic research station, making it an accessible yet geologically significant site for deep drilling operations.

    With this breakthrough, China now has the proven technical capacity to conduct drilling research across more than 90 percent of the Antarctic ice sheet and the entirety of the Arctic ice sheet, according to official project updates. Hot water ice drilling is widely recognized as a cutting-edge frontier of global Earth science, with core research goals that include unlocking clues about Earth’s ancient environmental shifts, improving the accuracy of future climate change projections, exploring the limits of life in extreme hidden ecosystems, and expanding humanity’s fundamental understanding of polar geoscience.

    Compared to traditional mechanical ice drilling methods, hot water drilling technology offers major advantages. It penetrates ice far faster while causing minimal disruption to the ice column and subglacial environment, supports clean, large-diameter drilling operations, and can efficiently reach critical geological interfaces including subglacial lakes, ice shelf bases, and subglacial bedrock. For these reasons, it has become the gold standard for international research into the deep, hidden environments of polar ice sheets.

    The 2026 experimental mission was designed primarily to validate the performance of China’s domestically developed deep ice sheet hot water drilling system under extreme Antarctic conditions. By drilling through the full thickness of the ice cover over Qilin Subglacial Lake, the project created a contamination-free access route and lays critical technical groundwork for upcoming research, including future in-situ observations of the subglacial ecosystem and collection of water and lakebed sediment samples.

    Targeting an ice sheet over 3,000 meters thick, the mission integrated multiple custom-built pieces of equipment engineered specifically to withstand polar conditions, while solving longstanding key technical challenges: reliable low-temperature operation of machinery, strict prevention of external contamination of the pristine subglacial environment, and precise management of deep hoses and winches at extreme depth.

    Officials noted that the successful drilling demonstrated the new system’s efficient, stable, and environmentally sustainable operation. The milestone fills a longstanding gap in China’s polar research capabilities and aligns with the country’s stated commitment to ‘green exploration’ and environmentally responsible polar science practices.

  • Foresight Science and Technology Award honors scientists

    Foresight Science and Technology Award honors scientists

    SHANGHAI — Against the backdrop of Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s 130th founding anniversary, the institution has hosted the fourth iteration of its prestigious Foresight Science and Technology Award ceremony on Monday, bringing together leading scientific minds, industry partners, and community stakeholders to celebrate groundbreaking research and honor the legacy of scientific inquiry.

    First established in 2022, the award was created to fill a unique niche: it recognizes outstanding work by Shanghai Jiao Tong University affiliates based across the globe, with eligible contributions spanning three core domains: fundamental basic research, translational applied research, and cutting-edge exploration at the frontiers of scientific knowledge. The program’s core mission extends far beyond simply recognizing existing achievement; organizers designed it to celebrate the enduring spirit of scientists, foster cross-institutional and cross-border academic exchange, and ignite new waves of technological innovation among early-career researchers.

    This year’s ceremony featured a distinctive celebratory addition: a star-studded red carpet opening that welcomed a diverse cross-section of attendees. Leading the procession were senior academicians from both the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, joined by senior representatives from top domestic research institutions and industry partners. Also in attendance were prominent alumni who have gone on to become leading business leaders, as well as representatives from the university’s network of partner primary and secondary schools, reflecting the institution’s commitment to nurturing scientific interest from the earliest stages of education.

    As Shanghai Jiao Tong University marks its 130 years of advancing scientific education and research, the award ceremony stands as a testament to the institution’s ongoing mission to push the boundaries of human knowledge and support the next generation of scientific pioneers.