Science

NASA's Curiosity Rover got a rock stuck to the drill at the end of its robotic arm, necessitating some remote-controlled shaking and jiggling to free the tool. We've all been there, doing a bit of do-it-yourself with a power tool when something awful happens. It might be hitting a pipe while drilling a hole for a Rawlplug. Or punching through a drywall to find nothing beyond. In this case, NASA's trundlebot drilled a sample from a rock, lifted its drill and… the rock came too. The rock, dubbed "Atacama" and measuring 1.5 feet in diameter at its base and 6 inches thick, weighed approximately 28.6 pounds (13 kilograms). After drilling the sample on April 25, the rover operators retracted Curiosity's arm as they had done many times before. However, this time, the entire rock was lifted, "suspended by the fixed sleeve that surrounds the rotating drill bit," according to NASA. So what to do? Had a human been there, a swift poke of the drill would have removed the offending chunk of Mars. But the nearest humans are millions of miles away on Earth, so some remote control shenanigans were needed. First, the team tried vibrating the drill to shake off the rock. No joy. On April 29, they tried reorienting the robotic arm and vibrating the drill again. Some sand shook loose, but Atacama remained firmly attached to the drill. Finally, on May 1, the team tried tilting the drill more, rotating and vibrating the drill, and spinning the drill bit, and success! The rock tumbled off, fracturing on the ground. The rover has been trundling around Mars since 2012, and its drill has presented engineers with the odd headache or two. In 2016, the tool's feed mechanism, responsible for moving the bit into and out of rocks, didn't move when commanded. The solution was to use the robotic arm instead, and first drill a shallow pilot hole. "This," wrote NASA, "lets Curiosity adjust its arm motion and avoid getting stuck while drilling kind of like you might adjust your arm while drilling into a wall at home." The latest incident is also, at least as far as this writer is concerned, just like drilling into a wall at home: a bit more wall than expected came away. And sadly, unlike this writer, NASA can't simply call out a professional to do the job properly. ®

OPINION NASA's budget and its new administrator's statements are evoking a ghost from the agency's past: Faster, better, cheaper. The agency closed out the last century with a near decade-long experiment in doing more with less. Administrator Dan Goldin championed the philosophy as NASA faced criticism that its flagship programs, including the Cassini mission to Saturn, demanded years of development and billion of dollars. Was there another way? The answer in the 1990s, was Faster, better, cheaper: run several smaller missions in the time it once took to build a big one, and lean on private industry to drive down costs. Fast forward a quarter of a century and it sounds like the US space agency is retreading old ground. The problem with the methodology was risk. After a run of successes, including the Mars Pathfinder and Mars Global Surveyor missions, NASA suffered a string of failures. These included the infamous loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter due to a measurement units error and the Mars Polar Lander, which crashed during its landing attempt. Whether the philosophy was pushed too far, or whether repeated failure simply proved politically unpalatable, NASA retreated. The Mars rovers and the James Webb Space Telescope stand as monuments to what the old, expensive, methodical approach could achieve. Now under the Trump administration, NASA is being pushed back toward austerity. New administrator Jared Isaacman wants more missions, more commercial involvement, while also expecting cheaper projects that carry a higher degree of risk. The commercial environment has changed considerably since the 1990s. SpaceX, for example, has demonstrated that launches can be done relatively cheaply, and its rapid-iteration model has produced real results. But it has also produced real failures: Starship, despite reaching its third major version, is only now approaching the reliability threshold for uncrewed orbital flight. NASA's own Space Launch System, meanwhile, remains monstrously expensive and behind schedule, yet it has launched twice - both times successfully - including a crewed lunar flyby. That contrast captures the core tension. The traditional NASA approach is slow and costly, but it works. Isaacman wants to raise mission cadence while cutting budgets. This is a combination that, given the administration's fiscal goals, is very difficult to achieve without accepting a higher failure rate and simpler mission profiles. The original faster, better, cheaper philosophy foundered partly on the stigma of failure. A similar reckoning is coming if Isaacman's ambitions are to be met. The only real question is what happens when (and it is a when not an if) the first high-profile mission is lost. ®

Faster, better, cheaper is back and history suggests you can't get all three at the same time

OPINION  NASA's budget and its new administrator's statements are evoking a ghost from the agency's past: Faster, better, cheaper.…

Professor Fry's AI experiment shows light and dark sides of agentic tech

British mathematician Professor Hannah Fry has shared a cautionary experiment involving an AI agent, a set of tasks, and a bank card number Fry's team gave it "to show us what it could do."…

Amid the sensational NASA budget cut proposals taking place in the US at the moment, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has refined the Artemis III launch date to "late 2027." Isaacman was speaking during the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies hearing earlier this week, and said the agency has received responses from both SpaceX and Blue Origin to the effect that both vendors would be able "to meet our needs for a late 2027 rendezvous, docking and test the interoperability of both landers in advance of a landing attempt in 2028." During NASA's Ignition event, 2027 was repeatedly mentioned as the target for Artemis III, so a late 2027 date meets that goal. However, Isaacman also said the agency intends to increase the cadence of Artemis launches and close the launch gap to a matter of months, rather than the over three years between Artemis I and Artemis II. Artemis III, being set for late 2027, is a bit more than mere months after Artemis II. The core stage for the Space Launch System (SLS) that will launch Artemis III was rolled out from NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans on Monday for shipping to Kennedy Space Center, and wheeled into the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) for processing. The engine section is already there, and the first shipment of Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) segments arrived on April 13. As such, engineers are well on the way to putting Artemis III together. While Isaacman did not spell it out, there is a good chance the late 2027 target is driven by SpaceX's and Blue Origin's needs. Under the original plan, Artemis III was the landing mission, but it became painfully clear last year that SpaceX was unable to get the lunar version of its Starship vehicle ready in time. It has yet to demonstrate it can get a Starship into orbit, let alone show off the Starship-to-Starship fuel transfer required for a lunar mission. Isaacman repurposed Artemis III to demonstrate whatever SpaceX and Blue Origin could get working in 2027 in Low Earth Orbit. The date for Artemis III has always been vague in official announcements. However, Isaacman's desire to get the gap between missions down to months rather than years suggests the first half of 2027 was an option. Given the latest stated scheduled, the question is whether SpaceX and Blue Origin will be ready in time. The Register contacted both companies about their plans, but neither responded. A lunar landing in 2028 is a very ambitious goal, in the same way that a 2027 landing was ambitious to the point of being impossible. The confirmation of a late 2027 rendezvous and docking test in Low Earth Orbit means there really will be mere months – barely a year – before Artemis IV is ready to return humans to the lunar surface. ®

SpaceX and Blue Origin will absolutely be ready in time. Definitely

Amid the sensational NASA budget cut proposals taking place in the US at the moment, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has refined the Artemis III launch date to "late 2027."…

An astronomy software dev claims a Falcon 9 upper stage will hit the Moon in August, traveling at several times the speed of sound. The upper stage of the Falcon 9 rocket used to launch the Blue Ghost and Hakuto-R lunar lander is set to have its own close encounter with the Moon after loitering in orbit for more than a year, claims astronomer Bill Gray of Project Pluto, who posted a commentary on the object. It is his software that projected the August 5 impact. The Falcon 9 was launched on January 15, 2025, on a mission to send a pair of landers to the Moon. One, Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost, made a successful landing. The other, ispace's Hakuto-R, did not fare so well. However, while the first stage of the Falcon 9 landed successfully, the second stage and payload canister remained in space. The latter reentered the atmosphere and was destroyed. The former was in too high an orbit and carried on circling the Earth. Too high for the US military's tracking service to get an accurate fix, but detectable by amateur astronomers and asteroid surveys. Gray notes in his post that: "It doesn't present any danger to anyone, though it does highlight a certain carelessness about how leftover space hardware (space junk) is disposed of." The object, dubbed 2025-10D is - according to Gray - in an "orbit around the Earth, taking about 26 days to go around us. The orbit is lopsided; at its closest (perigee), the object is about 220,000 kilometers (137,000 miles) away. At its farthest, it gets out to 510,000 km (310,000 miles). For comparison, the moon is about 385,000 km (240,000 miles) away. "The orbit of the Moon and of this object, roughly speaking, intersect. Usually, one goes through the intersection point while the other is someplace else. But on August 5, they'll reach that point at the same time." As for its speed when it hits the lunar surface, Gray said: There is very little risk from the impact – there are no humans on or around the Moon, and it is highly unlikely debris from the upper stage will strike probes in the vicinity. Will it be visible? "Probably not." It does, however, highlight concerns about space junk in general, as well as what to do with rocket bodies on lunar trajectories. Gray wrote, "If we have humans on the Moon in the coming years, we might start to worry more about this sort of thing. But it won't be a problem on August 5." So, SpaceX might be landing on the Moon in August. Just not quite in the manner NASA is expecting. ®

But unlike most junkers, it'll be traveling faster than the speed of sound, claims astronomy software dev

An astronomy software dev claims a Falcon 9 upper stage will hit the Moon in August, traveling at several times the speed of sound.…

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman delivered some potentially good news at a Senate hearing this week, as well as some slightly odd news: in an environment of constrained budgets, the space agency was somehow finding resources to contest the decision to relegate Pluto from planet status. "I am very much in the camp of 'Make Pluto A Planet Again'," Isaacman told the members of the Senate Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies. "I would say we are doing some papers right now on a position that we would love to escalate through the scientific community to revisit this discussion and ensure that Clyde Tombaugh gets the credit he received once and rightfully deserves to receive again." Isaacman was responding to US Senator Jerry Moran (R-KS), the chair, who brought up the subject. Clyde Tombaugh, a US astronomer, discovered Pluto in 1930. Pluto was classified as a planet until 2006, when the International Astronomical Union (IAU) adopted a set of criteria for planetary status. To be classified as a planet, an object had to be in orbit around the Sun – check. It had to be nearly round under its own gravity – check. It had to clear the neighborhood around its orbit – nope … so Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet, and the argument over that decision has continued ever since. It is into this controversy that Isaacman has tossed the agency's hat. While scientific debate is to be commended, given that the budget request Isaacman was defending would cut NASA science spending by almost half, "Make Pluto A Planet Again" seems a curious diversion for the limited resources that could be left within the agency. Pluto was, of course, famously imaged by NASA's New Horizons probe. This is the same mission that could be on the chopping block if the budget request Isaacman was defending were to be approved. The principal investigator for the New Horizons mission, Dr Alan Stern, is very much on the side of Pluto being classified as a planet once again, judging by his comments on the IAU decision in Chasing New Horizons, which chronicles the mission. Otherwise, the hearing was largely a retread of one earlier this week in which Isaacman accepted congratulations for the successful Artemis II mission, while also trying to explain how NASA would be able to undertake the ambitious goals set for the agency, such as establishing a moonbase, all while living with a reduced budget. Not all the lawmakers appeared convinced. While much of Isaacman's testimony will have worried scientists, pondering what the administrator meant by launching with 70 percent of a mission's planned capability, there were a few glimmers of light. Last week, NASA boasted that the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope would be ready for launch ahead of schedule in September this year. During the hearing, Isaacman hinted that it could be ready sooner than that. He told Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD): "You may in the near future be adjusting your marks to talk about Nancy Grace Roman launching in August instead of September." For some, an earlier launch date is proof that efficiencies are indeed possible in NASA's bloated and forever-delayed programs. For others, there will be a lingering worry: have any important steps been skipped to bring the mission in ahead of schedule? ®

Despite looming science cuts, Isaacman finds resources to poke the planetary hornet nest

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman delivered some potentially good news at a Senate hearing this week, as well as some slightly odd news: in an environment of constrained budgets, the space agency was somehow finding resources to contest the decision to relegate Pluto from planet status.…

As the Iran war pushes up energy prices, the Trump administration is paying offshore wind developers to walk away from projects and invest instead in fossil fuel infrastructure. The US Department of the Interior (DoI) announced on Monday two "historic" agreements under which the firms behind the Bluepoint Wind and Golden State Wind projects will voluntarily terminate their offshore wind leases. In return, the DoI will reimburse the companies with taxpayers' cash, to the tune of $765 million in the case of Bluepoint Wind, and $120 million for Golden State Wind. There is a catch, of course: the leaseholders must first invest a comparable amount in qualifying US conventional energy projects (i.e., oil, gas, or liquefied natural gas infrastructure) before they can recover the money tied to their offshore wind leases. This isn't the first such development: last month, the DoI reached a similar deal with French energy biz TotalEnergies to reimburse the company approximately $1 billion to give up its wind farm leases in Carolina Long Bay and the New York Bight area, suggesting that this may be an ongoing strategy. It appears that paying developers to surrender offshore wind leases has become a fallback strategy after President Trump's executive order halting new federal approvals for wind projects ran into legal challenges from a coalition of state attorneys general and was later struck down in federal court. In a remarkable coincidence, both sets of developers have decided not to pursue any new offshore wind developments in the US. Washington's justification for these actions is that it is all part of President Trump's "Energy Dominance Agenda" to "leverage the nation's natural resources" to benefit American citizens and help lower everyday energy costs. "President Trump is focused on providing affordable and reliable energy to American citizens," claimed Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum in a prepared remark. "The companies that bid for these offshore wind leases were basically sold a product in 2022 that was only viable when propped up by massive taxpayer subsidies. Now that hardworking Americans are no longer footing the bill for expensive, unreliable, intermittent energy projects, companies are once again investing in affordable, reliable, secure energy infrastructure," he added. The President's well-known aversion to renewable energy is said to date back at least to his failed legal attempt to stop a wind farm project from being built within sight of his golf course in Scotland over a decade ago. Looking at the figures, fossil fuel producers are estimated to receive about $34.8 billion a year in federal support through tax breaks, royalty policies, and other subsidies, even though oil and gas have enjoyed public backing for decades and hardly qualify as an emerging industry. Globally, fossil fuel subsidies are typically much higher than those handed out to renewable energy projects. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), fossil fuel subsidies exceeded $7 trillion in 2022, or 7.1 percent of global GDP. Meanwhile, G20 governments provided about $168 billion in public financial support for renewable power in 2023, according to the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). At the same time, the most recent annual report on electricity generation costs published by investment bank Lazard found that unsubsidized wind and solar had been the lowest cost energy generation sources in the US for at least the last decade. This is apparent to big energy users like datacenter operators, which are keen to keep renewables in the mix due to the low cost of solar in particular. But it appears the Trump administration is convinced that only oil and gas, with a side dish of atomic power, can provide the energy America needs to meet the challenges of the future. ®

DoI offers up to $885M if they abandon offshore wind projects

As the Iran war pushes up energy prices, the Trump administration is paying offshore wind developers to walk away from projects and invest instead in fossil fuel infrastructure.…

NASA administrator Jared Isaacman has appeared before the US House Appropriations Committee to explain the proposed Trump administration plan to cut $5.6 billion from the space agency's budget. Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY), the committee's chairman, extended his congratulations to NASA, Isaacman, and all those involved in recognition of the Artemis II mission before telling the administrator how disappointed he was. "After all the success and momentum NASA has built up over the last year," Rogers said, "it's disappointing to see that request." The FY2027 budget request for NASA cuts funding by 23 percent and reduces the Science Mission Directorate by 46 percent, down to $3.9 billion. To put those figures in context, the first week of the US's war against Iran cost well over $10 billion, according to reports. Dozens of missions are at risk, some in the planning stages, and some are active. The Planetary Society provided a helpful list and commentary from scientists on some of the endangered missions. The Habitable Worlds Observatory is either on the chopping block or facing deployment in phases. It is a flagship-class mission and so carries a high price tag as currently designed. Evgenya Shkolnik, PhD, said, "Canceling HWO would destroy humanity’s first real opportunity to detect life on another planet." Then there is NASA's contribution to the European Space Agency's "snakebit" Mars trundlebot, which the agency has committed to launching but for which no funding has been allocated. After its ride to the red planet on a Russian rocket was canceled following the invasion of Ukraine, the rover was meant to launch on a NASA-provided rocket. Its cancellation would mean, at best, more delays for the mission to find signatures of life. Active assignments are also under threat. In 2022, NASA announced an extension for the OSIRIS-Rex mission. The primary objective – collecting a sample from the asteroid Bennu – was complete. The sample was returned to Earth in 2023, but since the spacecraft was still healthy, it was directed on an extended mission to inspect a near-Earth asteroid. Renamed OSIRIS-APEX (Apophis Explorer, for the asteroid it is headed to), the spacecraft is scheduled to arrive in 2029. However, if cut, the spacecraft will be silenced. And the list goes on. Much as it did last year. In fact, the whole process carries a whiff of déjà vu about it following 2025's budget proposal, which was dubbed "an extinction event for science and exploration in the United States" by observers. The same language is being used again as the latest budget's implications are digested. Last week, Casey Drier, Chief of Space Policy for the Planetary Society, wrote, "An extinction-level event can be thought of as a sudden, external calamity wiping out a given species. For the dinosaurs, it was the Chicxulub impactor. "For NASA's science program, it very well may be the FY 2027 Presidential Budget Request." Pressed on why more than 50 missions were omitted from budget documents sent to Congress, Isaacman insisted "they are not canceled," but qualified his statement: "a lot of these missions that are in formulation right now have coverage from existing assets." He went on to suggest that commercial industry could be used for Earth observation missions at least. This must be a great comfort to scientists pondering the fate of OSIRIS-APEX and its trip to an asteroid. The subcommittee appeared equally unconvinced by Isaacman's insistence that NASA could meet its goals with the budget in the request. Lawmakers will have the opportunity to amend the budget request, as they did last year. To coin a phrase, "Aw heck, here we go again." ®

That 'yet' is sure doing a lot of heavy lifting if the budget for science is slashed

NASA administrator Jared Isaacman has appeared before the US House Appropriations Committee to explain the proposed Trump administration plan to cut $5.6 billion from the space agency's budget.…

Facebook provider also working with energy storage firm to keep 100 hours of juice on hand

With AI demand growing, Facebook parent Meta is looking for new ways to power its datacenters, with one ambitious project pledging to send solar power down from orbit. Another agreement offers Meta the opportunity to store enough power to keep its bit barns going, even when the grid is over capacity or down.…

UPDATED SpaceX is preparing to launch its Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time in more than 18 months, kicking off what could be a busy time for the vehicle. The mission will loft the ViaSat-3 F3 communications satellite into geostationary orbit. Liftoff is scheduled during an 85-minute window opening at 1421 UTC today, with a backup opportunity on April 28 at 1417 UTC. The last Falcon Heavy mission launched the Europa Clipper in October 2024, and the entire Falcon Heavy system was expended. This time, SpaceX plans to recover both side boosters, landing them simultaneously at Landing Zones 2 and 40 at Cape Canaveral. Both side boosters are veterans: one has flown on 18 Starlink missions, the other on the GOES-U Falcon Heavy mission in June 2024. Today's assignment marks the start of a high-activity period for SpaceX's heavy lifter. If all goes to plan, a Falcon Heavy will send Astrobotic's Griffin-1 uncrewed lander to the Moon in July, and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope could launch as soon as September. The ViaSat-3 F3 satellite - part of the ViaSat-3 broadband constellation - will add more than 1 Tbps of capacity to the company's network over the Asia-Pacific region. It weighs in at six metric tons, so requires a heavy lifter. ViaSat originally planned to use an Ariane rocket for this task and agreed to modify its contract to use the Ariane 64 variant of the Ariane 6 launcher in 2019. However, delays meant that ViaSat eventually looked elsewhere, and here we are. The Falcon Heavy looks like three Falcon 9 rockets strapped together - though as SpaceX boss Elon Musk acknowledged, it's a bit more complicated than that. SpaceX's Starship can haul larger payloads, but remains in development; the third iteration of the rocket is about to begin testing, with orbital flight still uncertain. Until Starship matures, Falcon Heavy remains SpaceX's heaviest operational workhorse and its most photogenic, with the twin booster landings a spectacle in their own right. ® Updated at 15.25 UTC on April 27, 2026, to add: SpaceX has confirmed today's launched was scrubbed due to "unfavourable weather."

Side boosters to make simultaneous touchdown while center core takes one for the team

SpaceX is preparing to launch its Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time in more than 18 months, kicking off what could be a busy time for the vehicle.…

With more capacity and faster charging, solid-state batteries could be the next big thing in energy. And good news: researchers may have pinned down one major reason these batteries still fail before they can reach widespread commercial use. A team at the Max Planck Institute for Sustainable Materials in Düsseldorf, Germany, published its findings in Nature on Wednesday, saying it has identified a key mechanism behind cracking in the ceramic solid electrolytes that distinguish solid-state batteries from the liquid-electrolyte designs used in most modern electronics. As mentioned above, solid-state batteries swap a liquid electrolyte for a solid one, which offers several potential advantages. Energy density can be higher, cells can be made smaller and lighter, and some designs may allow faster charging and longer operating life than conventional lithium-ion batteries. They are also generally considered safer because solid electrolytes are less flammable than liquid ones and cannot leak. Unfortunately, the very same thing that makes them superior - the solid electrolyte - is also what makes SSBs prone to failure. Typically made of a ceramic material, these electrolytes can develop microscopic cracks that plated lithium from the metal anode may fill as it grows through the material, forming dendritic filaments inside the electrolyte. If those filaments continue to propagate, they can extend cracks and eventually short-circuit the cell. The Max Planck team believes it has identified what drives that dendrite-induced fracture in its garnet electrolyte samples, and has also proposed a couple of possible ways to limit the damage in future solid-state battery designs. As explained in the paper, there are two theories for how dendrites fracture the electrolyte: either internal stress within the lithium dendrite causes the ceramic to break, or electron leakage at grain boundaries promotes isolated lithium nuclei that later interconnect and contribute to short-circuiting. By prepping a number of samples subjected to vacuum conditions at a cryogenic temperature to eliminate influences from outside forces, the Planck team said that it found proof that dendrite-induced cracking has everything to do with mechanical stress.  Not only was there no lithium enrichment ahead of the tip of dendrites they studied, meaning the electron leak theory is out, but stress measurements made the mechanical failure theory seem likely to be true.  "The soft lithium metal is able to penetrate the stiff ceramic electrolyte, like a continuous waterjet that penetrates a rock," lead author Yuwei Zhang said in a press release from the Planck Institute. "We calculated that hydrostatic stress in the dendrite leads to brittle fracture of the solid electrolyte in the end."  Not only did the team conclude that mechanical failures are the source of dendrite-induced short circuiting, but they also did initial research into how to stop the fractures, too.  Zhang and his colleagues propose some possible solutions for electrolyte fractures: First, they suggest coming up with tougher solid electrolytes that'd simply resist cracks. Failing that, there's the second option, which sees the team suggesting that SSB makers leave microscopic voids in the electrolyte to force dendrites to take a path that prevents fracturing and inhibits growth. That, or just coat the lithium anode with something that'd stop cracks from forming.  It's a pretty simple solution on its face, though there's surely plenty of complex chemistry involved that'll take researchers years to sort out - we asked the Planck team when its recommendations might be tested more broadly, but didn't hear back.  Don't rule out chemical contributions yet The Planck team's answer to a question that's plagued battery experts for decades comes just a couple of weeks after a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology similarly published research in Nature saying they found pressure and mechanical forces alone aren't causing ceramic electrolytes to shatter: There's an electrochemical reason for the failure, too.  "Normally you would expect that the faster a dendrite grows, the more stress it creates," senior author and MIT materials science professor Yet-Ming Chiang said of his team's findings. "Instead, we observed exactly the opposite. The faster it grew, the lower the stress around it, meaning the solid electrolyte is breaking under a lower stress."  That, said Chiang, means mechanical force isn't solely to blame, and is indicative of embrittling happening in the electrolyte.  By turning to a cryogenic scanning transmission electron microscope, the MIT team was able to study the electrolyte at practically the atomic scale, which they said showed evidence of ionic current passing through the electrolyte and causing it to become brittle, contributing to fractures.  Not only is there a chemical component causing the electrolyte breakdown in the eyes of the MIT team, but they also said that they spotted a concentrated flow of lithium ions at the tip of the dendrites they studied.  Lead author and MIT materials science and engineering PhD candidate Cole Fincher told The Register in an email that he finds the Planck team's discovery complementary to his. "In our previous work in Joule, we showed that dendrite growth is a mechanical fracture process," Fincher explained. "In our Nature paper, we show that electrochemistry weakens the solid electrolyte, and assists this fracture process." In other words, consider the MIT team's recent publication to be yet more evidence pointing to the shortcomings of the current generation of solid-state battery electrolytes. It sure is great to know what's holding up a leap in energy storage technology, but equally disheartening to know the only solution is doing more difficult science to find superior electrolyte materials. Two steps forward, one step back, as they say. ®

Two teams, similar diagnosis: Ceramic electrolytes still refusing to cooperate

With more capacity and faster charging, solid-state batteries could be the next big thing in energy. And good news: researchers may have pinned down one major reason these batteries still fail before they can reach widespread commercial use.…

NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is ready for launch ahead of schedule despite repeated attempts by both Donald Trump's first and second administrations to cut funding. The space agency is now targeting early September to send forth the telescope, a full eight months ahead of schedule. The instrument boasts a field of view more than 100 times wider than Hubble's and will ride a SpaceX Falcon Heavy into orbit. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said: "Roman's accelerated development is a true success story of what we can achieve when public investment, institutional expertise, and private enterprise come together to take on the near-impossible missions that change the world." As well as being a "true success story," Roman's tale is also one of overcoming repeated attempts at defunding and termination. The proposal [PDF] for NASA's FY2020 budget, under Trump's first administration, for example, contained the words "The Budget proposes to terminate the WFIRST mission." WFIRST (Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope) was the original name for the observatory before it was renamed in honor of NASA's first Chief of Astronomy, Nancy Grace Roman. A Trump administration attempt in 2025 to cut NASA's science funding would likely have led to the telescope's cancellation. Once again, Roman swerved the ax. The administration is making another attempt to chainsaw NASA's science budget in 2026 after lawmakers rejected its effort last year, but the telescope could be in space before the axman comes knocking at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, where the project was managed. The telescope has a five-year primary mission and is expected to send 20,000 terabytes of data back to Earth for scientists to study. The data will include observations of 100,000 exoplanets, hundreds of millions of galaxies, billions of stars, and so on. It is quite the boon for science, and so confirmation that the vehicle is both ready for launch and ahead of schedule is no doubt a relief to the scientific community. Some worry that this might be the last of NASA's flagship missions as the agency seeks ways to do more with less, however. Initially, the budget for the Roman telescope was capped, and the project lived within its means, but even that early cut occurred when the funding situation was considerably more positive. The US administration's latest funding proposal, which aims to cut even deeper, might get struck down, but even if it does, planning long term (for example, for the Habitable Worlds Observatory – a telescope capable of directly imaging habitable worlds) is becoming complicated when every year brings a new fight over budget. ®