A once-in-a-century, 222-meter-diameter impact crater formed on the Moon in 2024, recently discovered in repeat images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) Camera. Analysis by the LRO Diviner team reveals a 7-kilometer-wide nighttime “cold spot” surrounding the crater, suggesting that the impact altered the upper centimeters of lunar regolith to distances far beyond the crater itself.

The APL-built Parker Solar Probe obtained the first-ever in situ observations confirming the existence of a heliospheric current sheet in the wake of a coronal mass ejection (CME), which may play a key role in accelerating these massive solar storms toward Earth.

Combining data from NASA’s Europa Clipper and 16 other spacecraft, an APL-led study revealed a hidden Earth-directed component of a highly asymmetrical coronal mass ejection that operational forecasts missed. The study demonstrates how multipoint observations across the inner solar system can improve space-weather forecasting and help protect spacecraft and future crews.

Can life exist, full-cycle, in a planet’s atmosphere? We know life spends time in our atmosphere, but does anything live there full time? How about Venus, other solar system planets, or exoplanets? How can we know? This APL-led hypothesis paper addresses four key hypotheses to better understand the possibilities of aero-biospheres.

APL-led computer modeling demonstrates that the five large moons of Uranus likely experienced two distinct episodes of self-destruction: the first due to the giant planets themselves being in close proximity to one another shortly after their formation and the second resulting from the massive impact that tilted Uranus on its side.

A new APL-led study reveals that key plasma waves that influence the radiation belts and space weather in geospace respond to solar wind pressure in two distinct time-delayed phases.

An APL-led study shows that solar wind turbulence is a real, but weak, causal driver of geomagnetic activity, acting through slow, viscous-like coupling rather than magnetic reconnection.

The James Webb Space Telescope split a hot Jupiter’s atmosphere in two, revealing morning clouds, clear evening skies, and a hidden asymmetry that skews our view of planet chemistry.

APL-led data analysis reveals that winds erase nightside methane on a hot Jupiter, showing how fast circulation can drive atmospheric chemistry.

APL-led Mini-RF analysis shows that a rockier Moon doesn’t always look rocky to radar, redefining how we use radar for landing-site assessment.

A new study of measurements from the APL-built Juno/JEDI instrument reveals relativistic electron acceleration upstream of Jupiter’s bow shock, advancing our universal understanding of particle acceleration.