SAN ANTONIO — January 20, 2026 — Research conducted by an international team of astronomers from  Southwest Research Institute, Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences in India and the Max Plank Institute in Germany could help predict upcoming solar cycle activity. To enable these predictions, the team devised a new way to look at historical data from the Kodaikanal Solar Observatory (KoSO), a field station of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) Bangalore, to reconstruct the Sun’s polar magnetic behavior over more than 100 years.

A research team from the Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT) and Yinhe Hangtian has achieved a major advance in orbit mechanics by developing an analytical method capable of directly predicting spacecraft trajectories under third-body gravitational perturbations. This work, recently published in the Chinese Journal of Aeronautics, resolves a long-standing challenge in celestial dynamics and provides a new theoretical tool for deep-space exploration and autonomous spacecraft control.

With climate change posing an unprecedented global challenge, the demand for environmentally friendly solvents in green chemical processes and carbon dioxide capture has surged. Ionic liquids (ILs) have emerged as promising "designer solvents" due to their negligible volatility, broad liquid temperature range, and exceptional thermal stability. However, the immense chemical space of ILs—with theoretically up to 10¹⁸ possible cation-anion combinations—has created a critical bottleneck in efficient screening and design. Traditional experimental methods are costly and time-consuming, while theoretical calculations like molecular dynamics and quantum chemistry remain computationally prohibitive for large-scale screening. This urgent need for accelerated discovery has set the stage for a transformative technological leap.

Recently, micro/nanosatellites have become a significant trend in space with the rapid development of space technology, microelectromechanical systems, and commercial off-the-shelf components. However, most traditional micro/nanosatellites have poor reliability and real-time performance. The implementation of a real-time operating system (RTOS) can effectively prevent system crashes due to untimely responses, thereby enhancing the real-time performance and reliability of the micro/nanosatellite attitude determination system. The Dalian-1 Lianli satellite, a 17-kg 12U high-resolution remote sensing CubeSat, was developed to validate a series of innovative technologies, including submeter high-resolution remote sensing imaging, the high-reliability OpenHarmony real-time operating system (RTOS), and the nontoxic hydroxylamine nitrate propulsion system. The satellite first uses the free, high-reliability OpenHarmony RTOS in the world. Launched on 2023 May 10, aboard the Tianzhou-VI cargo spacecraft, the satellite was successfully deployed into orbit on 2024 January 18, following 253 d of in-orbit storage at the China Space Station.

The positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) information is fundamental to modern information systems. Over the years, people have invented many navigation systems to get PNT information, whereas each single navigation system has its flaws. As far as radio navigation is concerned, besides global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), exploiting non-navigation signals of opportunity for navigation under complex environments has attracted more and more interest in recent years. Satellite signals of opportunity positioning (SSOOP) attempts to work out a navigation solution with many non-GNSS satellite signals, such the many low-earth-orbit direct-to-cell and broadband satellite communications signals, when GNSS signals are not available. It is promising in addressing GNSS vulnerability by using an overwhelming quantity of satellites with diverse signal formats, multiple radio bands, and global availability. However, existing work on SSOOP is still quite preliminary. No work on identifying the passing satellite has been done when a receiver powers on without a rough guess on its location.

There are over 36,500 pieces of space debris of larger than 10 cm in orbit according to statistical model orbit provided by European Space Agency’s Space Debris Office at European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany. Any of those debris can pose a threat to operational satellites. Active debris removal (ADR) is conducted to solve the above problems for stabilizing the space debris environment. Unfortunately, the angular velocity of space debris exceeds the maximum angular velocity of 4 to 5 deg/s that can be directly captured by a robotic arm. Therefore, to stabilize the debris environment, the first task, i.e., de-tumbling tasks, is to reduce the initial angular velocity of the debris by applying an external torque. To ensure the safety of the de-tumbling tasks avoiding collision between the de-tumbling device and the uncooperative space target, many contactless methods have been studied. Among them, the contactless method based on electromagnetic eddy current method has received increasing attention due to the advantages of pollution-free and high safety performance.

Rapid industrialization advancements have grabbed worldwide attention to integrate a very large number of electronic components into a smaller space for performing multifunctional operations. To fulfill the growing computing demand state-of-the-art materials are required for substituting traditional silicon and metal oxide semiconductors frameworks. Two-dimensional (2D) materials have shown their tremendous potential surpassing the limitations of conventional materials for developing smart devices. Despite their ground-breaking progress over the last two decades, systematic studies providing in-depth insights into the exciting physics of 2D materials are still lacking. Therefore, in this review, we discuss the importance of 2D materials in bridging the gap between conventional and advanced technologies due to their distinct statistical and quantum physics. Moreover, the inherent properties of these materials could easily be tailored to meet the specific requirements of smart devices. Hence, we discuss the physics of various 2D materials enabling them to fabricate smart devices. We also shed light on promising opportunities in developing smart devices and identified the formidable challenges that need to be addressed.