A new NASA-funded project led by UT San Antonio will examine how icy lunar soil, or regolith, behaves in the extreme cold found in the Moon’s permanently shadowed regions, primarily found in craters around the poles. The findings could help inform methods for extracting, transporting and processing resources on the Moon.

The work addresses a critical challenge for future missions that rely on in-situ resource utilization, or using resources found on the Moon rather than transporting them from Earth. Water ice in permanently shadowed regions is a potentially important resource, but researchers need to better understand how icy regolith will respond to excavation and handling.

The project, “Characterizing Physical and Mechanical Properties of Regolith at Cryogenic Conditions using the Multi-Planetary Surface Simulator (MPS2),” began this month and will receive $1 million over two years through NASA’s MUREP Space Technology Artemis Research (M-STAR) program, which supports research and workforce development at minority-serving institutions. NASA selected only 12 institutions nationwide for the highly competitive award.

As COP31 gets underway in Türkiye, new research led by the University of Plymouth has found that unclear regulations are preventing authorities from acting on evidence of suspicious vessel activity. The study analysed the rules governing almost 10,000 MPAs covering parts of Africa, Asia, Europe, North and South America, and Oceania, as well as around 120 pieces of national legislation - it found such clarity was not being provided in the vast majority of cases with only 4% of the legislation they examined containing specific reference to satellites and vessel tracking.

A new framework from Cambridge scholars argues that the real question for universities isn’t what AI can do, but whether teaching is designed so that AI enriches—rather than erodes—the space where educators exercise professional judgement.