• Humanity just confirmed its 6 000th exoplanet, from hot Jupiters to rocky super-Earths—about 700 are terrestrial . Missions like TESS accelerate discovery, hinting Earth-like worlds are common .

• Faint hydrogen whispers from the cosmic “dark ages” may soon reveal dark matter’s mass. Moon-based radio telescopes could detect milli-Kelvin 21-cm signals, distinguishing warm from cold dark matter .

• Perseverance’s drill in Jezero found organic molecules with iron phosphate and sulfide “poppy seeds” and “leopard spots” . These meet NASA’s biosignature criteria; samples await Earth return for confirmation .

• Artemis II will send astronauts on a 10-day lunar flyby to test life-support and navigation . Delayed to 2026, engineers revised reentry after Artemis I’s heat-shield erosion .

• A centrifugal nuclear thermal rocket would spin molten uranium to heat propellant, achieving ~1 500 s specific impulse . It could cut Mars trips to ~420 days, possibly six months .

• JWST spotted dark “beads” drifting in Saturn’s ionosphere and a star-shaped auroral pattern . These structures connect atmospheric layers to the magnetosphere, reshaping models .

• Hubble saw a white dwarf devouring an icy Pluto-like fragment rich in carbon, nitrogen, sulfur and 64 % water . It reveals Kuiper-belt-type worlds can survive stellar death .

• Gaia mapped 44 M stars plus 87 O-stars, revealing 3D spires, bubbles and cavities in stellar nurseries .

• Chandra spotted a quasar 12.8 B ly away with a black hole growing 2.4× the Eddington limit . A billion-solar-mass monster from the early universe challenges formation models.

• Comet C/2025 R2 (SWAN) will pass within 0.26 AU of Earth on Oct 20–21 . Likely to brighten to mag +4–6, it offers a rare long-period comet sighting .