Pluto Has Liquid, a Star Died on Camera, and the Moon Got Hit

NASA announced the first evidence of liquid on Pluto's surface — liquid nitrogen rising through cracks in Tombaugh Regio, the heart-shaped glacier that defined the first close-up images returned by New Horizons in 2015. Pluto sits 3.67 billion miles from Earth in a region so cold that nitrogen exists as ice; liquid nitrogen on or near its surface implies a subsurface heat source planetary scientists do not yet fully understand. The comparison to Europa and Enceladus — moons of Jupiter and Saturn with liquid water oceans maintained by gravitational tidal heating — is tempting but imperfect, as Pluto lacks a sufficiently large nearby gravitational body to generate equivalent tidal heat. Radioactive decay in the core is one working hypothesis. The finding complicates existing models of where in the solar system liquid phases can persist and, by extension, where habitability conditions might exist.

Separately, astronomers captured a dying star's first flash of light from a rare supernova — the 'shock breakout,' the moment a stellar explosion's shockwave first reaches the surface and escapes into space as visible light. The phenomenon lasts only minutes to hours; a survey camera caught it serendipitously, and follow-up observation confirmed the recording. The data on stellar interiors and explosion dynamics is expected to be studied for years.

NASA's PUNCH satellite constellation predicted a solar storm's arrival within 30 minutes — a tenfold improvement over existing forecast capability. The practical implications are immediate: solar storms damage satellites, disrupt GPS, and can knock out power grids. The 2003 Halloween storms caused billions in satellite damage and disrupted high-frequency radio communications for weeks. A 30-minute warning versus a three-to-four-hour warning materially changes what operators of critical infrastructure can do to protect systems.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage that had been drifting in an unstable orbit since January 2025 struck the lunar surface near Einstein Crater at approximately 5,400 miles per hour Thursday. The four-tonne rocket body was tracked by amateur astronomers and its impact confirmed by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter; the resulting crater is expected to be visible in orbital imagery. The event served as a concrete illustration of the growing debris problem in Earth orbit and cislunar space. The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, meanwhile, released the most detailed solar surface images ever recorded, providing direct visual confirmation of plasma vortices long theorized to transport energy from the solar interior to the corona — a partial step toward explaining why the corona is millions of degrees hotter than the surface below it, a paradox that has puzzled solar physicists for decades.