Business attire, headsets, and multiple computer monitors are a much different backdrop than hiking gear, rock hammers, and the volcanic fields of Iceland. For Kelsey Young of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and Trevor Graff and Angela Garcia of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, comfort and skill across both environments have made them uniquely suited to be certified as NASA's first Artemis II science officers.  

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Today marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, born April 3, 1926, in Mitchell, Indiana. As one of NASA's first seven astronauts, he became America's second astronaut to fly in space when he launched aboard the Liberty Bell 7 spacecraft on July 21, 1961, just weeks after Alan Shepard's historic first Project Mercury spaceflight.

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Students and faculty at Columbia's M.S. in Sustainability Management and Sustainability Science programs turned cutting-edge research on microplastics into Moby Filter, a sustainability startup tackling laundry-induced pollution at its source....

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The White House Office of Management and Budget has released its budget for fiscal year 2027. Here's what it includes, and what it means for NASA....

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The Trump administration is requesting the cancellation of billions of dollars in funds for renewable energy, environmental justice, carbon removal, space science, and climate change education in its FY 2027 budget. The cuts would help fund massive budget increases to Department of War programs, including a 28% increase in discretionary funding, bringing defense funding to $1.5 trillion.

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Back in 2010, I wrote about early artistic depictions of Brachiosaurus (including Giraffatitan). There, I wrote of the iconic mount MB.R.2181 (then HMN S II):

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The number of court decisions upholding building decarbonization laws against federal preemption challenges is growing. After the Ninth Circuit's decision in California Restaurant Association v. City of Berkeley (Berkeley), building decarbonization laws effectively prohibiting fossil-fuel appliances covered by the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 (EPCA) appeared to be on shaky ground. Since that court denied rehearing en banc, however, state and federal courts in other circuits have been consistently issuing decisions upholding similar building decarbonization laws by employing the reasoning of Judge Friedland's dissenting opinion. Last week, two federal district courts continued that trend, rejecting EPCA challenges to local building decarbonization laws enacted in Montgomery County, Maryland and Washington, D.C. In both cases, the plaintiffs claimed that the building electrification laws are preempted by EPCA, and in support, advanced arguments similar to those accepted by the Ninth Circuit majority. Federal district courts in D.C. and Maryland were less receptive to the arguments.

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This blog post and the "Deep Dive" podcast, created by NotebookLM, are based on "Rapid subsurface warming in the subpolar North Atlantic from freshening" by Menviel et al. (2026). Menzviel et al. (2026) study explores how increased fresh...

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Meet one of the most wonderfully peculiar animals to ever grace our ancient seas. This five-eyed marvel swam through the Cambrian oceans some 508 million years ago, its soft body drifting above the seafloor of what is now British Columbia--pres...

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At the top of the planet, the cap of sea ice across Arctic waters grows and shrinks with the seasons, usually reaching its annual maximum extent in March. In 2026, this peak occurred on March 15, when the extent reached 14.29 million square kilometers, matching the lowest maximum observed since satellite monitoring began in 1979. One of the key areas contributing to the low maximum this year was the Barents Sea.

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NASA's Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft lift off in this April 1, 2026, image. NASA's Artemis II mission will take NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy on an approximately 10-day journey around the Moon and back aboard their Orion spacecraft.

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A historic glacier protection law is under attack in Argentina as Congress loosens environmental protections....

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Corporate coordination to mitigate climate change raises complex questions for competition policy. From a structural antitrust perspective, climate alliances comprised of large asset managers can raise the specter of unaccountable "private governance," if effectively imposing clean-energy restraints across an entire sector. But from an econometric perspective, which seeks to optimize consumer welfare, institutional investors may possess a strong procompetitive rationale for mitigating systemic climate risk, particularly with their clients' diversified investment portfolios vulnerable to such risks. More broadly, given the capital-intensive burdens faced by first-movers in a clean-energy transition, climate alliances offer the promise of addressing negative externalities harmful to all, while enabling their members to thrive in a competitive marketplace.

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Though no spaceflight is without danger, Artemis II carries special risks....

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Nature awes me everyday. Quiet moments often shared solo or if lucky, with a good friend or one of the amazing animals that walk this Earth.I was especially lucky to have many of them while staying in Banff, Alberta. A morning stroll became an e...

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Our solar system appears to be very stable. The orbits of planets, moons, comets, and other objects are predictable enough to have provided the basis for theories of gravity, as well as insight into the internal structures of celestial bodies. In the famous final paragraph of On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin even contrasted the eternal cycles of planets to the chaotic changes driven by...

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It feels like we're doing this a lot now, but Marc, Gemma and Natee are once again reviewing a new television show with CGI dinosaurs! This time, the title is simply The Dinosaurs, a four-part miniseries on Netflix narrated by that fellow from Driv...

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This month's list has a couple of studies on the 2023 Türkiye earthquakes and the Mediterranean area. Also included are a few methodological studies that might be of interest to the paleoseismology community. Enjoy reading!

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The Artemis II crew, working closely with mission control in Houston, were able to restore the Orion spacecraft's toilet to normal operations following the proximity operations demonstration.

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I returned to St. Mary of the Annunciation Catholic Church located at East Eighth and Spring Streets, New Albany Indiana, USA. The fossil appears in the floor of the church alter area has strips of Red Verona or Rosso Verona marble in it. This roc...

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Neil Innes's bard in Holy Grail is one of my favorite film characters.

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This blog post and the "Deep Dive" podcast, created by NotebookLM, are based on "Increased ocean heat transport to the central Arctic despite a well working Barents Sea Cooling Machine" by Eisner et al. (2026). This study uses the SODA4 r...

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Cosmic Origins...Cosmic Origins CommunityHWO SIG Seminar, 1...AboutCommunityExecutive CommitteeScience GroupsNews & EventsCosmic PathfindersEarly Career WorkshopOpportunitiesMissionsStudiesNews & EventsResources  H...

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Back in 2017, the United Nations announced something that sounded genuinely exciting: a Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030). The idea was to have ten years of coordinated global investment in ocean science to help solve ...

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NASA's Artemis II mission has just launched people to the Moon for the first time in over 50 years....

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