SpaceX Starship Sticks Water Landing, Sets Stage for Orbital Flight

SpaceX Starship achieves first intact ocean splashdown on Flight 13. The 13th test flight of the world's largest rocket successfully splashed down intact in the Indian Ocean for the first time, deployed 20 working Starlink satellites, and CEO Elon Musk announced plans to attempt a tower catch on Flight 14. 12

Chang'e-6 far-side lunar samples force rewrite of solar system history. Analysis of the first rocks ever returned from the Moon's far side, published in Science Advances, reveals asteroid bombardment occurred over a 3-billion-year period, challenging the long-standing theory of a single, violent Late Heavy Bombardment. 3

Host metals dramatically boost low-energy nuclear fusion reaction rates. A UC Davis and Berkeley Lab study found that packing deuterium into metal foils dramatically increases the rate of low-energy fusion, opening an entirely new 'materials-driven fusion' field that could act as a catalyst for the process. 4

Decades-old mystery of low-energy nuclear gamma rays finally solved. Researchers at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) traced a decades-long anomaly—excess low-energy gamma rays in zinc-70—to magnetic transitions inside the nucleus, improving the models used to understand how stars form elements. 56

Physicists extend magnon lifetimes 100-fold toward tiny quantum computers. An international team led by the University of Vienna extended magnetic quasiparticle (magnon) coherence time from hundreds of nanoseconds to 18 microseconds, enabling a path to radically miniaturized quantum computers. 7

Physicists observe a spacetime crystal melting into disorder for first time. Using a tabletop vibrating plate, physicists at Shanghai Jiao Tong University observed a spacetime crystal losing its order in three distinct phases, providing the first direct insight into how this exotic state of matter melts. 8

Laser-powered 'electron lighthouse' steers current without an electric field. University of Michigan physicists built a device that uses two infrared laser beams to launch ballistic electrons through a semiconductor without applying an electric field, offering a new approach for ultrafast photonic circuits. 9

Frozen-core optical fiber boosts light-sound interaction for quantum storage. Physicists at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light froze a liquid-core fiber to -196°C, amplifying Brillouin light-sound scattering by over 1000x to create a high-performance optical buffer and memory. 10

Insulator-free photonic crystals enable multi-lane highways for light. A new topological photonic design replaces insulating barriers with four distinct one-way 'lanes' for light, dramatically increasing data capacity and robustness in a compact chip-scale platform. 11

Study maps hidden biological drivers of co-occurring conditions in Down syndrome. A comprehensive study in Nature Communications mapped 100 clinical traits in individuals with Down syndrome, revealing that obesity acts as a powerful biological amplifier of systemic inflammation and immune dysregulation. 12

China's brain-mimicking chip reconstructs surfaces 478x faster than Nvidia A100. Peking University researchers developed a 40nm brain-mimicking chip capable of reconstructing brain surfaces in real time at speeds 478 times faster than an Nvidia A100 GPU, targeting surgical navigation and Alzheimer's research. 13