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One of the biggest mysteries in science is how the "Dark Ages" of the universe ended. This period, beginning 370,000 years after the Big Bang, had no stars and no light. It ended when the first Population III (Pop III) stars ignited, forged from pure hydrogen and helium. Observing these stars is functionally impossible, so scientists must rely on supercomputer simulations.

The United States is accelerating its plan to deploy nuclear reactors on the Moon and Mars. A new NASA directive, signed July 31 by acting chief Sean Duffy, calls for appointing a "nuclear power czar" to select two commercial proposals within six months. The memo frames the push as a critical race against a joint Chinese-Russian effort, warning that the first country to place a reactor on the Moon "could potentially declare a keep-out zone," inhibiting U.S. Artemis plans.

As NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft soared past Mars in March, it conducted a critical test that was impossible on Earth. Mission scientists have now declared a complete success: the REASON radar instrument performed just as expected, perfectly bouncing and receiving signals off the Red Planet's equator. This "dry run" confirms the instrument is ready for its ultimate goal: to peer beneath the icy shell of Jupiter's moon Europa and find the ocean hidden within.

Accurately classifying stars, galaxies, and quasars is crucial for understanding the universe. Spectroscopic observations are the "gold standard" but are incredibly slow. Using images (photometry) is much faster, but it's plagued by ambiguity. Now, researchers from the Yunnan Observatories have developed a new neural network that tackles this problem with remarkable accuracy.

Earth is surrounded by intriguing, invisible bands of radiation known as the Van Allen Belts. These belts trap high-energy particles, shielding our planet, but they aren't static. Occasionally, cosmic forces trigger a release of these particles into our atmosphere. A new CubeSat mission named REAL (Relativistic Electron Atmospheric Loss) is poised to find out exactly what causes this release.