News

With lunar missions looming, scientists grow chickpeas in 'moon dirt'

The development marks a step toward enabling astronauts on long-term moon missions to produce their own food.

AegisUI: Behavioral Anomaly Detection for Structured User Interface Protocols in AI Agent Systems

arXiv:2603.05031v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: AI agents that build user interfaces on the fly assembling buttons, forms, and data displays from structured protocol payloads are becoming common in production systems. The trouble is that a payload can pass every schema check and still trick a user: a button might say "View invoice" while its hidden action wipes an account, or a display widget might quietly bind to an internal salary field. Current defenses stop at syntax; they were never built

Zombie Agents: Persistent Control of Self-Evolving LLM Agents via Self-Reinforcing Injections

arXiv:2602.15654v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Self-evolving LLM agents update their internal state across sessions, often by writing and reusing long-term memory. This design improves performance on long-horizon tasks but creates a security risk: untrusted external content observed during a benign session can be stored as memory and later treated as instruction. We study this risk and formalize a persistent attack we call a Zombie Agent, where an attacker covertly implants a payload

A History of Entry, Descent, and Landing of Human Spacecraft

A human spacecraft is not finished when it reaches orbit. It is not finished when it docks, lands on the Moon, or circles Earth for months. It is finished only when the crew is back on the ground alive, reachable, and in condition to be recovered. That fact shaped the entire history of crewed spacecraft design.

Reclaiming Lost Text Layers for Source-Free Cross-Domain Few-Shot Learning

arXiv:2603.05235v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Source-Free Cross-Domain Few-Shot Learning (SF-CDFSL) focuses on fine-tuning with limited training data from target domains (e.g., medical or satellite images), where CLIP has recently shown promising results due to its generalizability to downstream tasks. Current works indicate CLIP's text encoder is more suitable for cross-domain tasks, however, we find that \textbf{removing certain middle layers of the text encoder can effectively improve perf

SPyCer: Semi-Supervised Physics-Guided Contextual Attention for Near-Surface Air Temperature Estimation from Satellite Imagery

arXiv:2603.05219v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Modern Earth observation relies on satellites to capture detailed surface properties. Yet, many phenomena that affect humans and ecosystems unfold in the atmosphere close to the surface. Near-ground sensors provide accurate measurements of certain environmental characteristics, such as near-surface air temperature (NSAT). However, they remain sparse and unevenly distributed, limiting their ability to provide continuous spatial measurements. To b

Mobility-Embedded POIs: Learning What A Place Is and How It Is Used from Human Movement

arXiv:2601.21149v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Recent progress in geospatial foundation models highlights the importance of learning general-purpose representations for real-world locations, particularly points-of-interest (POIs) where human activity concentrates. Existing approaches, however, focus primarily on place identity derived from static textual metadata, or learn representations tied to trajectory context, which capture movement regularities rather than how places are actua

Seraphim Space Investment Trust Posts Record Results

Seraphim Space Investment Trust ($SSIT) announced its financial results for H2 2025, revealing a successful portfolio of global space businesses that have seen valuations buoyed by geopolitical trends.   The post Seraphim Space Investment Trust Posts Record Results appeared first on Payload.

Exclusive: Viasat and Space42 Share Strategy for Equatys JV

The two companies cancelled a key roundtable at the Mobile World Conference, but Viasat CEO Mark Dankberg gave Payload an exclusive rundown. The post Exclusive: Viasat and Space42 Share Strategy for Equatys JV appeared first on Payload.

War in Iran: Verified footage reveals scale of Tehran's response and range of its targets

Since the Israeli-American airstrikes on Iran on February 28, the Islamic Republic has launched a large-scale retaliation against numerous targets across the Persian Gulf and as far as the Mediterranean. Videos recorded on the ground and satellite images help measure the number and extent of these strikes.

The US says it destroyed Iran's space command. Experts say it wasn't much of a threat.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ nascent space program has only a handful of satellites.

No Prank Here: NASA Lines Up April Fools' Day Window for First Crewed Moon Flight Since Apollo

NASA is targeting 1 April for the Artemis II Moon mission after engineers fixed a seal fault that forced the rocket back to the assembly building. The post No Prank Here: NASA Lines Up April Fools’ Day Window for First Crewed Moon Flight Since Apollo appeared first on Orbital Today.

NASA rules out chance of lunar asteroid impact in 2032

NASA on Thursday walked back a prediction that an asteroid had a "small, but notable" chance of impacting Earth or the moon in 2032 based on newly analyzed data.

Notorious asteroid 2024 YR4 won't crash into the moon after all

Earthlings aren't the only ones safe from a city-wrecking-size asteroid. Future lunar inhabitants won't have to worry about a strike in 2032 either

Poland-based Liftero will provide chemical propulsion for Indian firm OrbitAID's in-orbit servicing mission

WARSAW — Polish chemical propulsion startup Liftero has signed a deal with India’s commercial in-orbit servicing specialist OrbitAID where Liftero will supply green chemical propulsion for OrbitAID’s in-orbit servicing spacecraft.  Under the contract, Liftero will supply two multi-thruster BOOSTER configurations for an upcoming OrbitAID mission expected in the fourth quarter of 2026. The mission will […] The post Poland-based Liftero will provide chemical propulsion for Indian firm OrbitAID’s in

Toward practical laser-driven light sails using photonic crystals

Most space missions rely on chemical rockets for propulsion. Rockets must carry fuel, which increases spacecraft mass and limits their speed and travel distance. For decades, researchers have explored light sails as an alternative. These devices use radiation pressure—the force exerted when light reflects from a surface—to generate thrust. When driven by a powerful laser, a light sail can accelerate continuously without onboard propellant, enabling faster travel across the solar system.

NASA updates odds that 'city killer' asteroid 2024 YR4 will hit the moon

NASA now officially has no plans to use new mobile launcher for Artemis

When NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced the revamped approach to the Artemis moon program, it was unclear whether the new mobile launcher that has been constructed over the last two years at Kennedy Space Center would ever get used.

Artemis 2 inches closer to launch after helium fix

Finally, some good news for Artemis 2: NASA has fixed the helium flow issue that pushed the mission’s launch window from March to April. The Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft are expected to roll back out to the pad later this month, with launch opportunities opening April 1. After rolling back toContinue reading "Artemis 2 inches closer to launch after helium fix" The post Artemis 2 inches closer to launch after helium fix appeared first on Astronomy Magazine.

FCC Wants 'Weird Space' Missions To Get Spectrum, Too

The FCC has a plan to support the space industry sectors that feel more science fiction than fact.  The post FCC Wants ‘Weird Space’ Missions To Get Spectrum, Too appeared first on Payload.